Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Some may try to deceive themselves with a hollow reading of the Lord's words: “wherever two or three have gathered together in my name, I am among them.” Gospel-corrupters and dishonest interpreters seize on the closing clause while skipping past what precedes it, holding onto one fragment and craftily burying the other — and just as they have torn themselves away from the church, so they tear apart the meaning of a single passage. For the Lord was urging his disciples toward oneness of heart and toward peace: “I tell you,” he said, “that if two of you should come to agreement on earth about any matter you ask for, it will come to you from my Father who dwells in heaven. For wherever two or three have gathered together in my name, I am among them” — showing that the greatest weight falls not on sheer numbers but on the shared purpose of those praying as one. “If two of you should come to agreement on earth,” he says: oneness of heart came first in his order, the harmony of peace was set down before anything else — he taught, with faithfulness and firmness, that mutual agreement is what matters. Yet how can a man be in agreement with anyone at all, when he stands apart from the church's own body and from the whole brotherhood? How could two or three be joined together under Christ's name, when it is evident that they have cut themselves off from Christ and abandoned his gospel? It was not we who broke away from them; rather, they broke away from us — and once heresies and schisms had subsequently sprung up, as men built for themselves scattered and rival assemblies, they left behind the wellspring and origin of truth. Now the Lord is speaking of his own church, addressing those who remain within it, so that — if they hold together in agreement, if, following what he ordered and urged, even a mere two or three pray as one — few though they be, they might win from God's own majesty whatever it is they ask. “Wherever two or three shall be, I,” he says, “am among them” — meaning among the guileless and the peaceable, among people who fear God and hold fast to what God commands. He declared he would stay present with such a pair or trio in the same way he stood by the three boys inside the furnace: because they kept themselves guileless before God and of one mind toward each other, he gave them life amid the surrounding flame through the breath of dew; likewise with the pair of apostles locked away in prison — since they were guileless, since they held one mind, he himself was there, he himself unbarred the prison gates so they could go back out to the public square and hand on to the crowd the message they had faithfully proclaimed. So when he sets it down among his precepts and declares, “where two or three shall be, I am among them,” he is not splitting people off from the church — he who founded and built the church in the first place — but, rebuking discord among the disloyal and, through his own words, urging peace on the faithful, he reveals that his presence favors two or three united in prayer over a crowd locked in rivalry, and that a small band's harmonious plea gains more than the clashing petitions of many can obtain.
That is also why, when he was laying down the rule for prayer, he added: “and when you stand to pray, release whatever grievance you hold against another, so that your Father in heaven may likewise release your sins.” He recalls from the altar a man coming to offer sacrifice while still at odds with someone else, telling him to make peace with his brother first and only then return and present his gift to God in peace — for God did not even look with favor on Cain's offering, since no one at odds with his brother through the strife of envy could truly have God at peace with him. So what sort of peace do these opponents of the brethren promise themselves? What offerings do these rivals of the priesthood suppose they are performing? Do those who assemble apart from Christ's church really believe Christ stands with them when they meet?
Even should such people be put to death while professing the Name, that stain is not rinsed clean even by their blood; the fault of disunity is beyond atonement and severe, and no amount of suffering washes it away. A man estranged from the church cannot be counted a martyr; he cannot reach the kingdom, having deserted her who is destined to reign. Christ gave us peace; he directed us to live in harmony and share one mind; he laid on us the duty of keeping the covenant of love and affection whole and untouched — and no one who has failed to preserve love for the brethren can present himself as a martyr. Paul the apostle affirms this and stands as its witness: “even were my faith so strong as to move mountains, I would be nothing without love; even were every possession of mine distributed to feed the hungry, and even were this body handed over to burn in flame, lacking love, none of it would do me any good.” Charity is generous, charity is gentle, charity does not envy, does not swell with pride, does not lash out, does not scheme, does not harbor ill will, cherishes all, trusts all, hopes all, endures all. Charity never fails. Never, he says, will charity fail — for this alone will endure forever in the kingdom, this alone will last eternally within the tightly bound unity of the brotherhood. Discord has no path into the kingdom of heaven; whoever has trampled the love of Christ through disloyal division cannot share in Christ's reward — Christ, who declared, “this is my command, that you love each other just as I have loved you.” Whoever lacks charity does not possess God; so runs the saying of the blessed apostle John, that God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God remains in him. Those unwilling to hold one mind within God's church cannot remain with God. Even if, handed over to flame and fire, they are burned, or thrown to beasts and give up their lives there, it will not be faith's crown but disloyalty's sentence, not the glorious close of a devout courage but the collapse of despair. Such a person can be executed, but he cannot be crowned. He calls himself a Christian in just the way the devil often falsely poses as Christ — the Lord himself gave warning of this beforehand, saying: “many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ, and they shall lead many astray.” Just as that impostor is not truly Christ despite borrowing the name, so a man who does not remain within Christ's gospel and within the truth of the faith cannot rightly be regarded as a Christian.
To prophesy, to drive out demons, and to perform great mighty deeds on earth — these are certainly lofty and impressive things; yet no one found doing all of this reaches the heavenly kingdom unless his course keeps to the observance of the right and just road. The Lord announces and says: “many will tell me on that day, Lord, Lord, was it not in your name that we prophesied, in your name that we drove out demons, and in your name that we performed great mighty deeds? And then I will answer them: I have never known you — get away from me, you workers of iniquity.” Righteousness must be practiced, so that one may win merit before God the judge; obedience to his commands and warnings is required, so that our deserts may earn their reward. When the Lord, in the gospel, was setting our path of hope and faith on its shortest course, he taught that our God, the Lord, is one Lord, and that it is with one's whole heart, whole soul, and whole strength that this same Lord God must be loved. This commandment stands first, and a second resembles it: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On this pair of commandments the entire law and the prophets rest. Through his own instruction he taught unity and love together, folding all the prophets and the whole law into two precepts. Yet what unity does that man keep, what love does he guard or even give thought to, who, driven mad by the fury of discord, tears the church apart, tears down the faith, throws peace into disorder, scatters love abroad, and defiles the sacrament—
—evil. This, most faithful brothers, had already taken root some while ago, but now the destructive plague of that same evil has spread further, and the poisoned corruption of heretical distortion and of schisms has begun to swell and take root even more — since this too had to happen as the world approached its decline, just as the apostle foretold us and the Holy Spirit gave warning in advance: “in the last days,” he says, “difficult seasons will come. Men will love only themselves, will be arrogant, conceited, greedy, blasphemous, unwilling to heed their parents, thankless, godless, without natural affection, without loyalty, given to slander, lacking restraint, brutal, hostile to what is good, treacherous, rash, swollen with self-importance, loving pleasure above God, keeping up an appearance of devotion while rejecting its power.” Among these are those who worm their way into households and prey on foolish women weighed down by sin, women dragged along by assorted desires, forever taking instruction but never arriving at any grasp of the truth. And just as Jannes and Mambres stood against Moses, so these people now stand against the truth — yet they will not advance far, for their ignorance, like the ignorance of those two, will become obvious to everyone. All that had been foretold is being fulfilled, and now, as the world's end draws close, it has arrived through the joint test of men and of the times. More and more, as the adversary rages, error misleads, madness inflates itself, jealousy sets fires, greed strikes blind, wickedness corrupts, arrogance puffs up, discord embitters, and rage rushes headlong.
Even so, let the sheer runaway faithlessness of so many not shake or unsettle us; let it instead reinforce our own faith through the very fact that what was foretold has come true. Just as some began behaving this way because it had already been predicted, so let the remaining brothers be wary of people of this stripe, since this too was announced beforehand, with the Lord himself instructing us: “but be on your guard — see, I have told you everything in advance.” I urge you, keep clear of people like this, and drive their ruinous talk away from your presence and your hearing as though it were a plague of death, just as scripture says: “hedge your ears about with thorns, and refuse to listen to a wicked tongue.” And again: “bad company ruins good habits.” The Lord teaches and cautions that we ought to step back from such people: “they are blind,” he says, “guides of the blind; and when a blind man leads a blind man, the two of them will tumble into a ditch together.” Anyone cut off from the church needs to be avoided and escaped on that basis alone. A person of this sort is twisted and sinful, condemned by his own doing. Does he imagine himself joined to Christ, this man who works against Christ's priests, who severs himself from fellowship with the clergy and the people? He carries weapons against the church; he fights back against God's own arrangement. He turns his hand against the very altar and rises in revolt against Christ's own sacrifice; his profession of faith rings false, his profession of religion is sacrilege — a servant refusing obedience, a son gone wicked, a brother become an enemy. Scorning the bishops and abandoning God's priests, this is the man who dares set up a second, rival altar, offer a different prayer with words that are forbidden, and corrupt the true offering owed to the Lord through false sacrifices, never realizing that anyone who fights against God's own arrangement will be struck down by divine punishment for the recklessness of that presumption.
So it went with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who tried to seize for themselves — against Moses and against Aaron the priest — the right to offer sacrifice; they paid the price for that attempt on the spot. The earth's frame split open and its depths gaped wide; the yawning chasm of the receding ground swallowed them up standing and still alive. Nor did the wrath of the offended God strike down merely the ringleaders responsible: fire, bursting swiftly from the Lord in vengeance, also consumed the two hundred fifty companions bound to them in the same madness, who had joined them in that presumption — a plain lesson and demonstration that whatever wicked men, by their own will, try to do against God's arrangement is done in opposition to God. So too King Uzziah, seizing the censer and forcing on himself a sacrifice contrary to God's law, refused to yield or obey even when Azariah the priest resisted him; struck with confusion by divine anger, he was marked on his forehead with the mottled spots of leprosy — branded, in the very part of his body that had offended the Lord, at the same spot where those who please the Lord are marked. And the sons of Aaron, who set on the altar an alien fire the Lord had never commanded, were struck dead immediately before the avenging Lord's own sight.
These are plainly the men whom others imitate and follow — those who, spurning what God has handed down, chase after foreign teachings and introduce doctrines of merely human devising: the Lord rebukes and scolds these very people in his gospel, saying, “you set aside God's commandment in order to establish your own tradition.” This offense outweighs even what the lapsed appear to have done, since they, at least, standing in penitence over their fault, beg God with complete satisfaction. Here the church is sought out and petitioned; there the church is opposed outright. Here necessity could have been the cause; there the will itself is caught in the wrongdoing. Here the one who lapsed harmed only himself; there the one who has tried to found a heresy or a schism has misled a great many by dragging them along with him. Here only a single soul is at a loss; there many are put in danger. The former, at least, recognizes his sin, laments it, and grieves over it; the latter, swelling with pride in his own wrongdoing and even taking pleasure in his own offenses, tears children away from their mother, lures sheep from their shepherd, and throws God's sacraments into confusion. And whereas the lapsed sinned a single time, this other man sins every day. In the end, the one who lapsed, if he later attains martyrdom, can still receive the kingdom's promises; the other, if killed outside the church, cannot arrive at the church's rewards.
Nor should anyone, dearest brothers, be astonished that even some confessors go as far as this, and that a number among them likewise commit sins so shameful, so serious. Confession does not render a man immune to the devil's schemes, nor does it shield someone still living in this world with permanent safety against temptation, danger, worldly assault, and attack; otherwise we would never afterward have witnessed among confessors the deceit, the fornication, and the adultery that we now see in some and mourn and lament over. Whoever that confessor may be, he is no greater, no better, and no dearer to God than Solomon was — and yet, for as long as Solomon walked in the Lord's ways, he retained the favor he had won from the Lord; once he turned from the Lord's path, he forfeited the Lord's favor as well. And so it is written: “hold on to what you have, so that no one else takes your crown.” The Lord would hardly warn that the crown of righteousness could be taken away unless it were bound to happen that, once righteousness withdraws, the crown withdraws along with it.
Confession marks glory's starting point, not yet the crown's reward; it does not round off one's praise but merely opens the door to standing, and since it is written, “whoever holds out to the very end will be saved,” whatever happens short of that end is only a rung by which one climbs toward salvation's peak, not the final marker where the summit's height is already secured. He is a confessor — yet after the confession the danger only grows, because the adversary has been provoked all the more. He is a confessor — all the more reason, then, for him to stand fast with the Lord's gospel, since it was through that gospel that he won glory from the Lord. From the one given much, much is demanded; and from the one credited with greater honor, greater service is required. Let no one be ruined by following a confessor's example; let no one pick up injustice or arrogance or disloyalty from a confessor's behavior. He is a confessor: let him be humble and calm, let him keep his conduct restrained and disciplined, so that one called a confessor of Christ might actually imitate the Christ he confesses. For since Christ himself said, “whoever raises himself up will be brought low, and whoever brings himself low will be raised up,” and he himself was raised up by the Father precisely because, on earth, the Word and power and wisdom of God the Father brought himself low — how could a man love self-exaltation, when it was Christ who by his own law commanded us to humility, and who himself, as humility's reward, received from the Father the loftiest name of all? Being Christ's confessor carries a condition: Christ's own majesty and dignity must not later be blasphemed through him. Let the tongue that once confessed Christ not turn abusive, not be heard causing an uproar with insults and quarrels, not fling the serpent's venom at the brothers and God's priests after having spoken words of praise. But if he later turns culpable and detestable, if he squanders his own confession through bad conduct, if he stains his life with shameful filth, if, in the end, abandoning the church where he became a confessor and tearing apart the harmony of unity, he trades his earlier faith for a later faithlessness — he cannot congratulate himself over his confession as though singled out for glory's reward, since it is precisely from that same confession that the penalties owed him will grow all the greater.
For the Lord likewise chose Judas among the apostles, and yet Judas later betrayed the Lord. Even so, the apostles' steadfastness and faith did not collapse on that account, simply because the traitor Judas fell away from their company. The same holds here: the confessors' holiness and standing are not immediately reduced merely because the faith of some among them has been shattered. The blessed apostle writes in his letter: “for what if some among them fell away from the faith — did their faithlessness cancel out God's own faithfulness? Certainly not; God remains true, though every man may prove a liar.” The larger and better share of the confessors stands firm on the foundation of their faith and on the truth of the Lord's law and discipline, and they do not part ways with the church's peace, remembering that it was within the church, through God's favor, that they obtained grace; and by that very fact they earn an even greater tribute to their faith, since, having separated themselves from the disloyalty of those who once shared with them the bond of confession, they have withdrawn from that crime's contagion. Genuinely lit by the gospel's radiance, shining with the Lord's own pure and brilliant light, they deserve as much praise for guarding Christ's peace as they earned for prevailing in their encounter with the devil.
I truly wish, dearest brothers, and I equally counsel and press for it, that if it can be managed, not a single one of the brothers should be lost, and that the mother, rejoicing, might gather into her own embrace one united body of an agreeing people. Yet if sound counsel proves unable to call back to salvation's road certain ringleaders of schism and instigators of division who remain locked in blind, stubborn madness, let the rest — whether caught up through mere simplicity, or misled by error, or taken in by some deceiver's cunning craft — be freed by you from deceit's snares; set their wandering steps loose from their errors; let them come to know the straight course of the heavenly road. This is the apostle's own testimony: “invoking the Lord Jesus Christ's name, we direct you to withdraw from every brother whose conduct is disorderly and does not follow the tradition they received from us.” And again he says: “let no one deceive you with empty talk, for it is on account of such things that God's wrath comes upon the sons of disobedience; do not, then, become their partners.” We must withdraw from wrongdoers, indeed we must run from them, so that no one, by joining himself to those on the wrong path and traveling the roads of error and crime, might himself stray from the way of the true road and be held guilty of the very same crime. God is one, Christ is one, his church is one, the faith is one, and the people are one, welded by the glue of harmony into the solid unity of a single body. Unity cannot be torn in two, nor can a single body be split apart by a break in its framework, its inner parts ripped and shredded into pieces. Whatever has broken away from the source cannot go on living and breathing apart on its own — it loses the very substance of its salvation.