Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| On the Unity of the Church.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
The
Treatises of Cyprian.
————————————
Treatise I.
On the Unity of the Church.3097
| 3097
[Written a.d. 251. Although, in
order of time, this treatise would be the third, I have placed it here
because of its dignity, and because of its importance as a key to the
entire writings of Cyprian; for this theory is everywhere the
underlying principle of his conduct and of his correspondence. It
illustrates the epistles of Ignatius as well as his own, and gives the
sense in which the primitive Christians understood these words of the
Creed, “the Holy Catholic Church.” This treatise has
been subjected to falsifying interpolations, long since exposed and
detected, to make it less subversive of the countertheory of Rome as
developed by the school doctors. Elucidation I.] |
Argument.—On the Occasion of the Schism of Novatian, to Keep Back
from Him the Carthaginians, Who Already Were Not Averse to Him, on
Account of Novatus and Some Other Presbyters of His Church, Who Had
Originated the Whole Disturbance, Cyprian Wrote This Treatise.
And First of All, Fortifying Them Against the Deceits of These, He
Exhorts Them to Constancy, and Instructs Them that Heresies Exist
Because Christ, the Head of the Church, is Not Looked To, that the
Common Commission First Entrusted to Peter is Contemned, and the One
Church and the One Episcopate are Deserted. Then He Proves, as
Well by the Scriptures as by the Figures of the Old and New Testament,
the Unity of the Church.3098
| 3098
Describing in few words the ambition and dissimulation of Novatian in
invading the episcopate of Rome, he argues at length, that neither on
the one hand is the passage in Matthew xviii. of any avail to
compensate for their fewness as against the Church:
“Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name,”
etc.; nor, on the other, could martyrdom be of any benefit to them
outside the Church. Then he tells them that they need not marvel
that heresies flourished, since they had been foretold by Christ; nor
that certain Roman confessors acquiesced in the schism, because before
one’s death no one is blessed, and the traitor Judas was found in
the very company of the apostles. Yet he charges them to shun the
association of schismatics and heretics, and finally exhorts them by
the Scriptures to peace and unanimity. |
1. Since the Lord warns us, saying,
“Ye are the salt of the earth,”3099
and since He bids us to be simple to
harmlessness, and yet with our simplicity to be prudent, what else,
beloved brethren, befits us, than to use foresight and watching with an
anxious heart, both to perceive and to beware of the wiles of the
crafty foe, that we, who have put on Christ the wisdom of God the
Father, may not seem to be wanting in wisdom in the matter of providing
for our salvation? For it is not persecution alone that is to be
feared; nor those things which advance by open attack to overwhelm and
cast down the servants of God. Caution is more easy where danger
is manifest, and the mind is prepared beforehand for the contest when
the adversary avows himself. The enemy is more to be feared and
to be guarded against, when he creeps on us secretly; when, deceiving
by the appearance of peace, he steals forward by hidden approaches,
whence also he has received the name of the Serpent.3100
| 3100 The
creeping, stealing thing. | That is always his subtlety; that
is his dark and stealthy artifice for circumventing man. Thus
from the very beginning of the world he deceived; and flattering with
lying words, he misled inexperienced souls by an incautious
credulity. Thus he endeavoured to tempt the Lord Himself:
he secretly approached Him, as if he would creep on Him again, and
deceive; yet he was understood, and beaten back, and therefore
prostrated, because he was recognised and detected.
2. From which an example is given us to
avoid the way of the old man, to stand in the footsteps of a
conquering3101
Christ, that we may
not again be incautiously turned back into the nets of death, but,
foreseeing our danger, may possess the immortality that we have
received. But how can we possess immortality, unless we keep
those commands of Christ whereby death is driven out and overcome, when
He Himself warns us, and says, “If thou wilt enter into life,
keep the commandments?”3102
And again: “If ye do the
things that I command you, henceforth I call you not servants, but
friends.”3103
Finally,
these persons He calls strong and stedfast; these He declares to be
founded in robust security upon the rock, established with immoveable
and unshaken firmness, in opposition to all the tempests and hurricanes
of the world. “Whosoever,” says He, “heareth my
words, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, that built his
house upon a rock: the rain descended, the floods came, the winds
blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it
was founded upon a rock.”3104
We ought therefore to stand fast on
His words, to learn and do whatever He both taught and did. But
how can a man say that he believes in Christ, who does not do what
Christ commanded him to do? Or whence shall he attain to the
reward of faith, who will not keep the faith of the commandment?
He must of necessity waver and wander, and, caught away by a spirit of
error, like dust which is shaken by the wind, be blown about; and he
will make no advance in his walk towards salvation, because he does not
keep the truth of the way of salvation.
3. But, beloved brethren, not only must we
beware of what is open and manifest, but also of what deceives by the
craft of subtle fraud. And what can be more crafty, or what more
subtle, than for this enemy, detected and cast down by the advent of
Christ, after light has come to the nations, and saving rays have shone
for the preservation of men, that the deaf might receive the hearing of
spiritual grace, the blind might open their eyes to God, the weak might
grow strong again with eternal health, the lame might run to the
church, the dumb might pray with clear voices and prayers—seeing
his idols forsaken, and his lanes and his temples deserted by the
numerous concourse of believers—to devise a new fraud, and under
the very title of the Christian name to deceive the incautious?
He has invented heresies and schisms, whereby he might subvert the
faith, might corrupt the truth, might divide the unity.3105
| 3105
[Here note that our author’s entire ignorance of any
Centre of Unity, of any one See as the test of communion; in short, of
any one bishop as having more of Peter’s authority than
others,—is a sufficient disproof of the existence of any such
things. Otherwise, how could they have been overlooked in a
treatise devoted to the subject of unity, its nature and its
criteria? The effort to foist into the text something of
the kind, by corruption, demonstrates how entirely unsatisfactory to
the Middle-Age theorists and dogmatists is the unadulterated work,
which they could not let alone.] | Those whom
he cannot keep in the darkness of the old way, he circumvents and
deceives by the error of a new way. He snatches men from the
Church itself; and while they seem to themselves to have already
approached to the light, and to have escaped the night of the world, he
pours over them again, in their unconsciousness, new darkness; so that,
although they do not stand firm with the Gospel of Christ, and with the
observation and law of Christ, they still call themselves Christians,
and, walking in darkness, they think that they have the light, while
the adversary is flattering and deceiving, who, according to the
apostle’s word, transforms himself into an angel of light, and
equips his ministers as if they were the ministers of righteousness,
who maintain night instead of day, death for salvation, despair under
the offer of hope, perfidy under the pretext of faith, antichrist under
the name of Christ; so that, while they feign things like the truth,
they make void the truth by their subtlety. This happens, beloved
brethren, so long as we do not return to the source of truth, as we do
not seek the head nor keep the teaching of the heavenly
Master.
4. If any one consider and examine these
things, there is no need for lengthened discussion and arguments.
There is easy proof for faith in a short summary of the truth.
The Lord speaks to Peter,3106
| 3106 [On the
falsifying of the text by Romish editors, see Elucidation II.] |
saying, “I say unto thee, that thou art Peter; and upon this rock
I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven;
and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven,
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in
heaven.”3107
And
again to the same He says, after His resurrection, “Feed my
sheep.”3108
And
although to all the apostles, after His resurrection, He gives an equal
power, and says, “As the Father hath sent me, even so send I
you: Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose soever sins ye remit,
they shall be remitted unto him; and whose soever sins ye retain, they
shall be retained;”3109
yet, that He might set forth unity, He
arranged by His authority the origin of that unity, as beginning from
one. Assuredly the rest of the apostles were also the same as was
Peter, endowed with a like partnership both of honour and power; but
the beginning proceeds from unity.3110
| 3110 [Here
is interpolated]: “And the primacy is given to Peter, that
there might be shown one Church of Christ and one See; and they are all
shepherds, and the Rock is one, which is fed by all the apostles with
unanimous consent.” This passage, as well as the one a few
lines before, is beyond all question spurious. | Which one Church, also, the Holy
Spirit in the Song of Songs designated in the person of our Lord, and
says, “My dove, my spotless one, is but one. She is the
only one of her mother, elect of her that bare her.”3111
Does he who
does not hold this unity of the Church think that he holds the
faith? Does he who strives against and resists the
Church3112
| 3112 [Here
is interpolated]: “Who deserts the chair of Peter, upon
whom the Church is founded.” This passage also is
undoubtedly spurious. | trust that he is
in the Church, when moreover the blessed Apostle Paul teaches the same
thing, and sets forth the sacrament of unity, saying, “There is
one body and one spirit, one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith,
one baptism, one God?”3113
5. And this unity we ought firmly to hold and
assert, especially those of us that are bishops who preside in the
Church, that we may also
prove the episcopate itself to be one and undivided.3114
| 3114
[i.e., the universal episcopate is the chair of Peter.] | Let no one deceive the brotherhood
by a falsehood: let no one corrupt the truth of the faith by
perfidious prevarication. The episcopate is one, each part of
which is held by each one for the whole.3115
| 3115
[This maxim is the essence of the treatise; i.e., “Ecclesia
in Episcopo.” Compare p. 333, note 9,
supra.] | The Church also is one, which is
spread abroad far and wide into a multitude by an increase of
fruitfulness. As there are many rays of the sun, but one light;
and many branches of a tree, but one strength based in its tenacious
root; and since from one spring flow many streams, although the
multiplicity seems diffused in the liberality of an overflowing
abundance, yet the unity is still preserved in the source.
Separate a ray of the sun from its body of light, its unity does not
allow a division of light; break a branch from a tree,—when
broken, it will not be able to bud; cut off the stream from its
fountain, and that which is cut off dries up. Thus also the
Church, shone over with the light of the Lord, sheds forth her rays
over the whole world, yet it is one light which is everywhere diffused,
nor is the unity of the body separated. Her fruitful abundance
spreads her branches over the whole world. She broadly expands
her rivers, liberally flowing, yet her head is one, her source one; and
she is one mother, plentiful in the results of fruitfulness: from
her womb we are born, by her milk we are nourished, by her spirit we
are animated.
6. The spouse of Christ cannot be
adulterous; she is uncorrupted and pure. She knows one home; she
guards with chaste modesty the sanctity of one couch. She keeps
us for God. She appoints the sons whom she has born for the
kingdom. Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an
adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church; nor can he
who forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of
Christ. He is a stranger; he is profane; he is an enemy. He
can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his
mother. If any one could escape who was outside the ark of Noah,
then he also may escape who shall be outside of the Church. The
Lord warns, saying, “He who is not with me is against me, and he
who gathereth not with me scattereth.”3116
He who breaks the peace and the
concord of Christ, does so in opposition to Christ; he who gathereth
elsewhere than in the Church, scatters the Church of Christ. The
Lord says, “I and the Father are one;”3117
and again it is written of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, “And these three are
one.”3118
And does
any one believe that this unity which thus comes from the divine
strength and coheres in celestial sacraments, can be divided in the
Church, and can be separated by the parting asunder of opposing
wills? He who does not hold this unity does not hold God’s
law, does not hold the faith of the Father and the Son, does not hold
life and salvation.
7. This sacrament of unity, this bond of a
concord inseparably cohering, is set forth where in the Gospel the coat
of the Lord Jesus Christ is not at all divided nor cut, but is received
as an entire garment, and is possessed as an uninjured and undivided
robe by those who cast lots concerning Christ’s garment, who
should rather put on Christ.3119
| 3119 The
above reading of this passage seems hopelessly obscure; and it is not
much mended apparently by substituting “ipsam” for
Christum, unless “potius” be omitted, as in some editions,
in which case we should read, “who should put it on.” | Holy Scripture speaks, saying,
“But of the coat, because it was not sewed, but woven from the
top throughout, they said one to another, Let us not rend it, but cast
lots whose it shall be.”3120
That coat bore with it an unity
that came down from the top, that is, that came from heaven and the
Father, which was not to be at all rent by the receiver and the
possessor, but without separation we obtain a whole and substantial
entireness. He cannot possess the garment of Christ who parts and
divides the Church of Christ. On the other hand, again, when at
Solomon’s death his kingdom and people were divided, Abijah the
prophet, meeting Jeroboam the king in the field, divided his garment
into twelve sections, saying, “Take thee ten pieces; for thus
saith the Lord, Behold, I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of
Solomon, and I will give ten sceptres unto thee; and two sceptres shall
be unto him for my servant David’s sake, and for Jerusalem, the
city which I have chosen to place my name there.”3121
As the
twelve tribes of Israel were divided, the prophet Abijah rent his
garment. But because Christ’s people cannot be rent, His
robe, woven and united throughout, is not divided by those who possess
it; undivided, united, connected, it shows the coherent concord of our
people who put on Christ. By the sacrament and sign of His
garment, He has declared the unity of the Church.
8. Who, then, is so wicked and faithless,
who is so insane with the madness of discord, that either he should
believe that the unity of God can be divided, or should dare to rend
it—the garment of the Lord—the Church of Christ? He
Himself in His Gospel warns us, and teaches, saying, “And there
shall be one flock and one shepherd.”3122
And does any one believe that
in one place there can
be either many shepherds or many flocks? The Apostle Paul,
moreover, urging upon us this same unity, beseeches and exhorts,
saying, “I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms
among you; but that ye be joined together in the same mind and in the
same judgment.”3123
And again, he says,
“Forbearing one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity
of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”3124
Do you think that you can stand
and live if you withdraw from the Church, building for yourself other
homes and a different dwelling, when it is said to Rahab, in whom was
prefigured the Church, “Thy father, and thy mother, and thy
brethren, and all the house of thy father, thou shalt gather unto thee
into thine house; and it shall come to pass, whosoever shall go abroad
beyond the door of thine house, his blood shall be upon his own
head?”3125
Also, the
sacrament of the passover contains nothing else in the law of the
Exodus than that the lamb which is slain in the figure of Christ should
be eaten in one house. God speaks, saying, “In one house
shall ye eat it; ye shall not send its flesh abroad from the
house.”3126
The flesh
of Christ, and the holy of the Lord, cannot be sent abroad, nor is
there any other home to believers but the one Church. This home,
this household3127
of
unanimity, the Holy Spirit designates and points out in the Psalms,
saying, “God, who maketh men to dwell with one mind in a
house.”3128
In the
house of God, in the Church of Christ, men dwell with one mind, and
continue in concord and simplicity.
9. Therefore also the Holy Spirit came as a
dove, a simple and joyous creature, not bitter with gall, not cruel in
its bite, not violent with the rending of its claws, loving human
dwellings, knowing the association of one home; when they have young,
bringing forth their young together; when they fly abroad, remaining in
their flights by the side of one another, spending their life in mutual
intercourse, acknowledging the concord of peace with the kiss of the
beak, in all things fulfilling the law of unanimity. This is the
simplicity that ought to be known in the Church, this is the charity
that ought to be attained, that so the love of the brotherhood may
imitate the doves, that their gentleness and meekness may be like the
lambs and sheep. What does the fierceness of wolves do in the
Christian breast? What the savageness of dogs, and the deadly
venom of serpents, and the sanguinary cruelty of wild beasts? We
are to be congratulated when such as these are separated from the
Church, lest they should lay waste the doves and sheep of Christ with
their cruel and envenomed contagion. Bitterness cannot consist
and be associated with sweetness, darkness with light, rain with
clearness, battle with peace, barrenness with fertility, drought with
springs, storm with tranquillity. Let none think that the good
can depart from the Church. The wind does not carry away the
wheat, nor does the hurricane uproot the tree that is based on a solid
root. The light straws are tossed about by the tempest, the
feeble trees are overthrown by the onset of the whirlwind. The
Apostle John execrates and severely assails these, when he says,
“They went forth from us, but they were not of us; for if they
had been of us, surely they would have continued with
us.”3129
10. Hence heresies not only have frequently
been originated, but continue to be so; while the perverted mind has no
peace—while a discordant faithlessness does not maintain
unity. But the Lord permits and suffers these things to be, while
the choice of one’s own liberty remains, so that while the
discrimination of truth is testing our hearts and our minds, the sound
faith of those that are approved may shine forth with manifest
light. The Holy Spirit forewarns and says by the apostle,
“It is needful also that there should be heresies, that they
which are approved may be made manifest among you.”3130
Thus the
faithful are approved, thus the perfidious are detected; thus even
here, before the day of judgment, the souls of the righteous and of the
unrighteous are already divided, and the chaff is separated from the
wheat. These are they who of their own accord, without any divine
arrangement, set themselves to preside among the daring strangers
assembled, who appoint themselves prelates without any law of
ordination, who assume to themselves the name of bishop, although no
one gives them the episcopate; whom the Holy Spirit points out in the
Psalms as sitting in the seat of pestilence, plagues, and spots of the
faith, deceiving with serpent’s tongue, and artful in corrupting
the truth, vomiting forth deadly poisons from pestilential tongues;
whose speech doth creep like a cancer, whose discourse forms a deadly
poison in the heart and breast of every one.
11. Against people of this kind the Lord cries;
from these He restrains and recalls His erring people, saying,
“Hearken not unto the words of the false prophets; for the
visions of their hearts deceive them. They speak, but not out of
the mouth of the Lord. They say to those who cast away the word
of God, Ye shall have peace, and every one that walketh after his own
will. Every one who walketh in the error of his heart, no evil shall come upon him.
I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. If they had stood
on my foundation (substantia, ὑποστάσει),
and had heard my words, and taught my people, I would have turned them
from their evil thoughts.”3131
Again, the Lord points out and
designates these same, saying, “They have forsaken me, the
fountain of living waters, and have hewed them out broken cisterns
which can hold no water.”3132
Although there can be no other
baptism but one, they think that they can baptize; although they
forsake the fountain of life, they promise the grace of living and
saving water. Men are not washed among them, but rather are made
foul; nor are sins purged away, but are even accumulated. Such a
nativity does not generate sons to God, but to the devil. By a
falsehood they are born, and they do not receive the promises of
truth. Begotten of perfidy, they lose the grace of faith.
They cannot attain to the reward of peace, since they have broken the
Lord’s peace with the madness of discord.
12. Nor let any deceive themselves by a
futile interpretation, in respect of the Lord having said,
“Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there
am I in the midst of them.”3133
Corrupters and false interpreters
of the Gospel quote the last words, and lay aside the former ones,
remembering part, and craftily suppressing part: as they
themselves are separated from the Church, so they cut off the substance
of one section. For the Lord, when He would urge unanimity and
peace upon His disciples, said, “I say unto you, That if two of
you shall agree on earth touching anything that ye shall ask, it shall
be given you by my Father which is in heaven. For wheresoever two
or three are gathered together in my name, I am with
them;”3134
showing that
most is given, not to the multitude, but to the unanimity of those that
pray. “If,” He says, “two of you shall agree on
earth:” He placed agreement first; He has made the concord
of peace a prerequisite; He taught that we should agree firmly and
faithfully. But how can he agree with any one who does not agree
with the body of the Church itself, and with the universal
brotherhood? How can two or three be assembled together in
Christ’s name, who, it is evident, are separated from Christ and
from His Gospel? For we have not withdrawn from them, but they
from us; and since heresies and schisms have risen subsequently, from
their establishment for themselves of diverse places of worship, they
have forsaken the Head and Source of the truth. But the Lord
speaks concerning His Church, and to those also who are in the Church
He speaks, that if they are in agreement, if according to what He
commanded and admonished, although only two or three gathered together
with unanimity should pray—though they be only two or
three—they may obtain from the majesty of God what they
ask. “Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my
name, I,” says He, “am with them;” that is, with the
simple and peaceable—with those who fear God and keep God’s
commandments. With these, although only two or three, He said
that He was, in the same manner as He was with the three youths in the
fiery furnace; and because they abode towards God in simplicity, and in
unanimity among themselves, He animated them, in the midst of the
surrounding flames, with the breath of dew: in the way in which,
with the two apostles shut up in prison, because they were
simple-minded and of one mind, He Himself was present; He Himself,
having loosed the bolts of the dungeon, placed them again in the
market-place, that they might declare to the multitude the word which
they faithfully preached. When, therefore, in His commandments He
lays it down, and says, “Where two or three are gathered together
in my name, I am with them,” He does not divide men from the
Church, seeing that He Himself ordained and made the Church; but
rebuking the faithless for their discord, and commending peace by His
word to the faithful, He shows that He is rather with two or three who
pray with one mind, than with a great many who differ, and that more
can be obtained by the discordant prayer of a few, than by the
discordant supplication of many.
13. Thus, also, when He gave the law of
prayer, He added, saying, “And when ye stand praying, forgive, if
ye have ought against any; that your Father also which is in heaven may
forgive you your trespasses.”3135
And He calls back from the altar
one who comes to the sacrifice in strife, and bids him first agree with
his brother, and then return with peace and offer his gift to
God: for God had not respect unto Cain’s offerings; for he
could not have God at peace with him, who through envious discord had
not peace with his brother. What peace, then, do the enemies of
the brethren promise to themselves? What sacrifices do those who
are rivals of the priests think that they celebrate? Do they deem
that they have Christ with them when they are collected together, who
are gathered together outside the Church of Christ?
14. Even if such men were slain in confession of
the Name, that stain is not even washed away by blood: the
inexpiable and grave fault of discord is not even purged by
suffering. He cannot be a martyr who is not in the Church; he
cannot attain unto the
kingdom who forsakes that which shall reign there. Christ gave us
peace; He bade us be in agreement, and of one mind. He charged
the bonds of love and charity to be kept uncorrupted and inviolate; he
cannot show himself a martyr who has not maintained brotherly
love. Paul the apostle teaches this, and testifies, saying,
“And though I have faith, so that I can remove mountains, and
have not charity, I am nothing. And though I give all my goods to
feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not
charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity is magnanimous; charity
is kind; charity envieth not; charity acteth not vainly, is not puffed
up, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; loveth all things,
believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Charity never faileth.”3136
| 3136
1 Cor. xiii. 2–5, 7,
8. | “Charity,” says he,
“never faileth.” For she will ever be in the kingdom,
she will endure for ever in the unity of a brotherhood linked to
herself. Discord cannot attain to the kingdom of heaven; to the
rewards of Christ, who said, “This is my commandment, that ye
love one another, even as I have loved you:”3137
he cannot attain3138
who has
violated the love of Christ by faithless dissension. He who has
not charity has not God. The word of the blessed Apostle John
is: “God,” saith he, “is love; and he that
dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God dwelleth in
him.”3139
They
cannot dwell with God who would not be of one mind in God’s
Church. Although they burn, given up to flames and fires, or lay
down their lives, thrown to the wild beasts, that will not be the crown
of faith, but the punishment of perfidy; nor will it be the glorious
ending of religious valour, but the destruction of despair. Such
a one may be slain; crowned he cannot be. He professes himself to
be a Christian in such a way as the devil often feigns himself to be
Christ, as the Lord Himself forewarns us, and says, “Many shall
come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive
many.”3140
As he is
not Christ, although he deceives in respect of the name; so neither can
he appear as a Christian who does not abide in the truth of His Gospel
and of faith.
15. For both to prophesy and to cast out
devils, and to do great acts upon the earth is certainly a sublime and
an admirable thing; but one does not attain the kingdom of heaven
although he is found in all these things, unless he walks in the
observance of the right and just way. The Lord denounces, and
says, “Many shall say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not
prophesied in Thy name, and in Thy name have cast out devils, and in
Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto
them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work
iniquity.”3141
There is
need of righteousness, that one may deserve well of God the Judge; we
must obey His precepts and warnings, that our merits may receive their
reward. The Lord in His Gospel, when He would direct the way of
our hope and faith in a brief summary, said, “The Lord thy God is
one God: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength. This is the
first commandment; and the second is like unto it: Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all
the law and the prophets.”3142
He taught, at the same time, love
and unity by His instruction. He has included all the prophets
and the law in two precepts. But what unity does he keep, what
love does he maintain or consider, who, savage with the madness of
discord, divides the Church, destroys the faith, disturbs the peace,
dissipates charity, profanes the sacrament?
16. This evil, most faithful brethren, had
long ago begun, but now the mischievous destruction of the same evil
has increased, and the envenomed plague of heretical perversity and
schisms has begun to spring forth and shoot anew; because even thus it
must be in the decline of the world, since the Holy Spirit foretells
and forewarns us by the apostle, saying, “In the last
days,” says he, “perilous times shall come, and men shall
be lovers of their own selves, proud, boasters, covetous, blasphemers,
disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection,
truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, hating the good,
traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of
God, having a sort of form3143
| 3143
Deformationem religionis. | of religion, but denying the power
thereof. Of this sort are they who creep into houses, and lead
captive silly women laden with sins, which are led away with divers
lusts; ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the
truth. And as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these
also resist the truth;3144
but they shall proceed no further, for
their folly shall be manifest unto all men, even as theirs also
was.”3145
Whatever
things were predicted are fulfilled; and as the end of the world is
approaching, they have come for the probation as well of the men as of
the times. Error deceives as the adversary rages more and more;
senselessness lifts up, envy inflames, covetousness makes blind, impiety
depraves, pride puffs up, discord exasperates, anger hurries
headlong.
17. Yet let not the excessive and headlong
faithlessness of many move or disturb us, but rather strengthen our
faith in the truthfulness which has foretold the matter. As some
have become such, because these things were predicted beforehand, so
let other brethren beware of matters of a like kind, because these also
were predicted beforehand, even as the Lord instructs us, and says,
“But take ye heed: behold, I have told you all
things.”3146
Avoid,
I beseech you, brethren, men of this kind, and drive away from your
side and from your ears, as if it were the contagion of death, their
mischievous conversation; as it is written, “Hedge thine ears
about with thorns, and refuse to hear a wicked tongue.”3147
And
again, “Evil communications corrupt good manners.”3148
The Lord
teaches and warns us to depart from such. He saith, “They
are blind leaders of the blind; and if the blind lead the blind, they
shall both fall into the ditch.”3149
Such a one is to be turned away
from and avoided, whosoever he may be, that is separated from the
Church. Such a one is perverted and sins, and is condemned of his
own self. Does he think that he has Christ, who acts in
opposition to Christ’s priests, who separates himself from the
company of His clergy and people? He bears arms against the
Church, he contends against God’s appointment. An enemy of
the altar, a rebel against Christ’s sacrifice, for the faith
faithless, for religion profane, a disobedient servant, an impious son,
a hostile brother, despising the bishops, and forsaking God’s
priests, he dares to set up another altar, to make another prayer with
unauthorized words, to profane the truth of the Lord’s offering
by false sacrifices, and not3150
| 3150
According to some, “does not deign,” or “disdains to
know.” | to know that he who strives against the
appointment of God, is punished on account of the daring of his
temerity by divine visitation.
18. Thus Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who
endeavoured to claim to themselves the power of sacrificing in
opposition to Moses and Aaron the priest, underwent immediate
punishment for their attempts. The earth, breaking its
fastenings, gaped open into a deep gulf, and the cleft of the receding
ground swallowed up the men standing and living. Nor did the
anger of the indignant God strike only those who had been the movers
(of the sedition); but two hundred and fifty sharers and associates of
that madness besides, who had been mingled with them in that boldness,
the fire that went out from the Lord consumed with a hasty revenge;
doubtless to admonish and show that whatever those wicked men had
endeavoured, in order by human will to overthrow God’s
appointment, had been done in opposition to God. Thus also Uzziah
the king,—when he bare the censer and violently claimed to
himself to sacrifice against God’s law, and when Azariah the
priest withstood him, would not be obedient and yield,—was
confounded by the divine indignation, and was polluted upon his
forehead by the spot of leprosy: he was marked by an offended
Lord in that part of his body where they are signed who deserve well of
the Lord. And the sons of Aaron, who placed strange fire upon the
altar, which the Lord had not commanded, were at once extinguished in
the presence of an avenging Lord.
19. These, doubtless, they imitate and
follow, who, despising God’s tradition, seek after strange
doctrines, and bring in teachings of human appointment, whom the Lord
rebukes and reproves in His Gospel, saying, “Ye reject the
commandment of God, that ye may keep your own
tradition.”3151
This is a
worse crime than that which the lapsed seem to have fallen into, who
nevertheless, standing as penitents for their crime, beseech God with
full satisfactions. In this case, the Church is sought after and
entreated; in that case, the Church is resisted: here it is
possible that there has been necessity; there the will is engaged in
the wickedness: on the one hand, he who has lapsed has only
injured himself; on the other, he who has endeavoured to cause a heresy
or a schism has deceived many by drawing them with him. In the
former, it is the loss of one soul; in the latter, the risk of
many. Certainly the one both understands that he has sinned, and
laments and bewails it; the other, puffed up in his heart, and pleasing
himself in his very crimes, separates sons from their Mother, entices
sheep from their shepherd, disturbs the sacraments of God; and while
the lapsed has sinned but once, he sins daily. Finally, the
lapsed, who has subsequently attained to martyrdom, may receive the
promises of the kingdom; while the other, if he have been slain without
the Church, cannot attain to the rewards of the Church.
20. Nor let any one marvel, beloved
brethren, that even some of the confessors advance to these lengths,
and thence also that some others sin thus wickedly, thus
grievously. For neither does confession make a man free from the
snares of the devil, nor does it defend a man who is still placed in
the world, with a perpetual security from temptations, and dangers, and
onsets, and attacks of the world; otherwise we should never see in
confessors those subsequent frauds, and fornications, and adulteries, which now
with groans and sorrow we witness in some. Whosoever that
confessor is, he is not greater, or better, or dearer to God than
Solomon, who, although so long as he walked in God’s ways,
retained that grace which he had received from the Lord, yet after he
forsook the Lord’s way he lost also then Lord’s
grace.3152
And
therefore it is written, “Hold fast that which thou hast, lest
another take thy crown.”3153
But assuredly the Lord would not
threaten that the crown of righteousness might be taken away, were it
not that, when righteousness departs, the crown must also
depart.
21. Confession is the beginning of glory,
not the full desert of the crown; nor does it perfect our praise, but
it initiates our dignity; and since it is written, “He that
endureth to the end, the same shall be saved,”3154
whatever has been before the end is a
step by which we ascend to the summit of salvation, not a terminus
wherein the full result of the ascent is already gained. He is a
confessor; but after confession his peril is greater, because the
adversary is more provoked. He is a confessor; for this cause he
ought the more to stand on the side of the Lord’s Gospel, since
he has by the Gospel attained glory from the Lord. For the Lord
says, “To whom much is given, of him much shall be required; and
to whom more dignity is ascribed, of him more service is
exacted.”3155
Let no
one perish by the example of a confessor; let no one learn injustice,
let no one learn arrogance, let no one learn treachery, from the
manners of a confessor. He is a confessor, let him be lowly and
quiet; let him be in his doings modest with discipline, so that he who
is called a confessor of Christ may imitate Christ whom he
confesses. For since He says, “Whosoever exalteth himself
shall be abased, and he who humbleth himself shall be
exalted;”3156
and since He
Himself has been exalted by the Father, because as the Word, and the
strength, and the wisdom of God the Father, He humbled Himself upon
earth, how can He love arrogance, who even by His own law enjoined upon
us humility, and Himself received the highest name from the Father as
the reward of His humility? He is a confessor of Christ, but only
so if the majesty and dignity of Christ be not afterwards blasphemed by
him. Let not the tongue which has confessed Christ be
evil-speaking; let it not be turbulent, let it not be heard jarring
with reproaches and quarrels, let it not after words of praise, dart
forth serpents’ venom against the brethren and God’s
priests. But if one shall have subsequently been blameworthy and
obnoxious; if he shall have wasted his confession by evil conversation;
if he shall have stained his life by disgraceful foulness; if, finally,
forsaking the Church in which he has become a confessor, and severing
the concord of unity, he shall have exchanged his first faith for a
subsequent unbelief, he may not flatter himself on account of his
confession that he is elected to the reward of glory, when from this
very fact his deserving of punishment has become the
greater.
22. For the Lord chose Judas also among the
apostles, and yet afterwards Judas betrayed the Lord. Yet not on
that account did the faith and firmness of the apostles fail, because
the traitor Judas failed from their fellowship: so also in the
case in question the holiness and dignity of confessors is not
forthwith diminished, because the faith of some of them is
broken. The blessed Apostle Paul in his epistle speaks in this
manner: “For what if some of them fall away from the faith,
shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God
forbid: for God is true, though every man be a
liar.”3157
The
greater and better part of the confessors stand firm in the strength of
their faith, and in the truth of the law and discipline of the Lord;
neither do they depart from the peace of the Church, who remember that
they have obtained grace in the Church by the condescension of God; and
by this very thing they obtain a higher praise of their faith, that
they have separated from the faithlessness of those who have been
associated with them in the fellowship of confession, and withdrawn
from the contagion of crime. Illuminated by the true light of the
Gospel, shone upon with the Lord’s pure and white brightness,
they are as praiseworthy in maintaining the peace of Christ, as they
have been victorious in their combat with the devil.
23. I indeed desire, beloved brethren, and I
equally endeavour and exhort, that if it be possible, none of the
brethren should perish, and that our rejoicing Mother may enclose in
her bosom the one body of a people at agreement. Yet if wholesome
counsel cannot recall to the way of salvation certain leaders of
schisms and originators of dissensions, who abide in blind and
obstinate madness, yet do you others, if either taken in simplicity, or
induced by error, or deceived by some craftiness of misleading cunning,
loose yourselves from the nets of deceit, free your wandering steps
from errors, acknowledge the straight way of the heavenly road.
The word of the witnessing apostle is: “We command
you,” says he, “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that
ye withdraw yourselves from all brethren that walk disorderly, and not
after the tradition that they
have received from us.”3158
And again he says, “Let no
man deceive you with vain words; for because of these things cometh the
wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not ye
therefore partakers with them.”3159
We must withdraw, nay rather must
flee, from those who fall away, lest, while any one is associated with
those who walk wickedly, and goes on in ways of error and of sin, he
himself also, wandering away from the path of the true road, should be
found in like guilt. God is one, and Christ is one, and His
Church is one, and the faith is one, and the people3160
is joined into a substantial unity of
body by the cement of concord. Unity cannot be severed; nor can
one body be separated by a division of its structure, nor torn into
pieces, with its entrails wrenched asunder by laceration.
Whatever has proceeded from the womb cannot live and breathe in its
detached condition, but loses the substance of health.
24. The Holy Spirit warns us, and says,
“What man is he that desireth to live, and would fain see good
days? Refrain thy tongue from evil, and thy lips that they speak
no guile. Eschew evil, and do good; seek peace, and ensue
it.”3161
The son of
peace ought to seek peace and ensue it. He who knows and loves
the bond of charity, ought to refrain his tongue from the evil of
dissension. Among His divine commands and salutary teachings, the
Lord, when He was now very near to His passion, added this one, saying,
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto
you.”3162
He gave
this to us as an heritage; He promised all the gifts and rewards of
which He spoke through the preservation of peace. If we are
fellow-heirs with Christ, let us abide in the peace of Christ; if we
are sons of God, we ought to be peacemakers.
“Blessed,” says He, “are the peacemakers; for they
shall be called the sons of God.”3163
It behoves the sons of God to be
peacemakers, gentle in heart, simple in speech, agreeing in affection,
faithfully linked to one another in the bonds of unanimity.
25. This unanimity formerly prevailed among
the apostles; and thus the new assembly of believers, keeping the
Lord’s commandments, maintained its charity. Divine
Scripture proves this, when it says, “But the multitude of them
which believed were of one heart and of one soul.”3164
| 3164
Acts iv. 32. [Bernard., Epist.
ccxxxviii., Opp. i. 502.] | And
again: “These all continued with one mind in prayer with
the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His
brethren.”3165
And
thus3166
| 3166 Some
interpolate “because.” | they prayed with
effectual prayers; thus they were able with confidence to obtain
whatever they asked from the Lord’s mercy.
26. But in us unanimity is diminished in
proportion as liberality of working is decayed. Then they used to
give for sale houses and estates; and that they might lay up for
themselves treasures in heaven, presented to the apostles the price of
them, to be distributed for the use of the poor. But now we do
not even give the tenths from our patrimony; and while our Lord bids us
sell, we rather buy and increase our store. Thus has the vigour
of faith dwindled away among us; thus has the strength of believers
grown weak. And therefore the Lord, looking to our days, says in
His Gospel, “When the Son of man cometh, think you that He shall
find faith on the earth?”3167
We see that what He foretold has
come to pass. There is no faith in the fear of God, in the law of
righteousness, in love, in labour; none considers the fear of futurity,
and none takes to heart the day of the Lord, and the wrath of God, and
the punishments to come upon unbelievers, and the eternal torments
decreed for the faithless. That which our conscience would fear
if it believed, it fears not because it does not at all believe.
But if it believed, it would also take heed; and if it took heed, it
would escape.
27. Let us, beloved brethren, arouse
ourselves as much as we can; and breaking the slumber of our ancient
listlessness, let us be watchful to observe and to do the Lord’s
precepts. Let us be such as He Himself has bidden us to be,
saying, “Let your loins be girt, and your lamps burning;3168
| 3168
Some read, “in your hands.” | and ye
yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord, when He shall come
from the wedding, that when He cometh and knocketh, they may open to
Him. Blessed are those servants whom their Lord, when He cometh,
shall find watching.”3169
We ought to be girt about, lest,
when the day of setting forth comes, it should find us burdened and
entangled. Let our light shine in good works, and glow in such
wise as to lead us from the night of this world to the daylight of
eternal brightness. Let us always with solicitude and caution
wait for the sudden coming of the Lord, that when He shall knock, our
faith may be on the watch, and receive from the Lord the reward of our
vigilance. If these commands be observed, if these warnings and
precepts be kept, we cannot be overtaken in slumber by the deceit of
the devil; but we shall reign with Christ in His kingdom as servants
that watch.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
