Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Letter XLIII. Cyprian, to all the people, greeting. Dearest brothers, Vitius — a presbyter of complete faith and integrity — together with Rogatianus and Numidicus, confessor-presbyters shining with the glory that God's favor confers, and also the deacons, good men entirely given over to serving the church, along with the rest of the ministers, are giving you the full measure of their presence, tirelessly building each of you up through constant exhortation and shaping and correcting the minds of the lapsed with sound counsel; even so, I too admonish you as far as I am able, and visit you by letter in whatever way I can — by letter, I say, dearest brothers. For the spite and treachery of certain presbyters is why I was kept from reaching you before Easter: remembering their old conspiracy, and still harboring that ancient venom against my episcopate — no, truly against your own vote and God's own verdict — they are starting up again their long-standing assault on us, along with their sacrilegious plots, using their usual treachery. Yet by God's providence, even though we neither wanted nor sought this, and indeed pardoned and stayed silent, they have paid the penalties they had earned: rather than being thrown out by us, they threw themselves out; they passed judgment on themselves by their own conscience; conspirators and wrongdoers, they drove themselves from the church of their own will, in line with your own sacred votes. It has now become plain where the Felicissimus faction sprang from, on what foundation and by what force it held together. Long ago these same men were feeding certain confessors encouragement and provocation not to make peace with their bishop nor to keep church discipline, in faith and calm, according to the Lord's own commands — so that they would fail to preserve the honor of their confession through a blameless and undefiled manner of life. And as if corrupting the minds of some confessors and arming a fragment of a shattered brotherhood against God's priesthood had not been enough, they have now turned their poisoned trickery toward destroying the lapsed as well — aiming to lure the sick and wounded, those least able and least firm, given the disaster of their own collapse, to adopt a sounder plan — away from the cure for their wound; and, setting aside the prayers and pleas by which the Lord is to be reconciled through lasting and repeated satisfaction, to draw them by the false promise of a deceitful peace into disastrous recklessness. But I implore you, brothers: stay alert against the devil's traps, and, anxious for your own salvation, keep an even closer watch against this lethal deception. Here is another persecution, here is another trial, and these five presbyters are nothing but the same five ringleaders who not long ago were bound by an edict handed to the magistrates, aiming to undercut our faith and turn the fragile hearts of the brothers toward deadly traps by betraying the truth. This same scheme, this same overthrow, is now being carried out through the five presbyters allied with Felicissimus, to destroy salvation — so that God goes unpetitioned, so that the very man who denied Christ does not entreat that same Christ he denied, so that after the guilt of the crime there is no penance sought, so that satisfaction is not rendered to the Lord through the Lord's own bishops and priests; instead, with the Lord's priests set aside, a fresh scheme of sacrilegious innovation rises up against gospel discipline. And though we ourselves, along with the confessors and city clergy, and likewise every bishop established in our province or overseas, had already agreed that nothing be altered in the matter of the lapsed unless we all assemble together and, taking counsel jointly, settle on a decision balanced between discipline and mercy — against this resolution of ours they rebel, and all priestly authority and power is being torn down by their conspiring factions. What penalties I am now suffering, dearest brothers, since I cannot come to you in person at present, cannot go to each of you myself, cannot myself urge you as the Lord and his gospel teach! It was not enough that two years of exile have already passed, with the sorrowful parting from your faces and your eyes, the endless grief and groaning that tortures me alone, apart from you, in unbroken lament, the tears that flow day and night, because it has not yet fallen to me to greet you — you whom such love and passion made your bishop — nor yet to be held in your arms. Added to this wasting of my spirit has come a still greater sorrow: that amid so great an anxiety and need I cannot run to you myself, since, because of the threats and traps of the treacherous, we are careful that our arrival not stir up a greater uproar there, and — since a bishop in every matter ought to provide for peace and quiet — that I myself should not appear to have given an opening for unrest and to have stirred the persecution up afresh. Even so, dearest brothers, even so, I both warn you and urge you: do not rashly trust ruinous voices, do not readily give in to deceitful words, do not mistake night for day, darkness for light, hunger for nourishment, thirst for drink, poison for medicine, or death for salvation. Do not let the age or standing of these men mislead you — men who, matching the ancient wickedness of those two elders, just as those elders tried to corrupt and defile the chaste Susanna, likewise try, through their adulterous teaching, to defile the church's purity and violate the gospel's truth. God cries out and declares: do not heed the words of false prophets, for the visions in their own hearts deceive them; what they speak does not come from the Lord's mouth; to those who cast off the Lord's word they say, peace will be yours. Peace is now being offered by men who themselves have none, nor do they let the church bring the lapsed back and recall them — men who have themselves broken away from the church. There is one God, one Christ, one church, and one chair, founded by the Lord's own voice upon Peter; no other altar can be raised, no new priesthood established, beyond that single altar and that single priesthood. Whoever gathers anywhere else, scatters. Whatever human fury sets up in defiance of the divine ordinance is adulterous, impious, sacrilegious. Keep well away from any dealings with such men, and avoid their talk as you would flee a spreading cancer or a plague, since the Lord warned us beforehand, saying: they are blind guides leading the blind, and when a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit. Our prayers, which day and night we pour out to God together with you, plead on your behalf, so that you may satisfy him with fitting amends; our tears plead too, tears by which the guilt of the sin you committed is washed away; and the peace you seek from the Lord's mercy, sincerely and in true faith, likewise pleads for you. Do they not know it is written: and the prophet who dreams a dream, the one who spoke to lead you astray from the Lord your God? Brothers, let no one lead you astray from the Lord's paths; let no one steal you away as Christians from Christ's gospel; let no one drag the church's children off from the church. Let only those perish who chose ruin for themselves; let only those remain outside the church who tore themselves away from the church; let only those go without bishops who rose up against their bishops; let only those bear the penalty of their plot who, once by your votes and now by God's own verdicts, have earned the sentence their conspiracy and malice deserved. The Lord cautions us in his gospel, saying: you set aside God's commandment in order to establish your own tradition. Let those who set aside God's commandment and try to establish a tradition of their own be met by you with firm and unwavering rejection. Let a single fall suffice for the one who has lapsed; let no one, through his own scheming, cast down further those who wish to rise again; let no one press down and crush further those already lying prostrate, whom we pray may be raised up by God's own hand and arm; let no one strip of every hope of salvation those who, half-alive, beg to regain their former health; let no one, through the darkness of his own collapse, extinguish for the wavering the last light along the path of salvation. The apostle instructs us, saying: if anyone teaches otherwise and will not agree with the healthy teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, being puffed up with pride, withdraw from that person. And elsewhere he says: let no one deceive you with hollow words, for it is on account of these very things that God's wrath falls upon the sons of disobedience; do not, then, share in their fate. There is no cause for you to be taken in by the hollow words of their perversity and begin sharing their fate. I beg you, withdraw from such men, and stand with us in our counsel — we who day after day pour out unbroken prayers to the Lord on your behalf, who long to see you called back to the church through the Lord's mercy, who ask God for the fullest peace: peace for the mother first, and then for her children. Add your own prayers and pleas to ours; add your tears to our weeping. Flee the wolves who cut sheep off from their shepherd; flee the poisonous tongue of that devil who, ever a liar and a deceiver from the world's very beginning, tricks by deceiving, wounds by flattering, does harm by promising good, and destroys by pledging life. Even now his words gleam and his poison is obvious: he offers peace precisely so that peace is never attained; he offers salvation precisely so that the sinner never reaches salvation; he offers the church, since his one goal in all of it is that whoever trusts him should be lost from the church entirely. Now, dearest brothers, is the moment for those among you who stand firm to keep persevering, holding on with unbroken constancy to the glorious steadfastness you showed through the persecution — and for those who fell under the enemy's scheming in this second trial to think faithfully of their hope and their peace, and, so that the Lord may pardon them, not to turn away from the Lord's priests, since it is written: and whoever acts arrogantly, refusing to obey the priest or the judge holding office in those days, that man shall die. This is the last and closing trial of this persecution, and, with the Lord's protection, it too will soon be over, so that after Easter I may come before you in person along with my colleagues; and there, together, according to your own judgment as well and the shared counsel of us all — as had already been agreed — we shall be able to settle and refine what must be done. But if anyone, unwilling to do penance and make satisfaction to God, goes over to Felicissimus and his party and attaches himself to the heretical faction, let that person know that he can never afterward return to the church and share communion with Christ's bishops and people. I wish you, dearest brothers, always good health, and that you persist with us in unceasing prayer to beg the Lord's mercy.
Letter XLIV. Cyprian to his brother Cornelius, greeting. Dearest brother, some men sent by Novatian came to us: Maximus a presbyter, Augendus a deacon, along with a certain Machaeus and Longinus. But once we had learned, both from the letters they were carrying and from their own talk and insistence, that Novatian had been set up as bishop, we were troubled by the wrongness of an ordination carried out unlawfully and against the Catholic church, and decided they must be shut out from communion with us at once. Having for a time pushed back and answered what they were stubbornly and obstinately trying to argue, I and the many colleagues gathered around me nonetheless held off until Caldonius and Fortunatus, our colleagues, should arrive — men we had recently sent to you and to our fellow bishops present at your ordination, as our representatives — so that, once they came back and told the true story of what had happened, the wrongdoing of the other side could be shattered with greater weight, through their unmistakable proof. Later our colleagues Pompeius and Stephen also came, and they too, to brief us further on this end, brought forward clear signs and testimony matching their own seriousness and honesty, so there was no longer even a need to hear out further those sent by Novatian. When these men, at the gathering, burst in amid spiteful jeers and unruly shouting, demanding that the charges they claimed to have and to prove be examined publicly before us and the congregation, we judged it beneath our dignity to let colleagues who had already been chosen, ordained, and given the commendable approval of so many, be tossed about any further, their honor left open to rivals' slanderous voices. And because setting down in writing every point on which they were refuted and beaten, and shown by their unlawful attempts to have manufactured a heresy, would take too long, you will hear it all in full detail from Primitivus, our fellow presbyter, when he reaches you. Let them go running about looking for partners in their stubbornness and their broken, erring cause. We have given them our answer once already, and we keep insisting that, once they set aside this ruinous quarrel and strife, they ought to recognize that abandoning the mother is impiety, and to understand plainly that once a man has been made bishop — confirmed by his fellow bishops' and the people's own testimony and verdict — no one else can in any way be installed in his place. So if they genuinely wish to look after their own interests peacefully and in good faith, if they claim to stand for the gospel and for Christ, let them come back to the church first. I wish you, dearest brother, lasting good health.
Letter XLV. Cyprian to his brother Cornelius, greeting. Dearest brother, what suited the servants of God, and above all priests devoted to justice and peace, we had lately sent our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus to do: namely, that not merely through the persuasion carried in our letters, but through their own presence and the joint counsel of all of you, they might strive and work as hard as they could to bring the scattered members of a divided body back together, restoring them to the Catholic church's oneness, and to knit fast the tie of Christian love. But since the opposing side's stubborn, unbending obstinacy refused not only the embrace and bosom of the root and the mother, but, as the quarrel grew worse and festered further, set up its own bishop for itself, and, against the divine order once handed down as a sacred trust and against Catholic unity, made for itself outside the church a rival and adulterous head — once we had received letters from both you and our colleagues, and once our dear friends and colleagues Pompeius and Stephen, good men, had also arrived, through whom all this was affirmed and proved to us firmly and with shared joy, we have, following what the holiness and truth of divine tradition and church order required, sent our letter on to you. We have likewise arranged for this same news to reach each of our colleagues throughout our province, and have instructed that the brothers there also be supplied with letters on the matter. Yet our own mind and intention had already been made known at that time to the brothers and to the whole people there, when, upon receiving letters recently from both sides, we read your letter and made your episcopal ordination known to every ear. Mindful too of our shared honor, and holding fast to the respect owed to priestly gravity and holiness, we rejected with scorn the bitter, accusatory material gathered from the other side into a written pamphlet, weighing and considering together that in so large and devout a gathering of brothers, with God's priests seated together and the altar set before them, such things ought to be both read and heard. For matters are not to be put forward carelessly, nor published rashly and without thought, if, composed in a spirit of discord, they would scandalize those who hear them and would unsettle with uncertain rumor the brothers stationed far off across the sea. Let those answer for it who, serving either their own rage or their own appetite, forgetting divine law and holiness, are eager for the moment to boast of things they cannot prove, and, unable to tear down and overcome our innocence, are satisfied to smear it with lying report and false rumor. Surely it falls to those set over us, the priests, to make sure that such writings, whenever composed by certain persons, are rejected by us. For otherwise, where would we find what we are taught and what we teach is written: keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit? And elsewhere: your mouth has overflowed with malice, and your tongue has woven snares; sitting, you slandered your brother, and against your mother's son you set a stumbling block; and likewise what the apostle says: let no evil word proceed from your mouth, but only what is good for building up the faith, that it may give grace to those who hear. We have shown, moreover, that this is the right course — that whenever such things are composed through the reckless slander of certain people, we permit them to be read in our presence. And so, dearest brother, when writings of that kind against you and against the fellow presbyter seated with you reached me, I had only what conveyed a devout plainness read aloud to clergy and people, nothing that echoed with the barking of curses or abuse. As for our wish to have the written testimony of our colleagues who had been present at your ordination — it was not that we had forgotten old custom and were chasing something new, since it would have been enough for you simply to announce by letter that you had been made bishop, had there not been a faction on the other side at odds with us, one whose slanderous, accusing fabrications were troubling the minds of our fellow colleagues and of very many brothers alike, and confusing their hearts. To lay that matter to rest, we thought it necessary that you too be given the firm, solid backing of colleagues writing on your behalf; and they, declaring in their letters testimonies worthy of your character, your life, and your discipline, cleared away, even among your rivals — men who delight in novelty or wrongdoing — every trace of doubt and disagreement. And having weighed it by a sound method in keeping with our own advice, amid this unrest among troubled brothers, they gave sincere and firm approval to your priesthood. For this, brother, above all else, we labor and must labor: to guard, as far as we are able, the unity handed down to us as heirs by the Lord and through the apostles, and, insofar as it depends on us, to gather back into the church the sheep who wander and stray, whom the stubborn faction and heretical enticement of certain men have severed from their mother — leaving outside only those who, through their own stubbornness or rage, have persisted and refused to return to us, and who will themselves answer to the Lord for the division and separation they have caused, and for the church they have abandoned. As for how far this touches the matter of the presbytery involved and of Felicissimus — so that you can learn what took place here, our colleagues have sent you a letter signed in their own hand; from it you will find out what they decided and declared, once they had heard the case. But you would do well, brother, also to have read there to the brothers copies of the letter that, out of our shared affection, I recently sent by our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus for you to read — the letter I had written there about that same Felicissimus and those same presbyters, addressed to the clergy though not to the people — copies laying out both the ordination and the account of what happened, so that our whole fraternity, here and there alike, may be fully informed through us. I have now likewise sent the same copies by way of Mettius the subdeacon and Nicephorus the acolyte, whom I have sent on. I wish you, dearest brother, lasting good health.