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| To Florentius Pupianus, on Calumniators.
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Epistle LXVIII.2783
| 2783
Oxford ed.: Ep. lxvi. From his saying, that he has
now discharged his episcopal office for six years (sec. 5), it is
plainly evident that he is writing this letter in the time of
Stephen. a.d. 254. |
To Florentius Pupianus, on
Calumniators.
Argument.—Cyprian Clears Himself in the Eyes of Florentius Pupianus
from Various Crimes of Which He is Accused by Him; And Argues the
Lightness of His Mind, in that He Has So Hastily Trusted
Calumniators.
1. Cyprian, who is also called
Thascius,2784
| 2784
It is suggested with some probability, that this form of superscription
was intended to rebuke the rudeness of Florentius, who, in addressing
Cyprian, had used his heathen name of Thascius instead of his baptismal
name of Cæcilius, which he had adopted from the presbyter who had
been the means of his conversion. | to
Florentius, who is also Pupianus, his brother, greeting. I had
believed, brother, that you were now at length turned to repentance for
having either rashly heard or believed in time past things so wicked,
so disgraceful, so execrable even among Gentiles, concerning me.
But even now in your letter I perceive that you are still the same as
you were before—that you believe the same things concerning me,
and that you persist in what you did believe, and, lest by chance the
dignity of your eminence and your martyrdom should be stained by
communion with me, that you are inquiring carefully into my character;
and after God the Judge who makes priests, that you wish to
judge—I will not say of me, for what am I?—but of the
judgment of God and of Christ. This is not to believe in
God—this is to stand forth as a rebel against Christ and His
Gospel; so that although He says, “Are not two sparrows sold for
a farthing? and neither of them falls to the ground without the will of my
Father,”2785
and His
majesty and truth prove that even things of little consequence are not
done without the consciousness and permission of God, you think that
God’s priests are ordained in the Church without His
knowledge. For to believe that they who are ordained are unworthy
and unchaste, what else is it than to believe that his priests are not
appointed in the Church by God, nor through God?
2. Think you that my testimony of myself is
better than that of God? when the Lord Himself teaches, and says that
testimony is not true, if any one himself appears as a witness
concerning himself, for the reason that every one would assuredly
favour himself. Nor would any one put forward mischievous and
adverse things against himself, but there may be a simple confidence of
truth if, in what was announced of us, another is the announcer and
witness. “If,” He says, “I bear witness of
myself, my testimony is not true; but there is another who beareth
witness of me.”2786
But if the Lord Himself, who
will by and by judge all things, was unwilling to be believed on His
own testimony, but preferred to be approved by the judgment and
testimony of God the Father, how much more does it behove His servants
to observe this, who are not only approved by, but even glory in the
judgment and testimony of God! But with you the fabrication of
hostile and malignant men has prevailed against the divine decree, and
against our conscience resting upon the strength of its faith, as if
among lapsed and profane persons placed outside the Church, from whose
breasts the Holy Spirit has departed, there could be anything else than
a depraved mind and a deceitful tongue, and venomous hatred, and
sacrilegious lies, which whosoever believes, must of necessity be found
with them when the day of judgment shall come.
3. But with respect to what you have said,
that priests should be lowly, because both the Lord and His apostles
were lowly; both all the brethren and Gentiles also well know and love
my humility; and you also knew and loved it while you were still in the
Church, and were in communion with me. But which of us is far
from humility: I, who daily serve the brethren, and kindly
receive with good-will and gladness every one that comes to the Church;
or you, who appoint yourself bishop of a bishop, and judge of a
judge,2787
| 2787
[A mild remonstrance against the officious conduct of Stephen,
also.] | given for
the time by God? Although the Lord God says in Deuteronomy,
“And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken
unto the priests or unto the judge who shall be in those days, even
that man shall die; and all the people, when they hear, shall fear, and
do no more presumptuously.”2788
And again He speaks to Samuel,
and says, “They have not despised thee, but they have despised
me.”2789
And
moreover the Lord, in the Gospel, when it was said to Him,
“Answerest thou the high priest so?” guarding the priestly
dignity, and teaching that it ought to be maintained, would say nothing
against the high priest, but only clearing His own innocence, answered,
saying, “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if
well, why smitest thou me?”2790
The blessed apostle also, when
it was said to him, “Revilest thou God’s high
priest?” spoke nothing reproachfully against the priest, when he
might have lifted up himself boldly against those who had crucified the
Lord, and who had already sacrificed God and Christ, and the temple and
the priesthood; but even although in false and degraded priests,
considering still the mere empty shadow of the priestly name, he said,
“I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest; for it is
written, Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy
people.”2791
4. Unless perchance I was a priest to you
before the persecution, when you held communion with me, and ceased to
be a priest after the persecution! For the persecution, when it
came, lifted you to the highest sublimity of martyrdom. But it
depressed me with the burden of proscription, since it was publicly
declared, “If any one holds or possesses any of the property of
Cæcilius Cyprian, bishop of the Christians;” so that even
they who did not believe in God appointing a bishop, could still
believe in the devil proscribing a bishop. Nor do I boast of
these things, but with grief I bring them forward, since you constitute
yourself a judge2792
| 2792 [A
mild remonstrance against the officious conduct of Stephen, also.] | of God and
of Christ, who says to the apostles, and thereby to all chief rulers,
who by vicarious ordination succeed to the apostles: “He
that heareth you, heareth me; and he that heareth me, heareth Him that
sent me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me, and Him that sent
me.”2793
5. For from this have arisen, and still
arise, schisms and heresies, in that the bishop who is one2794
| 2794
[His aphorism, Ecclesia in Episcopo, is here used in
another form. “The bishop” here = the
episcopate.] | and rules
over the Church is contemned by the haughty presumption of some
persons; and the man who is honoured by God’s condescension, is
judged unworthy by men. For what swelling of pride is this, what
arrogance of soul, what inflation of mind, to call prelates and priests
to one’s own recognition, and unless I may be declared clear in your sight and absolved
by your judgment, behold now for six years the brotherhood has neither
had a bishop, nor the people a prelate,2795
| 2795
[Præpositum is the word thus translated.] | nor the flock a pastor, nor the Church
a governor, nor Christ a representative,2796
| 2796
Antistitem. [This word occurs in Tertullian, De
Fuga.] | nor God a priest! Pupianus must
come to the rescue, and give judgment, and declare the decision of God
and Christ accepted, that so great a number of the faithful who have
been summoned away, under my rule, may not appear to have departed
without hope of salvation and of peace; that the new crowd of believers
may not be considered to have failed of attaining any grace of baptism
and the Holy Spirit by my ministry;2797
that the peace conferred upon so many
lapsed and penitent persons, and the communion vouchsafed by my
examination, may not be abrogated by the authority of your
judgment. Condescend for once, and deign to pronounce concerning
us, and to establish our episcopate by the authority of your
recognition, that God and His Christ may thank you, in that by your
means a representative and ruler has been restored as well to their
altar as to their people.
6. Bees have a king, and cattle a leader,
and they keep faith to him. Robbers obey their chief with
an obedience full of humility. How much more simple and better
than you are the brute cattle and dumb animals, and robbers, although
bloody, and raging among swords and weapons! The chief among them
is acknowledged and feared, whom no divine judgment has appointed, but
on whom an abandoned faction and a guilty band have agreed.
7. You say, indeed, that the scruple into
which you have fallen ought to be taken from your mind. You have
fallen into it, but it was by your irreligious credulity. You
have fallen into it, but it was by your own sacrilegious disposition
and will in easily hearkening to unchaste, to impious, to unspeakable
things against your brother, against a priest, and in willingly
believing them in defending other men’s falsehoods, as if they
were your own and your private property; and in not remembering that it
is written, “Hedge thine ears with thorns, and hearken not to a
wicked tongue;”2798
and again: “A wicked doer
giveth heed to the tongue of the unjust; but a righteous man regards
not lying lips.”2799
Wherefore have not the martyrs
fallen into this scruple, full of the Holy Ghost, and already by their
passion near to the presence of God and of His Christ; martyrs who,
from their dungeon, directed letters to Cyprian the bishop,
acknowledging the priest of God, and bearing witness to him?
Wherefore have not so many bishops, my colleagues, fallen into this
scruple, who either, when they departed from the midst of us, were
proscribed, or being taken were cast into prison and were in chains; or
who, sent away into exile, have gone by an illustrious road to the
Lord; or who in some places, condemned to death, have received heavenly
crowns from the glorification of the Lord? Wherefore have not
they fallen into this scruple, from among that people of ours which is
with us, and is by God’s condescension committed to us—so
many confessors who have been put to the question and tortured, and
glorious by the memory of illustrious wounds and scars; so many chaste
virgins, so many praiseworthy widows; finally, all the churches
throughout the whole world who are associated with us in the bond of
unity? Unless all these, who are in communion with me, as you
have written, are polluted with the pollution of my lips, and have lost
the hope of eternal life by the contagion of my communion.2800
| 2800
[See sec. 6, note 3, supra.] | Pupianus
alone, sound, inviolate, holy, modest, who would not associate himself
with us, shall dwell alone in paradise and in the kingdom of
heaven.
8. You have written also, that on my account
the Church has now a portion of herself in a state of dispersion,
although the whole people of the Church are collected, and united, and
joined to itself in an undivided concord: they alone have
remained without, who even, if they had been within, would have had to
be cast out. Nor does the Lord, the protector of His people, and
their guardian, suffer the wheat to be snatched from His floor; but the
chaff alone can be separated from the Church, since also the apostle
says, “For what if some of them have departed from the faith?
shall their unbelief make the faith of God of none effect? God
forbid; for God is true, but every man a liar.”2801
And the Lord also in the Gospel,
when disciples forsook Him as He spoke, turning to the twelve, said,
“Will ye also go away?” then Peter answered Him,
“Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the word of eternal
life; and we believe, and are sure, that Thou art the Son of the living
God.”2802
Peter
speaks there, on whom the Church was to be built,2803
| 2803 [Not
any of his successors, but Peter personally, is thus honoured on the
strength of Eph. ii.
20. All the apostles
were in this foundation also, Rev. xxi. 14; but the figure excludes successors, who
are of the superstructure, necessarily.] | teaching and showing in the name of the
Church, that although a rebellious and arrogant multitude of those who
will not hear and obey may depart, yet the Church does not depart from
Christ; and they are the Church who are a people united to the priest,
and the flock which adheres to its pastor.2804
Whence you ought to know that the
bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the bishop;2805
| 2805
[See sec. 5, supra. This is the famous formula of
Cyprian’s theory. The whole theory is condensed in what
follows.] | and if any one be not with the bishop,
that he is not in the Church, and that those flatter themselves in vain
who creep in, not having peace with God’s priests, and think that
they communicate secretly with some; while the Church, which is
Catholic and one, is not cut nor divided, but is indeed connected and
bound together by the cement of priests who cohere with one
another.
9. Wherefore, brother, if you consider God’s
majesty who ordains priests, if you will for once have respect to
Christ, who by His decree and word, and by His presence, both rules
prelates themselves, and rules the Church by prelates; if you will
trust, in respect of the innocence of bishops, not human hatred, but
the divine judgment; if you will begin even a late repentance for your
temerity, and pride, and insolence; if you will most abundantly make
satisfaction to God and His Christ whom I serve, and to whom with pure
and unstained lips I ceaselessly offer sacrifices, not only in peace,
but in persecution; we may have some ground for communion with you,
even although there still remain among us respect and fear for the
divine censure; so that first I should consult my Lord whether He would
permit peace to be granted to you, and you to be received to the
communion of His Church by His own showing and admonition.
10. For I remember what has already been
manifested to me, nay, what has been prescribed by the authority of our
Lord and God to an obedient and fearing servant; and among other things
which He condescended to show and to reveal, He also added this:
“Whoso therefore does not believe Christ, who maketh the priest,
shall hereafter begin to believe Him who avengeth the
priest.” Although I know that to some men dreams seem
ridiculous and visions foolish, yet assuredly it is to such as would
rather believe in opposition to the priest, than believe the
priest. But it is no wonder, since his brethren said of Joseph,
“Behold, this dreamer cometh; come now therefore, let us slay
him.”2806
And
afterwards the dreamer attained to what he had dreamed; and his slayers
and sellers were put to confusion, so that they, who at first did not
believe the words, afterwards believed the deeds. But of those
things that you have done, either in persecution or in peace, it is
foolish for me to pretend to judge you, since you rather appoint
yourself a judge over us. These things, of the pure conscience of
my mind, and of my confidence in my Lord and my God, I have written at
length. You have my letter, and I yours. In the day of
judgment, before the tribunal of Christ, both will be
read.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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