Opening the library…
Cyprian correspondence, Epistle LXX
Cyprian of Carthage
Epistle LXX.
1. Cyprian to Quintus his brother
2. And they say that in this matter they follow ancient custom; although among the ancients these were as yet the first beginnings of heresy and schisms, so that those were involved in them who departed from the Church, having first been baptized therein; and these, therefore, when they returned to the Church and repented, it was not necessary to baptize. Which also we observe in the present day, that it is sufficient to lay hands for repentance upon those who are known to have been baptized in the Church, and have gone over from us to the heretics, if, subsequently acknowledging their sin and putting away their error, they return to the truth and to their parent; so that, because it had been a sheep, the Shepherd may receive into His fold the estranged and vagrant sheep. But if he who comes from the heretics has not previously been baptized in the Church, but comes as a stranger and entirely profane, he must be baptized, that he may become a sheep, because in the holy Church is the one water which makes sheep. And therefore, because there can be nothing common to falsehood and truth, to darkness and light, to death and immortality, to Antichrist and Christ, we ought by all means to maintain the unity of the Catholic Church, and not to give way to the enemies of faith and truth in any respect.
3. Neither must we prescribe this from custom, but overcome opposite custom by reason. For neither did Peter, whom first the Lord chose, and upon whom He built His Church, when Paul disputed with him afterwards about circumcision, claim anything to himself insolently, nor arrogantly assume anything; so as to say that he held the primacy, and that he ought rather to be obeyed by novices and those lately come. Nor did he despise Paul because he had previously been a persecutor of the Church, but admitted the counsel of truth, and easily yielded to the lawful reason which Paul asserted, furnishing thus an illustration to us both of concord and of patience, that we should not obstinately love our own opinions, but should rather adopt as our own those which at any time are usefully and wholesomely suggested by our brethren and colleagues, if they be true and lawful. Paul, moreover, looking forward to this, and consulting faithfully for concord and peace, has laid down in his epistle this rule: “Moreover, let the prophets speak two or three, and let the rest judge. But if anything be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace.” In which place he has taught and shown that many things are revealed to individuals for the better, and that each one ought not obstinately to contend for that which he had once imbibed and held; but if anything has appeared better and more useful, he should gladly embrace it. For we are not overcome when better things are presented to us, but we are instructed, especially in those matters which pertain to the unity of the Church and the truth of our hope and faith; so that we, priests of God and prelates of His Church, by His condescension, should know that remission of sins cannot be given save in the Church, nor can the adversaries of Christ claim to themselves anything belonging to His grace.
4. Which thing, indeed, Agrippinus also, a man of worthy memory, with his other fellow-bishops, who at that time governed the Lord’s Church in the province of Africa and Numidia, decreed, and by the well-weighed examination of the common council established: whose opinion, as being both religious and lawful and salutary, and in harmony with the Catholic faith and Church, we also have followed. And that you may know what kind of letters we have written on this subject, I have transmitted for our mutual love a copy of them, as well for your own information as for that of our fellow-bishops who are in those parts. I bid you, dearest brother, ever heartily farewell.
Oxford ed.: Ep. lxxi. a.d. 255.
[Note this, at the outset: it is presumption in his colleague Stephen to act otherwise than as a general consent of the provinces seems to rule.]
[Otherwise, “which doubtless is one in the Catholic Church; and if this Church be one, baptism cannot exist outside the Church.” His theory of unity underlies all our author’s conduct.]
[Note this, at the outset: it is presumption in his colleague Stephen to act otherwise than as a general consent of the provinces seems to rule.]
Ecclus. xxxiv. 25.
[The local custom of the Roman Province seems to have justified Stephen’s local practice. It is a case similar to that of Polycarp and Anicetus disturbed by Victor, vol. i. 310, and 312.]
[But a primacy involves no supremacy. All the Gallicans, with Bossuet, insist on this point. Cyprian now adopts, as his rule, St. Paul’s example, Gal. ii. 5.]
[Here, then, is the whole of Cyprian’s idea as to Peter, in a nutshell.]
1 Cor. xiv. 29, 30. [P. 379, note 4, infra.]
[With Cyprian it was an adjudged case. Stephen not only had no authority in the case, but, save by courtesy, even his primacy was confined to his own province.]