Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Nor should the new heretics congratulate themselves for claiming they hold no communion with idolaters, when in their own ranks are adulterers and defrauders bound by the guilt of idolatry, as the Apostle declares: "Know and understand this: every fornicator, or unclean person, or defrauder — which is idolatry — has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God." And again: "Put to death, then, whatever in you belongs to the earth" — meaning fornication, uncleanness, evil desire, and greed, which amount to serving idols and bring down God's wrath. Since our bodies belong to Christ as his members, and each of us is a dwelling-place of God, a man who defiles God's temple through adultery defiles God himself, and one who sins thereby carries out the devil's wishes and becomes a servant to demons and idols. Wicked acts spring not from the Holy Spirit; rather, desires kindled by the enemy's suggestion and by an unclean spirit drive a man to act against God and take up service to the devil. Thus it follows: if these heretics claim that one man can be stained by another's sin, and argue on their own authority that the offender's idolatry transfers to someone who did not offend, their very argument cannot clear them of the charge of idolatry, since apostolic proof establishes that the adulterers and defrauders they commune with are themselves idol-worshippers. We, however, hold — in keeping with our faith and the pattern handed down through divine teaching — that truth demands each person answer for his own sin alone, and that no one can be made guilty in place of another, for the Lord gives this warning: "The righteousness of the righteous will rest on him, and the wickedness of the wicked will rest on him." And again: "No father will perish on account of his sons, nor will any son perish on account of his father; rather, each person will perish for his own wrongdoing." Taking this teaching to heart, we surely believe no one ought to be shut out from satisfaction's reward and the expectation of peace, trusting as we do in the divine Scriptures, whose author and encourager is God himself, that sinners are led back to penance and that those who repent are not refused pardon and mercy.
And oh, what a cheat played upon the brotherhood, what a fraud worked on grieving mourners — this hollow, useless pretense of heretical teaching, urging repentance toward satisfaction while stripping satisfaction of its remedy: telling our brothers, "Weep, pour out your tears, groan by day and night, labor long and often to wash and cleanse your fault away — yet after all this you will die outside the church; you will do everything peace requires, yet receive none of the peace you sought." Who could keep from dying on the spot at such words? Who could avoid collapsing under that very despair? Who would not turn his heart away from the very purpose of mourning? Do you imagine a farmer would keep working if you told him, "Till your field with every skill a farmer has, tend it with diligence, but you will harvest no grain, press no wine, gather no olives, pick no fruit from your trees"? Or suppose you urged someone toward owning and sailing ships, saying: "Buy timber from the finest woods, brother; join the keel with the strongest, choicest oak; labor to build and equip the vessel with nails, ropes, and sails — but once you have done all this, you will see no profit from its voyages or its trade."
This amounts to blocking off and severing the path of grief, the road of repentance, so that — while in the Scriptures the Lord God shows tenderness to those who turn back and repent — our own harshness and cruelty, by cutting away the fruit of repentance, destroys repentance itself. But if we find that no one should be kept from performing penance, and that peace can be granted, through the Lord's priests, to those who beg and implore his mercy, since he is merciful and kind, then the groaning of mourners must be received, and the fruit of repentance must not be withheld from those who grieve. And since no confession, no exomologesis, can take place among the dead, those who have repented with a whole heart and made their plea ought meanwhile to be taken into the church and kept there for the Lord, who, coming to his church, will judge exactly those he finds inside it. But as for apostates, deserters, adversaries, enemies tearing apart Christ's church — these, even should they be slain for his Name while still outside, cannot, by the Apostle's own teaching, be received into the church's peace, since they held to neither its Spirit nor its unity.
These few points, dearest brother, out of many, I have run through as briefly as I could meanwhile, both to satisfy your wish and to bind you ever more closely into the fellowship of our college and body. But if opportunity and means should bring you to us, we shall be able to discuss more together and to treat more fully and richly what may serve a wholesome concord. I wish you, dearest brother, ever good health.
Letter 56. Cyprian to the brothers Fortunatus, Ahymnus, Optatus, Privatianus, Donatulus, and Felix, greeting. You wrote to me, dearest brothers, telling how, while attending a bishop's ordination in Capsa, our colleague Superius brought you word about our brothers Ninus, Clementianus, and Florus — men seized earlier in the persecution who had confessed the Lord's name and overcome both the magistrate's violence and the raging mob's assault, but who afterward, tortured under heavy punishment before the proconsul, were beaten down by the force of the torments and, after prolonged agony, fell short of the glory toward which the full strength of their faith had carried them; and that nonetheless, since that grave fall — brought about not by will but by necessity — they had spent these three years without ever ceasing to do penance. On this you thought it right to seek my counsel, asking whether it might now be permitted to admit them to communion. As for my own judgment: I believe the Lord's indulgence will not fail men who, it is agreed, stood their ground in the battle line, confessed the Lord's name, and with unshaken firmness of faith overcame the violence of magistrates and the onslaught of a furious populace; who endured imprisonment and, for a long time, amid the proconsul's threats and the roar of the surrounding crowd, resisted torments that tore their bodies and prolonged, repeated agonies — so that what seems, in the end, to have given way through the flesh's weakness may be offset by the defense of their earlier merit, and it should suffice for such men to have lost their glory, without our also shutting the door of pardon against them and stripping them of a father's love and our fellowship. We judge it enough, to win the Lord's mercy, that for three unbroken years, sorrowfully as you write, they have mourned with the utmost penitential lament. I certainly do not think peace is being handed out carelessly or rashly to men whom we can see neither lacked courage in their service nor shrank from the fight beforehand, and who, should the battle line form again, could well win back their glory. Since it was resolved in council that those doing penance should be helped if illness threatened them with death and given peace, surely priority in the granting of peace belongs to those we see failed not through weakness of will, but who, having joined the fight and been wounded there, could not, because the flesh is frail, carry through to the crown of confession — all the more since, eager as they were to die, no one allowed them to be killed, but they were torn by torments and worn down over so long a time that it was not their unconquered faith that gave way, but their weak flesh that was exhausted. Since, however, you asked that I take up this matter most fully with the assembled colleges — and so weighty a question demands a graver judgment drawn from many counselors — and since nearly everyone is now staying home with their people through the first days of Easter's celebrations, once they have satisfied their congregations and begun coming to me, I will discuss the matter more fully with each of them, so that a firm decision on your question, weighed by the counsel of many bishops, can be settled among us and written back to you. I wish you, dearest brothers, ever good health.
Letter 57. Cyprian, and Liberalis, and Caldonius, and Nicomedes, and Caecilius, and Junius, and Marrutius, and Felix, and Successus, and Faustinus, and Fortunatus, and Victor, and Saturninus, and another Saturninus, and Rogatianus, and Tertullus, and Lucianus, and Sattius, and Secundinus, and another Saturninus, and Eutyches, and Ampius, and another Saturninus, and Aurelius, and Priscus, and Herculaneus, and Victoricus, and Quintus, and Bonoratus, and Manthaneus, and Hortensianus, and Verianus, and Iambus, and Donatus, and Pomponius, and Polycarpus, and Demetrius, and another Donatus, and Privatianus, and Fortunatus, and Rogatus, and Monnulus, to brother Cornelius, greeting. Some time ago, dearest brother, after taking counsel with one another, we had already decided this: that those who, in the onslaught of persecution, had been tripped by the enemy and had fallen, defiling themselves with forbidden sacrifices, must undergo penance at full length, and, should the danger of fatal illness press upon them, should be given peace at the point of death. For neither justice nor a father's tenderness nor God's own mercy would allow the church to be shut against those knocking at her door, or the comfort of saving hope withheld from those who grieved and pleaded, so that souls departing this world would be handed over to the Lord stripped of communion and peace — since he himself had granted and laid down the rule that what is bound on earth is bound in heaven, and that only what had first been loosed here, within the church, could be loosed there. But now, seeing the day of a fresh onslaught beginning again to draw close, and warned repeatedly by sign after sign to stand armed and ready for the contest our foe proclaims against us, let us likewise, through our own exhortation, make ready the people entrusted to us by God's favor; above all, let us assemble within the Lord's camp soldiers of Christ eager for arms and demanding the fight. Under the pressure of necessity we have judged that peace ought to be granted to those who have never left the Lord's church, and who from the very day of their fall have gone on doing penance, mourning, and pleading with the Lord — and that these should be armed and made ready for the battle now close at hand. We must heed such signs and their just warnings, so that shepherds do not abandon their sheep to danger, but the whole flock is drawn together as one and the Lord's host is armed for the struggle of heavenly warfare. Rightly enough, in the past, the penance of mourners was stretched over a longer season, so that the weak might be aided at their last hour, so long as peace and stillness lasted — a season in which the tears of mourners could be delayed at length and help could still reach the dying late in their weakness. But now peace is needed not by the weak but by the strong, and it is not the dying but the living to whom we must give communion, so that those we rouse and urge to the fight are not left bare and unarmed by us, but fortified with the protection of Christ's blood and body; and since the very purpose of the Eucharist is to serve as a safeguard for those who receive it, let us arm with the shield of the Lord's abundance those whom we want kept safe from the enemy. For how can we teach them, or press them, to pour out their own blood in confessing his Name, if we refuse them the blood of Christ when they are about to fight in his cause? Or how can we prepare them for the martyr's cup, unless we first let them drink the Lord's cup within the church, by right of communion? A distinction must be kept, dearest brother, between those who apostatized, returning to the pagan world they had renounced to live once more as gentiles, or who deserted to the heretics and daily take up arms against the church like men murdering their own kin, and, on the other hand, those who never withdrew from the church's threshold and who, continually and sorrowfully begging for divine and fatherly comfort, now declare themselves ready to fight, prepared to stand firm and battle for their Lord's name and their own salvation. At this moment, the peace we grant is given not to those asleep but to those keeping watch; not for indulgence but for weapons; not for rest but for the front line. If, as we hear, hope, and trust, they hold their ground and, alongside us, strike the enemy down in the encounter, we will not regret having given peace to men so brave — in truth, since as priests we offer God's sacrifices every day, preparing victims and gifts for him, granting peace to martyrs is itself among the greatest honors and glories our episcopate can claim. But should any of the lapsed — God forbid it among our people — deceive us, seeking peace by a trick so as to gain communion at the very hour battle is coming without meaning to fight, that man deceives and cheats only himself, keeping one thing hidden in his heart while his lips proclaim another. As far as it is given us to see and to judge, we can view each man's face; we cannot search his heart or read his mind. Such things belong to the judgment of the one who searches and knows what is hidden, who comes soon and will judge the heart's secret, concealed places. Yet the wicked ought not to harm the good; rather the good should lend the wicked their help. Nor should peace be refused to those on the verge of martyrdom merely because some among them will end up denying the faith, for peace must be given, precisely for this reason, to all who are about to fight, lest through our own ignorance the very man destined to be crowned in the contest should be passed over. Let no one say: "The man about to suffer martyrdom is baptized already in his own blood, and needs no peace from the bishop, since his own glory will bring him peace regardless, and a still greater reward awaits him through the Lord's favor." Such a man cannot, in the first place, be fit for martyrdom if the church has not armed him for the fight, and his spirit — which receiving the Eucharist lifts up and kindles — will fail him. For the Lord says in his Gospel: "When they hand you over, do not worry about what you will say, for it will be given to you in that hour what to say; it is not you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking within you." But if it is the Spirit of the Father who, by his own word, speaks in those handed over and set to confess the Name, how can anyone be found ready or fit to confess who has not first received peace and, through it, the Spirit of the Father — who strengthens his servants and himself speaks and confesses within us? Suppose, then, that such a man abandons all he owns and flees, and, hiding out in remote wilderness, either falls in with bandits or dies of fever and sickness — will it not be charged against us that so fine a soldier, one who left behind everything, scorning house and parents and children to follow his Lord instead, died without peace, without communion? Will it not be counted against us on judgment day — whether as lazy neglect or cruel severity — that we, as shepherds, were unwilling either to care for the flock entrusted and committed to us in peace, or to equip them for the fight? Will the Lord not bring this charge against us, he who cries out through his prophet: "Behold, you drink the milk and clothe yourselves in the wool, you slaughter what is fat, yet you do not feed my sheep; the weak you failed to strengthen, the sick you failed to support, the broken you failed to bind up, the strayed you failed to bring back, the lost you failed to seek, and the strong you wore down with labor; and my flock was scattered for want of shepherds, and became prey for every wild beast, with no one to search for them or bring them home. Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I set myself against the shepherds: their hands will be made to give my sheep back, and I will drive them off, so shepherding my flock is no longer theirs to do; feeding my sheep will no longer be theirs either, for I will pull my sheep out of their mouths and, ruling with justice, feed them myself." So that our own mouths — by which we refuse peace, by which we set up human cruelty's hardness instead of divine, fatherly love — should not bring the Lord's demand for the flock entrusted to us back upon our own heads, it has seemed right to us, prompted by the Holy Spirit and warned by the Lord through many clear visions — since the enemy's approach has been foretold and made plain to us — to gather Christ's soldiers within the camp and, once each case has been examined, to grant peace to the lapsed, or rather to hand weapons to those about to fight. We trust this decision will win your approval as well, out of regard for fatherly mercy. But if any of our fellow bishops should hold, even as the contest presses in, that peace ought not be granted to the brothers and sisters, he will answer to the Lord on judgment day for either his untimely strictness or his inhuman severity. What we have set down accords with faith, love, and care, and reflects what lay on our conscience: that the day of the contest is near, that a fierce enemy will soon rise against us, and that the coming battle will be not like the one before but far heavier and more savage — this has been revealed to us again and again by divine means, and of it we have often been warned by the Lord's providence and mercy. Trusting in his aid and favor, we who place our confidence in him may stand secure, for he who tells his soldiers of the coming battle while they are still at peace will also grant victory in the encounter to those who fight for him. We wish you, dearest brother, ever good health.