Treatises & Letters 12 part 11/21

Shall not either slothful negligence or cruel hardness be charged against us in the day of judgment, that we were unwilling either to care for in peace, or to arm for the battle, the sheep entrusted and committed to us? Shall it not be cast upon us by the Lord, which He cries and says through His prophet:

'Behold, you consume the milk and clothe yourselves with the wool, and you kill what is fat, and you do not feed my sheep; what was weak you have not strengthened, and what was sick you have not made strong, and what was bruised you have not comforted, and what was straying you have not called back, and what was lost you have not sought, and what was strong you have worn out with labor; and my sheep have been scattered, because there are no shepherds, and they have become food for all the beasts of the field, and there was none who sought or called them back. Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will seek my sheep from their hands, and I will turn them away, that they may feed my sheep no more:'

'and they shall feed them no more, and I will draw my sheep out of their mouth, and I will feed them with judgment.' Lest therefore by our own mouth, by which we deny peace, by which we set forth the hardness of human cruelty rather than the divine and fatherly tenderness, the sheep committed to us be required back from us by the Lord, it has pleased us, the Holy Spirit suggesting and the Lord admonishing through many and manifest visions, that—since the enemy is foretold and shown to threaten us—we should gather the soldiers of Christ within the camp, and, the cases of each having been examined, give peace to the lapsed, nay rather supply arms to those about to fight. This we believe will please you also, in contemplation of the fatherly mercy.

But if any of the colleagues should arise who, the contest pressing, does not think peace should be given to the brothers and sisters, he shall render account in the day of judgment to the Lord, either of his unseasonable censure or of his inhuman hardness. We have set forth what accorded with faith and charity and solicitude, what was in our conscience: that the day of the contest has drawn near, that a violent enemy is soon to rise up against us, that a battle is coming, not such as was before, but far heavier and fiercer—this has often been shown to us from heaven, of this we are more frequently admonished by the providence and mercy of the Lord:

of whose help and tenderness we who trust in Him can be secure, because He who in peace foretells to His soldiers the coming battle will give victory in the encounter to those who fight. We pray, dearest brother, that you may ever fare well. Cyprian to the people abiding at Thibaris, greeting. I had indeed thought, and held it in mind, dearest brethren, that if the reason of affairs and the condition of the time should permit, according to what you have frequently desired, I myself would come to you, and, with whatever small measure of our exhortation, would there in person strengthen the brotherhood.

But since we are so detained by pressing matters that no opportunity is given of running far from here and being long absent from the people over whom by divine indulgence we preside, I have meanwhile sent to you these letters in my stead. For since by the condescension of the Lord, who instructs us, we are more often urged and admonished, we ought to bring the solicitude of our admonition to your conscience also. For you ought to know and to believe for certain and to hold, that the day of tribulation has begun to be over our head, and the end of the world and the time of Antichrist have drawn near, so that we may all stand prepared for the battle, and think of nothing but the glory of eternal life and the crown of the confession of the Lord; nor let us suppose that the things which are coming are such as those which have passed.

A heavier and fiercer battle now threatens, for which the soldiers of Christ ought to prepare themselves with incorrupt faith and robust valor, considering therefore that they daily drink the cup of the blood of Christ, that they themselves also may be able to shed their blood for Christ. For this is to wish to be found with Christ, to imitate that which Christ both taught and did, according to John the Apostle, who says: 'He who says that he abides in Christ ought himself also to walk as He walked.' Likewise the Apostle Paul exhorts and teaches, saying: 'We are sons of God. But if sons, then heirs also of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together with Him.'

All these things must now be considered by us, that no one may desire anything of the world that is now dying, but may follow Christ, who both lives forever and gives life to His servants who are established in the faith of His Name. For the time has come, dearest brethren, which our Lord long ago foretold and taught was to arrive, saying: 'The hour will come, that whosoever kills you will think that he does a service to God. And these things they will do, because they have not known the Father nor me. But these things I have spoken to you, that when their hour shall come, you may remember that I told you of them.'

Nor let anyone wonder that we are wearied by continual persecutions and frequently pressed by oppressing tribulations, since the Lord foretold beforehand that these things would come to pass in the last times, and equipped our warfare by the teaching and exhortation of His word; and the Apostle Peter also taught that persecutions come about that we may be proved, and that, by the example of the just who went before, we too may be joined by death and sufferings to the love of God which is the love of the just. For he set it down in his epistle, saying:

'Beloved, do not wonder at the fiery trial befalling you, which is for your testing, nor fall away as though some new thing happened to you; but as often as you partake in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice in all things, that in the revelation of His glory made manifest you also may rejoice and exult. If you are reproached in the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the name of the majesty and power of the Lord rests upon you, which indeed is blasphemed according to them, but according to us is honored.' And the apostles taught us those things which they too had learned from the Lord's precepts and the heavenly commandments, the Lord Himself strengthening us and saying:

'There is no one who leaves house or field or parents or brothers or wife or children for the kingdom of God's sake, and does not receive sevenfold in this time, and in the world to come life everlasting.' And again He says: 'Blessed shall you be, when men shall hate you and shall separate you and cast you out and revile your name as evil for the Son of man's sake. Rejoice in that day and exult; for behold, your reward is great in heaven.' The Lord willed that we should rejoice and exult in persecutions, because, when persecutions occur, then are given the crowns of faith, then are the soldiers of God proved, then are the heavens opened to the martyrs.

For we have not so given our name to the warfare that we should think only of peace and shun and refuse the warfare, seeing that in that very warfare the Lord, the master of humility and endurance and suffering, walked first, that He might do first what He taught was to be done, and that He who exhorts to suffer might Himself first suffer for us. Let it be before our eyes, dearest brethren, that He who alone received all judgment from the Father, and who is to come to judge, has already pronounced the sentence of His future judgment and inquiry, foretelling and attesting that He will confess before His Father those who confess, and will deny those who deny. If we could escape death, we should rightly fear to die.

But furthermore, since it is necessary for the mortal to die, let us embrace the occasion coming from the divine promise and condescension, and let us accomplish the end of our death with the reward of immortality; nor let us fear to be killed, who, it is agreed, when we are killed, are crowned. Nor let anyone, dearest brethren, when he sees our people put to flight by the fear of persecution and scattered, be disturbed because he does not see the brotherhood assembled nor hear the bishops discoursing. All cannot then be together at once, who are not permitted to kill, but must be killed.

Wherever in those days any one of the brothers shall have been separated from the flock for a while, by necessity of the time, in body but not in spirit, let him not be moved by the horror of that flight, nor, withdrawing and lying hidden, be terrified by the solitude of a desert place. He is not alone to whom Christ is a companion in flight. He is not alone who, keeping the temple of God, wherever he may be, is not without God.

And if, as he flees in the solitude and the mountains, a robber should overpower him, a wild beast assail him, hunger or thirst or cold afflict him, or, as he hastens by sea in headlong voyage, a tempest and storm should drown him, Christ watches His soldier wherever he fights, and to one dying for the honor of His Name in the cause of persecution He renders the reward which He promised He would give in the resurrection. Nor is the glory of martyrdom the less because he perished not publicly and among many, since the cause of perishing is to perish for Christ. For the witness of his martyrdom that Witness suffices who proves and crowns the martyrs. Let us imitate, dearest brethren, the just Abel, who inaugurated martyrdoms while he is the first slain for righteousness' sake.

Let us imitate Abraham, the friend of God, who did not hesitate to offer his son as a victim with his own hands, while he obeys God by the faith of his devotion. Let us imitate the three young men, Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, who, neither terrified by their age nor broken by their captivity—Judaea being conquered and Jerusalem taken—in His very kingdom overcame the king by the virtue of faith; who, being commanded to adore the statue which King Nebuchadnezzar had made, proved stronger than the threats of the king and the flames, proclaiming and attesting their faith in these words: 'King Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you concerning this matter. For there is a God whom we serve, who is able to deliver us from the furnace of burning fire, and He will deliver us out of your hands:'

'and if not, be it known to you that we do not serve your gods, nor do we adore the golden image which you have set up.' They believed that they could escape according to their faith, but they added 'and if not,' that the king might know that they could also die for the God whom they worshiped. For this is the strength of virtue and of faith: to believe and to know that God can deliver from the present death, and yet not to fear death nor yield, that faith may be the more strongly proved. There burst forth through their mouth the incorrupt and unconquered vigor of the Holy Spirit, that it might appear to be true which the Lord declared in His Gospel, saying: 'But when they seize you, take no thought what you shall speak; for it shall be given you in that hour what you shall speak.'

'For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaks in you.' He said that what we may speak and answer is given to us in that hour from heaven and presented, and that it is not then we who speak, but the Spirit of God the Father: who, since He neither departs from nor is divided from those who confess, Himself both speaks and is crowned in us. So too Daniel, when he was compelled to adore the idol Bel, whom then both the people and the king worshiped, in asserting the honor of his God burst forth with full faith and freedom, saying: 'I worship nothing except the Lord my God, who founded heaven and earth.'

What of the Maccabees? Do not the grievous torments of the blessed martyrs, and the manifold punishments of the seven brothers, and the mother strengthening her children amid their punishments and herself dying together with her children, bear witness to documents of great valor and faith, and exhort us by their sufferings to the triumph of martyrdom? What of the prophets, whom the Holy Spirit quickened to the foreknowledge of things to come? What of the apostles, whom the Lord chose? Did they not, when the just are slain for righteousness' sake, teach us also to die? The nativity of Christ began at once with the martyrdoms of infants, so that for His Name's sake those who were two years old and under were slain. An age not yet fit for the battle proved fit for the crown.

That it might appear that those slain for Christ are innocent, innocent infancy was put to death for His Name's sake. It was shown that no one is immune from the peril of persecution, since even such as these accomplished martyrdoms. But how grievous a thing it is for a Christian man to be unwilling to suffer as a servant, when the Lord first suffered, and to be unwilling to suffer for our own sins, when He, having no sin of His own, suffered for us! The Son of God suffered to make us sons of God, and the son of man is unwilling to suffer, that he may continue to be a son of God. If we labor under the hatred of the world, Christ first endured the hatred of the world:

If we endure insults in this world, if flight, if torments, the Maker and Lord of the world endured heavier things, He who also warns us, saying: 'If the world,' He says, 'hates us, remember that it hated me first. If you were of the world, the world would love what was its own; but because you are not of the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I spoke to you: the servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.' Our Lord and God taught and did all these things, so that the disciple who learns and does not do them can have no excuse.

Nor let any one of us, most beloved brethren, be so terrified by the fear of coming persecution or by the approaching advent of Antichrist as not to be found armed for all things by the exhortations of the Gospel and by the precepts and heavenly admonitions. Antichrist comes, but Christ comes upon him. The enemy goes about and rages, but at once the Lord follows, to avenge our sufferings and wounds. The adversary is angry and threatens, but there is One who can deliver us from his hands. He is to be feared whose wrath no one can escape, as He Himself forewarns and says: 'Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; rather fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.' And again:

'He who loves his life shall lose it, and he who hates his life in this world shall preserve it unto life eternal.' The Apocalypse also instructs and forewarns, saying: 'If any man worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he too shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, mixed in the cup of His wrath, and shall be punished with fire and brimstone before the eyes of the holy angels and before the eyes of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torments shall ascend for ever and ever, nor shall they have any rest day or night, whoever worships the beast and his image.' Men are trained and prepared for a worldly contest, and they count it great glory to their honor if it should fall to them to be crowned while the people look on and the emperor is present.

Behold a contest lofty and great, and glorious with the reward of a heavenly crown, in which God watches us as we strive, and, spreading His eyes over those whom He has deigned to make His sons, delights in the spectacle of our struggle. God beholds us as we do battle and contend in the conflict of faith; His angels behold us, and Christ beholds us also. How great is the dignity of glory, how great the happiness, to engage in combat with God presiding and to be crowned with Christ as judge! Let us arm ourselves, most beloved brethren, with all our strength, and let us prepare ourselves for the contest with an uncorrupted mind, an undivided faith, and devoted courage. Let the camp of God march out to the battle-line that is appointed for us. Let the unblemished be armed, lest the unblemished lose what he has lately stood firm in; let the lapsed also be armed,

so that the lapsed too may recover what he has lost, and that honor may rouse the unblemished and grief may rouse the lapsed to the battle. The blessed Apostle teaches us to be armed and prepared, saying: 'Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers and princes of this world and of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in heavenly places. Wherefore put on the whole armor, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, that, when you have accomplished all things, you may stand with your loins girded about with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod in the preparation of the Gospel of peace, taking up the shield of faith, with which you may quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one, and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.'

Let us take up these arms; let us fortify ourselves with these spiritual and heavenly defenses, that in the evil day we may be able to resist the threats of the devil and to fight back. Let us put on the breastplate of righteousness, that the breast may be defended and safe against the darts of the enemy. Let our feet be shod and armed with the Gospel teaching, so that when the serpent begins to be trodden and crushed by us, he may not be able to bite us or trip us up. Let us bravely bear the shield of faith, by whose protection whatever the enemy hurls may be extinguished.

Let us also take, for the covering of the head, the spiritual helmet, that the ears may be defended, lest they hear deadly decrees; that the eyes may be defended, lest they behold detestable idols; that the forehead may be defended, that the sign of God may be kept inviolate; that the mouth may be defended, that the victorious tongue may confess Christ its Lord. Let us also arm the right hand with the spiritual sword, that it may bravely reject the deadly sacrifices; that, mindful of the Eucharist, the hand which receives the Lord's body may embrace the Lord Himself, afterward to receive from the Lord the reward of heavenly crowns.

O what a day that will be, and how great, most beloved brethren, when the Lord shall begin to number His people and, by the examination of His divine knowledge, to review the merits of each one, to send the guilty into hell and to condemn our persecutors with the perpetual burning of penal flame, but to pay out to us the reward of our faith and devotion!

What glory there will be, and how great the joy, to be admitted to see God, to be honored so as to share with Christ your Lord and God the joy of salvation and eternal light, to greet Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the patriarchs and the apostles and the prophets and the martyrs, to rejoice with the just and the friends of God in the kingdom of heaven in the delight of the immortality granted there, to receive there what neither eye has seen nor ear heard nor has entered into the heart of man! For the Apostle declares that we receive greater things than what we here either do or suffer, saying: 'The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, which shall be revealed in us.'

When that revelation comes, when the brightness of God shines upon us, we shall be as blessed and joyful, honored by the favor of the Lord, as those shall remain guilty and wretched who, as deserters of God or rebels against God, have done the will of the devil, so that they must needs be tormented together with him in unquenchable fire. Let these things, most beloved brethren, cling to your hearts. Let this be the preparation of our arms, this our meditation by day and by night: to have before our eyes, and ever to turn over in thought and feeling, the punishments of the wicked and the rewards and merits of the just—what the Lord threatens by way of penalty to those who deny Him, and what He promises by way of glory to those who confess Him.

If, while we are thus thinking and meditating, the day of persecution should come upon us, the soldier of Christ, instructed by His precepts and admonitions, will not be terrified at the battle, but is ready for the crown. I wish you, dearest brethren, ever to fare well. Cyprian to his brother Cornelius, greeting.

I have read your letter, dearest brother, which you sent by our brother Saturus the acolyte—a letter full enough of brotherly love, of ecclesiastical discipline, and of priestly censure—in which you signified that Felicissimus, that enemy of Christ, had been kept away by you, not now for the first time but long ago, on account of his many and most grievous crimes, and condemned not only by my sentence but by that of very many fellow bishops, and rejected by you there; and that, when he had come surrounded by a crowd and a faction of desperate men, he was, with the full vigor with which bishops ought to act, driven out of the Church—from which he had already long ago, together with men like himself, been driven by the majesty of God and the severity of Christ our Lord and Judge—lest, being an author of schism and division, a defrauder of money entrusted to him, a ravisher of virgins, a despoiler and corrupter of many marriages, he should any longer, by the disgrace of his presence and his shameless and incestuous contagion, violate the spouse of Christ, who is uncorrupt, holy, and chaste.

But indeed, brother, when I had read another letter which you had appended to the first, I was quite astonished, for I perceived that you had been somewhat moved by the threats and terrors of those who had come, when, as you wrote, they had assailed you, threatening with the utmost desperation that, if you did not accept the letters they had brought, they would read them out publicly and would utter many base and shameful things, worthy of their own mouths.

But if this is so, dearest brother—that the audacity of the most wicked is to be feared, and that the evil should accomplish through rashness and desperation what by law and equity they cannot—then it is all over with the vigor of the episcopate and with the lofty and divine power of governing the Church; nor can we any longer endure or be Christians, if it has come to this, that we should dread the threats and snares of the lost. For both Gentiles and Jews threaten, and heretics and all whose breasts and minds the devil has besieged daily testify their venomous rage with frenzied voice. Yet we must not on that account yield because they threaten, nor is the adversary and enemy therefore greater than Christ because he claims and assumes so much for himself in the world.

There ought to remain among us, dearest brother, an immovable strength of faith, and a steadfast and unshaken courage that ought to withstand all the assaults and onsets of the howling waves, as with the firmness and mass of a rock standing in their way. Nor does it matter from what quarter terror or danger comes to a bishop, who lives subject to terrors and dangers and yet becomes glorious through those very terrors and dangers.

For we ought not to consider and regard only the threats of Gentiles or Jews, since we see the Lord Himself seized by His own brethren and betrayed by him whom He had chosen from among the apostles. At the very beginnings of the world, too, the just Abel was slain by none other than a brother, and Jacob, as he fled, was pursued by a hostile brother, and the boy Joseph was sold by his brothers who sold him; and in the Gospel also we read it foretold that our enemies will rather be those of our own household, and that those who had first been joined by the sacrament of unanimity will betray one another. It matters nothing who betrays or rages, since God permits the betrayal and the crowning. Nor is it any disgrace to us to suffer from brethren what Christ suffered, nor is it any glory to them to do what Judas did.

But what self-exaltation is this, what swelling, inflated, and empty boasting of those who threaten—to threaten me when absent, while here they have me present in their power? We do not fear the revilings with which they daily lacerate themselves and their own life; we do not shudder at the clubs and stones and swords which they brandish with parricidal words. In what lies within them, such men are murderers in the sight of God. Yet they cannot slay, unless the Lord permit them to slay; and since we must die but once, they nevertheless by their hatred, words, and offenses kill themselves daily.

But not on that account, dearest brother, is ecclesiastical discipline to be forsaken or priestly censure relaxed, because we are harassed with revilings or shaken with terrors—since the divine Scripture comes to meet us and admonishes us, saying: 'But he who is presumptuous and contumacious, a man boasting of himself, shall in no way prosper, who has enlarged his soul like hell.' And again: 'And fear not the words of a sinful man, for his glory shall be dung and worms. Today he is lifted up, and tomorrow he shall not be found, because he is turned into his earth, and his thought shall perish.' And again: 'I have seen the wicked exalted and lifted up above the cedars of Lebanon; and I passed by, and behold, he was not; and I sought him, and his place was not found.'

This exaltation and inflation and arrogant, proud boasting is born not of the teaching of Christ, who teaches humility, but of the spirit of Antichrist, whom the Lord reproaches through the prophet, saying: 'But you have said in your heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of God, I will sit upon the high mountain, above the high mountains toward the north, I will ascend above the clouds, I will be like the Most High.' And He added, saying: 'But you shall descend to hell, into the foundations of the earth; and those who see you shall marvel over you.' Whence also the divine Scripture in another place threatens a like punishment for such men, and says: 'For the day of the Lord of Sabaoth shall be upon everyone who is injurious and proud, and upon everyone who is lofty and lifted up.'

And so, from his own mouth and from his own words each one is at once betrayed, and whether he has Christ in his heart or rather Antichrist is disclosed by his speaking, according to what the Lord says in His Gospel: 'O generation of vipers, how can you speak good things, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of his good treasure brings forth good things, and an evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth evil things.' Whence also that rich sinner, who implores aid from Lazarus set in Abraham's bosom and placed in refreshment, while he is tortured in torments and scorched by the burning heats of consuming flame, among all the parts of his body, his mouth and tongue chiefly suffer punishment—because, namely, he had sinned more with his tongue and mouth.

For since it is written, 'Neither shall the railers possess the kingdom of God,' and again the Lord says in His Gospel, 'Whoever shall say to his brother, You fool, and whoever shall say, Raca, shall be liable to the hell of fire'—how can those escape the censure of the Lord the avenger who heap such things not only upon brethren but even upon priests, to whom so great an honor is granted by the favor of God that whoever did not obey His priest, even one judging here for a time, was at once put to death? In Deuteronomy the Lord God speaks, saying: 'And whatever man shall act in pride, so as not to hearken to the priest or the judge, whoever he shall be in those days, that man shall die; and all the people, when they hear, shall fear, and shall not act impiously any more.'