Letters 55.16–56.3

The reasoning of the philosophers and Stoics is another thing, dearest brother: they say that all sins are equal and that a serious man ought not easily to be swayed. But between Christians and philosophers there is a very great distance. And since the apostle says: “See that no one plunders you through philosophy and empty deceit,” we must avoid what does not come from the clemency of God but descends from the presumption of a harsher philosophy. Of Moses we read it said in the Scriptures: “And Moses was a very gentle man.” And the Lord says in his gospel: “Be merciful, as your Father also has had mercy on you.” And again: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” What medicine can he practice who says: “I cure only the healthy, who have no need of a physician”? We ought to offer our help, our healing, to the wounded. Nor let us think that those whom we see wounded by the deadly persecution are dead, but rather that they lie half alive; for if they were wholly dead, confessors and martyrs would never afterward be made from them.

But since there is in them something that, with penance following, may regain strength for faith, and from penance their vigor is armed for courage (which cannot be armed if one fails from despair, if, harshly and cruelly separated from the church, he turns to the ways of the heathen and worldly works, or, rejected by the church, goes over to heretics and schismatics, where, even if he is afterward killed for the Name, being placed outside the church and divided from unity and love, he cannot be crowned in death), therefore it was decided, dearest brother, after examination of each one's case, that those who took certificates should be admitted meanwhile, and those who sacrificed be helped at the end, because there is no confession in the underworld, nor can anyone be compelled by us to penance if the fruit of penance is taken away. If battle comes first, he will be found strengthened by us for battle; but if sickness presses him before battle, he departs with the comfort of peace and communion.

For we do not prejudge the Lord who is to judge, so that, if he finds the sinner's penance full and just, he may then ratify what has been decided by us here. But if anyone has deceived us by a pretense of penance, let God, who is not mocked and who looks upon the heart of man, judge concerning what we have not seen clearly, and let the Lord amend the sentence of his servants. Only, brother, we ought to remember that it is written: “A brother helping a brother will be exalted”; and that the apostle too said: “Considering each one, lest you also be tempted, bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ”; and also what he sets down in his letter, rebuking the proud and breaking arrogance: “And let him who thinks he stands see that he does not fall”; and in another place he says: “Who are you that judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. But he will stand, for God is able to make him stand.” John also proves that Jesus Christ our Lord is advocate and intercessor for our sins, saying: “My little children, I write these things to you that you may not sin; and if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins.” And the apostle Paul too put in his letter: “If, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, much more now, justified by his blood, shall we be delivered through him from wrath.”

Thinking of his kindness and clemency, we ought not to be so bitter, nor so harsh, nor inhuman in caring for our brothers, but to grieve with those who grieve and weep with those who weep, and to raise them up as far as we can with the help and comfort of our love; neither so ungentle and stubborn as to beat back their penance, nor again so lax and easy as to relax communion rashly. See, a brother lies wounded, struck by the adversary in the battle. On one side the devil tries to kill the one he has wounded; on the other Christ urges that the one he has redeemed should not wholly perish. Which of the two do we stand by? On whose side do we stand? Do we favor the devil, that he may destroy, and pass by our brother lying half dead, like the priest and Levite in the gospel? Or rather, as priests of God and Christ, imitating what Christ both taught and did, do we snatch the wounded man from the adversary's jaws, and, having cared for him, reserve him for God the judge?

Nor think, dearest brother, that on this account either the courage of the brothers is lessened or martyrdoms fail, because penance has been relaxed for the lapsed and hope of peace offered to the penitent. The strength of those who truly trust remains unmoved, and among those who fear and love God with their whole heart integrity perseveres firm and strong. For to adulterers too a time of penance is granted by us, and peace is given. Yet virginity does not therefore fail in the church, nor does the glorious resolve of continence grow feeble through others' sins. The church flourishes, crowned with so many virgins, and chastity and modesty keep the course of their glory; nor is the vigor of continence broken because penance and pardon are relaxed for the adulterer. It is one thing to stand waiting for pardon, another to attain to glory; one thing, sent into prison, not to come out from there until one pays the last farthing, another at once to receive the reward of faith and courage; one thing to be tormented with long grief for one's sins and to be cleansed and purged a long time by fire, another to have purged all sins by suffering; one thing, in short, to hang on the Lord's sentence on the day of judgment, another to be crowned at once by the Lord.

And indeed, among our predecessors, some of the bishops here in our province thought that peace should not be given to adulterers, and wholly closed the place of penance against adulteries. Yet they did not withdraw from the college of their fellow bishops, nor break the unity of the catholic church by the obstinacy of their harshness or severity, so that, because peace was given to adulterers by others, the one who did not give it should be separated from the church. While the bond of concord remains and the undivided sacrament of the catholic church endures, each bishop arranges and directs his own conduct, as one who will give account of his decision to the Lord.

I am amazed that some are so obstinate as to think that penance should not be given to the lapsed, or to judge that pardon must be denied to the penitent, when it is written: “Remember from where you have fallen, and do penance, and do the first works.” This is said, surely, to one who has evidently fallen and whom the Lord urges to rise again by works, because it is written: “Almsgiving frees from death,” and surely not from that death which the blood of Christ once extinguished and from which the water of saving baptism and the grace of our Redeemer have freed us, but from that which creeps in afterward through sins. In another place likewise a time of penance is given, and the Lord threatens the one who does not do penance: “I have much against you,” he says, “that you allow your wife Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat of sacrifice; and I gave her time to do penance, and she will not repent of her immorality. Behold, I cast her into a bed, and those who have committed immorality with her into very great tribulation, unless they do penance for their works.” The Lord would surely not urge to penance unless he promised pardon to the penitent. And in the gospel: “I say to you,” he says, “so there will be joy in heaven over one sinner doing penance, more than over ninety-nine righteous who have no need of penance.” For since it is written, “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living,” surely he who wills that no one perish desires that sinners do penance and through penance return again to life. Therefore he also cries through the prophet Joel and says: “And now the Lord your God says: Return to me with your whole heart, and with fasting and weeping and mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and kind and patient and of great mercy, and one who turns his sentence away from the evil threatened.” In the Psalms too we read the severity and likewise the clemency of God, at once threatening and sparing, punishing to correct and, when he has corrected, preserving: “I will visit their crimes with the rod,” he says, “and their sins with scourges; but my mercy I will not scatter from them.”

The Lord too, showing in the gospel the kindness of God the Father, says: “Which man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will hand him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, will hand him a serpent? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him?” Here the Lord compares a father according to the flesh with the eternal and bountiful kindness of God the Father. If that evil father on earth, gravely offended by a sinful and wicked son, yet afterward sees him reformed and, the sins of his former life laid aside, corrected by the sorrow of penance to sober and good habits and to the discipline of innocence, rejoices and is glad and, taking back the one he had cast off, embraces him with the longing of a father's exultation, how much more does that one and true Father, good, merciful, and kind, nay goodness and mercy and kindness itself, rejoice in the penance of his children, and threaten not wrath to the penitent, nor punishment to those who mourn and lament, but rather promise pardon and forgiveness! Hence the Lord in the gospel calls those who mourn blessed, because he who mourns calls forth mercy, while he who is stubborn and proud heaps up for himself wrath and the punishment of the coming judgment. And therefore, dearest brother, we have decided that those who do not do penance, nor testify to sorrow for their sins with their whole heart and the open profession of their lament, are to be wholly barred from the hope of communion and peace if they begin to plead in sickness and danger, because what drives them to ask is not penance for their sin but the warning of pressing death; and he is not worthy to receive comfort in death who did not reflect that he would die.

As for the person of Novatian, dearest brother, about whom you asked to be written to, what heresy he had introduced, know first of all that we ought not even to be curious about what he teaches, since he teaches outside. Whoever he is and whatever he is, he is not a Christian who is not in the church of Christ. Let him boast and proclaim his philosophy or eloquence with proud words: he who has kept neither brotherly love nor the church's unity has lost even what he had been before. Unless he seems a bishop to you who, when a bishop had been made in the church by sixteen fellow bishops, strives by intrigue to be made an adulterous and alien bishop by deserters; and who, although the church has been divided by Christ into many members throughout the whole world, and likewise the episcopate is one, spread abroad in the harmonious multitude of many bishops, after God's tradition, after the unity of the catholic church linked and everywhere joined together, tries to make a human church and sends his new apostles through very many cities to lay certain fresh foundations of his own institution; and although long ago bishops have been ordained through all the provinces and in every city, old in years, sound in faith, proven in affliction, proscribed in persecution, he dares to create other false bishops over them: as if he could either travel the whole world by the obstinacy of his new attempt or tear apart the frame of the church's body by sowing his discord, not knowing that schismatics are always fervent at the beginning but cannot grow or increase what they have unlawfully begun, but at once fail together with their perverse rivalry. But he could not hold the episcopate even if, having been made bishop first, he broke away from the body of his fellow bishops and from the unity of the church, since the apostle admonishes us to bear with one another, lest we withdraw from the unity which God has established, and says: “Bearing with one another in love, taking care to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” He, then, who keeps neither the unity of the Spirit nor the bond of peace, and separates himself from the bond of the church and from the college of priests, can have neither the power nor the honor of a bishop, since he would hold neither the unity nor the peace of the episcopate.

Then, further, how great is the swelling of arrogance, how great the forgetfulness of humility and gentleness, how great the boasting of his arrogance, that anyone should either dare or believe himself able to do what the Lord did not grant even to the apostles: to think that he can distinguish the tares from the wheat, or, as if it had been granted to him to carry the fan and cleanse the threshing floor, to try to separate the chaff from the wheat; and, whereas the apostle says, “In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of clay,” to seem to choose out the vessels of gold and silver and to despise, cast away, and condemn those of wood and clay, when only on the day of the Lord will the vessels of wood be burned by the blaze of divine fire, and those of clay be broken by him to whom the rod of iron has been given.

Or if he has set himself up as searcher and judge of heart and reins, let him judge equally in all things; and since he knows it is written, “Behold, you have been made whole; sin no more, lest something worse happen to you,” let him separate the defrauders and adulterers from his side and company, since the case of the adulterer is far graver and worse than that of one who took a certificate: the latter sinned under necessity, the former by will; the latter, thinking it enough for himself that he had not sacrificed, was deceived by error; the former, a violator of another's marriage, or one who entered a brothel, into the sewer and filthy pit of the crowd, has violated a sanctified body and God's temple with loathsome defilement, as the apostle says: “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits adultery sins against his own body.” Yet even to these penance is granted, and hope of lamenting and making satisfaction is left, according to the same apostle who says: “I fear lest perhaps, when I come to you, I may mourn over many of those who sinned before and did not do penance for the uncleanness and sexual immorality and lusts that they committed.”

Nor let the new heretics flatter themselves in this, that they say they do not hold communion with idolaters, since among them there are both adulterers and defrauders who are held guilty of the crime of idolatry, according to the apostle who says: “For know this, understanding that every sexually immoral or unclean person or defrauder, which is idolatry, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” And again: “Put to death, therefore, your members which are on earth, putting off sexual immorality, uncleanness, and evil desire and greed, which are the service of idols, on account of which the wrath of God comes.” For since our bodies are members of Christ and each of us is a temple of God, whoever violates the temple of God by adultery violates God; and whoever does the devil's will in committing sins serves demons and idols. For evil deeds do not come from the Holy Spirit, but the lusts born of the adversary's prompting and of the unclean spirit compel men to act against God and serve the devil. So it follows that, if they say that one person is defiled by another's sin and contend by their assertion that the idolatry of the sinner passes over to the one who does not sin, they cannot, by their own word, be excused from the crime of idolatry, since it is established by the apostle's proof that the adulterers and defrauders with whom they hold communion are idolaters. But for us, according to our faith and the form given by the divine preaching, the rule of truth holds that each is held in his own sin, and one cannot become guilty for another, since the Lord forewarns and says: “The righteousness of the righteous will be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon him.” And again: “Fathers shall not die for sons, nor shall sons die for fathers; each shall die in his own sin.” Reading and holding this, we think that no one is to be kept from the fruit of satisfaction and the hope of peace, since we know, according to the faith of the divine Scriptures, with God himself as author and encourager, both that sinners are brought back to do penance and that pardon and forgiveness are not denied to the penitent.

And oh, the mockery of frustrating the brotherhood! Oh, the same deception of wretched mourners! Oh, the ineffective and empty tradition of heretical teaching: to urge men to the penance of satisfaction and to take away the medicine from the satisfaction; to say to our brothers: “Mourn and shed tears and groan day and night, and work generously and often to wash away and cleanse your sin; but after all this you will die outside the church. You will do whatever pertains to peace, but you will receive none of the peace you seek.” Who would not perish at once, who would not fail from very despair, who would not turn his mind from the purpose of lamenting? Do you think a farmer could work if you said: “Work the field with all the skill of husbandry, apply yourself diligently to cultivation, but you will reap no harvest, you will gather no fruit of your olive grove, you will pick no fruit from the trees”? Or if you were urging someone to the ownership and use of ships and said: “Buy timber, brother, from the finest forests; frame the keel with very strong and choice oak; work to have the ship built and fitted with rudder, ropes, and sails; but when you have done this, you will see no fruit from its voyages and runs.”

It is to shut off and cut off the road of sorrow and the way of repenting, so that, whereas in the Scriptures the Lord God speaks gently to those who return to him and repent, by our harshness and cruelty, while the fruit of penance is intercepted, penance itself is taken away. But if we find that no one ought to be prevented from doing penance, and that to those who beg and implore the Lord's mercy peace can be granted through his priests, according as he is merciful and kind, then the groaning of mourners must be admitted and the fruit of penance must not be denied to those who grieve. And since in the underworld there is no confession, nor can confession be made there, those who have repented with their whole heart and have asked ought meanwhile to be received into the church and reserved in it for the Lord, who, when he comes to his church, will judge concerning those whom he finds within it. But apostates and deserters, or adversaries and enemies and those who scatter the church of Christ, even if they have been killed for the Name outside, cannot, according to the apostle, be admitted to the peace of the church, since they have kept neither the unity of the Spirit nor that of the church.

These few things out of many, dearest brother, I have run through briefly for now as best I could, both to satisfy your wish and to join you more and more in the fellowship of our college and body. But if you have the opportunity and means of coming to us, we shall be able to confer on more things together and to discuss more fully and richly what makes for a saving concord. I wish you, dearest brother, good health always.

Cyprian to Fortunatus, Ahymmus, Optatus, Privatianus, Donatulus, and Felix, his brothers, greeting. You wrote to me, dearest brothers, that when you were in the city of Capsa for the ordination of a bishop, our brother and colleague Superius brought before you the case of our brothers Ninus, Clementianus, and Florus. They had earlier been arrested in the persecution and, confessing the Lord's name, had overcome the violence of the magistrate and the onset of the raging people; but afterward, when they were tortured with heavy punishments before the proconsul, they were subdued by the force of the torments and, through prolonged tortures, fell from the degree of glory toward which they were striving with the full strength of faith. Yet after this grave lapse, incurred not by will but by necessity, they have not ceased to do penance throughout these three years. About them you thought you should consult whether it was now right to admit them to communion.

And indeed, as far as my own mind's judgment goes, I think that the Lord's forgiveness will not be lacking to those who, as is established, stood in the battle, confessed the Lord's name, overcame the violence of the magistrates and the assault of the raging people by the steadfastness of an unmoved faith, suffered prison, and long resisted, amid the threats of the proconsul and the roar of the surrounding people, torments that tore and racked them with long repetition; so that what at the very end seems to have been subdued by weakness of the flesh may be relieved by the plea of their earlier merits, and it may be enough for such men to have lost their glory; but that we ought not to close to them the place of pardon as well and deprive them of the fatherly kindness and of our communion. For them we judge that it can suffice for entreating the Lord's clemency that, as you write, they have mourned continually and sorrowfully for three years with the greatest lamentation of penance. Certainly I do not think that peace is entrusted incautiously and rashly to those whom we see, by the fortitude of their warfare, not to have failed the battle before, and who, if battle comes again, can regain their glory. For since it was decided in council that those doing penance should be helped and given peace in the danger of sickness, surely those ought to go first in receiving peace whom we see to have fallen, not from weakness of mind, but, having engaged in battle and been wounded, to have been unable through frailty of the flesh to carry through the crown of their confession; especially since, though they desired to die, they were not allowed to be killed, but the torments tore them, worn out, for as long as it took, not to conquer their faith, which is unconquered, but to weary their flesh, which is weak.

Yet since you have written that I should discuss this very matter most fully with more colleagues, and so great a matter requires a larger and more weighed counsel from the conference of many, and now nearly all are staying at home with the brothers during the first solemnities of Easter, when they have fulfilled the celebration of the feast among their own people and begin to come to me, I will discuss it more fully with each, so that a firm sentence, weighed by the counsel of many priests, may be fixed among us on what you have asked and written back to you. I wish you, dearest brothers, good health always.