Treatises & Letters 12 part 8/21

And having for the time refuted and beaten back the things which they obstinately and stubbornly attempted to assert, nevertheless I and very many of my colleagues who had assembled to me awaited the arrival of our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus, whom we had recently sent as legates to you and to our fellow bishops who had been present at your ordination, so that, upon their arrival and their bringing back the truth of what had been done, the wickedness of the opposing party might be broken by greater authority and by a clear proof through them. But our colleagues Pompeius and Stephanus arrived in addition, who themselves also brought forth, for our instruction from that side, manifest indications and testimonies according to their gravity and faith, so that it was not even necessary to hear any further those who had come sent by Novatian.

When these men, in the assembly, broke out also into invidious abuse and turbulent clamours, and demanded that the charges which they said they brought and could prove should be made known publicly by us and by the people, we refused that it was fitting to our gravity that our colleagues—now already chosen and ordained, and approved by the laudable judgement of many—should be permitted to have their honour tossed about any further by the slanderous voice of envious men. And because it would have been long to gather together in a letter the points by which they were refuted and crushed, and were stripped bare of having made a heresy by unlawful attempts, you will hear each particular most fully from Primitivus our fellow presbyter when he comes to you.

And lest their raging audacity should ever cease, here too they strive to drag the members of Christ into the parts of schism, and to cut and tear in pieces the body of the Catholic Church, so that, running about from door to door through the houses of many, or from town to town through certain cities, they may seek for themselves companions of their obstinacy and of their riven error. To these we have once given an answer, nor do we cease to charge them, that, laying aside their pernicious dissension and contention, they should know it to be impiety to desert the mother, and should acknowledge and understand that, when a bishop has once been made and approved by the testimony and judgement of the colleagues and of the people, another can in no way be appointed:

Therefore, if they confess that they have taken counsel for themselves peacefully and faithfully, if they confess themselves to be defenders of the Gospel and of Christ, let them first return to the Church. I wish you, dearest brother, ever to fare well. CYPRIAN TO HIS BROTHER CORNELIUS, GREETING. What befitted the servants of God, and especially priests who are just and peace-loving, dearest brother, we had recently done: we had sent our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus, that not only by the persuasion of our letters, but by their own presence and by the counsel of you all, they might strive as much as they could and labour to compose the members of the riven body into the unity of the Catholic Church, and to couple together the bond of Christian charity.

But since the obstinate and inflexible stubbornness of the opposing party not only refused the bosom and embrace of the root and the mother, but also—the discord swelling and breaking out into worse—set up a bishop for itself, and, contrary to the sacrament once handed down of the divine ordinance and of Catholic unity, made an adulterous and opposing head outside the Church, we, having received letters both from you and from our colleagues, and likewise upon the arrival of those good men and our dearest colleagues Pompeius and Stephanus, by whom all these things were firmly asserted and proved to us with common joy, according to what the holiness and likewise the truth of divine tradition and of ecclesiastical institution demanded, directed our letters to you.

But also throughout our province, conveying these same things to the notice of the individual colleagues, we charged that brethren with letters should be sent back by these too. Although our mind and purpose had even then been made manifest to the brethren and to the whole people there, when, having recently received letters from both parties, we read your letters and made known to the ears of each one the ordination of your episcopate.

Mindful also of our common honour, and holding regard for sacerdotal gravity and holiness, we rejected with criminal asperities the things that had been heaped up from the opposing side into the book that was sent, considering at the same time and weighing what ought to be read and heard in so great and religious an assembly of brethren, with the priests of God sitting together and the altar set up. For things are not easily to be brought forth, nor incautiously and rashly to be published, which, by a discord-stirring pen, may move scandal in the hearers, and may confound with uncertain opinion the brethren set far off and established beyond the sea.

Let those see to it who, serving either their own fury or their lust, and unmindful both of the divine law and of holiness, desire meanwhile to bandy about things which they cannot prove, and who, since they are not able to destroy and assail innocence, count it enough to sprinkle stains by lying report and false rumour. Certainly, what befits those set over the people and the priests, our effort must be that such things, when they are written by certain persons, should be rejected by us. For where will be that which we learn and teach to be written: 「Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips that they speak no guile?」 And likewise elsewhere: 「Your mouth has abounded in malice, and your tongue embraced snares.」

「You sit and speak against your brother, and against your mother's son you lay a stumbling-block」; likewise what the apostle says: 「Let no evil speech proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for the edification of faith, that it may give grace to the hearers.」 Furthermore, that these things ought to be done, we have shown, if ever such things have been written down by the calumnious rashness of certain persons, we suffer to be read among us.

And therefore, dearest brother, when such writings against you and against the fellow presbyter sitting with you had come to me, I bade them be read to the clergy and the people—those things which sounded a religious simplicity and did not clamour with any barkings of curses and reproaches. But that we desired the writings of our colleagues who had been present there at your ordination, it was not that, forgetting the old customs, we were seeking anything new; for it is enough that you should announce yourself made bishop by a letter drawn up, were there not a faction discrepant on the opposing side which, by its criminal and calumnious devices, was likewise troubling the minds of many of the colleagues and of the brethren, and confounding their hearts; for the quieting of which matter we judged it necessary that the firm and solid authority of our colleagues writing to us and to you should be prepared:

who, proclaiming in their letters testimonies worthy of your character and life and discipline, removed from the rivals also—who rejoice either in the novelty or in the depravity of things—every scruple of doubting and of dissenting; and, according to our counsel weighed by a wholesome reasoning, they sincerely and firmly approved your priesthood amid this billow of the agitated minds of the brethren.

For this above all, brother, we both labour and ought to labour: that we should take care, as much as we can, to maintain the unity handed down by the Lord and through the apostles to us their successors; and that, as far as in us lies, we should gather into the Church the bleating and straying sheep, which the obstinate faction of certain persons and the heretical temptation separates from the mother—those alone remaining outside who have persisted in their obstinacy or fury and have been unwilling to return to us, themselves about to render to the Lord an account of the division and separation made by them, and of the Church abandoned.

But as far as concerns here the matter of the presbytery of certain persons and of Felicissimus, in order that you might be able to know what was done here, our colleagues sent letters to you subscribed by their own hand; from whose letters you will learn what they felt and what they pronounced when these men were heard. But you will do better, brother, if you also order to be read there to the brethren the copies of the letters which I had recently sent to you, to be read for the sake of our common love, through our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus—the letters which I had written concerning the same Felicissimus and concerning those same presbyters to the clergy there, not also to the people—which letters tell both the ordination and the account of what was done, so that both there and here in all matters the brotherhood may be instructed through us.

But the same copies I have now also transmitted through Mettius the subdeacon sent by me, and Nicephorus the acolyte. I wish you, dearest brother, ever to fare well. CYPRIAN TO MAXIMUS AND NICOSTRATUS AND THE OTHER CONFESSORS, GREETING. Since you have frequently learned from my letters, dearest ones, what honour I have preserved by my discourse both for your confession and what love for the brotherhood joined together, believe, I beg, and consent to these my letters, by which I both write to you and to your conduct and praises, and counsel you simply and faithfully.

For it grieves and saddens me, and the sorrow of a stricken and almost prostrate breast oppresses me, when I had learned that you there had consented—against the ordinance of God, against the evangelical law, against the unity of Catholic institution—that another bishop be made; that is, what is neither lawful nor permitted to be done: that another Church be set up, that the members of Christ be torn apart, that the one soul and body of the Lord's flock be lacerated by a divided rivalry. Wherefore I beg that at least among us this unlawful rupture of our brotherhood may not persist, but that, mindful both of your confession and of the divine tradition, you may return to the mother whence you came forth, whence you came to the glory of confession with the exultation of that same mother.

And do not think that you thus defend the Gospel of Christ, while you separate your very selves from the flock of Christ and from His peace and concord—since it rather befits glorious and good soldiers to remain within the home camp, and, placed within, to handle and to provide for the things that are to be treated in common. For since our unanimity and concord ought in no way to be rent, because we, the Church having been abandoned, cannot go out and come to you, we ask and beg with what exhortations we can, that you rather may return to the mother Church and to your brotherhood. I wish you, dearest brethren, ever to fare well. CYPRIAN TO HIS BROTHER CORNELIUS, GREETING.

I have considered it both religious and necessary, dearest brother, to make brief letters to the confessors who are there and have departed from the Church, seduced by the obstinacy and depravity of Novatian and Novatus, by which letters I might, for the sake of mutual affection, appeal to them to return to their mother, that is, the Catholic Church. Which letters I first charged to be read to you by Mettius the subdeacon, lest anyone should pretend that I had written something other than what is contained in my letters. Nevertheless I charged the same Mettius, sent by me to you, to act in the matter according to your judgement. And if you should think that the same letters ought to be entrusted to the confessors, then let him deliver them. I wish you, dearest brother, ever to fare well. CYPRIAN TO HIS BROTHER CORNELIUS, GREETING.

I have read your letters, dearest brother, which you sent through Primitivus our fellow presbyter, in which I found you moved because, when letters were directed to you from the colony of Hadrumetum in the name of Polycarp, after I and Liberalis had come to that same place, letters began to be directed there to the presbyters and to the deacons. Which we wish you to know and to believe for certain was done with no levity or insult.

But since we, the several colleagues who had assembled into one, had resolved that, our fellow bishops Caldonius and Fortunatus having been sent as legates to us, all things should meanwhile be kept entire and held in suspense, until those same colleagues of ours should return to us, the affairs there having been either reduced to peace or ascertained for the truth, the presbyters and deacons settled in Hadrumetum, our fellow bishop Polycarp being absent, did not know what had been resolved among us in common. But when we came in person, our counsel having been ascertained, they too began to observe that which the rest also observed, so that in nothing should the agreement of the churches settled there be discrepant. Yet certain persons sometimes trouble minds and souls by their discourses, while they announce some things otherwise than the truth holds itself.

For we, to the individuals who were sailing, lest they should sail with any scandal, rendering an account, we know that we exhorted them to acknowledge and to hold fast the matrix and the root of the Catholic Church.

But since our province is more widely spread, having Numidia and Mauretania also adjoining it, lest the schism made in the city should confound the minds of the absent with uncertain opinion, it pleased us that—the truth of the matter having been retained by us through the bishops, and greater authority having been made for the approving of your ordination—then at last, every scruple having been shaken out from the breasts of each one, letters should be made, as indeed they are being made, through absolutely all who are settled there, so that all our colleagues might firmly approve and hold both your communion, that is, the unity of the Catholic Church, and likewise your charity. Which we rejoice has come about by divine appointment, and that our counsel has providently proceeded.

For thus now both the truth and the dignity of your episcopate has been founded with the clearest light, and with the most manifest and most firm proof. And by the rescripts of our colleagues who made letters to us from there, and from the relation and testimonies of our fellow bishops Pompeius and Stephanus and Caldonius and Fortunatus, both the necessary origin of your ordination and its just account, and your glorious innocence also, might be known to all. That this we may administer stably and firmly together with the rest of our colleagues also, and that we may hold it in the concordant unanimity of the Catholic Church, the divine protection will accomplish—that the Lord, who deigns to choose and to constitute priests for Himself in His Church,

may also protect those chosen and constituted by His will and aid, governing them by inspiring and supplying both vigour for curbing the obstinacy of the wicked and gentleness for fostering the penitence of the lapsed. I wish you, dearest brother, ever to fare well. CORNELIUS TO HIS BROTHER CYPRIAN, GREETING. How great a solicitude and anxiety we sustained concerning those confessors who had been circumvented by the guile and malice of a crafty and inveterate man, and were almost deceived and alienated from the Church—with so great a joy were we affected, and we give thanks to God almighty and to Christ our Lord, when, their error having been recognized and the malicious man having been understood,

as if by the poisoned cunning of a serpent—they came to the Church, whence they had gone out, just as they themselves profess from their own heart, with a simple will. And at first indeed our brethren of approved faith, loving peace and desiring unity, announced the swelling of those men and the softening of these; yet the credit was not fit enough that it should easily be given us to believe that they had been suddenly changed. But afterwards Urbanus and Sidonius the confessors came to our fellow presbyters, affirming that Maximus the confessor and presbyter desired together with them likewise to return into the Church.

But since many things designed by them had preceded—which you also have learned both from our fellow bishops and from my letters—so that credit should not be rashly given to them, it pleased us that those things which they had charged through their delegation should be heard from their own mouth and confession.

When they had come, and the things which they had done were demanded of them by the presbyters—lastly, that letters full of calumnies and curses in their name had been frequently sent throughout all the churches and had almost disturbed all the churches—they affirmed that they had been circumvented, and that they had not known what was contained in those letters, but had only subscribed; that, led about by his craftiness, they had committed themselves also to the schism, and had been authors of the heresy, so that they suffered a hand to be laid upon him, as if into the episcopate. When these and other things had been reproached to them, they begged that they might be abolished and removed from memory. The whole matter having been reported to me, it pleased us that the presbytery should be convened.

There were present also five bishops, who were present on that day too, so that, the counsel having been confirmed, what ought to be observed concerning their person might be established by the consent of all. And that you might discern the movement of all and the counsel of each, it pleased us that our opinions also should be conveyed to your notice, which you may also read as appended below.

These things having been so done, there came into the presbytery Maximus, Urbanus, Sidonius, and very many brethren who had attached themselves to them, desiring with the utmost prayers that the things which had before been done might pass into oblivion and that no mention of them might be made, just as if nothing had been either committed or said; all things being mutually remitted, that they might now exhibit to God a clean and pure heart, following the evangelical voice that they are blessed who are pure in heart, for they shall see God. As was consequent, this whole act had to be intimated to the people, that they too might see established in the Church those whom for so long they had seen erring and wandering and had grieved over. Their will having been known, a great concourse of the brotherhood took place.

There was one voice of all giving thanks to God, expressing the joy of their breast with tears, embracing those men as if on this day they had been freed from the punishment of prison. And, that I may set down their very own words, 「we」, they say, 「know Cornelius to be the bishop of the most holy Catholic Church, elected by God almighty and by Christ our Lord. We confess our error. We have suffered an imposture. We were circumvented by perfidy and by captious loquacity. For although we seemed to have had, as it were, a certain communion with a schismatic and heretical man, yet our heart was always in the Church.」

For we are not ignorant that there is one God, and that there is one Christ the Lord whom we have confessed, and one Holy Spirit, and that in the catholic Church there ought to be one bishop. Who would not be moved by such a profession of theirs, namely that what they had confessed before the power of the world they should confirm when established within the Church? Wherefore we have bidden Maximus the presbyter to acknowledge his rank. As for the rest, with the immense support of the people, we have remitted to almighty God all that was done before, in whose power all things are kept in reserve.

These things therefore, most beloved brother, in the same hour and at the same moment we have transmitted to you in writing; and Nicephorus the acolyte, who was hastening down to embark, I at once dispatched to you from his post, so that without any delay you might, as it were present here in this clergy and in this assembly of the people, give thanks together with us to almighty God and to Christ our Lord. We believe that it shall come to pass—nay rather, we are now confident for certain—that the rest also who are established in this error will soon return into the Church, when they have seen their own ringleaders making common cause with us. I think, most beloved brother, that you ought to send this letter to the other churches as well, so that all may know that the deceit and prevarication of this schismatic and heretic is being emptied out day by day.

Farewell, most beloved brother. Cornelius to his brother Cyprian, greeting. Lest anything be lacking to the punishment yet to come upon this wicked man, having been laid low by the powers of God—when Maximus and Longinus and Machaeus had been expelled from thence—he has risen up anew; and, as I signified to you in the earlier letter which I sent by Augendus the confessor, I think that Nicostratus and Novatus and Evaristus and Primus and Dionysius have by now arrived yonder. Let it therefore be watchfully ensured that it become known to all our fellow bishops and brethren:

that Nicostratus, guilty of many crimes, not only committed frauds and robberies against his own worldly patroness whose accounts he managed, but also—what is reserved for him unto perpetual punishment—carried off no small deposits belonging to the Church; that Evaristus indeed had been one of the authors of the schism, and that Zetus has been appointed bishop in his place over the people whom he had formerly governed. Novatus, however, has here marked himself out by the same malice and his insatiable greed as he always practised there among us: so that you may know what kind of leaders and protectors this schismatic and heretic keeps ever joined to his side. Farewell, most beloved brother. Cyprian to his brother Cornelius, greeting.

That we have given, and do give, most beloved brother, the greatest thanks without ceasing to God the Father almighty and to His Christ our Lord and our God the Author of salvation, we openly profess—because the Church is thus divinely protected, so that its unity and its holiness are not continually nor wholly corrupted by the obstinacy of perfidy and heretical depravity.

For we have read your letter, and with exultation received the most ample joy of our common prayer, that Maximus the presbyter and Urbanus the confessors, together with Sidonius and Macarius, have returned to the catholic Church—that is, having laid aside their error and forsaken their schismatic, nay rather heretical, frenzy, have sought again with faithful soundness the dwelling-place of unity and truth; so that from the very place whence they had advanced unto glory, thither they might return in glory, lest those who had confessed Christ should afterward desert the camp of Christ, and lest those who had not been overcome by strength and valour should be tempted in the fidelity of charity and of unity.

Behold, the integrity of their praise is unharmed and unstained; behold, the dignity of those who confess is uncorrupted and solid—in that they have withdrawn from deserters and fugitives, and have left the betrayers of the faith and the assailants of the catholic Church. Deservedly, as you write, did both clergy and people and the whole brotherhood receive them with the highest joy as they returned; for in the confessors who preserve their own glory and return unto unity, every man reckons himself a sharer and partaker of their glory. The gladness of this day we are able to judge from our own feelings.

For when here, at your letter which you sent concerning their confession, the whole number of the brethren rejoiced and received this tidings of common congratulation with the utmost eagerness, how much more there, where the very event and a present joy were enacted 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 likewise in heaven, over confessors returning to the Church of God with their glory and with praise, and making for the rest by the fidelity and proof of their own example a way of returning? For here a certain error had led some of our brethren astray, in that they seemed to themselves to be following the communion of the confessors.

With their error removed, light has been poured into the hearts of all, and the catholic Church has been shown to be one, and that it can neither be torn nor divided. Nor will anyone now be easily able to be deceived by the talkative words of a raging schismatic, since it has been proved that the good and glorious soldiers of Christ could not long be kept outside the Church by another's deceit and perfidy. I pray, most beloved brother, that you may ever fare well. Cyprian to his brother Cornelius, greeting.

Both with diligence and with love did you act, most beloved brother, in hastening to send to us Nicephorus the acolyte, who might both announce to us the glorious gladness concerning the returned confessors, and most fully instruct us against the futile and pernicious engines of Novatian and Novatus for assaulting the Church of Christ.

For when, on the day before, the harmful faction of heretical depravity—itself already lost, and about to ruin others who had consented with it—had come hither, on the following day Nicephorus arrived with your letter, by which we both learned and began to teach and instruct the rest: that Evaristus, no longer even a layman after having been a bishop, an outcast from his see and from his people, and an exile from the Church of Christ, is wandering through other far-off provinces, and, himself made a shipwreck of truth and faith, is stirring up like shipwrecks among certain men resembling himself; and that Nicostratus likewise, having lost the diaconate of holy administration, having withdrawn the moneys of the Church by sacrilegious fraud, and having denied the deposits of widows and orphans, did not so much wish to come into Africa as flee thence from the city through the consciousness of his robberies and abominable crimes.

And now this deserter and fugitive from the Church, as though changing one's region were to change the man, boasts and proclaims himself a confessor still—whereas he can no longer be called nor be a confessor of Christ who has denied the Church of Christ. For since the apostle Paul says: For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and they two shall be in one flesh; this is a great sacrament, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church—since, I say, the blessed apostle says this, and by his holy voice bears witness that the unity of Christ and likewise of the Church cleaves together in indivisible bonds, how can he be with Christ who is not with the spouse of Christ and within His Church?

Or how does he take upon himself the care of ruling or governing the Church, who has despoiled and defrauded the Church of Christ? For concerning Novatus nothing needed to be announced to us from thence, since rather it is through us that Novatus ought to be shown to you—ever covetous of revolutions, raging with the rapacity of insatiable avarice, puffed up with the arrogance and stupor of a swollen pride, ever ill-known to the bishops there, condemned by the voice of all the priests as a perpetual heretic and traitor, ever curious to betray, a flatterer to deceive, never faithful so as to love, a torch and fire to kindle the conflagrations of sedition, a whirlwind and tempest to make shipwrecks of faith, an enemy of quiet, an adversary of tranquillity, a foe of peace.

In short, when Novatus withdrew thence from you—that is, when a storm and whirlwind withdrew—quiet was in part made there, and the glorious and good confessors who had departed from the Church at his instigation, after he departed from the city, returned to the Church. This is the same Novatus who first among us sowed the firebrand of discord, who separated certain of the brethren here from their bishop, who in the very persecution, for the overturning of the brethren's minds, was to us a kind of second persecution.

He it is who, neither with my permission nor my knowledge, by his own faction and ambition appointed Felicissimus his henchman a deacon; and, sailing with his tempest to Rome also for the overturning of the Church, he there contrived like and equal things, tearing away a portion of the people from the clergy, rending the concord of a brotherhood that was well cohering and mutually loving. Plainly, since according to her greatness Rome ought to take precedence of Carthage, he committed there greater and graver deeds. He who here had made a deacon against the Church, there made a bishop. Nor let anyone wonder at this in such men. The wicked, demented by their own frenzy, are ever carried away, and after they have committed crimes, they are driven on by the very consciousness of their guilty mind.