Epistolae

THE LETTERS OF ST. CORNELIUS, POPE AND MARTYR, AND THOSE WRITTEN TO HIM.

A.D. 251. 699-700 LETTER ONE.

OF ST. CYPRIAN, BISHOP OF CARTHAGE, TO ST. CORNELIUS, POPE

(Erasm., 11; Pamel., Rigalt., Baluz., XLI; Paris., XI; Oxon., Lips., XLIV; Coustant, I, 125; Galland. III, 333.)

ARGUMENT. The wickedness of Novatian's envoys is exposed, and therefore they are kept from communion. When they ask to be heard publicly, this is refused. Those who seek on every side to attach to themselves companions of schism and heresy are restrained.

CYPRIAN TO HIS BROTHER CORNELIUS, GREETING.

I. There came to us, dearest brother, envoys sent by Novatian: Maximus a presbyter, Augendus a deacon, and a certain Machaeus, and Longinus. But when, from the letter which they were bringing and from their own talk and assertion, we had learned that Novatian had been made bishop, we were moved by the wickedness of an ordination that was unlawful and made against the catholic Church, and we judged that they must at once be kept from our communion; and, having for the time being refuted and beaten back the things which they were attempting obstinately and stubbornly to maintain, I and very many of my colleagues who had gathered to me were already awaiting the arrival of our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus, whom we had lately sent as envoys to you and to our fellow bishops who had been present at your ordination, so that, when they arrived and reported the truth of what had been done, the shamelessness of the opposing party might be broken with greater authority and with clear proof through them.

But Pompeius and Stephanus, our colleagues, have arrived, and they too, in keeping with their own gravity and faith, have brought clear indications and testimonies to instruct us here, so that there was no need to hear further those who had been sent from Novatian. When these men burst into the assembly with invidious insults and turbulent outcries, and demanded that the charges which they said they were bringing and proving should be made publicly known by us and by the people, we denied that it was fitting for our gravity to allow the honor of our colleagues, already chosen and ordained and approved by the praiseworthy judgment of many, to be further tossed about by the abusive voice of the envious. And because they have been refuted and put down, and by their unlawful attempts they have been laid bare as having made a heresy, it would have been tedious to gather everything into a letter; from Primitivus, our fellow presbyter, you will hear every single matter most fully when he comes to you.

II. And lest their raging audacity should ever cease, here too they strive to tear apart the members of Christ into the factions of schism, and to split and mangle the one body of the catholic Church; so that, running about from door to door through the houses of many, or town by town through certain cities, they may seek companions for their own obstinacy and error from those they have split off to themselves. To these we have once given an answer, and we shall not cease to command, that, having laid aside pernicious dissension and strife, they may know it is impiety to desert the mother; and may acknowledge and understand that, once a bishop has been made, and approved by the testimony and judgment of his colleagues and of the people, another can in no way be appointed. Therefore, if they have consulted peaceably and faithfully for themselves, if they confess themselves to be assertors of the Gospel and of Christ, let them first return to the Church. I pray, dearest brother, that you may always fare well.

In the year of Christ 251. Letter II.

Of St Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, to St Cornelius the Pope.

ARGUMENT. What Cyprian did from the usage of divine tradition and ecclesiastical institution, when he was informed concerning the legitimate ordination of Cornelius. That the letters of Cornelius, not of Novatian, were read publicly. Why, besides the letters of Cornelius in which he announced himself as bishop, he desired the testimony of those who had been present at his ordination. He asks Cornelius to read the letters concerning the case of Felicissimus and the presbyters and the adherents, which he sent to him.

CYPRIAN TO HIS BROTHER CORNELIUS, GREETING.

As was fitting for the servants of God, and especially for just and peaceable priests, dearest brother, we had recently sent our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus, so that not only by the persuasion of our letters, but by their presence and counsel, they might strive with all your people, as much as they could, and labor to reconcile the torn members of the body to the unity of the catholic Church and to bind them in the bond of Christian love.

But since the stubborn and inflexible obstinacy of the opposing party has not only refused the bosom and embrace of the root and mother, but even, with discord growing and worsening, has set up a bishop for itself, and against the sacrament once delivered of the divine ordering and catholic unity has made for itself an adulterous and opposing head outside the Church, having received letters both from you and from our colleagues, and likewise from the good men and our dearest colleagues Pompeius and Stephanus, by whom all these things were affirmed to us with shared joy and approved, according as the holiness and truth alike of the divine tradition and ecclesiastical institution required, we have sent our letters to you. Moreover, conveying these same things to each of our colleagues throughout our province, we have also instructed that our brothers be sent with letters from them as well.

II. Although our mind and purpose had already been made manifest to the brethren and to the whole people there, when, having recently received letters from both sides, we read your letters and made known the ordination of your episcopate to the ears of each individual—also mindful of the common honor and holding in regard the dignity and holiness of the priesthood—we rejected those things which had been heaped up from the other side in the book sent to us with bitter accusations, considering equally and weighing that in so great and religious an assembly of brethren, with God's priests sitting and the altar set in place, they ought neither to be read nor heard. For such things are not easily to be brought forth and rashly and recklessly made public, which with their discordant style may stir up scandal for the hearers and confound brethren situated far off and established across the sea with uncertain opinion. Let those see to it who, serving either their own fury or their lust and unmindful of the divine law and holiness, either eagerly desire for the moment to boast of things which they cannot prove, and when they are unable to destroy and overcome innocence, they consider it enough to bespatter it with the stains of lying report and false rumor. Certainly, what befits those set over others and priests must be worked at, that such things, when they are written by certain persons, may be rejected by us. For where will that be which we learn and teach to have been written: Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips that they speak no guile (Psal.

XXXIX, 13); likewise elsewhere: Your mouth overflowed with malice, and your tongue wove snares; you sat and spoke against your brother, and set a stumbling block before the son of your mother (Ps. XLIX, 20); likewise what the Apostle says: Let no evil speech proceed from your mouth, but what is good for building up faith, that it may give grace to those who hear (Eph. IV, 29). Moreover, we have shown that this ought to be done: whenever such things have been written by the reckless calumny of certain persons, we do not allow them to be read among us. And therefore, dearest brother, when such writings against you and against the fellow presbyter who sits with you had come to me, I ordered them to be read to the clergy and the people, since they sounded of religious simplicity and were not resounding with any barking of curses and insults.

III. But as for our having desired the writings of our colleagues who were present there at your ordination, we were not forgetting old customs, nor seeking something new. For it was enough that you should announce yourself as bishop by written letters, were it not that a faction on the other side was at variance, which by its criminal and calumnious fabrications was greatly disturbing the minds of colleagues and brothers alike, and confounding their hearts.

To settle this matter, we have deemed it necessary that the firm and solid authority of our colleagues who wrote to us about it be secured; for they, proclaiming in their letters testimony worthy of your character, life, and discipline, have removed every scruple of doubt and disagreement from rivals as well, and from those who rejoice in novelty or depravity of affairs; and, according to our counsel weighed by sound reason, in this surge of troubled brothers they have sincerely and firmly approved your priesthood. For this especially, brother, we both labor and ought to labor, that we take care, as much as we can, to preserve the unity handed down to us by the Lord and through the apostles to us their successors; and that, as far as lies in us, we gather into the Church the wandering and straying sheep, which the stubborn faction and heretical temptation of certain persons separate from their mother: with only those remaining outside who by their obstinacy or madness have refused to desist and return to us, themselves to render an account to the Lord for the decision and separation made by them, and for the Church they have abandoned.

As for what concerns the presbytery here in the matter of a certain Felicissimus, so that you may know what has been done here, our colleagues have sent you a letter subscribed in their own hand; from their letter you will learn, once you have heard them, what they thought and what they pronounced. But you will do better, brother, if you also order the copies of the letters which I recently sent to you to be read to the brothers there, through our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus, for the sake of our common love—letters which I wrote concerning this same Felicissimus and his presbytery to the clergy there and also to the people—which set forth both the ordination and the account of what was done, so that both there and here the brotherhood may be instructed in all things through us. I have now also sent the same copies through Mettius the subdeacon, sent by me, and Nicephorus the acolyte. I pray, dearest brother, that you are always well.

In the year of Christ 251. Letter III. Of the same to the same.

ARGUMENT. — Concerning the letter which he wrote to the confessors seduced by Novatian and Novatus.

CYPRIAN TO HIS BROTHER CORNELIUS, GREETING.

I considered it both dutiful toward you and necessary, dearest brother, to write a brief letter to the confessors who are there and who, seduced by the obstinacy and depravity of Novatian and Novatus, have withdrawn from the Church, in which I would appeal to them in mutual affection to return to their Mother, that is, the catholic Church. I instructed that this letter be read to you first by Mettius the subdeacon, so that no one might pretend that I had written anything other than what is contained in my letter. I have nevertheless instructed the same Mettius, sent by me to you, to conduct the matter at your discretion, and if you judge that the same letter should be delivered to the confessors, then let him deliver it. I pray, dearest brother, that you always fare well.

ANN. CHR. 251. LETTER IV. OF THE SAME TO THE SAME.

(Erasm. IV, 8; Pam. Rigalt. Baluz. Paris. XLIV; Lips. Coustant. p. 131; Galland. III, p. 335.)

ARGUMENT. — While a sure testimony concerning Cornelius's ordination was awaited, Cyprian and Liberalis had prompted the clergy of Adrumetum to address their letters to the presbyters and deacons of Rome, not to Cornelius. Having complained of this matter, Cornelius is now satisfied by Cyprian as to his complaint; and he adds that the truth of his episcopate, founded in the clearest light and confirmed by the rescripts of his colleagues, is acknowledged.

CYPRIAN TO HIS BROTHER CORNELIUS, GREETING.

I. I have read your letter, dearest brother, which you sent by our fellow presbyter Primitivus, in which I found that you were moved because, when a letter was being directed to you in the name of Polycarp from the colony of Adrumetum, after we, that is I and Liberalis, had come to that same place, letters began to be directed there to the presbyters and deacons.

II. We want you to know this and to believe it for certain: it was done out of no levity or contempt. But when we, several colleagues who had gathered together, had decided that, with our fellow bishops Caldonius and Fortunatus sent as legates to you, all matters should in the meantime be held in suspense and left intact, until those same colleagues of ours should return to us, once affairs there had either been brought to peace or the truth had been ascertained—the presbyters and deacons residing in Adrumetum, in the absence of our fellow bishop Polycarp, did not know what had been decided by us in common. But when we came into their presence, and they learned of our decision, they too began to observe the same thing as the others, so that there should be no disagreement in anything among the churches situated there.

III. Yet certain persons sometimes disturb minds and hearts with their talk, while they report certain things otherwise than the truth stands. For we, rendering an account to each one as they sail, that they might not sail with any scandal, know that we have exhorted them to recognize and hold fast to the root and mother of the catholic Church.

But since our province is spread more widely, and has Numidia and Mauretania adjoining it, lest a schism made in the City should confuse the minds of those who are absent with uncertain opinion, it was decided that, with the truth of the matter retained by us, and with greater authority brought to bear to confirm your ordination, then at last, with every scruple shaken from the hearts of individuals, letters should be sent through all the bishops everywhere established there, as they are being sent, so that all our colleagues might firmly approve and hold your communion, that is, the unity and charity of the catholic Church alike. We rejoice that this has happened by divine providence, and that our counsel has proceeded with foresight.

IV. For thus now the truth and dignity alike of your episcopate has been founded in the clearest light and by the most manifest and firmest proof, so that from the rescripts of our colleagues who sent letters to us from there, and from the report and testimonies of our fellow bishops Pompeius and Stephanus and Caldonius and Fortunatus, both the necessary origin of your ordination and its just reason and its glorious innocence might be known by all.

That we may administer this together with our other colleagues in a stable and firm manner, and hold it in the harmonious unanimity of the catholic Church, the divine favor will accomplish; so that the Lord, who deigns to choose and appoint priests for himself in his Church, may also guard those chosen and appointed by his will and assistance, inspiring and supplying those who govern with both vigor to curb the insolence of the wicked and gentleness to foster the repentance of the fallen. I pray, dearest brother, that you may always fare well.

IN THE YEAR OF CHRIST 251. EPISTLE V.

ARGUMENT. — What sort of men were those whom Novatian sent again as envoys to Carthage.

CORNELIUS TO CYPRIAN HIS BROTHER, GREETING.

Lest anything should be lacking for the future punishment of this wicked man, though he was laid low by the virtues of God, when Maximus and Longinus and Machaeus had been expelled from there, he rose again; and as I indicated to you in my earlier letter, which I sent by the confessor Augendus, I think that Nicostratus and Novatus and Evaristus and Primus and Dionysius have already arrived there.

Let it therefore be seen to that it be made known to all our fellow bishops and brothers that Nicostratus, guilty of many crimes, not only committed frauds and robberies against his own carnal patroness, whose accounts he managed, but also—which is reserved for him unto eternal punishment—took away no small deposits of the church; but that Evaristus was the author of the schism, and that Zetus was appointed bishop in his place as successor to the people whom he had previously led. But here he has indicated greater and graver things by his malice and insatiable depravity than those which he always practiced there among his own people, so that you may know what sort of leaders and protectors this schismatic and heretic always has joined to his side.

Letter VI.

OF SAINT CORNELIUS, POPE, TO CYPRIAN, BISHOP OF CARTHAGE.

ARGUMENT. — That the confessors Maximus the presbyter, Urbanus, and Sidonius have renounced the schism and been received into the catholic Church.

CORNELIUS TO HIS BROTHER CYPRIAN, GREETING.

I. What great solicitude and anxiety we sustained concerning those confessors who had been circumvented by the guile and malice of a crafty and wily man, and had been almost deceived and alienated from the Church, with such great joy have we been affected, and we gave thanks to almighty God and to Christ our Lord, when they, having recognized their error and understood the venomous cunning of the malignant man, like that of a serpent, came to the Church from which they had gone out, as they themselves confess with one heart, with simple willingness. And indeed at first our brothers of proven faith, lovers of peace, desiring unity, were already announcing that the swelling pride of these men had been softened; yet their faith was not such as to make it readily credible to us that they had been thoroughly changed. But afterward Urbanus and Sidonius, confessors, came to our presbyters, affirming that Maximus, a confessor and presbyter, desired together with them to return to the Church; but since many things had preceded that had been set forth by them, which you also have learned from our fellow bishops and from my letters, so that faith should not be given to them rashly, it pleased us that these things which they had entrusted through their delegation be heard from their own mouth and confession.

When they had come, and the presbyters demanded an account of what they had done, finally—since letters full of slanders and curses had been sent frequently in their name through all the churches, and had disturbed almost all the churches—they affirmed that they had been deceived, and that they had not known what was contained in those letters; that they had merely been led about and had also committed schismatic acts and had been the authors of heresy, so that they allowed hands to be imposed on him as if on a bishop. When these and other things had been reproached to them, they begged that they be abolished and removed from memory.

II. Therefore, when the whole matter had been reported to me, it was decided to convene the presbytery (five bishops were also present, who were also present today), so that with the counsel confirmed, what should be observed concerning their persons might be decided by the consent of all. And so that you might recognize the mind of all and the counsel of each individually, it was decided that our opinions also be brought to your notice, which you have also attached below. When these things had been done, Maximus, Urbanus, Sidonius, and very many of the brethren who had joined themselves to them came into the presbytery, earnestly begging with the utmost prayers that those things which had been done before might pass into oblivion, and that no mention of them be had; and accordingly, as if nothing had been either committed or said, with all things mutually forgiven, they might now present a clean and pure heart to God, following the Gospel voice saying that the pure in heart are blessed, for they shall see God.

As was fitting, this whole proceeding had to be made known to the people, so that they might see established in the Church those very men whom they had long seen wandering and straying about, and had grieved over. When their will became known, a great gathering of the brotherhood took place. There was one voice from all, giving thanks to God, expressing the joy of their heart with tears, embracing them as though they had that very day been freed from the punishment of prison. And, to set down their own words: "We," they say, "know that Cornelius has been chosen bishop of the most holy catholic Church by God almighty and Christ our Lord. We confess our error: we have suffered imposture, we have been circumvented by treachery and captious loquacity. For although we seemed to have had, as it were, some communication with a schismatic and heretical man, yet our sincere mind was always in the Church. For we are not ignorant that there is one God, that there is one Christ the Lord, whom we have confessed, one Holy Spirit, and that there ought to be one bishop in the catholic Church." Should we not be moved by this profession of theirs, so that what they had confessed before the power of the world, they might prove when established in the Church? Therefore we ordered Maximus the presbyter to recognize his own place; the rest we received with the full approval of the people. But we have entrusted all things to God almighty, in whose power all things are reserved.

III. Therefore, brother, we sent these writings to you at that same hour, at that same moment, and I immediately dismissed from the station to you the acolyte Nicephorus, who was hastening to set sail, so that, with no delay, as though present in this clergy and in this assembly of the people, you might give thanks to almighty God and to Christ our Lord. We believe, moreover, that it will come to pass—indeed, we now confidently trust for certain—that the rest also who are established in this error will shortly return to the Church, when they see their authors acting with us. I think you ought, brother, to send this letter also to the other Churches, so that all may know that the deceit and prevarication of this schismatic and heretic is being emptied out from day to day. Farewell well, dearest brother.

EPISTLE VII.

Of Saint Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, to Pope Cornelius.

ARGUMENT. — He praises his diligence, by which he opportunely warned him about the pernicious machinations of Novatian and the character of his new envoys. He pursues the crimes of Novatus at greater length, and commends his own effort in recalling those whom he had seduced.

CYPRIAN TO HIS BROTHER CORNELIUS, GREETING.

I. You have acted both with diligence and with love, dearest brother, in hastening to send to us the acolyte Nicephorus, who might announce to us the glorious joy concerning the confessors who have returned, and might most fully instruct us against the new and pernicious machinations of Novatian and Novatus for assaulting the Church of Christ. For when the harmful faction of heretical depravity had come there the day before—itself already lost, and about to destroy others who had consented to it—on the following day Nicephorus arrived with your letters. From these we both learned, and began to teach and instruct the others, that Evaristus, from a bishop, has already remained not even a layman, an exile from his chair and his people, and a fugitive from the Church of Christ, wandering through far-off provinces elsewhere, and having himself become a shipwreck of truth and faith, stirring up similar shipwrecks around certain men like himself; but that Nicostratus, having lost the diaconate of holy service, having subtracted the church's funds by sacrilegious fraud, and having denied the deposits of widows and orphans, did not so much wish to come to Africa as, by the consciousness of his robberies and unspeakable crimes, fled from there, from the city.

And now, a deserter and fugitive from the Church, as if changing his country could change the man, he vaunts and proclaims himself a confessor beyond measure; though he can neither be called nor be a confessor of Christ, who has denied the Church of Christ. For since the apostle Paul says: For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they two shall be one flesh; this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:31); since, I say, the blessed Apostle says this and by his holy voice testifies that the unity of Christ and the Church is bound together by indivisible bonds, how can he be with Christ, who is not with the bride of Christ and in her Church? Or how does he take upon himself the care of ruling or governing the Church, who has despoiled and defrauded the Church of Christ?

II. For concerning Novatus nothing needed to be reported to us from that quarter, since Novatus ought rather to be shown to you by us: always greedy for novelties, raging with the insatiable rapacity of avarice, inflated with the arrogance and stupor of proud swelling, always ill known to the bishops there, as a heretic always and a traitor condemned by the voice of all priests; always prying so as to betray, flattering to this end that he may deceive, never faithful so as to love, a torch and fire to kindle the flames of sedition, a whirlwind and tempest to make shipwreck of the faith, an enemy of quiet, an adversary of tranquility, an enemy of peace.

Finally, when Novatus withdrew from you there, that is, when the storm and tempest withdrew, there was in part a calm there, and the glorious and good confessors who had departed from the Church at his instigation returned to the Church after he departed from the city. It is the same Novatus who first sowed among us the fire of discord and schism, who separated certain of the brethren there from the bishop, who in that very persecution became for us, in order to overthrow the minds of the brethren, a kind of second persecution. It is he who, without my permission and without my knowledge, appointed his satellite Felicissimus as deacon by his own faction and ambition; and when he sailed with his tempest even to Rome to overthrow the Church, he attempted there similar and like things, tearing away a portion of the people from the clergy, splitting the concord of a brotherhood that held well together and loved one another. Plainly, since Rome ought to precede Carthage in proportion to its greatness, he committed there greater and graver deeds. He who there had made a deacon against the Church, here made a bishop. Nor let anyone marvel at this in such men. The wicked, always deranged by their own fury, are driven about afterward, once they have committed their crimes, by the very conscience of their guilty mind. Nor can those remain in the Church of God who have held to the God-given and ecclesiastical discipline neither by the conduct of their life nor by the peace of their manners.

The orphans despoiled by him, the widows defrauded, the funds of the church also withheld—these exact from him the punishments that we see in his frenzy. His own father also died of hunger in the village, and afterward was not even buried by him in death. His wife's womb was struck with a heel, and the offspring, hastened by abortion, was forced out into parricide. And does he now dare to condemn the hands of those who sacrifice, when he himself is more guilty by the feet with which the son who was being born was killed?

III. This conscience of his crimes he had long feared; for this reason he was certain that he would not only be removed from the presbyterate but also barred from communion; and as the brethren pressed, the day of inquiry was at hand, on which his case would be heard among us, had the persecution not come first. Receiving this as a kind of vow of escaping and gaining damnation, he committed and confounded all these things: so that he who was to be cast out of the Church and shut off should precede the judgment of the priests by a voluntary departure; as if to have escaped were punishment, to have forestalled were sentence.

IV. But we labor on behalf of the other brethren, whom we grieve have been circumvented by him, that they may flee the destructive flank of the cunning schemer, that they may escape the deadly snares of the one soliciting them, that they may return to the Church from which he deserved by divine judgment to be expelled. These, indeed, with the Lord's help, we trust can return through his mercy; for no one can perish unless it is established that he is to perish, since the Lord says in his Gospel: Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up (Matthew 15:13). He who has not been planted in the precepts and counsels of God the Father will alone be able to depart from that Church, will alone, having abandoned the bishops, remain in his fury with the schismatics and heretics. But the rest the mercy of God the Father, and the indulgence of Christ our Lord, and our patience will unite with us. I pray, dearest brother, that you always fare well.

Letter VIII.

OF ST. CYPRIAN, BISHOP OF CARTHAGE, TO POPE CORNELIUS.

(Erasm. II, Pamel. Rigalt. Baluz. XLVII, Oxon. Lips. li, Paris, xlvi. Coustant. i, 113. Galland. iii, 340.)

He rejoices at the return of the confessors to the Church. How much this return contributes to the Catholic Church.

CYPRIAN TO CORNELIUS HIS BROTHER, GREETING.

I. We profess that we have given and do give the greatest thanks without ceasing, dearest brother, to God the Father Almighty and to Christ his Lord and our God and Savior, because the Church is so divinely protected that her unity and holiness are not continually, nor wholly, corrupted by the obstinacy of perfidy and heretical depravity. For we have read your letters, and with exultation we have received the most abundant joy of our common desire, that Maximus the presbyter and Urbanus the confessors, together with Sidonius and Macarius, have returned to the Catholic Church, that is, having laid aside their error and having abandoned the schismatic, or rather heretical, frenzy, they have sought again with faithful soundness the dwelling-place of unity and truth; so that where they had gone forth to glory, there they might return glorious; lest those who had confessed Christ should afterward desert the camp of Christ, nor should they who had not been conquered by force and power tempt the faith of charity and unity. Behold the unimpaired and spotless integrity of their praise, behold the incorrupt and solid dignity of the confessors, to have withdrawn from deserters and fugitives, to have left the betrayers of the faith and the assailants of the Catholic Church.

Rightly did the clergy and people and the whole brotherhood, as you write, receive them on their return with the greatest joy, since in the confessors who preserve their glory and return to unity, everyone counts himself a partner and sharer in their glory.

II. The joy of this day we can estimate from our own feelings. For since here the whole number of the brethren rejoiced at your letter, which you sent concerning their confession, and with the greatest eagerness received this announcement of common congratulation, what must it have been there, where the matter itself and the present joy were being enacted before the eyes of all? For since the Lord says in His Gospel that there is the greatest joy in heaven over one sinner who repents (Luke 15:7), how much greater is the joy both on earth and in heaven over the confessors returning to the Church of God with their glory and with their praise, and by the faith and trial of their example making a way of returning for the rest? For here error had led certain of our brethren to think that they seemed to follow the communion of the confessors. With this error removed, light has been poured into the hearts of all, and it has been shown that the Catholic Church is one, and cannot be cut or divided. Let no one now easily be deceived by the talkative words of a raging schismatic, since it has been proved that good and glorious soldiers of Christ could not long be held outside the Church by another's deceit and perfidy. I pray, dearest brother, that you may always fare well.

LETTER IX.

FRAGMENTS TO FABIUS, BISHOP OF ANTIOCH.

SUMMARY. — I. How the confessors deceived by Novatian detected his frauds and made them publicly known to the Church. II. Ordained contrary to all laws, he arrogates the episcopate to himself. III. He is not deterred from schism by the multitude of the Roman clergy and people. IV. When pressed by illness, having been poured upon or baptized in bed, he was not at all consigned. V. In the time of persecution he prefers to deny that he is a presbyter rather than come to the aid of the brethren. VI. Contrary to the laws, with the clergy and very many of the people interceding, he was advanced to the presbyterate through the favor of the bishop. VII. When he offers the body and blood of Christ, he compels each one to swear to him. VIII. He is deserted by all.

I. But so that you may know how that man, admirable for his greed for episcopal dignity, burned, and hiding that reckless and unbridled ambition of his within himself, lay concealed, while he held out this veil of madness, that he had had the confessors with him from the beginning, I wish to recount.

Maximus, a presbyter of our Church, and Urbanus, having obtained a distinguished glory from a repeated confession, as also Sidonius and Celerinus — a man who by God's mercy most bravely endured every kind of torment, and strengthening the weakness of the flesh by the fortitude of his faith, utterly conquered the adversary — these men, then, when they had come to know him and had detected his fraud and cunning, as well as his perjuries and lies, and his mind and wolfish habit abhorring from fellowship and communion, returned to the holy Church; and all his tricks and crimes, which he had long been hiding and suppressing within himself, they made public in the presence of several bishops and presbyters and very many laypeople, groaning and grieving that, led on by that deceitful and malignant beast, they had for a short time fallen away from the Church.

Then after a few words he says:

II. It is scarcely credible, dearest brother, what variety and change in him we have seen take place in a short space of time. For that distinguished man, who had given assurance by certain awe-inspiring sacraments that he by no means desired the episcopate, suddenly appears as bishop, as if thrust into the midst by some machine.

For that founder of doctrines and champion of ecclesiastical discipline, when he attempted to arrogate to himself and steal an episcopate not granted to him by God, contrary to all right, chose two companions of a deplorable state, whom he dispatched into a tiny and most worthless part of Italy, so that, having summoned bishops from there—three men plainly rude and simple—he might deceive them by some fraudulent machination, affirming and constantly asserting that they ought to set out for Rome as soon as possible, so that every discord arising from wherever might be settled by their intervention together with the other bishops. When they had arrived—men, as we have said, of rather simple mind, and not sufficiently practiced in the arts and deceits of the wicked—he, having shut them in with certain men like himself whom he had prepared for this purpose, at the tenth hour, drunken and oppressed by debauchery, forced them by violence to hand over the episcopate to him by a certain imaginary and empty imposition of hands; and this, since it belongs to him by no right, he claims for himself through ambush and fraud. And not long after, one of those bishops returned to the Church, confessing his sin with lamentations and tears. Him, when the whole people present had entreated, we received into lay communion. As for the remaining two bishops, we arranged the matter for their successor, and sent them into their places.

III. Did that defender of the Gospel, then, not know that there ought to be one bishop in the catholic Church? In that Church it was not hidden from him (for how could it be hidden?) that there were forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, seven subdeacons, forty-two acolytes, and fifty-two exorcists, readers, and doorkeepers, and more than fifteen hundred widows with the needy. To all of these the grace and kindness of the Lord supplies nourishment. Yet that so great and so necessary a multitude in the Church, so vast a number, rich and abounding in the resources of divine providence, together with the immense and countless people, did not deter him from such desperation and audacity, nor recall him to the Church.

Then, after some other matters had been inserted, he adds this as well:

IV. Come now, let us set forth in order by what works, by what manner of life, he dared to seek the episcopate. Was it because from the beginning he spent his life in the Church, and underwent many struggles on its behalf, and was in many great dangers for the sake of religion? Not in the least: indeed, the occasion for him to receive the faith was that Satan entered into him and dwelt in him for a long time. When he was being assisted by the exorcists, he fell into a most serious illness, so that he was already thought to be on the point of death; on the very bed on which he lay, he received the faith by pouring— if, that is, such a man is to be said to have received it.

But neither after he was freed from his illness did he receive the remaining things which according to the rule of the Church ought to be received, nor was he signed by the bishop. But having received this seal in no way, how could he receive the Holy Spirit?

And again, somewhat later, he says:

V. He who in the time of persecution, out of fear and excessive love of life, denied that he was a presbyter. For when he was admonished and asked by the deacons to come out of the chamber in which he had shut himself in and to help the brethren, as far as a presbyter is permitted and as it is right for him to come to the aid of brethren placed in danger and in need of help: so far was he from complying with the deacons who asked him, that rather he went away and departed in indignation. For he answered that he no longer wished to be a presbyter, but was held by the love and zeal of another philosophy.

But after a few things had been passed over, he again adds these things, saying:

VI. For that distinguished man abandoned the Church of God, in which after he had received the faith he was honored with the presbyterate through the grace and indulgence of the bishop, who, laying his hand upon him, advanced him to the order of the presbyterate. All the clergy interceded, and many of the laity, because it was not permitted for him, who just as that one also had been poured out upon a bed by pressing illness, to be assumed into any part of the clergy. But the bishop asked that it be permitted to him to ordain this one man for himself.

Then he adds another crime, by far the gravest of all those committed by him, speaking thus:

VII. For when the offerings had been made, dividing a portion to each individual, while he hands it over, he compels the wretched men to swear in place of a blessing, holding the hands of the man who has received the portion clasped in both his own hands, and not letting go before the sworn men have said these things (for I will use his own words): Swear to me by the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ that you will never desert my party, nor ever return to Cornelius. And the wretched man does not taste before he has called down evil upon himself. And when, receiving that bread, he ought to have said, Amen; in its place he says: I will not return hereafter to Cornelius.

And after other things he again says this:

VIII. Now indeed you should know that he has been stripped and deserted, with the brethren daily leaving him and returning to the Church. Whom also the blessed martyr Moses, who recently among us fulfilled a distinguished and admirable martyrdom, while he was still alive, having perceived his audacity and madness, separated from his communion together with five presbyters, who had likewise cut themselves off from the Church with him.

From the remaining letter Eusebius (Hist. VI, 43) adds only this in summary:

IX. At the end of the letter, moreover, he wove a catalogue of the bishops who, assembling at Rome, had condemned the madness of Novatus (read: Novatian), writing down also their names and which Church each one governed. He likewise accurately records the names and cities of those who had not been present at Rome at all but had approved the judgment of their superiors by their own vote, and from where each had sent letters. And these things Cornelius made known to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, by letter.

ANN. CHR. 252, LETTER X.

OR THE FIRST PART OF ST. CYPRIAN'S LETTER TO ANTONIANUS, IN WHICH CYPRIAN DISCUSSES ST. CORNELIUS.

(Erasm. IV, 2. Pamel. Rigalt. Baluz. LII Paris. LI, Oxon. Lips LV. Only the first part in Coustant I, col. 159; Galland III, p. 348.

ARGUMENT OF THE FIRST PART — Cyprian relieves Antonianus of the false opinions injected by Novatian into his own letter. He clears himself of the suspicion of fickleness in the matter of the lapsed. He recounts how canonically Cornelius was promoted to the chair of Peter, and how bravely he conducted himself in it.

CYPRIAN TO HIS BROTHER ANTONIANUS, GREETING.

I. I have received your first letter, dearest brother, firmly upholding the concord of the priestly college and adhering to the catholic Church; in it you signified that you do not communicate with Novatianus, but follow our counsel, and hold one consent with our fellow bishop Cornelius. You wrote also that I should transmit a copy of the same letter to our colleague Cornelius, so that, all anxiety laid aside, he might now know that you communicate with him, that is, with the catholic Church.

II. But then afterwards another letter of yours arrived, sent by Quintus the fellow presbyter, in which I noticed that your mind, moved by the letters of Novatianus, had begun to waver. For although you had before firmly fixed both your counsel and your consent, in this letter you desired that I write back to you what heresy Novatianus had introduced, or on what reasoning Cornelius communicates with Trophimus and with those who have offered incense. Indeed, if out of solicitude for the faith you anxiously care for this, and, troubled, you search out the truth of a doubtful matter, the solicitude of a mind suspended in divine fear is not to be blamed.

III. Since, however, I see that after the first judgment in your letter you were afterward disturbed by the writings of Novatian, I place this first, dearest brother: that grave men, once founded upon the solid rock with firm stability, are not moved—I do not say by a light breeze, but not even by wind or whirlwind—so that a doubtful and uncertain mind may not be frequently agitated by various opinions, as by the blasts of winds rushing in, and be changed from its purpose with some reproach of fickleness. And so that the writings of Novatian may not do this either with you or with anyone, as you desired, brother, I shall briefly set out to you the reasoning of the matter. And indeed first, since you seem to have been moved also concerning my own action, both my person and my cause must be cleared with you, lest anyone think that I have lightly withdrawn from my purpose, and, whereas I first defended the evangelical vigor and at the beginnings, afterward I may seem to have bent my mind away from my former discipline and censure, so that I thought peace should be relaxed to those who have stained their conscience with libelli or have committed abominable sacrifices. Both of these things were done by me not without a long-weighed and considered reasoning.

IV. For while the battle line was still in our hands, and the contest of glorious struggle was blazing in the persecution, the soldiers' strength had to be roused with every encouragement and full force, and especially the minds of the lapsed had to be stirred by a kind of trumpet-call of our voice, so that they might follow the way of repentance not only with prayers and lamentations, but—since the opportunity was being given of renewing the contest and restoring salvation—might be provoked by our rebukes to a greater ardor for confession and the glory of martyrdom. Finally, when the presbyters and deacons had written to me about certain persons, that they were immoderate and were hastily pressing to be received into communion, I wrote back to them in my letter which survives, and added this: "If they are too eager, they have in their own power what they demand, since the time itself grants them more than they demand. The battle line is still being held, and the contest is celebrated daily: if they truly and firmly repent, and the fervor of faith prevails, one who cannot be delayed can be crowned." On the matter, however, of what should be decided concerning the case of the lapsed, I deferred, so that when quiet and tranquility had been granted, and the divine indulgence permitted the bishops to convene together, then, having shared and weighed counsel from the contribution of all, we might determine what ought to be done. But if anyone, before our council and before the sentence established by the counsel of all, should have wished rashly to communicate with the lapsed, let him himself be kept from communion.

V. This too I wrote most fully to Rome, to the clergy who were at that time still without a bishop, and to the confessors Maximus, a presbyter, and the others placed in custody, now joined with Cornelius in the Church. That I wrote this you may know from their reply; for in their letter they set it down thus: "Although in so great a matter it pleases us that, as you yourself have treated it, the peace of the Church must first be maintained, and then, after a comparison of counsels has been made with the bishops, presbyters, deacons, confessors alike and with the standing laity, the case of the lapsed should be dealt with." It was added, with Novatian then writing and reciting aloud what he had written with his own voice, and with the presbyter Moses, then still a confessor, now already a martyr, subscribing, that peace should be given to the lapsed who were weak and at the point of death. These letters were sent throughout the whole world and brought to the notice of all the churches and all the brethren.

VI. Nevertheless, according to what had been determined beforehand, once the persecution had subsided, when opportunity to assemble was granted, a large number of bishops, whom their faith and the Lord's protection had kept whole and unharmed, gathered together with us, and after the Scriptures had been set forth at length by both sides, we weighed out a measured course with wholesome moderation: that neither should the hope of communion and peace be wholly denied to the lapsed, lest they fail the more through despair and, because the Church was closed to them, live after the manner of the world like the gentiles; nor yet, on the other hand, should the Gospel's censure be relaxed so that they might rashly rush forward to communion; but that penance should be drawn out at length, and the fatherly clemency entreated with grief, and the causes and dispositions and necessities of each individual examined, according to what is contained in the document which I trust has reached you, where the individual heads of the decisions are written down. And if the number of bishops in Africa seemed insufficient, we also wrote to Rome on this matter to our colleague Cornelius, who himself, having held a council with very many fellow bishops, agreed with us in the same judgment with equal seriousness and wholesome moderation.

VII. Concerning this, it was necessary for me to write to you now, so that you may know that I have done nothing lightly, but, in accordance with what I had previously set out in my letters, I deferred everything to the common counsel of our council, and indeed I communicated with none of the lapsed beforehand, when there was still room for the lapsed to receive not only pardon but even a crown; afterward, however, as the concord of the college and the usefulness of gathering the brotherhood and healing the wound demanded, I yielded to the necessity of the times and thought that provision must be made for the salvation of many; and now I do not withdraw from those things which were once decided in our council by common deliberation, although many things are being tossed about by the voices of many, and lies against the priests of God, brought forth from the mouth of the devil, are being spread everywhere to break the concord of catholic unity. But it behooves you, as a good brother and a fellow priest of one mind with your fellow priests, not to readily take up what the wicked and apostate say, but to weigh what your colleagues, modest and grave men, do in the examination of our life and discipline.

VIII. I come now, dearest brother, to the person of our colleague Cornelius, so that you may know Cornelius more truly with us, not from the lie of the malicious and the detractors, but from the judgment of God, who made him bishop, and from the testimony of fellow bishops, whose whole number throughout the entire world has agreed with harmonious unanimity. For what commends our dearest Cornelius to God and to Christ and to His Church, and likewise to all his fellow priests, with praiseworthy proclamation—he did not arrive at the episcopate suddenly, but was promoted through all the ecclesiastical offices, and having often deserved well of God in the divine administrations, he ascended to the lofty height of the priesthood through all the grades of religion. Then, furthermore, he neither sought the episcopate itself, nor desired it, nor, like others whom the swelling of their arrogance and pride inflates, did he seize it; but being otherwise quiet and modest, and such as those are accustomed to be who are divinely chosen for this place, out of the shame of his virginal conscience and out of the humility of the modesty born in him and truly guarded, he did not, like certain others, do violence to become bishop, but he himself suffered violence, so that he received the episcopate under compulsion. And he was made bishop by very many of our colleagues who were then present in the city of Rome, who sent to us honorable and praiseworthy letters, illustrious by their testimony of proclamation, concerning his ordination.

But Cornelius was made bishop by the judgment of God and of his Christ, by the testimony of almost all the clergy, by the vote of the people who were then present, and by the assembly of ancient priests and good men: when no one had been made bishop before him, when the place of Fabian, that is, the place of Peter and the rank of the priestly chair, was vacant. When this was occupied by the will of God and confirmed by the consent of all of us, whoever now wishes to be made bishop must necessarily be outside, nor can he have ecclesiastical ordination who does not hold the unity of the Church. Whoever he is, though he boasts greatly of himself and claims very much for himself, he is profane, he is an outsider, he is outside. And since after the first there cannot be a second, whoever is made after the one who alone ought to be, is no longer that second, but is nothing.

IX. Then, after the episcopate was not sought nor extorted, but undertaken by the will of God, who makes priests, how great was the virtue in him when he undertook his episcopate, how great the strength of his mind, how firm his faith—which we with a simple heart ought both to perceive deeply and to praise—he sat undaunted at Rome in the priestly chair at that time when the hostile tyrant was threatening things fit and unfit to be spoken against the priests of God; when he would hear far more patiently and tolerably that a rival prince was raised up against him, than that a priest of God was appointed at Rome. Is not this man, dearest brother, to be proclaimed with the highest testimony of virtue and faith?

Should he not be counted among the glorious confessors and martyrs, who sat for so long a time awaiting the executioners of his body and the avengers of a raging tyrant—those who would either attack Cornelius with the sword, or crucify him, or burn him with fire, or tear his entrails and limbs with any unheard-of kind of punishment—as he resisted the deadly edicts and trampled underfoot threats and tortures and torments by the vigor of his faith? Even if the majesty of the protecting Lord and his goodness protected the priest whom he willed to be made, and protected him once made: nevertheless Cornelius, as far as pertains to his devotion and fear, suffered whatever he could suffer, and he who was afterward conquered by arms and war, conquered the tyrant before [his own] priesthood.

X. But as for certain dishonorable and malicious things being spread about him, I would not have you wonder: since you know that this is always the work of the devil, to tear the servants of God with lies, and to defame a glorious name with false opinions; so that those who shine bright by the light of their own conscience may be soiled by the rumors of others. But know that our colleagues have investigated, and have discovered most truly, that he was stained by no blemish of a libellus, as some boast: but neither did he mingle sacrilegious communion with the bishops who sacrificed; but rather those whose cause had been heard and whose innocence had been proven, he joined with us.

XI. For concerning Trophimus, about whom you wished to be written to you, the matter is not as rumor and the slander of the malicious reported to you. For, as our predecessors often did, our most beloved brother Cornelius yielded to necessity in gathering our brethren. And since with Trophimus the greatest part of the people had withdrawn, now that Trophimus is returning to the Church, and making satisfaction and confessing his former error with the penitence of entreaty, and recalling with full humility and satisfaction the brotherhood which he had recently drawn away, his prayers have been heard; and into the Church of the Lord not so much Trophimus as the greatest number of the brethren who had been with Trophimus has been admitted: all of whom would not have been going to return to the Church, unless they had come with Trophimus accompanying them. Therefore, after a discussion had been held there with very many colleagues, Trophimus was received, for whom the return of the brethren and the restored salvation of many made satisfaction. Yet Trophimus was admitted in such a way that he communicates as a layman, not, as the letters of the malicious reported to you, as though he usurps the place of a priest.

XII. But also, as to what has been reported to you everywhere, that those who sacrifice are admitted to communion with Cornelius, this too arises from the fabricated rumors of the apostates. For those who withdraw from us cannot praise us; nor ought we to expect to please those who, being displeasing to us and in rebellion against the Church, violently persist in soliciting the brethren away from the Church. Therefore, whatever is boasted concerning Cornelius and concerning us, do not readily listen to or believe, dearest brother.

The second part of the letter of S. Cyprian to Antonianus. Argument. — Those who have lapsed at the point of death are to be helped, yet the condition of all is not the same; the case of the Libellatici is especially to be favored; Novatian has brought the doctrines of the Stoics into the Church. — In a doubtful matter the gentler course is to be taken. — By no means are Christians to be turned away from martyrdom on account of indulgence toward the lapsed; those who deny peace to the lapsed oppose the Holy Scriptures. — Concerning the character of Novatian the philosopher and Stoic. — From the admission of adulterers to penance it follows that the lapsed are to be admitted. He who, with the hope of pardon taken away, persuades to penance, mocks it.

XIII. For if any are seized by illnesses, they are assisted in their peril, as has been decided. But after assistance has been given, and peace has been granted to those in danger, they cannot be smothered or crushed by us, or driven to the outcome of death by our force and hand, so that because peace is given to the dying, those who have received peace must necessarily die, when rather in this the indication of divine mercy and paternal gentleness appears, that those who receive the pledge of life in the peace granted are here also held unto life by the peace they have received. And therefore if, once peace has been accepted, a departure from God is granted, no one ought to bring this as a charge against the priests, since it has once been decided by the brethren to assist those in peril. Nor should you think, dearest brother, as it seems to some, that the libellatici ought to be equated with the sacrificati, since even among those who have sacrificed, both the condition and the cause are frequently different.

For they are not to be equated: the one who rushed forward to the unspeakable sacrifice at once by his own will, and the one who, having struggled and contended for a long time, came to this deadly deed by necessity; the one who betrayed both himself and all his own, and the one who, coming himself into danger on behalf of all, protected his wife and children and his whole household by the performance of his own peril; the one who compelled his tenants or friends to the crime, and the one who spared his tenants and coloni, and even received very many brethren, who were withdrawing as exiles and fugitives, into his own chosen lodgings and hospitality, showing and offering to the Lord many living and unharmed souls who would entreat on behalf of one wounded soul.

XIV. Since, therefore, there is great diversity among those who sacrificed, what harshness is it, and how bitter a hardness, to join the libellatici with those who sacrificed, when he who has received a libellus may say: I had read beforehand, and, with the bishop treating the matter, I had come to know that one must not sacrifice to idols, nor ought a servant of God to adore images; and therefore, lest I should do what was not permitted, when the opportunity of a libellus had been offered—which I would not even have accepted unless the opportunity had been shown—I either came to the magistrate, or sent word by another going, that I am a Christian, that it is not permitted for me to sacrifice, that I cannot come to the altars of the devil, that I give a payment for this reason, that I may not do what is not permitted.

But now even this man, who has been stained by the certificate, after he learned from our admonitions that he ought not to have done this either—although his hand may be pure, and no contagion of the deadly food has polluted his mouth, yet his conscience is polluted—he weeps when he hears us and laments, and is now admonished of what he has done wrong, and, deceived not so much by crime as by error, he testifies that for the future he is instructed and prepared.

XV. But if we reject the repentance of those who have some confidence of a tolerable conscience, immediately, with the devil inviting them, they are carried off with their wife and children, whom they had kept safe, into heresy or schism; and it will be charged to us on the day of judgment that we did not heal the wounded sheep, and that because of one wounded sheep we lost many sound ones; and whereas the Lord, leaving the ninety-nine sound ones, sought the one that was wandering and weary, and when he found it carried it himself on his shoulders (Luke 15; Matthew 18), we not only do not seek the fallen, but even drive away those who come, and while false prophets do not cease now to lay waste and tear the flock of Christ, we give occasion to dogs and wolves, so that those whom hostile persecution has not destroyed, we ourselves destroy by our harshness and inhumanity. And where, dearest brother, will that be which the Apostle says: I please all men in all things, not seeking what is useful to me, but what is useful to many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:33; 11:1).

And again: I became weak to the weak, that I might gain the weak. And again: If one member suffers, all the other members suffer with it; and if one member rejoices, all the other members rejoice with it.

XVI. The reasoning of the philosophers and Stoics is one thing, dearest brother—those who say that all sins are equal and that a serious man ought not easily to be swayed. But among Christian philosophers the difference is very great. And since the Apostle says, See that no one despoil you through philosophy and empty deceit, we must avoid those things which do not come from God's mercy, but descend from the presumption of a harsher philosophy. But of Moses we read in the Scriptures that it was said: And Moses was a man exceedingly meek. And the Lord says in his Gospel: Be merciful, as your Father has been merciful to you. And again: Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. How can he practice medicine who says: I care only for the healthy, who have no need of a physician? We ought to offer our help, our healing, to the wounded. Nor should we think that those are dead, but rather that they lie half-alive whom we see wounded by deadly persecution; for if they were wholly dead, confessors and martyrs would never afterward be made from among them.

XVII. But since there is in them that which, with repentance following, may recover strength for the faith, and the vigor of repentance is armed for virtue, which cannot be armed if anyone fails through despair, if, being harshly and cruelly separated from the Church, he turns to the ways of the Gentiles and to secular works, or, being rejected by the Church, passes over to heretics and schismatics; where, even if afterward he is slain for the name while placed outside the Church and divided from unity and from charity, he cannot be crowned in death. And therefore it has pleased us, dearest brother, the causes of each having been examined, that libellatici be admitted in the meantime, and that those who have sacrificed be succored at the point of departure: since there is no Exomologesis among the dead, nor can anyone be compelled by us to repentance if the fruit of repentance is withdrawn. If the battle comes first, he will be found strengthened by us and armed for the battle. But if infirmity presses before the battle, he departs with the solace of peace and communion.

XVIII. For we do not prejudge the Lord, who is to judge, so as to prevent him, if he finds the sinner's repentance full and just, from then ratifying what has been decided here by us. But if anyone deceives us by a simulation of repentance, God, who is not mocked (Gal. 6) and who looks upon the heart of man (1 Kings 16), will judge concerning those things which we have seen less clearly, and the Lord will correct the judgment of his servants; provided only that we, dearest brother, must remember that it is written, A brother helped by a brother shall be exalted (Prov. 18:19), and that the Apostle also said: Each one considering, lest you also be tempted, bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:1-2); and likewise, rebuking the proud and breaking arrogance, he sets down in his epistle: And let him who thinks he stands see that he does not fall (1 Cor. 10:12); and in another place he says: Who are you to judge another's servant? He stands or falls to his own master. But he shall stand. For God is able to make him stand (Rom. 16:4). John also proves Jesus Christ our Lord to be an advocate and intercessor for our sins, saying: My little children, I write these things to you so that you may not sin; and if anyone has sinned, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, our pleader, and he himself is the propitiation for our offenses (1 John 2:1-2).

And Paul the apostle also says in his Epistle: If while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, much more now, justified in his blood, shall we be saved by him from wrath (Rom. 5:8-9).

XIX. Thinking on his loving-kindness and mercy, we ought not to be so harsh and hard, nor so inhuman in cherishing our brethren, but to grieve with those who grieve and weep with those who weep, and to raise them up as much as we can with the help and comfort of our love, and not be so ungentle and stubborn as to beat back their repentance, nor again so loose and easy as to rashly loosen the bond of communion. Behold, a brother lies wounded, struck down by the adversary in the battle line. Hence the devil strives to kill the one he has wounded; hence Christ urges that the one he redeemed not perish utterly. Which of the two do we stand by, on whose side do we take our stand? Do we favor the devil that he may destroy, and pass by the brother lying half-dead, as in the Gospel the priest and the levite did? (Luke 10.) But rather, as priests of God and of Christ, imitating what Christ both taught and did, let us snatch the wounded man from the jaws of the adversary, that, once healed, we may reserve him for God the judge.

XX. Nor should you think, dearest brother, that the strength of the brethren is diminished or that martyrdoms fail because repentance has been relaxed for the lapsed, and because the hope of peace has been offered to the penitent. Truly the strength of the faithful remains immovable, and among those who fear and love God with their whole heart, integrity perseveres stable and strong. For even to adulterers a time of repentance is granted by us and peace is given. Yet not for that reason does virginity fail in the Church, nor does the glorious purpose of continence languish through the sins of others. The Church flourishes, crowned with so many virgins, and chastity and modesty preserve the tenor of their glory, nor because repentance and pardon are relaxed to the adulterer is the vigor of continence broken. It is one thing to stand for pardon, another to attain to glory; one thing to be cast into prison and not to come out from there until you pay the last farthing (Matt. 5), another to receive at once the reward of faith and virtue (1 Cor. 3); one thing to be cleansed by long grief and purged by fire for a long time for sins, another to have purged all sins by suffering; one thing, finally, to hang upon the day of judgment for the sentence of the Lord, another to be crowned at once by the Lord.

XXI. And indeed, among our predecessors, some bishops in this province of ours thought that peace should not be granted to adulterers, and they closed off the place of repentance against adultery altogether. Yet they did not withdraw from the college of their fellow bishops, nor did they break the unity of the catholic Church by the obstinacy of their harshness or censure, so that because peace was being given to adulterers by others, one who did not give it should be separated from the Church. While the bond of concord remained and the indivisible sacrament of the catholic Church persevered, each bishop disposes and directs his own conduct, to render to the Lord an account of his purpose.

XXII. But I am amazed that some are so obstinate as to think that repentance should not be granted to the lapsed, or to believe that pardon should be denied to the penitent, when it is written: Remember from where you have fallen, and do penance, and do your former works (Rev. 2:5). This is certainly said to one who is known to have fallen, and whom the Lord urges to rise again through works, because it is written: Almsgiving delivers from death (Tob. 4:10); and certainly not from that death which the blood of Christ extinguished once for all, and from which the grace of saving Baptism and of our Redeemer freed us, but also from that death which creeps in afterward through sins.

In another place likewise a time for repentance is given, and the Lord threatens one who does not repent: I have, he says, many things against you, because you allow your wife Jezabel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants, to commit fornication and to eat of the sacrifices, and I gave her time that she might repent, and she does not wish to repent of her fornication. Behold, I cast her into a bed, and those who have committed fornication with her into the greatest tribulation, unless they repent of their works. The Lord would surely not exhort these to repentance unless he promised pardon to those who repent. And in the Gospel: I say to you, he says, that so there will be joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, more than over ninety-nine just men, who have no need of repentance. For since it is written, God did not make death, nor does he delight in the perdition of the living, he who surely wishes no one to perish desires sinners to repent and through repentance to return again to life. Therefore also through the prophet Joel he cries out and says: And now these things says the Lord your God: Return to me with your whole heart, together with fasting and weeping and lamentation, and rend your hearts, and not your garments, and return to the Lord your God, because he is merciful and kind and patient and of great compassion and one who turns away judgment against the malice inflicted.

In the Psalms as well we read of the censure and at the same time the clemency of God, who both threatens and spares, who punishes in order to correct, and when he has corrected, preserves. I will visit, he says, their crimes with the rod, and their offenses with lashes. But my mercy I will not scatter from them (Ps. 88:33-34).

XXIII. The Lord also in his Gospel, showing the piety of God the Father, says: Who among you is a man whose son, if he asks for bread, he will hand him a stone; or if he asks for a fish, he will hand him a serpent? If therefore you, though you are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him (Matt. 7:11)? Here the Lord compares a carnal father with the eternal and generous piety of God the Father: that if this wicked father on earth, though gravely offended by a sinful and wicked son, nevertheless afterward sees that same son reformed and corrected by the grief of repentance, with the faults of his former life laid aside, brought to sober and good conduct and to the discipline of innocence, he both rejoices and congratulates him, and receiving the one whom he had before cast out, he embraces him with the vow of a father's exultation—how much more does that one and true Father, good, merciful, and loving, indeed goodness and mercy and love itself, rejoice in the repentance of his children, and no longer threatens punishment to those who repent and weep and lament, but rather promises pardon and indulgence.

Hence the Lord in the Gospel calls those who mourn blessed (Matt. 5), because he who mourns calls forth mercy; he who is stubborn and proud heaps up for himself wrath and the punishment of the coming judgment. And therefore, dearest brother, we have decreed that those who do not do penance, nor testify to the grief of their sins with their whole heart by a manifest profession of their lamentation, are to be wholly barred from the hope of communion and peace, if they begin to entreat in sickness and in danger; because it is not penitence for their sin but the warning of pressing death that compels them to ask, nor is he worthy to receive consolation in death who did not consider that he would die.

XXIV. But as for the person of Novatian, dearest brother, concerning whom you desired that I write to you what heresy he had introduced, know that in the first place we ought not even to be curious about what he teaches, since he teaches outside. Whoever he is and of whatever sort he is, he is not a Christian who is not in the Church of Christ. Let him boast as he may and proclaim his philosophy or eloquence with proud words, he who has held neither brotherly love nor ecclesiastical unity has lost even what he previously was.

Unless perhaps he seems to you to be a bishop who, made a bishop in the Church by sixteen fellow bishops, an adulterer and an outsider, strives through ambition to become a bishop by deserters, and whereas there is one Church from Christ throughout the whole world divided into many members, and likewise one episcopate spread abroad through the harmonious multitude of many bishops, he, after the tradition of God, after the unity of the catholic Church bound together and joined everywhere, tries to make a human church, and sends his new apostles through very many cities, so that he may establish certain recent foundations of his own institution, although already long since bishops have been ordained through all the provinces and through individual cities, ancient in age, sound in faith, tested in hardship, proscribed in persecution—he dares to create other false bishops over them.

As if he could either traverse the whole world by the obstinacy of a new undertaking or tear apart the fabric of the ecclesiastical body by the sowing of his discord, not knowing that schismatics always blaze up in their beginnings but cannot grow, nor increase what they have begun unlawfully, but immediately fail with their depraved rivalry; and he could not hold the episcopate, even if he had first been made a bishop, if he were to desert the body of his fellow bishops and the unity of the Church, since the Apostle admonishes us to bear with one another, lest we withdraw from the unity that God established, and says: Bearing with one another in love, being careful to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Therefore he who observes neither the unity of the Spirit nor the bond of peace, and separates himself from the bond of the Church and from the college of priests, can have neither the power nor the honor of a bishop, since he wished to hold neither the unity nor the peace of the episcopate.

XXV. Then, how great is the swelling of arrogance, how great the forgetfulness of humility and gentleness, how great the boasting of his own arrogance, that someone should either dare or believe he can do what the Lord did not grant even to the Apostles—to think he can distinguish the tares from the wheat (Matt. 13)—or, as if it had been granted to them to carry openly and to purge the threshing floor, he attempts to separate the chaff from the wheat, when the Apostle says: But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of clay (2 Tim. 2:20); he seems to choose the vessels of gold and silver, but to despise, cast away, and condemn those of wood and clay, whereas the wooden vessels are burned up only on the day of the Lord by the fire of divine ardor, and the clay vessels are broken by him to whom the iron rod has been given (Ps. 2).

XXVI. But if he has made himself the searcher and judge of heart and reins, let him judge equally in all things; and since he knows it is written: Behold, you have been made whole; sin no more, lest something worse happen to you (John

Let him separate from his side and from his company the defrauders and adulterers, since the case of the adulterer is both much graver and worse than that of the libellaticus, since the latter sinned under compulsion, the former by his own will; the latter, thinking it was enough for him that he had not sacrificed, was deceived by error; the former, an assailant of another's marriage, or having entered a brothel, into the sewer and foul maw of the common crowd, has violated the sanctified body and the temple of God with detestable filth, as the Apostle says: Every sin whatsoever a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits adultery sins against his own body (1 Cor 6:18). Yet even to these repentance is granted, and the hope of lamenting and making satisfaction is left, according to the same Apostle saying: I fear lest, coming to you, I should mourn over many of those who have sinned before and have not repented of the uncleannesses which they have committed and their fornications and lusts (1 Cor 12:20-21).

XXVII. Nor let the new heretics flatter themselves in this, that they say they do not communicate with idolaters, when there are among them both adulterers and defrauders, who are held guilty of the crime of idolatry, according to the Apostle saying: For know this, understanding, that every fornicator or unclean person or defrauder, which is idolatry, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. And again: Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, putting off fornication, uncleanness, and evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is the service of idols, for which things the wrath of God comes. For since our bodies are members of Christ, and each of us is a temple of God, whoever violates the temple of God by adultery violates God; and he who in committing sins does the will of the devil serves demons and idols. For evil deeds do not come from the Holy Spirit, but from the instigation of the adversary and from an unclean spirit do the lusts that are born compel one to act against God and to serve the devil. Thus it comes about that if they say one person is defiled by another's sin and contend by their assertion that the idolatry of the one who sins passes over to the one who does not sin, they cannot, according to their own words, be excused from the crime of idolatry, since it is established from the Apostle's proof that fornicators and defrauders, with whom they communicate, are idolaters.

But for us, according to our faith and the form given by divine preaching, the reasoning of truth requires that each person be held guilty in his own sin, and that one person cannot become guilty for another, since the Lord forewarns and says: The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him (Ezek. 18:20). And again: Fathers shall not die for their children, and children shall not die for their fathers. Each one shall die in his own sin (Deut. 24:16). Reading and holding this, we certainly think that no one is to be barred from the fruit of satisfaction and the hope of peace, since we know, according to the faith of the divine Scriptures, with God himself as author and exhorter, that sinners are brought to perform penance, and that pardon and indulgence are not denied to the penitent.

XXVIII. But O the mockery that frustrates brotherhood! O the fleeting deception of wretched men who lament and are out of their minds! O the ineffective and vain tradition of heretical teaching! To exhort to the penance of satisfaction and to withdraw the remedy from satisfaction, to say to our brothers: "Weep and pour out tears, and groan by day and by night, and to wash away and purge your offense, labor abundantly and frequently—but after all these things you will die outside the Church; whatever pertains to peace you will do, but you will receive no peace, which you seek." Who would not perish at once, who would not faint from desperation itself, who would not turn his mind away from the purpose of lamentation?

Do you think a farmer can work if you say to him: “Work the field with every skill of husbandry, apply yourself diligently to cultivation; but you will reap no harvest, you will press no vintage, you will gather no fruits from your olive grove, you will pluck no apples from the trees.” Or if to one whom you urge to own and use ships you say: “Buy timber from the finest forests, brother; weave the keel from very strong and choice oak, work with nail, ropes, and sails, so that a ship may be built and equipped; but when you have done this, you will see no profit from its voyages and courses.”

XXIX. It is to block and cut off the path of sorrow and repentance, so that when in all the Scriptures the Lord God coaxes those who return to him and repent, by our hardness and cruelty, while the fruit of repentance is intercepted, repentance itself is taken away. But if we find that no one ought to be forbidden to do repentance, and that to those who entreat and implore the Lord’s mercy, according as he is merciful and kind, peace can be granted through his priests, then the groans of the mourners must be admitted, and the fruit of repentance must not be denied to the sorrowful. And because there is no confession among the dead, nor can exomologesis be made there, those who have repented with their whole heart and have asked must be received within the Church and reserved in it for the Lord, who, when he comes to his Church, will judge those whom he finds within it.

But apostates and deserters, or adversaries and enemies and those who scatter the Church of Christ, even if they have been killed outside for the name, cannot, according to the Apostle, be admitted to the peace of the Church, since they have held neither the spirit nor the unity of the Church.

XXX. These few things out of many, dearest brother, I have run through briefly, as far as I could, both to satisfy your desire and to join you more and more to the fellowship of our college and body. But if there should be for you an opportunity and means of coming to us, we shall be able to confer more in common and to treat more abundantly and fully those things which make for salutary concord. I pray, dearest brother, that you always fare well.

Letter XI.

(Erasm. i; Pamel. Rigalt Baluz. LIV, Paris, LIII; Coustant I, 167; Galland. III, 350; Routh Reliq. sacr. III, and 108.)

(You have this synodical letter of the second Council of Carthage under St. Cyprian below (col. 851) among the acts of the Councils of Carthage celebrated in the time of St. Cornelius.)

IN THE YEAR OF CHRIST 252. LETTER XII.

OF ST. CYPRIAN, BISHOP OF CARTHAGE, TO ST. CORNELIUS, POPE.

(Erasm. 1, 5; Pamel. Rigalt. Baluz., LV: Paris. LIV. Lips., Oxon., LIX; Constant. I, col. 172; Galland., III, p. 362.)

CONCERNING THE FIVE PRESBYTERS AND FORTUNATUS THE PSEUDO-BISHOP.

Concerning the twofold letter of Cornelius: the first, in which he announced that Felicissimus and those who had come with him had been rejected; the second, in which he indicated that, moved by their threats, he had accepted the letters they had brought. A bishop ought not to be deterred by fear of evil men from guarding ecclesiastical discipline. Then Cyprian relates that he himself is the legitimate bishop, but that Fortunatus was co-opted as bishop by five bishops—of whom three had been condemned, the fourth had been ordained in heresy by a condemned bishop, and the last had lapsed in persecution—and by a few men whose conscience was complicit with his own. Hence he graphically sets forth what the doctrine of Fortunatus's followers is concerning the lapsed, and in what manner they do not cease to communicate with them, and intercede on their behalf against the doing of penance. In vain do they strive to go to Rome to seek confirmation of the pseudo-bishop created by them. There the Africans decree that a case must be heard where the crime was committed. With what ease and kindness Cyprian receives those returning to the Church.

I. I have read your letter, dearest brother, which you sent by our brother Satyrus the acolyte, full enough of brotherly love, of ecclesiastical discipline, and of priestly censure, in which you signified that Felicissimus, the enemy of Christ—not a new one, but one long since restrained for his many and most grievous crimes, and condemned not only by my judgment but also by that of very many fellow bishops—has been rejected by you there, and that when he had come surrounded by a crowd and faction of desperate men, he was driven out of the Church with full vigor, as bishops ought to act; from which he had long since been expelled, together with those like him, by the majesty of God and the severity of Christ our Lord and Judge—so that he, the author of schism and dissension, the defrauder of money entrusted to him, the violator of virgins, the despoiler and corrupter of many marriages, might no longer defile the uncorrupt, holy, and chaste bride of Christ by the disgrace of his presence and by his impure and incestuous contagion.

II. But indeed, having read the other letter of yours, brother, which you appended to your first letter, I was greatly astonished: when I noticed that you had been somewhat shaken by the threats and terrors of those who had come; since, as you wrote, they had accosted you in utter desperation, threatening that if you did not accept the letters they had brought, they would read them out publicly, and would utter many shameful and disgraceful things, worthy of their own mouth. But if this is so, dearest brother, that the audacity of the most wicked is feared, and that what they cannot achieve by right and equity they accomplish by recklessness and desperation, then it is all over with the vigor of the episcopate and with the sublime and divine power of governing the Church: nor can we Christians any longer endure or even exist, if it has come to this, that we should dread the threats and snares of the depraved. For both the Gentiles and the Jews threaten, and the heretics and all whose hearts and minds the devil has besieged daily testify to their venomous rage with furious voice: yet we must not yield for this reason, because they threaten; nor is the hostile adversary greater than Christ for this reason, because he claims and assumes so much for himself in the world. The strength of faith must remain in us immovable, dearest brother; and a steadfast and unshaken virtue must resist against all the attacks and onsets of the barking waves, as with the strength and mass of a rock lying in their path.

Nor does it matter whence terror or danger comes to a bishop, who lives exposed to terrors and dangers, and yet is made glorious even by those very terrors and dangers. For we ought not to think of and look only at the threats of the Gentiles or the Jews, when we see that our own Lord was restrained by his brethren (Mark 3:21) and betrayed by one whom he himself had chosen among the apostles (Matthew 26:14); that also at the beginning of the world only a brother killed righteous Abel (Genesis 4:8); and that a hostile brother persecuted Jacob as he fled (Genesis 27:41); and that Joseph was sold by his brethren (Genesis 37:23); in the Gospel too we read that it was foretold that a man's enemies would be those of his own household (Matthew 10:36), and that those who had first been joined by the sacrament of unanimity would themselves betray one another. It makes no difference who betrays or rages, since God permits betrayal and crowning. Nor is it a disgrace to us to suffer from brethren what Christ suffered; nor is it a glory to them to do what Judas did. But what arrogance is this, what a swelling, inflated, and empty boast of those who threaten—to threaten me in my absence, when they have me present in their power? We do not fear their insults, with which they daily tear themselves and their own lives to pieces; we do not shudder at the clubs and stones and swords which they brandish with parricidal words. As far as lies in them, such men are murderers before God; yet they cannot kill unless the Lord permits them to kill.

And since we must die once, they nonetheless destroy us daily by their hatred and words and sins.

III. But not for this reason, dearest brother, is ecclesiastical discipline to be abandoned, or the priestly censure to be relaxed, because we are assailed by insults or shaken by terrors; since divine Scripture comes to mind and warns us, saying: But that man who is presumptuous and contumacious, a man boasting of himself, will accomplish nothing at all, who has enlarged his soul like hell (Habakkuk 2:5). And again: And do not fear the words of a sinful man, for his glory will be in dung and in worms. Today he will be exalted, and tomorrow he will not be found; for he has been turned into his own earth, and his thought will perish (1 Maccabees 2:62). And again: I saw the wicked exalted and lifted up above the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by, and behold, he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found (Psalm 36:37). Exaltation and inflation, and arrogant and proud boasting, is born not from the teaching of Christ, who teaches humility, but from the spirit of Antichrist, whom the Lord reproaches through the prophet, and says: But you said in your heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of God; I will sit on the high mountain, above the high mountains I will ascend above the clouds, I will be like the Most High (Isaiah 14). And he added, saying: But you will descend into hell, into the foundations of the earth, and those who see you will marvel over you (Ibid. 15).

Therefore divine Scripture threatens an equal punishment for such people in another place, and says: For the day of the Lord of hosts is upon everyone that is injurious and proud, and upon everyone that is lifted up and exalted (Isa. 2:12). And so each person is immediately betrayed by his mouth and by his words, and by speaking it is revealed whether he has Christ in his heart or truly Antichrist, according to what the Lord says in his Gospel: You brood of vipers, how can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings forth good things from a good treasure, and the wicked man brings forth wicked things from a wicked treasure (Matt. 12:34-35). Hence also that rich sinner, who implores help from Lazarus, placed in Abraham's bosom and established in refreshment, while in torments he is burned, tortured by the burning blazes of the flame (Luke 16:23), among all the parts of the body it is his mouth and tongue that pay the penalty most; because, clearly, he had sinned more with his tongue and mouth.

IV. For since it is written: Nor shall the abusive inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:10), and again the Lord says in his Gospel: Whoever shall say to his brother, Fool, and whoever shall say, Raca, shall be guilty of the fire of Gehenna (Matt. 3:22), how can those escape the judgment of the avenging Lord who bring other reproaches not only against brothers but even against priests, to whom such honor is granted by God's condescension that whoever would not obey his priest, even one judging only for a time here, was immediately put to death? In Deuteronomy the Lord God speaks, saying: And whatever man shall act in pride, so as not to listen to the priest or the judge whoever he may be in those days, that man shall die; and all the people, when they hear, shall fear; and they shall not act impiously even now (Deut. 17:12). Likewise to Samuel, when he was despised by the Jews, God says: They have not despised you, but me they have despised (1 Kings 8:7). And the Lord also in the Gospel says: Whoever hears you hears me and him who sent me: and whoever rejects you rejects me, and him who sent me (Luke 10:16). And when he had cleansed the leper, he said: Go, and show yourself to the priest (Matt. 8:4). And when later, at the time of his passion, he had received a blow from a servant of the priest, and when he had said to him, Do you answer the high priest so? (John

IV, 22) the Lord said nothing abusive against the high priest, nor did he detract anything from the honor of the priest; but rather, asserting and showing his innocence, he said: If I have spoken evil, reprove the evil; but if well, why do you strike me? (Ibid. 23.) Likewise in the Acts of the Apostles, afterward, blessed Paul, when it was said to him: Do you thus insult the priest of God with curses? (Acts 23:4), although those sacrilegious and impious and bloodstained men had already begun to be such after the Lord had been crucified, and no longer retained anything of priestly honor and authority: nevertheless Paul, thinking of that name, though empty, and a kind of shadow of the priest, said: I did not know, brothers (Ibid. 5), that he is the high priest; for it is written: You shall not curse the prince of your people (Exod. 22:28).

V. Since such great and such examples, and many others, precede, by which priestly authority and power are confirmed by divine favor; what sort of men do you think those are, who are enemies of the priests and rebels against the Catholic Church, and are frightened neither by the warning threat of the Lord nor by the vengeance of the future judgment? For heresies have not arisen, nor have schisms been born, from any other source than while the priest of God is not obeyed, and it is not considered that there is one priest in the Church for the time, and one judge for the time, in the place of Christ.

If the whole brotherhood would obey the divine teachings, no one would raise any objection against the college of priests; no one, after the divine judgment, after the suffrage of the people, after the consent of fellow bishops, would make himself a judge now not of the bishop but of God; no one would rend the Church of Christ by the division of unity; no one, pleasing himself and puffed up, would establish a new heresy separately outside, unless someone is of such sacrilegious rashness and depraved mind as to think that a priest is made without the judgment of God—although the Lord says in his Gospel: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, and not one of them falls to the ground without the will of the Father? (Matt. 10:29). Since he says that not even the least things happen without the will of God, does anyone think that the greatest and mighty things happen in the Church of God either without God's knowledge or without his permission, and that priests, that is, his stewards, are ordained not by his sentence? This is to not have the faith by which we live, this is to not give honor to God, by whose nod and will we know and believe that all things are ruled and governed. Clearly bishops are not made by the will of God—but those who are made outside the Church, but those who are made against the disposition and tradition of the Gospel: as the Lord himself sets forth in the twelve Prophets and says: They have set up a king for themselves, and not through me (Hos. 8:4). And again: Their sacrifices are like the bread of mourning; all who eat them will be defiled (Hos. 9:4).

And through Isaiah too the Holy Spirit cries out and says: Woe to you, rebellious sons, thus says the Lord: You have taken counsel not through me, and you have made a covenant not through my spirit, adding sins upon sins (Isa. 30:1).

VI. As for the rest (for I speak provoked, I speak grieving, I speak compelled), when a bishop is put in the place of one deceased, when by the suffrage of the whole people he is chosen in peace, when by God's help he is protected in persecution, faithfully joined to all his colleagues, already approved for four years in his episcopate by his own people, serving the discipline in quiet, in the storm proscribed with the name of his episcopate attached and joined to him, so many times sought as prey for the lion in the circus, honored in the amphitheater by the testimony of the Lord's favor: even in these very days in which I have written these letters to you, because of the sacrifices which the people were ordered to celebrate by a published edict, he was again demanded for the lion in the circus by the clamor of the populace. Since such a man, dearest brother, is seen to be attacked by certain desperate and lost men who are placed outside the Church, it is clear who it is that attacks him. Not Christ, surely, who either appoints or protects priests; but he who is the adversary of Christ and the enemy of His Church, to this end persecutes the overseer of the Church by his harassment, and once the governor has been removed, rages more savagely and violently around the shipwrecks of the Church.

VII. Nor should any faithful man, mindful of the Gospel and holding to the commands of the forewarning Apostle, be disturbed, dearest brother, if in these last times certain proud and stubborn men, enemies of God's priests, either withdraw from the Church or act against the Church; since both the Lord and His apostles foretold long ago that such men would arise now. Nor should anyone be surprised that a servant set in charge is deserted by some, when even the Lord Himself, performing great and mighty wonders and proving the powers of God the Father by the testimony of His deeds, was abandoned by His own disciples. And yet He did not rebuke those who were leaving, nor did He threaten them severely; but rather, turning to His apostles, He said: Do you also wish to go away? — preserving, that is, the law by which man, left to his own freedom and established in his own free will, chooses for himself either death or salvation. Peter, however, upon whom the Church had been built by the same Lord, speaking as one for all and answering with the voice of the Church, said: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed and have known that you are the Son of the living God.

...signifying and showing, that is, that those who have withdrawn from Christ perish by their own fault; yet that the Church which believes in Christ, and which once holds fast to what it has known, never departs from him altogether; and that those are the Church who remain in the house of God; but that the planting which was not planted by God the Father is not his (Matthew 15:13), whom we see not strengthened by the stability of wheat, but winnowed like chaff by the spirit of the scattering enemy, concerning whom John also said in his Epistle: They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us (1 John 2:19). Likewise Paul warns us that, when evil men perish from the Church, we should not be disturbed, nor should faith be diminished by the departure of the faithless: For what, he says, if some of them have fallen away from the faith? Has their unbelief made void the faith of God? By no means: for God is true, but every man is a liar (Romans 3:4).

VIII. As far as we are concerned, it befits our conscience, dearest brother, to take care that no one perishes from the Church through our fault. But if anyone has perished of his own accord and by his own crime, and refuses to repent and return to the Church, we shall be blameless on the day of judgment, since we counsel what is healthful; those who have been unwilling to be healed by the wholesomeness of our counsel will remain in their punishments. Nor should the insults of the lost move us to withdraw from the right way and the sure rule, since even the Apostle instructs us, saying: If I pleased men, I would not be the servant of Christ (Galatians 1:10). It matters whether one desires to win the favor of men or of God. If men are pleased, the Lord is offended; but if we strive and labor to be able to please God, we must despise both the insults and the curses of men.

IX.

But as for the fact that I did not write to you at once, dearest brother, about this Fortunatus, a pseudo-bishop set up by a few inveterate heretics, this was not a matter that needed to be brought to your notice by us hastily and immediately, as though it were great or to be feared; especially since you already knew well enough the name of Fortunatus, who is one of the five presbyters who long ago fled from the Church and were recently excluded by the sentence of our fellow bishops, many and most weighty men, who wrote to you about this matter last year; likewise you would recognize Felicissimus, the standard-bearer of sedition, who is himself also contained in the same letters of our fellow bishops written to you some time ago; he was not only excluded by them there, but was recently driven out of the Church there by you as well. Since I trusted that these things were within your knowledge, and knew that they were fixed with certainty in your memory and discipline, I did not think it necessary to announce to you quickly and urgently the follies of the heretics. For it ought not to pertain equally to the majesty and dignity of the Catholic Church what the audacity of heretics and schismatics attempts among themselves. For even the party of Novatian is said now to have made Maximus, a presbyter who was recently sent to us as a legate from Novatian and rejected from our communion, their pseudo-bishop there.

Nor had I written to you about this; since we despise all these things, and I recently sent you the names of the bishops established there, who, sound and whole, preside over the brethren in the catholic Church. And this indeed was decided by the counsel of all of us to write to you, so that it might become a shortcut for dispelling error and discerning the truth, and so that you and our colleagues might know to whom you ought to write, and from whom you ought in turn to receive letters. But if anyone besides these, whom our letter has embraced, should dare to write to you, you would know that he is stained either by sacrifice or by a libellus, or that he is one of the heretics, that is, perverse and profane. Having obtained the opportunity, however, through a most intimate man and cleric, through Felicianus the acolyte, whom you had sent with our colleague Perseus, among the other things that had to be brought to your notice from here, I also wrote to you about this Fortunatus. But while our brother Felicianus was either delayed by the wind or detained by us to receive other letters, Felicissimus, hastening to you, got ahead of him. For thus crimes ALWAYS hasten, as if by haste they might prevail against innocence.

Through Felicianus, moreover, I have signified to you, brother, that Privatus, an old heretic, has come to Carthage—a man condemned many years ago, nearly, in the colony of Lambesis by the sentence of ninety bishops, and also marked most severely by the letters of our predecessors Fabianus and Donatus, as your own conscience is not unaware—who, when he said that he wished to plead his case among us in the council which we held on the Ides of May just past, and was not admitted, made this Fortunatus his pseudo-bishop, worthy of his own company. There had come with him also a certain Felix, whom he himself had once established outside the Church as a pseudo-bishop in heresy. But Jovinus and Maximus also, his companions, were present with the heretic Privatus—men condemned by the sentence of nine of our colleagues for abominable sacrifices and crimes proved against them, and also for the second time excluded by many of us in council the year before. With these four was joined also Repostus of Suturnica, who not only fell himself in the persecution, but also cast down the greatest part of his people by the persuasion of sacrilege. These five, together with a few who had either sacrificed or were conscious of evil, co-opted Fortunatus as their pseudo-bishop, so that, with their crimes agreeing as one, their ruler might be such as those who are ruled.

XI. Hence, dearest brother, you can now also learn the rest of the lies that desperate and ruined men have spread abroad there: although there were no more than five false bishops, whether of the lapsed or even of the heretics, who came to Carthage, and they made Fortunatus a partner in their madness, yet those men, as sons of the devil and full of lying, have dared, as you write, to boast that twenty-five bishops were present—a lie they also boasted here among our brothers beforehand, saying that twenty-five bishops would come from Numidia to make a bishop for themselves; and after they were exposed and put to shame in their lie, when only five shipwrecked men, cut off from us, had assembled, they sailed to Rome with the merchandise of their lies, as if the truth could not sail after them, which by the proof of a certain matter would convict their lying tongues. And this is, brother, true madness: not to think or know that lies do not deceive for long, that night lasts as long as it takes for day to dawn, but when day is made bright and the sun has risen, the darkness and gloom give way to the light, and the robberies that raged by night cease. Finally, if you were to ask them for names, they would not have even those whom they could falsely name: so great is the scarcity of evil men even among them that neither from the lapsed nor from the heretics can twenty-five be gathered to them.

And yet, to deceive the ears of the simple and of those absent, the number is inflated by a lie: as if, even if this number were true, the Church would be conquered by heretics, or justice by the unjust.

XII. Nor is it fitting for me, dearest brother, to do the same as they now do, and to run through in my discourse the things they have committed and still commit to this day; since we ought to consider what it befits priests of God to bring forth and to write, and grief ought not to speak in us so much as shame: and lest I seem, when provoked, to heap up curses rather than charges and sins. I therefore keep silent about the fraudulent deeds done against the Church, I pass over conspiracies and adulteries and the various kinds of crimes: that one thing, in which the cause is not mine, nor men's, but God's, I do not think ought to be passed over in silence concerning their crime; that from the very first day of persecution, when the recent crimes of the delinquents were still fresh, and not only the altars of the devil but even the very hands and mouths of the lapsed still reeked with abominable sacrifices, they did not cease to communicate with the lapsed and to intercede for the doing of penance. God cries out: He that sacrificeth to gods shall be rooted out, save to the Lord alone (Exod. 22:20). And the Lord says in the Gospel: Whoever denies me, I will deny him (Matt. 10:33). And in another place the indignation and wrath of God does not keep silent, saying: To them you poured out libations, and to them you imposed sacrifices: shall I not be indignant at these things? says the Lord (Isa.

And they intercede so that God may not be entreated, he who himself testifies that he is angry. They intercede so that Christ may not be implored with prayers and satisfactions, he who declares that he denies those who deny him.

XIII. We, in the very time of persecution, sent letters concerning this very matter, and we were not heard; when a council had frequently been held, we decreed not only by our consent but also by threat, that the brethren should do penance, and that no one should rashly give peace to those not doing penance. And those men, sacrilegious against God, reckless with impious fury against the priests of God, withdrawing from the Church and taking up parricidal arms against the Church, strive to complete their work by the malice of the devil, and to prevent the wounded from being healed by divine mercy in his Church; they corrupt the penance of the wretched by the fraud of their lies, so that satisfaction may not be made to an angry God; so that one may not afterward seek Christ his Lord, whom he either blushed to be a Christian before, or feared; so that one who had withdrawn from the Church may not return to the Church. Effort is made that sins not be redeemed by just satisfactions and lamentations, that wounds not be washed away by tears. True peace is taken away by the lie of false peace; the saving bosom of the mother is closed off by the intercession of a stepmother, so that the weeping and groaning of the lapsed may not be heard from their heart and mouth.

Even further, the lapsed are compelled to insult the priests with the very mouth and face with which they formerly sinned in the Capitol; they pursue with insults and abusive words even the confessors, the virgins, and the righteous, who are outstanding in the praise of faith and glorious in the Church. By these attacks it is not so much the modesty, humility, and shamefacedness of our people that is struck down, as the hope and life of those very men that is torn apart. For it is not the one who hears the insult who is wretched, but the one who makes it; nor is it the one who is struck by his brother who is a sinner under the law, but the one who strikes his brother; and when the guilty do injury to the innocent, those suffer the injury who believe they are doing it. Hence it is that their mind is struck, their spirit dulled, and their understanding estranged. It is a sign of God's anger not to understand one's sins, lest repentance follow, as it is written: And God gave them a spirit of deep sleep (Isa. 29:10)—that is, lest they turn back and be healed, and be restored after their sins by just entreaties and satisfactions. The apostle Paul sets this down and says in his Epistle: They did not have love of the truth, that they might be saved; and therefore God will send them the working of error, that they may believe a lie, that all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in their own injustice (2 Thess. 2:10). The first degree of happiness is not to sin; the second, to recognize one's sins.

There innocence runs its course, whole and unblemished, to watch over itself; here the remedy succeeds, to heal. Both of these those men have lost, having offended God: the grace that is received from the sanctification of Baptism has been lost, and there is no repentance beneath it through which guilt is cured. Or do you think, brother, that the crimes committed against God are light, the offenses small and trifling, because through them the majesty of the indignant God is not entreated? because His wrath and fire and the day of the Lord are not feared? because, with Antichrist imminent, the faith of the militant people is disarmed, while the vigor and fear of Christ are taken away? Let the laity see how they care for this; upon the priests a greater labor falls in asserting and procuring the majesty of God, lest we seem to neglect anything in this matter, since the Lord admonishes and says: And now this commandment is for you, O priests: if you will not hear, and if you will not lay it to heart, to give honor to my name, says the Lord, I will send a curse upon you and I will curse your blessing.

Is honor then given to God when the majesty and judgment of God are so despised that, although he says he is indignant and angry with those who sacrifice, and threatens eternal punishments and perpetual torments, it is proposed and said by the sacrilegious: Let not the wrath of God be considered, let not the judgment of the Lord be feared, let not the Church of Christ be approached; but with repentance removed, and no confession of sin made, with bishops despised and trampled upon, let peace be preached with deceitful words by false presbyters; and so that the lapsed may not rise, or those placed outside may not return to the Church, let communion be offered by those who are not in communion?

XIV. Nor was it enough for them to have withdrawn from the Gospel, to have taken away from the lapsed the hope of satisfaction and repentance: having removed those entangled in frauds, or defiled by adulteries, or polluted by the deadly contagion of sacrifices, from every sense and fruit of repentance, so that they might not ask God, so that they might not make confession of their sins in the Church: they have established for themselves outside the Church and against the Church a conventicle of a lost faction, into which a crowd of those conscious of evil and unwilling to ask God and make satisfaction might flow together: after these things, moreover, with a pseudo-bishop set up for themselves by heretics, they dare to sail, and to the chair of Peter and to the principal Church, from which the unity of the priestly office arose, to carry letters from schismatics and profane men, nor do they think that these are Romans, whose faith was praised by the preaching of the Apostle.

to whom faithlessness can have no access. But what is the reason for coming and announcing a pseudo-bishop made against a bishop? For either what they have done pleases them, and they persevere in their crime; or if it displeases them and they withdraw, they know where they should return. For since it has been established by all of us, and it is equally fair and just, that each person's case be heard there where the crime was committed, and since a portion of the flock has been assigned to individual shepherds, which each one is to rule and govern, to render an account of his conduct to the Lord, it is certainly necessary that those whom we preside over should not run about, nor by their crafty and deceitful rashness dash together the concord of bishops that holds together; but they should plead their case there where they can also have accusers and witnesses of their crime: unless perhaps, in the eyes of a few desperate and lost men, the authority of the bishops established in Africa seems too small, who have already judged concerning them, and have recently condemned their conscience, bound by the snares of many offenses, by the severity of their judgment. Their case has already been examined; sentence has already been pronounced concerning them, nor does it befit the censure of priests to be reproved by the levity of a fickle and inconstant mind, since the Lord teaches and says: Let your speech be Yes, yes, No, no (Matt. 5:37).

XV. If the number of those who judged concerning them in the previous year is counted together with the presbyters and deacons, more were then present at the judgment and examination than are these same men who now appear to be joined with Fortunatus. For you must know, dearest brother, that after he was made a pseudo-bishop by the heretics, he has now been deserted by almost everyone. For those two, to whom in the past deceits were held out and deceptive words were given, saying that they would return together to the Church—after they saw that a pseudo-bishop had been made there, they learned that they had been frustrated and deceived, and they return daily and knock at the Church; yet we, by whom an account must be rendered to the Lord, weigh this anxiously and examine it carefully—who ought to be received and admitted to the Church. For in the case of some, either their crimes stand in the way, or the brothers stubbornly and firmly resist, so that they cannot be received at all without scandal and danger to many. For neither are certain husks to be gathered in such a way that those things which are whole and sound are wounded; nor is that shepherd useful or prudent who so mingles diseased and infected sheep with the flock that he contaminates the whole flock by the affliction of the evil clinging to it. O if only you could be present there with us, dearest brother, when these depraved and perverse men return from schism!

You would see what labor it costs me to persuade our brothers to patience, so that, with the pain of their minds soothed, they may consent to receive and heal the wicked. For just as they rejoice and are glad when tolerable and less culpable men return, so on the contrary they murmur and resist whenever men who are incorrigible and forward, and contaminated either by adulteries or by sacrifices, and after these things still moreover even proud, return to the Church in such a way that they corrupt good dispositions within. I scarcely persuade the people, or rather I extort from them, that such men be allowed to be admitted; and the grief of the brotherhood was made more just by this, that one and another, with the people resisting and contradicting, were nevertheless received by my leniency, and proved worse than they had been before, nor could they keep the faith of penitence, because they had not come with true penitence.

XVI. But what shall I say of those who have now sailed to you with Felicissimus, the guilty one of all crimes, sent as legates by Fortunatus the false bishop, bringing to you letters as false as is he himself whose letters they bring, false; as is his conscience, manifold with sins, as is his execrable life, as is his base one: so that even if they were in the Church, such men ought to have been cast out of the Church? Finally, because they know their own conscience, they do not dare to come, or to approach the threshold of the Church; but outside they wander through the province to circumvent and despoil the brothers: and now sufficiently known to all, and excluded on every side on account of their own misdeeds, they sail even there to you.

For they cannot have the face to approach us or stand among us, since the charges brought against them by the brothers are most bitter and most grave. If they wish to test our judgment, let them come. In short, if there can be any excuse and defense for them, let us see what sense of satisfaction they have, what fruit of penitence they bring: neither is the Church here closed to anyone, nor is the bishop denied to anyone; our patience and readiness and humanity are at hand for those who come. I desire that all return to the Church, I desire that all our fellow soldiers be enclosed within the camps of Christ and the dwellings of God the Father: I remit all things, I overlook many things, in my zeal and desire to gather the brotherhood together; even the things committed against God I do not examine with the full judgment of religion, and by remitting offenses more than I ought, I almost myself offend: I embrace with ready and full love those who return with penitence, confessing their sin with humble and simple satisfaction.

XVII. But if there are any who think they can return to the Church not by prayers but by threats, or who suppose that they can make an entrance for themselves not by lamentations and satisfactions but by terrors, let them know for certain that against such people the Church of the Lord stands closed, and that the camp of Christ, invincible and strong and fortified under the Lord's protection, does not yield to threats. The priest of God, holding fast to the Gospel and keeping the precepts of Christ, can be killed, but cannot be conquered. Zacharias, the priest of God, supplies and furnishes us with examples of virtue and faith; since he could not be terrified by threats or stoning, he was killed in the temple of God, crying out and saying again and again what we too cry out and say against the heretics: Thus says the Lord: You have forsaken the ways of the Lord, and the Lord will forsake you. For it is not because a few reckless and wicked men forsake the heavenly and saving ways of the Lord and, doing nothing holy, are deserted by the Holy Spirit, that we too ought to be unmindful of the divine tradition, so as to judge that the crimes of the raging are greater than the judgments of the priests, or to think that human efforts can avail more for attacking than divine protection prevails for defending.

XVIII. To this point, dearest brother, must the dignity of the catholic Church be laid aside, and the faithful and incorrupt majesty of the people placed within, and also the authority and power of the priesthood, so that they say they wish to judge the overseer of the Church while placed outside the Church, the Christian by a heretic, the sound by a wounded man, the whole by the wounded, the standing by the fallen, the defendant by the guilty, the priest by the sacrilegious? What remains, except that the Church yield to the Capitol, and with the priests withdrawing and removing the altar of the Lord, the images and idols with their altars pass over into our sacred and venerable assembly of the clergy, and a richer and fuller material for declaiming against us and rebuking us be furnished to Novatian; if those who sacrificed and publicly denied Christ not only are to be asked and admitted without performed penance, but even further begin to domineer by the power of their terror?

XIX. If they seek peace, let them lay down their arms. If they make satisfaction, what do they threaten? Or if they threaten, let them know that they will not be feared by the priests of God. For not even Antichrist, when he begins to come, will enter the Church because he threatens; nor will her arms and violence be yielded to because he declares that he will kill those who resist. The heretics arm us while they think we are terrified by their threats; nor do they cast us down in peace, but rather raise us up and inflame us, while they make that very peace worse than persecution for the brethren. And we indeed pray that they may not fulfill in crime what they speak in fury, nor that those who sin with treacherous and cruel words may also transgress in deeds. We pray and beseech God, whom they cease not to provoke and exasperate, that their hearts may be softened, that, laying aside their fury, they may return to soundness of mind, that hearts covered by the darkness of sins may recognize the light of penitence; and that they may rather ask that the prayers and supplications of the bishop be poured out for them, than that they themselves pour out the blood of the priest. But if they persist in their fury, and cruelly persevere in these plots and parricidal threats of theirs, no priest of God is so weak, so cast down and abject, so enfeebled by the weakness of human mediocrity, that he is not divinely raised up against the enemies and assailants of God, whose humility and infirmity are not animated by the vigor and strength of the protecting Lord.

It matters nothing to us by whom or when we are killed, since we are to receive the reward of death and blood from the Lord. Their condition is to be wept over and lamented—those whom the devil so hollows out that, not thinking on the eternal punishments of hell, they strive to imitate the coming of Antichrist, who is now near.

XX. And although I know, dearest brother, that out of the mutual love which we owe and show to one another, you always read my letters to the most flourishing clergy presiding with you there and to the most holy and most ample people, nevertheless now I both admonish and ask that what you do at other times spontaneously and honorably, you do also at my request: that when this letter of mine has been read, if any contagion of poisoned speech and pestilential sowing has crept in there, it be wholly stripped away from the ears and hearts of the brethren, and the whole and sincere love of the good be cleansed by all from the filth of heretical detraction.

XXI. But henceforth let our most beloved brothers firmly turn aside and avoid the words and conversations of those whose speech spreads like cancer, as the Apostle says: Evil conversations corrupt good manners. And again: Avoid a heretic after one admonition, knowing that such a one is perverse and sins, and is condemned by himself. And through Solomon the Holy Spirit speaks: The perverse man, he says, carries destruction in his mouth, and stores up fire in his lips. Likewise again he warns, saying: Hedge your ears about with thorns, and do not listen to an evil tongue. And again: The evil man obeys the tongue of the wicked; but the just man does not attend to lying lips. Although I know that our brotherhood there, fortified as it is by your foresight, and also sufficiently guarded by its own vigilance, can neither be caught nor deceived by the poisons of heretics, and that the divine teachings and precepts prevail as much among them as is their fear of God, nevertheless out of abundance either our concern or our love has persuaded us to write these things to you, so that no dealings may be joined with such people, no banquets or conversations be mixed with the wicked, and we may be as separated from them as they are fugitives from the Church; where it is written: But if he despises the Church, let him be to you as a heathen and a publican.

And the blessed Apostle not only advises but even commands that such people be avoided. "We command you," he says, "in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us." There can be no fellowship between faith and perfidy. He who is not with Christ, who is an adversary of Christ, who is an enemy of his unity and peace, cannot be joined with us. If they come with prayers and satisfactions, let them be heard; if they bring curses and threats, let them be rejected. I pray, dearest brother, that you may always fare well.

In the year of Christ 252. Epistle XIII.

Of Saint Cyprian to Saint Cornelius the Pope.

(Erasm. I. 1; Pamel. Rigalt. Baluz. LVII; Paris. 56; Ceustant I, col. 190; Galland. III, p. 360.)

Argument. Cyprian congratulates Cornelius on having shown himself a leader to his people for confessing by a strong confession. He runs out against the crowds of the Romans. Then he censures the adverse lot of Novatian. Finally he sets forth that they ought mutually to prepare themselves for the nearest contest.

CYPRIAN TO HIS BROTHER CORNELIUS, GREETING.

I. We have learned, dearest brother, the glorious testimonies of your faith and virtue; and we have received the honor of your confession with such exultation that we count ourselves also as partakers and companions in your merits and praises. For since the Church is one for us also, and is joined to me in undivided concord, what priest would not rejoice in the praises of his fellow priest as in his own? Or what brotherhood would not everywhere rejoice in the joy of brothers? It cannot be sufficiently expressed how great was the exultation here, and how great the gladness, when we learned the prosperous and strong things concerning you: that you stood forth there as the leader of the confession for the brothers; but also that the confession of the leader grew from the confession of the brothers, so that while you go before to glory, you have made many companions of glory, and have persuaded the people to be pierced through with you, while you were the first ready to confess on behalf of all; so that we do not find what we ought to proclaim first in you, whether your prompt and steadfast faith, or the inseparable love of the brothers. There the virtue of the bishop going before was publicly approved; the unity of the brotherhood following was shown. While among you there is one mind and one voice, the whole Roman Church has confessed.

II. The faith which the blessed Apostle preached concerning you has shone forth clearly, dearest brother. He already foresaw in the spirit this praise of your virtue and this firmness of strength, and by proclaiming beforehand the merits of future generations he bore witness to your merits, and while he praised the parents, he stirred up the children. Since you are thus of one mind, since you are thus strong, you have given great examples of unanimity and fortitude to the other brethren. You have taught us to fear God greatly, to cling firmly to Christ, that the people be joined to their priests in danger, that in persecution brothers not be separated from brothers; that a concord joined together cannot be overcome at all; that whatever is asked together by all, the God of peace grants to the peacemakers. The adversary had leapt forth to throw the camp of Christ into confusion with violent terror; but with the same force with which he came he was driven back; and as much dread and terror as he brought, so much fortitude and strength did he find. He had believed that he could again supplant the servants of God, and, as if they were raw recruits and inexperienced, as though less prepared and less cautious, shake them in his usual manner. Having first attacked one, he had tried, like a wolf, to separate a sheep from the flock, like a hawk to separate a dove from the flock of flying birds: for he who does not have enough strength against all seeks to surround the solitude of individuals.

But the remnant of the united army, strong alike in faith and in vigor, understood that the soldiers of Christ were now keeping watch, sober, and standing armed for battle; that they could not be conquered, but could die; and that by this very fact they were invincible, because they did not fear to die; nor did they resist those who attacked them, since it is not permitted to kill even the guilty, let alone the innocent, but they promptly gave up both their souls and their blood: so that when such great malice and savagery raged in the world, they might withdraw more swiftly from the wicked and the cruel. What a glorious spectacle was that beneath the eyes of God! What joy for His Church in the sight of Christ, when, at the battle which the enemy had attempted to bring about, not individual soldiers but the whole camp together came forth! For it is certain that all would have come, if they had been able to hear; since whoever heard hurried swiftly and came. How many there were who, having fallen, were restored by a glorious confession! They stood firm, and by that very grief, made penitent, they became stronger for battle; so that it is clear that they had been taken unawares recently and had trembled with fear at a new and unfamiliar thing; but afterward they returned to themselves, to the true faith, and, gathering their strength from the fear of God, they strengthened themselves constantly and firmly for all endurance, and now stood ready not for pardon of their crime, but for the crown of martyrdom.

III. What does Novatian say to these things, dearest brother? Does he now at last lay aside his error? Or rather, as is the manner of the insane, is he driven to fury all the more by our very goods and prosperities; and the more and more this glory of love and faith grows here, the more there, the madness of dissension and jealousy grows fierce again; nor does the wretch care for his wound, but still more grievously wounds both himself and his own; his tongue clamoring for the destruction of his brethren, and hurling the darts of venomous eloquence; harder by the depravity of worldly philosophy than peaceful by the gentleness of the Lord's philosophy; a deserter of the Church, an enemy of mercy, a killer of repentance, a teacher of pride, a corrupter of truth, a destroyer of charity? Does he now recognize who is the priest of God, what is the Church and the house of Christ, who are the servants of God whom the devil attacks, who are the Christians whom the Antichrist assails? For he does not seek those whom he has already subdued, nor does he eagerly overturn those whom he has already made his own. The enemy and foe of the Church despises and passes by as captives and bound men those whom he has alienated from the Church and led outside, and goes on to assail those in whom he sees Christ dwelling.