Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Letter 74. Cyprian sends greeting to his brother Pompeius. We have already covered fully, in the letters whose copies I forwarded to you, dearest brother, all that must be said about baptizing heretics; yet since you wished to learn what our brother Stephen wrote back to us in answer to our own letter, I am forwarding you a copy of that answer. Reading it will make his error stand out to you ever more sharply -- a man striving to argue the heretics' side against Christians and against God's Church. Among the various things he set down, some proud, some beside the point, some at odds with each other, all penned without much care, he even went so far as to add this: 'If, then, anyone comes to you out of any heresy at all, let no change be made beyond what tradition hands down -- that hands be laid on such people as a mark of penance, since the heretics themselves, properly speaking, do not baptize one another when they cross over, but merely admit each other to communion.' In forbidding baptism within the Church for a convert from any heresy, he has thereby ruled every heretical baptism valid and legitimate. Yet given that each heresy carries its own particular baptism and its own separate sins, this man, by accepting all of them at once, has piled the guilt of every heresy into his own lap. He has directed that nothing be altered beyond what has been handed down -- as though the innovator were the one who holds fast to unity and claims a single baptism for the single Church, rather than the one who, forgetting that unity, clings to the falsehoods and stains of an unholy washing! 'Let nothing be altered,' he insists, 'beyond what has been handed down.' But where does such a tradition originate -- does it flow down from the Lord's own authority and the Gospel, or does it arise instead from what the apostles commanded and wrote? God himself testifies and warns beforehand that whatever is written must be carried out, saying to Joshua son of Nun: 'Let this book of the law never leave your mouth; ponder it day and night, so as to keep and perform everything written within it.' In the same way the Lord, dispatching his own apostles, orders that the nations be baptized and instructed to keep everything he had commanded. So then, if either the Gospel lays down, or the letters or acts of the apostles contain, a rule that converts from any heresy are not to be baptized but only to have hands laid on them for penance, then let this sacred and God-given tradition stand. But if heretics everywhere are called nothing except opponents and antichrists, and pronounced to be avoided, twisted, and self-condemned, how can we imagine we ought not condemn people the apostles' own testimony already shows to stand condemned by their own doing? Let no one, then, cast slander on the apostles, as though they had approved heretical baptisms or shared communion with heretics apart from the Church's own baptism, given that whatever the apostles wrote about heretics came before the fiercer plagues of heresy had even broken out -- before Marcion of Pontus had even risen out of Pontus, whose own teacher Cerdo arrived in Rome while Hyginus, ninth bishop of that city, held office; Marcion, following Cerdo's lead, piled fresh crimes onto the old, blaspheming against God the Father and Creator more brazenly and rashly than any before him, and arming heretical madness still more wickedly and gravely with sacrilegious weapons in revolt against the Church. But suppose it is granted that still more, and still worse, heresies arose afterward, and that no rule or writing ever, at any earlier time, prescribed that a heretic need only have hands laid on him in penance before being received into communion -- and suppose there is only a single baptism, existing among us, within our bounds, granted by divine favor to the Church alone -- then what obstinacy, what arrogance, is this, to rank a human tradition above the divine arrangement, failing to notice that God grows indignant and angered whenever a human tradition breaks apart and overrides the divine commands, exactly as he cries out through the prophet Isaiah: 'This people honors me only with their lips, while their heart stays far removed from me. Their worship of me is empty, for they teach human commandments and doctrines.' In the same vein the Lord in the Gospel rebukes and reproaches, saying: 'You set aside the commandment of God in order to establish your own tradition.' Remembering this precept, the blessed apostle Paul himself likewise cautions and teaches: 'If anyone teaches otherwise and will not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and with his teaching, that man is puffed up, understanding nothing; withdraw from one such as this.' A splendid, lawful tradition indeed is being offered to us through our brother Stephen's teaching, one supposedly lending us fitting authority! For in that very passage of his letter he went on to add: 'since the heretics themselves, properly speaking, do not baptize one another when they cross over, but merely admit each other into communion.' To such depths of wrongdoing has God's Church, the bride of Christ, now sunk, that she should copy the heretics' example, borrowing from darkness the discipline she uses to celebrate heaven's own sacraments, letting Christians act exactly as antichrists do! What blindness of mind, what depravity is this, refusing to acknowledge the unity of faith that flows down from the tradition of God the Father and of our Lord and God Jesus Christ? For if the Church is absent among heretics precisely because she is one and cannot be split apart, and if for that same reason the Holy Spirit is not present there, since he too is one and cannot dwell among the profane and the outsiders -- then surely baptism, resting on that identical unity, cannot exist among heretics either, since neither the Church nor the Holy Spirit can be severed from it. Or, if they credit the majesty of the name for baptism's effect, so that whoever is baptized anywhere, in any fashion, in the name of Jesus Christ, is deemed renewed and made holy -- why, then, does that same name's majesty not equally apply when hands are laid on the baptized person there to receive the Holy Spirit? Why should that identical majesty of that identical name fail to prevail in the laying on of hands, when they insist it has already prevailed in making baptism holy? For if someone born outside the Church can still become a temple of God, why could the Holy Spirit not likewise be poured out over that temple? Whoever has had his sins removed in baptism and been made holy, refashioned spiritually into a new man, is thereby rendered fit to receive the Holy Spirit -- since the apostle states: 'All of you baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.' A person baptized among heretics who is capable of that -- of putting on Christ -- is by the same token capable of something greater still: taking in the very Spirit Christ sent forth. Suppose instead one insisted a man baptized outside the Church had truly clothed himself in Christ yet somehow failed to obtain that Spirit; such a claim would make the one sent greater than the sender himself, as if Christ could be donned with the Spirit absent, or the Spirit torn loose from Christ. It is equally senseless, given that the second birth is a spiritual one, through which we are brought forth in Christ by the washing of rebirth, to claim that a person might be born spiritually among heretics, where they deny the Spirit even exists at all. Water by itself cannot wash away sin and make a man holy unless the Holy Spirit accompanies it. So then, either they must concede the Spirit is likewise present wherever they claim baptism exists, or else no baptism exists where the Spirit is absent, since baptism cannot occur apart from the Spirit. And what does it even mean to claim and insist that there could be children of God who were not born within the Church? For the blessed apostle plainly shows and proves that baptism is the place where the old man perishes and the new man comes to life, saying: 'He rescued us through the washing of rebirth.' But if rebirth belongs to that washing -- that is, to baptism -- how could a heresy that is not Christ's bride bring forth children for God through Christ? Only the Church, joined and made one with Christ, brings forth children in a spiritual sense, as the same apostle says elsewhere: 'Christ loved the Church and gave himself up on her behalf, so as to make her holy, cleansing her through the washing of water.' If, then, this cherished one, this bride, is the only one made holy by Christ and the only one cleansed by his washing, then it is obvious that a heresy -- not being Christ's bride, and unable to be cleansed or made holy by his washing -- cannot bring forth children for God. Furthermore, a person is not born through the laying on of hands, since that is not when he receives the Holy Spirit, but rather in baptism, so that, once already born, he may then receive the Spirit -- exactly as happened with Adam, the first man. God first shaped him, and only afterward breathed the breath of life into his face. The Spirit cannot be received, after all, unless someone already exists to receive it. Since, then, Christians are born in baptism, and since the power to beget and to sanctify through baptism rests with Christ's bride alone -- she alone able to bear and beget children for God in a spiritual sense -- where, from whom, and to whom is a person born who does not belong to the Church as a child? For a man to have God as father, let him first take the Church as mother. Since, then, no heresy whatsoever -- nor indeed any schism -- can possess outside the Church the power to sanctify through saving baptism, our brother Stephen's stubbornness has gone so far that he even insists children are born to God through the baptism performed by Marcion, and likewise by Valentinus and Apelles and the rest who blaspheme against God the Father, claiming that forgiveness of sins is granted there, in Jesus Christ's name, in the very place where the Father, Lord, and God Christ himself is blasphemed. Here, dearest brother, loyalty to our faith and to the sacred office we occupy compels us to ask a hard question: could a priest of God stand and render account on judgment day, having affirmed, endorsed, and claimed as his own the baptisms performed by blasphemers? The Lord himself issues this warning: 'And now, O priests, this command is given to you: if you will not listen, and will not take it to heart to render honor to my name, says the Lord almighty, I will send a curse down upon you, and I will turn your blessing into a curse.' Does a man honor God by sharing communion with Marcion's baptism? Is God honored by one who rules that blasphemers against him receive forgiveness of sins nonetheless? Does he honor God by claiming that God's children are born, outside the Church, from an adulteress and a prostitute? Does he honor God by upholding heresies against the Church, having abandoned the unity and truth that flow from divine law? Does he honor God, being a friend to heretics and an enemy to Christians, by judging that God's priests -- who defend Christ's truth and the Church's unity -- deserve to be shunned? If this is what honoring God amounts to, if this is how fear of God and discipline are kept by his own worshipers and priests, then let us cast down our weapons, hand ourselves over into captivity, surrender to the devil the Gospel's ordinance, Christ's design, and God's own majesty; let the divine army's sacraments be undone, the banners of the heavenly camp be given up; let the Church retreat and yield ground to the heretics -- light to darkness, faith to faithlessness, hope to despair, sound reasoning to error, immortal life to death, love to hatred, truth to lies, Christ to antichrist. Small wonder, then, that schisms and heresies keep rising day by day, spreading thicker and more abundantly, spewing out, like snakes multiplying from serpent hair, the venom of their poison with ever-greater force against God's Church -- so long as certain people lend them patronage, authority, and firm backing, so long as their baptism finds defenders, so long as faith and truth are betrayed, so long as what is waged against the Church from outside gets vindicated from within the Church itself. But if the fear of God still lives among us, dearest brother, if the thread of faith still holds firm, if we keep Christ's commandments, if we guard his bride's holiness whole and untouched, if the Lord's own words cling to our hearts and minds where he asks, 'Yet when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?' -- then let us, God's faithful soldiers serving him in genuine faith and devotion, hold with loyal courage the camp entrusted to us by heaven. Nor should a custom that has crept in among some be allowed to block truth from prevailing and winning through. For custom apart from truth is nothing but error grown old. Because of this, let us set error aside and follow truth, recognizing that even among the people of Ezra truth won out, as it stands written: 'Truth endures and grows strong forever; it lives and holds power throughout every age. With her there is no favoritism and no distinctions; she carries out what is just, and nothing unjust is found in her judgment; strength, kingship, majesty, and power belong to every age. Blessed is the God of truth.' This is the truth Christ himself reveals to us in his Gospel, saying: 'I am the truth.' Because of this, if we are in Christ and hold Christ within us, and if we remain within the truth and truth remains within us, let us hold on to what is true. Yet through eagerness born of presumption and stubbornness, it happens that a man will defend his own crooked, false position more readily than yield to what is right and true in someone else. Foreseeing this, the blessed apostle Paul writes to Timothy, warning that a bishop should not be quarrelsome or combative, but gentle and open to instruction. And the one who is open to instruction is patient and mild when it comes to learning. Bishops, after all, ought not merely teach but also learn, since the one who teaches better is the one who keeps growing and advancing daily by learning better things. This same apostle Paul likewise teaches and warns that if someone still speaking hears a better revelation given to another, the first speaker should fall silent. For devout, unpretentious minds, setting error aside and then finding and digging out the truth is, in short, a simple matter. If we go back to the head and starting point of the divine tradition, human error comes to an end, and once the logic of the heavenly mysteries has been examined closely, whatever lay hidden and dim beneath a fog and cloud of darkness is thrown open into truth's light -- just as, when a channel carrying water that once flowed richly and freely suddenly runs dry, one naturally heads straight to the spring to discover there the cause of the failure: whether the veins at the source itself have dried up, or whether the water, running full and unbroken from there, simply stopped somewhere along its path; so that, if the fault turns out to lie in a cracked or leaky channel keeping the water from flowing steadily and continuously for use, then, once that channel is mended and reinforced, water may again reach the city for drinking and use with the same fullness and abundance it had when it first left the spring. This is exactly what God's priests ought to do now, holding to the divine precepts: if truth has wavered or faltered on some point, let us go back to the Lord's own starting point and to the tradition handed down by the Gospel and the apostles, and let the reasoning behind our conduct rise again from the very source where its order and origin first arose. For we have received the tradition that there is one God, one Christ, one hope, one faith, one Church, and one baptism, established only within that one Church -- and whoever has broken away from that unity is necessarily found standing among the heretics, and by taking a stand against the Church, attacks the very sacrament of the divine tradition. We see this sacrament of unity expressed too in the Song of Songs, in words spoken as though by Christ: 'A garden enclosed is my sister, my bride -- a sealed fountain, a well of living water, a paradise bearing the fruit of orchards.' But if his Church is a closed garden and a sealed fountain, how could anyone outside the Church enter that same garden or drink from that fountain? Peter too, likewise demonstrating and defending this unity, taught and warned that we can be saved only through the one Church's single baptism: 'In Noah's ark,' he says, 'a few -- eight people, that is -- were kept safe through water, and baptism will save you in that same way.' Through this brief, spiritual summary the sacrament of unity is laid bare. For just as, in that flood which cleansed the world of ancient wickedness, anyone not inside Noah's ark could not be kept safe through the water, so too now no one can be seen as saved through baptism unless baptized within the Church, which stands founded -- after the pattern of that single ark -- upon the Lord's own unity. And so, dearest brother, having examined and clearly seen the truth, this is what we hold and observe: that everyone crossing over to the Church from any heresy at all be baptized with the Church's one lawful baptism -- except for those already baptized within the Church beforehand who afterward went over to the heretics. Such people, when they return, having performed penance, need only receive the laying on of hands and be restored by the shepherd to the fold from which they had wandered. May you keep good health always, dearest brother.
Firmilian, greeting his brother Cyprian in the Lord. Through Rogatianus, our beloved deacon whom you dispatched, we received the letter you addressed to us, most beloved brother, and for this we rendered God our fullest thanks: that although separated bodily from one another, we have been so joined together in spirit that we seem not merely to occupy one region but to share a single dwelling under one roof. And this is fitting to affirm, since God's spiritual house is itself singular. For, as it is written, in the last days the Lord's mountain will stand revealed, with God's own dwelling set above the mountain peaks, where those who assemble come together in joy -- matching what the Psalm likewise asks of the Lord, that one might dwell within God's house across every day of life. Elsewhere too it has been shown that among the saints there exists a deep shared longing to gather as one: 'Behold,' it says, 'how good and how delightful a thing it is when brothers dwell together as one.'