Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
For union, peace, and concord furnish the greatest delight not only to faithful men who know the truth, but even to the angels of heaven themselves — for the divine word tells them that when one sinner turns back in penitence and comes home to the bond that unites us, joy follows. Such a thing surely could not be said of angels dwelling in heaven unless they too were joined to us, rejoicing at our unity just as, on the other hand, they grieve when they see the divided minds and split wills of certain people, as though such people were not calling upon one and the same God together, but, separated and divided from one another, could no longer hold conversation or common speech. Except that in this matter we can render thanks to Stephen, because through his inhumanity it has now come about that we might receive proof of your faith and wisdom. But it does not follow that, because we have received this benefit of grace on Stephen's account, Stephen himself has thereby earned a benefit and grace worthy of him. For neither can Judas, on account of his treachery and the betrayal he wickedly worked against the Savior, be thought worthy, as though he himself had furnished the cause of such great goods, in that through him the world and the peoples of the nations were freed by the Lord's passion.
For now let these deeds of Stephen's be set aside, so that dwelling on his brazenness and arrogance does not weigh us down further with grief over his misdeeds. But learning from your side that this present question has been resolved by you in keeping with the standard of truth and Christ's own wisdom, we rejoiced greatly and offered thanks to God for showing us, in brothers placed at so vast a distance, such a strong shared bond of faith and truth. God's grace, after all, has the power to bind and join, through the tie of love and oneness, even things that appear parted by wide stretches of land — much as, in ages past, divine power once bound Ezekiel and Daniel, born later, to Job and Noah, who came earlier, uniting them across an interval of time in one bond of accord; separated though they were by long stretches of years, they were nonetheless of a single mind through the same divine breath. We now notice the same thing in you: though the farthest regions lie between us, you have proven yourselves bound to us in heart and spirit. All of this happens because of divine oneness. Since the same one Lord dwells within us, he everywhere gathers and unites his people by the tie of unity. Hence, as scripture says, their voice has gone out through every land — those sent by the Lord who run swiftly in a spirit of oneness. Conversely, it does no good at all for people to live near one another and be joined bodily if their hearts and minds are at odds, since souls once torn from God's unity can never truly be one. For it is written: those who go far from you will perish. Such people, though, will face the Lord's judgment as their conduct deserves, having turned away from the words of the one who begged the Father for oneness, saying: Father, grant that just as you and I are one, so these too may be one within us.
As for what you have written, we have taken it up as our own, and have not read it in passing, but have committed it to memory, having gone over it repeatedly; nor does it harm the usefulness of a saving matter either to go over the same points again to confirm the truth, or to add certain things to build up the proof. Whatever we have appended on our part is no sign that your account fell short in any way; rather, divine speech exceeds what human nature can hold, and no soul can take in its whole and perfect measure — which is exactly why prophets are so numerous, so that God's many-sided wisdom could be shared out among a multitude of them. Hence it is also commanded that the first prophet, while speaking, keep silence if a revelation has been made to a second. For this reason it necessarily happens among us that each year the elders and those set over the churches come together as one, to settle matters entrusted to our care, so that, if there are more serious matters, they may be directed by common counsel, and that a cure through penance might also be sought for fallen brothers wounded by the devil after their saving bath—not because we grant them release from sin ourselves, but so that, through us, they come to understand their wrongdoing and are driven to make a more complete amends before the Lord.
Since your envoy was eager to hurry back to you, and winter weather was closing in, we wrote back to your letter as fully as we could manage. Regarding Stephen's claim — that the apostles forbade baptizing those coming from heresy and passed this rule down to their successors — you responded thoroughly, noting that hardly anyone would be foolish enough to think the apostles handed down any such thing, given that it is well established that the heresies themselves, loathsome and detestable as they are, only sprang up afterward. Marcion, Cerdo's pupil, is known to have brought in his blasphemous teaching against God well after the apostles, long past their era; Apelles too, siding with that blasphemy, piled on further novel and even worse doctrines hostile to faith and truth. The dates of Valentinus and Basilides are likewise well documented — they too took up arms against God's church with their wicked falsehoods after the apostles, following a considerable stretch of time. It is equally plain that the remaining heretics brought forward their own twisted sects and corrupt inventions later still, each led astray by whatever error he fell into; and it is obvious that every one of them stands self-condemned, having pronounced against themselves, before the day of judgment, a verdict allowing no excuse. Whoever upholds their baptism does nothing less than join in their condemnation, making himself, by becoming their partner in such matters, guilty alongside them.
Now, that those who are at Rome do not observe in all things what has been handed down from the beginning, and vainly claim the authority of the apostles, can be known even from this: that in regard to the celebration of the days of Easter, and in regard to many other sacraments of divine matters, one may see that there are certain differences among them, and that not all of it matches what is kept at Jerusalem — much as, across a great many other provinces too, numerous practices differ according to local and regional custom; yet none of this variation has ever caused any rupture in the unity and peace of the Catholic Church. Stephen, however, has now ventured to do just that: shattering the peace he owed you, a peace his predecessors had consistently preserved toward you with mutual affection and respect, and even now defaming the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, as though they themselves had handed down this practice—they who in their letters cursed heretics and warned us to avoid them. Hence it is clear that this is a human tradition which asserts that heretics have baptism, and defends them as possessing what belongs to the Church alone.
You gave a good reply also to the point Stephen raised in his letter — that heretics themselves reach agreement with one another over baptism, so that when they come from one sect to another they do not rebaptize but merely admit each other into fellowship, as though we too were bound to act this way. Here, though you have already made clear enough how absurd it is for anyone to follow those in error, we add, for good measure, that this behavior of theirs is hardly surprising: for however much they diverge on lesser points, on the one point that matters most they share a single, common stance — namely, blasphemy against the Creator, inventing for themselves assorted dreams and delusions about some unknown god. From this it naturally follows that they agree about the emptiness of their baptism in exactly the way they agree in rejecting the true nature of the Godhead. Since answering each of their wicked or empty assertions one by one would take too long, it is enough to state briefly, as a summary, that whoever fails to hold the true Lord and Father cannot possess the truth of either the Son or the Holy Spirit — just as those called Cataphrygians, who claim new revelations for themselves, can possess neither Father nor Son, since they lack the Holy Spirit. Ask them whom they proclaim as Christ, and they will answer that they proclaim the one who sent the spirit speaking through Montanus and Prisca. Noticing in these people a spirit not of truth but of deception, we conclude that whoever upholds this false prophecy in opposition to Christ's own faith cannot possess Christ. The same holds for every other heretic: having severed themselves from God's church, they can hold no power or grace whatsoever, because every power and every grace reside in the church alone, where the elders preside, holding the authority to baptize, to lay on hands, and to ordain. Just as a heretic has no right to ordain or lay on hands, neither does he have the right to baptize or perform any holy, spiritual act, since he remains a stranger to holiness that is spiritual and God-given. We settled all of this long ago at Iconium, a town of Phrygia, gathering together those who had come from Galatia, Cilicia, and neighboring districts nearby, resolving that the point must be firmly upheld and defended against heretics, since some had raised doubts about the matter.
Now, since Stephen and his supporters insist that forgiveness of sins and rebirth can occur through baptism administered by heretics — people who by their own admission lack the Holy Spirit — let them stop and grasp that no spiritual birth is possible apart from the Spirit. Consider how the blessed apostle Paul gave a spiritual baptism anew to those who had received only John's baptism prior to the Lord's sending of the Holy Spirit, and only afterward laid hands on them so the Spirit might come upon them. What sense would it make, then, if we, seeing Paul rebaptize his own disciples who had undergone John's baptism, should nonetheless hesitate to baptize those coming to the church from heresy, once their unlawful, profane dipping is behind them? Unless, that is, today's bishops — lesser figures than Paul — are somehow granted the power to confer the Holy Spirit on converted heretics through the laying on of hands alone, while Paul himself lacked the standing to confer the Spirit that way on those baptized by John, and had to baptize them anew with the church's own baptism before he could.
This too is absurd, that they think it need not be asked who it was that baptized, on the ground that the one baptized can obtain grace once the trinity of the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has been invoked. Then this would be the wisdom which Paul writes exists in those who are perfect, that whoever counts as perfect and wise within the church would maintain or accept the notion that this bare recitation of names by itself suffices to remit sins and consecrate the baptism — when in truth these effects follow only when the one performing the baptism himself possesses the Holy Spirit, and the rite itself is never valid without the Spirit's presence. But they say that whoever is baptized outside, in whatever manner, can obtain the grace of baptism by his own mind and faith. This too is plainly absurd, as if a corrupt mind had the power to draw down from heaven the sanctity meant for the righteous, or a counterfeit faith could summon the truth meant for believers. The Lord himself makes clear that not all who invoke the name of Christ are heard, or can obtain any grace by their invocation, saying: Many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and they will deceive many. In the final analysis, a false prophet and a heretic are no different from one another: just as the former deceives by invoking the name of God or Christ, the latter deceives through the rite of baptism. Both rely on a lie to deceive the wills of men.
I wish also to relate to you a matter of history that has occurred among us, bearing on this very point. Nearly twenty-two years back, during the period following Emperor Alexander's reign, many disturbances and afflictions befell here, both common to all men and particular to Christians: there were also many frequent earthquakes, so that they overthrew much throughout Cappadocia and Pontus, and certain cities were even swallowed up, taken down into the deep by a gaping fissure in the collapsed ground; from this a grave persecution also arose against our name, which, after a long peace before it, springing up suddenly from an unexpected and unaccustomed evil, became all the more terrifying in throwing our people into confusion. Serenianus was at that time governor in our province, a harsh and fierce persecutor. In this disturbance, while the faithful were set in fear and fleeing this way and that from dread of persecution, leaving their homelands and passing into other parts of the region (for there was still opportunity to move, since that persecution was not throughout the whole world but local), there suddenly appeared here a certain woman who, falling into ecstasy, set herself up as a prophetess, and acted as though full of the Holy Spirit. She was moved by the onslaught of the chief demons in such a way that for a long time she troubled and deceived the brotherhood, performing certain marvelous and portentous things and promising to make the earth move—not that the demon had such power as to be able by his own force to move the earth or shake the elements, but that the wicked spirit, sometimes foreknowing and understanding a coming earthquake, would pretend that he himself was going to do what he saw was going to happen. Through such falsehoods and boasts, he managed to overpower the judgment of individual people to the point that they obeyed her and followed wherever she commanded and led, and he even made that woman walk barefoot through rough snows in the raw of winter, without being troubled or harmed in any way by that wandering; he even had her say she was hastening to Judea and Jerusalem, pretending she had come from there. This same spirit also led astray one of the presbyters, Rusticus, and likewise a certain deacon, to the point that both engaged in intercourse with her — a fact uncovered a short while afterward. For suddenly there appeared to her one of the exorcists, a tested man always well conducted in matters of religious discipline, who, roused also by the exhortation of many brothers who themselves were strong and praiseworthy in the faith, set himself against that wicked spirit to overcome it—a spirit which, by a subtle deceit, had itself foretold a little before that a certain hostile and unbelieving tempter would come. Nevertheless that exorcist, inspired by the grace of God, resisted bravely and showed that it was a most wicked spirit which before had been thought holy. And this woman, who earlier, through the tricks and delusions of many demons, had plotted to mislead the faithful — among the many devices by which she had led great numbers astray, she even dared this often: that by an invocation not to be despised she pretended to sanctify bread and to make the Eucharist, and offered a sacrifice to the Lord without the sacrament of the customary proclamation, and she also baptized many, using the usual and lawful words of questioning, so that nothing seemed to differ from ecclesiastical rule.
What, then, are we to say of a baptism where a supremely wicked demon performed the rite by means of a woman? Surely Stephen and his adherents do not endorse this as well, especially seeing that it lacked neither the Trinitarian formula nor the proper and ecclesiastical questioning? Can anyone believe that sin was truly remitted, or that the regeneration of the saving washing was rightly accomplished, when everything, though carried out in the likeness of the truth, was nonetheless carried out through a demon? Or do the defenders of heretical baptism go so far as to argue that a demon, calling upon that same threefold name — Father and Son and Spirit — thereby handed down baptismal grace? If so, the identical error grips them all, and demonic deceit is precisely what is at work there, given that the Spirit is entirely wanting among them.
This too, what sort of thing is it, that Stephen wishes there to be present, among those baptized by heretics, the presence and holiness of Christ? For if the apostle speaks truly in saying, All of you who have been immersed into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ, then surely whoever has been baptized there into Christ has clothed himself with Christ as well. But if he has clothed himself with Christ, he might also have received the Holy Spirit sent by Christ, making it pointless for a hand to be laid upon him when he comes to receive the Spirit — unless they intend to split the Spirit apart from Christ, so that among heretics Christ is indeed present, yet the Holy Spirit is not.
Let us run briefly through the rest of what has been said by you copiously and most fully, especially since our dearest deacon Rogatian is hastening to you. It follows, then, that we must put this question to those who defend heretics: is their baptism a matter of flesh, or of spirit? If it belongs to the flesh, it is no different from Jewish washing, employed by them merely as an ordinary rite by which bodily grime alone gets removed. If, on the other hand, it belongs to the spirit, how could a spiritual baptism exist among people lacking the Holy Spirit entirely? For this reason, the water in which they are immersed amounts, for them, to nothing more than a fleshly cleansing, not the true sacrament of baptism.
Now if baptism performed by heretics were truly capable of a second-birth regeneration, then those baptized in their ranks would have to be reckoned not heretics at all, but children of God — since it is exactly this second birth occurring in baptism that produces God's children. Yet if Christ has a single bride — namely the Catholic Church — then she alone is the one who bears children for God. Christ does not have multiple brides, for the apostle states: I have pledged you, a chaste virgin, to be presented to a single husband, Christ; and elsewhere: Listen, daughter, look and bend your ear; forget your own people, since the king has longed for your loveliness; and again: Come from Lebanon, bride, cross over and pass through, starting from the origin of faith; and once more: I have entered my garden, my sister, my bride. Everywhere we see a single figure put forward, precisely because there is likewise a single bride. The assembly of heretics, however, does not share unity with us, since she is no bride at all but an adulteress given over to fornication, and therefore cannot produce offspring for God. Unless, as Stephen apparently supposes, heresy does the birthing and abandons the infant, while the church merely picks up the castoffs and raises as her own those she never bore — though a mother cannot claim motherhood over children not her own. This is precisely why Christ our Lord, revealing that his bride is singular and proclaiming the mystery of her unity, states: Whoever stands apart from me stands against me, and whoever fails to gather alongside me scatters instead. For if Christ stands with us while heretics do not, then heretics plainly stand opposed to Christ; and if we gather together with Christ while heretics fail to gather with us, they are, beyond doubt, scattering.