Letters 65.1–66.9

Cyprian to his brother Epictetus and to the people residing at Assuras, greeting. I have been gravely and sorrowfully troubled, dearest brothers, to learn that Fortunatianus, formerly bishop among you, after the grave lapse of his fall, now wishes to act as though unharmed and has begun to claim the episcopate for himself. This has saddened me, first on his own account, since, wretched man, either wholly blinded by the devil's darkness or deceived by the sacrilegious persuasion of certain people, when he ought to make satisfaction and devote himself day and night to entreating the Lord with tears and prayers and supplications, he still dares to claim for himself the priesthood which he betrayed; as if it were right, after the devil's altars, to approach the altar of God, or as if he were not provoking greater wrath and indignation of the Lord against himself on the day of judgment, who, since he could not be a leader of faith and courage for the brothers, stands out as a teacher of faithlessness, audacity, and rashness; and he who did not teach the brothers to stand bravely in battle teaches those who have been conquered and laid low not even to entreat, although the Lord says: “To them you have poured out drink offerings and to them you have laid on sacrifices. Shall I not be angry at these things? says the Lord.” And in another place: “He who sacrifices to gods, except to the Lord alone, shall be rooted out.” Likewise the Lord speaks again and says: “They worshiped what their fingers made, and man was bowed down and the man was humbled, and I will not forgive them.” In the Apocalypse too we read the wrath of the Lord threatening and saying: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives the mark on his forehead and on his hand, he too will drink of the wine of God's wrath mixed in the cup of his wrath, and will be punished with fire and sulfur before the eyes of the holy angels and before the eyes of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torments will go up for ever and ever; and those who worship the beast and its image will have no rest day or night.”

Since, then, the Lord threatens these torments, these punishments on the day of judgment to those who obey the devil and sacrifice to idols, how does he think he can act as a priest of God, he who obeyed and served the devil's priests? Or how does he think that his hand, which was made captive to sacrilege and crime, can be transferred to God's sacrifice and the Lord's prayer, when in the divine Scriptures God forbids priests who are guilty even of a lighter fault to approach the sacrifice, and says in Leviticus: “A man in whom there is a defect and blemish shall not approach to offer gifts to God”? Likewise in Exodus: “And let the priests who approach the Lord God be sanctified, lest perhaps the Lord forsake them.” And again: “And those who approach to minister at the altar of the holy place shall not bring sin upon themselves, lest they die.” Those, then, who have brought grave sins upon themselves, that is, who by sacrificing to idols have offered sacrilegious sacrifices, cannot claim God's priesthood for themselves nor make any prayer for the brothers in his sight, since it is written in the gospel: “God does not hear a sinner; but if anyone worships God and does his will, him he hears.” Yet the deep gloom of the gathering darkness has so blinded the hearts of some that they admit no light from the saving precepts, but, once turned from the straight path of the true way, are swept headlong over the precipice of their crimes by night and error.

Nor is it surprising if those who have denied the Lord now refuse our counsels or the Lord's precepts. They long for the contributions and offerings and gains over which they formerly brooded insatiably; and even now they gape after suppers and banquets, whose surfeit, lately surviving, they belched out daily in indigestion, now proving most plainly that even before they served not religion but rather their belly and gain with profane greed. Hence we perceive and believe that the rebuke itself came from God's searching, so that they might not continue further to stand at the altar and handle, the unchaste modesty, the faithless faith, the profane religion, the earthly divine things, the sacrilegious holy things. That such men may not return again to the desecration of the altar and the contagion of the brothers, we must watch with all our strength and strive with all vigor to beat them back, as far as we can, from this audacity of their crime, lest those who, cast down to the extremity of death, have fallen beyond the lapsed laity with the weight of a greater ruin, should still try to act as priests.

But if the incurable fury of these madmen persists, and, the Holy Spirit withdrawing, the blindness that has begun remains in its night, our counsel will be to separate the brothers one by one from their deceit and set them apart from their contagion, so that no one falls into the snares of error, since neither can the offering be sanctified there where the Holy Spirit is not, nor will the Lord help anyone through the prayers and supplications of one who has himself outraged the Lord. But if Fortunatianus, either forgetful of his crime through the devil's blindness or made the devil's minister and servant to deceive the brotherhood, persists in this madness of his, labor as much as you can, and in this gloom of the raging devil call back the minds of the brothers from error, so that they may not readily consent to another's madness nor make themselves partners in the sins of desperate men, but may keep, whole, the course of their salvation and the lasting vigor of the integrity they have preserved and guarded.

But let the lapsed, recognizing the greatness of their sin, not cease from entreating the Lord nor forsake the catholic church, which is one and alone established by the Lord; but, persevering in satisfactions and entreating the Lord's mercy, let them knock at the church, so that they may be received there where they were, and return to Christ from whom they withdrew. And let them not listen to those who deceive them with false and deadly seduction, since it is written: “Let no one deceive you with empty words; for because of this the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Do not, therefore, be partners with them.” Let no one, then, accompany the disobedient, those who do not fear God and withdraw wholly from the church. But if anyone is too impatient to entreat the Lord whom he has offended, and will not obey us, but follows the desperate and lost, he will have himself to blame when the day of judgment comes. For how will he be able to entreat the Lord on that day who before this denied Christ and now also denies the church of Christ, and, not obeying bishops who are sound, whole, and living, has made himself the companion and partner of the dying? I wish you, dearest brothers, good health always.

Cyprian, also called Thascius, to his brother Florentius, also called Puppianus, greeting. I had believed, brother, that you had at last turned to repentance for having in the past rashly heard or believed about us things so unspeakable, so shameful, so execrable even to the heathen. But even now I notice in your letter that you are still the same as you were before: that you believe the same things about us and persist in what you have believed, and, lest perhaps the dignity of your renown and martyrdom be stained by communion with us, that you are diligently inquiring into our character, and that after God, the judge who makes priests, you wish to sit in judgment, I will not say on me (for how great am I?) but on the judgment of God and Christ. This is not to believe in God; this is to stand as a rebel against Christ and against his gospel: that, while he says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, and neither of them falls to the ground without the Father's will?”, and his majesty and truth prove that not even the least things happen without God's knowledge and permission, you should think that the priests of God are ordained in the church without his knowledge. For to believe that those who are ordained are unworthy and unchaste, what else is it than to contend that his priests are not appointed in the church by God or through God?

Or do you think that my testimony about myself is greater than God's, when the Lord himself teaches and says that testimony is not true if anyone stands as witness about himself, because everyone naturally favors himself, and no one brings forward hostile and adverse things against himself; whereas the credit of truth is sincere if in what is proclaimed of us another is the proclaimer and witness? “If I bear witness about myself,” he says, “my testimony is not true. There is another who bears witness about me.” But if the Lord himself, who will afterward judge all things, did not wish to be believed on his own testimony, but preferred to be approved by the judgment and testimony of God the Father, how much more ought his servants to observe this, who are not only approved by the judgment and testimony of God but even glory in it? Yet with you the fabrication of enemies and malicious men has prevailed against the divine sentence and against our conscience, resting on the strength of its faith; as if among the lapsed and profane and those placed outside the church, from whose hearts the Holy Spirit has departed, there could be anything but a depraved mind, a deceitful tongue, poisoned hatreds, and sacrilegious lies. Whoever believes them must be found with them when the day of judgment comes.

As for your saying that priests ought to be humble, because both the Lord and the apostles were humble: my humility all the brothers, and the heathen too, know very well and love; and you too knew and loved it when you were still in the church and in communion with me. But which of us is far from humility: I, who daily serve the brothers and receive kindly, with desire and joy, each one who comes to the church, or you, who make yourself bishop of the bishop and judge of the judge given by God for the time? For the Lord God says in Deuteronomy: “And whatever man acts in pride, so as not to listen to the priest or the judge, whoever he may be in those days, that man shall die; and all the people, when they hear, will fear and will not act impiously even now.” And again he speaks to Samuel and says: “They have not spurned you, but they have spurned me.” And further, the Lord in the gospel, when it had been said to him, “Is that how you answer the high priest?”, keeping and teaching that priestly honor ought to be preserved, said nothing against the high priest, but only cleared his own innocence, answering: “If I have spoken wrongly, reproach me for the wrong; but if rightly, why do you strike me?” Likewise the blessed apostle, when it had been said to him, “Do you thus assail the priest with abuse?”, spoke nothing insulting against the priest, although he could have stood up boldly against those who had crucified God and had already lost the Lord and Christ and the temple and the priesthood; but, thinking of the very shadow, empty as it was, of the priestly name even in false and despoiled priests, he said: “I did not know, brothers, that he was high priest; for it is written: You shall not speak evil of the ruler of your people.”

Unless, perhaps, I was a priest to you before the persecution, when you were in communion with me, and after the persecution ceased to be a priest! For the persecution, when it came, raised you to the highest summit of martyrdom, but weighed me down with the burden of proscription, when it was publicly read out: “If anyone holds or possesses any of the goods of Caecilius Cyprianus, bishop of the Christians”; so that even those who did not believe God when he appointed a bishop might at least believe the devil when he proscribed a bishop. I do not boast of this, but bring it forward in grief, since you make yourself judge of God and of Christ, who says to the apostles, and through this to all leaders who succeed the apostles by vicarious ordination: “He who hears you hears me; and he who hears me hears him who sent me. And he who rejects you rejects me and him who sent me.”

For from where have schisms and heresies arisen, and from where do they arise? From this: that the bishop, who is one and presides over the church, is despised by the proud presumption of some, and a man honored by God's favor is judged unworthy by men. For what swelling of pride is this, what arrogance of spirit, what inflation of mind, to summon leaders and priests to your inquiry, and, unless we have been cleared before you and acquitted by your sentence, see, for six years now the brotherhood will have had no bishop, the people no leader, the flock no shepherd, the church no helmsman, Christ no minister, God no priest! Let Puppianus come to the rescue and pronounce sentence, and ratify the judgment of God and Christ, so that so great a number of the faithful who have been summoned while under us may not seem to have departed without hope of salvation and peace; so that the new people of believers may not be judged to have obtained through us no grace of baptism and of the Holy Spirit; so that the peace given to so many lapsed and penitent, and the communion granted by our examination, may not be undone by the authority of your judgment. Nod assent at last, and deign to pronounce on us and confirm our episcopate by the vigor of your inquiry, so that God and his Christ may give you thanks that through you a minister and ruler has been restored to their altar and their people alike!

Bees have a king, and cattle a leader, and they keep faith with them; robbers obey their chief with a submission full of humility. How much simpler and better than you are brute cattle and dumb animals, and brigands, though bloody and raging among swords and arms! A leader is recognized and feared there, whom no divine sentence appointed, but on whom a lost faction and a guilty band agreed.

You said, indeed, that the doubt into which you have fallen must be removed from your mind. You have fallen, but by your irreligious credulity; you have fallen, but by your sacrilegious mind and will: while you readily hear unchaste, impious, unspeakable things against a brother, against a priest, and willingly believe them, you defend others' lies as though they were your own and private, and do not remember that it is written: “Hedge your ears with thorns, and do not hear a wicked tongue”; and again: “The wicked man listens to the tongue of the unjust, but the righteous does not attend to lying lips.” Why did the martyrs, full of the Holy Spirit and already near through their suffering to the sight of God and his Christ, not fall into this doubt, who directed letters from prison to Cyprian the bishop, acknowledging him as God's priest and bearing witness to him? Why did so many fellow bishops, my colleagues, not fall into this doubt, who were either proscribed when they withdrew or arrested and were in prison and chains, or who, banished into exile, went to the Lord by an illustrious journey, or who in some places were executed and received heavenly crowns from the Lord's glorifying? Why did so many confessors from this people of ours, which is with us and committed to us by God's favor, not fall into this doubt, who were interrogated and tortured and are glorious in the memory of their famous wounds and scars; so many virgins untouched, so many praiseworthy widows, and finally all the churches throughout the whole world joined with us by the bond of unity? Unless all these, being in communion with me, have, as you wrote, been polluted by our polluted mouth and have lost the hope of eternal life by the contagion of our communion. Puppianus alone, whole, inviolate, holy, chaste, who would not mix himself with us, will dwell alone in paradise and in the kingdom of heaven!

You also wrote that the church now has a portion of itself scattered because of me, although the whole people of the church has been gathered and united and joined together in undivided concord, and only those have remained outside who, even if they were inside, would have had to be cast out. Nor does the Lord, the protector and guardian of his people, allow the wheat to be snatched from his threshing floor; only the chaff can be separated from the church, since the apostle too says: “For what if some of them have fallen away from the faith? Has their unbelief made void the faithfulness of God? By no means. For God is true, but every man a liar.” And the Lord too in the gospel, when the disciples left him as he spoke, turned to the twelve and said: “Do you also wish to go?” Peter answered him, saying: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the word of eternal life, and we believe and know that you are the Son of the living God.” There Peter speaks, on whom the church had been built, teaching and showing in the name of the church that, even if a stubborn and proud multitude of those unwilling to obey departs, the church does not withdraw from Christ; and those are the church who are a people united to the priest and a flock cleaving to its shepherd. Hence you ought to know that the bishop is in the church and the church in the bishop, and that whoever is not with the bishop is not in the church; and that those flatter themselves in vain who, not having peace with God's priests, creep in and believe that they are secretly in communion with some, since the church, which is catholic and one, is not split or divided, but is indeed connected and joined by the glue of priests cleaving to one another.

Therefore, brother, if you consider the majesty of God who ordains the priests, if you at last have regard for Christ, who by his will and nod and presence governs both the leaders themselves and the church with its leaders; if you believe about the innocence of priests not from human hatred but from divine judgment; if you begin, even late, to do penance for your rashness, pride, and insolence; if you make the fullest satisfaction to the Lord and his Christ, whom I serve and to whom with a pure and spotless mouth I offer sacrifices unceasingly both in persecution and in peace, we shall be able to consider your communion, while still keeping regard and fear for the divine censure; and I shall first consult my Lord whether he permits, by his showing and admonition, that peace be given to you and that you be admitted to the communion of his church. For I remember what has already been shown to me, or rather what has been commanded by the Lord's divine authority to an obedient and fearing servant; who, among the other things that he deigned to show and reveal, added this too: “So whoever does not believe Christ when he makes a priest will afterward begin to believe him when he avenges a priest.” I know, however, that dreams seem ridiculous and visions foolish to some, but surely to those who would rather believe against priests than believe a priest. But it is no wonder, since Joseph's brothers said of him, “Behold, that dreamer comes; now therefore come, let us kill him,” and afterward the dreamer attained what he had dreamed, and his murderers and sellers were confounded, so that those who had not first believed words afterward believed deeds. As for what you did either in persecution or in peace, it would be foolish of me to wish to judge you, since you have rather made yourself our judge. I have written back out of the pure conscience of my mind and in confidence in my Lord and God. You have my letter and I have yours. On the day of judgment, before the tribunal of Christ, both will be read out.