Letters 51.1–55.15

Cyprian to his brother Cornelius, greeting. We declare, dearest brother, that we have given and give without ceasing the greatest thanks to God the Father almighty and to his Christ, our Lord and God and Savior, that the church is so protected by God that its unity and holiness are not continually nor wholly corrupted by the obstinacy of faithlessness and heretical perversity. For we have read your letter and received with exultation the fullest joy of our common prayer: that the presbyter Maximus and Urbanus, confessors, with Sidonius and Macarius, have returned to the catholic church; that is, that, laying aside their error and forsaking the schismatic, nay heretical, madness, they have sought again with faithful soundness the home of unity and truth, so that, from where they had gone forth to glory, they might return there glorious; so that those who had confessed Christ should not afterward desert the camp of Christ, and those who had not been overcome in strength and courage should not be tried in the faith of charity and unity. See, the integrity of their praise is safe and spotless; see, the dignity of the confessors is uncorrupted and solid: they have withdrawn from deserters and fugitives, they have left the betrayers of the faith and the assailants of the catholic church. Rightly, as you write, did clergy and people, the whole brotherhood, receive them with the greatest joy as they returned, since in confessors who keep their glory and return to unity there is no one who does not reckon himself a sharer and partaker in their glory. The gladness of that day we can estimate from our own feelings.

For if here the whole number of the brothers rejoiced at your letter which you sent about their confession, and received this news of common thanksgiving with the greatest eagerness, what must it have been there, where the thing itself and the joy were present and taking place before the eyes of all? For since the Lord says in his gospel that there is the highest joy in heaven over a sinner doing penance, how much greater is the joy both on earth and in heaven alike over confessors returning to the church of God with their glory and praise, and making the way of return for others by the faith and proof of their example? For here error had led some of our brothers to think that they were following the communion of the confessors. With that error removed, light has been poured into the hearts of all, and the catholic church has been shown to be one, unable to be split or divided. Nor will anyone now easily be deceived by the wordy talk of a raving schismatic, since it has been proven that the good and glorious soldiers of Christ could not long be held outside the church by another's deceit and treachery. I wish you, dearest brother, good health always.

Cyprian to his brother Cornelius, greeting. You acted both diligently and lovingly, dearest brother, in sending us in haste the acolyte Nicephorus, to bring us the glorious joy of the confessors' return and to inform us most fully against the new and ruinous devices of Novatian and Novatus for attacking the church of Christ. For whereas the day before, the harmful faction of heretical perversity had come here, itself already lost and about to ruin others who agree with it, on the following day Nicephorus arrived with your letter, from which we learned, and began to teach and instruct others, that Evaristus, from being a bishop, has not remained even a layman; that, banished from his see and his people and an exile from the church of Christ, he wanders far through other provinces, and, himself made a shipwreck of truth and faith, stirs up like shipwrecks among some who are like him; that Nicostratus too, having lost the diaconate of his holy ministry, having taken away the church's money by sacrilegious fraud and denied the deposits of widows and orphans, did not so much wish to come to Africa as flee from the City out of consciousness of his robberies and unspeakable crimes. And now, a deserter and fugitive from the church, as if changing one's region were changing one's person, he still boasts and proclaims himself a confessor, although he who has denied the church of Christ can neither be called nor be a confessor of Christ. For since the apostle Paul says: “For this reason a man will leave father and mother, and the two will be in one flesh. This sacrament is great; but I say, in Christ and the church”; since, I say, the blessed apostle says this and testifies with his holy voice to the unity of Christ and the church, cleaving together in bonds that cannot be divided, how can he be with Christ who is not with the bride of Christ and in his church? Or how does he take upon himself the care of ruling or governing the church who has robbed and defrauded the church of Christ?

As for Novatus, nothing needed to be reported to us from there, since Novatus ought rather to be shown to you by us: always eager for revolution, raging with the rapacity of insatiable greed, puffed up with the arrogance and stupor of swollen pride, always ill regarded here by the bishops, always condemned by the voice of all the priests as a heretic and faithless, always inquisitive so that he may betray, a flatterer so that he may deceive, never faithful so that he may love; a torch and fire for kindling the blazes of sedition, a whirlwind and storm for making shipwrecks of faith, an enemy of quiet, an adversary of tranquility, a foe of peace. In short, when Novatus withdrew from you there, that is, when the storm and whirlwind withdrew, quiet came there in part, and the glorious and good confessors who had left the church at his urging returned to the church after he left the City. This is the same Novatus who first sowed the fire of discord among us, who separated some of the brothers here from their bishop, who in the very persecution was, so to speak, another persecution of ours, for overturning the minds of the brothers. He it is who, without my permission or knowledge, by his faction and ambition appointed his henchman Felicissimus a deacon, and who, sailing with his storm to Rome too for overturning the church, contrived similar and like things there, tearing a portion of the people away from the clergy, splitting the concord of a brotherhood that held well together and loved one another. Clearly, because Rome ought by its greatness to take precedence over Carthage, he committed greater and graver crimes there: he who here had made a deacon against the church made a bishop there. Let no one wonder at this in such men. The wicked are always carried away, maddened by their own fury, and after they have committed crimes they are driven by the very conscience of their guilty mind. Nor can those remain in the church of God who have not kept God's discipline and the church's either in the conduct of their life or in peaceable character. Orphans robbed by him, widows defrauded, the church's money too withheld, exact from him the penalties we see in his madness. His father also died of hunger in the street, and afterward was not even buried by him. His wife's womb was struck by his heel, and, a miscarriage being hastened, the child was forced out in a parricide. And now he dares to condemn the hands of those who sacrificed, when he himself is guiltier in his feet, by which the son who was being born was killed.

He had long feared this consciousness of his crimes. Because of it he held it for certain that he would not only be put out of the presbytery but also barred from communion; and, at the brothers' urging, the day of inquiry was drawing near on which his case was to be tried before us, had not the persecution come first. He welcomed it with a kind of wish to escape and be spared condemnation, and committed and stirred up all these things, so that he who was about to be cast out and excluded from the church might forestall the judgment of the priests by a voluntary departure, as if to have anticipated the sentence were to have escaped the penalty.

As for the other brothers, whom we grieve to have been ensnared by him, we are working that they may flee the ruinous side of the old deceiver, escape the deadly snares of the tempter, and seek again the church from which he deserved by God's doing to be driven out. We trust that, with the Lord's help, through his mercy they can come back. For no one can perish except one who is certain to perish, since the Lord says in his gospel: “Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.” Only he who has not been planted in the precepts and admonitions of God the Father can depart from the church; only he can remain in madness with schismatics and heretics, having abandoned the bishops. But the rest the mercy of God the Father, the forgiveness of Christ our Lord, and our patience will unite to us. I wish you, dearest brother, good health always.

Maximus, Urbanus, Sidonius, and Macarius to their brother Cyprian, greeting. We are sure, dearest brother, that you too rejoice with us with like prayer that, having taken counsel and considering rather the interests and peace of the church, passing over all other things and reserving them to the judgment of God, we have made peace with Cornelius our bishop and likewise with the whole clergy. You ought to know most certainly from this letter of ours that this was done amid the joy of the whole church and with the ready love of all. We pray, dearest brother, that you may fare well for many years.

Cyprian to the presbyter Maximus, and also to Urbanus, Sidonius, and Macarius, his brothers, greeting. Having read your letter, dearest brothers, which you wrote to me about your return and about the peace of the church and the restoration of brotherhood, I confess that I rejoiced as much as I had rejoiced before when I learned of the glory of your confession and received with congratulation the heavenly and spiritual praise of your warfare. For this too is another confession of your faith and praise: to confess that the church is one, and not to become a partaker in another's error, or rather perversity; to seek again the same camp from which you went forth, from which you sprang out with the bravest strength to wage battle and subdue the adversary. For the trophies from the battle line had to be brought back to the place from which arms had been taken up for the battle, so that the church of Christ should not lack, as her glorious ones, those whom Christ had prepared for glory. But now you have kept, in the Lord's peace, a course fitting your faith and the law of undivided love and concord, and by your journey have set an example of love and peace to others, so that the truth of the church and the unity of the gospel and of the sacrament which we held might be bound fast by your consent and bond as well, and that confessors of Christ, who had stood out as praiseworthy authors of courage and honor, should not become leaders of error.

Let others see how much they congratulate you, or how much each glories within himself: I confess that I both congratulate you fully and glory more than the rest in this peaceful return and love of yours. For you ought to hear simply what was in my heart. I grieved deeply and was sorely distressed that I could not be in communion with those whom I had once begun to love. After schismatic and heretical error took you in as you came out of prison, it was as if your glory had remained in the prison. For the dignity of your name seemed to have stayed behind there, when soldiers of Christ did not return from prison to the church, into which prison they had first gone with the church's praise and congratulation.

For even if there seem to be tares in the church, neither our faith nor our love ought to be hindered, so that, because we see tares in the church, we ourselves withdraw from the church. We must labor only that we may be wheat, so that when the wheat begins to be stored in the Lord's barns we may receive fruit for our work and labor. The apostle says in his letter: “In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of clay, and some to honor, some to dishonor.” Let us take pains and labor as much as we can to be a vessel of gold or silver. But to break the vessels of clay is granted to the Lord alone, to whom the rod of iron has also been given. The servant cannot be greater than his master, nor may anyone claim for himself what the Father has granted to the Son alone, so as to think that he can already carry the fan to winnow and cleanse the threshing floor, or by human judgment separate all the tares from the wheat. That is proud obstinacy and sacrilegious presumption which perverse madness takes upon itself. And while some always take for themselves more than gentle justice requires, they perish from the church; and while they insolently exalt themselves, blinded by their very swelling pride they lose the light of truth. For this reason we too, keeping moderation, considering the Lord's balance, and thinking of the kindness and mercy of God the Father, after long and full discussion among ourselves, have weighed what must be done with just moderation.

All of this you can examine thoroughly by reading the booklets which I recently read here and had sent to you too, to be read out of our common love, in which the lapsed lack neither the rebuke that reproves nor the medicine that heals. But our modest ability has also set out, as far as it could, the unity of the catholic church; and I trust that this booklet pleases you more and more now, when you read it in such a way as both to approve and to love it, since what we have written in words you fulfill in deeds, when you return to the church in the unity of love and peace. I wish you, dearest brothers, good health always.

Cyprian to his brother Antonianus, greeting. I received your first letter, dearest brother, firmly maintaining the concord of the priestly college and cleaving to the catholic church, in which you indicated that you were not in communion with Novatian but followed our counsel and … [that I should forward a copy] of that same letter to our colleague Cornelius, so that, laying aside all anxiety, he might now know that you were in communion with him, that is, with the catholic church.

But then another letter of yours arrived, sent by our fellow presbyter Quintus, in which I noticed that your mind, moved by Novatian's letter, had begun to waver. For although you had first firmly fixed your counsel and consent, you asked in this letter that I write back to you what heresy Novatian had introduced, or on what grounds Cornelius is in communion with Trophimus and with those who offered incense. If indeed you take anxious care for the faith and search out with concern the truth of a doubtful matter, the anxious hesitation of a mind in turmoil in the fear of God is not to be blamed.

Yet since I see that after the first opinion in your letter you were afterward shaken by Novatian's letter, I put this first, dearest brother: serious men, once founded upon the rock with solid firmness, are moved, I do not say by a light breeze, but not even by wind or whirlwind, lest a doubtful and uncertain mind be often tossed by various opinions as by blasts of assailing winds and be changed from its purpose with some reproach of fickleness. That Novatian's letter may not do this with you or with anyone, I will briefly set out the matter for you, brother, as you asked. And first, since you seem also to be troubled about my own conduct, my person and my case must be cleared before you, lest anyone think I have lightly departed from my purpose, and that, although at first and at the beginning I defended the rigor of the gospel, I afterward seem to have turned my mind from my former discipline and severity, so as to have thought that peace should be granted too easily to those who have stained their conscience with certificates or committed the unspeakable sacrifices. Both of these I did not do without a reason long weighed and considered.

For while the battle was still at hand and the fight of the glorious contest was raging in the persecution, the strength of the soldiers had to be roused with every exhortation and full force, and above all the minds of the lapsed had to be stirred by the trumpet, as it were, of our voice, so that they might follow the way of penance not only with prayers and laments but, since the opportunity was given of renewing the contest and recovering salvation, might be spurred by our rebukes rather to the ardor of confession and the glory of martyrdom. Accordingly, when the presbyters and deacons had written to me about some who were unrestrained and were pressing hastily to receive communion, in writing back to them in my letter, which is extant, I added this too: “If they are in too great a hurry, they have in their own power what they ask, the time itself granting them more than they ask. The battle is still being waged, and the contest is celebrated daily. If they truly and firmly repent of what they have committed, and the warmth of faith prevails, he who cannot be put off can be crowned.” But I deferred what should be decided about the case of the lapsed, so that, when quiet and tranquility had been granted and divine indulgence allowed the bishops to meet together, then, counsel being shared and weighed by the conference of all, we might decide what ought to be done; and if anyone before our council, and before a sentence settled by the counsel of all, wished rashly to give communion to the lapsed, he himself should be kept from communion.

This I also wrote most fully to Rome, to the clergy, who were then still without a bishop, and to the confessors, the presbyter Maximus and the others then held in custody, now joined with Cornelius in the church; that I wrote this you can learn from their replies. For in their letter they put it thus: “Although in so great a matter we agree with what you yourself have discussed, that the peace of the church must first be awaited, and then, a conference of counsels being held with bishops, presbyters, deacons, confessors, and also laymen who stood firm, the case of the lapsed be treated.” It was also added, Novatian then writing and reading aloud with his own voice what he had written, and the presbyter Moyses, then still a confessor and now a martyr, subscribing, that peace should be given to the lapsed who were sick and at the point of death. This letter was sent through the whole world and brought to the knowledge of all the churches and of all the brothers.

Nevertheless, in accordance with what had been determined before, when the persecution had died down and the opportunity was given of meeting together, a large number of bishops, whom their faith and the Lord's protection had kept whole and unharmed, came together; and, the Scriptures having been brought forward on both sides, we weighed a balance with wholesome moderation, so that hope of communion and peace should not be wholly denied to the lapsed, lest they fail the more from despair and, because the church was shut against them, follow the world and live as heathens; nor yet, on the other hand, should the rigor of the gospel be loosened so that they rush rashly to communion; but that penance should be drawn out long, and the fatherly clemency be sorrowfully entreated, and the cases, intentions, and necessities of each be examined, according to what is contained in the booklet which I trust has reached you, in which the several heads of our decisions are written down. And in case the number of bishops in Africa should seem too small, we also wrote to Rome on this matter to our colleague Cornelius, who himself, having held a council with very many fellow bishops, agreed with us in the same sentence with equal seriousness and wholesome moderation.

I had to write this to you now so that you may know that I did nothing lightly, but, according to what I had set out before in my letters, deferred everything to the common counsel of our council; that I gave communion to none of the lapsed earlier, while there was still a way by which a lapsed person might receive not only pardon but also a crown; but that afterward, as both the concord of the college and the benefit of gathering the brotherhood and healing its wound required, I yielded to the necessity of the times and thought that the salvation of many must be provided for; and that I do not now depart from what was once agreed in our council by common conference, although many things are bandied about by the voices of many, and lies uttered against the priests of God from the devil's mouth are hurled everywhere to break the concord of catholic unity. But it befits you, as a good brother and a like-minded fellow priest, not easily to accept what the malicious and apostates say, but to weigh what your colleagues, modest and serious men, do, from an examination of our life and discipline.

I come now, dearest brother, to the person of our colleague Cornelius, so that you may know Cornelius more truly with us, not from the lies of the malicious and slanderers, but from the judgment of God, who made him bishop, and from the testimony of his fellow bishops, the whole number of whom throughout the world has agreed with harmonious unanimity. For what commends our dearest Cornelius with praiseworthy report to God, to Christ and his church, and also to all his fellow priests is this: he did not come to the episcopate suddenly, but, promoted through all the church's offices and having often deserved well of the Lord in the divine ministries, he ascended through every grade of religion to the lofty summit of the priesthood. Then he neither asked for nor wanted the episcopate itself, nor did he seize it, like others whom the swelling of their arrogance and pride puffs up; but, quiet in other ways and modest, and such as those are accustomed to be who are chosen for this place by God, out of the modesty of his virginal continence and the humility of the reserve inborn in him and guarded, he did not, as some have, use force to become bishop, but himself suffered force, so that he accepted the episcopate under compulsion. And he was made bishop by very many of our colleagues who were then present in the city of Rome, who sent us letters about his ordination that were honorable and full of praise and distinguished by the testimony of their report. Cornelius was made bishop by the judgment of God and his Christ, by the testimony of almost all the clergy, by the vote of the people who were then present, and by the assembly of aged priests and good men, when no one had been made before him, when the place of Fabian, that is, the place of Peter and the rank of the priestly chair, was vacant. Once that place has been filled and confirmed by the will of God and the consent of all of us, whoever now wishes to be made bishop must of necessity be made outside, and he does not have the church's ordination who does not hold the unity of the church. Whoever he may be, however much he boasts of himself and claims for himself, he is profane, he is an alien, he is outside. And since there cannot be a second after the first, whoever is made after the one who ought to be alone is no longer second but nothing.

Then, after an episcopate neither canvassed for nor extorted, but received by the will of God who makes priests, how great was the courage in the very taking up of his episcopate, how great the strength of soul, what firmness of faith, which we ought with a simple heart both to see thoroughly and to praise: that he sat fearless at Rome in the priestly chair at a time when a tyrant hostile to God's priests was threatening things speakable and unspeakable, when he would hear with far more patience and tolerance that a rival prince was rising against him than that a priest of God was being appointed at Rome. Is not this man, dearest brother, to be proclaimed with the highest testimony of courage and faith? Is he not to be counted among the glorious confessors and martyrs, who sat so long awaiting the executioners of his body and the avengers of a raging tyrant, who might attack Cornelius, as he resisted the deadly edicts and trampled threats and torments and tortures underfoot by the vigor of his faith, with the sword, or crucify him, or roast him with fire, or tear his entrails and limbs with some unheard-of kind of punishment? Even if the majesty and goodness of the Lord who protects him guarded, once made, the priest whom he willed to be made, yet Cornelius, as far as his devotion and fear are concerned, suffered whatever he could suffer, and by his priesthood first conquered the tyrant who was afterward conquered by arms and war.

As for the shameful and grave things that are bandied about concerning him, I would not have you wonder, since you know that it is always the devil's work to tear the servants of God with lies and defame a glorious name with false opinions, so that those who shine in the light of their own conscience may be sullied by others' rumors. But know that our colleagues have investigated and found out most truly that he was not stained, as some keep boasting, by any taint of a certificate; nor did he mingle sacrilegious communion with bishops who had sacrificed, but joined with us only those whose case had been heard and whose innocence had been proven.

As for Trophimus, about whom you asked to be written to, the matter is not as rumor and the lies of the malicious brought it to you. For, as our predecessors also often did, our dearest brother yielded to necessity in gathering back our brothers. And since the greatest part of the people had gone away with Trophimus, now that Trophimus was returning to the church, making satisfaction, confessing his former error with the penance of supplication, and calling back with full humility and satisfaction the brotherhood he had lately drawn away, his prayers were heard, and not so much Trophimus as a very great number of brothers who had been with Trophimus were admitted into the Lord's church; all of them would not have returned to the church unless they had come with Trophimus accompanying them. So, after discussion there with very many colleagues, Trophimus was received, the return of the brothers and the restored salvation of many making satisfaction for him. Yet Trophimus was admitted on the terms that he communicates as a layman, not, as the letters of the malicious reported to you, as if he were usurping a priestly place.

And the report to you that Cornelius indiscriminately gives communion to those who sacrificed, this too springs from the invented rumors of apostates. For those who withdraw cannot praise us, nor ought we to expect to please those who, displeased with us and rebelling against the church, violently press on to lure brothers away from the church. Therefore, whatever is bandied about concerning Cornelius and concerning us, do not readily listen to it or believe it, dearest brother.

For if any are overtaken by sickness, help is given them in their danger, as was decided. But after help has been given and peace granted to those in danger, they cannot be smothered by us, or crushed, or pushed by our force and hand to the end of death, as if, because peace is given to the dying, those who have received peace must die; when rather the sign of divine kindness and fatherly gentleness appears in this, that those who receive the pledge of life in the peace granted are also held here in life after peace has been received. And therefore, if after peace is received a reprieve is given by God, no one ought to blame the priests for this, once it has been decided that the brothers should be helped in their danger. And do not think, dearest brother, as it seems to some, that those who took certificates ought to be put on a level with those who sacrificed, since even among those who sacrificed the circumstances and the case often differ. For he is not to be put on a level who leapt at once of his own will to the unspeakable sacrifice, and he who, having resisted and struggled long, came to this deadly deed under necessity; he who betrayed both himself and all his household, and he who, going himself into danger for all, protected his wife, his children, and his whole house by the bargain of his own peril; he who compelled his tenants or friends to the crime, and he who spared his tenants and farmers, and even received into his own roof and hospitality very many brothers who were withdrawing as exiles and fugitives, showing and offering to the Lord many souls living and unharmed to plead for one that is wounded.

Since, then, there is great difference even among those who sacrificed, what unmercifulness it is, and what bitter harshness, to join those who took certificates with those who sacrificed, when the one who received a certificate may say: “I had read before, and had learned from the bishop's teaching, that one must not sacrifice to idols and that a servant of God ought not to worship images; and therefore, so as not to do what was not permitted, when the opportunity of a certificate was offered (which I would not have taken either, had the opportunity not been shown me), I either went to the magistrate or, another going for me, sent word that I was a Christian, that it was not lawful for me to sacrifice, that I could not come to the devil's altars, and that I was paying for this reason, so as not to do what is not lawful.” Yet now even this one who is stained by a certificate, after he has learned from our admonition that he ought not to have done even this, and that, although his hand is clean and no contact with the deadly food has polluted his mouth, his conscience is nevertheless polluted, weeps on hearing us and laments; and, now admonished of how he has sinned, deceived not so much by crime as by error, he testifies that from now on he is instructed and prepared.

If we reject the penance of those who have some confidence in a conscience that can be borne, at once, with their wives and children whom they had kept unharmed, they are snatched away into heresy or schism at the devil's invitation; and it will be written against us on the day of judgment that we did not care for the wounded sheep, and for the sake of one wounded lost many whole ones. And whereas the Lord, leaving the ninety-nine sound, sought the one that was wandering and weary and, when he found it, carried it himself on his shoulders, we should not only not seek the weary but even drive away those who come; and while false prophets do not cease now to lay waste and tear the flock of Christ, we should give an opening to dogs and wolves, so that those whom hostile persecution did not destroy we destroy by our harshness and inhumanity. And where, dearest brother, will be what the apostle says: “I please all in all things, not seeking what is profitable to me, but to many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ”? And again: “I became weak to the weak, that I might gain the weak.” And again: “If one member suffers, the other members suffer with it; and if one member rejoices, the other members rejoice with it.”