Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Letter 68. Cyprian to his brother Stephen, greeting. Our colleague Faustinus, residing at Lyon, dearest brother, has written to me once and again, informing me of things which I know have certainly also reached you, both from him and from our other fellow bishops established in that same province: that Marcianus, residing at Arles, has joined himself to Novatian and has broken away from the truth of the Catholic Church and from the concord of our body and priesthood, holding to the hardest depravity of heretical presumption, so that for those repenting and grieving and knocking at the church with tears and groaning and sorrow, the comforts and supports of divine devotion and fatherly gentleness are shut, and the wounded are not admitted to have their wounds tended, but are left without hope of peace and communion, to be thrown to the plundering of wolves and to the devil's prey. It falls to us to take counsel here and to bring aid, dearest brother — we who keep the divine mercy before our eyes and hold the balance by which the church is governed, dealing out to sinners the rigor of firm discipline, yet in such measure that goodness and divine mercy are never withheld as medicine for the fallen who need raising up, nor for the wounded who need healing. Therefore you ought to write a most complete letter to our fellow bishops established in Gaul, so that they no longer allow Marcianus — obstinate, proud, an enemy alike of divine devotion and of the brethren's salvation — to go on insulting our college, seeing that he has not yet, it appears, been separated from us; for he has for some time now been boasting and proclaiming that, in his devotion to Novatian and pursuit of his obstinacy, it was he himself who cut off communion with us. Yet Novatian, the very man he follows, was long ago put outside and judged an enemy of the church: when he sent envoys to us in Africa hoping to be readmitted to our communion, the council of very many bishops present there answered him that he had already placed himself outside and could not be received back into fellowship by any of us — this because he had tried to raise a profane altar, install an adulterous throne, and offer sacrilegious sacrifice against the true priest, after bishop Cornelius had already been set in the Catholic Church by God's own judgment together with the votes of clergy and people. Accordingly, should Novatian wish to regain his senses and turn back to a sound mind, his path was penance, coming to the church humbled and pleading. How empty it is, then, dearest brother, that Novatian, though rebuffed, refuted, and disowned by priests of God across the whole world, should still find flatterers among us willing to mock at us and sit in judgment on the majesty and dignity of the church! Send letters through the province, to the people gathered at Arles, so that with Marcianus set apart, someone else may be put in his place, and Christ's flock — scattered and injured by him to this very day, and treated with contempt — may be brought back together. Let it suffice that so many of our brethren there have already died these past years without peace; let those who remain, at least, be given help — they who groan through day and night and beg, imploring the divine and fatherly mercy, for the comfort of our support. This, dearest brother, is exactly why the body of bishops is so large: cemented by the glue of shared concord and bound fast by the cord of unity, so that should any one of our college attempt to breed heresy and tear apart and ravage Christ's flock, the others may step in to help, gathering the sheep of the Lord into the fold as shepherds ought — useful and merciful ones. Consider: if some harbor at sea, its breakwaters broken, turned hostile and dangerous to shipping, would sailors not steer instead for other, closer harbors offering safe passage, a sound approach, and secure anchorage? Or if some roadside inn came under siege and control of bandits, so that anyone entering would fall victim to those lying in ambush there, would travelers who learned of it not seek out safer lodging further along the road, where hospitality and shelter could be trusted? Just such a duty rests on us, dearest brother: to welcome with open and generous humanity those of our brothers who, steering clear of Marcianus's reefs, come looking for the safe harbor of the church, and to offer travelers an inn like the one in the gospel, where men wounded and battered by robbers may be taken in, cared for, and kept safe by the innkeeper. What greater or finer duty could there be for those set over the church than watching carefully, with wholesome remedy, over the tending and safekeeping of the flock — for the Lord himself speaks and declares: those grown feeble you left unstrengthened, those fallen sick you left unhealed, those broken you offered no comfort, those who wandered off you never turned back, and those who were perishing you never searched for; and so my flock scattered, for lack of any shepherd, and became a meal for every wild beast in the field, with no one to search them out or bring them home. For this the Lord speaks thus: watch — I stand against these shepherds; I will demand my flock back from their hands, and I will strip from them the charge of feeding my sheep; they shall feed them no longer, and I will pull my sheep free of their mouths, and I myself will feed them with justice. Since, then, this is how the Lord threatens shepherds through whose fault the flock he owns is left uncared for and dies away, what else is left for us to do, dearest brother, but pour full effort into bringing Christ's sheep back together and nursing them, and apply the medicine of a father's devotion to heal the wounds of the fallen — since the Lord likewise warns in the gospel, saying that it is not the well who need a physician, but the sick. For however many of us shepherd, it is one flock we feed together, and every sheep that Christ won by his own blood and suffering is ours to gather in and tend, never allowing our grieving, pleading brothers to be crushed by cruelty and trodden under the arrogant conceit of certain men — for it stands written: the stubborn man, vaunting himself, gains nothing at all, he who has stretched his soul as wide as the grave; and all such men the Lord in the gospel rebukes and condemns, saying: you are those who make yourselves out righteous before other men, yet God sees straight into your hearts, since whatever stands high among men is loathsome before God. Those who please only themselves, who swell with arrogant pride and claim things for themselves that are not theirs, he calls loathsome and detestable. Since Marcianus has taken his place among such men, allying himself with Novatian and setting himself up as an enemy of mercy and devotion, it is not his place to pass sentence but to receive it; nor should he act as if he had himself judged the college of bishops, when in truth it is he who has been judged by every bishop. Cornelius and Lucius, blessed martyrs who went before us, left a glory that must never go unguarded; we ourselves hold their memory dear, but the duty falls on you with still greater weight, dearest brother — you who now stand in their place as vicar and successor — to uphold that honor with all the gravity and authority your office carries. Full of the Lord's own Spirit and already established in the glory of martyrdom, they judged that peace should be extended to the fallen, and set down in their own letters that once penance had been performed, the fruit of communion and peace was not to be withheld — a judgment every one of us everywhere has echoed without exception. There could hardly have been a divided mind among men who shared a single Spirit; and it is thus plain that whoever we now see holding a differing view does not share, along with the rest, the truth of the Holy Spirit. Tell us plainly who has taken Marcianus's place at Arles, so that we may know where to send our brothers and to whom we owe our correspondence. I wish you, dearest brother, always good health.
Cyprian to his son Magnus, greeting. Out of your religious diligence you have put a question to our modest judgment, dearest son: whether, alongside the rest of the heretics, those who come over from Novatian, after his unholy washing, ought also to receive baptism and consecration in the Catholic Church — the church's own lawful, true, and singular baptism. On this point, so far as our grasp of the faith and the truth and holiness of the divine Scriptures can guide us, our answer is that heretics and schismatics of every kind hold no power or right whatsoever. For that very reason no exception can or should be made for Novatian, allowing him alone, though standing outside the church and working against Christ's peace and love, to escape being numbered among its adversaries and antichrists. Nor did our Lord Jesus Christ, when he declared in his gospel that his enemies were those not aligned with him, single out any one variety of heresy; rather he showed that anyone at all who stood apart from him, failing to gather with him and thereby scattering his flock, counted as an adversary — as he says: whoever is not with me stands against me, and whoever does not gather alongside me scatters. In the same way the blessed apostle John drew no line between one heresy or schism and another, nor picked out particular groups by name, but branded as antichrists all who had broken away from the church and worked against it, saying: you have heard that an antichrist is coming, and even now many antichrists have already appeared; by this we recognize that the last hour has come. They went out from among us, yet they never truly belonged to us — had they belonged to us, they would have stayed at our side. From this it is clear that the Lord's adversaries and antichrists include everyone known to have broken away from the love and unity of the Catholic Church. Further still, the Lord lays down in his gospel: and should he refuse to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a pagan and a toll collector. If, then, those who scorn the church are counted no better than pagans and toll collectors, how much more must rebels and enemies — who fabricate false altars, illegitimate priesthoods, sacrilegious offerings, and counterfeit titles — be reckoned among pagans and toll collectors, when even those guilty of the lesser fault of mere contempt for the church earn that verdict from the Lord's own mouth.
That the church is a single thing, the Holy Spirit makes plain in the Song of Songs, speaking as Christ: my dove is one, my flawless one is one; she alone belongs to her mother, singled out by the one who bore her. And of her he says again: an enclosed garden is my sister, my bride — a sealed spring, a well of living water. Now if Christ's bride, the church, is a garden shut up, then what is closed cannot stand open to outsiders and the unclean. And if it is a spring under seal, then no one stationed outside, cut off from access, can either drink from it or be sealed by it. So too, if the well of living water is a single well, that same water within cannot bring life or sanctity to someone standing outside it, for drinking and use of it are reserved solely for those inside — a point Peter also makes clear, showing that the church is one and that baptism belongs only to those within it, when he writes: in Noah's ark a few — eight souls in all — were kept safe through water, and this baptism now saves you in the same way, proving in this that Noah's single ark stood as a figure for the one church. And if, back then, a man who had never entered Noah's ark could nonetheless be saved through water once the world had been purged and cleansed by that flood, then equally now someone outside the church — to which alone baptism belongs — can be given life through baptism just the same. Paul, too, sets this out with even greater openness and clarity in his letter to the Ephesians: Christ loved the church and gave himself up on her behalf, so that he might make her holy, cleansing her through the washing of water. And if this church, loved by Christ and made clean solely by his washing, is one, then how could someone outside it be either loved by Christ or cleansed and washed by that same washing?
For this reason — since the water of life and the power to baptize and wash a person belong to the church alone — whoever claims a follower of Novatian can be baptized and made holy must first demonstrate that Novatian either belongs to the church or stands at its head. For there is one church, and being one, it cannot be at once inside and outside. If it stands with Novatian, it did not stand with Cornelius; but if it stood with Cornelius, who took Fabian's place through lawful ordination and whom the Lord crowned not merely with the priesthood's honor but with martyrdom besides, then Novatian has no place within the church, nor can he count as a bishop, since — spurning both gospel and apostolic tradition, succeeding no one — he sprang from himself alone. No one, in fact, can possess or hold the church who was never ordained inside it.
Divine Scripture's own witness makes plain that the church has no existence outside itself, cannot be torn apart or split against itself, but keeps the oneness of a house that neither separates nor divides — as it is written of the mystery of the Passover and the lamb, that lamb which stood for Christ: it shall be eaten within a single house; carry none of its flesh out beyond the door. We find the same thing shown through Rahab, who herself likewise carried a figure of the church, when she was commanded: gather your father and mother, your brothers and your father's whole household, in to yourself, into your own house; and whoever passes out through your door will bear the guilt himself. This mystery declares that all who wish to live and to escape the world's destruction must be gathered into that one single house — the church — and that whoever leaves those thus gathered (that is, if someone who has received grace within the church later withdraws and departs from it) will bear his own guilt, meaning he alone will be to blame for his own ruin. The apostle Paul makes this very point, teaching that a heretic must be shunned as a man who is perverse, sinful, and condemned by his own hand. He it is who answers for himself — not driven out by any bishop, but a runaway from the church by his own choosing, condemned by his own heretical presumption.
And so the Lord, revealing to us the unity that flows from divine authority, states plainly: I and the Father are one. And drawing his church back into that same oneness, he adds further: and there will be one flock, one shepherd. But if there is only one flock, how can someone not counted among its number still be reckoned part of it, or take the man who calls himself shepherd while the true shepherd still stands, presiding over God's church by unbroken succession: since he succeeds no one and springs from himself alone, that title cannot hold; such a man turns foreign and unclean, hostile to the peace Christ gives and to the oneness God intends, and God's house, his church, offers him no dwelling, for only those joined in one harmony and single mind live there — as the Holy Spirit says through the Psalms: God, who settles the like-minded together within a house? Finally, the Lord's own sacrifice itself points to this Christian oneness of mind, held fast by a love that will not break or separate. For when the Lord names his body bread — bread gathered from the joining of many grains — he shows that our people, whom that bread represents, are joined as one; and when he names his blood wine, pressed from many clusters and grapes and drawn together into one, he likewise signifies that our flock is bound together by the blending of a united multitude. Suppose Novatian truly shares this loaf that belongs to the Lord, and suppose he has likewise drunk from Christ's own cup: even so, the grace of the church's one baptism could be granted him only on one condition — proof that he holds fast to the church's unity.
Just how unbreakable the mystery of unity is, and how hopeless the ruin — how great a disaster drawn down by God's own anger — awaiting those who break away and, forsaking their bishop, raise up some rival false bishop elsewhere, divine Scripture shows in the books of Kings, where the ten tribes tore away from Judah and Benjamin and, forsaking their own king, set up another for themselves: and the Lord, it says, grew angry against the whole line of Israel and thrust them out and handed them over to be plundered, until he cast them from his presence, because Israel had torn itself from the house of David and made Jeroboam son of Nebat king over themselves. Scripture tells us that the Lord's anger delivered them to ruin precisely because they had broken away from unity and raised up a rival king. And the Lord's fury against those who caused this schism ran so deep that when a man of God was dispatched to Jeroboam to charge him with his sins and warn of coming punishment, he was forbidden even to eat bread or drink water while there; and when he disobeyed and dined against God's command, he was struck down at once by the weight of divine judgment, so that on his way home a lion attacked and killed him on the road. Ordinary food and drink, mere earthly fare, were forbidden even to that prophet among schismatics — so how could anyone still insist that heaven's grace and the water that saves us through baptism belong to schismatics too? The Lord in his own gospel goes further still, casting an even brighter light on the matter: those very people who had once broken away from Judah and Benjamin, abandoning Jerusalem to settle in Samaria, came to be counted among pagans and foreigners. For when he first sent his disciples out on their mission of salvation, he instructed them: do not take the road that leads to the nations, and do not enter any town of the Samaritans. By directing them first to the Jews, he tells them to pass over the nations for the time being; but by adding that even the towns of Samaria — where the schismatics lived — must likewise be avoided, he shows that schismatics rank alongside the nations.
Suppose someone objects that Novatian keeps the same rule of faith the Catholic Church keeps, baptizing with our own creed — naming, as we do, one God as Father, one Christ as Son, one Spirit as Holy — and therefore claims a right to the power of baptizing, on the grounds that his baptismal questioning appears no different from ours. Whoever thinks to raise such an objection should know, first, that we and the schismatics do not share one and the same rule for the creed, nor the same questioning. For when they ask, do you believe in the forgiveness of sins and everlasting life through the holy church, their very question is a lie, since they possess no church. And by their own words they then admit as much: that forgiveness of sins comes only through the holy church — which, lacking it themselves, proves that no sins can be forgiven among them at all.