Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Letter LXVII. From Cyprian, together with Caecilius, Primus, and Polycarp; Nicomedes, Lucilianus, and Successus; Sedatus, Fortunatus, and Januarius; Secundinus, Pomponius, and Honoratus; Victor, Aurelius, and Sattius; a Petrus, a second Januarius, and a Saturninus; a second Aurelius, Venantius, and Quietus; Rogatianus, Tenax, and Felix; Faustus, Quintus, and a second Satveninus; Lucius, Vincentius, and Libosus; Geminius, Marcellus, and Iambus; Adelphius and Victoricus, along with Paulus — writing to Felix the presbyter, to the congregations settled at Legio and at Asturica, and no less to Aelius the deacon and the congregation settled at Emerita: brothers, greeting in the Lord. Once we had assembled together, dearest brothers, we read the letter you had sent us through our fellow bishops Felix and Sabinus; in it, out of your concern to keep your faith whole and your reverence for God, you told us that Basilides and Martial, both marked by certificates of idol-worship and burdened with the knowledge of unspeakable crimes, had no right to hold a bishop's office or to carry out God's priesthood. You asked us to answer you on the matter and to see your just and pressing worry relieved, whether by our encouragement, our aid, or our formal judgment. Yet what meets this wish of yours is not so much our own advice as a command from God, since long before now a heavenly voice ordered, and God's own law set down, exactly who — and of what sort — ought to serve at his altar and carry out the sacred offerings. Thus in Exodus, God addresses Moses directly with this warning: those priests who draw near the Lord God must be made holy, so the Lord does not, perhaps, cast them off. And further: when they draw near to serve at the sacred altar, they must not bring guilt upon themselves, or they will die. So too in Leviticus, the Lord instructs: no man marked by any flaw or blemish shall come forward to present offerings to God. Now that these truths have been set before us and made clear, our submission owes itself entirely to what heaven commands; no one's standing may sway the outcome in matters such as these, nor can any human leniency hand out favors where a decree from God steps in and settles the law. Nor should we lose sight of what the Lord, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, said to the Jews when he rebuked and condemned them for scorning his commands in favor of merely human teaching: this nation, he declares, honors me only with its lips, while its heart stays distant from me; their reverence for me is empty, since what they teach are simply human rules dressed up as doctrine. The Lord makes the same charge again in the gospel: you set aside God's command so that you can uphold your own custom instead. Bearing all this in mind, and weighing it with careful, reverent attention, we are bound, when ordaining priests, to select only bishops of blameless and unblemished character — men whose holy and worthy offerings to God will win a hearing for the prayers they raise on behalf of the people's welfare, since scripture says: God does not listen to the sinner, but hears the one who reveres him and carries out his will. This is why, with the utmost care and honest examination, only those whom God is known to hear ought to be selected for his priesthood. Let no one among the people console themselves with the notion that fellowship with a corrupt priest, or consent given to an unjust and improper appointment of one placed over them, leaves them untouched by the taint of wrongdoing — for the prophet Hosea records this divine warning: their offerings will become like the bread of mourners; everyone who eats of it will be made unclean — showing plainly that guilt spreads to everyone without exception who has had contact with the offering of an impure and unrighteous priest. We find the same lesson set out in Numbers, when Korah, Dathan, and Abiram claimed for themselves, in defiance of Aaron the priest, the privilege of offering sacrifice. There too the Lord, through Moses, ordered the people to keep apart from them, so that by association with the guilty they would not themselves share in the guilt: withdraw, he says, from the tents of these harsh and wicked men, and do not touch anything belonging to them, or you will perish along with them in their sin. This is why a people obedient to the Lord's commands, and reverent toward him, is bound to keep clear of a leader mired in sin, and not join in the offerings of a priest who defiles the altar — for it is precisely the people who hold the authority either to choose priests worthy of the office or to turn away those unfit for it. And we see that this same principle flows directly from divine authority: that a priest is to be selected with the people looking on, in full view of everyone, and confirmed as worthy and suitable through the judgment and witness of the public — exactly as the Lord directs Moses in Numbers: take your brother Aaron, and his son Eleazar, and bring them up the mountain in view of the whole assembly; strip Aaron of his vestments and clothe Eleazar his son with them, and let Aaron then be gathered to his people and die there. God orders that the priest be installed before the entire assembly — meaning he teaches and demonstrates that priestly ordinations must happen only where the gathered people are watching and aware, so that with the community present, either the wrongdoing of the unworthy comes to light or the merit of the worthy is made known, and the appointment stands as fair and lawful only once it has passed through everyone's scrutiny and vote. The Acts of the Apostles preserve the very same custom, carried forward as heaven itself had taught it: a successor needed to be chosen for Judas's vacated place, and it was before the assembled body that Peter rose to speak. He stood up, so the text runs, in the midst of the disciples gathered there, and the whole company was of one accord. We also notice that the apostles held to this practice not only when ordaining bishops and priests but likewise for deacons — as is recorded, again, in the Acts: the twelve, it says, summoned the entire body of disciples together and spoke to them. This was carried out with such deliberate care, summoning the whole community, precisely to keep anyone unworthy from slipping unnoticed into service at the altar or into priestly rank. For sometimes the unworthy are indeed ordained — not by God's will, but through mere human overreach — and God himself makes plain, through the prophet Hosea, his displeasure at appointments that arise apart from a lawful and rightful process, saying: they set up kings for themselves, and not through me. For this reason it must be kept and observed with care, in keeping with divine tradition and apostolic custom — as is likewise upheld among us, and indeed across virtually every province — that for ordinations to be properly carried out, the bishops from the neighboring sees of the same province should gather together with the congregation for whom a leader is being installed, and the bishop should be selected while the people stand present, since they know each candidate's whole manner of life and have observed each one's conduct firsthand. And we see that this is exactly what took place among you when our colleague Sabinus was ordained, with the result that the office was granted to him through the vote of the entire brotherhood together with the judgment of the bishops who were present and who had already written to you about him, and hands were laid on him to fill the place Basilides had vacated. Nor can an ordination rightly carried out be undone simply because Basilides, once his crimes had come to light and even been admitted by his own conscience, traveled to Rome and misled our distant colleague Stephen — who knew nothing of what had truly happened — hoping to maneuver his way back into an office from which he had justly been removed. The upshot is that Basilides's guilt has not been wiped away but rather compounded, since the crime of trickery and deceit has now been heaped on top of his earlier sins. For the one caught off guard through carelessness deserves far less blame than the one condemned for deliberately practicing deception. Yet even granting that Basilides managed to deceive men, God he cannot deceive, since scripture says: God is not to be mocked. Nor has deception done Martial any good either, so as to free him — entangled as he too is in serious wrongdoing — from exclusion out of the episcopate, since the apostle likewise warns: a bishop must be above reproach, as one entrusted with God's household. Therefore, given what you yourselves report, dearest brothers, what our colleagues Felix and Sabinus confirm, and what another Felix, from Caesaraugusta, a man devoted to the faith and a champion of the truth, states in his own letter — namely, that Basilides and Martial bear the stain of a wicked idolatrous certificate; and given, further, that Basilides, beyond the mark of that certificate, while confined by illness spoke blasphemy against God, admitted to having done so, and, laying down his office of his own will because his conscience was wounded, turned instead toward penance, pleading with God and counting himself fortunate merely to be granted lay communion; and given that Martial, apart from the shameful and sordid pagan feasts long kept up within the burial guild, and apart from having buried his sons pagan-style in unconsecrated graves alongside foreigners, has also been shown, through records taken openly before the procurator ducenarius, to have submitted to idol-worship and renounced Christ — and given that many other grave charges besides entangle Basilides and Martial — it is pointless for men such as these to try to lay claim to a bishop's office, since it is beyond doubt that men of this kind can neither govern Christ's church nor are fit to offer sacrifice to God; all the more so since, well before this, together with us and indeed with every single bishop established throughout the whole world, our colleague Cornelius as well — a peaceable and upright priest, whom the Lord further honored with martyrdom — had already ruled that such men may be allowed to undertake penance, yet must be kept from ordination to clerical rank and from priestly standing. Do not let it unsettle you, dearest brothers, if in these final days some grow unsteady in faith, some let their reverence for God slacken irreligiously, or some fail to hold on to peaceful harmony. All this was foretold as bound to happen as the age draws to its close; it was declared beforehand, by the Lord's own voice and by the apostles' witness together, that as the world grows old and the antichrist approaches, whatever is good will dwindle while whatever is wicked and hostile will spread. Even so, despite these final days, neither has the church of God lost the vigor of the gospel, nor has the strength of Christian virtue and faith grown weak, such that a portion of the clergy still remains that will in no way give way to this collapse of circumstance and this shipwreck of belief, but instead stands firm and unshaken, guarding the honor of God's majesty and the dignity of the priesthood with unwavering, reverent care. We recall and hold on to this: that even while others gave way and yielded, Mattathias upheld the law of God with courage; that Elijah, as the Jews fell away and turned from true religion, held his ground and struggled valiantly; that Daniel, undeterred either by exile in a foreign land or by the constant assault of persecution, again and again bore glorious witness through martyrdom; and that the three youths likewise, unbent by either years or threats, stood firm against the fires of Babylon and triumphed over the conquering king even in the midst of their own captivity. Whatever number of turncoats or traitors may now be rising up inside the church against the church itself, working to tear down both faith and truth together, most people still keep a sincere heart and unbroken devotion, a soul given over to none but the Lord their God; the treachery of others does not pull the Christian faith down into ruin, but instead rouses and lifts it up toward glory, in keeping with what the blessed apostle urges when he asks: what then, if some among them fell away from faith? Has their faithlessness canceled out God's faithfulness? Certainly not — God remains true, even if every man proves false. And if every man is indeed false, and God alone is true, what else ought we, his servants, and above all his priests, to do except cast aside human error and falsehood and hold fast to his commands, so that we remain within God's truth? So then, even if some among our fellow bishops, dearest brothers, have judged it acceptable to set aside godly discipline and to fellowship carelessly with Basilides and Martial, this ought not to shake our own faith, since the Holy Spirit issues this warning against such men in the psalms: but you hated discipline and cast my words behind you; if you saw a thief, you ran alongside him, and you threw in your lot with adulterers. This shows that whoever attaches himself to wrongdoers becomes a partner and sharer in the sins of others. And the apostle Paul writes to the very same effect: gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent men, arrogant men, boasters, inventors of wickedness — who, though they knew God's justice, failed to grasp that those responsible for such conduct deserve death; and not only do they commit these wrongs themselves, but they also approve of others who do. For, as he says, those responsible for such conduct deserve death. He makes it plain and demonstrates that it is not only the wrongdoers who deserve death and face punishment, but also those who approve of the wrongdoers — people who, by mixing themselves into forbidden fellowship with the wicked, with sinners, and with those unwilling to repent, become stained through contact with the guilty, and, having joined in the offense, are likewise not spared from the penalty. For this reason, dearest brothers, we both praise and endorse the devoted care you show for your integrity and your faith, and, as far as we are able, we urge you through this letter of ours not to entangle yourselves through unholy fellowship with priests who are corrupt and stained, but rather to keep the complete and unblemished steadiness of your faith intact through reverent watchfulness. I wish you, dearest brothers, lasting good health.