! The Ancient & Modern Library 
 
 of 
 
 Theological Literature. 
 
 The Life and Times 
 
 of S. Cyprian
 
 THE 
 
 LIFE AND TIMES OF ST CYPRIAN. 
 
 The Ancient and Modern Library of Theological Literature.
 
 THE LIFE AND TIMES 
 
 OK 
 
 SAINT CYPRIAN 
 
 BY 
 
 GEO. AYLIFFE P O O L E, M. A, 
 
 SOMETIME RECTOR OK WINW1CK, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. 
 
 WITH A PREFATORY NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR 
 
 GRIFFITH FARRAN OKEDEN & WELSH 
 
 NEWBERY HOUSE 
 
 CHARING CROSS ROAD LONDON 
 
 AND AT SYDNEY 

 
 The rights of Translation and of Reproduction are reservea.
 
 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR OF THE 
 AUTHOR. 
 
 THE present volume brings before us a chapter of 
 Church History which finds fitting place after the 
 volume on Tertullian. That writer, designated by 
 Dean Milman, " the father of Latin Christianity," 
 belongs to the beginning of the second century. 
 St Cyprian is martyred in the middle of the third. 
 The Church has grown immensely in numbers and in- 
 fluence. Several persecutions have taken place ; that 
 in which Cyprian was taken from the earth, namely, 
 the persecution of Decius, was the fiercest there had 
 yet been. There was a yet fiercer to come, that of 
 Dioclesian, but it was the last. His successor made 
 Christianity the national religion of the Empire. 
 
 And the days of Cyprian mark this further develop- 
 ment, that Christian literature had greatly multiplied, 
 and we arc able to see more clearly the nature of 
 Christian doctrine and practice. There is no need to 
 expatiate on this subject here, as the volume before 
 us supplies the information. It only remains for the 
 Editor to offer a word concerning the author of the
 
 6 Introductory Memoir. 
 
 book before us, and so to render a tribute of respect 
 to a pious and learned Churchman of our own stirring 
 time. 
 
 George Ayliffe Poole was born in 1 809, and educated 
 at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, taking his degree in 
 1831. The same year he was ordained by Law, Bishop 
 of Bath and Wells. After serving Curacies at Twicken- 
 ham, St John's, Edinburgh, and St Chad's, Shrewsbury, 
 he was presented to the incumbency of St James', Leeds, 
 and held it until 1843, when he became incumbent of 
 Welford, in Northamptonshire. In 1876, the Bishop of 
 Peterborough preferred him to the rectory of Winwick, 
 in the same county, and this he held till his death 
 in 1883. 
 
 He was not only a well-read man, but possessed a 
 refined taste and great skill in matters of art. The rise 
 of aestheticism as part of the great Church movement of 
 1832 was not entirely happy in its results in early days. 
 Gothic architecture came into vogue in place of the 
 miserable " classical " style of the eighteenth century, 
 and the principles of Gothic architecture were but 
 imperfectly understood. It would be invidious to 
 name Churches of that era, poor and ugly for the 
 most part, which were nevertheless highly bepraised 
 as being Gothic. Even the early works of Sir G. G. 
 Scott were anything but happy, for Gothic architecture 
 was a lost art which had to be slowly relearned. Mr 
 G. A. Poole was much in advance of his time, and it 
 has been said, and not untruly, that next to J. H. Parker 
 and M. H. Bloxam, the revival of good Gothic architec- 
 ture owes most to him. He was an exquisite painter in
 
 Introductory Memoir. 7 
 
 water colour, and when he would go about in his neigh- 
 bourhood, as he loved to do, lecturing on the village 
 churches, and endeavouring to kindle enthusiasm 
 among his neighbours towards the history of their 
 parishes, and the beautiful things which they possessed 
 in their churches, it was always a delight to crowd 
 round his drawings. He was the author of a History 
 of England, which had a very large sale for a while, 
 though it was almost the least satisfactory of his works. 
 Pamphlets on " The Present State of Parties in the 
 Church of England," and "The Admission of Lay 
 Members to the Synods of the Church of Scotland," 
 indicate his theological position namely, that of a 
 decided High Churchman of the earlier school, strongly 
 opposed to Romanism. A story, ' Sir Raoul de Broch," 
 was also his. But his best known works were " Churches, 
 their Structure and Arrangement," " History and Archi- 
 tecture of Lincoln Cathedral," and a " Diocesan History 
 of Peterborough," in the series of Diocesan Histories 
 now publishing by S. P. C. K. 
 
 The book before us was first published in 1840, 
 whilst he was incumbent of St James', Leeds, and 
 is included in the present series, not only for its 
 inherent value, which is very great, historically and 
 theologically, but also because the name of one who 
 did so much and such good work for his mother 
 Church, and who was so revered and loved in his 
 day, ought not to be left out of a series which aims 
 at producing some of the best books in English 
 theology. 
 
 W. B.
 
 Go tbe 
 
 MOST REVEREND FATHER IN GOD, 
 
 WILLIAM, 
 
 THIS HISTORY 
 OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF 
 
 CYPRIAN, 
 
 ARCHBISHOP OF CARTHAGE, SAINT AND MARTYR, 
 
 is 
 IN THESE DAYS OK UNGODLINESS AND INFIDELITY 
 
 AND OF 
 
 BITTER HOSTILITY AGAINST THE CHURCH, 
 
 WITH HIS GRACE'S PERMISSION, 
 MOST DUTIFULLY AND HUMBLY INSCRIBED. 
 
 MDCCCXL.
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 IF this volume at all answers the Author's design, there is 
 one important consideration which the reader ought to carry 
 with him during its perusal. 
 
 The work was undertaken with a desire to recommend that 
 tone of religion, calm, reverential, implicit, self-sacrificing, and 
 objective, which is well and conveniently called " CATHOLIC," 
 to distinguish it from the bustling, irreverent, neological, self- 
 seeking, and subjective character of the fashionable religion 
 of the present day; and which was happily exemplified in 
 St Cyprian, and generally, though indeed with glaring, and 
 for our present purpose valuable exceptions, in the Church 
 over which he presided. 
 
 Perhaps, too, something of the constitution and polity of 
 the Church, as exemplified in the life and times of St 
 Cyrian, and of the form and order of its several assemblies 
 and offices, may be profitably contrasted with the impatience 
 of rule and discipline, and the undervaluing of whatever is 
 positive and ritual, which is characteristic of the loudest and 
 most obtrusive party of religionists in the present day. 
 
 Now the spirit and form of the Anglican Church is 
 eminently CATHOLIC, in the sense before mentioned. But 
 we may contract a careless habit of judging our Church by 
 its present members ; and forgetting that she everywhere 
 protests against their laxity and irreverence, we may lay that
 
 1 2 Preface. 
 
 blame on the sorrowing mother, which ought to fall on the 
 undutiful children. Or again, while we are studying the 
 history of a particular Church and age, for the sake of the 
 "Catholic" spirit which it embodies, we may be in danger 
 of forgetting, that that spirit may animate very different 
 forms : and so we may hastily condemn our own Church, 
 because we, in our folly and pride, deem the various arrange- 
 ments which she has made, in wisdom and in love, incon- 
 sistent with a primitive character, because they are not 
 identical with a particular primitive form. This is a grievous 
 error into which those are likely to fall, who are seeking to 
 catholicise the present generation of the sons of the Church 
 by a reference to the ecclesiastical records of any former age. 
 But let us all remember (and the Author of this volume feels 
 that the warning is necessary for himself, which he presses 
 on others), that if, in pretence of a Catholic spirit, we touch 
 but the hem of the garment of our own holy brother except with 
 the deepest reverence and piety, we most unequivocally give 
 the lie to our pretensions. There is no one thing which our 
 Church can require, so long as she hath the grace of God 
 with her, so wrong, so opposed to all Catholic form and 
 spirit, as the unfilial judgment, or the imperfect obedience, 
 of any of her sons. 
 
 LEEDS, June 20, 1840.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Scantiness of strictly Personal Notices of Cyprian Pontius his 
 Panegyrist. Questions of the Place of Cyprian's Birth, Of 
 his Age, And of his Marriage. His Profession and Condition 
 as a Heathen His Acquaintance with Caecilius. His Con- 
 version. His Use of the Scriptures. His Baptism. His 
 own Account of the Spiritual Change effected in him at Bap- 
 tism. He adopts the name of Ccecilius 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 St Cyprian's Writings while a Layman. His Epistle to Donatus, 
 on the Grace of God. His Treatise on the Vanity of Idols. 
 The Death of Csecilius ; Who appoints Cyprian the Guardian 
 of his Family. St Cyprian a Deacon. Dionysius of Alex- 
 andria. St Cyprian a Presbyter. His Three Books of Testi- 
 monies against the Jews 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Cyprian chosen Bishop. His Attempt to Escape. The part 
 of the People in his Election. The Constitution of the 
 Church in the Cyprianic Age. The State of Morals and of 
 Discipline in Cyprian's Diocese, and the Acts and Writings 
 which arose out of the Condition of the Church. The Epistles 
 of Cyprian. The Case of Geminius Victor : Commemoration 
 of the Dead : The Primitive Practice a Witness against 
 Romish Errors. The Case of the Player : The State of the 
 Stage in Cyprian's time. The Case of the Rebellious Deacon. 
 The Case of the aweiffuKTol. " Ancient Christianity "
 
 14 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Revolutions in the Roman State. Their influence on the con- 
 dition of the Church. Edicts of Decius. The Persecution 
 commences. Some retire from Carthage ; Among whom St 
 Cyprian himself. Cyprian's Reasons for retiring. His care 
 of the Church while absent. His Letter to the Confessors. 
 The Insinuations of the Roman Clergy against Cyprian : and 
 Cyprian's Answer to their Epistle. The Progress of the 
 Persecution. The Sufferings of Mappalicus, and other Con- 
 fessors and Martyrs ...... 66 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Number of Apostates in the Decian Persecution. The 
 Sacrificati, Thurificati, and Libettatici. The Discipline of the 
 Lapsed. Its Rigour, And its occasional Relaxation. The 
 Privilege of the Martyrs : Abused in this instance. The 
 Clergy chiefly in fault. Cyprian's own Determination of the 
 case of the Lapsed ...... 84 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Cyprian's Return prevented by a Schism in his Church. The 
 Origin of the Schism. Novatus : His Character: His 
 Crimes. He is cited to appear before Cyprian. He escapes 
 under cover of the Decian Persecution. He makes a Party, 
 and forsakes the Church. He obtains the Ordination of Feli- 
 cissimus : It is questioned by whom. The five Presbyters 
 companions of Novatus in Schism. Cyprian appoints Deputies 
 to put his Regulations in force. The Place which Voluntary 
 Seceders hold, in respect of the Church. Novatus goes to 
 Rome. Novatian : His Character. His secret Cabals: 
 Fostered by Novatus. Election of Cornelius to the See of 
 Rome. His Character. Novatian's Schismatical Ordina- 
 tion. His Practices at Home and Abroad. The Spread of 
 of his Party. Novatus returns to Carthage . . .98 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Proceedings touching the Election of Cornelius, and the Schismatical 
 Ordination of Novatian, at Carthage; at Hadrumettium. 
 The Episcopate of Cornelius finally recognised. Felicissimus 
 and the five Presbyters Excommunicated. St Cyprian's Letters
 
 Contents. 1 5 
 
 PAGE 
 
 to the Schismatical Confessors. His Treatise De Unitate 
 Ecclesia. Letter of Dionysius of Alexandria to Novatian. 
 A Synod at Carthage, and in Rome. The return of the 
 Schismatical Confessors. Letters of Cornelius, the Confessors, 
 and Cyprian. Reflections on the Novatian Schism . .118 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 A Review of St Cyprian's Tract De Unitate Ecclesia . . 134 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A Schism at Carthage. Its origin. The Surreptitious Ordination 
 of Fortunatus. The Schismatics apply to Cornelius for his 
 support : They are at first repelled, but afterwards too 
 favourably heard. St Cyprian expostulates with Cornelius. 
 The extinction of Fortunatus's Party. Maximus ordained 
 by the Novatians in Carthage. His Faction contemptible . 144 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Persecution renewed on occasion of the Plague. Cyprian's apolo- 
 getic Letter to Demetrian. His Epistle to the Thybaritani. 
 The Penitent Lapsed admitted to Communion, in anticipation 
 of Persecution. The Exhortation to Martyrdom. St Cyprian's 
 last Letter to St Cornelius. Death of Cornelius. Of Lucius. 
 How far Persecution a Test of Truth . . .151 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The Plague rages at Carthage. Cyprian's Tract De Mortalilate. 
 The Expectation of the Last Day in the Early Church : 
 Gibbon's use of it. Cyprian's Opinion on the Time, Person, 
 and Character of Antichrist . . . . .178 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Weakness of the Roman Empire. Numidian Christians carried 
 captive by Barbarians. Collections made in Carthage to 
 redeem them. Cyprian's Epistle to Caecilius on the Mixed 
 Cup. His Doctrine applied to Half Communion, and other 
 Errors in the present day . . ~. 193
 
 1 6 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Revolutions in the Roman Empire. Questions of Fidus touching 
 a Lapsed Bishop, and the Case of Infant j Baptism. The Case 
 of Fortunianus: Of Basilides and Martialis: Of Marcianus 
 of Aries. The Insolence of Pupianus . . . .213 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The Question of the Baptism of Heretics, and the Controversy 
 arising out of it. Its origin in Asia Minor: It is discussed 
 in a Synod at Carthage. Cyprian's Letter to the Bishops of 
 Numidia. The Character of Several Objections against his 
 Rule. A Synod of Seventy- two Bishops assembled at Carthage 
 to determine the Question. Cyprian's Account to Stephen of 
 the Proceedings of the Synod. Cyprian's Letter to Jubaianus 228 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Stephen, Bishop of Rome, interferes in the Controversy about the 
 Baptism of Heretics. Cyprian's Epistle to Pompeius. The 
 last Council assembled at Carthage to determine the Question ; 
 St Cyprian's opening Address; and several of the more re- 
 markable Suffrages. The unanimity of Council against the 
 judgment of Stephen, and the Custom of Rome. Irenseus and 
 Victor. Dionysius and Stephen .... 248 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A General View of the Principles involved in the Controversy con- 
 cerning the Baptism of Heretics .... 261 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Valerian instigated by Macrianus to persecute the Church. Death 
 of Stephen: and Election of Sixtus. St Cyprian summoned 
 before the Proconsul : His Confession : His Banishment : 
 His Vision. Dionysius of Alexandria also Banished. Cyprian 
 recalled to Carthage by Galerius Maximus. He retires for a 
 short time when summoned to Utica. He returns to Carthage, 
 and is brought before the Proconsul. His Examination, 
 Sentence, and Death ..... 273
 
 Sbe 
 
 Xife anb ftimes of St Cyprian. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Scantiness of strictly Personal Notices of Cyprian. Pontius his Panegyrist. 
 Questions of the Place of Cyprian's Birth, Of his Age, And of his 
 Marriage. His Profession and Condition as a Heathen. His Acquain- 
 tance with Crecilius. His Conversion. His use of the Scriptures. 
 His Baptism. His own account of the Spiritual Change effected in 
 him at Baptism. He adopts the Name of Csecilius. 
 
 THE personal history, even of great men, derives its charm 
 not from the splendour and importance of those actions 
 by which they were ennobled, but from the variety of in- 
 cidents, in which the distinctive peculiarities of their character 
 were displayed. The unity and expression of the whole, 
 which are the sources of our gratification, result not from the 
 greatness of the parts, but from their due proportion and 
 subordination, and from a pervading tone, harmonising their 
 very minuteness and variety : as the Mosaic must be wrought 
 into an harmonious whole out of pieces infinitely small and 
 diversified, or it will present, not a finished and striking 
 tablet, but a cold and disjointed patchwork. Even in the 
 lives of heroes and of statesmen, the reader is interested not 
 only by the preparations for conflict, the bustle of the 
 encounter, and the elation of success ; but also, and perhaps
 
 1 8 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 still more intensely, by the lighter incidents : the child's 
 question or the boy's exploit, a hasty expression of hope or 
 disappointment or impatience, a liking or an antipathy, in 
 short anything and everything which may serve to embody a 
 marked trait of personal character, in the record of a trifling 
 incident. 
 
 The charm, however, of these minute records, is to be 
 referred to the more splendid incidents, and to the greatness 
 of the whole subject. We are delighted to see one who is 
 elevated to a dim and mysterious height above us, brought 
 down to our level ; identified with the man with whom his 
 neighbours conversed, whom his associates admired, and 
 whom his family loved. Hence it is impossible to throw the 
 appropriate charm of biography over the history of a great 
 man, if we possess but few characteristic anecdotes of his 
 private life, and but few unstudied expressions of his personal 
 feeling. With all our effort to keep the same person always 
 in view, and always the centre of interest, we are still writing 
 History, not Biography ; and neither splendour of character 
 nor importance of incident can supply the requisite material. 
 They may elevate the pages in which they are recorded to the 
 more exalted order of ethics or of history, and impart some- 
 thing of the interest appropriate to their new station; but 
 they cannot invest them with the peculiar charm of the story 
 of a life in its varied sameness, in its blended diversity of 
 thoughts, of feeling, and of incident. 
 
 It is not inconceivable, that the very greatness of the part 
 which a man has played, may have deprived us of these most 
 valuable materials of his biography. While we are dazzled 
 with splendid actions, we do not discern traits of character; 
 and while we are proclaiming the deeds of high emprize 
 which make the hero, we omit those little incidents which 
 mark the man. Thus the means of gratifying it, are often in 
 the inverse proportion of the interest with which we look for 
 indications of the complexion of a mind, which has wrought 
 revolutions in opinions or in empires. 
 
 These remarks preceding a life of St Cyprian are apolo-
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 19 
 
 getic : for though he was the centre of most important 
 ecclesiastical movements in his own day, and though scarce 
 any single person has ever contributed more to give a colour 
 to distant ages, so that we cannot repress a curiosity to know 
 more of his individual mind and feelings, we are remarkably 
 destitute of information on these points. His only professed 
 biographer affords us almost no assistance ; and while the 
 public records of his Episcopate are a great part of the history 
 of the Western Church in his day, the sources from which 
 these are derived, though chiefly his own Epistles, are equally 
 deficient in strictly personal notices. An account, therefore, 
 of St Cyprian's life and times, stands in that middle ground 
 between biography and history, which it is difficult to invest 
 with the appropriate interest of either. 
 
 We have no records, and but very scanty intimations, of 
 the incidents in the life of THASCIUS CYPRIAN before his 
 conversion to Christianity, though it was doubtless varied 
 by the political events of his day, and coloured with the 
 peculiar energy of his character. Cyprian was not, indeed, 
 without a contemporary biographer. Pontius, his Deacon, 
 his companion in many of his labours and troubles, and, 
 what is more, his affectionate friend and ardent admirer, 
 sought consolation at the death of Cyprian in the pious task 
 of enumerating his actions and recording his virtues. But 
 Pontius was either ignorant of the specific charm of biography, 
 or so conscious of the difficulties before mentioned in the 
 particular case of St Cyprian, that he has not adventured to 
 overcome them. We cannot help regretting, that one who 
 had so full an opportunity of acquainting himself with 
 Cyprian's former life and condition, did not think these 
 subjects worthy of his attention. There is certainly more of 
 the piety than of the judgment of a Christian biographer, in 
 the resolution to commence the account of an illustrious 
 convert with his spiritual birth ; as if it was not interesting 
 and profitable to know what a man was before his conversion, 
 as well as what he then became : for surely an acquaintance 
 with his former life and disposition is a necessary element in
 
 2O Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 a comprehensive view even of his Christian character ; and 
 must form a part of our estimate of its importance, as 
 illustrative of the grace of God. The world has recorded 
 this judgment in its appreciation of the Confessions of St 
 Augustine. 
 
 The expression of Pontius is worthy of remark, as giving 
 at the very commencement of his work a clue to its real 
 character. " Whence," l says he, " shall I commence his 
 panegyric, but from the dawn of his faith, and from his 
 heavenly birth ? " And in perfect harmony with this ex- 
 ordium, we find Pontius far more earnest in celebrating the 
 praises, than laborious in relating the actions, of Cyprian : 
 in eulogising, than in illustrating, his character. He professes, 
 that not only his own eloquence, but even eloquence itself, 2 
 must fail to paint the virtues of his martyred Bishop in their 
 true colours : he represents the seed-time, the harvest, the 
 budding, and the pressing of the grape, the planting of the 
 tree, and the ripening of the fruit, 3 as all crowded into the 
 same season, in this illustrious convert : he prefers him far 
 before Cornelius, who was baptised by Philip ; and the very 
 oppositions which Cyprian met at his entering on the Episco- 
 pate, he represents as providentially occurring, that they 
 might reflect the greater honour on the holy Bishop by his 
 conquest of them. 4 
 
 Meanwhile we are left to collect as we can from other 
 sources, all the most interesting particulars concerning Cy- 
 prian's former life. Where was he born, and when ? What was 
 
 1 Unde igitur incipiam? Unde exordium bonortim ejus aggrediar, 
 nisi a principio fidei et nativitate coelesti. 
 
 2 St Augustine expresses the same thing by another strange conceit. 
 Cujus reverendi Episcopi et venerandi Martyris laudibus nulla lingua 
 sufficeret, nee si se ipse laudaret. Sermo cccxiii. vol. viii. p. 1258. Ed. 
 Bassani, 1807. 
 
 3 It is curious to find the modesty of Cyprian, and the admiration of 
 Pontius, expressed under the same image. Exilis ingenii, says Cyprian, 
 (Ep. i. p. r.) angusta mediocritas tenues admodum fruges parit, nullis ad 
 copiam fcecundi cespitis culminibus ingravescit. 
 
 4 Quidam illi restiterunt, etiam ut vinceret. PONTIUS V.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 2 1 
 
 his lineage and condition? Was he a married or a single 
 man ? And at what age did he embrace the faith of Christ ? 
 These are questions which Pontius will not answer for us, 
 and some of which are still subjects of controversy : not of 
 curious inquiry only, but actually of controversy, such are 
 the interest and importance which they derive from Cyprian's 
 character and position. 
 
 Where l Cyprian was born we have no means of discovering, 
 and the time of his birth is equally uncertain. 2 A general 
 notion seems to prevail, that he was already an old man 
 before his conversion; but all the indirect evidence that 
 I can find seems to lead to a different conclusion. His 
 voluntary discipline while a Catechumen, which excited the 
 admiration of Pontius, was more appropriate to one in the 
 vigour of life than to an old man, 3 and all his actions and 
 writings are replete with the energy of a mature manhood, 
 not yet deprived of the fire of youth. 
 
 Such a life as induced some to invent the evidences of his 
 noble descent is more honourable to Cyprian, than the most 
 ancient and dignified pedigree could have been : yet there 
 is a real elevation in rank and ancestral nobility, which 
 harmonises well with whatever is great and good ; it is only, 
 therefore, for want of sufficient evidence, that I reject the 
 notion of Baronius, founded on a passage of Gregory 
 Nazianzen, that Cyprian was of noble birth, and of senatorial 
 rank. Of the personal consideration, however, of Cyprian in 
 the profession of oratory we have clearer evidence. Lactantius, 
 
 1 Perhaps, however, we may obscurely collect, that he was not born 
 at Carthage, the scene of his many labours, from this slight negative 
 evidence. Speaking, during his temporary retreat, of his desire to revisit 
 Carthage, he asks, " Where could my time be spent, either more delight- 
 fully or more profitably, than where it was the will of God that I should 
 first believe, and continue to grow in the faith ?" Ep. xxxvi. 49. It may 
 be supposed, that if Carthage had been his birth-place, he would have 
 added, Where can I better dwell ? Where if I must suffer, can I better 
 resign my soul to God, than where I first received it at his hands ? 
 
 2 Quando natus sit ignoramus. August. Sermo. cccx. 
 
 3 Inter fidei sure prima rudimenta, nihil aliud credidit Deo dignum, 
 quani ut cantincntiam tueretur. 
 
 I
 
 22 Life and Times of Sf Cyprian. 
 
 who prefers him above all those who had employed a cultivated 
 mind in the defence of Christianity, 1 tells us of the distinction 
 which he had gained as a master of Rhetoric : and Cyprian 
 himself seems to refer to his own personal condition before 
 his baptism, when he describes, in his Epistle to Donatus, 
 the pomp of place, and the crowd of clients, by which a 
 distinguished public character is surrounded. St Augustine 
 mentions his wealth : and here again, his own account seems 
 to infer as much ; for all those allurements of pleasure and of 
 sin which he represents as opposing the greatest obstacles to 
 the reception of Christianity, and which he mentions in such 
 a manner as scarce to admit a doubt that he was speaking 
 from his own experience, are such as the rich only are 
 acquainted with. Ease and luxury; vestments of gold and 
 purple ; the pomp and the projects, the passions and the 
 pursuits, of the great and wealthy, had all combined to 
 enslave the ardent mind of Cyprian, and to keep him still in 
 the Egyptian bondage of heathenism and vice. Nor yet at 
 the time that he wrote his Epistle to Donatus on occasion of 
 their baptism, had he wholly ceased to relish the advantages 
 of an honourable wealth. His rural retreat, which he evidently 
 describes as it was then before his eyes, and filling his mind 
 with images of beauty, was not unworthy of a Cicero or a Pliny ; 
 nor the use which he made of it of a Christian philosopher. 
 " The season and the place," says he, " both alike invite us 
 to serious conversation ; the cool breezes that fan the face 
 of the earth, gemmed with flowers, and this lovely arbour, 
 excluding every obtrusive step and curious gaze, but admitting 
 the free light and the whispering breeze through the hanging 
 branches of the vine, invite us to the communion of Christian 
 souls ; and while we despise the pleasures of sense as an end, 
 lead us gracefully and naturally to something higher." 2 
 
 But the most honourable memorial of Cyprian's wealth, is 
 the sale of his estates for the benefit of the poor, and the 
 supply of their penury, out of his private fortune. To the 
 Christian duty of almsgiving, it seems more than probable 
 
 1 Lactantius, lib. v. p. 237. Ed. Cantab. 1685. 2 See Ep. i. p. i.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 23 
 
 that he soon after sacrificed that rural retreat in which we 
 have seen him delighting : for Pontius speaks of his "gardens," 
 which were providentially restored to him in his last sufferings, 
 though he had sold them long before for charitable uses. To 
 these gardens he retired after his baptism, and from them he 
 went to meet his martyrdom. 
 
 Opposite parties find an object in giving Cyprian a wife. 1 
 As the polemical importance of the question, whether he was 
 married or no, is quite distinct from its biographical interest ; 
 and as there is no direct evidence of the fact, while all the 
 presumptive evidence is against it ; we may be excused in 
 concluding, that Cyprian had no wife at the time of his 
 conversion, and probably had never been married. 
 
 Such then, so far as we can collect, was Thascius Cyprian. 
 His mind was matured both by years and study, but yet 
 unchilled with the frosts of age. He had a soul ready to 
 sacrifice wealth, interest, and ease to religion, and a sense of 
 duty ; and family he had none. He was of good repute for 
 his successful practice of an honourable and lucrative pro- 
 fession ; and he was rewarded by the possession of the fruits 
 of his labour and reputation. The highest powers, unblessed 
 from above, are unworthy of the office, for which Cyprian was 
 designed ; and by God's grace a more moderate share of 
 talents and acquirements may adorn the highest station ; but 
 God does condescend to employ the talents of His creatures ; 
 and He had marked out Cyprian for His work, and by the 
 ruling of His providence He had formed his mind, his 
 character, and his circumstances accordingly. 
 
 It was surely providential, that Cyprian contracted an 
 
 1 Milner goes yet farther, and gives his imaginary wife an imaginary 
 character, in order to enhance as it seems to him the character of Cyprian 
 " In vain," says the Historian, (?) "his wife opposed his Christian spirit 
 of liberality." In truth, the liberality of Cyprian would have been scarcely 
 just, and altogether imprudent, if he had to provide for others, as well as 
 himself. In the passage from the life of Cyprian by Pontius which has 
 given rise to these misstatements, the biographer is speaking not of 
 Cyprian and his wife, but of Job and his wife. The passage is given at 
 pa^e 25 of this volume.
 
 24 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 intimacy, which soon ripened into no common affection, with 
 Caecilius, an aged Presbyter 1 of the Church of Carthage. 
 This friendship with a Christian Priest was the means of 
 Cyprian's conversion, which took place, as he himself informs 
 us, at Carthage, and, as it seems most probable, very early 
 in the year of grace 246. We may perhaps collect from St 
 Jerome, that the book of Jonah was especially instrumental 
 to his conversion. " Let us," says St Jerome, in his com- 
 mentary on the third chapter of Jonah, "set before us the 
 example of St Cyprian, who was before an advocate of 
 idolatry, and had arrived at so great reputation as an orator, 
 as to teach rhetoric in Carthage : but having heard this 
 preaching of Jonah, was converted, and repented ; and attained 
 to such a height of virtue, as to preach Christ publicly, and 
 to submit his neck to the sword for His sake." 
 
 Nor is this either the only or the strongest intimation that 
 Cyprian, before his ordination, and even before his baptism, 
 was freely permitted to study the holy Scriptures. Those 
 who know how painfully the concession of the Scriptures to 
 the laity in some countries has been extorted from the 
 Church of Rome, and who have not escaped the vulgar error, 
 that Rome really follows antiquity as she pretends, may 
 wonder to find, that in Cyprian's days the Bible was not a 
 sealed book even to Catechumens. We of the Anglican 
 Church, following the principles of Catholic antiquity, en- 
 courage that godly custom, and use the practice of the ancient 
 Church, not merely as an argument, but as an argument a 
 fortiori. If the laity and new converts in Cyprian's time 
 were encouraged in this custom, much more should they be 
 now. For though it is impossible that the Church could then 
 have provided so ample commentaries upon the Scriptures ; 
 and though Neophytes, fresh from the ranks of heathenism, 
 could scarce be so well prepared for their interpretation, as 
 all in Christian countries ought to be ; and though, therefore, 
 if it were true now to say with Rome, that more evil than 
 good would arise from the reading of the Scriptures by the 
 1 Caecilius et oetate tune, et honore Presbyter. PONTIUS.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 25 
 
 laity, 1 it were much more true to have said so in the days of 
 Cyprian : yet the use of the sacred volume was then fully 
 indulged to the laity, and even to Catechumens. When only 
 a Presbyter, we shall find Cyprian recommending to Quirinus, 
 whom he calls his son, and who was probably therefore, and 
 indeed almost certainly, a layman, a careful study of holy 
 writ : and he himself, while only a Catechumen, read the 
 Scriptures with constant and anxious attention ; and bringing 
 to bear upon them the strength and the resources of a power- 
 ful and cultivated mind, he profited greatly by their perusal ; 
 nor need we adopt the assertion of Pontius, at least in its 
 literal sense, that the first approach of the divine light left in 
 him no darkness at all, to shew that he was early prepared, 
 as well in the knowledge of sacred things, as in the character 
 of a Christian, for all the offices of the sacred Ministry. Even 
 his earliest works, some of which were perhaps written while 
 he was yet a layman, attest the progress which he had made 
 in the true use of the Scriptures ; and we have a beautiful 
 picture of the practical account to which he turned these 
 divine lessons, from the pencil of his affectionate biographer. 
 " When he read of any who had received commendation from 
 God, he would recommend the inquiry, Wherefore was it 
 that God was well pleased with them ? If Job, glorious in 
 the testimony of God, was declared to be a true worshipper 
 of God, and one to whom none other upon earth might be 
 compared, he would exhort us to do that which Job also did ; 
 
 1 The Romanist adduces the unnumbered heresies which have arisen 
 from the rash interpretation of the Scriptures by individuals : but let us 
 only remember the fact, that almost every heresy has originated not from 
 the laity, but from the clergy ; and if we dared act upon such an indication 
 of expediency, we may retort upon them their reasoning, and say, that if 
 from the laity, then much more from the clergy, should the holy Scriptures 
 be taken. But man is not wiser than God : and those Scriptures which 
 were originally written as much to and for the laity as the clergy ; some 
 of which were actually addressed to individuals not clerical but lay, were 
 surely adapted to the laity, and are not to be taken from them without im- 
 piety ; as they cannot be without absurdity, except by those who would 
 uphold a system contradicted by those inspired writings.
 
 26 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 that while we follow the example of Job, we may receive the 
 like testimony from God. Making light of the necessary 
 expenses of his household, Job advanced to so great elevation 
 of virtue, that he felt not the sacrifice which he made of 
 temporal wealth, in the cause of piety. He was unbroken by 
 penury and by grief: the persuasions of his wife could not 
 move him ; and he bore the afflictions of his own body un- 
 shaken. His manly virtue stood unmoved in its own place ; 
 and the deep root of his devotion remained firmly fixed. To 
 no temptation of the devil did he yield, nor did he cease to 
 thank God, in faith and gratitude, even in the midst of all 
 his misfortunes. His house was ever open to the stranger. 
 No widow was sent away unprovided ; no blind man was 
 undirected or unattended by him. He was a staff to the 
 lame, and his hand was the protection of the poor and help- 
 less. And so ought we to do, Cyprian was accustomed to 
 say, if we would please God. And so would he run through 
 all the records of the saints of old ; and while he studied to 
 imitate the best, he himself became worthy of imitation." 
 
 Cyprian has himself told us, in his Epistle to Donatus, some 
 of the struggles which it cost him to leave the world, and to 
 embrace the life of a Christian, cut off, as it then was, by 
 external circumstances, from the secular employments and 
 honours of the state, and from the pomp and revelries of a too 
 luxurious wealth. We shall not be surprised to find, that some 
 of the temptations which assailed the young convert were 
 directed against his pride of reason. Like Nicodemus, he 
 could not receive the mystery of a spiritual regeneration. 
 " While," says he, " I was lying in darkness and in the shadow 
 of death, and while I was tossed uncertain upon the waves of 
 this tempestuous world, ignorant of what was my real life, and 
 an alien from truth and light, I thought the method of salvation 
 which was proposed to me strange and impossible. I could 
 not believe that man should be born again ; and being ani- 
 mated with a new life, put off, in the laver of regeneration, what 
 he had before been ; and though remaining the same in his 
 whole natural and animal frame, become changed in his mind
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 27 
 
 and affections." The favour of God, however, which had 
 directed Cyprian to the good Caecilius, did not desert him 
 in these difficulties ; and coming at last with faith and repent- 
 ance to the Sacrament of Baptism, Cyprian received that grace 
 of regeneration, at which his natural reason had stumbled. 
 
 All the regulations respecting the administering of Baptism 
 in the Primitive Church, tended to invest that Sacrament with 
 the highest reverence and interest ; and none more so, perhaps, 
 than the setting apart certain days, on which alone, except in 
 extreme cases of danger, or other exigencies, it was adminis- 
 tered. The custom of different Churches slightly varied in 
 this matter, though the same spirit animated all. Easter, 
 Pentecost, and the Epiphany, and in some places the festivals 
 of saints, and the anniversary of the dedication of churches, 
 were the times appointed for Baptism : and thus a double 
 advantage was gained ; the solemnity of the act and the 
 reverence of the season reflected on each other associations 
 of deeper and more intense devotion ; the number of the 
 baptised on each occasion was increased, in proportion to the 
 infrequency of the ceremonial. 1 There must have been some- 
 thing singularly imposing in the crowd of Catechumens, 
 distinguished not only by their white garments, but by the 
 joyful alacrity, with which they hastened to the confession oi 
 their faith before the whole Church, and to the rite in which 
 they were enrolled among the ranks, and assumed the duties 
 and received the privileges of the Church militant in earth. 
 
 With respect to the custom of the African Church, Ter- 
 tullian - mentions Easter and Pentecost only as the seasons 
 of Baptism. But it is plain that such regulations must give 
 place to circumstances, and as a Church increased greatly in 
 numbers, the seasons of Baptism would be multiplied ; every 
 advantage being still retained, which was originally consulted 
 
 1 The number of candidates for Baptism, under these regulations, was 
 so great, that Deacons were sometimes permitted to administer that Sacra- 
 ment at Easter, though at other times it was no part of their office ; and 
 we hear of three thousand persons baptised at Constantinople, on one of 
 the greater Festivals. 
 
 2 De Baptismo, xix. torn. i. p. 392. Opera, Ed. Paris us, 1616.
 
 28 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 in the restriction to one or a few of the greater festivals : and 
 we learn from the history of the Vandalic persecution by 
 Victor of Utica, 1 that the Epiphany, on which day it is sup- 
 posed Christ was Himself baptised, was afterwards added to 
 the seasons of Baptism by the African Churches. 
 
 Cyprian was probably baptised at Easter, in the year of 
 grace 246. His own words will best describe the spiritual 
 benefit which he received on this occasion : and as they are 
 the words of one who was yet too young a Christian to inno- 
 vate and invent ; and as they appeal to the experience of his 
 friend Donatus also, we may be sure that they express what 
 was then taught and experienced to be the effects of the 
 Sacrament of Baptism. " So entirely was I immersed in the 
 deadly atmosphere of my former life, so enveloped in the 
 habits and commission of sin, that I despaired of ever freeing 
 myself, and began to look upon these things, and to love 
 them, as a part of myself. But when the sulliage of my past 
 iniquities was washed away by the waters of Baptism, the pure 
 and serene light from above infused itself into my whole spirit: 
 when my second birth of the Spirit had formed in me a new 
 man, all at once what had been doubtful before, became 
 certain ; what had been shut, was opened ; into the darkness 
 light shined; that was easy, which before was difficult, and 
 that only difficult, which before was impossible : and now I 
 knew, that that was earthly and mortal, which had formerly 
 included me in the bondage of sin ; but that the Holy Spirit 
 */ of God had animated me with a new and better nature." 2 
 
 Thus does St Cyprian speak of the grace of Baptism, as a 
 matter of his individual experience. In other parts of his 
 works he treats of Baptism dogmatically ; and says, again and 
 again, that therein we receive the Spirit, have our sins remitted, 
 and are born again. And nothing can more assuredly mani- 
 fest the consent of the Church in this doctrine, than the way 
 in which he makes these assertions. He does not go about 
 to prove them : no, this was unnecessary, since they were con- 
 fessed by all; nor were they in his day, nor till 1200 years 
 1 Quoted from Bingham, Orig. Ecc. XI. vi. 7. - Epist. i. p. 2.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 29 
 
 after, a subject of controversy ; but he assumes them as pre- 
 mises mutually agreed upon, from which to deduce the 
 catholic doctrine on another subject. 1 In a word, in Cyprian's 
 days, and long after, the doctrine of Baptismal regeneration 
 was no more questioned in the Church, than the first axioms 
 in Geometry are questioned in our Schools. If some pre- 
 tended demonstration should involve the denial of the pro- 
 position that the whole is greater than a part, it would be 
 rejected with contempt, without farther refutation : and so, if 
 some new doctrine or custom should be clearly inconsistent 
 with the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, that alone, in the 
 eyes of the primitive Christians, would have branded it as false 
 and heretical. 
 
 It was usual for the new convert to receive another name at 
 Baptism : a custom fairly derived from the authority of our 
 Saviour Himself, in giving new names to some of His earliest 
 disciples ; and one, too, which well enough harmonised with 
 the solemn occasion of that new birth, wherein we put off 
 the old man, and put on the new man, with all his attendant 
 duties and privileges. And there was something of religion 
 in the assuming a name which had been borne by some 
 eminent saint or apostle ; not, as the Council of Nice says, 
 that there is any merit or fortune in the name itself, but that 
 it may serve as a stimulus to emulate the character of him 
 from whom it was derived. Cyprian, actuated by these 
 motives, and by affection for his master in Christianity, took 
 the name Csecilius, from the venerable Presbyter who had 
 first been his companion and friend, and afterwards his 
 spiritual father. Henceforth then we speak not of Thascius, 
 but of Cascilius Cyprian, except when we find the Saint before 
 a heathen tribunal : and we may perhaps look with some little 
 interest even in this change of a pronomen, when we find here- 
 
 1 "The argument of Cyprian and his adherents, against the validity 
 of heretical Baptism, proceeds upon the assumption, that Christians are 
 born again, and receive forgiveness of sins, and the Holy Ghost in 
 Baptism." Bp. Bethell's General view of the Doctrine of Regeneration 
 in Baptism, (Ed. 2) p. 117, note. See also p. 85, et seq.
 
 3O Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 after a proud professor, and a recusant of Cyprian's authority 
 and fellowship, concentrating some portion of his malice and 
 contempt in a recurrence to the old designation of Cyprian, 
 calling him, " Cyprian, alias Thascius;" 1 while Cyprian retorts 
 the opprobrium, whatever it may be, of such a designation, 
 styling his uncourteous correspondent, " Florentius, alias 
 Pupianus." 
 
 1 For Cyprianus, the future Saint and Martyr, had already a name 
 accounted of happy omen, as we collect from Augustine's panegyric : 
 " He who rooteth up and planteth (Jer. i. 10), came unto him ; and 
 rooting out the old Cyprianus, and placing him on the true foundation, 
 planted the new Cyprianus in himself, and caused the true Cyprianus to 
 spring out of himself. For the Church saith to Christ, 'My beloved is a 
 bundle of cypress' (Cant. i. 15). At the same time then that he was 
 made a Christian from Christ, he was also made Cyprianus from the true 
 Cypress. For he became a sweet, savour of Christ in every place ; as the 
 Apostle Paul saith of himself, who also was first as a persecutor a destroyer 
 of the Church, and afterwards a builder of the Church as a preacher." 
 Aug. Serm. cccxii. In Natali Cyp. Mart. vol. viii. p. 1257. 
 
 By some of the heathen, who ridiculed the application of his powers to 
 the support of Christianity, this auspicious name of Cyprian was by a change 
 of a single letter converted into one of opprobrious signification. "A 
 doctis hujus seculi, quibus forte scripta ejus innotuerunt, derideri solet. 
 Audivi ego quendam hominem sane sacrilegum, qui eum immutata una 
 litera Coprianum vocaret ; quasi quod elegans ingenium, et melioribus 
 rebus aptum ad anileis fabulas contulisset." Lact. v. i. 
 
 This playing upon names was not unusual either among the heathen or 
 Christians. Thus the historian Timceus came to be called Epitinurus, the 
 calumniator, for his malignant lies. St Jerome plays upon the name of 
 Vigilantius : "Ais Vigilantium, qui KO.T avrtypacnv hoc vocatur nomine, 
 nam Domitantius rectius diceretur." And to return to an instance of 
 better omen : Dionysius of Alexandria (in Eusebius) speaking of a martyr 
 contemporary with Cyprian, says, "A native of Africa called Macarius, 
 that is to say, happy, and who was happy indeed, since he possessed the 
 favour of God, having been unmoved by the menaces of the judge, was 
 burnt alive." Ecc. Hist. vi. 41.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 St Cyprian's Writings while a Layman. His Epistle to Donatus, on the 
 Grace of God. His Treatise on the Vanity of Idols. The Death of 
 Csecilius ; who appoints Cyprian the Guardian of his Family. St 
 Cyprian a Deacon. Dionysius of Alexandria. St Cyprian a Presbyter. 
 His Three Books of Testimonies against the Jews. 
 
 ST CYPRIAN'S active mind sought occupation in his altered 
 state, in recording the mercy of God in his conversion ; and 
 in displaying to his former associaties in pagan wickedness 
 and superstition, the vanity and folly of the religion which he 
 had left. 
 
 The first-fruit of his conversion seems to have been his 
 Epistle to Donatus, on the grace of God ; the subject of 
 which sufficiently indicates its date. Donatus was a com- 
 panion of Cyprian as a catechumen, and also at baptism ; 
 and the more ingenious and learned of the two friends under 
 the form of a familiar Epistle, arising out of certain past con- 
 versations, addresses to the other an appropriate exposition of 
 the importance of Christianity in general, and especially of its 
 initiatory rite, together with an exposure of the vanity and 
 wickedness of the world, from which true religion is the only 
 safe refuge. These important topics are rendered yet more 
 interesting by many personal allusions ; and the whole Epistle 
 has a tinge of individual feeling, which gives it much of the 
 warmth and brilliancy, which are only found where the highest 
 matters are treated by those who have themselves felt their 
 importance. But the singular interest of St Augustine's Con- 
 fessions has so entirely cast all other works of this character
 
 32 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 into the shade, that I shall be excused for treating Cyprian's 
 Letter to Donatus rather as an historical document than as an 
 interesting literary production ; and for having made use of it 
 for the hints which it suggests of its author's former life and 
 character, instead of presenting to the reader a connected 
 view of the work itself. 
 
 Of his treatise, On the vanity of Idols ; which seems also to 
 have been written about this time, and while he was yet a lay- 
 man, I must, however, speak more at length : although in this 
 class of writing also St Augustine has surpassed all others, 
 before or since his days. Indeed St Augustine's work De 
 Civitate Dei, surpasses all other writings, adversus gentes, in 
 learning and general importance, as much as his Confessions 
 surpasses all other religious autobiographies. 
 
 There is a singular interest attached to the writings of the 
 early Christians, addressed to the heathen, whose society and 
 superstitions they had lately deserted. Whether such works 
 appealed to the heathen by way of apology or of instruction, 
 they must be such as a pagan could understand and appre- 
 ciate ; such as might, if possible, interest him : and yet they 
 must be imbued with a spirit of religion, seeking higher ob- 
 jects than any which this world contains. Accordingly, they 
 present Christian literature to our view in a transition state, so 
 to speak; freed from the living death of the heathen, and 
 casting off the garment spotted with the flesh ; but not yet 
 soaring into the purer empyrean of Christian mysteries, nor 
 opening its seraph wings to the full blaze of day. 
 
 Works of this kind were often, perhaps generally, under- 
 taken by late converts, or by those whose profession did not 
 lead them into the depths of theology : and such persons were 
 on some accounts the best suited to such an undertaking. 
 They were themselves somewhat in the same moral condition 
 with the works which they had to produce. Neophytes, and 
 fresh from the memory, even from the love of paganism ; or 
 still living in the busy pursuits of the world ; their zeal and 
 their courage would be ardent and aspiring ; while their argu- 
 ments might be expected, if any might, to find a way to the
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian, 33 
 
 hearts of those for whom they wrote, whose opinions were so 
 fresh upon their minds ; on whose prejudices they could make 
 so direct an attack ; whose language they could so readily 
 assume. 
 
 It would not unfrequently happen, that the very persons who, 
 as Christians, thus stepped forth in defence of the Church, had 
 before been its direct opponents, as the avowed advocates of 
 paganism. It was the most appropriate method such persons 
 could take to manifest the sincerity of their faith and repent- 
 ance, and to promote the service of God, to exert their earliest 
 energies as Christians in the demolition of the temple which 
 they had before assisted in propping, or in the construction of 
 outworks to that sanctuary which they had endeavoured to 
 demolish. We learn from St Jerome, that Cyprian himself, 
 when a heathen, had been a defender of pagan idolatries. If 
 the words of St Jerome imply that he had engaged his pen in 
 their cause, the unhallowed work of his ignorance is lost : of 
 his palinode I subjoin the following sketch. 
 
 It opens with a general reference of the deities, temples, and 
 images of the heathen to their acknowledged origin in a desire 
 to maintain the memory and reverence of kings, and other 
 benefactors of the several nations ; and descending to par- 
 ticulars, he mentions Castor and Pollux, yEsculapius, Saturn, 
 and Mars, as illustrating his assertion ; shewing, moreover, that 
 the Moors still worshipped their kings, without veiling their 
 practice under any other form. 
 
 Hence arose the variety of deities and the different character 
 of their worship in various countries : and hence, too, the 
 whole system of idolatry was exposed to manifest objections 
 and ridicule ; as for instance : Wherefore is it that the gods, 
 who were formerly so prolific, have long ceased to multiply 
 their kind ; as if Jupiter were too old to be a father, and Juno 
 had lost the privilege of bearing children ? Wherefore is it 
 that the gods who are powerful enough to assist Rome, have 
 not an equal power to defend other nations ? As for the 
 origin of the gods, Romulus owed his apotheosis to the 
 perjury of Proculus. Even courtesans were deified : and
 
 34 Life and Tiiiics of St Cyprian. 
 
 vices and diseases had their patron deities. Viduus, whose 
 part it was to dissolve the connexion between the soul and 
 the body, is banished from the city on account of the terrors 
 of his office : and Venus the Bald is more subjected to 
 ridicule, than the wounded Venus of Homer. 
 
 Kingdoms owe their power not to merit, but to fortune ; 
 Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Greeks, and Egyptians, succeed 
 one another in order ; and at last Rome, whose very origin 
 is enough to excite a blush, succeeds : and whatever auguries 
 may indicate, she shall hold her dominion for her appointed 
 season, and no longer. Indeed, what so deceitful as the rites 
 of divination ? Regulus consulted the Augurs, and was taken 
 prisoner ; so did Mancinus, yet he passed under the yoke ; 
 and Paulus received a happy omen, and fell at Cannae : but 
 Caius Caesar, who despised such indications of future events, 
 seemed to be prosperous, and to conquer in proportion. 
 The origin of all these things is in those wandering and lying 
 spirits, which, being immersed in grovelling vices, and having 
 lost their heavenly temper in the contact of earth, cease not 
 to hurry others into their own depravity and perdition. 
 
 Your own poets and philosophers, continues Cyprian, know 
 that there is one God, and that these all are but demons. 1 
 In this, Socrates, Plato, and Hermes Trismegistus, consent 
 with us. These wandering spirits you attach to statues and 
 images. They breathe their inspiration into your prophets, 
 animate the entrails of sacrifices, direct the flight of birds, 
 dispose lots, contrive oracles, jumble falsehood and truth 
 together (for they are themselves deceived and deceivers), 
 disturb your existence, infest your sleep, inject causeless and 
 superstitious fears, convulse your limbs, injure your health, 
 irritate diseases to bring you to their shrines, that they may 
 feast on your sacrifices, and then by undoing their own work, 
 seem to effect a cure. By such means do they seek to divert 
 
 1 Perhaps the best account of the theology of the heathen, especially of 
 their apparently inconsistent doctrine of many demons and one God, may 
 be found in Bp. Warburton's account of the heathen mysteries, in his 
 Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 35 
 
 you from the worship of the true God ; and to involve you in 
 their guilt, that they may have companions in their punish- 
 ment. But even these demons, when adjured by us in the 
 name of the true God, are obliged to leave the bodies which 
 they have possessed, conquered and confessing their real 
 nature. Under the influence and mighty operation of our 
 exorcisms, you may hear them confess that they are beaten 
 with stripes, bound in the fire, and more and more exceedingly 
 tortured : and as they either depart by degrees, or flee away 
 at once, according to the faith of the demoniac or of his 
 exorcist, you may hear them declaring whence they came 
 and whither they go. And hence the enmity of the common 
 people against us ; for these demons instigate them to hate 
 us, without knowing what we are, lest if they should once 
 know us, they should cease to be our persecutors. 
 
 There is, in short, but one God, and He is Lord of all. 
 If in states and cities there can be no division of sovereignty 
 without dissension, how much more is it necessary in the 
 mighty universe that there should be one God. And what 
 temple can contain God, whose temple is the whole world ? 
 If you ask His name, it is God : as He is but one, He requires no 
 distinctive appellation. And indeed the common expressions 
 of the people shew the innate sense of this truth in the mind : 
 for do not all exclaim, O God ! and say, God seeth, May God 
 reward them, and the like? 
 
 What Christ is, and the dispensation of salvation through 
 Him, may be thus briefly stated. To the Jews first the favour 
 of God was vouchsafed, and His promises were made ; and 
 hence their ancient sanctity and prosperity. But they be- 
 came at length, as they themselves confess, disobedient and 
 idolatrous ; or if they confess it not, their present condition 
 is a token of the wrath of God. Now God had long ago 
 declared that He would choose for Himself another people 
 who should serve Him faithfully, and be blessed with the 
 highest privileges. Of this dispensation, Christ is the Mes- 
 senger, and the Mediator : and as such He was foretold long 
 before He came, by prophets of the Jews. Hence the 
 
 H 2
 
 36 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 Jews themselves expected Him : but as He was to come twice ; 
 once in humility, and again in power and great glory ; they 
 in their pride and folly overlooked His first coming, being 
 blinded judicially for their past offences : and now they suffer 
 their due reward. 
 
 Then, after a slight sketch of the life, and death, and 
 ascension of Jesus, Cyprian proceeds to declare the appoint- 
 ment of disciples to preach the religion of which He is the 
 head; and points out the fact that they are manifestly doing 
 this, in the midst of sufferings and persecutions, which are 
 but the filling up of the measure of the sufferings of Christ 
 Himself in His followers. Suffering, which is the test of 
 \ truth, we endure, that Christ the Son of God may be pro- 
 claimed not only by the preacher's life, but by the martyr's 
 passion. Him we accompany, Him we follow ; He is our 
 Leader, our Light, our Salvation : He will open to us the 
 gates of Heaven, and make us partakers of the Father. We 
 Christians shall be hereafter what Christ is, if we imitate 
 Christ in this world. 
 
 Such is Cyprian's tract on the vanity of idols, which affords 
 a very fair specimen of that kind of work in the early days of 
 the Christian Church. We return now to his personal history, 
 and to the first steps of his singularly rapid ecclesiastical 
 career. 
 
 Cyprian soon lost his friend and spiritual father ; for Pon- 
 tius has scarcely named Caecilius, before he mentions his 
 death ; adding, that on his death-bed, Caecilius left his wife 
 and children to the care of Cyprian ; thus making him, who 
 was heir to his piety and religious attainments, the guardian 
 of his dearest relations. 
 
 Even in the short interval, however, between his own bap- 
 tism and the death of Caecilius, Cyprian had been admitted 
 into the order of Deacons ; for Pontius, who was himself of 
 that order, says, "while he was one of us, 1 he dwelt with 
 Caecilius, a man of honourable report, whose memory is yet 
 held in reverence ; who had already been the means of his 
 1 Erat ille etiam de nobis, &c. Pontius.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 37 
 
 conversion to the faith of Christ." The interpretation of this 
 passage of Pontius is not without importance, since it is the 
 only direct testimony which we have to the admission of 
 Cyprian into the Diaconate, before he filled the higher orders 
 of the Church. Eusebius thus speaks of him : Cyprian, first a 
 Rhetorician, afterwards a Presbyter, and at length Bishop of 
 Carthage, eventually received the crown of martyrdom ; and 
 St Jerome says, that being early elected into the Pres- 
 bytery, he was afterwards made Bishop of Carthage : l while 
 Pontius, whose duty it was to be more explicit, only says in 
 general terms, that he passed through each honourable step, to 
 the highest order of the priesthood. Hence, contrary to all 
 probability, which should surely be the interpreter of the 
 silence of historians, some have chosen to deny that Cyprian 
 was ever a Deacon. The silence of Pontius may, I think, be 
 accounted for, from the exaggerated stream of panegyric, in 
 which the life by that author is composed; for he seems 
 determined to mention nothing which he cannot convert into 
 a singular mark of honour in his idolised master. Hence, 
 while his own modesty prevented his speaking of the order to 
 which he himself belonged as an honourable distinction, he 
 could scarce find fit words to express the fact, that Cyprian 
 had passed through it. In such general terms as these, then, 
 Pontius speaks of Cyprian's advancement : " He rose rapidly 
 from the order of Priests to that of Bishops ; for who would 
 hesitate to advance such an one through the highest degrees 
 of honour ? " And again ; " this surely is a sufficient com- 
 mendation of his excellence, that he was elected to the 
 honour of the Priesthood, and of the Episcopate, by the judg- 
 ment of God, and the favour of the people, even while he was 
 yet accounted but a Neophyte." We cannot wonder, how- 
 ever, that some should make use of such expressions to prove, 
 in spite of probability, that Cyprian was never a Deacon; 
 
 1 Christianas factus, omnem substantiam suam pauperibus erogavit, ac 
 post non multum temporis electus in Presbyterum, etiam Episcopus Car- 
 thaginiensis constitutus est. Hieronymi, Cat. Script. Eccl. vol. i. p. 
 187. Editio Francofurti, 1684.
 
 38 Life and Times of St Cyprian, 
 
 when we find Blondel asserting, in spite of a yet greater proba- 
 bility, and in opposition even to these plain assertions, that 
 he became a Bishop, without ever having been a Priest. 
 
 But though St Cyprian was doubtless a Deacon at the time 
 of Csecilius's death, it is certain that he was not yet advanced 
 to the Priesthood ; for in that case, neither could Caecilius 
 have committed to him, nor could he have accepted, the 
 guardianship of his wife and children, without breach of 
 ecclesiastical discipline ; which debarred Priests and Bishops 
 from taking upon themselves any secular duties, especially 
 those of a guardian or executor. The Deacon, not as yet per- 
 mitted to consecrate the Eucharist, or to administer Baptism, 
 except under peculiar circumstances, was not rigidly tied down 
 by the sanctity of his office to purely spiritual avocations; 
 indeed his duties, even in respect of the Church, required 
 some degree of intercourse with the daily offices of common 
 life; to him, therefore, such a charge was permitted. And 
 there was nothing inconsistent in these regulations ; as there 
 might seem to be if they were still enforced, when the Dia- 
 conate has become a step soon passed over, and taken almost 
 invariably rather as an approach to the Priesthood, than for 
 its own sake : for in the early Church many remained for life 
 in the order of Deacons ; while others passed through it, with 
 a rapidity as little known among us as the opposite continu- 
 ance in it. Cyprian, who passed hastily through the Dia- 
 conate, and his panegyrist Pontius, 1 who probably never ad- 
 vanced beyond it, afford examples in point. 
 
 It was during the reign of the Emperor Philip, while the 
 Church was free from persecution, that Cyprian was thus 
 adorning the progressive states of a catechumen, of a lay com- 
 municant, and of the Diaconate, by his personal and active piety 
 and charity, and by his works in defence of Christianity, and 
 in illustration of Christian doctrine. Meanwhile one of his 
 great contemporaries was advancing, in a distant part of 
 
 1 Jerome, speaking of Pontius, calls him only " Pontius Diaconus 
 Cypriani." Cat. Script. Ecc. vol. i. p. 187. Nicholas Ferrar is an ex- 
 ample of the like kind in our Church.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 39 
 
 Africa, to the summit of his dignity and reputation ; for it was 
 at this time that Dionysius was appointed to fill the Episcopal 
 throne of Alexandria, vacant on the death of Heraclas, who 
 had been its occupant for sixteen years. 1 The Epistles of 
 Cyprian and of Dionysius form a large part of the authentic 
 materials for the ecclesiastical history of this age : and we 
 shall often have occasion to cite the authority of the Prelate 
 of Alexandria. 
 
 It was probably in December of this year (247) that Cyprian 
 was made a Presbyter. Without distinctively referring any of 
 his acts or writings to this part of his life, Pontius tells us, 
 in general terms, that as he had been active as a layman, so 
 he was also as a Priest. To this season we may probably 
 refer his three books of Testimonies against the Jews : this at 
 least is the conclusion of the Benedictine editors of Cyprian's 
 works, who have well remarked, that the contents, or rather 
 the omissions, of this work, indicate the time at which it was 
 composed ; since it contains no allusions to those events in 
 which the interest and energies of Cyprian were so deeply 
 engaged, during all the remainder of his life ; while even some 
 of his principles are less vividly displayed than they would 
 have been at any subsequent period. In the third book, for 
 instance, he collects several Scriptural testimonies against 
 heretics and schismatics ; but he would have been fuller and 
 more vehement on this point, had he written amidst the very 
 flames and commotions which were excited by heretics in his 
 own diocese. 
 
 The three books into which this work is distributed are 
 addressed to Quirinus, who was probably a young Christian, 
 for Cyprian calls him his dear son. It seems that Quirinus 
 had requested his more accomplished friend to furnish him, 
 from the Scriptures, with the evidences of Christianity; in 
 consequence of which request these books were written. The 
 two first books were given to Quirinus, accompanied with an 
 introductory Epistle, in which Cyprian thus unfolds his plan. 
 " I have comprised the subject of this work in two books of 
 1 Pearson's Annals. Eusebius, vi. 35.
 
 40 Lije and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 nearly equal size; in the first book I have endeavoured to 
 shew, that the Jews, as it had been foretold, had departed 
 from God, and forfeited the favour of the Lord, which had 
 been at first granted to them, and promised to their posterity ; 
 but that Christians, whose faith is the ground of their acceptance 
 with God, have succeeded in their place, out of all nations, 
 and from every quarter of the globe. The second book con- 
 tains a statement of the mystery of Christ ; shewing that He 
 is come, as the prophets had foretold, that He has done and 
 suffered all that had been presignified concerning Him." In 
 the third book, in conformity with another request of Quirinus, 
 Cyprian presents in the words of Scripture, a summary of the 
 duties of Christians ; following the same plan which he had 
 pursued in the two former books, and adding nothing of his 
 own to the citations from holy writ, but the connecting heads 
 of the several sections. 1 For a better understanding of these 
 
 1 Some notion of the contents of these books may be derived from the 
 following heads. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 1. That the Jews grievously offended God, by leaving the Lord, and 
 following idols. 
 
 2. And also because they believed not the prophets, but slew them. 
 
 3. That it was foretold that they should neither recognise, understand, 
 nor receive the Lord. 
 
 12. That the old baptism should cease, and another be instituted. 
 
 1 6. That the old sacrifice should cease to be offered, and that a new one 
 should be offered in its stead. 
 
 1 7. That the old Priesthood should be extinct, that a new Priest should 
 come, whose Priesthood should be eternal. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 I. That Christ is the first -begotten of God, and Himself the wisdom of 
 God, by whom all things were made. 
 
 6. That Christ is God. 
 
 I 1 . That He was to be of the seed of David according to the flesh. 
 
 19. That Christ is the bridegroom, and the Church His bride, from 
 whom a spiritual progeny should spring. 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 16. The benefit of martyrdom. 
 
 24. That we can approach the Father only through Christ.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 4 1 
 
 matters, he remits Quirinus to the Scriptures themselves, 
 assuring him that strength will be given to him as he reads ; 
 and that his insight into sacred things and all spiritual truth 
 will be increased, as he goes through the contents of the Old 
 and New Testaments. 
 
 Thus was Cyprian preparing himself, by a diligent and 
 useful career in the inferior stations of the Church, for the 
 highest order of the Christian hierarchy, to which he was soon 
 most unexpectedly raised. 
 
 25. That no man can enter into the kingdom of God unless he be baptised 
 and regenerated. 
 
 26. That it avails little to receive Baptism and the Eucharist, unless we 
 advance in good works. 
 
 53. That the secrets of God are inscrutable, and that our faith therefore 
 should be implicit. 
 
 54. That none is free from sin and corruption. 
 65. That all sins are cast off in baptism. 
 
 in. That the sacrifices of the wicked are evil. 
 
 116. That he loveth God more, to whom the more sins are remitted at 
 Baptism. 
 
 1 20. That we should continue instant in prayer.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Cyprian chosen Bishop. His attempt to escape. The part of the People 
 in his Election. The Constitution of the Church in the Cyprianic Age. 
 The state of Morals and of Discipline in Cyprian's Diocese, and the 
 Acts and Writings which arose out of the Condition of the Church. 
 The Epistles of Cyprian. The Case of Geminius Victor : Com- 
 memoration of the Dead : The Primitive Practice a Witness against 
 Romish Errors. The Case of the Player : The state of the Stage in 
 Cyprian's Time. The Case of the Rebellious Deacon. The Case of 
 the "ZweiffCLKToi. "Ancient Christianity." 
 
 THE elevation of St Cyprian to the Episcopal throne of 
 Carthage, followed very soon upon his admission to the 
 Priesthood : for at the death of Donatus, 1 in the year 248, 
 the whole body of the people, with the concurrence of by far 
 the greater part of the clergy, demanded Cyprian for their 
 Bishop ; overlooking the youth of the Christian, in the singular 
 merit of the man. The modesty of the young Presbyter, 
 however, would have given place to his seniors ; and he 
 actually withdrew, concealing himself for a while from the 
 eager search of the people. But the providence of God had 
 marked Cyprian as their Bishop ; and when the people had 
 for some time surrounded his house, besieging the door, and 
 searching every passage and retirement in their officious zeal, 
 he appeared at last, baffled in his concealment, before the 
 assembled crowd. The people received him with transports 
 
 1 It is only from a casual expression of Cyprian in one of his Epistles 
 to Cornelius, that we learn the name of his predecessor : Antecessorum 
 nostrorum Fobiani et Donati. Agrippinus, of whom we shall afterwards 
 have occasion to speak, is, I believe, the only Carthaginian Prelate before 
 Cyprian and Donatus, whose name has descended to these times.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 43 
 
 of joy, proportioned to the earnestness of their hopes and 
 
 expectations. Yet his consecration was not wholly free from 
 
 opposition ; for certain Presbyters, who seem to have had 
 
 some previous pique against him, opposed his election, and 
 
 contrived to embitter a considerable portion of his Episcopate 
 
 with their factious and schismatical opposition. So far from 
 
 rigid truth is the boast of Pontius on behalf of his patron, 
 
 " Quidam illi restiterunt, etiam ut vinceret :" some opposed 
 
 him, that his dignity might be graced by his overcoming their 
 
 opposition ; unless indeed it was Pontius's meaning, that he 
 
 overcame evil with good ; for he presently adds, that it was a 
 
 wonder to many how patiently he endured this opposition, 
 
 and how readily he pardoned it, so as to receive his opponents 
 
 into the number of his most intimate and friendly acquaintance. 
 
 St Cyprian is not the only example that antiquity presents, 
 
 of one avoiding the Episcopate so pertinaciously, as to resort 
 
 even to concealment or flight. Indeed there was so much 
 
 of personal risk, so little of temporal advantage, and so great 
 
 a weight of spiritual responsibility, attached to the highest 
 
 pastoral office in a persecuted Church, that it is no wonder 
 
 that many were anxious to escape from the invidious dignity. 
 
 We shall presently find the see of Rome vacant for some 
 
 months, because of the danger which must inevitably beset 
 
 one who should fill it ; and when the election was at last 
 
 made under a favourable aspect of affairs, we shall find 
 
 Cyprian magnifying the virtuous and disinterested courage 
 
 of the man who did not shrink from the mingled duties, 
 
 dangers, and honours, of that station. In the mind of Cyprian, 
 
 however, the fear of danger could have had no place ; and 
 
 it was doubtless his unaffected modesty which prompted his 
 
 intended rejection of the dignity which the acclamations of 
 
 the people of Carthage would have conferred on him. St 
 
 Athanasius, like Cyprian, a man too bold to flee from danger, 
 
 and indeed in no immediate apprehension that it would await 
 
 his elevation to the Episcopate, affords a parallel example. 
 
 Apollinaris the Syrian, as quoted by Sozomen, 1 tells us, that 
 
 1 Sozomen, ii. 17.
 
 44 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, being near his end, was 
 divinely moved to appoint Athanasius his successor. As 
 he lay, therefore, expecting his death, he called aloud for 
 Athanasius, who had fled to avoid the choice which was to 
 fall upon him. An attendant of the same name answered the 
 dying Prelate, who only said, that it was not he whom he 
 called, and continued still to call " Athanasius ! Athanasius !" 
 At length the good Alexander exclaimed with a prophetic 
 impulse, "Thou thinkest to escape, Athanasius; but thou 
 shall not escape." And he was accordingly found by the 
 direction of Providence. 
 
 Nor was the part which the people had in the choice of a 
 Bishop in Cyprian's case at all unusual. SS Ambrose and 
 Augustine present remarkable instances of a like choice. 
 Indeed this seems to have been one of the methods in which 
 God designated certain persons for this high office ; as He 
 did also in other ways, quite beyond our present experience ; 
 and, since He has established the Church in a settled form and 
 order, beside the necessity of the case. It would be almost as 
 unreasonable to wait for the expressed consent of the people 
 in the choice of a Bishop now, or even to give to their 
 acclamations a very material influence, as it would be to 
 expect that his successor should be appointed by Divine 
 admonition in a dream to a dying Bishop, or that a dove 
 should alight upon the head of the person to whom God 
 would direct the choice of His Church. Cyprian, Athanasius, 
 and Fabian, 1 were designated by such means ; but we therein 
 find, not a rule of discipline, but a manifestation of God's 
 special purpose ; not a principle of general application, but 
 a particular interposition of Providence. 
 
 Having now accompanied Cyprian in his elevation through 
 the several orders of the Apostolic Ministry, to the Episcopate, 
 the Sacerdotii sublime fastigium, we may pause for a moment 
 to take a rapid view of the polity of the Church, as it appears 
 in ecclesiastical records of that period. 2 
 
 1 Eusebii, Ecc. Hist, vi. 29. 
 
 2 Those who would acquaint themselves with the minutiae of this ques-
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 45 
 
 The whole body of the Church was divided first of all into 
 two grand divisions, Clergy and Laity : a distinction which 
 was first made by Jesus Christ Himself, and which was guarded 
 most reverently by His Apostles, and by the whole of Christen- 
 dom for many ages : yet Dodwell has to meet the objections 
 of Rigaltius against the primitive authority of this division of 
 the Church, which he does with his usual learning in his first 
 Cyprianic dissertation, de voce cleri sacri ordinis propria. Dod- 
 welPs arguments are still important, for they bear on the posi- 
 tion of all those sects who trace their origin, or that of their 
 Ministry, to lay interference ; in short, to any thing but 
 Apostolical derivation. If there is a Clergy in the Church of 
 Christ, and if the office of the Clergy is not only to minister 
 for men, but to minister from God, then it is clear that some- 
 thing more than the choice of the people or the assumption 
 of the individual is required to give a man a place in the 
 Clergy : and it is equally clear, that the intervening of a few 
 or many successions to an usurped office does not better the 
 position of the last intruder. If A, having no power to 
 ordain, that is to transmit the office of a minister from God, 
 pretends to ordain B, and B to ordain C, and so on to M or 
 N, since none of the intervening persons can transmit more 
 than he received, and B in fact received absolutely nothing 
 from A, who had absolutely nothing to give, then are M and 
 N mere laymen, with this only addition, whether it be of 
 honour or of shame, that they are assuming a sacred office 
 which belongs not to them. 
 
 How many sects are now without Clergy, I will not pretend 
 to say. 
 
 In St Cyprian's time, the distinction between the Clergy 
 and the Laity was so strictly guarded, not only by ecclesias- 
 tical laws, but also by popular opinion and feeling, that it 
 would have been morally impossible for a single person to 
 usurp a single pastoral function without ordination : an in- 
 
 tion, will consult Bishop Sage's principles of the Cyprianic age, with his 
 vindication of that work. Stillingfleet, in his Unreasonableness of the 
 Present Separation, is also pretty full upon the subject.
 
 46 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 trader even into the Deacon's office would have been rejected 
 everywhere with scorn and indignation, and his temerity would 
 have found its proper reward in excommunication. But no- 
 thing can be more unjust than to suppose that the Laity were 
 therefore depressed, or deprived of their proper place and 
 influence in the Church : so far from it, that the very plain- 
 ness of the line of demarcation by which they were separated 
 from the Clergy, giving them a definite position, ensured them 
 also definite privileges. Were the Laity confused with the 
 Clergy, all ecclesiastical affairs must inevitably fall, sooner or 
 later, into the hands of the Clergy ; for they would be the 
 best fitted for them by the habits and opportunities of their 
 office ; and having this direction pointed out to their ambition, 
 they would certainly follow it, unless they were more than men 
 in virtue, and as certainly succeed, unless they were less than 
 men in conduct : l but with a defined province for each, Clergy 
 and Laity have their proper place, from which neither the one 
 nor the other will advance or retire, if they know the real 
 strength of their own position, or consult the real welfare of 
 the whole body. 
 
 We have seen indeed already, in the election of St Cyprian 
 to the Episcopate, how great a voice the people had in those 
 days, when the distinction between Clergy and Laity was most 
 marked ; and many other proofs might be added, shewing that 
 they had a more effectual influence in the ecclesiastical polity 
 of those times. St Cyprian himself always appears most 
 anxious to save their privileges, and to give them their proper 
 place in the body of the Church. 2 
 
 The Clergy, who were set apart for the pastoral office by a 
 solemn Ordination, of which the Bishop was the sole dis- 
 penser, were distinguished into three ranks, Deacons, Pres- 
 
 1 The immense influence of the Clergy in secular affairs during the 
 middle ages, when the case just supposed was reversed, and the Clergy 
 were more secularised, instead of the Laity being more confused with the 
 Clergy, fortifies this reasoning with an ex abundanti example. 
 
 2 I may refer on this head to a little Pamphlet published anonymously 
 by myself some two years past, On, the admission of Lay Members to the 
 Ecclesiastical Synods of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Scotland.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 47 
 
 bytcrs, and Bishops. These had each its defined province 
 distinct from the rest, just as clearly as the Laity distinct from 
 the Clergy. The Bishop was the chief ruler in the Church 
 under God, and the fountain of authority to all the rest ; 
 especially he was the channel through which whatever partook 
 of a sacramental efficacy or character was transmitted from 
 God to the Church. Hence the rule, that nothing should be 
 done %upii 'E-r/axoVou, or civeu yvu/iris rou 'ETHMOKOU : which 
 means something more than that it ought not to be done 
 without the Bishop's sanction ; but that if it were so done, it 
 would be as if not done at all, illegal, and even invalid. So 
 St Ignatius says, that without the Bishop there is no com- 
 munion ; and such passages from other primitive authors 
 might be cited almost without end. 
 
 The distinctive theological office of the Bishop, that which 
 could under no circumstances be committed to any other, 
 that which not only must not be done %upi$ 'ET/<rxoVou, but 
 which must be done by the Bishop, was Ordination. In 
 this were the Bishops always reckoned more especially the 
 successors of the Apostles, and the express ordinance of God. 
 The Presbyterate, which was the next order, had its own 
 functions also, which were derived from the Bishop, but could 
 not be committed to the Deacon, especially the consecration 
 of the blessed Eucharist ; and this order also was referred to 
 the immediate ordinance of Jesus Christ. The last order of 
 the Pastoral Clergy was that of the Deacons, which was in- 
 stituted by the Apostles themselves, and to which were com- 
 mitted other functions and offices, into which the Laity were 
 not permitted to intrude, though they were below those of the 
 Presbyterate. The highest office for which the Deacon was 
 held competent was the administration of Baptism, to which 
 he was ordinarily appointed by permission of the Bishop on 
 the greater festivals, at which the number of candidates was 
 so great, that the Presbyters and Bishops were not sufficient 
 for the task : in some places it seems to have been the 
 common practice for Deacons to baptise. 1 
 
 1 Bingham, Orig. Ecc. II. xx. 9.
 
 48 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 Thus then, in St Cyprian's time, and for all the generations 
 in the Church before it, a proper Episcopacy, in its strictest 
 theological sense, was established. That this Episcopacy was 
 also diocesan, or such that the authority of the Bishop 
 extended over many separate congregations, is equally clear 
 from the whole history of the Church in those days. In 
 Rome there were at this very time forty-six Presbyters, seven 
 Deacons, seven Sub-Deacons, forty-two Acolyths, fifty-two 
 Exorcists, Readers and Ostiarii, with above fifteen hundred 
 widows and poor, dependent on the bounty of the Church. 
 AU these were under the Episcopal jurisdiction, that is, in the 
 diocese of Cornelius : l and when the number of Christians at 
 Rome is estimated from the number of Clergy, officers and 
 poor among them, it will be too absurd to suppose that they 
 were not many Churches, or separate congregations. 
 
 The Churches of Rome 2 and Carthage, together with many 
 others, were also at this time Metropolitan, or Archiepis- 
 copal, as will appear abundantly during the course of this 
 work. This is indeed rather a question of polity than of 
 theology; the Archbishop or Metropolitan being elevated 
 above the Suffragan Bishop not in theological order, but in 
 ecclesiastical rank and power : it is however very satisfactory 
 to see our own ecclesiastical form so exactly paralleled in the 
 primitive Church, and before the alliance with the State can 
 have secularised the Church, or in any way modified her 
 constitution. 
 
 Thus far, then, we are wholly in accordance with the primi- 
 tive Church ; for even the place of the Laity, and their in- 
 fluence in the councils of the Church, which escapes a careless 
 search under another form, is yet found not too minute, but, 
 on the contrary, rather exaggerated, in the alliance of Church 
 
 1 See the letter of Cornelius in Eusebius, Ecc. Hist. vi. 43. In Cyrus, 
 the diocese of Theodoret, there were 600 parishes, or Churches under the 
 government of separate Presbyters. 
 
 2 The highest rank to which the Church of Rome ever attained by right, 
 was to that of a Patriarchal See, which is to Metropolitan Churches what 
 they are to the Suffragan Sees. But it is to be observed, that Britain is 
 not in the Patriarchate of Rome.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 49 
 
 and State, and in the King's supremacy : l and nothing can 
 be clearer than the identity of our constitution both theo- 
 logical and ecclesiastical ; of our Churches Episcopal and 
 Metropolitan, our Episcopate, Presbyterate, and Diaconate, 
 with those of the Church of Carthage in St Cyprian's 
 time. 
 
 The only question which occurs is suggested by the 
 enumeration of ecclesiastical officers before mentioned, who 
 were subject to Cornelius in his Church of Rome ; and we 
 shall meet with the same frequently in Carthage, and 
 other Churches. Even here, however, the difference is 
 not so great as at first sight appears. For first of all, 
 the inferior orders, Subdeacons, Acolyths, and the rest, 
 were never suspected to be of divine appointment, or 
 of necessary use in the Church; nor were they entrusted 
 with any charge approaching to a pastoral or sacramental 
 character. In the next place, though under different names, 
 we have very nearly the same servants of the Church ; 
 Churchwardens, Parish Clerks, Vergers, Sextons, &c., suc- 
 ceeding to all the offices of Subdeacons, Readers, Ostiarii 
 and the rest. One difference we confess, and would gladly 
 see removed, but it is rather in the character of the times, 
 than in the spirit or constitution of the Church : that whereas 
 in Cyprian's time whatever was at all connected with the 
 service of God was regarded with greater reverence ; and so 
 it was required that all persons engaged within the precincts 
 of the Church, even the very servants, should be separated to 
 their occupation by a religious ceremony : now we have re- 
 duced religion within the confines of the smallest province 
 in which she can maintain her state; and the Apostolic 
 principles, and the sentiment which led to consecrations 
 having languished, the very thing itself seems out of date. 
 
 But we must return to St Cyprian in the discharge of his 
 Episcopal office. His attention seems to have been turned, 
 immediately on his elevation, to the restoration of discipline, 
 
 1 See Hooker, Ecc. Pol. viii. 8. It is well to find a saving of important 
 principle in what seems our weakest point.
 
 50 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 which had been much relaxed during the long peace which 
 the Church had enjoyed ; x and in some instances to the cor- 
 recting of most serious abuses, which had crept into the 
 manners even of ecclesiastics. To this end he called in the 
 advice and assistance of his clergy and people, and wrote his 
 Tract de habitu virginum, together with several Epistles, ad- 
 verting to particular cases which called for his interference. 
 
 And now our attention is arrested by the first of those 
 Epistles of St Cyprian, which throw so much light on the 
 history, laws, and principles of the Church in his days. 
 Geminius Victor, an ecclesiastic of the Church at Furni, and 
 not improbably its Bishop, at his death appointed Geminius 
 Faustinus, then a Presbyter, the guardian or executor of his 
 will. The necessity of keeping the Clergy free from the cares 
 of this world, and especially from those duties which would 
 bring them within the precincts of the court of the heathen 
 magistrate, had suggested laws to prevent any of the Clergy 
 from undertaking such an office, under pain of degradation. 
 The civil law, on the other hand, on account of the difficulty 
 with which persons were found to take on themselves places 
 of such trouble and responsibility (the discharge of which, 
 however, was necessary to the proper transaction of affairs), 
 had made it penal to refuse them. The Church, therefore, 
 was obliged to inflict the penalty, in some instances, not on 
 the Clergyman who executed, but on the testator who im- 
 posed, such an office ; and now Cyprian was called upon to 
 enforce the laws of the Church against Victor, who had 
 nominated Faustinus his executor. Accordingly in a letter 
 to the Clergy and people at Furni, he expresses his regret at 
 such a breach of discipline; cites the decision of a former 
 Synod condemning the practice, of which Victor had been 
 guilty; and reasons, in general terms, on the necessity on 
 which the Ecclesiastical Canons on that head were founded. 
 
 1 Sulpicius says, that after the persecution under Severus, the Church 
 enjoyed a peace of thirty-eight years, except when Maximinus persecuted 
 some particular Churches. Africa did not, in all probability, suffer in this 
 partial affliction. See Pearson's Annals.
 
 Life and Times of Si Cyprian. 5 1 
 
 No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this 
 life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier: 
 and if this rule should regulate the life of every Christian, 
 much more of every ecclesiastic, that he may give himself the 
 more entirely to the service of the Altar: on the same 
 principle proceeded the exemption of the Levites, under the 
 Mosaical law, from the cares of this life : and all this was 
 maturely considered by those who made the ecclesiastical 
 rule which Victor has disregarded. " Wherefore," continues 
 Cyprian, "since Victor has dared, contrary to the law lately 
 enacted in Council, to nominate Faustinus his executor, no 
 oblation ought to be made for his death, nor any prayer be 
 offered in his name in the Church : that so we may maintain 
 the decree of the Bishops which was religiously made, and of 
 necessity ; and that a warning may be given at the same time 
 to the rest of the brethren, not to call off the Priests and 
 Ministers of the Altar and Church of God, by the distracting 
 cares of this world." 
 
 This method of enforcing an Ecclesiastical Canon, by for- 
 bidding the mention of the offender, even after his death, in 
 the service of the Church, leads us to consider another primi- 
 tive rule and custom. The oblations of the faithful in the 
 Holy Eucharist were made not only for themselves individu- 
 ally, but for the whole Church; and, of consequence, for 
 the dead in Christ ; who were ever held to be a portion of the 
 Church, as certainly as those who were still living in the flesh : 
 and though the ancient Fathers, with their characteristic 
 caution in handling sacred and mysterious subjects, did not 
 venture to describe what was the specific advantage which the 
 faithful dead might receive from this act; yet they held it 
 highly congruous to suppose (as who will not?) that when 
 the memorials of Christ's death and sacrifice were solemnly 
 celebrated on earth, it was not without some benefit to all who 
 were truly interested in that stupendous act of His love. The 
 Angelic Host they believed to be present at the Holy 
 Eucharist : and as the celebrants communicated with seraphic 
 spirits by their presence ; why should they not also with those
 
 52 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 with whom they might certainly be present in spirit, being 
 mystically joined with them in one body, even Christ's ; and 
 so all His whole Church on earth and in paradise be united 
 by a mutual benefit. 
 
 Nor was there any superstition in the belief, that the 
 prayers of the righteous, especially when assembled as a 
 Church, and sanctified by the celebration of the most sublime 
 mysteries of our faith, might benefit the souls of those who 
 awaited, in their separate state, the full fruition of the bliss. 
 But here, as in the case of oblations, the primitive Church 
 pretended to unravel no mystery ; and sought not to explain 
 or to particularise what was most excellent in its sacred 
 obscurity and generality. As they offered for the blessed 
 dead as well as for themselves, so also they prayed for them, 
 but in both cases without fanaticism, and without superstition. 
 
 In order to the greater interest in this part of the service of 
 the Church, the names of those, for whom offerings and 
 prayers were made, were recited aloud, out of the diptychs or 
 sacred rolls of the Church. Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, 
 the Blessed Virgin, and the Martyrs of the Church, were first 
 mentioned ; and then those pious men who had departed in 
 immediate communion with that particular Church were 
 enumerated in order; especially the Bishops, and other 
 ecclesiastics. Besides the mysterious benefits which might 
 thence accrue to the departed, it was not doubted that this 
 was a fit honour to their name and memory : and to the living, 
 it had this assured benefit ; that it was a great inducement to 
 them to cultivate that unity of the faith, and those virtues 
 which were thus rewarded : that it kept up in their hearts 
 the memory and affections of the dead, with a pious hope of a 
 reunion with them at the resurrection : that it was a marked 
 confession of the great truth which Christ Himself taught, when 
 He said, that God was not the God of the dead but of the 
 living ; viz., that all saints live in and to Him : that even if 
 the dead received not a blessing, yet at least this service per- 
 formed by the living, in piety and charity and hope, was 
 acceptable to God, and so would not miss its reward : that
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 53 
 
 it was an instrument of discipline in the hands of the Church, 
 by which the living might be encouraged to a godly life ; for 
 they could not choose but be excited to virtue by the pious 
 memorial of the blessed, and affected sadly, yet profitably, by 
 the solemn verdict of the Church, which refused the wicked a 
 participation in these honours and benefits. 
 
 The judgment, then, of St Cyprian against Geminius Victor 
 amounted to this ; that his name should not be inserted in the 
 diptychs of the Church, nor any memorial be made of him 
 at the Altar, at which he had once communicated. If this 
 should seem a severe sentence, the necessity of the case 
 should be considered, and the importance of supporting, by 
 every possible means, a canon which seems at first sight 
 wanting in the more rigid moral sanctions. Moreover it 
 should be considered, that this excommunication of Victor 
 after his death, was the infliction only of an ecclesiastical form 
 of discipline, and by no means amounted to a judgment of 
 his state before God ; to whom mercy was still left, though 
 disapproval was the duty of the Church. The conduct of 
 Cyprian is justified, moreover, by the constant practice of the 
 Church, and even by an act of General Council ; for the sixth 
 Council having anathematised Pope Honorius, as a Monothe- 
 lite, after his death, together with several other Bishops, 
 ordered that their names should be erased from the diptychs. 
 And the judgment of a particular Bishop or Church might 
 afterwards be reversed, as in the case of a person excom- 
 municated in his lifetime without sufficient cause : thus when 
 Chrysostom had been unjustly condemned and excommuni- 
 cated, the Western Bishops would not communicate with the 
 Bishops of Egypt, the Bosphorus, Thrace, and the East, until 
 they had restored the name of Chrysostom to the diptychs of 
 his Church. Arsacius, the successor of Chrysostom, was 
 actually deprived of their countenance; which Atticus, the 
 next Bishop, only obtained, by submitting to their just 
 demands. 1 
 
 To those who give only a cursory attention to such matters, 
 1 Theodoreti, Ecc. Hist, v. 34, vol. iii. p. 1076. Ed. Hate, 1769.
 
 54 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 what we have just said may seem to array the Church in the 
 days of St Cyprian on the side of Rome, m her custom of 
 oblations and prayers for the dead, and in her doctrine of 
 purgatory, which grew out of that custom. I must, therefore, 
 point out the difference between the Roman and the primitive 
 practice ; and shew that the latter does not presuppose, but 
 actually refute the doctrine of purgatory. 
 
 The oblations and prayers which were offered for the dead 
 in the Primitive Church were offered not for the unholy, but 
 for the blessed dead ; not for those concerning whose state 
 the Church was in doubt ; but for those concerning whom 
 there was never any question, but that they were received into 
 Abraham's bosom, or Paradise; not, therefore, that they 
 might be delivered from any, I know not what torments, 
 but that their joy might be more full even in their state of 
 expectancy ; and that the time of the consummation of their 
 glory might be hastened : a petition which we make expressly 
 in the words of our Funeral Service, and virtually, whenever 
 we pray, Our Father, Thy kingdom come. 
 
 And therefore it was that the primitive Christians prayed 
 for the greatest saints, and for those only whom they believed 
 to be in their rest in Paradise : and even though they had 
 believed in a purgatory, it was not to such as might be sup- 
 posed to be in that place that these prayers referred; else 
 Geminius Victor, before mentioned, should rather have been 
 the more than the less remembered in the prayers of his 
 Church, for the offence which he had committed. But, in 
 fact, there is not a single vestige of any thing like the doctrine 
 of purgatory till long after the days of Cyprian : and though 
 Augustine certainly gave occasion to the less modest asser- 
 tions of subsequent doctors, by his very guarded expression of 
 a question, whether a place of intermediate purgation might not 
 by possibility exist ; yet even Augustine's modest opinions were 
 not in accordance with the Romish dogmatical assertions, 
 guarded by eternal sanctions. 1 
 
 1 " Constanter teneo purgatorium esse, animasque ibi detentas fidelium 
 suffragiis juvari." " Hanc veram Catholicam fidem, extra quam nemo 
 salvus esse potest." Creed of Pope Pius IV.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 55 
 
 But if prayer for the dead, according to the primitive notion, 
 is incongruous with the doctrine of purgatory, it is perfectly 
 irreconcilable with the practice of praying to the saints, or of 
 using their mediation with God. It were almost impossible 
 to pray first for, and then to or through, any being : but the 
 primitive Christians actually did pray for the Blessed Virgin, 
 the Holy Apostles, and such other saints as Rome now prays 
 to, and makes her mediators. 1 
 
 The Bishop of Exeter, in his letters to Charles Butler, has proved at 
 length that Augustine's notion of purgatory was not the same as that of 
 Rome at the present day. Even Augustine would scarce escape the 
 penalty of damnation for the rejection of this Article ; and certainly all 
 the preceding Fathers of the Church cannot but be condemned. 
 
 1 It is very instructive to see the change made by the gradual perver- 
 sion of doctrine, in those public Prayers which are the very best records 
 of the tenets of a Church : I therefore transcribe the following passage 
 from Bingham's Orig. Ecc. book xv. iii. 15, which bears directly on this 
 point. 
 
 " It appears from all the ancient Liturgies under the name of St Basil, 
 Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzen, and Cyril, that they prayed for all saints, 
 the Virgin Mary herself not excepted. And it is remarkable, that in the 
 old Roman Missal they were used to pray for the soul of St Leo, as 
 Hincman, a writer of the ninth age, informs us, who says the prayer ran 
 in this form, ' Grant, O Lord, that this oblation may be of advantage to 
 the soul of thy servant Leo, which Thou hast appointed to be for the 
 relaxation of the sins of the whole world.' But this was thought so in- 
 congruous in the following ages, that in the later Sacramentaries or 
 Missals it was changed into this form : ' Grant, O Lord, we beseech 
 Thee, that this oblation may be of advantage to us by the intercession of 
 St Leo,' as Pope Innocent the Third assures us it was in his time. And 
 such another alteration was made in Pope Gregory's Sacramentarium. 
 For in the old Greek and Latin edition there is this prayer : ' Remember, 
 O Lord, all Thy servants, men and women, who have gone before us in 
 the seal of the faith, and sleep in the sleep of peace ; we beseech Thee, 
 O Lord, to grant them, and all that rest in Christ, a place of refreshment, 
 light, and peace, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.' But in the 
 new reformed Missals it is altered thus, ' Remember, Lord, Thy servants 
 and handmaids N. and N. that have gone before us, &c.' That they 
 might not seem to pray for saints as well as others that were in purga- 
 tory. Which makes it very probable, that St Cyril's Catechism has also 
 been tampered with, and a clause put in, which speaks of their praying to 
 
 God by the intercession of Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs :
 
 56 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 It seems then, on a careful review of this matter of prayers 
 and oblations for the dead, that we of the English Church 
 are far nearer to the doctrine, principles, and practice of the 
 Primitive Church, than the Church of Rome is : for Rome, 
 apparently continuing the same custom, has connected it 
 with principles and doctrines, together with which the precise 
 custom of the ancients could not stand ; while we, not so 
 obtrusively retaining the custom, yet have retained it in part ; 
 and for the doctrine and principles, maintain them still entire. 
 For we expressly commemorate the dead in the Eucharist ; 
 and with regard to oblations for the blessed dead, for those, 
 that is, for whom they were presented in St Cyprian's time, 
 I defy any one to point out a single principle or doctrine of 
 the English Church which is opposed to it. On the contrary, 
 the commemoration being made in the very prayers in which 
 the oblation also is made, leads obviously to the conclusion, 
 that the offering is for them, as well as for the living mentioned 
 with them : and so far as prayer for the dead is concerned, it 
 is only not condemned, but actually used by the Church over 
 the grave of every departed brother, when she saith, " That it 
 may please Thee of Thy gracious goodness shortly to accom- 
 plish the number of Thine elect, and to hasten Thy kingdom ; 
 that we, with all those that are departed in the true faith of 
 Thy holy Name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, 
 
 since the ancient Liturgies prayed for them as well as for all others. St. 
 Chrysostom says expressly, 'they offered for the Martyrs.' And so it is 
 in his Greek Liturgy, ' We offer unto Thee this reasonable service for the 
 faithful deceased, our forefathers, fathers, Patriarchs, Prophets, and 
 Apostles, Evangelists, Martyrs, Confessors, religious persons, and every 
 spirit perfected in the faith ; but especially for our most holy, immaculate, 
 most blessed Lady, the Mother of God, and ever Virgin Mary." Though, 
 as Bp. Ussher has observed, some of the Latin translators have also given 
 a perverse turn to these words, rendering them thus, ' We offer unto 
 Thee this reasonable service for the faithful deceased, our forefathers and 
 fathers, by the intercession of the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, 
 Martyrs, and all the Saints.' For it sounded ill to the Latin ears to hear 
 St Chrysostom say, the ancient Church prayed for Saints and Martyrs. 
 And yet he says it, not only in the forementioned places, but over and 
 over again in others."
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 57 
 
 both in body and soul, in Thy eternal and everlasting glory ; 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord." Thus we have commem- 
 oration of the dead, and, if I be not greatly mistaken, an 
 oblation for the dead, and prayer for the dead ; the only 
 difference being, that we pray for none by name. 
 
 Now when it is considered that we have so much of the 
 primitive custom, and all the primitive doctrine upon this 
 question ; and that whatever of this custom we have not, we 
 have been obliged to forego on account of the false doctrines 
 which Rome had so connected with the custom, that there 
 was, humanly speaking, no possibility of avoiding her error 
 without modifying her usage : the blame of our partial defi- 
 ciency, if such it be, will surely be laid on those who have 
 robbed us of our right, by their perverse adherence to wrong. 1 
 
 A player, who had left off the exercise of his profession 
 when he embraced Christianity, but still continued to teach 
 it to others, gave occasion to the second of Cyprian's Epistles ; 
 in which he gives the following answer to Eucratius, an 
 ecclesiastic, who had asked, whether such a person ought to 
 be admitted to communion. " I hold it to be inconsistent 
 with sacred and evangelical discipline, that the modesty and 
 honour of the Church should be tainted with the contact of 
 such a person : for if it be contrary to the divine law for men 
 to wear women's garments, how much more so must it be for 
 them to imitate also the manners and gestures of the most 
 abandoned of that sex : nor is the excuse to be heard, that 
 he does not himself appear thus before the public, while he 
 continues to teach others to do so ; for he can scarce be said 
 to have retired from a profession, who is training up to it 
 many successors. If, however, he makes poverty a pretence, 
 let him receive sufficient for his wants, so they be moderate, 
 from your Church ; or if you are poor, he can be amply 
 provided for here : and instead of leading others into the 
 paths of perdition, he may himself learn that which shall be 
 for his everlasting peace." 
 
 1 See on this subject PALMER'S Origines Liturgica, vol. ii. chap. iv. . 
 10. p. 94 et seq. 2d Edition.
 
 58 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 The licentiousness of the theatre St Cyprian had al- 
 ready touched in his Epistle to Donatus. He observes, 
 with evident truth, that while the stage was occupied with 
 the representation of the most monstrous actions that had 
 ever been perpetrated, and while the repetition of the scenic 
 story was accompanied with loud applauses, men were 
 habituated to the forms of vice ; and began to fancy, that 
 what was applauded as done in the days from whence the 
 fable was borrowed, might always be done, and that with 
 honour. Thus crimes, which ought not so much as to enter 
 into people's imagination, were not only not permitted to 
 sink into oblivion, but were converted into examples. Other 
 parts of the dramatic scene were direct stimulants to vice ; 
 so that the woman who went thither virtuous, might return, 
 in inclination at least, thoroughly depraved ; while all was 
 rendered worse, by the gods themselves being represented as 
 criminals, in many cases, so that the people who are ready 
 enough to follow bad example, and to find an excuse for sin, 
 would be led to consecrate every perpetration of wickedness 
 into religion. 
 
 Without at all advocating the modern theatre, I must 
 yet remark, that much of this reasoning of Cyprian is not 
 applicable to our times ; though it was loudly called for by 
 the state of things in his own. Women not being permitted 
 to appear on the stage, all the female parts were sustained by 
 men ; there was a degree of licentiousness and obscenity in 
 the representations of many pieces, which would not now be 
 tolerated on the stage of the most abandoned cities : and 
 above all, the drama was so intimately linked with idolatry, 
 that a Christian could not have taken his part in it, con- 
 sistently with his duty to God, even though there were no 
 other and more direct immorality, inseparable from the profes- 
 sion of a player. 1 Still, however, it will be obvious that the 
 
 1 The profession of an actor was always by the Primitive Church held 
 to be inconsistent with true religion. In the African code of Canons (45) 
 players are grouped with apostates. And the Apostolical Canons ( 14 al 
 1 8) deny Holy Orders to one who has married an actress.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 59 
 
 moral question and its solution is not now wholly different 
 from that which Eucratius put to Cyprian, and Cyprian's 
 answer. If the general tendency of the stage, as it is now 
 conducted, be deleterious to the public principles and morals, 
 we need not doubt on which side such an one as Cyprian 
 should and would place the weight of his authority. 
 
 Cyprian's third Epistle is to an aged Bishop, named 
 Rogatian, who asked his advice as to the course which he 
 ought to pursue with a Deacon, who had so forgotten his 
 station and his duty, as to insult the person and despise the 
 authority of Rogatian. In strict accordance with the prin- 
 ciples of Church government and discipline in his age, 
 Cyprian, declared most explicitly, that it was wholly in 
 Rogatian 's power to proceed against the rebellious Deacon, 
 either to degradation, or to excommunication, as the case 
 required : yet he recommended, first of all, the milder 
 methods of persuasion and reproof; since it is better to 
 overcome reproaches and injuries with patience and clemency, 
 than to overwhelm the offender with the weight of the 
 Episcopal authority. 
 
 But the most painful delinquency against which Cyprian 
 had now to exert his Episcopal authority forms the subject 
 of his fourth Epistle. The experience of the Church during 
 two centuries of persecution had fully justified St Paul's 
 assertion, that for the present distress, celibacy was the better 
 state. It was also recognised by the word of inspiration as 
 an acceptable discipline and instance of self-denial. From 
 these concurring circumstances and Scriptural declarations, 
 a single life was by this time looked on as a state of greater 
 privilege and sanctity, and many of each sex had voluntarily 
 embraced that condition, not binding themselves by any vow, 
 but simply purposing to themselves a religious celibate. l 
 
 1 Such persons in Cyprian's days, and till long after, did not subject 
 themselves to any particular regimen : this is clear from the directions 
 and exhortations in Cyprian's book, de habitu virginum ; and also from 
 the circumstances to which we are now directing our attention, which 
 must have arisen out of the most unbounded licence in the voluntary 
 celibates of both sexes, to follow their own inclination as to the place of
 
 60 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 From this condition, those who were already married were 
 of course excluded : but for those there was a greater refine- 
 ment of asceticism open, by a voluntary continence ; and to 
 this some of them resorted. This discipline, like that of the 
 voluntary celibates, was neither scandalous, nor in itself 
 otherwise than innocent : though it had too much the appear- 
 ance of going beyond what was required by God, to seem wholly 
 wise and safe. But out of it arose a most criminal practice ; 
 for it seems to have suggested to those who had already 
 professed celibacy, the dangerous expedient of choosing one 
 of the other sex, bound by the like vows, with whom they 
 might form a kind of spiritual nuptials, still maintaining their 
 chastity, though, in all things else, living as freely together 
 as married persons. 1 
 
 That there were unworthy motives at the bottom of such 
 a course it would be difficult not to believe : it is however 
 fair to suppose that the delinquents were self-deceived. They 
 had prevailed on themselves to believe that they might thus, 
 
 their residence, and their general deportment. The difficulties also which 
 Chrysostom notes (de sac. III. xvii.) in the sacerdotal government of 
 virgins in the Church, arise out of the same liberty. The following words 
 of Bingham (Orig. Etc. VII. iv. 3.) will sufficiently indicate the pro- 
 gressive restraints which were laid upon professed virgins. Having 
 observed that in Cyprian's days they were not even positively forbidden 
 to marry, he proceeds : " But in the following ages, the censures of the 
 Church were inflicted on them. The Council of Ancyra, [Anno 314.] 
 determined universally against all such as having professed virginity, 
 afterward went against their profession, that they should be subject to 
 the same term of penance as digamists were used to be ; that is, a year or 
 two, as we learn from one of the Canons of St Basil. The Council of 
 Chalcedon [451] orders them to be excommunicated, if they married, but 
 leaves the term of their penance to the Bishop's discretion. The Council 
 of Valence [374] in France is still more severe, forbidding them to be 
 admitted immediately to penance ; and when they were admitted, unless 
 they made full and reasonable satisfaction to God, their restoration to 
 
 communion was still to be deferred " 
 
 1 Non deesse qui Dei templa et post confessionem sanctificata et 
 illustrata membra turpi et infami concubitu suo plus maculent, cubilia 
 sua cum fceminis promiscua jungentes. Ep. vi. p. 12. see also Ep. Ixii. 
 pp. 102-104.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 61 
 
 even more effectually than in any other way, strengthen their 
 religious character, by preserving their celibate, in the midst 
 of such temptations : and there was something in the spiritual 
 union which they did not conceal, not unapt to excite admira- 
 tion, and to fill them with self-complacency. The world, how- 
 ever, refused to view the matter in this light ; and much scandal, 
 as might be expected, ensued. 1 Pomponius, then, a brother 
 Bishop, wrote for St Cyprian's advice, as to the course which 
 he should pursue, and the manner in which he should treat 
 those who had been guilty of this scandalous custom in his 
 diocese; one of whom it seems was a Deacon. Cyprian, 
 after his usual manner, takes a decided view of the case, and 
 does not for an instant temporise with the deceitful reasonings 
 by which such a practice was excused. He declares at once, 
 that the professed celibates with their agapeta had placed 
 themselves within the snares of the devil ; and laments that 
 many had already, as might be expected, fallen a sacrifice to 
 his wiles : he recommends, that those who had offended in 
 this matter, without reference to the truth or falsehood of 
 their assertions of purity, should undergo penance ; that they 
 should then resume their state of professed celibacy, if they 
 still thought it conducive to their Christian character; but 
 otherwise, that they should marry, since, as St. Paul says, it is 
 better to marry than to burn. But if any refused to forego their 
 scandalous custom, they were to be excommunicated, without 
 hope of reconciliation. 
 
 As for the Deacon who was among the number of the 
 delinquents, he had been already excommunicated by Pom- 
 ponius, whose judgment Cyprian approves. 
 
 This whole matter affords us a most useful general lesson, 
 and an awful example of the deceitfulness of sin. It was 
 under the pretence of a singular sanctity that the avvtiffaxroi, 
 voluntarily placed themselves in a position so full of scandal 
 to the Church in general, and of danger to themselves ; and 
 
 1 Quando etsi stuprum conscientue eorum desit, hoc ipsum grande cri- 
 men est, quod illorum scandalo in aliorum ruinas exempla nascuntur. 
 Ibid.
 
 62 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 many of them doubtless, when they were on the verge of 
 losing the very purity which they estimated so highly, were 
 priding themselves on the constancy with which they resisted 
 temptation, and maintained their Christian life. 
 
 We are also forcibly reminded here, that God is the wisest 
 dispenser of our duties ; not only when He is apparently rigid 
 and severe, but also when He is so merciful to our infirmities, 
 that men fancy they can advance in their obedience even 
 beyond what He requires of them. Every step towards the 
 extreme criminality of some at least of the awtiaaxTot, was 
 beyond the law of God, though taken with an avowed in- 
 tention of pleasing Him; and had this course of conduct 
 stopped but one or two steps sooner, we might have been 
 almost disposed to believe, that the voluntary yoke was good 
 to be borne : in other words, that man was in this case wiser 
 than God. But the principle of the mischief was in the 
 voluntary exercise of the married, opposing as it did a plain 
 precept of holy writ; and it advanced still farther in the 
 asceticism of the celibate, also contrary to the spirit of many 
 of the sacred declarations. I need proceed no farther ; I 
 will only observe, that we have still, in the Roman Church, a 
 memorial before us of the truth of the remarks which I have 
 now made : for though Rome has so far profited by the fall of 
 the ffweitaxroi, as to take her celibates under the peculiar 
 protection of the Church, and to enforce a separate habitation 
 for the two sexes, the whole system is scandalous and danger- 
 ous ; and she had certainly better revert to obedience to the 
 word of God, than proceed to the organizing of human 
 devices. We will not deny to Romanists the merit of a good 
 intention, at least in a vast majority of instances ; neither 
 surely can they deny, that some of the blackest stains that ever 
 came upon any Church, or upon any body of men whatever, 
 have proceeded from their system of celibacy. 
 
 Thus far I had written, before an extraordinary attack upon 
 the Church appeared, under the title of Ancient Christianity. 
 The character and the writings of St Cyprian are strangely 
 distorted in this work ; and the case of the ffwsiaaHroi, with
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 63 
 
 St Cyprian's Tract on the attire of virgins, are made, by 
 perversion, abundantly useful in supporting the slanderous 
 representations which are wanted for the suppport of the 
 argument. Mr Taylor's system required, that the celibacy 
 of persons of either sex should be the effect if not of actual, 
 yet at least of moral, force : and so, without the shadow of 
 proof, he speaks of the "rash and unwarrantable vow of 
 perpetual celibacy, or virginity, taken or forced upon multi- 
 tudes of young women, in some moment of artificial re- 
 ligious excitement." l To this representation we have simply 
 to say, that it is false; and without it the whole scheme 
 totters. 
 
 The work of all others in which one would expect to find 
 St Cyprian labouring to produce an artificial religious excite- 
 ment, which should force virgins to devote themselves to a 
 perpetual celibate, is the tract above named, On the Attire of 
 Virgins. Nuns, Mr Taylor explains it ; though he ought to 
 know, that nuns, in the sense in which his reader will under- 
 stand the word, had then no existence ; and though he is 
 manifestly aware, that unless it be thus understood, his reason- 
 ing will lose half its force. This is dishonest, and should 
 have been avoided by one who speaks in this very same page 
 of a similar sophism with becoming reprobation : " How 
 much," he exclaims, " turns often upon an insensible sub- 
 stitution of a technical, for the general and genuine sense of 
 an ethical, term !" 2 How much, we may retort, here turns on 
 the artful substitution of a name, which has been appropriated 
 to an institute unknown in Cyprian's time, and associated in 
 our minds with a large catalogue of evil, which had no place 
 in the world until ages after, for a simple term, sufficiently 
 expressing its object, and not adapted to suggest suspicions, 
 and opprobrious thoughts ! 
 
 Then, again, there is the accomplished management by 
 which a few isolated passages are made to stand as the repre- 
 sentatives of the whole Tract, and of the character of all St 
 Cyprian's writings. To a mind at all versed with the subject, 
 1 Ancient Christianity, p. 72. a P. 75.
 
 64 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 and imbued with the necessity of giving at least some meaning 
 to the words of our Lord and of St Paul on the subject of a 
 life of religious celibacy, even the passages adduced, as they 
 stand in their isolated form, will cause no unfavourable 
 impressions. But when it is remembered, that the treating of 
 any particular virtue almost necessarily leads to the giving to 
 that virtue an undue preference at the time ; the balance 
 being justly struck not on a view of a particular Tract or 
 Homily, but of the whole series of moral discourses of an 
 author or an age ; when it is remembered, that St Cyprian is 
 there expressly speaking of a religious celibacy, and there only 
 in all his works, instead of almost every where, as a careless 
 reader of "Ancient Christianity " would suppose ; and when 
 it is remembered, that even that work alone does really stand 
 free from the blame which Mr. Taylor attaches to it, if it be 
 read as a whole ; when all this is remembered, the argument of 
 "Ancient Christianity" will gain but little from the Tract De 
 Habitu Virginum. 
 
 And if we were to judge of the whole Church, or of any portion 
 of it, by the invectives which are pronounced against certain 
 vices in certain members of it, what would the indignant 
 remonstrances of Bishop Latimer lead us to suppose was the 
 state of England in his day : of the Protestant Court of 
 Edward VI., and of the reformed Church of our fathers ? 
 
 And, if the characters of the very preachers against iniquity 
 were always to be involved in the stain of which they speak 
 (and unless it be on that principle, I know not whence the 
 stigma falls upon those names which Mr Taylor delights to 
 mention) ; where again would be the character of every bold 
 reprover of vice in every age ? 
 
 And what can be a more satisfactory proof of the purity of 
 the Christian Church, as a society, from any particular vice, 
 than the indignant reprobation of that vice by all who hint at 
 it, and its denunciation by several Councils? 1 Perhaps it 
 
 1 The learned reader may turn to Dodwell's third Cyprianic Disserta- 
 tion, for much learning on the whole of this matter ; and for the voice of 
 Fathers and Councils, to sect. 3 of that Dissertation.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 65 
 
 may signify little to Mr Taylor, that there is in the Apostles' 
 Creed such an Article as " THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH ; " 
 but we confess that we should scarce prove its /witness very 
 satisfactorily, if we found in all its safeguards of virtue, and 
 all its repudiation of vice, nothing but the symptoms of 
 leprosy, or the indications of a moral plague. 
 
 If Mr Taylor himself had not zealously laboured to dis- 
 abuse us of such an opinion, we should have been in .danger 
 of taking his book for the work of a man half learned 
 at most, who had heaped together by the use of indexes 
 all the passages which seemed to serve his impure purpose 
 by some mention at the very least of impurity, though to 
 condemn it : and that without reading a single entire page, 
 still less a single entire treatise, he had concluded, that all was 
 alike impure, or capable of easy misrepresentation. 
 
 But this at least is certain. That Mr Taylor has com- 
 menced the study of the Fathers with a sinister purpose, 
 with a mind early infected with the spirit of dissent, at an 
 age when it was too late for him to acquire that tact, without 
 which the theological, and even the profane literature of 
 an age, can never be understood and appreciated. Such 
 being his object, and such his qualifications for the task, 
 the irreverent and the impure will revel in his pages, if they 
 be unlearned; but all the really learned will see through 
 his artifice or imperfect information, whichever it may be : 
 and the Church of God, which has withstood the attacks of 
 moral persecution from many a stronger hand, will weep as 
 she receives the blow, not at her own discomfiture, but at the 
 impiety of her son.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Revolutions in the Roman State. Their influence on the condition of the 
 Church. Edicts of Decius. The Persecution commences. Some 
 retire from Carthage among whom St Cyprian himself. Cyprian's 
 reasons for retiring. Plis care of the Church while absent. His letter 
 to the Confessors. The insinuations of the Roman Clergy against 
 Cyprian : and Cyprian's answer to their Epistle. The Progress of the 
 Persecution.: The sufferings of Mappalicus, and other Confessors and 
 Martyrs. 
 
 WHILE St Cyprian was engaged in restoring that discipline 
 which a long peace had relaxed, the Roman state was con- 
 vulsed by a rapid succession of rebellions. Within the space 
 of six months the two Philips were slain ; a traitor, who had 
 assumed the imperial name, expiated his treason with his 
 blood ; and the imperial dignity descended on one no better 
 entitled to it than the rebel whom he had chastised. Early 
 in the summer of the year 249 a rebellion broke out among 
 the legions of Mcesia, who invested an inferior officer named 
 Marinus with the purple. Decius marched against the upstart, 
 who was soon after murdered : and Decius, who left Rome 
 the general of Philip, returned in the imperial robes, to hurl 
 his former master from the throne. The elder Philip met the 
 traitor with an army of superior numbers, but the appeal to 
 arms was unsuccessful : he was routed, and in a few days 
 slain at Verona ; and soon after, his son and associate in the 
 empire, the younger Philip, was murdered at Rome by the 
 praetorian guard. This was in August : in September, Decius 
 proclaimed himself emperor, throwing off all pretences of 
 allegiance, which he had hitherto affected to maintain ; and
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 67 
 
 in October he was received at Rome with the acclamations of 
 the people and senate. 
 
 To the citizens of Rome it was comparatively unimportant 
 whether Philip, or Marinus, or Decius, reigned; but to the 
 Christians throughout the empire it was far otherwise. These 
 revolutions were the signal of a bitter persecution. Philip had 
 always been favourable to Christianity, and Eusebius tells us, 
 that it was even reported by some that he was a Christian : 
 but Decius was warmly attached to the superstitions of his 
 forefathers ; was alarmed possibly at the number of Christians 
 who might be expected to resent the death of Philip, and 
 certainly was not the more kindly disposed towards Christians, 
 for Philip's encouragement of the Church. The reign of 
 Decius commenced, therefore, with an edict against the 
 Christians, directed to the magistrates throughout the empire; 
 in which he commanded that the Christians should be driven 
 to apostacy, and to the worship of the heathen deities, by 
 every motive of fear and force ; threatening the infliction of 
 severe penalties, and even tortures, upon the magistrates 
 themselves, if they should neglect to execute this decree in 
 all its rigour. The officers in the several provinces, thus 
 stimulated to a cruel persecution, immediately entered upon 
 their odious charge ; and seemed to make it an occasion of 
 increasing their ingenuity, as well as cruelty, in the arts and 
 infliction of torture. Many were thrown into prison, many 
 were scourged, and new and strange instruments of torture 
 were exhibited, to intimidate the appointed victims ; and in 
 many instances death was the only favour which the judge 
 conferred on the trembling and agonised confessor and 
 martyr. 
 
 The letters of Dionysius of Alexandria, preserved by Euse- 
 bius, give some account of the persecution which followed on 
 this edict in Egypt ; though he tells us at the same time, that 
 a popular fury, which often ended in horrid violence and 
 murder, had already been excited against the Christians of 
 Alexandria by a poet, who had employed his art in uphold- 
 ing the ancient superstitions, and exciting his fellow-citizens 
 
 c 2
 
 68 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 against the Christians. This letter of Dionysius, together 
 with the Epistle of St Cyprian, to which we shall presently 
 refer, affords a sufficiently correct view of what was passing 
 throughout Christendom : nor shall we find any lack of such 
 descriptions of particular cases of suffering and constancy, as 
 may give to the general history the necessary, though in this 
 case painful, interest of individual and personal details. 
 
 The first step which was taken on the publication of the 
 edict of Decius seems to have been, the appointing a day on 
 which all who were accused or suspected of being Christians 
 should be required to renounce their faith, and sacrifice to 
 the heathen gods. Meanwhile they were suffered to remain 
 unmolested in possession of their own property, and without 
 any farther sacrifice of their rights, as subjects and citizens. 
 There was sufficient leniency here towards the persons of the 
 brethren, but a cruel policy against the faith of the Church ; 
 for there was no more likely method than this to make 
 apostates. The measure of suffering which he might have 
 to expect on the appointed day, was yet unknown to the 
 Christian ; and he had no ground to look for anything short 
 of the most cruel torments and a lingering death. Space was 
 given to brood upon this danger ; and the Church had not 
 been composed of men, if there had not been found many to 
 shrink from torture and death by a denial of their holy faith ; 
 especially since this, too, was made easy to them by many 
 devices, which ensured to the apostates the safety, without the 
 public exposure, of their recusancy. 
 
 Many, in express obedience to the precept of our blessed 
 Lord Himself, who taught His disciples, when persecuted in 
 one city to flee to another, retired from Carthage, leaving their 
 possessions as the price of their life ; and perhaps (since some 
 of them doubtless fled from their distrust of their own forti- 
 tude), as a price of their Christianity also. These certainly 
 did well, and reasoned justly, and received a reward in pro- 
 portion to their integrity and faith ; although, as we shall find 
 hereafter, they avoided not the sneers and reproof of their 
 more courageous brethren. " Let no one, my beloved
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 69 
 
 brethren," says Cyprian, in his Treatise on the Lapsed, "let 
 no one derogate from the honours of those who thus main- 
 tained their integrity, nor cast any reproach upon their con- 
 fession. When the appointed day had passed, whoever had 
 not yet denied himself to be a Christian, had in fact confessed 
 the faith of Christianity. The first title to the crown belongs 
 indeed to those who confess their Lord in the hands of the 
 heathen ; but to reserve one's self in the faith and service of 
 the Lord, by a cautious retreat, is only second to that highest 
 point of glory. The first is a public confession, the latter is 
 a private confession. The first is a conquest over the judge 
 of this world ; the latter is the maintaining a pure conscience, 
 and integrity of heart, content with the testimony of God 
 alone. On the one hand is the greater and more cheerful 
 endurance ; on the other a wiser and safer caution. One man 
 is found ready, when the hour of suffering approaches ; but 
 another is perhaps only reserved for a future trial, having al- 
 ready sacrificed his fortune, that he might not abjure the faith." 1 
 Those who fled of course suffered proscription, and con- 
 fiscation of goods ; while those who remained, but neither 
 sacrificed to heathen gods, nor otherwise denied their faith, 
 were banished, or cast into prison, there to await the more 
 vigorous proceedings of the proconsul, when he should arrive 
 at his province. St Cyprian himself was among those who 
 avoided persecution by an early retreat : not, however, before 
 he had seen ample indications, that against him especially, 
 as the Bishop of the Church, the fury of the heathens would 
 be excited ; not before the circus and the amphitheatre had 
 again and again echoed the voices of the people, calling out 
 that he should be cast to the lions ; and not before (which is 
 far the most important) he had become fully convinced by the 
 best consideration, and, as he himself tells us, by a warning 
 also from heaven, that he should thus be fulfilling his duty to 
 God and His Church more perfectly. Under these circum- 
 stances it was, that he followed the precept of the Lord, as he 
 himself assures the Roman Clergy ; 2 and at the first outbreak 
 1 De Lafsis, p. 182. 2 Ep. xiv.
 
 70 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 of popular fury, when the cries of the people were swelled 
 with loud threatenings against him, consulting not so much 
 his own safety, as the welfare of the flock committed to his 
 charge, he made his retreat ; lest by his inopportune and 
 illjudged presence, the commotion already so violent, should 
 be still more increased. 1 On this retreat Csecilius Cyprian 
 was proscribed by name, and his estate confiscated. 2 
 
 We know not the place of St Cyprian's first retreat, nor 
 the names of any of his companions, except Victor his 
 Deacon : he tells us, however, incidentally, that he had not 
 retired from Carthage, without leaving so much of his 
 property, as he was enabled to appropriate, for the benefit of 
 the poor of his diocese ; committing it, for that purpose, to 
 the Presbyter Rogatian : and we have presently sufficient 
 indications, that if absent in body, he was yet in spirit present 
 with his flock ; sparing neither exertion, nor prayers, nor 
 eucharistic commemorations, nor frequent directions, encour- 
 agements, and reproofs, to preserve them in the true faith of 
 Christ, and within the bonds of Apostolical order. 
 
 He was careful, therefore, through the medium of Tertullus, 3 
 of whom he speaks with much affection, to receive constant 
 intelligence from Carthage ; and he made up for his absence, 
 as much as possible, by his frequent letters to the Clergy, and 
 to the people of his Church. He begins, in Epistle V. with 
 the necessary provisions for maintaining discipline in his 
 absence. Having acknowledged the good providence of God 
 in his present security, he exhorts his Clergy to give the 
 greater diligence to the affairs of the Church : since his part 
 in them had now devolved on their management ; and since 
 the state of Carthage, and his own office, more obnoxious to 
 popular vengeance, permitted not his return. With prudence, 
 
 1 St Cyprian is not the only person who has avoided persecution by 
 flight under the like circumstances. " His contemporaries, Dionysius of 
 Alexandria, and Gregory of Neocsesarea, had fled also ; as had Polycarp 
 before them, and Athanasius after them." See chap. xii. of " The 
 Church of the Fathers ;" in which is an admirable view of the principles 
 of the Church of Christ on this subject. 
 
 2 Ep. Ixix. 3 Ep. xxxvii. p. 50.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 71 
 
 and a total absence of all fanaticism, he exhorts them to a 
 proper care to restore all things to peace and quiet, if it were 
 possible ; and he suggests a present rule of conduct to this 
 end, that the Presbyters, whose office it was to visit the con- 
 fessors in their prisons, should not crowd about them in too 
 great numbers; but that they should go separately, each 
 attended with his single Deacon ; that the attention of the 
 heathen might not be arrested, nor their suspicions needlessly 
 excited ; that the Priests might not be debarred the exercise 
 of their duty in administering the Holy Eucharist to their 
 imprisoned brethren, nor they be deprived of the privileges 
 of communion : " for we ought," says he, " as servants of 
 God, to adapt ourselves to the present times, meekly and 
 humbly ; to concert means of quiet, and to have respect even 
 to the feelings of the people." 
 
 The same real wisdom is manifest in all his letters under 
 these trying circumstances. In his seventh Epistle, for 
 instance, he writes to his Clergy, " I salute you, dearest 
 brethren, being through God's blessing in safety; and I 
 would that I might soon obtain permission from heaven, and 
 find fitting occasion to return to you, both to your joy and 
 my own. For what would both my pleasure and spiritual 
 interest point out as the best place for me, but that in which 
 the providence of God made me a Christian. But however 
 trying it may be to remain still separated from you, it is my 
 first duty to promote the peace of the community, and to 
 remain here ; lest my return should excite the rage and malice 
 of the Gentiles, and I, who ought to consult peace in all that 
 I do, should become the chief occasion of violence." In this 
 letter, St Cyprian makes mention of a supply out of his own 
 patrimony, which he had left behind him for the use of the 
 pensioners of the Church ; and he mentions a farther supply 
 which he thus sent by his Acolyth Naricus; and makes 
 suitable arrangements for its distribution. 
 
 St Cyprian's sixth Epistle 1 is addressed to Sergius, Rogati- 
 anus, and the other confessors in prison; to those, that is 
 1 Ep. Ixxxi. in the Benedictine Edition.
 
 72 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 who had refused obedience to the edict of Decius, before the 
 magistrates of Carthage; and were remitted to confinement 
 until the arrival of the Proconsul with higher powers. The 
 terms of high praise and of respect in which he addresses 
 these sufferers for the name of Christ, may prepare us to hear 
 of their future elation, when we consider how very difficult it 
 is for men to bear the praise of their fellow-creatures, without 
 vanity and presumption : yet from Cyprian, whose adherence 
 to the cause of Christ was of a different complexion, and 
 though equally sincere, yet wanting in the splendour of a 
 public confession, and continued sufferings before the eyes of 
 the people, those expressions of deep reverence come with a 
 peculiarly good grace. " Would," says he, " that the present 
 state of affairs would permit me to visit you in person : for 
 what could now fill me with greater joy, than to embrace you 
 again, and to receive the pressure of those arms, which have 
 retained their purity amid the temptations to idolatry, and 
 still held fast the faith of our Lord ? What so delightful, what 
 so ennobling, as to touch those lips which have uttered a 
 glorious confession : and to be seen by those eyes, which have 
 looked down upon this world, and shewn themselves worthy 
 of the beatific vision ? But since so great a privilege is denied 
 me, I send these letters to you in my place ; at the same time 
 congratulating you, and exhorting you to farther perseverance, 
 that you may stand fast in your professions, and persist in your 
 heavenly path, until you receive the crown of glory ; having 
 that God for your defender and keeper, who saith, Lo ! I am 
 with you always, even unto the end of the world. O blessed 
 prison, which your presence has illuminated : O blessed 
 dungeon, which is but as the next step to heaven ! O dark- 
 ness more splendid than the sun itself, so long as it contains 
 living temples of our God, even your bodies sanctified by a 
 divine confession ! Now you need no other occupation than 
 to meditate on those divine precepts and loving commands, 
 with which the Holy Spirit has continued to animate you to 
 the endurance of suffering. Think not then of death, but of 
 immortality ; think not of temporary torment, but of eternal
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 73 
 
 glory ; since it is written, Precious in the sight of the Lord is 
 the death of His saints : and again ; A broken spirit is a sacrifice 
 to God, a broken and a contrite heart God doth not despise : and 
 again ; where holy writ speaks of those divine torments which 
 consecrate the martyrs of God, and sanctify them by the very 
 endurance of suffering: 'Though they be punished in the 
 sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality. And 
 having been a little chastised, they shall be greatly rewarded : 
 for God proved them, and found them worthy for Himself. 
 As gold in the fire hath He tried them, and received them as 
 a burnt-offering. And in the time of their visitation they shall 
 shine, and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble. 
 They shall judge the nations and have dominion over the 
 people, and their Lord shall reign for ever.' " l 
 
 Cyprian proceeds to some appropriate exhortations ; and 
 we learn from his letter, that women and children were not 
 free from this persecution, nor wanting in that divine grace, 
 which enabled them to witness a good confession. He men- 
 tions with especial praise Rogatian and Felicissimus, two 
 ecclesiastics, who had borne the first outrage of heathen 
 violence, preparing as it were for their brethren, mansions in 
 the prison house, and a way to heaven through violence and 
 death : and he does not conclude without a prayer, that those 
 whom God had made confessors, He would still continue to 
 bless, until their first steps to glory should be consummated 
 with the martyrs' crown. 
 
 While St Cyprian was thus earnestly engaged in fulfilling 
 his duty towards his flock, though absent, reports had gone 
 abroad to his disadvantage ; and at Rome he had been re- 
 presented rather as a renegade than as a faithful but prudent 
 man, acting himself upon those high principles of duty, which 
 he openly recommended to others in the like case. 
 
 It seems doubtful whether the Roman Clergy had heard of 
 
 Cyprian's retreat from his enemies; or whether they had 
 
 heard it only imperfectly, and without any of the peculiar 
 
 circumstances which forced the Bishop to a temporary retreat 
 
 1 Wisdom iii. 4-8.
 
 74 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 for the benefit of his people. At any rate, they had not yet 
 been told, for there had not been time for this, of that great 
 diligence in his charge which, as they themselves afterwards 
 confessed, made him as it were present with his flock, though 
 in person he was absent from them. Looking upon Carthage, 
 therefore, as a deserted Church, and being themselves de- 
 prived of their Bishop by the martyrdom of Fabian, they 
 wrote to Carthage a letter, in which they offered many sug- 
 gestions, in harmony with the directions which Cyprian had 
 already given, for the better government of the Church ; and 
 in which they glanced somewhat severely at the conduct of 
 the absent Bishop. There can be little advantage in tran- 
 scribing strictures which evidently took their rise from a false 
 report, or at least a misapprehension : one passage, however, 
 I cannot refrain from copying (though it is not quite free from 
 insinuations against St Cyprian), since it gives us a fair de- 
 scription of the Church of Rome at that time. " We do not," 
 say the clergy of Rome to their brethren at Carthage, " send 
 you bare exhortations, but they are enforced, as you may 
 easily learn from those who have seen our state, by our ex- 
 ample. By God's grace we have done, and yet do, according 
 to our precepts, notwithstanding the extreme peril in which 
 we stand ; for we have the fear of God, and eternal torments, 
 rather than man's anger, and a short suffering, before our 
 eyes; and thus encouraged, we leave not the brethren for- 
 saken, but continually warn them to constancy in the faith, 
 and preparation to meet the Lord. Thus we have even re- 
 called some to their duty, who were going up to the Capitol 
 by restraint, to offer sacrifice, or openly to apostatise. Our 
 Church stands firm ; though some indeed have fallen, either 
 from the extremity of terror, or because they were remarkable 
 for their station, and the more exposed to the fear of man : 
 whom, however, even in their separation from us, we do not 
 utterly abandon ; but we exhort them to repentance, that they 
 may obtain pardon from Him who can alone bestow it ; lest 
 being utterly forsaken by us, they should become worse." 1 
 
 1 Ep. ii.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 75 
 
 Crementius, the Subdeacon, who was the messenger of the 
 Roman Clergy to Carthage, carried also a letter to St 
 Cyprian, giving an account of the martyrdom of Fabian. 
 This letter was so expressed, as to convey a tacit reproof to 
 Cyprian for his retreat. I shall give Cyprian's answer entire. 1 
 
 "Cyprian to his brethren the Presbyters and Deacons of 
 Rome, Health ! When there was an uncertain rumour, 
 dearest brethren, among us, of the departure of that excellent 
 man my colleague, 2 and we were doubtful what to think, I 
 received your letters at the hands of Crementius the Sub- 
 deacon, by which I was fully informed of his glorious exit ; 
 and I was exceedingly rejoiced, that the honour of its close 
 was worthy of the integrity of his administration. I congratu- 
 late you very highly, because you perpetuate his memory in 
 so illustrious a testimony; so that through you I am ac- 
 quainted with the splendid reputation of your Bishop, and an 
 example of faith and virtue is thus afforded me. For the fall 
 of a Bishop is not more pernicious as an example of defection, 
 than his fidelity is useful and salutary for the imitation of his 
 brethren. I have also read another letter, in which it is not 
 clearly expressed either by whom or to whom it was written ; 
 and since both its character and contents, and the paper 
 itself, raised a doubt in me, whether it had not been mutilated 
 or corrupted, I have sent back to you the identical letter, that 
 you may yourselves discover whether it is the same which you 
 sent by Crementius the Subdeacon : for it is a matter of the 
 utmost importance, if the integrity of the letters of the clergy 
 is rendered questionable by deception or fraud. That I may 
 know this, therefore, examine carefully, whether the writing 
 and subscription be yours, and return to me the true account 
 of the matter. I wish you, dearest brethren, continued 
 health." 
 
 This mention of the death of Fabian, Bishop of Rome, 
 opens to us an altered view of the present persecution. It 
 was before observed, that the Christians were not, generally 
 at least, immediately put to death ; but that some days were 
 
 1 Ep. iii. - Fabian, Bishop of Rome.
 
 76 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 allowed for them to determine whether they would sacrifice 
 their rights as subjects, or their religion ; and that those who 
 confessed Christ at the expiration of that term, were then 
 banished, or committed to prison, until the Proconsul of each 
 province should arrive, to enforce a more rigorous sentence. 
 But still death was the ultimate sanction of the imperial 
 edicts : and in Rome, where they were first published, would 
 the interval soonest expire between their mildest and their 
 most severe execution. Accordingly, Fabian first fell a sacri- 
 fice to the inhuman edict of Decius : Alexander Bishop of 
 Jerusalem, and Babylas of Antioch, succeeded in due time ; 
 and the persecution being directed more especially against 
 the Bishops of the several Churches, as St Cyprian himself 
 assures us, the Prelates of various Churches received the crown 
 of martyrdom ; while others, among whom were Gregory 
 Thaumaturgus and Dionysius Alexandrinus, sought security, 
 as] Cyprian did, in a temporary retreat ; the Jatter Prelate, as 
 well as Cyprian, pleading an express revelation from heaven 
 as his warrant. 1 
 
 Fabian, who had filled the Roman see fourteen years, 
 received his crown on the twentieth of January, in the year of 
 grace 250. Soon after, Moyses and Maximus, of whom we 
 shall hear more presently, and Nicostratus a Deacon, were 
 cast into prison ; and Celerinus, of a family of martyrs, 2 was 
 summoned before Decius, and after many torments was im- 
 prisoned nineteen days. By the time that a report of these 
 things had reached Carthage, the persecution had assumed 
 there also the same violent form. The Proconsul arrived at 
 Carthage probably about the beginning of April, nearly at the 
 same time at which Crementius came from Rome, with letters 
 to Cyprian, and to the Clergy at Carthage. Those who were 
 already imprisoned were treated with greater rigour: they 
 
 1 Eusebius, vi. 40. 
 
 1 " Avia ejus Celerina jam pridem martyrio coronata est : item patruus 
 ejus et avunculus Laurentius et Egnatius, in castris et ipsi quondam saecul- 
 aribus militantes, sed veri et spiritales Dei milites, dum diabolum Christi 
 confessione prosternunt, palmas a Domino et coronas illustri passione 
 meruerunt." Ep. xxxiv.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 77 
 
 were macerated with hunger and thirst, and thus prepared to 
 experience the most savage tortures, or death itself. A general 
 view of this stage of the persecution may be collected from 
 St Cyprian's Epistles, written at this time, which will also 
 afford us some instances of individual suffering and constancy. 
 I shall transcribe the first of his Epistles (No. X.) to the 
 martyrs and confessors on this occasion, as affording not only 
 a description of the sufferings of the Christians of these 
 times ; but also an example of the manner in which their 
 Bishop fulfilled his part as a ruler of the flock, and as their 
 friend and counsellor in all spiritual matters. 
 
 " Cyprian to the martyrs and confessors, continued health 
 in Christ our Lord, and in God the Father. 
 
 " I am exceeding glad, and heartily congratulate you, 
 brethren, most blessed in your great endurance, when I hear 
 of your faith and courage, in which your Mother the Church 
 triumphs. Indeed she triumphed before, when a judicial sen- 
 tence drove the confessors of Christ into exile, without shaking 
 their constancy. But your present confession is as much more 
 glorious and honourable than that, as the sufferings have been 
 greater, through which it has been maintained. The combat 
 has been greater, and greater has been the glory of the com- 
 batants. You have not been deterred from the contest, but 
 you have been rather the more excited to the battle, by the 
 prospect of torture : and you have returned, firm and un- 
 daunted, with an unshaken devotion, to the struggles of the 
 hottest engagement. Some of you, I hear, have already been 
 crowned ; some are pressing towards the crown of victory, and 
 stand ready to grasp it ; and all the glorious band, upon whom 
 the dungeon has closed, are animated with an equal and 
 mutual ardour to carry on the contest. This is as it ought to 
 be with the soldiers of Christ in the army of the saints ; that 
 effeminacy may not enervate, that threats may not terrify, that 
 racks and tortures may not move the integrity and stability of 
 their faith : since He is greater who is in us than he who is in 
 the world ; and no earthly infliction has greater power to cast 
 us down than the Divine help has to support us. Of this we
 
 78 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 have the proof before our eyes in the glorious contest of those 
 of our brethren, who were the leaders in this conquest of tor- 
 tures ; and afforded an example of constancy and faith, while 
 they rushed again and again on the battle, until the battle was 
 overcome. In what words shall I proclaim your praises, O 
 brethren, most invincible ! With what device of the herald 
 shall I blazon the strength of your fortitude, the endurance of 
 your faith ! You have borne the most exquisite tortures, even 
 to the consummation of your glory ; nor have you yielded to 
 torment, but rather torment has yielded to you. Your martyr- 
 dom has crowned those sufferings, to which your tortures 
 refused to put an end. The severity of infliction was thus 
 continued, not to the overthrow of a dauntless faith, but that 
 it might transport men more rapidly to their Lord. The spec- 
 tators wondering at the celestial contest, the contest of God, 
 the spiritual contest, the battle of Christ, saw His servants 
 standing, with a determined voice, with a mind untainted, 
 with heavenly virtue ; without the arms of this world, indeed, 
 but strong in the panoply of faith. The tortured stood more 
 unmoved than their torturers ; and the crushed and lacerated 
 limbs overcame the instruments of cruelty. The fierce and 
 often repeated lash could not overcome their invincible faith, 
 although their very vitals were laid open with repeated stripes, 
 and the frequent blow fell not on the body, but on the wounds 
 of the servants of God. The effusion of blood might have ex- 
 tinguished the flames of persecution, might have assuaged the 
 very fires of hell with its glorious stream. O how noble was 
 that spectacle ! In the eyes of the Lord how sublime ! How 
 great, how acceptable in the sight of God, that fulfilment of 
 the oath, that pledge of the devotion of His soldiers ! since it 
 is written in the Psalms, the Holy Spirit speaking also to us, 
 Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. This 
 is indeed a precious death, which has purchased immortality ; 
 which has received the crown as the consummation of virtue. 
 How did Christ then rejoice ! How willingly did He fight and 
 conquer in such servants of His ; confirming their constancy, 
 and giving to all those who believed in Him according to their
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 79 
 
 faith ! He was present, as if the contest were His own : He 
 strengthened, encouraged, and animated those who fought .(or 
 Him, and for the honour of His name : and He who once 
 conquered death for us, continues to conquer death in us. 
 When they shall deliver you up, says He, think not what ye shall 
 say; for in that hour it shall be given you what ye shall say; 
 for it is not ye who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who 
 speaketh in you. The present combat afforded an evidence of 
 this truth. A word full of the Holy Spirit broke from the 
 mouth of the most blessed martyr Mappalicus, when he ex- 
 claimed, in the midst of his tortures, to the Proconsul, To- 
 morrow shall you see a struggle indeed! And what he said 
 with the witness of a courageous faith, the Lord Himself ful- 
 filled. The heavenly struggle was seen ; and the servant of 
 God received his crown in the height of the anticipated con- 
 test . . . This is the struggle which the Apostle Paul 
 describes, in which we ought to run so as to obtain the crown 
 of glory : Know ye not, says he, that they which run in a race 
 run all, but one receiveth the prize ? So run, that ye may obtain. 
 And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all 
 things. Ncnu they do it to obtain a corruptible crown ; but we 
 an incorruptible. Again, describing his own contest, and in 
 immediate anticipation of being offered up, he says, For I am 
 now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. 
 I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept 
 the faith : henceforth there is laid up for me a crcnvn of righteous- 
 ness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that 
 day : and not to me only, but unto all them also that loi-e His 
 appearing. 
 
 "This struggle, therefore, appointed by the Lord, under- 
 gone by Apostles, Mappalicus, in his own name and in the 
 name of his companions, promised that the Proconsul should 
 see. Nor did he disappoint the expectation that he had 
 excited : he exhibited the contest he had promised ; he bore 
 off the palm which he deserved. Let me, then, exhort those 
 of you who remain to follow that most glorious martyr, and 
 the rest who shared in his engagement ; who were patient in
 
 8o L ifc and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 tribulation, who were victorious over the rack, and stood like 
 soldiers and comrades unbroken in faith. That those whom 
 the bond of one confession and the walls of the dungeon 
 have already associated, may also be associated in the con- 
 summation of virtue and the heavenly crown. That you may 
 dry, by your joy, those tears of your Mother the Church, 
 which she sheds over the fall and ruin of many; and that you 
 may confirm those, who are yet unshaken, by your example 
 of endurance. When your turn shall arrive, and you too 
 shall be called to the fight, quit yourselves valiantly, and 
 endure with constancy; well assured that you fight under 
 the eyes of the Lord, who is present with you, and that you 
 march to glory through the confession of His name. He is 
 not such a master as to look on His servants from afar ; but 
 He Himself struggles together with them ; with them He 
 advances to the conflict : He Himself, in the successful issue, 
 both bestows and receives a crown. 
 
 "If, however, the Lord should grant peace to the Church, 
 before your day of conflict arrive, still yours is the unshaken 
 purpose, and yours a conscious deserving of glory. Nor let 
 any of you be moved to envy by the apparent superiority of 
 those who have endured torments before you, and arrived by 
 a glorious journey to the Lord, having trampled a conquered 
 world under their feet. The Lord is a discerner of the hearts 
 and the reins ; He sees through our secret thoughts, and looks 
 into our inmost heart. The testimony of Him alone, who is 
 to award it, will be sufficient to secure you the crown. Either 
 condition, therefore, dearest brethren, is alike noble and 
 illustrious; it is safer to hasten to the Lord fresh from the 
 victory ; it is more joyous, having served with honour, to 
 receive for a while the praises of the Church. O how blessed 
 is our Church become ; bright with the approval of God, 
 illustrious with the glorious blood of her martyrs. She was 
 already white with the works of her sons ; now she is red 
 with the blood of martyrs : neither the lily nor the rose is 
 wanting in her coronal. Now let each one of you contend 
 for the full possession of either dignity : let him receive
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 81 
 
 either a white crown for his works, or a purple crown for his 
 passion. Peace and war have their garlands alike in the 
 heavenly camp, with which the soldier of Christ may be 
 gloriously crowned. 
 
 " Brethren, most courageous and most blessed, I wish you 
 health in the Lord : continue to hold me in your remem- 
 brance. Fare ye well." 
 
 The history of a persecution is but an aggregate of the 
 records of sufferings inflicted on separate individuals. I shall 
 therefore best finish this part of the subject, by collecting 
 from the works of Cyprian some other accounts similar to 
 that of Mappalicus in the foregoing letter. 
 
 Celerinus, l descended from a family of martyrs, both on 
 his father's and his mother's side, was the first who earned 
 the glorious title of a confessor, animating his brethren by 
 his example, and teaching them victory by his successful 
 endurance. Yet, as Cyprian tells us, his struggle was not 
 short nor light ; but he triumphed by a miraculous constancy 
 and courage : nineteen days and nights was he confined and 
 tortured ; but his body only was enchained, while his soul 
 remained free and unshackled. His body was emaciated by 
 hunger and thirst ; but God kept his soul alive in faith and 
 virtue, with spiritual food. While stretched upon the rack, 
 he was stronger than his torturers ; while in prison, greater 
 than they who imprisoned him ; prostrate so far as his body 
 was concerned, he was more lofty than they who stood over 
 him ; in his bonds he was more unfettered than they who 
 bound him; receiving his sentence more dignified than his 
 judges. The marks of his wounds remained conspicuous in 
 his glorious body ; and his emaciated limbs long bore witness 
 of his suffering. Such patient endurance received the honour- 
 able testimony even of the persecutor himself, and is worthy 
 to stand foremost among the records of this season of affliction 
 patiently endured to the glory of God, and the honour of the 
 Church. 
 
 Aurelius also receives an honourable testimony from St
 
 82 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 Cyprian, as one who had twice suffered for the faith ; first of 
 all, indeed, being banished only, but afterwards tortured, 
 and victorious on both occasions. It should seem that the 
 torture was often inflicted, and before several magistrates, 
 since Cyprian tells us, that as often as the adversary would 
 challenge the servant of God, so often was he found prompt and 
 courageous, so often did he fight and conquer. To have suffered 
 in banishment under the eyes of a few was little : he was reserved 
 to display a greater endurance in the Forum itself, that he might 
 be victorious over the proconsul, as he had before been over the 
 inferior magistrates ; and that after his exile, he might suffer 
 tortures. The account which we have of Lucian tells us inci- 
 dentally, that the torture inflicted on Aurelius had deprived him 
 of the use of his hands ; for he was one of those whose names 
 Lucian used, (with that pretext,) in the letters of communion 
 to the lapsed, with which Lucian is less honourably connected, 
 than his place as a confessor would warrant us to expect. 
 
 For Lucian was a faithful and courageous witness for the 
 truth; though not sufficiently imbued with those principles 
 of order and discipline which might have handed down his 
 name, with that of Celerinus and Mappalicus, his brethren in 
 suffering, with unalloyed splendour. He himself thus speaks 
 of his sufferings, with those of several others, his companions. 1 
 Bassus died in the quarries : Mappalicus on the rack : For- 
 tunio in prison. Paulus from the effects of torture ; and 
 Fortunata, Victorinus, Victor, Herennius, Credula, Herena, 
 Donatus, Firmus, Venustus, Fructus, Julia, Martialis, and 
 Aristo, were all starved to death in prison. With these I 
 shall myself probably be numbered, adds Lucian, before this 
 day is over : for now we have been for eight days past 
 confined with still greater rigour than heretofore ; though for 
 five preceding days, our only allowance was a morsel of bread 
 each day, and a small measure of water. 
 
 With this enumeration, by one of the sufferers, of the 
 various tortures and hardships inflicted on the brethren, I 
 shall conclude the account of this persecution. Those who 
 1 Ep. xxi.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 83 
 
 estimate duly the immense moral influence of courage in 
 suffering, combined with unshaken virtue, and mildness of 
 demeanour, will not be at a loss to understand the assertion, 
 that the blood of the martyrs has ever been the seed of the 
 Church : and those who know and feel that even in Christians 
 the remains of corruption, of fear and self-indulgence continue, 
 will not wonder that many were found unable to stand against 
 so violent an assault. The constancy of those who patiently 
 endured to the end, striving even unto blood, we must ascribe 
 to the grace of God, operating in them marvellously, almost 
 miraculously ; and sometimes, indeed, with an evident mani- 
 festation of an Almighty hand, that neither persecutors nor 
 persecuted might fail to see, that it was not the might of man, 
 but of God, which was thus put forth. For those who fell we 
 may mourn ; but proudly or harshly we may not condemn 
 them. It is God that maketh us to differ ; and He who 
 glorified His power in the strong, may hereafter glorify His 
 mercy in the feeble.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Number of Apostates in the Decian Persecution. The Sacrificati, 
 Thurificati&nA. Libellatici. The Discipline of the Lapsed. Its Rigour, 
 and its Occasional Relaxation. The Privilege of the Martyrs : 
 Abused in this Instance. The Clergy chiefly in Fault. Cyprian's own 
 Determination of the Case of the Lapsed. 
 
 IN this persecution, which was the fiercest to which Christian- 
 ity had yet been exposed ; and which found the Church less 
 prepared than it had been at any previous time to resist its 
 spiritual enemies ; a proportionate number of the brethren, in 
 all parts of the Roman empire, apostatised from the faith. 
 We have several indications of the multitude of the lapsed, 
 not in Carthage only, but in Egypt, and Spain, and in Rome 
 itself: and now it was that by the united effort of the sound 
 part of the Church in all Christendom, the ecclesiastical 
 regulations concerning the treatment of the lapsed, on their 
 return to a better mind, were reduced to the most perfect 
 form that they ever assumed. This was not effected, however, 
 without very serious divisions in several places; and the 
 exigency of the times, in this as in other cases, called out and 
 exercised the master mind of St Cyprian. 
 
 Those who lapsed in times of persecution, had been called 
 formerly, from the kinds of abjuration which had been de- 
 manded of them, SACRIFICATI, and THURIFICATI ; according 
 as they had approached the heathen altars with a sacrifice, or 
 only with incense: but in the present persecution, another 
 kind of apostates arose out of the circumstances of the times, 
 called LTBELLATICI. The two former classes of persons had
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 85 
 
 plainly and unequivocally denied their Saviour and the one 
 true God ; the Libellaiici found a way of avoiding the penalties 
 of persecution by a more indirect, yet still a real, denial of 
 their faith, and by a virtual dereliction of their religious 
 principle. It is probable that Decius had decreed that every 
 one who was accused or suspected of being a Christian, 
 should be called on to produce a certificate, or libellus, from 
 the magistrate, attesting that he had abjured his faith in 
 Christ, or declared that he had never been a Christian. The 
 cupidity of the magistrate, and the pusillanimity of some of 
 the accused (fearful alike to deny their heavenly Master, and 
 to confront a heathen judge), conspired to erect on this 
 foundation a system equally disgraceful to both; yet one 
 which should enrich the one, while it ensured safety to the 
 other, at the expense of such a measure of temporising, as 
 might probably evade all censure and inquiry. The timid 
 Christian was eager to purchase, and the venal magistrate was 
 not unwilling to sell, such a testimonial, or libellus, as was 
 required to ensure a freedom from farther molestation : and 
 the Libellaticus, or person who had purchased the libellus, 
 returned to his occupation and his patrimony, no longer 
 obnoxious to the laws. 
 
 The sale of these libelli was more profitable to the magis- 
 trate than the shedding of Christian blood : and it was more 
 subversive, whether or no it was suspected to be so at the 
 time, of the true interests of the Church ; which flourished 
 while it was watered with the blood of martyrs, and encouraged 
 by the voice of confessors ; and only languished in the sad 
 but silent defection of cowardly pretenders. Every facility 
 seems to have been given to those who would thus purchase 
 immunity from suffering ; and it is more than probable that 
 many were permitted to purchase the libellus, without being 
 subjected to a public examination, or to any inquiries. The 
 number of those who were detected by the circumstances of 
 their defection, was sufficient to overwhelm the Church with 
 sorrow and shame ; and we need not now speculate on the 
 multitude, who may have secretly enjoyed their purchased
 
 86 " Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 freedom from suffering, together with the peace of the 
 Church. 
 
 These Libellatici were numbered, equally with the Thurifi- 
 cati and Sacrificati, among the lapsed ; although their crime 
 was not held to be quite so great, and their ecclesiastical 
 penalty was moderated in proportion. The discipline of the 
 lapsed, which had been previously established by the usage of 
 the Church, seems to have been as follows. Those who had 
 denied the faith explicitly, or by offering sacrifice or incense, 
 were at once excommunicated : no offerings were received 
 from them, and no mention was made of them at the Euchar- 
 istic commemorations; nor were they received with the 
 faithful into any ecclesiastical fellowship. They were not, 
 however, utterly cast off, nor left to become hardened by 
 escaping observation and rebuke ; nor, if they came to a sense 
 of their miserable condition, were they permitted to remain 
 in despair of the favour of God, by being for ever shut out 
 from the peace of the Church : but all those who would bear 
 reproof and receive exhortation, seem to have been the object 
 of vigilant and laborious attention from the Clergy of the 
 Church ; while all who came of themselves to a sense of their 
 condition, and desired the peace of the Church, even though 
 their fidelity did not return till all danger was past, were 
 admitted, at the discretion of the Bishop, to a penance pro- 
 portionate with their offence; and were afterwards formally 
 received into communion with the faithful, by Episcopal 
 imposition of hands. 
 
 Another and a more glorious way of retrieving their place 
 in the Church, was by actual confession afterwards, and a 
 martyr's death. In such cases as these, the long and formal 
 penance which was usually necessary, which was profitable 
 both to the returning lapsed, and to the Church in general, 
 was fairly remitted; since no length or rigour of penance 
 could be more effectual than such a confession or death, to 
 attest their return to soundness of faith and Christian courage ; 
 nor could any exhibition of a humiliated condition, nor any 
 solemnity of reconciliation, more effectually impress the whole
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 87 
 
 body of the Church with the necessity of faithful endurance, 
 and a good confession. In the case of those who actually 
 attested their perfect restoration to the faith with their blood, 
 none denied that they received a martyr's crown ; especially 
 since martyrdom was always accounted a kind of second 
 baptism, in which all sins were purged away, at least on the 
 Church's account, with blood ; as they had been, in the 
 ordinary laver of regeneration, with water. 
 
 There were also some cases, in which it would have been 
 manifestly more rigorous than wise or charitable to withhold 
 the communion of the Church from penitents among the 
 lapsed ; even though the whole term of their penance had not 
 transpired, and though they had not received imposition of 
 hands from the Bishop. Such was the case of those who were 
 truly penitent, so far as man could judge, and who fell into 
 any mortal sickness, before they were restored. And in cases 
 in which extreme danger seemed to threaten a whole popula- 
 tion, due provision was sometimes made for the frequent 
 occurrence of such cases. Thus St Cyprian himself, in 
 anticipation of a season of peculiar unhealthiness at Carthage, 
 proposes in some degree to relax those rules which postponed 
 the restoration of the lapsed, till the judgment of the Bishop 
 in person had been heard : "Since," says he, in an Epistle to 
 his Clergy (xii.), " summer has already commenced, which is 
 a season abounding with serious sickness, 1 think that some 
 indulgence ought to be granted to our brethren, and that 
 those who have received letters of communion from the 
 martyrs, and may hope through their privileges to be accepted 
 by God, if they are seized with any grievous and dangerous 
 illness, may make confession of their fault before any Presbyter 
 who may be present, without waiting for my return ; or if a 
 Presbyter cannot be found, and death seems near at hand, 
 before a Deacon, so that by imposition of hands, in order to 
 their penance, they may approach the Lord in that peace of 
 the Church, which the martyrs would have bestowed upon 
 them by their letters. The rest of the people also who have 
 fallen, I would have you support by your presence, cherishing
 
 88 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 them with appropriate encouragement, that they may not 
 entirely fall away from the faith and from the mercy of the 
 Lord : for they, who in meekness and humility and true 
 penitence persevere in good works, will not be so forsaken by 
 the gracious help of the Lord, as not to be partakers of the 
 mercy of God." 
 
 Eusebius 1 relates an interesting case, which will illustrate 
 this provision by the example of an individual. Serapion had 
 led an irreproachable life ; but having sacrificed to the 
 heathen gods during the violence of persecution, he often 
 implored remission, but in vain. Being taken ill, he remained 
 three days speechless and insensible. On the fourth day 
 coming to himself, he called a youth to him, and said, " How 
 long shall I be detained in this world while absolution is with- 
 held from me ? Go, and bring me a Priest." After this he 
 again became speechless. The child ran to fetch a Priest ; 
 but it was night, and the Priest was sick. His Bishop, how- 
 ever, (Dionysius of Alexandria, on whose authority Eusebius 
 relates this story), had ordered, as we have before seen Cyprian 
 doing, that Communion should not be withheld from those 
 who implored it in their last moments (especially if they had 
 asked for it while in health), so that they might die in hope of 
 salvation. The Priest, therefore, gave the child a portion of 
 the Eucharist, telling him to moisten it with water, and to put 
 it into Serapion's mouth. The child returned ; but before he 
 had reached the house, the old man had come to himself. 
 " My child," said he, " I perceive that you are returned, but 
 that the Priest has not been able to come : do as he has 
 ordered, so that I may be suffered to depart." The child 
 moistened the portion of the Eucharist, and placed it in 
 Serapion's mouth, who died almost immediately on receiving 
 it. " Is it not plain," asks the historian, " that God had pre- 
 served his life until he should obtain pardon for his fault ; and 
 that, having been reconciled to the Church, he received the 
 reward of his good works ? " 
 
 Another medium of return to the peace of the Church, was 
 
 1 Liber vi. 44.
 
 Life and Tunes of St Cyprian. 89 
 
 the intercession of the martyrs ; which was so prevailing (and 
 founded indeed on such good grounds), as almost to amount 
 to a command, when exercised with tolerable judgment, and 
 consistently with good order. It was fair to suppose, that 
 those blessed saints who were awaiting in the faith and hope 
 of martyrs an immediate crown of glory, and admission to the 
 beatific vision, and whose prison was sanctified to them by the 
 presence of the Spirit of God, might especially prevail in their 
 intercessions at the throne of grace ; since an Apostle had said 
 that the fervent effectual^ intercession of the righteous man 
 availeth much : and the privilege of those whose souls should 
 soon cry from beneath the heavenly altar, against the perse- 
 cutors, was thought to extend in some degree to a prevailing 
 intercession for the persecuted. St Cyprian himself, remind- 
 ing the martyrs of their duty in this respect, does not forget 
 that they were such as should sit as judges with Christ : a 
 consideration as proper to exalt their privilege in this case, as 
 to prompt them to a careful and holy use of it. In these 
 considerations there seemed sufficient grounds to attribute no 
 slight efficacy, even with God Himself, to the intercession of 
 martyrs ; and as concerns the Church, none certainly ought to 
 prevail so greatly with her, as those her most holy and most 
 faithful children ; whose confession was her glory, whose 
 endurance was her strength, and in whose blood she was more 
 than conqueror. 2 
 
 To prevent those evils which might be expected in the 
 exercise of such a privilege by the martyrs (and every privilege 
 
 1 Inwrought, evepyovn^vy, James v. 16. 
 
 2 These considerations prevailed with the Church in very early times. 
 Tertullian twice alludes to the privilege of the martyrs to restore those to 
 the peace of the Church by their intercession, who had been cut off from 
 it by sin or apostacy, but whose repentance and desire to be restored 
 was manifest : and there is this evidence, at least, that the custom was not 
 new, even in Tertullian's time ; that it had begun to be in part abused, as 
 we may collect from the twenty-second chapter of his book De Pudicitia. 
 Origen also has several passages bearing on the same point. But for the 
 learning on this head, I must refer to the eighth of Uodwell's Dissertationcs 
 Cyprianioe.
 
 QO Life and Times of Si Cyprian. 
 
 entrusted to men, however pious, is liable to abuse), it was the 
 custom of the Priests and Deacons, who were engaged in 
 visiting the martyrs in prison, to instruct them in the proper 
 exercise of their privilege ; to shew them the necessity of 
 doing everything in subordination to the Church in general, 
 and in accordance with her laws ; and, in this instance, so to 
 express their recommendations to the mercy of the Church, 
 as to leave them to be ratified by the Bishop, the proper 
 minister of ecclesiastical reconciliation. It was the duty of the 
 Clergy, too, to suggest, and to approve, the individuals who 
 should receive this great favour through the recommendations 
 of the martyrs ; an office for which they were prepared by 
 the exercise of their pastoral care, in which they became 
 acquainted with the character, the penitence, the reformation, 
 of those who had yielded, indeed, to the violence of persecu- 
 tion, but whose tears and submission marked them out as 
 proper recipients of the favour of the Church. Under these 
 limitations the privilege of the martyrs, of which we have been 
 speaking, was a great benefit not only to individual penitents, 
 but also to the Church in general ; affording a fair and con- 
 stitutional method of remitting the severity of Ecclesiastical 
 Canons, in those peculiar cases in which they were too 
 rigorous for the particular occasion, though neccessary for 
 the general health of the Church. It was the exercise of the 
 royal prerogative of pardon, whereby the law is not weakened, 
 and yet the offender is received into favour, and the com- 
 munity gains a subject. None could question that the peace 
 of the Church was well bestowed upon Numeria and Candida, 
 for instance, who had fallen, but sincerely repented; and 
 manifested their recovery not by tears only, but by good 
 works : whose brother Celerinus, too, a most noble confessor, 
 himself in his prison bewailed their fall with unspeakable grief, 
 and besought on their behalf the restoration of the Church's 
 favour, through the mediation of Lucian, whose spirit was then 
 vibrating, as it were, between heaven and earth. 
 
 Nor should it be forgotten that in this, as in every other 
 case in which a rule of discipline is applied by the Church, it
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 91 
 
 was never supposed that God's pardon was necessarily with- 
 held from those who were not restored to Church com- 
 munion, provided that they were really penitent. This 
 principle, which Cyprian expressly lays down in the eleventh 
 Epistle, sufficiently defended the practice of the Church from 
 any taint of tyrannical severity ; while it left to her laws those 
 sanctions, by which her purity and fidelity must be guarded. 
 
 Thus, whatever there was of leniency in the treatment of 
 the penitent lapsed, was not without reason and without 
 profit ; and whatever there was of austerity and extreme 
 rigour, was sufficiently counteracted by the assurance, which 
 we need not doubt was industriously afforded to all whom it 
 properly concerned, that though the Church might not relax 
 her rules of communion ; since what was formal and external 
 was a part of her charge ; yet God, who seeth the hearts of 
 His penitent servants, might receive those to His favour whom 
 the Church dare not, without some indication of His will, re- 
 admit into her fellowship. In a word, the treatment of the 
 lapsed was a part of Church discipline, and not a judgment 
 upon the eternal state of individual Christians. But it will be 
 better to express this in the words of St Cyprian himself. " I 
 know," says he, to the laity of his Church, " from my own 
 grief, that you, dearest brethren, lament and bewail the fall of 
 our brethren. For my part, in the words of the Apostle, Who 
 is weak, and I am not weak 1 who is offended, and I burn not 1 
 and again, If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it ; 
 and if one member rejoice, all the members rejoice with it. I 
 sympathise, therefore, and lament with you, over those of our 
 brethren who have fallen away under the terrors of persecution : 
 tearing away with them, as it were, a part of mine own bowels, 
 and inflicting on me equally the pain of their wounds. To 
 these indeed the Divine mercy may apply a remedy ; yet I think 
 that we ought not to judge incautiously, or to act hastily in their 
 case ; lest while the peace of the Church is rashly invaded, 
 the Divine wrath be the more incensed against them." * 
 
 But during the present persecution of the Church in Africa, 
 1 Ep. xi. p. 21.
 
 92 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 the salutary laws, which should have restrained the exercise 
 of the martyrs' privilege, were in many instances disregarded 
 by all persons concerned ; by the lapsed, by the Presbyters 
 and Deacons, and even by the martyrs themselves : and hence 
 arose miserable divisions in the Church, with all the heart- 
 burnings and lasting evils of party spirit ; some proceeding 
 even to actual violence, and others taking occasion from this 
 excitement and division, to add fury to a previous faction, and 
 strength to a subsequent schism. In a word, the question of 
 the lapsed is more or less connected, henceforth, with almost 
 every incident of importance in which we shall find St Cyprian 
 involved. We must therefore trace the history of these sad 
 disputes with considerable care. 
 
 So soon as the end of April, before, that is, the extremity 
 of persecution had lasted a month, we find Cyprian lamenting 
 the pride and presumption of some confessors; and again, 
 soon after (Ep. vi.), he rebukes some of the clergy for a spirit 
 of insubordination, and contention. And in an Epistle 
 written in June to his clergy, he feelingly laments, that the 
 beauty and excellence of confession was so often tarnished 
 by these vices ; and having recommended humility and 
 obedience, and regretted his own necessary absence at so 
 trying a season, he enters at once upon the great question 
 which then awaited his decision, touching the reconciliation 
 of those who had received a recommendation from the 
 martyrs, without sufficient proof of penitence on the part of 
 the lapsed ; without sufficient caution on the part of the 
 martyrs ; and wholly without a sufficient care, to say the 
 least, on the part of the clergy, to maintain due order and 
 discipline. " I regret," says he, " to hear that some of you, 
 actuated by pride, and impudence, employ yourselves in ex- 
 citing discord .... and that they cannot be governed by 
 the Deacons or the Priests ; but so demean themselves, that 
 the illustrious splendour of many and excellent confessors is 
 tarnished by the disreputable manners of a few. Such persons 
 ought to dread, lest they should be expelled from the society 
 of the good, being condemned by their testimony and judg-
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 93 
 
 ment. For he is the truly illustrious confessor, for whom the 
 Church has not to blush afterwards, but in whom she still 
 glories. As for that which my brother Presbyters Donatus 
 and Fortunatus, Novatus and Gordius, have written to me, I 
 have been able to answer nothing alone ; since I have de- 
 termined, from the beginning of my Episcopate, to do nothing 
 by my private judgment without consulting you, and without 
 the consent of the people. But when God shall permit my 
 return, we will determine what ought to be done together, as 
 our mutual dignity demands." l 
 
 Although, however, Cyprian would absolutely determine 
 nothing in this case for the present; yet he found it necessary 
 to exert the authority both of his office and of his character, 
 to regulate matters as far as possible in the meanwhile. For 
 this purpose he wrote presently after his last Epistle three 
 others, to the martyrs and confessors ; to the clergy ; and to 
 the laity of his Church ; recommending to each the course 
 that they should pursue, in the present exigence. It is from 
 these Epistles, chiefly, that we collect the proper and ordinary 
 rules of the Church ; and from them we also collect that these 
 rules were in every possible respect disregarded in the present 
 case. 
 
 The first fault seems to have been in the negligence of the 
 clergy, in not affording to the martyrs sufficient advice and 
 assistance in the exercise of their privilege, and the choice of 
 the objects on behalf of whom it should be exerted. It will 
 be well if the reader does not come to the conclusion, that in 
 this instance the martyrs were made the tools of an ambitious 
 and factious party among the Presbyters, who actually insti- 
 gated them to an unworthy use of their licence of recom- 
 mendation, in favour of men to whom they knew that Cyprian 
 could never conscientiously concede the privilege of com- 
 munion : thus associating with themselves, in their opposition 
 against their Bishop, a body of overweening martyrs and 
 confessors, and a clamorous party of the lapsed ; while they 
 flattered the pride of the one, and excited the hopes and 
 passions of the other. 
 
 1 Ep> v. pp. 10, ii.
 
 94 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 For in his (tenth) Epistle to the martyrs and confessors, 
 Cyprian expressly declares, that the fault is not so much with 
 the martyrs themselves, as with the clergy, who ought to have 
 so directed them, as to cut off all occasion of such disorder : 
 whereas, in fact, the clergy were so far from setting before the 
 martyrs the rules of the Gospel, and of ecclesiastical disci- 
 pline, that they actually, and intentionally, misrepresented 
 them ; so that when the martyrs themselves would have 
 exercised a proper caution with due respect to the authority 
 of their Bishop, certain Presbyters rather excited them to in- 
 subordination, and made their care ineffectual. Thus many 
 were actually admitted to communion, whom the martyrs had 
 only recommended to the lenient judgment of the Bishop ; 
 and that before any penance had been exacted of them, or 
 any sufficient ecclesiastical reconciliation had taken place. 
 Thus Cyprian, while he does not wholly excuse the martyrs, 
 yet lays the greatest blame on some of the clergy : and it is 
 remarkable that, presumptuous and unwarrantable as some of 
 the demands of the martyrs were, yet still, had they been 
 precisely obeyed by the Presbyters, they would not have led 
 to so great a breach of discipline, as the restoration to com- 
 munion of the lapsed, without the Bishop's consent or know- 
 ledge. This will appear even from the following most haughty 
 letter of the confessors to Cyprian. 
 
 "All the confessors to Pope Cyprian, Health ! Be it 
 known to you, that we have granted peace to all those, con- 
 cerning whose good conduct since their fall you may be well 
 persuaded ; and it is our will that this measure of ours be 
 made known by you to other Bishops. We would that you 
 should maintain peace with the holy martyrs. Written by 
 Lucian in the presence of an exorcist and reader." l 
 
 But if Cyprian did not condemn the martyrs so much as 
 certain of the clergy in this matter, still less did he compare 
 the guilt of the lapsed themselves, with that of the factious 
 Presbyters. " As for the lapsed," says he, " they may be 
 pardoned. Who would not seek for life, feeling himself to be 
 
 1 Ep. xvi.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 95 
 
 dead ? who would not, knowing his danger, seek earnestly for 
 safety ? But those who are placed over them should restrain 
 their impetuous desire, and keep them within the bounds of 
 proper discipline : or else they who should be the shepherds, 
 become rather the butchers of the flock." In another Epistle 
 (xxvii.) Cyprian expressly tells us, that some of the lapsed, 
 who had received the recommendations of the martyrs, yet 
 maintained the humble and Christian bearing which was due 
 to him as their Bishop : and these he very highly commends. 
 
 But of those of the clergy who were involved in these errors, 
 Cyprian speaks very differently ; as will appear from his ninth 
 Epistle, of which the following is an extract. 
 
 " I have long forborne, dearest brethren, to interpose in this 
 affair ; hoping that my silence would rather tend to the peace 
 of the Church : but now, since the rash and hasty presumption 
 of some, threatens to disturb the honour of the martyrs, the 
 modesty of the confessors, and the peace of the whole body 
 of the people, I can remain silent no longer, without danger 
 to the Church in general, as well as to my own authority. 
 For what danger may we not anticipate, when some of the 
 Presbyters, forgetful both of the Gospel and of their place, and 
 slighting both the judgment of God which is to come, and His 
 Bishop now placed over them, arrogate to themselves the sole 
 authority with an unprecedented impudence. And I would 
 that the injured Church were not a sufferer by their arrogance. 
 The insulted dignity of the Episcopate I could overlook and 
 bear, as I have often done : but now there is no place for 
 forbearance, while the brethren are being led astray by some 
 of your body, who endeavour to win upon the lapsed by their 
 groundless pretences of restoring them to the peace of the 
 Church, and in fact cajole them to their ruin. The very 
 apostates themselves know, that they have committed the 
 most heinous offence : and he who withholds from them the 
 judgment of God, deceives those who are already most miser- 
 able : for then, those to whom a true repentance is open, and 
 who may appease God, their merciful Father, by prayers and 
 by their future obedience, are deluded to their greater damn.i-
 
 96 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 tion ; and they who might otherwise retrieve themselves, are 
 more miserably fallen. For whereas, even for smaller offences, 
 a stated time of penance is imposed ; and confession is re- 
 quired according to a certain rule of the Church ; and the 
 penitent is restored to his place by imposition of hands of the 
 Bishop and clergy ; now, at a brief interval, before the per- 
 secution has ceased, the Church herself not enjoying peace, 
 they are admitted to communion, and their name is offered 
 with those of the faithful at the altar : and without penance, 
 without confession, without imposition of hands, the Eucharist 
 is given to them, though it is written, He who eateth the bread 
 or drinketh the cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body 
 and blood of the Lord. 
 
 " But now the chief guilt falls upon those who are placed 
 over them, yet neglect to inform them how they should act in 
 this case with due reverence to God, and to the authority of 
 the Church. Hence the blessed martyrs are exposed to envy, 
 and the confessors are set at variance with their Bishop : so 
 that whereas mindful of my dignity, they had originally ex- 
 pressed their wish that their petition might be considered 
 when the Church was restored to peace, and I had returned 
 to my place ; the Presbyters, forgetting that honour which the 
 martyrs had accorded to me, and despising those divine laws 
 which they had regarded, communicate with the lapsed, before 
 any one necessary preliminary has been observed. 
 
 " For these things the anger of God is expressed against us 
 night and day. For not only in visions of the night are we 
 reproved, but young children, moved by the Holy Spirit, 
 recount to us day after day those rebukes, which the Lord 
 will have to be uttered against us. Of these things I will give 
 you a more particular account when the mercy of God shall 
 restore me to my Church : meanwhile, if those among you 
 who act so rashly and proudly, with such forgetfulness of 
 their duty to man, and of their fear of God, still continue such 
 a perverse conduct, I am determined to put forth that power 
 with which the Lord hath endued me, and to suspend them 
 from their office, until they may be heard and judged before
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 97 
 
 me, and before the confessors themselves, and the whole body 
 of the Church." 
 
 From such statements as these, we have no difficulty in 
 determining, that the chief fault in the matter of the premature 
 restoration of the lapsed lay with certain Presbyters. The 
 names of some of them we collect from Cyprian's fifth Epistle ; 
 in which he mentions a letter, which evidently displeased him, 
 from Donatus, Fortunatus, Novatus, and Gordius. Two of 
 these names we shall find often hereafter, among the schis- 
 matical opponents of Cyprian : and we can hardly doubt that 
 they were all among those original opposers of his election to 
 the Episcopate, of whom Pontius tells us. It may be well to 
 bear this in mind, for the character of these men gives a 
 colouring to the whole history of Cyprian's Episcopate ; and 
 the perpetual recurrence of their persons and of their party 
 affords a remarkable instance of the same moral depravity, 
 exposing itself in various ecclesiastical offences, and falling 
 into divers theological errors, of opposite tendencies ; alike 
 only in being evil. 
 
 It is impossible, indeed, to state the conclusion of this whole 
 affair of the lapsed, without entering into the history of an 
 actual schism which arose out of it ; or which at least took 
 it as its avowed origin. It will be sufficient here to state, 
 that St Cyprian continued firm in his determination to main- 
 tain the discipline of the Church, such as I have before stated 
 it ; moderating the strictness of general rules only where 
 particular cases required ; and giving repeated injunctions to 
 his clergy, to seek the real good of the lapsed, by setting 
 before them the danger of their state, or encouraging them to 
 hope in the mercy of the Lord, according as each individual 
 might require to be treated ; and all along proposing to settle 
 the whole matter by his Episcopal authority (not, however, 
 without the counsel and consent of his clergy and people) j 
 when peace should be restored to the Church, and when he 
 should be enabled to return to the personal superintendence 
 of his diocese; an event which was long protracted by the 
 cabals of his enemies.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Cyprian's return prevented by a Schism in his Church. The Origin of the 
 Schism. Novatus : His Character : His Crimes. He is cited to 
 appear before Cyprian. He escapes under cover of the Decian Perse- 
 cution. He makes a Party, and forsakes the Church. He obtains the 
 Ordination of Felicissimus : It is questioned by whom. The five 
 Presbyters Companions of Novatus in Schism. Cyprian appoints 
 Deputies to put his Regulations in force. The place which voluntary 
 Seceders hold, in respect of the Church. Novatus goes to Rome. 
 Novatian: His Character. His secret Cabals: Fostered by Novatus. 
 Election of Cornelius to the See of Rome. His Character. Nova- 
 tian's Schismatical Ordination. His practices at home and abroad. 
 The spread of his Party. Novatus returns to Carthage. 
 
 CYPRIAN had now remained more than a year 1 in his retreat. 
 He lamented his forced absence with deep and unceasing 
 regret ; day and night with tears and groans regretting, that he 
 who had been chosen their Bishop with so great and zealous 
 affection, was still deprived of the presence of his flock. He 
 found consolation, however, in the hope that he should cele- 
 brate the approaching Easter among them : for at this high 
 festival, and at the solemn season preceding it, it was the 
 custom of all Bishops to be present with their spiritual 
 children ; and all ecclesiastical affairs were so ordered, as 
 not to interfere with this arrangement. But the promised 
 pleasure and privilege was denied to Cyprian and his flock, 
 by the miserable secession and rebellion of certain of his own 
 people, who so disturbed the peace of the Church, and excited 
 
 1 Non suffecerat exilium jam biennii, &c., Ep. xl. the last Epistle to his 
 people before his return, p. 53.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 99 
 
 so much passion and violence, that Cyprian compares the 
 effects of their machinations to another persecution : and as 
 he had before remained absent from his city, lest his presence 
 should too much excite the avowed enemies of Christ and His 
 Church, and lest he who ought to be the bond and con- 
 servator of peace, should become, however unwillingly, the 
 occasion of tumult ; so now he declares it was inexpedient for 
 him to return, lest the authors of schism, though professed 
 Christians, should be excited to some sudden ebullition of 
 violence, by the return of their own Bishop. 
 
 The seeds of these disturbances had fallen on a soil fruitful 
 in evil, before the commencement of the Decian persecution ; 
 but we omitted to notice them at that time, that we might 
 give a tolerably connected account of the growth of this fatal 
 schism. But after the usual manner of such noxious words, 
 it branched into so many separate factions ; each united in 
 itself, but separated from the Church by various errors ; that 
 we shall be called off more than once from the main tenour 
 of the history of Cyprian and the Church, to expose the crimes 
 and follies, or to trace the adventures, of some wanderer from 
 the doctrine and fellowship of the Apostles. 
 
 In the Church of Carthage, at the time when our history 
 commences, was a Presbyter named Novatus. He was doubt- 
 less among those who opposed the election of Cyprian, and 
 disturbed the beginning of his Episcopate; for a rancorous 
 and persevering hostility to whatever was right, seems to have 
 been habitual in him. We find him avowedly connected with 
 Donatus, Fortunatus, and Gordius, in proposing a factious 
 question to Cyprian, touching the lapsed : l and these, with 
 whom Novatus was then associated, were among the Pres- 
 byters of whom Cyprian says, that they still retained the 
 recollection of their former conspiracy, and their opposi- 
 tion to his Episcopate, though sanctioned by the whole 
 Church, and by the judgment of God. Himself. This 
 Novatus was a lover of novelty, of insatiable avarice, proud 
 and overbearing, of ill report among the Bishops of his 
 1 Ep. v. p. ii 
 D 2
 
 TOO Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 province, and accused by common report of peculation in the 
 temporal, and error in the spiritual deposit of the Church ; 
 he was fawning and treacherous, a firebrand of contention, in 
 the Church a destroying tempest, and a disturber of all peace. 1 
 This man, about the end of the year 249, seems to have be- 
 come obnoxious to ecclesiastical censure, by specific acts of 
 violence and injustice. We have the following catalogue 
 of his crimes ; but it is not clear for which of them he was 
 called to give an account. He had appropriated to himself 
 a part of the funds appointed for the relief of widows and 
 orphans : he had occasioned his wife's miscarriage, by kicking 
 her when she was pregnant ; and he had suffered his father 
 to die of hunger in the street, and had not even taken the 
 charge of his funeral. 
 
 For these crimes, or some of them, Novatus was cited to 
 answer before Cyprian ; and there is little doubt that he would 
 have been convicted, and deprived of his ecclesiastical dignity, 
 and even of lay communion. But when the day for his trial 
 was near at hand, the Decian persecution broke out with such 
 fury as to disturb all the arrangements of the Church, for its 
 .nternal purity and peace. 
 
 Nothing could have fallen out more opportunely for Nova- 
 tus : he thus avoided the present censures of the Church, and 
 found time also to make a party to maintain his cause against 
 his accusers and his judge, and abet him in his future plans. 
 He was not content with impunity ; he must also have noto- 
 riety, influence, and revenge : and he turned the difficulties of 
 the Church under persecution into an opportunity not only of 
 covering his own retreat, but of collecting round him a factious 
 multitude, chiefly composed of those who were disgusted with 
 
 1 Ep. xlix. p. 63. Mosheim warns us against taking Cyprian's account 
 of Novatus without question. It is out of all doubt the testimony of an 
 adversary ; and we know that the best men are not free from liability to 
 mistake the character of their opponents : but if we do but judge Novatus 
 by the specific charges which Cyprian adduces against him, without taking 
 his comments upon them (and surely we shall not accuse Cyprian of de- 
 liberate falsehood, though Mosheim does not hesitate to do so), we shall 
 find Novatus branded with indelible infamy.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 101 
 
 the rigour with which the discipline of penance had been ex- 
 acted from the lapsed. So soon as he had gathered about 
 him a sufficient number of clergy and laity to make his party 
 formidable, he separated, by his own act, from the Church ; 
 and not only braved her censures, but even opposed to her 
 body a conventicle of his own, and retorted her condemna- 
 tions and warnings with insolent and rebellious threats. 
 
 His appropriate charge as a Presbyter was over a congrega- 
 tion separate from that of the mother Church, but in the dio- 
 cese, and under the episcopal jurisdiction, of Cyprian. This 
 congregation met on some eminence in the suburbs of Car- 
 thage, whence the place of their assembly was called "on the 
 hill" At this Church, Novatus collected around him five 
 other Presbyters, together with a large body of the people ; 
 taking advantage to this end of the commotions which followed 
 on the decision of Cyprian concerning the lapsed, which he 
 himself fomented, and had perhaps originated, that they might 
 subserve his personal ambition. Among his acts of insubor- 
 dination, that in which schism and rebellion were most for- 
 mally involved, was the procuring the ordination of Felicis- 
 simus as his Deacon, without the consent of Cyprian his 
 Bishop, and even without his knowledge. This Felicissimus 
 became afterwards his tool and most active partisan : indeed 
 he was a worthy associate of Novatus ; for he too had been a 
 peculator, and was charged with repeated adulteries, and the 
 most heartless debaucheries. 1 
 
 The order of these events is obscure ; and the facts, though 
 in themselves undeniable, are so denuded of circumstances in 
 the accounts which we have of them, as to suggest many diffi- 
 cult questions. How, for instance, being only a Presbyter, 
 could Novatus ordain Felicissimus ? or, if he did not himself 
 usurp the episcopal function in that instance, how could he 
 obtain so irregular an ordination for one of his own choice, at 
 
 1 Ep. xxxviii. p. 51, and Ep. Iv. p. 79. Mosheim here endeavours, as 
 before in the case of Novatus, to take off the edge of Cyprian's censures : 
 indeed he is the self-constituted apologist of every one whom Cyprian 
 condemns.
 
 IO2 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 the hands of any Bishop? or, if this office was really per- 
 formed by a Bishop, how is it that that Bishop, becoming a 
 party in the schism, is not associated with Novatus in the con- 
 demnation, nor so much as named by Cyprian? Mosheim 
 supposes, that as a Presbyter of a separate charge Novatus 
 had, or thought that he had, power to ordain a Deacon for 
 his own Church : and that he did so in this case. Blondel 
 had before expressed the same opinion. Baronius supposes, 
 though in direct contradiction of all history, that Novatus was 
 himself a Bishop ; and so, not by an usurpation of office, 
 though schismatically, conferred orders on Felicissimus. Of 
 these two opinions, which are founded on the false assumption 
 that Novatus ordained Felicissimus with his own hands, that 
 of Baronius is the least improbable : for it is just possible, 
 though only just possible, that an error may have been com- 
 mitted in stating the place of Novatus in the Hierarchy ; but 
 it is not possible that Novatus should have supposed himself 
 endowed with the authority to ordain, being but a Presbyter, 
 or that he should have acted on such a presumption, being the 
 first Presbyter who had ever ventured on such an anomalous 
 act, without its being specially noted in the history of the 
 Church. Aerius was the first person who adventured upon 
 such a theory or practice, and he did not live till the next 
 century. 1 
 
 But Novatus most assuredly did not ordain Felicissimus. 
 He probably took advantage of the presence of a strange 
 
 1 Aerius, as Augustine tells us (de Hares., vol. x. p. 21), was mortified 
 at not himself attaining the Episcopate ; and having fallen into the heresy 
 of Arius, and having been led into many strange notions by impatience of 
 the control of the Church, he taught among other things that no difference 
 ought to be recognised between a Bishop and a Presbyter. Thus Aerius 
 revenged himself upon the dignity to which he had unsuccessfully aspired : 
 and he has left his history and his character to future ages, as an argument 
 almost as forcible as direct reasoning and evidence, of the Apostolical 
 ordinance of the Episcopate. Aerius, like some others who have suc- 
 ceeded him, was a self-erected reformer, actuated by personal pique, and 
 regulated by Anti-Catholic principles. See Hooker's Ecc, Pol., VII. 
 viii. 9.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 103 
 
 Bishop at Carthage, whom he found some means of influenc- 
 ing, to obtain the ordination of his satellite : and perhaps in 
 his own Bishop's protracted absence, it was not very difficult 
 to make out a probable case, and one which would satisfy a 
 person unsuspicious of evil, for the ordination of a Deacon, in 
 a congregation separate from the mother Church. Or, reason- 
 ing from what was in another case, to what might be in this, 
 perhaps Novatus procured the co-operation of some Bishops, 
 by such disgraceful arts as Novatian soon after employed, to 
 procure his consecration at the hands of three obscure Italian 
 Prelates. But it seems to me most probable, that some lapsed 
 Bishop, attached to the cause of Novatus by community in 
 error, might have given the necessary orders to Felicissimus : 
 for such Bishops were employed, as we learn from Cyprian 
 himself, in the schismatical consecration of Fortunatus. 1 This 
 supposition, which is in itself probable, will solve all diffi- 
 culties ; and will sufficiently account for no mention being 
 made of the ordainer of Felicissimus, or of his being involved 
 by this schismatical act in the condemnation of Novatus ; for 
 such a Bishop as I have supposed would have been already 
 implicated in the whole guilt and sin of separation ; and 
 Cyprian would scarce have condescended to mention the name 
 of a person thus situated, except for some very special pur- 
 pose. The Church knows nothing of heretics and schismatics. 
 The extent to which this schism was already carried is suffi 
 ciently apparent from the fact, that it rendered Cyprian's 
 return to his own diocese a matter of danger, 2 or at least of 
 imprudence : a consequence however monstrous in itself, yet 
 naturally enough flowing from a schism which separated a 
 large portion even of the clergy of Carthage from the com- 
 munion of the Church Catholic. Of the eight Presbyters, 
 besides Novatus, 3 of whom alone we have any mention as 
 
 1 Tanta apud eos etiam malorum penuria est, ut ad illos nee de sacrifi- 
 catis nee de hoereticis viginti quinque colligi possunt. Ep. Iv. pp. 84, 85. 
 
 2 Fustes et lapides et gladios, quos verbis paracidalibus jactitant, non 
 perhorrescimus, &c. Ep. Iv. p. 80. 
 
 3 Bishop Pearson, the Benedictine Editors, and Mosheim, all enumerate 
 five schismatical Presbyters exclusive of Novatus.
 
 IO4 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 attached to the Church of Carthage, and who perhaps formed 
 the whole of the Bishop's consistory, five, that is, the majority 
 of the whole number, adhered to the party of Novatus, and to 
 his Deacon, surreptitiously ordained. These five were For- 
 tunatus, Jovinus, Maximus, Donatus, and Gordianus, Pres- 
 byters of long standing, and the same who had been the old 
 oppugners of Cyprian's Episcopate ; while of the three who 
 remained faithful, Britius, Rogatianus, and Numidicus, the last 
 had been lately, and indeed during the very progress of the 
 schism, added to the list of the Presbytery of Carthage. 1 En- 
 couraged by so large and important an array of Ecclesiastics, 
 this party presumed so far, as to declare that they would 
 refuse the communion to all who maintained the fellowship, 
 or obeyed the mandates of Cyprian ; and this assumption, 
 though without the shadow of lawful authority, though in fact 
 a sentence of excommunication against themselves, yet was 
 not to be despised ; for it wanted not that kind of power 
 which the people can most readily appreciate, that of numeri- 
 cal strength. 
 
 Cyprian, though absent in person, had not left his flock 
 without pastoral charge. He had placed the care of the poor 
 and of strangers in the hands of a Presbyter, Rogatianus ; 
 having himself provided for their need in the first instance, 
 and added to his former supply by the hands of Naricus, an 
 Acolyte : and afterwards he sent Caldonius and Herculanus, 
 two of his colleagues in the Episcopate, and Numidicus the 
 Presbyter before mentioned, associating them with Rogatianus 
 in such parts of the charge of his diocese as could be executed 
 by deputies. 2 The charge of these persons extended to the 
 enforcing of those laws concerning the lapsed, which it was 
 the policy of Novatus and his faction to oppose ; and Felicis- 
 simus ventured openly to deny the authority under which they 
 
 1 See Ep. xxxv. written by Cyprian to his clergy and people to inform 
 them, that he had added Numidicus to the Carthaginian Presbytery. 
 Numidicus had already adorned the same station in some other Church by 
 remarkable courage and fidelity. 
 
 2 See Epistles xxxvi. and xxxviii.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 105 
 
 acted, and to threaten excommunication to all who obeyed 
 them. Such extreme audacity and insolence defeated its own 
 purpose, and wholly overreached the mark ; for it so far 
 opened the eyes of the people, that many thenceforth retraced 
 their steps. Cyprian himself at once recognised the happy 
 consequences of their avowed separation of themselves from 
 the communion of the Church ; which was far better than 
 their continuing its members in name, while they were in fact 
 enemies to the body of Christ ; and was even preferable, on 
 the whole, to the sentence of excommunication proceeding in 
 the first instance from the Church. " Let him," says Cyprian 
 to his before-mentioned deputies, " abide by his own sentence, 
 and hold himself as separated from our communion, his 
 voluntary act being ratified by us." 1 And, writing to his 
 people, he says, " It seems nothing short of an interposition 
 of Divine Providence, that these men have brought upon 
 themselves, by their own act, without my will or even know- 
 ledge, the punishment which was due to their crimes ; and 
 that they who must otherwise have suffered the sentence of 
 excommunication at our hands, and with your suffrage, have 
 themselves left the pale of the Church." 2 
 
 It is scarce possible to record this judgment of Cyprian, 
 without a mental reference to parallel cases in our own times. 
 Our Church is subject, as that of Carthage was in Cyprian's 
 days, to the insolence of voluntary seceders from her body : 
 we are attacked and maligned and opposed with every avail- 
 able weapon ; and the terms of the communion of each sect 
 involve our condemnation and exclusion. Now, that all this 
 is very sad, let no one deny who bears in mind the frequent 
 exhortations of the Apostles and of Christ Himself, to unity 
 and charity and humility : let no one deny, who recognises 
 in the Church a divinely appointed medium of spiritual gifts ; 
 and who must believe, therefore, that those who are without 
 her pale are deprived of great and inestimable privileges : but 
 I think that we invest it with a kind and character of evil 
 which it does not possess, and render it still more painful, 
 1 Ep. xxxviii. - Ep. xl. p. 52.
 
 lo6 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 when we view it as an attack upon us by part of our own 
 body ; as if there were a continuing schism within us and 
 among us, and brother divided against brother. If any just 
 concession on our part, in the first instance ; if any fair and 
 honourable terms of union even now, were able to reunite 
 these dissevered limbs to the Church, it would be the part of 
 Christian charity to concede, or to reflect upon the terms 
 which might be offered : and if the schismatics had been 
 thrust out by us with unnecessary contumely, and irritated by 
 improper severity, a burden would indeed rest upon us. But 
 when we can appeal to history, that we have not been the 
 separatists either actually or in temper; when we can call 
 each sect to witness for us, except in the particular question 
 in which it is itself involved ; when we can, with pious con- 
 fidence, approach God, as loving our brethren, as protesting 
 against error and divisions, as in no way and in no degree 
 affording sufficient grounds for leaving our communion ; when 
 in a word we may look on all who have left us as self-erected 
 enemies, and self-constituted aliens from our body ; we may 
 pity them indeed, and we may lament the evil of disunion in 
 general ; but we stand so far above their insolence, and so far 
 beside their malice, that we need not feel nor express irritation, 
 and that peculiar tone of sorrow, which is excited by the 
 treachery of brethren and of friends. 
 
 In the censures before mentioned, Cyprian includes 
 Augendus (a layman I suppose, who had been led away by 
 the faction of Novatus ; who was perhaps singularly violent, 
 and so obtained an unenviable conspicuousness notwithstand- 
 ing his private station), and all others who were alike criminal 
 were equally obnoxious to the same sentence, unless they 
 should repent. All this we collect from Epistle xxxviii., which 
 is a precept or commission to Caldonius and Herculanus, and 
 Numidicus with Rogatianus, to pronounce this sentence of 
 excommunication : and this we find by the next Epistle that 
 they immediately proceeded to do. Thus Felicissimus and 
 Augendus, with two or three others who were of the number 
 of the confessors, but whose presumption had linked them in
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 107 
 
 affections and pretensions with the schismatical p rty, were 
 formally separated from the Church. 
 
 Novatus, who had before escaped the censure of his Bishop, 
 under cover of the persecution, on this occasion avoided a 
 formal excommunication by absence. He was in Rome, 
 whither he carried his iniquitous character unchanged ; and 
 where he found, or soon made, equal occasions of exercising 
 it to the peril of the Church. 
 
 For it was now the beginning of the year 251, and the 
 chair of Rome had been vacant for a whole year, Fabian 
 having suffered martyrdom in the preceding January, and 
 Decius being so furiously set upon the extirpation of the 
 Christian priesthood, that the brethren at Rome had not 
 dared to proceed to the election of another Bishop. Decius, 
 however, was now in Macedonia, and Julius Valens had 
 assumed the purple, and was gone into Illyricum, 1 and the 
 Church at Rome being left in comparative quiet by civil 
 commotions, proceeded to the election of a successor of their 
 late Bishop. 
 
 One of the most remarkable of the members of the Church 
 of Rome at this time was Novatian. He commenced his 
 public career as a professor of the philosophy of the Stoics ; 
 and his mind was naturally attuned to the austere system of 
 that sect. A lover of solitude, and given to severe moral 
 speculations, and morbidly excitable by the suggestions of 
 those evil spirits which attack us through the medium of a 
 vain imagination, he came first under the notice and discipline 
 of the Church as an energumen ; for it was not till he had 
 been long vexed by an evil spirit that he sought the faith and 
 help of Christ. 2 In this condition he remained until his 
 death seemed to be approaching, and then he received clinical 
 Baptism. The singular and striking character of the man 
 
 1 Bishop Pearson's Ann. Cyp., p. 29. 
 
 2 Beside the Cyprianic Epistles, the materials for the history of Novatian 
 are found in Eusebius, especially in an Epistle of Cornelius to Fabius, 
 Bishop of Antioch, which Eusebius has transcribed in the forty-third 
 chapter of his sixth book.
 
 io8 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 had invested him with so great interest and factitious im- 
 portance, that he was too incautiously raised by his Bishop to 
 the order of Presbyters, when it seemed that this favour was 
 necessary to retain him in that Church, which he had entered 
 under such strange circumstances, and with the spirit of which 
 his rigid temper and harsh morals were so incompatible. The 
 whole body of the Clergy, however, and many of the people, 
 protested against his ordination, properly objecting against 
 him his clinical Baptism. 1 But what was morose in his dis- 
 position, and what was irregular in his conduct, was not in 
 the least altered by his elevation : for now, involving the true 
 God and the true religion in the rigorous principles of his 
 philosophy (instead of reducing his philosophy into subordina- 
 tion to the truth, and his mind into submission to God), he 
 imagined a system of divinity which had all the faults of his 
 miserabla ethics, 2 and gloomy speculations. According to 
 this system, all offences were equal, and all inexpiable ; and 
 such attributes were ascribed to God, as could not be imagined 
 without equal harshness and temerity. 3 He exacted of Chris- 
 tians as a condition of communion, a more rigid perfection 
 than the best men were able to maintain ; and declared them 
 utterly cut off from the privilege even of penance by their 
 
 1 Whether this objection was founded on any Canon yet actually made 
 in any Church, or whether it was only from the reason of the thing, I 
 know not : but afterwards (in the beginning of the fourth century), the 
 Bishops assembled at the Council of Neo-Cesarea ordained in their twelfth 
 Canon, that those who had received clinical Baptism should not be ad- 
 mitted Priests, since their faith was not of choice, but of necessity. 
 
 2 Magis durus secularis philosophise pravitate quam sophiae dominicse 
 lenitate pacificus, &c. Ep. Ivii. p. 95. 
 
 3 Quis ante crudelissimum Novatianum, crudelem Deum dixit, eo 
 quod mallet mortem morientis, quam ut revertatur et vivat? Vincentii 
 Lirinensis Com. cap. xxxiv. 
 
 I ought not to withhold the confession that there is some difficulty in 
 determining how ar Novatian personally carried these monstrous prin- 
 ciples. In the sect which originated from him they were certainly carried 
 to the extremest length. Mosheim, as usual, is learned and industrious 
 in his enquiries into thi matter. See his Commentarii de rebus Christ, 
 Sec. iii. 1 6 pp. 520 et seq.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 109 
 
 first fall ; especially by an apostasy, though in the bitterest 
 persecution. 
 
 Vet Novatian himself followed not so rigid a rule of 
 conduct; nor maintained his courage and fidelity without 
 suspicion : and no marvel ; for after his baptism he rejected 
 the ordinary discipline of the Church, refusing to receive the 
 holy unction 1 from the Bishop, which was the appointed 
 vehicle of the highest grace, and the confirmation of his 
 baptismal privileges : 2 and how then was he a partaker of the 
 Holy Ghost ? And during persecution he was betrayed by 
 terror into the denial of his office; for when the Deacons 
 besought him to leave the solitude in which he had immured 
 himself, to engage in the active duties of his station, and to 
 exhort the brethren to perseverance and courage ; he answered 
 their entreaties in a rage, and declared that he would no 
 longer be numbered with the Presbyters, but that he would 
 return to his former profession of philosophy. 3 
 
 The inconsistency of his conduct with his professions did 
 not rest here ; for while he was covertly seeking the Episcopate, 
 he denied with tremendous adjurations (5pxuv <po/3spuv) that he 
 desired that dignity : an incident which Mosheim endeavours 
 to turn to his advantage, as if it was a proof that he really 
 sought not that elevation, nor had manifested any ambitious 
 pretentions : whereas it was plainly an attempted expurgation 
 of himself of intentions and practices already imputed to him ; 
 for who solemnly desires that of which he has never been 
 
 1 Cornelius apud Eusebium, ut ante. 
 
 3 'A.vdfjonj<rov ffavrov TIJJ lepas /uuara-ywykis, tv 77 oZ TfXoufJtvoi, /JLCTO. rijv 
 Upvriffiv TOV Tvpdfvov, *ca2 TT/JV TOV fia.ffi\us 6^.o\oyiav, olovd ff(f>paylda TIVO. 
 
 ^afflXiKTJV dtxOVTCU rOV TTVtVtW.TI.KOV fJLVpOV TO Xpfo/A*' WJ (V TV1T(p T<(J /J.VfXf> 
 
 TT]v doparov TOV irai>aylov T[vV(j.a.TOS \dpiv vtrodex^f-foi. Theodoret, in 
 Cant. i. 2. vol. ii. p. 30. 
 
 3 This conduct of Novatian brought him within the meaning of the 
 sixty-second Apostolical Canon ; if the code, of which it is a part, was so 
 soon framed. "If any Clergyman from fear of man, Jew, heathen, or 
 heretic, deny the name of Christ, let him be excommunicated : if he deny 
 his clerical character, let him be deposed ; and on repentance be received 
 only as a layman,"
 
 i io Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 accused ? His eloquence was abundantly sufficient for all his 
 purposes : l but that which chiefly won upon the people was 
 his rigorous adherence to the theory of Church discipline, and 
 his severity to the lapsed. The confessors especially, flattered 
 with the exclusive dignity and prerogatives which he awarded 
 to them, but from whom his ambition and inconsistency were 
 at present concealed, were especially moved by his eloquence 
 and pretentions to a singular piety. Thus Moyses, a most 
 glorious professor, and one who eventually died in prison after 
 torture, was at first one of his nearest associates ; but on a 
 farther knowledge of the man and his designs, this holy 
 martyr repudiated him entirely. Others, however, continued 
 their false estimate of the man and his principles, and 
 Novatian gathered around him a large number of persons, 
 who imagined that in him in him who had not been brought 
 up in the Church, nor scarce regularly admitted into it in 
 him who had endured no conflict for the faith ; nay, who had 
 avoided all question by a cowardly and ignominious solitude, 
 and now at length showed himself when all danger was passed 
 that in him they had found a proper successor of the holy 
 Bishop and martyr Fabian, and a worthy competitor with 
 Saint Cornelius. 
 
 Affairs were in this posture when Novatus arrived at Rome; 
 and his love of faction overcame all principle in him, as 
 ambition had already done in Novatian. Novatus, who had 
 before excited and organised a schism against Cyprian at 
 Carthage, on the pretence that the lapsed ought to be received 
 with a short penance or none; now at Rome joined the 
 party of Novatian, who denied communion to the lapsed, 
 even after the most rigid discipline, and on their death-bed, 
 not even allowing them the privilege of penance. Novatian 
 
 1 Cyprian more than once speaks of the eloquence of Novatian ; not 
 indeed in terms of admiration, but so as to prove the fact that this quality 
 was usually attributed to him. Some notions may be obtained of Nova- 
 tian's parts, from the Epistle of the Roman Clergy to Cyprian (inter Epis. 
 Cyp. xxxi.), which was written by him, as Cyprian himself tells Antonian. 
 We have also a work of his remaining on the Trinity.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian, 1 1 1 
 
 also had changed his opinion on that subject, though not 
 quite in the same degree, having joined the Roman clergy in 
 their sentence that the lapsed should be restored, though 
 indeed with just caution, and after the most severe discipline j 1 
 a judgment which he now altogether repudiated, and even 
 made his opposition to it an occasion of disturbing the repose 
 of the Church, and himself breaking off from her body. 
 
 Novatus entered at once into all the designs of Novatian, 
 and even outran the ambitious demagogue, spurring him to a 
 more hasty breach from the Church, and a more determined 
 opposition to its laws. So long as the vacant see was yet 
 open to a fair competition, there is no reason to suppose that 
 Novatian, though actuated by Novatus, proceeded beyond the 
 usual arts of those who court popularity by crooked ways 
 indeed, yet without the breach of any express laws but those 
 of honour and conscience. But the eloquence and ambition 
 of Novatian, seconded by the unprincipled violence of 
 Novatus, were insufficient to compete with the established 
 character and sterling virtues of Cornelius ; and accordingly 
 the latter was elected to fill the chair of Rome, with the con- 
 sent of the whole body of the clergy, and the greater part of 
 the laity ; and Cornelius was canonically ordained by sixteen 
 Bishops. 
 
 If contrast can add blackness to the character of Novatian, 
 and criminality to his schism, we have that contrast in the 
 sterling worth of Cornelius, and in the unimpeachable justice 
 of his cause. St Cyprian, in a letter to Antonianus, gives an 
 account of Cornelius, against the truth of which I know not 
 that ecclesiastical history has anything to oppose. Of the 
 qualifications and election of that Prelate he thus writes : 
 "You will more safely collect the character of this man from 
 the judgment of God, by whose providence he fills his present 
 station, and from the unanimous testimony of his brethren in 
 the Episcopate throughout the world, than from the inventions 
 of malignant slanderers. It is not a little in his favour, that 
 he rose not suddenly to his present position, but that he has 
 1 See Epistle xxxi.
 
 112 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 passed through all the inferior ecclesiastical orders : and 
 having approved himself faithful in the functions of each, has 
 now attained through them all to the Episcopate, the pinnacle 
 of priestly dignity. He sought not, he did not even desire, 
 this elevation ; still less, like some who are inflated with 
 arrogance and self-conceit, did he usurp it. With the quiet 
 and modesty which are among the usual characteristics of those 
 who are divinely appointed to this office, and which accorded 
 well with his native humility, purity, and worth, he rather 
 yielded to force in ascending the throne, than used force, 
 like Novatian (ut quidani), to obtain it. With such qualifica- 
 tions, then, with the judgment of God and of his Christ, with 
 the consent of almost all the clergy, and with the applause of 
 the crowd of bystanders, and with the full concurrence of 
 assembled Prelates, Cornelius was made Bishop, when the 
 chair of Fabian, that is the chair of Peter, and the sacerdotal 
 office was yet unfilled. . . . And how great was his 
 courage and constancy, that he took his seat undaunted, at 
 that very time when the tyrant (Decius) was uttering the most 
 malignant threats against the whole of the Episcopate ; and 
 when he could have endured with more patience to hear of a 
 competitor for the purple, than of a new Bishop of the Church 
 in Rome. Is not Cornelius, then, to be applauded as a 
 pattern of faith and virtue? Is he not to be numbered with 
 the greatest martyrs and confessors? He, who awaited so 
 long and so resolutely the approach of executioners and tor- 
 mentors, braving their vengeance, though it should be enforced 
 with fire or the sword, with the rack or with the cross ? And 
 though the power of God has hitherto protected His servant in 
 his appointed elevation, yet so far as peril and devotedness is 
 concerned, he has suffered whatever can be inflicted : and thus 
 in his unstained priesthood he first conquered that tyrant, who 
 was so soon to fall beneath secular arms in other hands." x 
 
 The election of Cornelius excited Novatian to a degree of 
 criminality, of which it is probable he had scarce conceived 
 himself capable : for the Episcopate which his ambition had 
 1 Ep. Hi. pp. 68, 69.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. \ \ 3 
 
 failed to reach, he would now compass by actual usurpation. 
 He sent, therefore, two of his wicked party to some obscure 
 Italian cities, and thence fetched three Bishops, pretending 
 that he required their intercession with Cornelius. 1 Having 
 got these persons into his power, Novatian engaged them in so 
 free indulgence at a feast, that the close of the day found 
 them intoxicated ; and then, by the imposition of the hands 
 of the three Bishops, he obtained Episcopal Orders. But he 
 was not a whit the nearer his end, until he could obtain the 
 influence as well as the name of a Bishop ; until he could 
 find a diocese to govern, which the three Italian Bishops had 
 not to bestow. We must now follow him through his arts 
 to get himself recognised Bishop of Rome, in spite of the 
 canonical election and consecration of Cornelius. 
 
 Novatian had now to support his cause both at home and 
 abroad. At home, besides the usual arts of demagogues, 
 he employed one method of revolting impiety, at which we 
 almost shudder while we relate it. In administering the 
 Eucharist, he exacted of each communicant an oath of 
 adhesion to his cause ; and while he held their hands, to- 
 gether with the body of Christ, between his own, he said, 
 " Swear to me, by the Body and Blood of our Saviour Jesus 
 Christ, that thou wilt never abandon my party, nor return to 
 that of Cornelius." And thus those unhappy men could not 
 communicate, without uttering maledictions against them- 
 selves ; and instead of the accustomed " AMEN," at the 
 receiving of the sacred bread, their response was, " I will not 
 return to the communion of Cornelius." 2 
 
 In supporting his cause abroad, the first business of Nova- 
 tian was to despatch letters of communion to all Christian 
 Bishops, according to the manner of those times : and since 
 
 1 O&roj 4 Nai/aros, 6\lyovs rivas Kal \lav evapidjjiriTovt KuvuvTjffai TTJS 
 a-fws iret'tras, fs TTJV 'IraXiav er]\0f, Ka\.Tptt^iro\i-)(v^ v 
 
 Jjyev, cos SyOfv irptafifvaontvovs virtp aivou irpdj rbv rrjt ' 
 
 Theodoret. de Hzeret. Fab. III. v. vol. iv. p. 345. See also the Epistle 
 
 of Cornelius to Fabian, in Eusebius. 
 
 2 Eusebius vi. 43.
 
 H4 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 herein he had been of course anticipated by Cornelius, he 
 took occasion not only to recount the fact of his own election 
 and consecration, (which we may well suppose he did with 
 less regard to the truth of the matter, than to the object which 
 he had in view,) but also to throw all the odium he could on 
 the character of Cornelius ; and to affix on him if possible 
 such specific offences, as would nullify his election. 
 
 The contents of these letters of Novatian may be collected 
 from the notice of one of them to Antonianus, an African Bishop, 
 which occurs in an Epistle of Cyprian to that Prelate ; who 
 it seems had been shaken by the representations of Novatian 
 in his adherence to the Catholic communion of Cornelius. 
 From Cyprian's answers to the scruples of Antonianus, we 
 collect, that besides the general accusation against Cornelius, 
 of an undue lenity towards the lapsed, the particular charge 
 was added, that he had communicated with an ill-judged and 
 indecent haste, and with some circumstances of peculiar im- 
 propriety, with one Trophimus ; l and besides, that he was 
 himself stained with the crime of the libellatici. This last 
 and most scandalous article of accusation seems to have been 
 an unqualified falsehood ; the rest were founded on certain 
 apparent grounds, but were magnified and distorted, so as to 
 seem criminal, whereas they were in fact commendable. 
 
 " You ought not," says Cyprian to Antonianus, " to wonder, 
 that you receive scandalous and malignant reports of Cornelius ; 
 for you know that it is the constant work of the devil, to 
 wound the reputation of the servants of God with false 
 accusations, and to asperse the noblest names : so that they, 
 whose conscience is the most unstained, may be defiled with 
 the slander of others. But be assured that our colleagues 
 
 1 Bingham, by a singularly strange supposition, makes Trophimus one 
 of the Bishops who ordained Novatian ; and that to be the crime for 
 which he was deposed, though the lenity of his Bishop still maintained 
 him in the communion of the Church. But it is scarce possible that 
 Novatian should have accused Cornelius of too great mildness towards 
 one, whose only crime had been the ordaining of Novatian himself. See 
 Bingham 's Scholastical History of Lay- Baptism, chap. ii. sec. 3. and chap. 
 v. sec. 3.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 115 
 
 have most clearly proved, after patient investigation, that 
 Cornelius is untainted with the ignominy of the libellatid, 
 notwithstanding what you have heard ; neither hath he received 
 into communion those who sacrificed at the heathen altars, 
 but those only whose innocence has been established after 
 sufficient inquiry. As for Trophimus, of whom you wish me 
 to write, the affair has been maliciously and falsely reported 
 to you : for our dearest brother has done in this instance no 
 more than his predecessors have often done, in yielding to a 
 necessary expedient for collecting his scattered flock : and 
 because with Trophimus a large portion of the Church had 
 seceded, now, at his return to the Church with satisfaction 
 and penance, and a confession of his past error, and on his 
 bringing back with all humility and submission that portion 
 of the brethren which he had separated, his prayers are 
 granted ; and not so much Trophimus, as the great body of 
 the brethren who adhered to him, have been readmitted ; 
 none of whom would have returned at all, had they not had 
 Trophimus as the companion of their reconciliation. After 
 advising therefore with many of his colleagues, Cornelius 
 received Trophimus to communion ; and the return of his 
 brethren with him, and the restoration of many to salvation, 
 was his sufficient justification in this proceeding. And yet 
 after all, Trophimus was received only into the place of lay- 
 men, and not, as the libel of Novatian would insinuate, to 
 the exercise of his priestly functions." x 
 
 We may judge from hence how far Novatian's account of 
 the proceedings at Rome was from the truth, even when he 
 pretended to detail facts. Perhaps, however, if we proceeded 
 even with Cyprian's vindication of Cornelius, we might be 
 disposed to believe, that that Prelate had been somewhat 
 more lenient in his treatment of the lapsed, I say not than 
 was right, and perfectly within his power as a Catholic Prelate, 
 but than seemed exactly fitting to most of the Bishops of his 
 age, and to Cyprian himself, as his opinion had been expressed 
 again and again. But whether this was so, could never have 
 1 Ep. Hi. p. 69.
 
 1 1 6 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 a legitimate place in the discussion of the validity of the 
 election and Episcopate of Cornelius ; nor could any degree 
 of lenity in a Bishop, which transgressed no rules already laid 
 down by the Church, or no principles by which the Church 
 universal would not be bound in the declaration of her judg- 
 ment, be a sufficient excuse for disturbing his government, 
 still less for breaking communion with him, and with the 
 Church, and for usurping his Episcopate. 
 
 These lying letters were not the only vehicle of the poison 
 of Novatian. Messengers were sent from Rome to the 
 different Churches, expressly commissioned to carry a report 
 favourable to Novatian, and subversive of the authority of 
 Cornelius. The bearers of Novatian's letters to Carthage, 
 and of his accusations against Cornelius, played their part 
 most pertinaciously, even after they had been rejected by 
 Cyprian and a synod of Bishops : and we have no reason to 
 doubt that their impudence was equally great in other places. 
 By all these means a great effect was produced in the Churches 
 of many parts. We have already had occasion to notice the 
 hesitation of Antonianus ; which is little important in itself, 
 compared with that of some other Prelates, but which called 
 forth a vindication of Cornelius from Cyprian's pen, from 
 which we have derived much valuable information. We 
 learn from Eusebius, 1 that at Antioch some Bishops leaned 
 so much towards the Novatian cause, that a council was 
 necessary to suppress his party ; and the schism which 
 originated with him was not entirely healed until the 
 sixth century. 
 
 But we are anticipating the times at which the party of 
 Novatian prevailed in distant parts of Christendom : at 
 present we find it struggling for a bare existence in Rome ; 
 where Novatian, his error, and his schism, were formally 
 condemned, and the three Bishops who had ordained him 
 were punished : two of them being deposed, and their sees 
 filled by new Bishops, and the third being restored to his 
 ecclesiastical functions only after he had humbly confessed 
 1 Ecc. Hist., vi. 46,
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 117 
 
 his fault with many tears, and at the unanimous petition of 
 the people. 
 
 Novatian's party had been already treated with equal rigour 
 in Africa : for Maximus, Longinus, and Machaeus, his emis- 
 saries to that province, and the first of them the Bishop whom 
 he had endeavoured to obtrude upon the Church of Carthage, 
 were expelled from that country. But he was only incited to 
 greater exertions by these severities ; for he still maintained 
 himself as the centre of the schism at Rome, and laboured 
 more and more to disturb the peace of the whole Church, 
 sending Bishops of his party, with other emissaries, into 
 several cities. Of these, Evaristus a Bishop, together with 
 Nicostratus 1 a Deacon and Confessor, and Priscus and 
 Dionysius, accompanied Novatus, his ever-active and ever- 
 dangerous ally, to Africa, whence his party had been before 
 driven with ignominy. 
 
 1 In Evaristus and Nicostratus we have characters of like depravity with 
 that of Novatus. Nicostratus had defrauded his secular patrons, and had 
 robbed the Church to a great amount. As for Evaristus, he had been 
 already deposed from his Episcopate for schism. See Ep. xlviii. p. 62. 
 Bingham, with less improbability than he asserts the same of Trophimus 
 makes Evaristus, one of the Bishops who ordained Novatian ; but I find 
 nothing approaching to evidence on this point. Bingham's Scholastic 
 History of Lay-Baptism, chap. v. sec. 3.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Proceedings touching the Election of Cornelius, and the Schismatical 
 Ordination of Novatian, at Carthage ; At Hadrumettium. The Epis- 
 copate of Cornelius finally Recognised. Felicissimus and the five 
 Presbyters Excommunicated. St Cyprian's Letters to the Schismatical 
 Confessors. His Treatise de Unitate Ecclesice.'Leiter of Dionysius of 
 Alexandria to Novatian. A Synod at Carthage, and in Rome. The 
 Return of the Schismatical Confessors. Letters of Cornelius, the 
 Confessors, and Cyprian. Reflexions on the Novatian Schism. 
 
 HAVING now brought Novatus back to Carthage, we shall take 
 occasion to describe the conduct of Cyprian in that see, and 
 the means which he took for the suppression of the party, in 
 the organising of which Novatus had been so deeply impli- 
 cated, and still continued so actively engaged. 
 
 We have said that Cornelius, as was usual, immediately on 
 his election sent letters of communion to the several Bishops 
 of the Church, notifying what had been done, and seeking 
 from them a recognition of his Episcopate. The letters of 
 Cornelius to Carthage found a Synod of Bishops there met, 
 and to this ecclesiastical assembly Cyprian communicated 
 their contents, which intimated not only the election of 
 Cornelius, but also the disturbances which had since arisen, 
 though they had not yet proceeded so far as to the election of 
 a Schismatical Bishop. Upon this important occasion, Cyprian 
 sought the counsel of his colleagues ; and it was agreed that 
 Caldonius and Fortunatus, two of their number, should be 
 sent to Rome to collect information on the spot of what had 
 passed, upon which the African Bishops might frame their 
 definitive sentence. Caldonius and Fortunatus had also in
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 119 
 
 charge to do what they could towards restoring peace to the 
 Church in Rome. 
 
 It was in the absence of these Carthaginian deputies, that 
 Maximus, Augendus, Machseus, and Longinus, the messengers 
 by whom Novatian sent his letters, arrived at Carthage, claim- 
 ing on behalf of their pseudo-Bishop, that he should be received 
 as Bishop of Rome. There was sufficient evil manifested in 
 this appearance of legates from another person pretending to 
 the Episcopate of Rome, after Cornelius had been elected and 
 ordained, to warrant the rejection of those legates from the 
 communion of the Church ; and to make it necessary to oppose 
 their mission, and to refute their pretences, even before the 
 fuller information which might be desired should arrive. This 
 accordingly Cyprian and his colleagues did. They soon 
 discovered that they, were amply justified by the real merits 
 of the case : for while Caldonius and Fortunatus were still 
 absent, Pompeius and Stephanus, two African Prelates who 
 had been present at the election and consecration of Cornelius, 
 came to Carthage, and furnished Cyprian and his associates 
 in the Church with a true account of the disturbances at 
 Rome. 
 
 The arrival of Pompeius and Stephanus was most opportune ; 
 for the emissaries of Novatian, not satisfied with their repulse, 
 had still laboured with pertinacious boldness, and by the use 
 of slanderous reports against Cornelius, to obtain their end. 
 They proceeded so far as to present themselves riotously at 
 the religious assemblies of the Carthaginian brethren ; by whom 
 it was their object that their accusations against Cornelius 
 should be heard, and their libels read. The conduct of 
 Cyprian was most prompt and judicious. He doubtless 
 employed the information which he possessed to support the 
 cause of Cornelius in the proper way and place ; but to the 
 importunate and unquiet Novatus, and in the presence of the 
 crowd, he only deigned to reply, that it was not according to 
 his principles of government to suffer the character of one who 
 was already chosen and ordained Bishop, to be publicly 
 aspersed, or his conduct to be so much as called in question
 
 I2O Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 before the people. The letters, however, of Cornelius, which 
 seem to have been free from invective and a bitter spirit, were 
 freely read to the people. 
 
 Thus repulsed in all their public attempts, these unhappy 
 men went about from house to house, and from city to city, 
 seeking to divide the Church, and to gain adherents to their 
 schism. That they were not wholly unsuccessful is certain ; 
 but they found no countenance any where with the well- 
 affected of the Church, or with those who understood those 
 principles of government and order, by which she was then 
 and ever had been, and we trust ever will be, regulated. 1 
 
 The Synod of Bishops, who sent Caldonius and Fortunatus 
 to Rome, had adjourned for a season, after determining that 
 the final sentence should be deferred until the return of their 
 emissaries; that it might be pronounced at last upon more 
 ample assurance and information : hence, though there was a 
 moral certainty of the result, yet the members of that Synod 
 were not at liberty, as yet, to pronounce individually on the 
 Episcopate of Cornelius. This will account for a little 
 incident, to which we now proceed. 
 
 The letters of communion of Cornelius to Hadrumettium 
 had been received and answered by Polycarp, Bishop of that 
 colony, in an Epistle to Cornelius himself, in which he was 
 recognised as the Bishop of Rome. But Cyprian and another 
 Bishop, Liberalis, had gone together into that part of the 
 country, during the recess of the Carthaginian Synod ; and 
 they communicated to Polycarp the present state of the 
 question, with the determination of the Synod to defer their 
 final sentence till Caldonius and Fortunatus had reported the 
 result of their inquiries. In consequence of this, Polycarp 
 directed the letters which he had occasion to send to Rome, 
 not to Cornelius individually, but to the Clergy of that Church ; 
 thus avoiding a specific acknowledgment of the Episcopate of 
 Cornelius. Cornelius was wounded by this change in the 
 conduct of Polycarp, consequent on Cyprian's visit to him, 
 
 1 We learn all this from a Letter of Cyprian to Cornelius, sent by 
 Primitivus a Presbyter.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 121 
 
 and expostulated with Cyprian accordingly : the answer of 
 Cyprian, though not written till a somewhat later stage of the 
 history, we shall take this occasion to notice, because it affords 
 an intimation of the point at which things were left in Carthage, 
 at the recess of the Synod. 
 
 Cyprian denies not the circumstances to which Cornelius 
 adverts with displeasure : but declares that they proceeded 
 from no inconstancy or indecision on his part ; but that the 
 Synod assembled at Carthage had determined to proceed to 
 no definitive arrangement, until Caldonius and Fortunatus 
 should return with an account of restored peace at Rome, or 
 at least with an authentic report of what had been done there. 
 Of this arrangement the Clergy of Hadrumettium were ignorant 
 at the time ; but they immediately acceded to it, when it had 
 been explained to them by Cyprian and Liberalis. 
 
 And as Cyprian had before acquainted Cornelius with the 
 steps which he had taken on his behalf : so now he is careful 
 to show, that this, which seemed less directly in his favour, 
 was not done except upon good grounds, and such as were 
 consistent with, and even prudently arranged for, the con- 
 firmation of Cornelius's Episcopate. " I suffer none," says he, 
 " to leave me, without an especial charge to avoid the dissemi- 
 nation of scandalous reports, and without an exhortation to 
 maintain the unity of the Church : but because of the great 
 extent of my province, which stretches into Numidia and 
 Mauritania, lest a division in my city should be of ill con- 
 sequence with those at a distance, we determined, when by 
 means of the Bishops whom we sent we had been placed in 
 full possession of the truth, and had the more irrefragable 
 arguments of your canonical ordination, and after every 
 shadow of doubt should have been removed from every mind, 
 that letters should be sent from all the Bishops who reside in 
 that province, as has now been done; so that all our 
 colleagues might acknowledge you, and your communion, and 
 maintain at the same time the unity and love of the Church 
 universal. And I rejoice that this has so happened, according 
 to my intentions, as to seem an instance of providentia.
 
 122 Life and Times of Sf Cyprian. 
 
 interference : for now by these means, both the validity and 
 the dignity of your Episcopate are placed in the clearest light, 
 and rest on the strongest possible confirmation ; since, by the 
 answers of my colleagues who have written an account of these 
 things from the spot, and from the relation and witness of 
 Pompeius and Stephen, of Caldonius and Fortunatus, our 
 brethren in the Episcopate, the propriety and entire justice of 
 your title from first to last is more fully manifested." l 
 
 This letter of Cyprian shows us how great stress was laid 
 in those days on the acknowledgment of a new Bishop by the 
 whole body into which he was elected : which was, indeed, 
 the most assured safeguard of a Bishop's authority ; and to 
 the Church, the most assured warrant of his orthodoxy. Nor 
 is it unworthy of remark, that whereas in these days Rome 
 has usurped the whole authority of this confirmation in all 
 Churches subject to her sway ; and has even, if not verbally 
 yet by implication, declared that without her confirmation 
 there cannot be a theologically valid, still less an ecclesiasti- 
 cally legitimate and canonical Episcopate; in a word, that 
 there cannot be a valid Episcopate in any Church not subject 
 to her ; as, for instance, in the whole Greek Church s in 
 Cyprian's days the Bishop of Rome was fully as dependent 
 on the recognition of others, as others were on that of the 
 Bishop of Rome ; nor could afford to despise the countenance 
 or overlook the least shadow of defection of a poor Prelate of 
 a remote colony. 
 
 We have already collected from Cyprian's account of the 
 matter to Cornelius, that on the return of Caldonius and 
 Fortunatus, the whole subject of the Roman Episcopate was 
 set at rest in the minds of the Bishops who met again at 
 Carthage to receive the report of their messengers ; that they 
 directed their letters of communion to Cornelius, and declared 
 that the same should be done by the whole province. 
 
 1 Ep. xlv. p. 59. 
 
 2 Yet in fact Rome acknowledges the Orders of the Greek Church ; 
 as do many of her best divines of our own Church. I only speak 
 above of what she would do, if she were in all cases consistent in her own 
 principles,
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 123 
 
 The same Synod which took these important steps for the 
 confirmation of the authority of Cornelius, and the peace of 
 the Church in Rome, took steps equally important to the 
 peace of Cyprian, and to the repose of their own province, in 
 the excommunication of Felicissimus the deacon, and the five 
 Presbyters his adherents in his schism. Of this they sent an 
 account to Cornelius. 
 
 And the same messengers who carried these accounts from 
 the Synod, and the letters of Cyprian to Cornelius, also took 
 with them a letter from Cyprian to those confessors in Rome 
 who had been enticed into the sect of Novatian ; in which he 
 deplores most feelingly that schism, to which their accession 
 gave its chief strength and influence. In this letter he ex- 
 poses the full heinousness of their crime ; and impresses on 
 their minds a theological verity (to all most practically im- 
 portant in principle, but to them, in their present situation as 
 confessors yet schismatics, most unpalatable in its application) : 
 that though the constancy of confessors is an additional honour 
 even to the Church herself, glorious as she is, if they continue 
 faithful to her; it ceases to be an honour even to the individual 
 sufferers, from the instant of their defection. " Repress, I 
 beseech you," says he, "this schism, respect your own con- 
 fession, respect the divine tradition, and return to your 
 mother, from whom you have seceded. Remember that it 
 was from her body, and to her exceeding joy, that you 
 advanced to the trial of your faith, and attained the glory of 
 confessors. But now : think not that you are maintaining 
 the Gospel of Christ, while you are living in voluntary segre- 
 gation from the fold of Christ, and from its peace and unity ; 
 since it would better become you, as good and illustrious 
 soldiers, to sit down together in the camp at home, and to 
 act and consult for the common good. Our unity and agree- 
 ment cannot be disturbed : we cannot leave the fold of the 
 Church, and go out and join you ; therefore it is that we 
 beseech you the more earnestly to return to your mother, the 
 Church, and to the fellowship of her sons." 1 
 1 Ep. xliv. p. 58.
 
 124 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 Mettius, a Subdeacon, the bearer of this letter, was especially 
 charged to read it to Cornelius, before he delivered it to the 
 confessors to whom it was addressed. 1 This was a proper 
 attention on the part of Cyprian, to the courtesies of the 
 Episcopal order. 
 
 It seems probable, too, that Mettius, though without any 
 commission, conveyed a copy, or at least a report, of Cyprian's 
 Tract on the Unity of the Church ; which was occasioned by 
 the present disturbances, and was certainly known at Rome, 
 before the Author himself sent a copy thither. This Tract, 
 which is one of the most elaborate of St Cyprian's works, and 
 indeed one of the most valuable remnants of Ecclesiastical 
 Antiquity, is so important, that a review of it must have a 
 chapter to itself. We only observe now, that it seems to have 
 materially subserved the cause for which it was written. 
 
 The impression produced by the Epistles and writings of 
 Cyprian, was deepened by a letter of Dionysius of Alexandria 
 to Novatian. This letter affords another, and an evidently 
 independent testimony, to the paramount importance of 
 Church Unity, which we have seen so effectually urged by 
 Cyprian, and which it is now so much the fashion to despise 
 as a mere fantasy of dreaming theologians ; or as something 
 worse, an engine of intriguing priestcraft. Perhaps Novatian 
 might judge equally hardly of it. "If, as you declare," says 
 Dionysius, " you were compelled to separate, in spite of your- 
 self, you will manifest your sincerity by a voluntary return. 
 It had been a sufficient motive for suffering anything that the 
 Church might not be divided : nor had it been less glorious 
 to suffer martyrdom for the Unity of the Church, than to 
 avoid offering to idols. Nay, I even hold that it would have 
 been the more illustrious of the two : for while the martyr in 
 general surfers for his own salvation, he who surfers in the 
 cause of unity, suffers for the salvation of the whole Church. 
 Even now, if you can persuade your companions in separation 
 to return to the bosom of the Church, your merit will more 
 than equal your offence : you will avoid the imputation of the 
 
 1 Ei>. xliii. p. 58.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 125 
 
 one, and of the other you will receive the praise : but if they 
 should continue obstinate, and you cannot save them, at least 
 save your own soul. I wish you health in the Lord, and that 
 you may learn to love peace." 1 
 
 This letter of the Alexandrian Prelate shall introduce us to 
 better prospects, and to the view of that peace which he so 
 ardently desired : for now the question of the lapsed was fully 
 determined at Carthage, according to the rule of St Cyprian 
 and Cornelius, which we have already sufficiently explicated. 
 This was in August [257] : and Cornelius, having received 
 from Cyprian an account of what was done at Carthage, both 
 in the matter of the lapsed, and in that of Novatian, sum- 
 moned a provincial Synod, to consult on the same subjects. 
 Sixty Bishops, with many Presbyters and Deacons, obeyed 
 his summons, and the same course was pursued by the Church 
 at Rome, as had been already pursued at Carthage by the 
 ecclesiastics of that province ; those Prelates who were absent 
 from the Synod signifying their consent to its decrees, so soon 
 as they were acquainted with them. And now, the case of 
 Novatian being so plainly condemned by all authority ; and 
 the exhortations of all good men seconding the principles of 
 sound ecclesiastical discipline, and the express decrees of the 
 Church ; the confessors who had joined the party of Novatian 
 would no longer persist in their separation, and they sought 
 and obtained admission into the fold from which they had 
 wandered. 
 
 Of this joyful event Cyprian received intelligence, first from 
 Cornelius, and afterwards from the restored confessors them- 
 selves. The following extracts from the letters which con- 
 veyed this intelligence to Cyprian, with his congratulatory 
 replies, will be interesting. 
 
 " I received in the first instance," says Cornelius, 2 " vague 
 accounts of symptoms of compunction, and of a return to a 
 better mind, in some of the adherents to Novatian's schism, 
 from persons of approved integrity, and well-wishers to the 
 Church : and by and by this report was admirably con- 
 1 Euseb. vi. 45. * Ep. xlvi. p. 60.
 
 126 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 firmed ; for two confessors, Urbanus and Sidonius, came to 
 our brethren of the Presbytery and declared that Maximus, 
 also a confessor, and a Presbyter, was desirous of returning 
 with them into the Church ; but since many things had 
 occurred which made it imprudent to trust too entirely to 
 their good faith, I determined to hear from their own mouths 
 the proposal which they had sent by others. Accordingly 
 they appeared before us ; and when they had been charged 
 with their criminal conduct by the Presbyters, and especially 
 that they had very lately despatched letters full of scandalous 
 and false reports, to the disturbance of peace and unity 
 through all the Churches ; they affirmed that they had been 
 deceived, and that they knew not the contents of those letters : 
 yet they confessed that they had been implicated too deeply 
 in schism and heresy, when they were induced to suffer the 
 imposition of hands upon Novatian. And when the heinous- 
 ness of these and the like actions had been exposed to them, 
 they earnestly petitioned that they might be remitted and for- 
 gotten. When this had been reported to me, I summoned an 
 assembly of my Presbyters ; with whom also five Bishops were 
 associated, so that it might be determined with the consent of 
 all, what course should be pursued with the returning con- 
 fessors. At the close of these proceedings, Maximus, 
 Urbanus, Sidonius, Macharius, and several others of the 
 brethren who had joined them, were admitted into the 
 presence of the Synod. With earnest prayers they besought 
 us to bury their delinquencies in silence and oblivion, and 
 promised for their part to present to God thenceforth the 
 sacrifice of a heart undefiled, in accordance with the Evan- 
 gelical benediction ; Jllessed are the pure in heart, for they 
 shall see God. It still remained to inform the people of all 
 these events, that they might see those, who had been formerly 
 wandering in error, established in the Church. There was 
 accordingly a large assembly of the people : and with one 
 voice they rendered thanks to God, weeping for very joy, and 
 embracing the restored confessors, as if they had but that 
 instant been liberated from prison. As for the confessions of
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 127 
 
 the restored brethren, I send you their very words. ' We 
 know that Cornelius is a Bishop of the most holy Catholic 
 Church, elected by God Almighty and Christ our Lord. We 
 confess our error: we have been deceived, we have been 
 carried away by captious and fraudulent misrepresentations. 
 For even while we seemed to be holding some kind of com- 
 munion with a heretic and a schismatic, our mind was still 
 faithful to the Church. Nor are we ignorant that there is one 
 God, and one Christ the Lord, whom we have confessed, and 
 one Holy Spirit : and that there should be one Bishop in a 
 Catholic Church.' 
 
 "Who," continues Cornelius, "would not, by such an 
 acknowledgment, be moved to admit those who had confessed 
 before the powers of this world, to the full proof of their 
 confessions in the Church ? Maximus, therefore, we restored 
 to his former dignity; the rest we received to communion, 
 with the applause of the whole multitude : all judgment we 
 committed to God, to whom all judgment belongs. . . . 
 We believe, moreover, nay are confident, that others who are 
 at present involved in the same error, will soon return to the 
 Church, when they see that their former leaders are again 
 associated with us." 
 
 The following is the letter of the confessors themselves to 
 Cyprian : 
 
 "Maximus, Urbanus, Sidonius, and Macharius, to their 
 brother Cyprian, Health ! We are sure, dearest brother, that 
 your joy will equal our own, at the step which we have taken ; 
 that consulting the good of the Church, and passing by former 
 events, and committing them to the judgment of God, we 
 have made peace at once with Cornelius our Bishop, and with 
 the whole body of the Clergy. And we write this letter that 
 you may be well assured, that we have done this to the great 
 joy of the whole Church, and so as to carry with us the 
 affections of all. We wish you health, dearest brother, for 
 many years to come." l 
 
 1 Ep. \. p. 64.
 
 128 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 Cyprian's answer to the confessors shall close this series of 
 letters. 
 
 " Cyprian to his brethren Maximus the Presbyter, Urbanus, 
 Sidonius, and Macharius, Health ! I confess, dearest brethren, 
 that the perusal of your letter, in which you give an account 
 of your return to the obedience and peace of the Church, gave 
 me as much joy, as the report of your glorious confession had 
 formerly done. For to confess the unity of the Church, is 
 another witness of your faith, another token of your virtue ; to 
 maintain that the Church is free from possible participation in 
 the error or wickedness of any, is to seek again the same en- 
 campment, from which you before advanced to the battle, and 
 rushed eagerly to meet the foe, and to lay him prostrate. The 
 trophies of your success ought to be suspended in that 
 Church, from the armoury of which you were arrayed for the 
 victory ; lest the Church of Christ should lose the glory of 
 those, whom Christ had prepared for glory. And now at last, 
 you have returned to a path worthy of your faith, and of the 
 love and reverence for the divine law which burns in the 
 hearts of each of you ; and you have given an example also of 
 love and peace to others, that the truth of the Church, the 
 sacrament of unity in the Gospel, which was before maintained 
 by us, might be knit together also with the additional bond of 
 your consent : and that the confessors of Christ who had 
 stood out as the foremost in virtue and in honour, should not 
 become leaders in error. Others are doubtless conscious of a 
 great joy at your return; but I confess that I feel singularly 
 interested in it, and my congratulations fall short of none, in 
 sincerity and joy. Let me open to you my feelings with all 
 simplicity. I was greatly and oppressively afflicted by the 
 thought, that I could no longer hold communion with those 
 whom I had begun to love with my whole heart. When a 
 schismatical and heretical error received you, as it were, out 
 of prison, whither you had been carried with the praise and 
 gratulation of the Church, it was as if your glory had remained 
 in the dungeon. For though there are evidently tares in the 
 Church, this ought not so to subvert our faith or love, as to
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. \ 29 
 
 induce us to forsake the Church. It is our part to labour, 
 that we may be wheat ; .that when the wheat is gathered into 
 the barn of the Lord, we may receive the reward of our labour. 
 The Apostle says, In a great house there are not only vessels 
 of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some 
 to honour and some to dishonour. Be it our care, dearest 
 brethren, so to labour, that we may be vessels of gold or of 
 silver : but to break the vessels of earth can be committed 
 to the Lord alone, to whom is given the rod of iron. The 
 servant cannot be greater than his master : nor may any one 
 arrogate to himself what the father has given to the son alone ; 
 nor think himself at liberty, by human judgment, to fan the 
 floor, or drive away the chaff, or separate between the wheat 
 and the tares. This were nothing short of madness, of 
 obstinate pride and presumption : and while some will be 
 always assuming to themselves a greater authority than justice 
 and mildness will allow, they themselves fall away from the 
 Church ; and while they are boasting themselves of their 
 greater light, their very pride shuts them up in impenetrable 
 darkness. Bearing these things in mind, and endeavouring to 
 follow the indications of God's will, in His justice and in His 
 compassion, after long and deep consideration, I have myself 
 arrived at a moderate judgment in these matters : as you will 
 see on the perusal of the accompanying treatise, which I have 
 lately read to my own people, and now commit affectionately 
 to your perusal ; and in which there is neither wanting just 
 censure upon the lapsed, nor such milder remedies as may 
 effect their cure. I have also, to the best of my power, 
 written upon the principle of unity in the Church Catholic : 
 and I have the more confidence that you will approve of that 
 treatise, now that your own actions and affections may be in 
 accordance with it : for you have now, by your return to the 
 peace and unity of the Church, exemplified in your conduct, 
 that which I have committed to writing. Dearest and most 
 beloved brethren, I wish you eternal health." * 
 
 1 Rf. H. p. 65. 
 

 
 130 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 Here I close the direct history of Novatian and his party ; 
 though it is obvious that these events must give a colouring to 
 the future narrative. 
 
 If any, on a retrospect of the whole matter, be disposed to 
 ask, What heresy did Novatian teach, that he fell under such 
 heavy censures and punishments, and eventually under such 
 universal execration of all good men? I shall return the 
 answer of Cyprian to this very question, when it was proposed 
 to him by Antonianus. " It is not fitting to inquire too nar- 
 rowly what he teaches, since, whatever it is, he teaches it out 
 of the Church. Whoever and whatever he may be, he cannot 
 be a Christian who is not in the Church of Christ. 1 Let him 
 pride himself as he will on his philosophy or eloquence ; and 
 let his boasting equal his vanity; he who hath held fast 
 neither brotherly love nor Church unity has lost even that 
 which he before possessed." 2 
 
 That Cyprian's principle is startling, I admit ; but the more 
 we think upon it, the more likely we are, I suspect, to believe 
 that it is true. It is moreover of very general application. It 
 is so far from being a sufficient vindication of a separatist, that 
 he carries the doctrine of the Church with him, that it is in fact 
 the very extreme form of sinful schism, or causeless separation, 
 to do this. So far as their separation is concerned (abstract- 
 ing from it all its antecedents and consequents), the Manich- 
 aean or the Arian was excusable ; the Quaker or the Socinian 
 is now excusable ; in comparison of any who may think to plead 
 in their justification, that they teach no doctrines which ever 
 were or ever can be condemned by the Church as heretical. 
 
 Nor will it be sufficient to take away this opprobrium from 
 separation, that though there is no sufficient cause for it in a 
 conscientious difference of doctrine ; yet conscience is pre- 
 tended^ in respect of discipline. For the regulation of discipline 
 is the proper province of the visible body of Christ's Church : 
 and all individuals are bound to obey, and not to cavil, still 
 
 1 Quisquis ille est et qualiscunque est, Christianus non est, qui in 
 Christi Ecclesia non est. 
 - Ep. lii. p. 73.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 131 
 
 less to rebel : and those who pretend conscience in this 
 matter, too often mean obstinate opinion, or at best weak 
 scruples. Cyprian gives a case in point, when he says to 
 Antonian, " Among our predecessors, there were certain 
 Bishops in this very province, who thought that the peace of 
 the Church ought not to be given to adulterers, and cut them 
 off from all the privileges of penance : yet they seceded not 
 from the college of their brethren in the Episcopate, nor 
 broke the unity of the Church by an obstinate severity and 
 censure ; so as that one who allowed not penance to adul- 
 terers, should secede from those who did. In such cases, 
 the bond of unity being inviolate, and the peculiar mystery of 
 indivisibility in the Catholic Church being preserved, each 
 Bishop acts as he will, and on his own responsibility, as one 
 who is hereafter to render his account to the Lord." l 
 
 Of course I do not deny, that by an hypothesis of unbridled 
 and unchastened fancy, the Church may enjoin obedience 
 to such rules of discipline, as may constitute a ground of 
 separation truly conscientious : but in this case the Church 
 itself would be schismatical, and in case of actual rupture, she 
 would be the separatist ; which is in theology impossible, 
 whatever it may be in imagination or logomachy ; and it is 
 illogical to reason on any other than theological principles, 
 in matters of theology. 
 
 But, in fact, there is so much of doctrine involved in dis- 
 cipline, though perhaps indirectly, that dissent on a pretended 
 conscience against the Church's discipline, will usually end in 
 downright heresy. In this light the schism of Novatian was 
 very dangerous, and its consequences very instructive. Its 
 pernicious effects were soon evolved. Pretending as its essen- 
 tial character a severer form of discipline, and avowing the 
 intention of maintaining a more ascetical and uncontaminated 
 piety, it might seem at first sight (especially if viewed as a 
 matter of opinion or speculation), that the harshest judgment 
 which could be pronounced of it was, that it was more rigid 
 than was expedient : more honest than wise. But in fact it 
 1 Ep. Hi. p. 72.
 
 132 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 tended, and that presently, to obscure the character, and over- 
 throw the reality, of the Church itself. Contrary to the uni- 
 versally received interpretation of the parables of the net, 
 which gathered of all fishes good and bad ; of the field, in 
 which tares and wheat grew together until harvest ; the defini- 
 tion of the Church which Novatian was obliged to assume as 
 the ground of his separation, excluded from that body every 
 assembly which contained a mixture of wicked men : and the 
 obvious inference was, that the Church nowhere existed : no 
 where, as he himself avowed, except with his own cabal ; no 
 where, as even his own party must soon discover, unless they 
 should be judicially blinded to their own enormities. More- 
 over, the distinctive title which he assumed for his party, 
 whom he called Cathari (Kadapof) or puritans, while it sounded 
 only as a profession and earnest of greater purity, in fact in- 
 volved a reproach, and was intended so to do, of the Catholic 
 Church. " Having obtained imposition of hands by robbery," 
 says Theodoret 1 of Novatian, " he became the leader of a heresy; 
 and gave to his followers not only the name of Novatians, but 
 of Cathari : and he trembled not at the rebuke pronounced 
 against some who say, I am clean, touch me not ; to whom the 
 Lord God saith, These are smoke in My nose, afire that burneth 
 all the day ; for the Lord resisteth the proud."* Perhaps 
 some who to this day, would be distinguished by a name 
 which casts opprobrium on all others, may not be free from 
 the crime of the Novatians, nor undeserving of the divine 
 rebuke thus applied to them by Theodoret. 
 
 It was a corollary of Novatian's doctrine concerning the 
 Church, that the Baptism of the Catholics was invalid, or 
 rather was no baptism at all. Hence his party was guilty of 
 the sacrilege of rebaptising those whom they received into 
 their number. 3 Again, they have their parallel in certain sec- 
 
 1 Theodoreti Hceret. Far. compend. lib. iii. v. Repi Navdrov, vol. iv. 
 
 P- 345- 
 
 2 See Isaiah Ixv. 5, and I Pet. v. 5. 
 
 3 The Catholics received the Novatians without Baptism ; but admin- 
 istered unction to them, on their conversion, as well as imposition of 
 hands ; for the Novatians rejected this part of the ceremony of Baptism.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 133 
 
 taries of these days. The whole complexion, too, of their 
 theology, represented God and Christ as cruel and implacable ; 
 and was therefore tinged at least with impiety. Have they no 
 parallels again in these days ? In a word, as Dionysius says, 
 " We have cause enough to hate Novatian ; for he hath 
 divided the Church ; he hath involved some of the faithful in 
 his impiety and blasphemy ; he hath brought in a dangerous 
 doctrine ; he hath taken away the mercy and beneficence of 
 the Saviour ; he hath rendered Holy Baptism useless, and 
 hath thereby driven away the Holy Spirit, even though there 
 might yet be hope of His return." l 
 
 1 Eusebius vii. 8.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A Review of St Cyprian's tract "De Unitate Ecclesiae. 
 
 IT was on occasion of the disturbances in the Church, of which 
 we have just given an account, and in the midst of those of 
 which we are about to speak, that St Cyprian wrote his cele- 
 brated and most important tract " DE UNITATE EGOLESS ; " 
 " On the Unity of the Church." 
 
 The exordium is most appropriate to the times. Persecu- 
 tion was then the great and overwhelming temptation by which 
 Christians were everywhere assailed : and as persecution was 
 the temptation then most dreaded, so was open apostasy, and 
 a return to heathen rites and superstitions, the sin most likely 
 to abound ; and the number of the lapsed was still reading to 
 the Church a sad lesson of fear and humiliation on this head. 
 On the other hand, since external assaults are usually found 
 to cement a society in the bonds of a closer compact, schism 
 would seem to be the sin least to be expected, and faction 
 and cabals the temptations least to be feared. St Cyprian 
 then begins his work against the evil of separation from the 
 Church, by warning his readers and his hearers (for the tract 
 in question was probably preached as well as published) 
 against the deceitfulness and subtlety of Satan, who would 
 now insinuate the temptations least expected, while the 
 Church was watchful and prepared against the dangers more 
 obviously impending. 
 
 To all the commandments of God, then, the Christian 
 Bishop writing under these circumstances demands the 
 obedience of his flock ; and against all temptations, especi-
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 135 
 
 ally at that time against temptation to schism and heresy, he 
 forewarns them; teaching them, that they who neglected 
 God's law of unity imposed upon the Church, must perish 
 equally with those who disobeyed any other divine precept. 
 
 The first point to be proved, according to this plan, is this. 
 That unity is the appointment of God and of Christ. A visible 
 unity of a visible body ; not that factitious unity which was 
 then pretended, and of which the liberalism of the present 
 day dreams so vaguely, but the sacrament of unity ^ or an out- 
 ward and visible union of the Church, as a sign and convey- 
 ance, appointed by Almighty God, of certain spiritual gifts 
 and privileges. 
 
 The first proof that St Cyprian offers of this is the typical 
 character of St Peter, whereby he becomes (not as Bishop of 
 Rome, but in his individual personal character) a type or 
 figure (not an instrument) of the unity of the Church. The 
 two limitations here expressed are most important, because 
 it is by keeping them out of sight that the Romanists make 
 it appear on a cursory view that St Cyprian favours their own 
 Church in his present reasonings ; whereas if either of those 
 limitations be found or implied in St Cyprian's teaching, the 
 whole scheme of Rome must fall to the ground, so far as 
 Cyprian's testimony is concerned. But in truth both are most 
 plainly indicated in this very treatise ; much more therefore 
 is the system of Rome, which cannot consist with either, 
 unsupported by St Cyprian. 
 
 The passage in which the typical character of St Peter is 
 thus adduced in proof of the will of God and of Christ that 
 the Church should be one, is as follows : " Addressing Peter, 
 the Lord saith, I say unto thee, Thou art Peter and upon this 
 rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not pre- 
 vail against it: and to thee will I give the keys of the kingdom 
 of heaven : and whatsoever things thou shalt bind on earth, 
 shall be bound in heaven also ; and whatsoever things thou shalt 
 loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven also. And again to the 
 same (Peter) He saith after His resurrection, Feed My sheep. 
 1 Unitatis Sacramentum, p. 196. bis.
 
 136 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 He builds His Church upon one, [and commits His sheep to 
 him to be fed]. And although He committed an equal power 
 to all the Apostles, saying, As My Father sent Me, so send I 
 you: receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whosesoever sins ye remit, they 
 shall be remitted unto him ; whosesoever sins ye retain, they shall 
 be retained : yet, for the exemplification of unity, He so dis- 
 posed, by His authority, the original of that unity, that it might 
 take its rise from one. The rest of the Apostles, indeed, were 
 what Peter was ; endowed with an equal fellowship both of 
 dignity and of power ; yet the beginning proceeds from unity, 
 that the Church may be shown to be one." x 
 
 Now it will be observed, that while the last sentence is quite 
 at variance with the Papacy, every word here uttered may be 
 accepted by an Anglican divine ; or at least, whether or no it 
 agree with his private opinion, be permitted as harmless, in 
 the controversy with Rome. But since the schism which gave 
 occasion to the whole tract occurred at Rome, it is next to 
 impossible that St Cyprian, if he had at all symbolized with 
 the modern Romanists in the matter of St Peter's supremacy, 
 should entirely forget to speak of St Peter the Bishop of 
 Rome, as well as of St Peter the Apostle ; and to make him 
 not a type only, but also a centre and instrument of unity : 
 for there lay the chief strength of this part of the argument, 
 according to the Romish assumption. 
 
 The typical character of St Peter is prophetic of the 
 Church's Unity, but we have also adduced by St Cyprian 
 an older prophecy of the same thing ; for in harmony with 
 Catholic interpretation, he explains the words of the Bride- 
 groom to the Bride in the Song of Songs ; My dove, my spotless 
 one, is but one ; she is the only one of her mother, elect of her 
 that bare her, as spoken by Christ to His Church. And after- 
 wards he adduces many direct precepts of unity, all tending 
 
 1 In this quotation I have followed the Oxford Edition of St Cyprian's 
 Works. The reason why the Benedictine Edition and those which it 
 follows are not to be relied on here, may be found va. James on the Corrup- 
 tions of the Fathers and Councils ; in the note at the end of the tract on 
 the Unity of the Church in the Oxford translation of St Cyprian's Works, 
 and in the Appendix to my own "Testimony of St Cyprian against Rome"
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 137 
 
 to set in the strongest light the intention and the command 
 of God, that the unity of the Church should be visibly and 
 inviolably maintained. 
 
 Besides these, there are many other indirect proofs ot the 
 divine origin of the principle of unity adduced by St Cyprian, 
 such as the type of the seamless coat of Christ, which the 
 very soldiers would not divide, and the unity of the ever- 
 blessed and glorious Trinity. Many too are the warnings 
 which he deduces from Scripture, as the case of Jannes and 
 Jambres, and that of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram : and it 
 is scarce necessary to add, that all those texts which are 
 ordinarily cited for the same purpose, he does not forget to 
 adduce as positive precepts to maintain the unity of the Spirit 
 in the bond of peace ; only this is observable, that it never 
 seems to have suggested itself to his mind, that men could 
 obey these precepts of love and charity and unity, while they 
 were visibly separate, and actively employed in maligning and 
 undermining the Church. 
 
 Hitherto we have St Cyprian indicating the duty of Church 
 unity, but not mentioning any instrument or bond of union, 
 without which the Church would be incomplete ; and which 
 Rome thinks that she finds in her own Bishop, while Ultra- 
 protestants know not where to look for it. Now though Cyprian 
 does not with modern Rome make St Peter personally or in 
 his successor at Rome a centre or instrument of unity ; neither 
 does he, with the modern Dissenter, and with those members 
 of the Church who are best designated perhaps as invisible 
 Churchmen, forget, that an instrument of that unity is really 
 provided, by means of which the command of God may be 
 obeyed. This instrument of unity, or visible bond and centre 
 of brotherhood, St Cyprian finds in the Episcopate : " which 
 unity," saith he, "we should firmly hold and maintain; 
 especially we, who as Bishops should preside in the Church, 
 that we may approve the Episcopate itself to be one and 
 undivided. Let none lead the brethren astray with a lie : let 
 none corrupt the unity of the faith with treachery and pre- 
 varication. The Episcopate is one, and each Bishop so shares
 
 138 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 in it, as to have an interest in the whole." l If any thing be 
 wanting to make this doctrine of Cyprian plain, it may be 
 gathered from his Epistle to the laity of his own Church, on 
 occasion of the schism of Felicissimus. " God is one, and 
 Christ one, and the Church one, and tliere is one Episcopal 
 chair founded on a rock by the word of the Lord. It is 
 impossible that any altar can be erected besides the one 
 altar ; or any new priesthood added to the one priesthood. 
 Whoever gathers from other sources scatters. . . . Let no 
 one, dearest brethren, induce you to wander from the ways 
 of the Lord. Let none snatch you who are Christians from 
 the Gospel of Christ. From the Church let none separate 
 the sons of the Church. They who will perish, let them 
 perish alone. They who have seceded from the Church, let 
 them alone remain without the Church. They who have 
 rebelled against the Bishops, let them alone be separated from 
 the Bishops." 2 
 
 To these passages might be added many others to show 
 that St Cyprian makes the Episcopate not only what he had 
 made St Peter, a type of unity, or an indication that God 
 would have His Church one ; but also more than He made St 
 Peter, that is to say, an instrument of unity, by means of 
 which the Church actually was what God had indicated in 
 the typical character of St Peter that it should be. 
 
 The Church, he adds, after the express declaration of the 
 oneness of the Episcopate, "The Church also is one, and by 
 the increase of her fruitfulness, extends herself far and wide, 
 still remaining one. So the rays of the sun are many, but its 
 light is one ; the boughs of a tree are many, but its strength 
 is one, residing in the firm root ; and when from one source 
 several streams take their rise, though the copious fountain 
 pour forth many rivers, yet unity is preserved in the source 
 itself. Intercept a ray of the sun, and the principle of unity 
 in its light no longer suffers it to shine. Tear a branch from 
 
 1 Episcopatus unus est, cujus a singulis in solidum pars tenetur. Page 195. 
 
 2 Extra ecclesiam soli remaneant, qui de ecclesia recesserunt, soli cum 
 Episcopis non sint, qui contra Episcopos rebellarunt. Ep. xl. 53, 54.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. \ 39 
 
 the tree, and it cannot bud forth again. Cut off the stream 
 from its source, and its channel is dried up. So the Church, 
 pervaded with the light of the Lord, extends its rays through 
 the whole world : yet the light is still one, in its universal 
 diffusion, nor is the unity of the body disturbed : its exuberant 
 fruitfulness extends its boughs over all the earth ; it pours 
 forth its streams far and wide : yet is there but one head, one 
 source, one mother, present everywhere in her unnumbered 
 progeny." 
 
 But there were some who thought to obtain the blessings 
 promised to the one Church by a factitious unity among 
 themselves ; and those especially, who had gained over the 
 Confessors at Rome, boasted of communion with these cham- 
 pions of the faith, and thought they might on the strength of 
 it neglect the real Church Communion with the Bishop, and 
 so, instrumentally, with Christ. In a word, they thought to 
 receive the grace of the Sacrament of unity, while sacrilegiously 
 rejecting the outward sign. With these St Cyprian thus 
 reasons. "Let them not deceive themselves with a false 
 interpretation of our Lord's words, Where two or three are 
 gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them. 
 This is to tamper with the Gospel, and to adapt it to a pur- 
 pose which it does not support, by taking part, and omitting 
 the remainder. And as they are themselves broken off from 
 the Church, so would they mutilate the passage, and present 
 it in fragments. For thus did the Lord say, when He would 
 persuade His disciples to unanimity and concord. If two of 
 you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall 
 ask, it shall be done for them. of My Father which is in heaven. 
 For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there 
 am I in the midst of them. Indicating that the unanimity of 
 the petitioners was of more avail than their numbers. . . . 
 But how can he agree with another, who first agreeth not with 
 the body of the Church itself, and with the whole brother- 
 hood? How can two or three, manifestly separated from 
 Christ and from His Gospel, be gathered together in Christ's 
 name? [And such is their case.] For we departed not from
 
 140 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 them, but they from us : and heresies and schisms have a date 
 posterior to ours, originating in the formation of separate 
 assemblies, by those who have left the head and original of 
 the truth. But, truly, it is of His Church that the Lord 
 speaks ; and to those who are in His Church that He says, 
 that if they be of one mind, as He commanded, yet though 
 they be but two or three, yet the majesty of God will hear 
 their petitions." 1 
 
 But not only do such men cut themselves off from the 
 peculiar privileges attached to unity, but all other the peculiar 
 blessings of the Church are to them of none avail. " What 
 peace do they hope to receive who are at enmity with the 
 brethren? What sacrifice do they offer who are opposed to 
 the Priest? Do they who are assembled together, without 
 the Church of Christ, dream that Christ is with them in their 
 assemblies ? Though such men should die in confession, not 
 even their blood would wash away these stains. The sin of 
 dissension is too weighty to be expiable by suffering. He 
 who is not in the Church cannot be a martyr." 2 
 
 And in respect both of criminality and of wretchedness of 
 condition, he postpones the separatists even to the lapsed. 3 
 "Their crime is more than that with which the lapsed appear 
 to be stained : for those do at least deprecate the wrath of 
 God, with all the appointed offices of penance. The lapsed 
 seek after the Church as suppliants : schismatics resist the 
 Church. The lapsed yielded to force and compulsion : schis- 
 matics cleave with full purpose to their sin. The one injures 
 
 1 Page 198. We may again find a parallel in one of St Cyprian's 
 Epistles. Writing to Pupianus, he says, "The Bishop is in the Church, 
 and the Church in the Bishop ; they who are not with the Bishop, are 
 not in the Church : and they miserably deceive themselves, who, not 
 maintaining communion with the Bishops of God, think cunningly to 
 insinuate themselves into the Church, by communicating with certain 
 others ; whereas the Church, which is one and Catholic, will not endure 
 separation and schism, but is united and consolidated through all its parts 
 by the cement of an united Episcopate." 
 
 2 Page 198. 
 
 3 This is in exact harmony with the Epistle of Dionysius to Novatian, 
 upon his schism.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 141 
 
 his own soul alone, the other perils the souls of many. The 
 one sees that he has sinned, and weeps and laments; the 
 other elated in his wilfulness, and rejoicing in his very crimes, 
 separates children from their mother, allures sheep from their 
 fold, and subverts the Sacrament of God ; and whereas the 
 lapsed has once sinned, the other offends daily. Finally, the 
 lapsed may be received into the kingdom of heaven after 
 martyrdom ; but he who is slain out of the Church hath no 
 part in the rewards of the Church." 1 
 
 How terrible we may well say is the picture which St 
 Cyprian presents, and to which all the saints of that age 
 agree, of the state of heretics and schismatics ! And since 
 the very elect may be almost within the deceptive art of the 
 tempter, how great reason that we should not be highminded 
 but fear ! Yet the temptation to schism, in St Cyprian's view 
 of it, is only another way by which the great enemy destroys 
 the souls of those who in truth are his, though other trials 
 had failed to move them. " Let none," says he, " account it 
 possible for the good to depart from the Church. The wind 
 carries not away the wheat ; nor does the storm tear up the 
 firmly rooted tree. It is the chaff that flies before the wind ; 
 it is the rotten trunk that is shattered by the storm. Such are 
 they whom St John transfixes with a curse : They went out 
 from us, because they were not of us : for if they had been of us, 
 no doubt they would have continued with us. . , . The Lord 
 suffers these things to be, leaving still to each his free will ; 
 that while the choice of truth attests the sincerity of our hearts 
 and minds, the unshaken faith of the approved may shine 
 with redoubled lustre. The Holy Spirit forewarns us of this 
 by the Apostle : There must be heresies, that they which are 
 approved may be made manifest among you. Thus are the 
 faithful proved ; thus are the faithless detected. Thus, even 
 before the day of judgment, are the works of the just and of 
 the unjust divided, and the chaff separated from the wheat." 2 
 After these copious extracts, it is scarce necessary to notice 
 the grave and indignant warnings against separation, and the 
 1 Page 201. 8 Page 197.
 
 142 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 affectionate and earnest entreaties to peace and unity, by 
 which they are followed. But perhaps some one will ask, Is 
 there nothing in the tract which we are examining about 
 that charity, that bond of peace, which is as the soul, of which 
 external visible unity is the body ? I must remind those who 
 should thus ask, that St Cyprian is expressly writing about the 
 visible unity, about the sacramentum unitatis ; so that he need 
 not be accused of indifference to love and charity, though he 
 had said but little about them : but in fact his ardent and 
 affectionate spirit would not miss the opportunity of com- 
 mending those Christian graces ; and he again and again 
 refers to them in very energetic terms. One passage (but it 
 is one out of many) shall suffice. " In the house of God, in 
 the Church of Christ, they dwell with united affections, in 
 concord and singleness of heart. And therefore came the 
 Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. A creature of cheerfulness 
 and simplicity ; bitter with no gall, fierce and violent with no 
 savage beak and hooked talons, delighting in the dwellings of 
 man, consorting together and rearing their young in an house : 
 flying side by side in their wanderings from their nests, 
 sweetening life with society and a mutual affection, betoken- 
 ing their peace with gentle kisses, and in all things living 
 according to a law of love. Such simplicity, such love, 
 should be seen within Church, and from the dove should the 
 love of the brethren take its pattern." l 
 
 Such is an imperfect sketch of the tract of Cyprian on the 
 unity of the Church. The abstract propositions which it 
 maintains are and will ever be true. Their application to 
 present circumstances may be difficult; and certainly is far 
 more so than when St Cyprian wrote : for though the mystical 
 holiness and truth of the Church remain perfect to the eye 
 of faith ; yet if She hath in any degree (and who shall dare to 
 say that She hath not ?) presented to the eye of sense a far 
 different aspect; with Her assuredly is some part of the 
 sin, and much of the shame, when Her weaker sons are 
 scandalized. It is still their duty to live by faith ; but if She 
 1 Pages 196, 197.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 143 
 
 hath made it harder to them, though they be not excused, 
 surely Her own children will less readily cast the stone. 
 
 Against two extreme forms, however, of schismatical, pro- 
 ceeding, there can be neither hesitation nor danger in declaring 
 all that Cyprian says to be just as true as ever, even in its direct 
 application. If there be any who deny not the truth of the 
 Church's doctrine, and the sufficiency of the means of grace, 
 which she herself affords, or which may be had in perfect 
 harmony with her laws ; yet with unordained hands and with 
 no Apostolic commission, present the mockery of an altar and 
 of the Christian Sacraments ; they are woefully deceiving the 
 people, and feeding them with husks, whereas in their Father's 
 house is enough and to spare for the meanest servants. 
 
 And again, the Romish Church, which first of all had so 
 extremely overlaid the truth of Christ with error, and the 
 purity of the Church with sin and crime, that its holiness and 
 its catholicity was removed, except from the most piercing 
 eye of faith ; so that we might almost say, that even had we 
 separated we should have been (dare I say justified ; yet) at 
 least forgiven : and at last, when we laboured earnestly to go 
 back to a primitive faith and catholic practice, and would 
 not, while we left the error, and escaped the sin, be driven, 
 taunted, persecuted to separation ; herself by her own act 
 separated us from her communion : and then came hither by 
 intrusion, and set up Bishop against Bishop, and altar against 
 altar ; surely thus doing, the Romish Church does bring 
 itself, and its adherents in this land, under the very meaning 
 of St Cyprian's definitions of schism, and within the range of 
 his reprobation.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A Schism at Carthage. Its Origin. The Surreptitious Ordination of 
 Fortunatus. The Schismatics apply to Cornelius for his Support : 
 They are at first repelled, but afterwards too favourably heard. 
 St Cyprian expostulates with Cornelius. The Extinction of For- 
 tunatus's Party. Maximus Ordained by the Nova tians in Carthage. 
 His Faction contemptible. 
 
 WE have no sooner concluded the history of the attempt of 
 Novatian on the peace of the Church in Rome, than we are 
 called upon to record a similar series of events in Carthage. 
 They were indeed of far less importance ; nor did they origin- 
 ate any party which long existed as a separate communion : 
 yet they gave some trouble to Cyprian ; and called for the 
 application of precisely the same principles of Church govern- 
 ment and discipline, which were so fully elicited during the 
 scandalous schism of the Novatians at Rome, and embodied 
 with so great skill and judgment in the work we have just 
 reviewed. And it is singular enough, that both these schisms 
 should indirectly have occasioned for a while some mutual 
 distrust of one another in St Cornelius and St Cyprian : for as 
 Cyprian's having suspended his formal judgment touching the 
 Episcopate of Cornelius, though for good purposes, had called 
 forth a remonstrance from that Prelate, who knew not the 
 motives by which Cyprian was actuated ; so also did the hesi- 
 .tation which was occasioned in the mind of Cornelius by the 
 false reports of the enemies of Cyprian, when there were no 
 sufficient sources of authentic information at hand, give occa- 
 sion to an expostulatory Epistle of Cyprian. From this 
 Epistle we extract the following accounts.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 145 
 
 Many years before, one Privatus, a notorious heretic, had 
 been condemned at Lambesa, in Numidia, by a Synod of 
 ninety Bishops ; whose judgment had been approved byFabi- 
 anus and Donatus, the predecessors of Cornelius and of 
 Cyprian in their respective sees. This man came to Carthage, 
 accompanied by Felix (whom he had schismatically ordained 
 Bishop), and by Maximus, Jovinus, and Repostus, who had 
 lapsed in the late persecution. Privatus, thus accompanied, 
 wished, it seems, or pretended a wish, to obtain a second 
 hearing of his cause at Carthage ; but this being denied him, 
 he with his four companions, joining this party of Felicissimus, 
 determined on constituting in the Church of Carthage an 
 Episcopal head to their schismatical body. They fixed on 
 Fortunatus, of whom we have already heard as one of the five 
 presbyters who took part with Felicissimus in his schism ; and 
 they gave out that five and twenty Bishops were to join them 
 from Numidia, to assist at his ordination. This, however, 
 was a vain boast, for five only, and they excommunicated, 
 assembled for this purpose. 
 
 Cornelius was already acquainted with the name of For- 
 tunatus, and catalogues had been sent to him from Carthage 
 both of those Bishops who were sound in the faith, and also 
 of those Bishops and others who had been condemned and 
 expelled the Church; Cyprian therefore deemed it hardly 
 necessary to convey a particular account of these matters to 
 Cornelius by a special messenger. He did, however, write to 
 Rome soon after by Felicissimus ; but in the meanwhile Feli- 
 cissimus arrived at that city, together with other adherents of 
 Fortunatus, there to appeal against the judgment of the African 
 Prelates, and to produce the evidence on which they claimed 
 that Fortunatus should be recognised as Bishop of Carthage. 
 
 At first Cornelius utterly rejected the claims of those im- 
 pudent pretenders; but when they repeated the lies which 
 they had forged at Carthage, and gave out that the number of 
 Bishops assisting at the ordination of Fortunatus was that 
 which they had at first promised to produce, not five, but 
 twenty-five ; and threatened to read the letters which they
 
 146 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 had brought with them in public, if they were not received by 
 Cornelius, and to spread many scandalous reports : Cornelius 
 was so far moved by their threats, that his determination was 
 shaken, and he addressed a letter to Cyprian, seeking farther 
 information upon the subject. 
 
 This application called forth the reply, from which this 
 account is taken. All the circumstances of the ordination of 
 Fortunatus, Cyprian relates as we have given them, and ex- 
 postulates somewhat warmly with Cornelius, for his vacillation 
 in so clear a cause. He tells Cornelius, in his own behalf, as 
 he had before told Antonianus on behalf of Cornelius, that we 
 are not to listen to the scandalous reports of factious and un- 
 godly men, and such as the Church repudiates : he reminds 
 him that such attacks upon his character by those who profess 
 the same religion, are a part of the portion of a good Bishop 
 in this world, as well as the open violence of Jews and 
 heathens ; even as Jacob and Joseph both suffered from the 
 enmity of their brethren, and Christ Himself was betrayed by 
 a disciple. The foul calumnies which the followers of For- 
 tunatus vented, he turns to an evidence against them ; for the 
 evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth evil 
 things : and especially when they are spoken against the priest 
 of God ; since it is written, " He that despiseth you despiseth 
 Me ; " and since our Lord Himself and St Paul illustrated by 
 their conduct and precept the general rule, " thou shalt not 
 speak evil of the ruler of thy people." 
 
 Thus having stated the source of such irreverence to the 
 sacred office which he held, he goes on to point out its con- 
 sequences also : that heresies have no other origin but this, 
 that the priest of God is not obeyed, and that it is not suffi- 
 ciently remembered, that there is but one Bishop at a time in 
 a Church, and but one judge, in the place of Christ ; that if 
 the whole brotherhood would obey him, according to the 
 divine institution, no one would be found to devise practices 
 against the college of Bishops : no one, in opposition to the 
 judgment of God, to the suffrage of the people, to the consent 
 of the Episcopate, already declared in behalf of any, would
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 147 
 
 erect himself into a judge not so much of his Bishop as of 
 God Himself: no one would rend the Church of Christ by a 
 breach of unity ; no one would indulge his vanity and pride 
 by the erection of a new heresy. 1 
 
 Then he proceeds to set forth his own testimonies as the 
 one Bishop in his see ; his election, his constancy in persecu- 
 tion, and the like ; and after giving an account of the pro- 
 ceedings of Fortunatus and his party, with a view of their 
 characters ; which we will gladly omit, or at least sum up in 
 the single expression of Cyprian, that Fortunatus and they 
 were worthy associates, he as a ruler, they as his people : after 
 having declared that the threats which they uttered against 
 him personally made them murderers in the sight of God : 2 
 after especially intimating their guilt, and largely proving its 
 heinousness, in too readily receiving the lapsed; he enters 
 upon another ground of complaint against them, and shows 
 that the very fact of their carrying their cause to Rome, after 
 it had been heard and determined in their own province, 
 was in itself criminal, so that it ought not only not to be 
 encouraged, but not so much as permitted by Cornelius. 
 
 St Cyprian's words are as follows : " After these schismatical 
 proceedings, and when a false Bishop had been ordained for 
 them by heretics, they dare to take ship, and to carry letters 
 from schismatics and profane persons, to the see of Peter, and 
 to a principal Church, from whence the unity of the Episco- 
 pate took its rise ; forgetting that it was the Romans, whose 
 faith is applauded in the preaching of the Apostle ; to whom 
 perfidy could have no access. But wherefore did they come, 
 and tell you of their having ordained a pseudo-bishop, in 
 opposition to the (true) Bishops? For either they are still 
 pleased with their deed, and persevere in their crime ; or if 
 they regret it, and would retrace their steps, they know 
 whither they should return. For since it has been determined 
 by us all, as indeed is just and fit, that the cause of every man 
 
 1 Neque enim aliunde haereses obortae sunt, &c. Ep. Iv. p. 82. 
 
 2 Fustis et lapidis et gladios quod in illis est, homicidae sunt apud 
 Deum tales. Ep. Iv. p. 80.
 
 148 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 should be heard where his offence was committed ; and that 
 a portion of the flock should be attached to each pastor, to be 
 by him ruled and governed, each having to render an account 
 of his actions to the Lord ; it is fit that those over whom we 
 rule should not wander about, nor make a breach in the co- 
 herent concord of Bishops, by their own artifice and deceitful 
 boldness ; but that they should plead their cause where they 
 may both find accusers, and witnesses of their crime. Unless, 
 indeed, to a few desperate and abandoned wretches, the 
 authority of the Bishops constituted in Africa, who have 
 already judged their cause, and with the weight of their sen- 
 tence confirmed the condemnation of their consciences, bound 
 with many crimes, seem inferior. Their cause is already 
 determined ; their sentence is already pronounced : nor is it 
 fit that the judgment of Bishops should be subject to the 
 reprehension of inconsistency and change." 
 
 And afterwards : " They have not the face to appear before 
 us, and to remain with us, so heinous and weighty are the 
 crimes which are alleged against them. Yet, if they be willing 
 to submit to my judgment, let them come. Let them show 
 their penitence, for the Church is shut against none ; and as 
 for my personal accessibility and mildness, they cannot deny it." 
 
 These passages are not unworthy of note, as conveying ex- 
 pressly, what we shall find more than once implied in the 
 following pages, the judgment of St Cyprian, and in him I will 
 venture to say of the Church Universal in his days and for ever, 
 concerning appeals to Rome, wherein consists one important 
 branch of the supremacy usurped by that see. 1 
 
 1 The nearest approach that was ever made by any Ecclesiastical 
 Synod, that could be deemed better than a party cabal, towards investing 
 Rome with the privilege of hearing appeals, was made by the Sardican 
 Council, about a hundred years after Cyprian's time. It was then de- 
 termined, that if any particular Bishop felt aggrieved by the judgment of 
 his comprovincial Bishops, he might apply to Julius, Bishop of Rome 
 (observe not to the Bishop of Rome absolutely, but to Julius the then 
 Bishop), in order to another trial (but observe), not before Julius person- 
 ally, or in his courts, but before such Bishops of the next adjoining 
 province as he should appoint ; or ultimately, under certain circumstances, 
 before his legates.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 149 
 
 It is needless to add, that the cause of Cyprian, just in 
 itself, and thus advocated, was wholly triumphant at Rome 
 
 Now, in the first place, this Sardican Council is not of universal 
 authority ; and the time was when Rome thought so too, or acted at least 
 as if she thought so. For in the year 415, Irsinius, Bishop of Rome, 
 rejudged the cause of Apiarius, an African priest, who had been deposed 
 by his own Bishop, pretending the authority of the Council of Nice for 
 these Sardican Canons, as if conscious that they required the authority of 
 that greater Council ; and under this pretended authority he sent his 
 legate into Africa, to hear the cause of Apiarius. It so happened that 
 a Synod of two hundred and seventy Bishops, among whom was the great 
 St Augustine, was assembled at that time ; and they all replied, that 
 they knew of no such Canon among those of Nice ; and after six years, 
 during the whole of which time it should seem the imposition was 
 attempted, they declared their final decision, that the Nicene Fathers had 
 determined the contrary to what was pretended by the Roman legates ; 
 that delinquent Clergymen were thereby left to the judgment of their own 
 Bishops, and Bishops to that of their Metropolitans ; and that all such 
 matters should be determined in the places where they arose : that the 
 grace of the Holy Spirit would not be wanting in each province, for the 
 right ordering of all such matters ; and that they could find no decree of 
 the Fathers which justified the proceedings of Rome in sending legates to 
 them. 
 
 But, secondly, it was not without a reason that the power then given 
 to Julius, Bishop of Rome, was limited in the Sardican Canons to him 
 personally. The Council of Sardica met to restore St Athanasius, and 
 to provide for the continued security of the orthodox. Now the Emperor 
 had the same privilege of granting a re-hearing which is here given to 
 Julius : and the then Emperor was Constantius, an Arian, of that very 
 sect against whose machinations the Canons in questions were intended 
 as safeguards. The exigency, then, arising from the heterodoxy of the 
 present Emperor^ %vas met by transferring one of his privileges, by an 
 internal arrangement of the Church, to the present Bishop of Rome. The 
 whole matter was an expedient, and fell to the ground, both according 
 to the letter and to the spirit of the Canons in question, when the present 
 necessity was passed. 
 
 But although that just stated is the nearest approach towards giving to 
 Rome a power of hearing appeals, yet it is not the nearest approach to 
 the like power given to another Church : the nearest approach to the 
 power now claimed by Rome that was ever given to any Church, was 
 given by the Fathers assembled at Chalcedon to the See of Constanti- 
 nople. See Canon ix. of that Council. 
 
 In the whole matter of this note, consult Johnson's Vade Mecum ; and 
 see also Palmer's Treatise on the Church of Christ, part ii. ch. 2.
 
 1 50 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 and elsewhere ; indeed he tells us, that by the very fact of the 
 ordination of Fortunatus, the faction which adhered to him 
 was diminished almost to nothing, so that they could scarce 
 number among their adherents, lay or cleric, so many as had 
 joined in their condemnation : l for this shameless act opened 
 the eyes of all who were hitherto deceived by the pretensions 
 of that party, and by the hope of being readmitted into the 
 Church by their means, the possibility of which was now pre- 
 cluded. I do not know that we hear anything more of this 
 desperate faction. 
 
 The ordination of Maximus by the Novatian party at 
 Carthage was still more obscure ; and scarce gives us an 
 opportunity of mentioning, that there were now three rival 
 Bishops in Carthage. The only account which Cyprian- deigns 
 to give of this latter pretender is contained in the following 
 passage of the letter so often lately quoted. " It is scarcely 
 consistent with the majesty of the Catholic Church, to notice 
 the impudent attempts of heretics and schismatics ; I hear, 
 however, that a party of the Novatians have lately sent as 
 their Bishop into these parts, one Maximus, whom I had 
 already excommunicated." The best use to make of such 
 accounts is to collect from them the testimony even of 
 heretics to the necessity of that discipline which the Catholic 
 Church has ever maintained. It seems that in those days it 
 was not thought possible to assume even the external figure 
 of a Church, without the presence of a Bishop : and that too, 
 a Bishop of that particular Church, where the schismatics 
 assembled. It would have seemed monstrous then to have 
 assumed the character of a Christian Church without a Bishop, 
 or of a Christian Church, in London for instance, under a 
 Bishop of Olena. But some in these wiser days seem to think 
 otherwise. 
 
 1 Ep* lv. page 87.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Persecution renewed on occasion of the Plague. Cyprian's Apologetic 
 Letter to Demetrian. His Epistle to the Thybaritani. The Penitent 
 Lapsed admitted to Communion, in anticipation of Persecution. The' 
 Exhortation to Martyrdom. St Cyprian's Last Letter to St Cornelius. 
 Death of Cornelius. Of Lucius. How far Persecution a Test of Truth. 
 
 BEFORE Cornelius received the account of Fortunatus and his 
 schism, a new scene of persecution had opened upon the 
 Church ; for Cyprian says, that he had been called for by the 
 enraged populace to the lions, while he was writing the Epistle 
 last mentioned : the blood of a Christian Bishop being re- 
 quired as the most acceptable libation upon the sacrifices 
 offered to appease the wrath of Apollo the destroyer, or to 
 propitiate Apollo the preserver. 
 
 The plague having lately raged with extraordinary fury over 
 almost the whole of the empire, Callus and Volusianus had 
 struck coins with the inscription Apolloni Salutari, and had 
 appointed sacrifices to be offered to the same deity. In these 
 sacrifices the Christians of course refused to join ; and thus 
 they offered first to the populace, and then to the state, a 
 specific occasion of wreaking on them the vengeance of that 
 malicious and cruel superstition, which imputed to them every 
 evil that afflicted this lower world. 
 
 This is a fair example of the way in which the Christian 
 Church generally suffered under some imputation, as absurd 
 as it was impious and malicious ; and became the victim first 
 of popular rage, and eventually of an authorised and organised 
 persecution. Whenever the empire suffered, whether from the 
 consequences of natural convulsions, or from the famine or
 
 152 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 disease attending on unfruitful or unhealthy seasons, or from 
 invasion by foreign foes, or from the crimes of political in- 
 cendiaries, or from the impudence or immorality of emperors, 
 the first effect was popular discontent and commotion ; and 
 then the hated religion of Jesus was cast out to the people, 
 that they might expend on it all their rage. If the first 
 occasion of the discontent was such as we naturally refer to 
 supernatural agencies, as famine or pestilence, so much the 
 more directly did the imputation and the penalty fall upon the 
 Christians ; for they were the avowed enemies of the gods, 
 whose vengeance was supposed to be excited against the 
 empire for harbouring them : but if the first evil was evidently 
 the work of man, as the burning of a city in sport ; no matter, 
 the Christians must still suffer, if the popular clamour was 
 excited. Certainly no people had ever so deep an interest 
 in the repose and prosperity of a nation, as the Christians had 
 in that of the Roman Empire ! 
 
 Its frequent recurrence, and its frightful effects, serve to 
 invest this moral phenomenon with great interest, and perhaps 
 with equally great importance. Let us see how it has been 
 viewed by some of those who lived within its fatal influence. 
 
 Tertullian, in the second century, in his book against the 
 Gentiles, having exclaimed against the custom of calling the 
 assemblies of Christians, bands of lawless men, conspiracies, 
 declares, that these titles are rather to be given to the factious 
 crowd of people who conspire against the peace and safety of 
 the good and peaceable, inventing against them the most 
 absurd accusations, and then calling out for their destruction : 
 " If the Tyber has flooded the city, or if the Nile has not 
 flooded the fields ; if the earth has trembled, or if the heavens 
 have not fallen in showers ; if there be a plague or a pesti- 
 lence; presently there is a cry, 'The Christians to the 
 lions!'" 1 
 
 Origen, in the next age, a contemporary of Cyprian, 
 mentions a particular instance in which an earthquake was 
 attributed to the Church. " We know," says he, " that in our 
 Tertul. adv. Gentes. . 40, vol. iii. p. 70.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 1 53 
 
 own days there was an earthquake, which in some places was 
 very destructive ; so that the impious infidels said that the 
 Christians were the cause of the calamity, the Churches being 
 incensed at the persecutions which they had suffered. And 
 not the impious only, but some also, of whom better things 
 might have been expected, said publicly, that the most terrible 
 earthquakes happened on account of the Christians." l In 
 short, so great an interest do the heathen seem to have attri- 
 buted to the Christians with heaven, that it had become an 
 old proverb in the days of Augustine, " Non pluit Deus, die 
 ad Christianos." Long before the time of that Father, the 
 Gentiles had learned to associate with the Church of Christ 
 all such occurrences as they looked on as divine interposi- 
 tions ; and if the gods seemed to speak in a voice of anger, 
 the Christians were to be the sacrifice ; and the destruction of 
 their " godless superstition " the propitiation : and it mattered 
 little whether the gods were the immediate executioners of 
 their own sentence, or whether they employed hostile nations 
 as their instrument ; for we have it on the authority of the 
 same Father, that a recent irruption of the barbarians was 
 attributed to the Christian Religion. 2 
 
 It is no wonder that the Christians should labour to free 
 themselves as well from the odium as from the danger of such 
 absurd imputations ; and we find it a point often and most 
 earnestly argued in their Apologetics. Arnobius even opens 
 his work with a declaration, that he was led to compose it by 
 the fact, that many, who seemed to fancy themselves wiser 
 than their neighbours, declared with all the violence and 
 fanaticism of those who pronounce an oracle, that ever since 
 the beginning of the Christian religion the world had been 
 manifestly declining, the human race had suffered new and 
 terrible disasters, and that all traces of the visits of Deity to 
 the earth, which used to be frequent, had now vanished. But 
 it would be endless to cite all the complaints of the Christians 
 on this head ; or to recount all the arguments by which they 
 refuted the absurdities of the heathen, and endeavoured to 
 
 1 Orig. in Mat. cap. xxiv. - Augustine De Civ. Dei, ii. 2, 3.
 
 154 Ltf e an d Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 avert their terrible consequences. Let us confine ourselves 
 now to a work of Cyprian, in which he touches on the same 
 subject, and to which the above remarks may give an addi- 
 tional interest. 
 
 The work of Cyprian, to which we allude, is the Apologetic 
 Epistle to Demetrian, who seems to have been a lawyer at 
 Carthage ; or, perhaps, a professor of Rhetoric, of the same 
 grade in which Cyprian himself had been before his con- 
 version. Some have supposed that he held a high civil 
 station, perhaps even the Proconsulate of Africa; and that 
 on him, therefore, personally, the execution of the penal 
 laws, against which Cyprian argues, devolved : but I think 
 that Mosheim l has sufficiently shown that this could not be ; 
 and Cyprian's character is cleared from the imputation of 
 something almost approaching to faction, in speaking of the 
 civil magistrate in terms of such marked disrespect as occur 
 towards Demetrian in the work before us. That holy Bishop 
 would never have been so far forgetful of the precepts and 
 example of our blessed Lord and His Apostles. 
 
 Whoever and whatever Demetrian was, 2 it seems that he 
 had been in the habit of entering into theological disputation 
 with Cyprian ; and that present circumstances had directed 
 their discussions to the real or supposed connexion between 
 the rise and progress of Christianity, and the anger of the 
 gods manifested in public calamities, and those dreadful 
 scourges of the earth, pestilence and famine. The rudeness 
 or obstinacy of Demetrian had determined Cyprian to dis- 
 continue the verbal discussion of this interesting and im- 
 portant question ; and to close the whole controversy, so far 
 as he and Demetrian were concerned, with this Epistle. He 
 himself tells us this in the opening paragraph. 
 
 " You say," says Cyprian, " that all the evils with which the 
 
 1 Mosheim. de rebus ant. Const. Mag. p. 532. 
 
 2 No one seems to suspect that Demetrian was only an imaginary person, 
 to whom Cyprian addresses his Apology, which is intended for the heathen 
 in general ; but is not this in itself probable ? And what difficulty is there 
 in the way of such an opinion ?
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 155 
 
 world is now harassed and shaken, are to be attributed to us, 
 and to our refusing to worship your gods. But since you 
 are ignorant of the Divine counsel and truth, you must first 
 be told that the universe itself has already grown old. The 
 earth has lost its pristine vigour, and can no longer put forth 
 the energies of youth. I need not quote our Scriptures to 
 confirm this assertion, nor enter into speculations of my own ; 
 for the world itself witnesses its own decline, by sufficient 
 tokens. The rains of winter and the summer now maintain 
 not their just proportion ; the spring smiles not as formerly 
 with the promise of fruitfulness, nor does autumn bend beneath 
 so rich a burden. Less marble is dug from the exhausted 
 quarries, less gold and silver from the impoverished mines. 
 Husbandmen are wanting for the fields, sailors for the sea, and 
 soldiers for the camp. Innocence and justice are banished 
 from the Forum and the courts. Society is deprived of con- 
 cord ; the arts are deficient in skill ; morality has relaxed her 
 discipline. Can you suppose that all these things should 
 retain the same vigour which they possessed when the world 
 was yet young? Everything is necessarily attenuated as its 
 end approaches. The sun shines more feebly in his setting ; 
 and the moon in her wane dwindles to a slender thread. 
 The tree once green and stately in its broad shade, withers 
 and diminishes to a stump : and the most abundant fountain 
 is at last exhausted, and pours out drop by drop the scanty 
 remainder of its waters. This is a law imposed upon all 
 things by the Deity, that whatever is born must die ; that 
 whatever increases must eventually fall away : strong things 
 must decay in strength, and large things in magnitude ; and 
 all must eventually perish. Do you attribute it to the 
 Christians, that everything is deteriorated with the general 
 decay and old age of the universe ; or do you lay it to their 
 charge, that life is now terminated within one hundred years, 
 instead of extending to eight or nine hundred ? . . . " 
 
 It is curious to find the Apologist confessing the premises 
 (that is, that the world really was then in a worse condition 
 than hitherto), and answering one false deduction from them,
 
 1 56 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 by another equally false in fact, though in reason and piety 
 most just and true. But we shall find, by and by, that it was 
 an opinion frequently expressed by Cyprian, and other great 
 and good men, that the world was grown old, and near its 
 end. Meanwhile we are indemnified for such false presump- 
 tions and false reasoning, by other arguments more to the 
 purpose. For Cyprian continues : 
 
 " Know, however, that all these things have been predicted ; 
 and know also, that they happen not as you ignorantly assume, 
 because we worship not your gods ; but because God is not 
 worshipped by you. For since He is the Lord and Ruler of 
 the universe, and all things obey His will, and nothing ever 
 happens but by His hand, or His permission, when such 
 events occur as demonstrate His indignation, they occur not 
 because of us who worship God, but because of your iniquities, 
 who will not seek the Lord, nor fear Him ; who will not 
 desert your vain superstitions, and acknowledge the true 
 religion ; so that God who is the same God over all, may by 
 all be alone worshipped and supplicated." We cannot refrain 
 from observing, with how good a grace the Christians, after 
 they had acquired the superiority in temporal power, retorted 
 upon the heathen their accusation, that they were the causes 
 of evil in the world ; since they had not been afraid to 
 make the same accusation, while they were depressed and 
 persecuted. 
 
 St Cyprian proceeds to quote several passages from the 
 Jewish Scriptures, in which the very same judgments are 
 denounced against those who will persist in serving false 
 gods, as the heathens then suffered, and imputed to the 
 vengeance of the gods against the Christians. He applies 
 these threatenings of the prophet to the present time. He 
 tells Demetrian, that the purpose of those judgments in the 
 Divine counsel, was to call the heathen to repentance ; yet 
 he adds other prophecies, which intimate that the threatened 
 judgments should fail in this purpose, and that in consequence 
 of the obduracy of the heathen, they should still continue. 
 This use of the Prophets was perfectly legitimate, even in
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 157 
 
 argument with a heathen ; for the Jewish Scriptures were of 
 known and acknowledged antiquity ; and in this instance fell 
 upon times which supplied an external evidence of their 
 authority and truth. 1 The conclusion of Cyprian's argument 
 from these denunciations and their fulfilment is as follows. 
 " Lo ! scourges fall upon you from above, yet ye tremble not. 
 If some such note of the Divine vengeance fell not upon men, 
 encouraged by impunity, how much greater would be their 
 boldness and impiety ! " 
 
 After having at some length exposed the vices of the 
 heathen, as calling for the vengeance of God, and amply 
 justifying the infliction of all those calamities which were 
 attributed to the wrath of heaven against the Church, St 
 Cyprian proceeds to the mention of those cruelties with which 
 the Christians were everywhere overwhelmed. " It is not 
 enough that you yourselves serve not God ; but those who do 
 serve Him you pursue with impious rage. You neither worship 
 God, nor suffer Him to be worshipped by others : and while 
 you extend indulgence to the worshippers of dumb idols, and 
 images made by the hands of men ; nay even of portents and 
 monsters ; the worship of the true God is alone proscribed. 
 The hideous gods of the Egyptians are adopted by you, and 
 sacrifices burn on every side to apes and crocodiles; while 
 God must be without an altar, at least in public. You dis- 
 inherit, you banish, the innocent and just, and those whom 
 God loves ; you put them into chains and dungeons ; you 
 drag them to the beasts, to fire, to the sword. Nor are you 
 satisfied with depriving us of life by a quick and simple 
 process ; you inflict the most cruel and lingering death, and 
 are not content even with torturing us except by some new 
 invention, and with the exercise of a savage ingenuity. 
 
 1 Vet Lactantius, with more assumption than sound reason, says, " Non 
 defugi hunc laborem, ut implerem materiam, quam Cyprianus non 
 executus est in ea oratione, qua Demetrianum (sicut ipse ait) oblatrantem, 
 atque obstrepentem veritati, redarguere conatur ; qua materia non est 
 usus, ut debuit : non enim Scriptura testimoniis, quam illi utique vanam, 
 fictam, eorum arbitriumque putabat ; sed argumentis, et ratione fuerat 
 refellendus " v. 4.
 
 158 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 How insatiable your cruelty ! How implacable your ven- 
 geance ! 
 
 " Christianity either is or is not a crime. If it be a crime, 
 why do you not at once execute him who confesses his guilt ? 
 If it be not a crime, why do you persecute the innocent ? 
 Again : allowing it to be a crime ; those who are implicated 
 in it, but obstinately withhold a confession of their guilt, 
 would be the proper objects of torture : but we confess, we 
 proclaim, our adherence to the Christian cause, and our 
 contempt of your gods. Why then are we tortured, as if we 
 concealed our guilt ? Why this attempt upon the infirmity of 
 our bodies ; upon the weakness of what is but earthly in us ? 
 Rather enter the lists with our minds ; try the strength of our 
 reason ; see if you can subvert our faith with argument ; and 
 if you must conquer, conquer by an appeal to reason." 
 
 Cyprian afterwards shows, that the heathen deities were, in 
 truth, not the patrons but the clients of their worshippers : 
 needing their support against the power and influence of the 
 Christians, whose exorcisms would expel them from the 
 victims of whom they had taken possession. 
 
 But the Pagan opponents of Christianity might remark, that 
 the Christians were not free from the same evil which afflicted 
 the nation in general ; and that the misery of persecution was 
 an additional suffering which the Church alone endured ; so 
 that if it was indeed true that the pressure of misery was a 
 punishment for impiety, the Christians who bore the greatest 
 infliction at the hands of the Deity must be accounted the 
 greatest criminals. Cyprian answers this objection thus l 
 
 " He it is who experiences the whole bitterness of temporal 
 evil, whose hopes and joys, whose very glory, is centred in 
 this world : who hath no happy anticipations ; whose very 
 hope is but a deep despair. They, on the other hand, whose 
 prospects, whose joys, whose ambition, are future, feel not the 
 pains and disappointments of this life. Thus we neither 
 despond nor murmur; but we rather rejoice in the same evils, 
 
 1 To the Christians themselves Cyprian had another answer to the same 
 observation. See his work upon the Plague.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. \ 59 
 
 which overwhelm you in affliction and despair : and we are 
 taught to believe, that our very sufferings are intended to 
 strengthen our faith. Do you reckon then, that to us and to 
 you evils are equally evil ? Do you not know from your own 
 observation, that you and we bear not afflictions in the same 
 way ? . . . Among us, hope then flourishes in its full vigour, 
 and faith loses nothing of its confidence : our mind stands 
 erect, and our virtue is unshaken, amid the ruins of a falling 
 world : l our patience is never wearied, while our souls repose 
 themselves still upon God. The Prophet says, 'Although 
 the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the 
 vines ; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall 
 yield no meat ; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and 
 there shall be no herd in the stalls : yet I will rejoice in the 
 Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.' That is, the 
 man of God, and he who worships Him, cannot be moved by 
 the changes and miseries of this world : the vine may fail and 
 the olive ; the plain may be brown with the parched herbage ; 
 but what is this to Christians, to the servants of God, for 
 whom Paradise stands open, for whom is prepared the fulness 
 of grace, and the abundance of the kingdom of Heaven ? 
 They ever rejoice in the Lord, and boast and delight them- 
 selves in their God ; and while they look forward to the gifts 
 and glories of eternity, they endure manfully the wrongs and 
 afflictions of time : for we who have set aside our natural birth, 
 and are born again, and created anew by the Spirit, live no 
 longer to the world, but to God." 
 
 Then Cyprian declares, that the prayers of Christians are 
 constantly offered even for their persecutors. He sets before 
 
 1 Inter ipsas saeculi labentis ruinas erecta mens est, et immobilis virtus, 
 p. 222, Probably Cyprian had in his mind the words of Horace (Carnt. 
 
 "i. 3) 
 
 Justum . . . virum 
 Si fractus illabatur orbis 
 Impavidum ferient ruinae. 
 
 But with Cyprian the ruime are literal, which with Horace are figurative ; 
 for Cyprian believed the end of the world to be at hand,
 
 160 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 the heathen the necessity of repentance; and declares, that 
 in thus doing, he most convincingly displays his charity, 
 
 This is a short summary of the contents of Cyprian's Epistle 
 to Demetrian on the subject of the present persecution, and 
 its occasion as pretended by the heathen. I have not thought 
 it necessary to translate the more intemperate language of the 
 Christian Prelate, believing it to be rather attributable to the 
 time than to the man, or the religion which he professed : for 
 it abounds everywhere in the controversial writings to which we 
 shall presently arrive, among which those of Cyprian are by no 
 means alone faulty. I hope and believe that the latter expres- 
 sions of charity are more consistent with the temper of Cyprian, 
 and a more exact transcript of his real feelings ; as they cer- 
 tainly better agree with the precepts of Christ. Nor indeed were 
 any of the divine injunctions of our Saviour more exactly 
 obeyed in the early ages of the Church, than that which 
 engages us to pray for them which despitefully use us and 
 persecute us. Dionysius of Alexandria says of Gallus on this 
 very occasion : " He persecuted the saints who were praying 
 to God for his health and for his glory ; and deprived himself 
 of the benefit of their intercessions, while he drove the brethren 
 from his dominions." l 
 
 And if we must give Cyprian credit for the sentiments of 
 true charity which he professed towards the heathen ; so may 
 we be sure that the expression of firmness, and even of glory- 
 ing in tribulation, which he attributes to the persecuted 
 Christians, was really found among them : for he writes in 
 the same strain, not only to the Gentiles, when he would set 
 forth the evidences of the faith ; but to Christians also, when 
 he would imbue them with a proper temper, in these trying 
 times. His exhortation to martyrdom breathes the spirit 
 rather of an Epinicion, than of a Threnic ode : and the same 
 spirit animates his Epistle to the Thybaritani, who had 
 
 1 Eusebius, vii. I. And see Arnobius Contra Gentes, liber i. p. 18. 
 Da veninm Rex Summe tuos persequentibus famulos : et quod tuse benigni- 
 tatis est proprium, fugientibus ignosce tui nominis et religionis cultum. 
 Non est mirum si ignoraris : majoris est admirationis si sciaris.
 
 Life and Times of Sf Cyprian. 161 
 
 repeatedly entreated him to visit them, but to whom he 
 excuses himself from the peculiar complexion of the times, 
 and the necessity which lay upon him of attending his own 
 flock with the greater care. He warns them of the coming 
 storm ; and tells them that he had received such intimations 
 from the Lord concerning its violence, as led him to antici- 
 pate a persecution even more fierce than that under the Decii. 
 In this he was certainly deceived ; and it will follow that he 
 either misinterpreted a real communication from heaven, 
 or mistook for such a communication the more than ordi- 
 narily impressive emotions of an excited mind ; but that he 
 wrote under that impression is all that is needed to show the 
 view which he took of persecution, in its extremest form, 
 and the practical application which he made of it to those of 
 his own faith, with the preparation which he deemed most 
 appropriate for encountering it. 
 
 "A more fierce and dreadful conflict," says he, 1 "now 
 awaits us, for which the soldiers of Christ ought to prepare 
 themselves with uncorrupt faith, and a manly virtue ; drinking 
 to this end, day by day, the blood of Christ, that for Christ 
 they may be enabled to shed their own blood. If we would 
 manifest our willingness to be with Christ, we ought also so 
 to walk as He walked : as St Paul tells us ; 'we are sons, and 
 if sons then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, 
 if we so suffer with Him as to be glorified with Him also.' 2 
 And this we should now bear in mind, that none of us may 
 have his desires fixed uppn this world, now ready to perish ; 
 but that all may follow Christ, who Himself liveth for ever, 
 and giveth life to those who are established in the faith of His 
 name." 
 
 After having quoted several warnings of our Lord and His 
 Apostles of impending persecutions, with the accompanying 
 promises and blessings, he proceeds, " In the midst of perse- 
 cution, our Lord would have us exult and be glad ; for then 
 the crowns of faith are bestowed, then the soldiers of God are 
 approved, then heaven is thrown open to the martyrs. Nor 
 1 Ep. Ivi. p. 90. a Rom. viii. 16, 17. 
 
 F
 
 1 62 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 did we so enrol our names in the army of the saints, as to 
 look for a peaceable service only, and to deprecate and refuse 
 the battle : for our Lord Himself, our example in humility 
 and patience and long-suffering, commenced our course in 
 actual conflict; Himself beginning that warfare which He 
 would have us to wage ; and bearing for us in His own 
 person, that which He would have us to bear after Him. 
 Remember that He, to whom all judgment is committed, has 
 declared, that those who confess Him here He will confess 
 before His Father ; and that He will deny those who deny 
 Him. . . . And let none be discouraged, dearest brethren, 
 at seeing the company of the faithful put to flight by fear of 
 persecution, and because he sees not the flock assembled in 
 one place, nor hears the voice of the shepherd [Bishop]. They 
 cannot be collected together who are appointed not to kill, 
 but to be killed. And whithersoever, in those days, a single 
 disciple shall be driven by necessity, being absent from the 
 brethren in body, but present with them in spirit, let him 
 not be cast into despondency by his flight, nor be driven to 
 despair by the solitude of his retreat. He flies not alone, 
 who hath Christ the companion of his flight. He is not 
 alone, who beareth about with him everywhere the temple 
 of God, and hath God ever within him. And if robbers, or 
 wild beasts, 1 or any accident, cut him off in his flight, Christ 
 still beholds His servants ; and wheresoever, and under what 
 circumstances soever, the encounter is endured, Christ bestows 
 the reward (which He hath promised to give at the resurrec- 
 tion) upon each one who dies for the honour of His name, on 
 occasion of persecution. 2 Nor is that martyrdom devoid of 
 
 1 The number of persons thus cut off, always entered largely into the 
 account of the havoc made among the Christians by persecution. 
 
 2 Et persecutionis causa, pro nominis sui honore morienti prsemium 
 reddit, quod daturum se in resurrectione promisit. (P. 91.) Cyprian 
 here avoids the promise of immediate glory to those who did not suffer 
 actual martyrdom. This is worthy of remark ; for if he speaks of an 
 immediate crown to the martyr, but of a crown only at the resurrection 
 to the rest of the faithful, how can he dispose of the latter except in Hades? 
 oF the Catholic doctrine of which there are no direct assertions in the
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 163 
 
 glory, which is not endured publicly : the witness and ap- 
 pearance of Him who crowns the martyr, being a sufficient 
 token of the glory of the martyr. 
 
 Then having proposed to them the examples of Abel, of 
 Abraham, of the Three Children, and of Daniel ; having 
 reminded them of the slaughter of the Innocents ; but more 
 especially having set before them the unparalleled sufferings 
 of Jesus Christ; he warns them, that the times of Antichrist 
 are approaching : and adapting his exhortation to their 
 necessities, he proceeds : " Men are trained and exercised for 
 victory in the secular games ; and they account it no slight 
 accession to their glory, if they receive the prize before a 
 crowded assembly, in the presence of the Emperor. Lo ! our 
 great, our illustrious contest ; glorious with the guerdon of a 
 heavenly crown ! Lo, how God witnesses our struggle ; and 
 looking benignantly on those whom He condescends to call 
 His children, Himself rejoices in our victory ! How great 
 the happiness in the sight of God to contend : to be crowned 
 by the judgment of Christ! Let us arm, my beloved brethren, 
 let us arm for the fight ! Let us prepare for the contest with 
 a mind and a faith uncorrupted, and with devoted valour ! 
 Let those who have hitherto conquered resume their arms, 
 lest they lose the glory which they have nobly won ! Let 
 those who have before fallen gird on their harness, that they 
 may retrieve their former disgrace. Let honour incite the 
 faithful, let remorse impel the fallen to the field." 
 
 In marked accordance with this last portion of his exhorta- 
 tion, was his own conduct in preparing his Church for the 
 coming persecution ; for besides these general exhortations to 
 martyrdom, and other such-like obvious measures, he tells 
 Cornelius, in a synodical letter, 1 that he had, with the con- 
 currence of forty-one of his comprovincial Bishops, readmitted 
 the penitent lapsed to communion. " For we are warned," 
 said he, " by divers signs, to arm for the battle, and to 
 summon the whole army of Christ to His banners ; and at 
 
 works of St Cyprian ; so that even these passing indications of his opinion 
 are valuable. ' Ep. liv. 
 
 V 2
 
 164 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 such a time we thought it advisable to place arms in the 
 hands of those who had before deserted their ranks, though 
 not as incorrigible traitors or renegades : and as they had 
 already been admitted to penance, so now to admit them to 
 the peace of the Church. For now the communion of the 
 brethren is as necessary to them in their perilous life, as it 
 was heretofore at the hour of death; at which time it was 
 always proposed to readmit them into the Church. 1 And 
 how shall we expect those to pour out their blood for Christ, 
 to whom we deny the cup of Christ's blood in the Supper of 
 the Lord?" 
 
 The Epistle to Fortunatus, entitled an Exhortation to 
 Martyrdom, is in the same strain with that just quoted. It is 
 composed after the same manner with the Testimonies against 
 the Jews ; being little else than citations of apposite passages of 
 Scripture, arranged under separate heads. Cyprian expresses 
 his motive for this arrangement of the subject under the 
 following singular figure. "Tha work thus performed, will be 
 more readily adapted to every c ne's use. If I had presented 
 you with a garment ready cut out, finished for myself, it would 
 be my own garment, though for another's use, and it might be 
 but ill fitted to his individual stature and bodily form. But 
 now, I have sent you the fleece itself, and the purple dye 
 from that Lamb, by whom we are redeemed, and in whom we 
 live ; and from this you can yourself form your garment 
 according to your own will and convenience ; and you will 
 feel greater pleasure in the use of your own appropriate 
 vesture. You will also be able to supply the like materials to 
 others, that they too may possess the materials of a garment 
 after their own taste ; and all, throwing the robes of Christ 
 over their former nakedness, may appear clothed with the 
 garments of celestial grace." 2 
 
 As Cyprian has himself prefaced this Epistle with a syllabus 
 of its contents, I shall present this to the reader. 
 
 1 The reader will remember, that on a former occasion the approach of 
 the unhealthy season was anticipated by a similar indulgence, for a 
 parallel reason. - Page 262.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 165 
 
 " In exhorting the brethren, and preparing them with the 
 fortitude of virtue and of faith for the confession of their Lord, 
 and in arming for the conflict of suffering and of death, it is 
 necessary, in the first place, to declare, that those idols which 
 man makes for himself are no Gods ; for neither are those 
 things that are made greater than he who designed and made 
 them, nor can those things which perish within their very 
 temples, unless they are preserved by the care of man, afford 
 any protection or preservation : neither are the elements to be 
 worshipped, which are appointed by the providence of God, 
 for the service of man. 
 
 " When the idols have been destroyed, and the true position 
 of the elements declared, we must show that God alone is to 
 be worshipped. 
 
 " Then the threatenings of God against those who sacrifice 
 to idols are to be denounced. 
 
 " And then, the difficulty with which God pardons idolaters 
 should be shown ; and that He is so indignant against the 
 worship of idols, that He has appointed that all who are 
 guilty of persuading others to that sin are to be put to death. 
 
 " After these things we must add, That we who are redeemed 
 and quickened by Christ's blood, are bound to prefer Christ 
 before all other things ; because He, too, preferred nothing to 
 us, but on our account preferred evil to good, poverty to 
 wealth, servitude to dominion, death to immortality ; that we, 
 while we suffer, might, on the contrary, prefer the riches and 
 delights of paradise, to the misery and vanity of the world, an 
 eternal power and kingdom to temporal servitude, immortality 
 to death, God and Christ to the Devil and Antichrist. 
 
 " They, too, who have been snatched from the jaws of the 
 devil, and delivered from the snares of this world, must be 
 warned lest, beginning to perceive themselves in difficulties 
 and dangers, they desire to return again to the world, and so 
 perish in their former delusion ; and they must be encouraged 
 rather to persevere in faith and virtue, and in the perfection 
 of every grace, that they may attain to the palm and the crown 
 of victory.
 
 1 66 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 " For to this very end we are persecuted and afflicted, that 
 is, that we may be proved ; and the injuries and tortures 
 inflicted by persecutors are not to be objects of terror ; for God 
 is more powerful to save, than the Devil to destroy. 
 
 "And lest any should be troubled above measure and 
 affrighted by the difficulties and persecutions which surround 
 us in this life, it ought to be proved, that it was foretold that 
 we should be hated by the world, and persecuted ; so that the 
 truth of God may be attested by these very things, and the 
 assurance therefore of the coming reward, which is built on 
 the promise of the same God, may be increased : while at the 
 same time it is apparent, that no new thing occurs in this to 
 the Christians ; since, from the beginning of the world, the 
 good have ever suffered under the oppression and violence of 
 the wicked. 
 
 " In the last place, we may enlarge upon the hope and the 
 reward of the just and of martyrs, when the troubles and per- 
 secutions of this life are ended ; being assured, that the reward 
 of our sufferings hereafter will far outweigh whatever misery 
 we endured in the martyrdom itself." * 
 
 Such is the strain in which Cyprian exhorts his brethren in 
 Christ to the constancy of confessors and martyrs, and such 
 the preparation which he made for the conflict. He was, 
 indeed, mistaken in looking for a more fierce persecution than 
 that from which the Church had lately emerged ; but the 
 event which happily contradicted his anticipation, diminishes 
 not the glory of his preparation. 
 
 We are not, however, excused from the mention of con- 
 fessors and martyrs under Gallus and Volusianus. For in 
 Rome, the magistrates, intending by one deadly blow to 
 annihilate the Church, directed their attacks against Cornelius, 
 the Bishop of that city. But whatever might be the method 
 of attack, the ravagers of the fold found that the flock preferred 
 death to apostasy ; and that they would rather be united in 
 suffering, than flee from their shepherd in his danger ; for not 
 only those who had always been constant, but even many of 
 1 Pp. 262, 263.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 167 
 
 the lapsed, collected round Cornelius, now that he had borne 
 the especial mark of the persecutors' malignity. 1 Cornelius 
 himself was banished to Centumsellae, whether alone, or with 
 what number of his faithful adherents, does not appear. 
 Cyprian wrote a congratulatory Epistle 2 to him in his banish- 
 ment, greatly commending, and as a member of the same 
 body, exulting in, his courage and constancy ; and declaring 
 the benefit which the alacrity and firmness of the Church in 
 Rome, in baffling persecution, would afford, and indeed had 
 afforded, to the whole body of Christians. Cyprian concludes 
 his Epistle to his brother saint, with a pious determination and 
 request, that whichever of them, he or Cornelius, should first 
 be taken from the Church on earth, would continue his prayers 
 to the Father for him who remained. An exact parallel to the 
 affecting petition of the truly catholic martyr Ridley to Brad- 
 ford, his fellow-sufferer, shortly before the execution of the 
 latter. " Brother Bradford," says Ridley, " so long as I shall 
 understand that thou art on thy journey," his journey, that is, 
 to execution, " by God's grace, I shall call upon our heavenly 
 Father, for Christ's sake, to set thee safely home ; and then, 
 good Father, speak you, and pray for the remnant that are 
 to suffer for Christ's sake, according to what thou then shalt 
 know more clearly." 
 
 The presentiment of Cyprian here apparent of the approach- 
 ing end of his earthly intercourse with Cornelius was verified : 
 for that Prelate died at the place of his banishment, and, as 
 we collect with probability from some casual expressions, a 
 martyr in the most rigorous sense of that word, as he certainly 
 was virtually a martyr. This, however, is not quite indisput- 
 able, and at any rate the manner of his death is unknown. 
 He died A.D. 252, and on the i4th of September; unless 
 the Roman Breviary, being published by Papal authority and 
 received by all the Bishops within the Roman Obedience, is 
 to be believed before an historical testimony, in which case 
 St Cornelius and Cyprian both suffered on the i6th of 
 September. 
 
 1 Ep. lv. 2 Ef. Ivii.
 
 1 68 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 After an interval of a few days, Lucius was chosen Bishop 
 of Rome in the place of Cornelius : and he too soon fell a 
 victim to the rage of persecution ; being first banished with 
 several of his brethren, but soon after permitted or obliged to 
 return. And we suppose with about the same degree of 
 evidence upon which we arrive at the same conclusion re- 
 specting Cornelius, that he suffered martyrdom. Cyprian, in 
 his Epistle to Lucius 1 after his return to Rome, while he 
 congratulates him on his confession, intimates that it was 
 perhaps the intention of the Lord in ordering his return, that 
 he should be crowned with greater glory to himself, and 
 greater benefit to the Church, in the presence of his own 
 people. Whether this intimation had any other foundation 
 than the pious and characteristic sentiment of St Cyprian, or 
 whether it was justified by the event, is not certain. Mosheim 
 says, 2 that he could make it appear that neither Cornelius nor 
 Lucius suffered actual martyrdom ; he confesses, however, 
 that the opposite opinion is upheld by no contemptible 
 authority. 
 
 Some expressions in Cyprian's gratulatory Epistles to Cor- 
 nelius and Lucius lead us to inquire, how far he held persecu- 
 tion to be a test of the truth of the persecuted party. After 
 having expressed his joy, that not only those who had before 
 adhered to the faith, but that some also who had formerly 
 lapsed, had joined Cornelius in his confession ; so that the 
 Church was rather united than scattered by this attack upon 
 it ; he continues : " What says Novatian to these things, 
 dearest brother ? Does he yet lay down his error ? or rather, 
 as is usual with men so infatuated as he is, does his rage 
 increase, at the sight of our blessed prosperity : and does the 
 madness of dissension and fanaticism gather strength among 
 his party, in proportion as the glory of an union in faith and 
 charity is advanced among us ? . . . Does he yet perceive 
 who is the true priest of God ; which is the Church and house 
 of Christ ; who are the servants of God, against whom the 
 Devil expends his rage ; who are the Christians, whom Anti- 
 1 Ep. Iviii. 2 De Rebus Chris, p. 529.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 169 
 
 christ opposes? For Satan pursues not those whom he has 
 already seduced to subjection ; nor does he labour to extirpate 
 those, whom he has made his own servants. The deadly foe 
 of the Church passes by, as already conquered and captive, 
 those whom he hath seduced from the pale of the Church ; 
 and directs all his efforts against those in whom he perceives 
 that Christ dwells." l 
 
 And again, in the next Epistle to Lucius, "We perceive, 
 dearest brother, and with our whole heart and understanding 
 consent to the wisdom and goodness of the counsel of God, 
 whence arose this sudden persecution, and to what end the 
 whole power of the state raged against the Church of Christ, 
 and the blessed Bishop and Martyr Cornelius, and you all ; 
 even that the Lord might confound and crush the heretics, 
 by showing which is the Church, which is the sole Bishop 
 chosen and appointed with the Divine sanction, who are the 
 priests associated with the Bishops in the sacerdotal functions, 
 which is the true flock of Christ, one in fellowship and love ; 
 who they are whom the enemy would destroy, and who are 
 they whom the Devil would spare, as his own children. For 
 whom doth the enemy of Christ persecute and oppose, but 
 the army and the soldiers of Christ ? Those who are already 
 prostrate in heresy, and become his own, he passes by in 
 contempt ; but those whom he beholds erect, them he seeks 
 to throw down." 2 
 
 From such passages we should almost judge, that Cyprian 
 inclined to the belief, that all heretics are exempt from 
 persecution, that the true Church is alone subject to this 
 expression of the Devil's enmity : in other words, that the 
 enduring of persecution is a certain and sufficient mark of 
 truth ; which would be, to say the least, a very strong expres- 
 sion of a proposition, which is true only in a mitigated form. 
 Nor are the passages just quoted the only ones in which 
 Cyprian seems to express the same opinion ; and to apply it 
 in its practical result, as a means of separating between truth 
 and error : for we have found him giving it as one of the 
 1 Ep. Ivii. p. 95. 2 Ef. Iviii. p. 97.
 
 170 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 divine warranties of his own Episcopate, that he was obnoxious 
 to popular and heathen fury, and more than once called for 
 to the lions. 
 
 There is something very plausible in this method of reason- 
 ing ; and it proceeds upon opinions which will always have 
 advocates among those who find support from them, under 
 the peculiar circumstances of their Church or sect. Nor yet 
 are such opinions to be at once discarded ; only they must 
 be kept within due bounds, and not suffered to go quite to 
 that length in theory, to which those who are, or fancy them- 
 selves, persecuted may be disposed to carry them ; nor to 
 be practically applied quite so unsparingly as all who find it 
 convenient to hold them may wish. For persecution may 
 be found sometimes, as history has evinced now, whatever it 
 may have done in Cyprian's time, with a sect or heresy ; and 
 may even be pretended where it does not exist : and so it 
 may be brought to bear with equal force upon opposite sides 
 of a theological discussion, and sometimes with equal truth 
 by both ; that is, it may possess no authority at all. 
 
 It is just so with miracles, another sign of the true Church, 
 which however may be counterfeited by the cunning and 
 villany, and possibly by the cunning and zeal, of man ; and 
 may form a part of the illusory art even of other powers. 1 
 Miracles were pretended on both sides in a late controversy 
 within the Romish pale : and the pretence to them has been 
 revived before us, by the deluded and deluding followers of 
 Edward Irving. Now in all these cases, we will not admit 
 the miracles, real or pretended, as a test of truth ; and in the 
 former case it is a matter of demonstration, that they could 
 not divinely approve opposing tenets. And though these 
 were also (probably) cases of pretended miracles, there is no 
 reason to doubt (nay rather there is the highest ground for 
 believing) that error itself may be accompanied with the 
 deceitful sign of lying wonders. 
 
 But I mention this only that we may return to the question 
 of persecution with the additional light gained from a parallel 
 1 See Deut xiii. and Vincentius Lirinensis, cap. xv.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 171 
 
 case. A claim to the merit of the persecuted may be advanced 
 by those who suffer no persecution at all ; but who so confuse 
 things that differ, as to construe even punishment for secular 
 crimes into suffering for religion, and for theological opinions : 
 or they may construe suffering for some dogma, which may be 
 in itself true, but which has no connexion with religion, into 
 suffering for an article of faith. And from the moment that 
 any party of religionists has become involved in any sufferings, 
 for any cause, there is a very strong temptation (a temptation 
 which I fear has seldom been effectually resisted), to look 
 upon and to adduce that suffering as a ground of boasting the 
 exclusive verity of their faith, on the evidence of persecution. 
 Even those branches of the Catholic Churdi which have fallen 
 under depressing and painful circumstances, have been de- 
 ceived into this erroneous judgment. In Scotland, for 
 instance, the members of the Catholic and Apostolic Church 
 (there to the present day, to the shame of our nation be it 
 said, left to struggle under the difficulties and opprobrium of 
 dissent from an adverse establishment ; and, in former times, 
 to the still greater disgrace of our nation, involved in still 
 greater and more positive difficulties) : in Scotland, I say, 
 the members of the true Church, and the adherents of the 
 established sect, are equally fond of adducing the persecution 
 which they have suffered at different times, as a plain and 
 popular, and very exciting and effective test of the truth of 
 their several communions. Now here again, it is demonstra- 
 tive that both cannot be right, even supposing both to be 
 persecuted, in the proper acceptation of the word, and the 
 only acceptation in which it can be taken for anything which 
 is a test of religious truth. But the truth is, that neither is or 
 has been persecuted. As regards the Catholics, who have the 
 truth on their side, by a higher evidence than they themselves 
 could elicit from a persecution though real, it is clear, I think 
 that what they hold to be persecution, was the rendering them 
 obnoxious to a severe system of political pains and penalties, 
 in themselves, it is true, excessive, and continued longer than 
 was needful, but still directed against political opinions and
 
 IJ2 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 practices which were associated with religion by themselves ; 
 and which the existing government was obliged, for its own 
 security, to condemn as criminal. Admitting their high 
 principle (which I do willingly and with admiration), still they 
 were martyrs, if we must give them that name, to their loyalty, 
 and not to their religion : and their suffering would go to 
 prove, if it go to prove anything at all, not that Episcopacy is 
 a characteristic of the Church Catholic, which is the use that 
 they would make of it; but that the Stuarts were unjustly 
 deprived of their kingdom, and ought at all hazard, and at 
 any time, to be restored to it. 
 
 As for the martyrs (so called) of the Presbyterians, they 
 are the only martyrs from the beginning of Christianity to the 
 present day, who have died with swords in their hands. In 
 fact, they were slaughtered insurgents, who sold their lives as 
 dearly as they could. They were wrong in everything almost 
 in which men can be wrong, except only that they were 
 conscientious in their errors. The example is striking; for 
 these, too, though not martyrs, either in patience, or in the 
 truth of that doctrine and discipline in behalf of which (and 
 not as its supporters, but as its inventors) they took arms and 
 died,'are yet as much vaunted to this day in Scotland, as are 
 in England the meek and blessed martyrs and confessors in 
 the Marian persecution, who died to witness against errors 
 which the Scotch also have thrown off; and as our not less 
 illustrious martyrs, King Charles and Archbishop Laud, who 
 died for the verities which they continue to deny. 
 
 And it is farther to be remarked, that the very party which 
 is in fact the persecuting, may be the one to complain most 
 loudly, and to boast their sufferings for the truth. We have 
 various forms and degrees of this self-deception in the world. 
 There is a tendency among some to declare that they are 
 accounted the very offscouring of all things, and to protest 
 themselves an afflicted and despised race of men, because 
 they and they alone among their countrymen hold the truth : 
 but meanwhile do they not themselves put in exercise a most 
 cruel spiritual persecution, while they declare all others re-
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 173 
 
 probate, and bear themselves towards them as towards aliens 
 and heathens. And again ; at this moment, there is here a 
 combination of all parties against the Church of England, 
 which amounts to the spirit of persecution, and in some 
 respects and places to the actual violence of persecution : and 
 yet she is everywhere assailed by the very parties thus in 
 league against her, as a persecuting Church. In a word, it is 
 now with us as it was in the days of King Charles the Martyr, 
 though (thank God !) in a very much mitigated degree, to 
 whom Laud writes in the dedication of his Conference with 
 Fisher. " One thing more let me be bold to observe to your 
 Majesty in particular, concerning your great charge in the 
 Church of England. She is in hard condition. She professes 
 the ancient Catholic faith, and yet the Romanist condemns 
 her for novelty in her doctrine. She practises Church govern- 
 ment as it hath been in use in all ages, and all places, where 
 the Church of Christ hath been established both in and since 
 the days of the Apostles, and yet the separatist condemns her 
 for Antichristianism in her discipline. The plain truth is, she 
 is between these two factions, and unless your Majesty look 
 to it, to whose trust she is committed, she will be ground to 
 powder, to an irreparable dishonour and loss to this kingdom. 
 And it is very remarkable, that while both these press hard 
 upon the Church of England, both of them cry out against 
 persecution, like froward children, who scratch, and kick, and 
 bite, and yet cry out all the while as if they were killed." Of 
 course I am not adducing this in proof of the Apostolicity or 
 Catholicity of our Church : I thank God that we want not the 
 testimony of the enmity of our opponents, though it may be as 
 strong an one as they can bestow : but only to show the 
 absurdity, yet possibility, of the persecutors, if either party be 
 persecuted, making persecution the test of truth. 
 
 None of these instances, however, exactly touches the point 
 of which Cyprian speaks, which is the suffering for the cause 
 of Christ under the attacks of heathen assailants ; and it is 
 certainly possible that persecution may afford a more just 
 criterion of the truth of those who suffer, when inflicted by
 
 1 74 Life and Tunes of St Cyprian. 
 
 heathens upon those who have the name and profess the faith 
 of Christ, than when employed by one party of professed 
 Christians against another. But in this case, too, history will 
 not bear out the propositions of St Cyprian, if taken in their 
 most rigid sense, and applied without limitation. Among the 
 Arians, for instance, we find men who have suffered together 
 with the Church Catholic; for under Julian the Apostate, 
 who was too hostile to the very name and pretensions of 
 Christianity to distinguish between a sect and the true Church, 
 the followers of Arius were involved in the common mis- 
 fortune. 
 
 I think, then, that it must be admitted, that although God 
 has employed persecution from without more frequently to 
 purify and confirm and render illustrious the faith of the true 
 Church, than to punish the iniquity of heretics and separatists ; 
 and that He has also, on the whole, made so marked a dis- 
 tinction in this respect, between the body of Christ, and all 
 those who have broken off from that body, as to surround the 
 former with a visible glory from above, while the latter are 
 left in their darkness, or in their self-assumed light ; yet still, 
 the mere fact of suffering^ under the name of suffering for the 
 truth as it is in Jesus, is not sufficient to prove one a member 
 of the Church of Christ, any more than the fact of suffering 
 for the dogmas of a sect is sufficient to confirm the truth of 
 those dogmas. 
 
 And this was, I imagine, the more solid conviction of 
 Cyprian himself; for he seems to me to lay much more stress 
 upon his sound reasoning, that there is no confession or 
 martyrdom out of the Church, though there may be those 
 who suffer and die ; than upon his more oratorical assumption, 
 that none but the faithful would be put to the test, or none 
 but they would endure it. Indeed, so far from collecting 
 from a broad view of Cyprian's works, that none but Catholics 
 ever did, or in his opinion ever could, suffer and die for the 
 name of Christ ; we shall rather collect from such passages as 
 those which I shall presently adduce, that some at least, if 
 not many, had actually thus suffered and died ; and that his
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 175 
 
 repeated and earnest references to the position in which such 
 persons stood in respect of the Church, arose out of the 
 necessity which their existence at least, and their pretensions, 
 if not their number, produced. 
 
 Thus, speaking of Nicostratus, he says, 1 " This deserter and 
 renegade boasts himself a confessor : whereas he can neither 
 be nor be called a confessor, who has denied the Church of 
 Christ." Again, at the conclusion of the Epistle to Antoni- 
 anus : " Apostates and deserters, or the adversaries of Christ, 
 who sow discord in His Church, cannot be admitted by any 
 Apostolic rule to the peace of the Church, no not though 
 they be slain for the name of Christ, while they are yet 
 without : since they have maintained neither the spirit nor 
 the unity of the Church." 2 And even in the passage immedi- 
 ately following that before quoted, in which he exults over 
 Novatian as having escaped persecution, Cyprian says, " Even 
 if one of such a party should fall into the hands of the enemy, 
 there is still no sufficient ground for his boasting himself a 
 confessor of the Christian name ; since it is plain, that if such 
 persons are ever put to death out of the Church, they receive 
 not the crown of their fidelity, but the meet reward of their 
 perfidy ; nor can they, whom we behold separated from the 
 household of faith by their reckless discord, be accounted 
 among those who continue of one mind in the house of 
 God." 3 The very event which Cyprian here admits as 
 possible, and against the pernicious effects of which he 
 provides an antidote, did actually occur; for Socrates tells 
 us in his Ecclesiastical History, 4 that Novatian, who escaped, 
 indeed, the persecution in which Cornelius and Lucius perished, 
 suffered death under Valerian. 
 
 In a word (for we are forced to take refuge at last in this 
 safe harbour), no popular test of the truth such as the en- 
 durance of persecution, though it may appeal ever so strongly 
 to man's affections ; or pretended miracles, though they may 
 take his reason almost by storm no such test can be safely 
 1 Ep. xlix. p. 63. - 2 Ep. Hi. p. 75. 
 
 " Ep. Ivii. p. 95. * Lil). iv. 28.
 
 176 Life and Times if St Cyprian. 
 
 trusted alone, however valuable it may be in its right place, 
 and however fascinating its use but after all we must apply 
 a more severe rule of judging between catholic verity and the 
 fancies and vagaries of sectaries and fanatics. We must listen 
 to no reasoning, however supported, which tends to shake our 
 faith in that which has been the doctrine of the first days 
 of the Church, and has been ever held as the faith of the 
 Apostles : our eyes must be closed against all portents, our 
 ears must be stopped against all boastings and lamentations, 
 which would subvert that primitive doctrine ; or else we shall 
 be in danger of falling victims to those delusions, by which 
 Satan would deceive, if it were possible, the very elect ; and 
 from which it is only possible that they can be saved by the 
 application of those means which God has committed to 
 them, to prove all things, that they may hold fast that which 
 is good. 
 
 It can scarcely be necessary to remark, that the questions 
 here touched are all and altogether different from that which 
 relates to persecution as a sign of the truth of Christianity 
 itself, in opposition to heathenism and infidelity. Upon this 
 subject St Cyprian expresses himself most excellently at the 
 close of his tract on the Vanity of Idols, wher 'ie is stating 
 the evidences of his religion to the Gentiles. " The followers 
 of Jesus," says he, 1 " are put to the torture, are crucified, and 
 suffer all manner of indignities, that their sincerity may be 
 tried to the uttermost. Suffering, which is the test of truth, 
 is inflicted on them, that Christ the Son of God, on whom 
 they believe as the Author of eternal life to man, may be 
 proclaimed not only with the voice of the preacher, but with 
 the testimony also of martyrs." This reasoning has all the 
 force of demonstration, when it is considered, that those who 
 first suffered as Christians, could not possibly be deceived as 
 to the truth of those events, in attestation of which they shed 
 their blood : nor would it so much as shake this evidence, if 
 some few isolated individuals had been found willing to main- 
 tain an obstinate adherence to known falsehood before the 
 1 De Idoli Van. p. 228.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 177 
 
 face of torture and of death : such single exceptions of a 
 general rule may afford psychological phenomena of great 
 interest and importance ; but can never shake those founda- 
 tions of human testimony, on which we may and must build 
 as unquestionably secure. 
 
 Thus in a history of these times, and of the persecution 
 under Callus, we have found leisure to speculate upon those 
 subjects which persecution naturally suggests : as Cyprian 
 himself, though he had anticipated a more violent attack 
 upon the Church than that which they had experienced from 
 the Decii, found himself now, however, at liberty to continue 
 among his people, and to encourage them with many works, 
 and constant pastoral care ; whereas in the former case he 
 had been driven from his charge by the more violent rage 
 of the persecutors. In writing of the Decian persecution, we 
 were chiefly occupied in detailing instances of suffering and 
 constancy ; but now we have found time and opportunity to 
 turn our eyes to the attendants of persecution, to its usual 
 causes and consequences : to the feelings, doctrines, and en- 
 couragements, rather than the actual sufferings, of martyrs and 
 confessors : and to the calm reasoning of Christians upon the 
 passing events : to the way in which men were prepared for 
 the conflict, rather than the way in which they actually en- 
 dured it : to the crown of martyrdom, towards which their 
 hopes were directed, rather than the instruments of torture 
 and of death.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 The Plague rages at Carthage. Cyprian's Tract De Mortalitate. The 
 Expectation of the Last Day in the early Church : Gibbon's use of it. 
 Cyprian's Opinion on the Time, Person, and Character of Antichrist. 
 
 THE persecution at length ceased, but the plague, which had 
 afforded to the heathen the first pretence of persecution, still 
 remained ; a more destructive, but a less cruel, enemy ; for 
 certainly the Christians must have felt that it was better to fall 
 into the hands of the Lord, than into the hands of men. This 
 scourge of the nations afforded an additional and most im- 
 portant and interesting occasion of the display of the character 
 of St Cyprian, as a Christian and as a Bishop. 
 
 The symptoms of this terrible disease Cyprian has himself 
 described; they seem to have included a fearful state of 
 exhaustion, with fever, and mortifying and putrid sores : * 
 and Pontius tells us, that this terrible pestilence swept away 
 numbers daily, sometimes carrying off whole households. The 
 carcases of men lay in the streets, and there were none to 
 bury them ; the uninfected deserted their sick relatives, or 
 even turned them out to die unattended in the streets. Yet 
 
 1 Quod nunc corporis vires solutus in fluxum venter eviscerat, quod in 
 faucium vulnera conceptus medullitus ignis exsestuat, quod assiduo vomitu 
 intestina quatiuntur, quod oculi vi sanguinis inardescunt, quod quorundam 
 vel pedes vel aliquae membrorum paries contagio morbidae putredinis 
 amputantur, quod per jacturas et damna corporum prorumpente languore 
 vel debilitatur incessus, vel auditus obstruitur, vel coecatur aspectus. De 
 Mortalitate, p. 232.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. \ 79 
 
 those who had not courage to attend the living, or to bury 
 the dead, summoned resolution to rob those who were in 
 the extremity of sickness ; and the fears of the Gentile inha- 
 bitants of the great city of Carthage were only surpassed by 
 their cupidity. In short, all was consternation, misery, and 
 crime. There is no reason to suspect Pontius of exaggeration 
 here ; indeed, exaggeration of such horrors would scarce be 
 possible. Gibbon gives an appalling account of the miseries 
 of these times. " Our habits of thinking," says he, " so 
 fondly connect the order of the universe with the fate of man, 
 that this gloomy period of history has been decorated with 
 inundations, earthquakes, uncommon meteors, preternatural 
 darkness, and a crowd of prodigies, fictitious or exaggerated. 
 But a long and general famine was a calamity of a more 
 serious kind. It was the inevitable consequence of rapine 
 and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present, 
 and the hope of future, harvests. Famine is always followed 
 by epidemical diseases, the effect of scanty and unwholesome 
 food. Other causes must, however, have contributed to the 
 furious plague, which from the year 250, to the year 265, 
 raged without intermission in every province, every city, and 
 almost every family of the Roman empire. During some 
 time five thousand persons died daily in Rome ; and many 
 towns that had escaped the hands of barbarians, were entirely 
 depopulated. 
 
 " We have the knowledge of a very curious circumstance, of 
 some use, perhaps, in the melancholy calculation of human 
 calamities. An exact register was kept at Alexandria of all 
 the citizens entitled to receive the distribution of corn. It 
 was found, that the ancient number of those comprised 
 between the ages of forty and seventy, had been equal to the 
 whole sum of claimants, from fourteen to fourscore years of 
 age, who remained alive after the reign of Gallus. Applying 
 this authentic fact to the most correct tables of mortality, it 
 evidently proves, that above half the people of Alexandria had 
 perished ; and could we venture to extend the analogy to the 
 other provinces, we might suspect, that war, pestilence, and
 
 180 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 famine, had consumed, in a few years, the moiety of the 
 human species." l 
 
 The courage and the charity of Cyprian shone with resplen- 
 dent lustre, in this gloom of misery and vice. Assembling 
 his people as heretofore, he inculcated, with the authority of 
 a Bishop, the highest moral lesson, enforced with the most 
 powerful and religious motives. He exhorted them to a 
 proper care of the sick, and to a pious sepulture of the dead ; 
 and that, not only of their own numbers, but even of the very 
 Gentiles who were taking occasion of the plague to persecute 
 them : thus did he illustrate the divine precept of our Lord, 
 by which we are taught to love our enemies, to repay evil with 
 good, and to bless those who persecute us ; and thus did he 
 exhort them to imitate the mercy of God, who maketh His 
 sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on 
 the just and on the unjust. If the heathen had heard him 
 addressing such lessons to his people, says Pontius, surely 
 they must have been converted. 
 
 The consequence of this care on the part of the pastor, was 
 manifested in the conduct of the flock. Provision was made 
 for the visiting of the sick, and for the burying of the dead ; 
 and those who had no money to give, gave their labour. That 
 pious care of the Christians for their departed brethren, which 
 so forcibly struck the Apostate Julian, was here extended, 
 under the most distressing and appalling circumstances, not to 
 their brethren only, but to their very enemies. How great 
 effect does this give to the severity with which Cyprian up- 
 braids the heathen, in his Epistle to Demetrian, with their 
 desertion of the dead and of the dying ! " You cry out," says 
 he, " against the plague and the pestilence, while by that very 
 plague and pestilence the crimes of individuals are either 
 detected or increased ; while pity is withheld from the infected, 
 and avarice and robbery gloat over the dead. The very 
 persons who dare not perform the pious obsequies of the 
 departed, are rash in their schemes of plunder : they flee from 
 funerals, that they may rush upon the spoil ; and it would 
 1 Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. i. p. 455, end of chap. x.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. \ 8 1 
 
 almost seem that the wretched sufferers are left alone in their 
 sickness, lest perchance they should escape death, if they 
 were attended. For he surely manifests a desire for another's 
 death, who scarce waits for it, that he may seize upon his 
 wealth." l 
 
 There were other considerations, however, to be urged upon 
 his people by Cyprian at this juncture, besides those which 
 excited them to charity and good works : they were to be 
 fortified against personal afflictions ; against the fear of death, 
 and against immoderate sorrow for departed friends. Accord- 
 ingly, the watchful Bishop prepared a discourse on the present 
 mortality, which was probably delivered from his own lips to 
 his assembled people, as well as distributed among them as a 
 written tract : and he expressly declares, that this was done in 
 obedience to repeated warnings from Heaven. In this dis- 
 course he urges much at length, and with characteristic 
 eloquence, the Scriptural encouragement to patience in suffer- 
 ing, and the reasons which a Christian has to look on death 
 as a blessing, though it come in the most terrible form. To 
 that which is equally applicable to all times of affliction in this 
 discourse, I will not advert : but I may mention, that among 
 the causes of the impatience which Cyprian had to contend 
 against, was the fear of some, that they might be deprived, by 
 the progress of the plague, of the honour of martyrdom. He 
 reminds such persons, that martyrdom is not to be accounted 
 as a property even of the best and most courageous Christians, 
 nor to be reckoned upon as if in every man's power ; since it 
 is in a double sense a free gift of God, Who both places us in 
 the way to it, and enables us to endure it ; and both by an 
 exercise of His free grace. He encourages them to believe, 
 moreover, that God, who trieth the hearts and reins, would, 
 if they were really prepared for martyrdom, bestow on them 
 the reward of martyrs, though they died not under the sword 
 of the magistrate, but beneath His own fatherly visitation : 
 for if, in vengeance, He rejected Cain's offering, anticipating 
 the crime not yet perpetrated ; much more could He, in 
 1 Page 219.
 
 1 82 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 mercy, accept them, though the noble act which they medi- 
 tated was not yet accomplished, and might perchance be 
 placed out of their power. 
 
 He relates an anecdote of a brother Bishop, who was at the 
 point of death, and clinging still tenaciously to life, prayed 
 earnestly for a short respite. While he was thus praying, and 
 while death was closing upon him, a youth stood beside him, 
 of an aspect noble and heavenly, and such as mortal eyes 
 could scarce behold, except those that were about to open 
 upon another world. With an indignant voice and manner, 
 he cried aloud to the dying man; Do YE SHRINK FROM 
 
 SUFFERING J ARE YE UNWILLING TO DEPART ; WHAT WOULD YE 
 
 THAT i SHOULD DO FOR YOU ? l This rebuke, says Cyprian, 
 could not have been intended chiefly for the dying Bishop, to 
 whom it had already ceased to be of use as a practical 
 admonition ; but it was uttered that he might publish it to 
 those whom he should leave behind, and that we might apply 
 it to our spiritual benefit. 
 
 There is another topic often touched by St Cyprian, in this 
 and other works, to which I shall advert at greater length ; 
 because the prevalence of the opinion which we shall find him 
 expressing, is made by Gibbon one of the natural causes of 
 the rapid increase of Christianity, in a discussion which is so 
 conducted as to interpose secondary causes to our perception 
 of the first divine cause, to which rather they ought to direct 
 our attention. 
 
 We have already seen Cyprian reasoning with Demetrian, 
 from a presumption that the world was rapidly approaching its 
 end : and this belief, from which he there gathered topics of 
 reproof to the heathen, he here employs to animate and 
 encourage his brethren in Christ, in their present transitory 
 struggle with afflictions. "The kingdom of God, brethren 
 most beloved, has begun its nearer approaches. The reward 
 of life, the fruition of eternal bliss, perpetual security, and the 
 enjoyment of paradise lately forfeited, are dawning upon us, 
 
 1 Pati timetis, exire non vultis, quid faciam vobis ? De Mortalitate, 
 p. 234.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 183 
 
 as the world passes away. What place, then, is there left, for 
 fear and trepidation." 1 And again, having inculcated the 
 general lesson of resignation at the death of friends, he adds : 
 " this submission, which ought always to be the temper of the 
 servants of God, is now much more incumbent on them, while 
 the world is hastening to destruction, in the midst of accumu- 
 lated evils. We who have seen terrible events, and know that 
 yet more terrible are impending, should reckon it our privilege 
 and happiness to escape the more quickly. If your house 
 shook, and threatened every moment to bury you beneath its 
 trembling walls, would you not rush out of it as soon as 
 possible ? If you were on a voyage, and the winds and the 
 swelling waves threatened destruction to your vessel, would 
 you not hasten to the port ? Behold, then, the world, nodding 
 to its fall, and affording every indication not only of an age 
 past maturity, but of its approaching end : and dost thou not 
 give God thanks : dost thou not congratulate thine own 
 felicity, that thou art snatched by an earlier deliverance from 
 impending wreck and ruin ? " 2 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to transcribe other passages to the 
 same purpose ; though we may make several references, to 
 show how habitually the notion of which we are speaking per- 
 vaded Cyprian's mind. In his Treatise on the Unity of the 
 Church, he refers the heresies and divisions which gave 
 occasion to that work to the prophecy of St Paul to Timothy, 
 that /'// the last days perilous times should come, and divisions 
 arising from the wilful and insubordinate temper of many in 
 the Church. 3 In his book on the Vanity of Idols, he connects 
 the calling of the Gentiles with the end of the world, in such 
 terms as to prove that he imagined the prophecies which he 
 adduces, spoke of his own days, as the fulness of times, and 
 the approaching end. 4 In his Epistle to the people of 
 Thybaris, before quoted, he draws the same conclusion from 
 the afflictions which the Church was then suffering : 5 and in 
 his Epistle to Cornelius, he refers the schisms in the Church 
 
 1 De Mort. p. 229. - Page 236. 3 Page 200. 
 
 4 Page 227. 5 Ep. Ivi.
 
 1 84 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 to the last days spoken of by St Paul, with the Apostle's 
 warning, that such evils should precede them. 1 Thus, 
 whether he had to rebuke the wilfulness of sectaries, or to 
 meet the arguments of the heathen, or to exhort the brethren 
 to meet martyrdom with courage, or the terrible death by 
 pestilence with patience, or the loss of friends with resigna- 
 tion ; whether he had to support the faith of the Church 
 against heresies, or its order against schism, he still referred to 
 that overwhelming consideration, that the end of all things 
 was at hand. 
 
 Nor does Cyprian stand alone in this mistaken conviction. 
 St Chrysostom says, "the end is no longer to be delayed; for 
 these things are even at the door. We know not, whether 
 even in this our generation, the death of all things temporal 
 may not arrive, and that dreadful day dawn, the day of judg- 
 ment. For the greater part of the signs of that day are before 
 us : the Gospel is preached in all lands ; we have had wars, 
 and earthquakes, and famine ; and what besides is there to 
 intervene? But you do not recognise these signs. Learn, 
 however, that this blindness of yours is among the greatest of 
 them ; for so it was in the days of Noe, and of Sodom," 2 &c. 
 And not to accumulate instances unnecessarily, Gregory, 
 Bishop of Rome, at the close of the fifth century, writes : 
 " As when night is ending and day beginning, before the sun 
 rises there is a sort of twilight, while the remains of the depart- 
 ing darkness are changing perfectly into the radiance of the 
 day which succeeds ; so the end of this world is already 
 mingling with the commencement of the next, and the very 
 gloom of what remains has begun to be illuminated with the 
 incoming of things spiritual." And again : "Why is it, I ask, 
 that in these last times so many things begin to be clear about 
 souls which before were hidden ; so that by open revelations 
 and disclosures the age to come seems forcing itself on us and 
 dawning ? " 
 
 1 Ep. lv. 
 
 2 Chrysostomi Horn. xx. al. xxi. in Matt, last paragraph, vol. vii. p. 
 304, new Edition of Paris,
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 185 
 
 Indeed, as the learned author of the tract on Purgatory, in 
 the " Tracts for the Times," from which the quotations from 
 Gregory are borrowed, observes, " Nothing has been more 
 common in every age, than to think the day of judgment 
 approaching; and perhaps it was intended that the Church 
 should ever so suppose. Perhaps so to suppose is even a 
 mark of a Christian mind ; which at least will ever be on its 
 watch-tower to see whether it be coming or no, from desire of 
 its Saviour's return." l 
 
 Now it is not to be doubted, that this prevailing expectation 
 of the end of the world would materially influence the char- 
 acter of Christians; and that for the better: and thus in- 
 directly it would be influential in the propagation of the faith ; 
 since the purity of the Church was one of the great moral 
 elements of its influence over the heathen, and one which we 
 as Christians can never be ashamed to recognise. I confess 
 that Gibbon does verbally ascribe to this opinion its appro- 
 priate effect in the primitive Church : but let us remember that 
 it is his main object in the fifteenth chapter of his work, to 
 which we are referring, to state the causes of the rapid growth 
 of the Christian Church; the second of which he makes "the 
 doctrine of a future life, improved by every additional circum- 
 stance which could give weight and efficacy to that important 
 truth." Having this his object in mind, and taking his words 
 in their proper connexion, we shall see that he would repre- 
 sent the heathen as frightened into Christianity by that expec- 
 tation which purified the character of Christians ; and not as 
 being won over to the Church, by the beauty of the Christian 
 character thus purified. 
 
 It is thus that he expresses himself. " When the promise 
 of eternal happiness was proposed to mankind, on condition 
 of adopting the faith, and of observing the precepts of the 
 Gospel, it is no wonder that so advantageous an offer should 
 have been accepted by great numbers of every religion, of every 
 rank, and of every province in the Roman empire. The ancient 
 
 1 Tracts for the Times, No. 79, p. 46.
 
 1 86 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 Christians were animated by a contempt for their present 
 existence, and by a just confidence of immortality, of which 
 the doubtful and imperfect faith of modern ages cannot give 
 us any adequate notion. In the primitive Church, the in- 
 fluence of truth was very powerfully strengthened by an 
 opinion, which, however it may deserve respect for its useful- 
 ness and antiquity, has not been found agreeable to experience. 
 It was universally believed, that the end of the world, and the 
 kingdom of heaven, were at hand. The near approach of this 
 wonderful event had been predicted by the Apostles; the 
 tradition of it was preserved by their earliest disciples, and 
 those who understood in their literal sense the discourses 
 of Christ Himself, were obliged to expect the second and 
 glorious coming of the Son of Man in the clouds, before that 
 generation was totally extinguished, which had beheld His 
 humble condition upon earth, and which might still witness of 
 the calamities of the Jews under Vespasian or Hadrian. The 
 revolution of seventeen centuries has instructed us not to press 
 too closely the mysterious language of prophecy and revela- 
 tion ; but as long as, for wise purposes, the error was per- 
 mitted to subsist in the Church, it was productive of the most 
 salutary effects on the faith and practice of Christians, who 
 lived in the awful expectation of that moment, when the globe 
 itself, and all the various races of mankind, should tremble at 
 the appearance of their divine Judge." 
 
 Now not to mention the malicious tone of this passage, and 
 the temerity with which its infidel author has ventured so to 
 interpret prophecy as to make it false (surely his unhallowed 
 hand might have refrained at least from touching the ark it- 
 self!); is it not manifest, that as concerns the expectation of 
 the coming of Christ, and that also of the Millennium, to 
 which he next adverts, and in short every expectation founded 
 on the reception and belief of what was revealed by Christ, 
 and propagated among His disciples, with or without some 
 mixture of human error ; is it not manifest, that such an ex- 
 pectation could only produce an effect on those who had 
 believed already; that is, on those who had embraced the
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 187 
 
 revelation of the truth ? But if so, this expectation was not 
 among the direct causes of the growth of Christianity, by 
 directing towards it, or frightening into it, those who were 
 without : and if it was, and was by God Himself intended to 
 be a means of purifying the lives and affections of Christians, 
 and so indirectly working upon the heathen, who saw their 
 good works, and glorified Our Father which is in Heaven, 
 little will be gained to the cause of infidelity, from this ground 
 of a Christian's rejoicing and humble boast. 
 
 And here some other remarks are suggested, upon the 
 Christian's hope of his Lord's speedy coming. The expecta- 
 tion of a rapid period of the world was never a matter of faith 
 in the Church, nor imposed as such by any body of Christians, 
 nor by any individual. It was at most an opinion of many 
 great and good men, which had in it nothing contrary to true 
 piety ; and which gave a high and noble tone to the applied 
 theology of each passing age. It is in vain therefore to argue 
 from their mistake in this matter, which was not a matter of 
 faith, against the authority of the Fathers, as witnessing to the 
 rule of faith. It is equally in vain to argue from hence against 
 the importance of the unanimous judgment of the doctors of 
 the Church, in its earliest and best days : for in the first place 
 it is not clear that the unanimous judgment of the Fathers, at 
 any one time, was ever recorded upon this subject ; l and 
 moreover, the expectation of the end of the world as imme- 
 
 1 The author of the Advent Sermons on Antichrist (No. 83 of Tracts for 
 the Times) says, after having quoted some prophecies of impending persecu- 
 tion from the Scriptures, "These passages were understood by the early 
 Christians to relate to the persecution, which was to come in the last 
 times ; and they seem evidently to bear upon them that meaning. Our 
 Saviour's words, indeed, about the fiery trial which was coming, might 
 seem at first sight to refer to the early persecutions, those to which the 
 first Christians were exposed ; and doubtless so they do. Yet, violent as 
 these persecutions were, they were not considered by those who suffered 
 them, to be the proper fulfilment of the prophecy" (p. 44). Now if they 
 looked for a farther fulfilment of these prophecies, they looked for a time 
 in which they might be fulfilled ; and so those to whom the learned 
 author refers, did not expect the end of the world as immediately ap- 
 proaching.
 
 1 88 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 diately impending at any particular time, could never, in the 
 very nature of things, become catholic ; for it must always 
 want the semper of catholicity, though at any one time it might 
 have had (which however I deny in fact) the ubique, and the 
 ab omnibus. For example, those only who lived before and 
 during the time of Cyprian, could possibly agree with him in 
 supposing that in his day the end was at hand. This is, in- 
 deed, self-evident, and may appear like solemn trifling ; but it 
 has really its importance derived from the misrepresentations 
 of those who deride the appeal to antiquity in theological dis- 
 cussions : for such opinions of particular times, or of individual 
 persons, are often adduced against us, as weakening the au- 
 thority of tradition, or of the recorded universal judgment of 
 all ages and Churches, in attestation of doctrinal truth. But 
 we of the Anglican Church receive not as conclusive the testi- 
 mony of one man or of one age ; therefore to weaken the 
 authority of one man or one age, is not to weaken the support 
 of our system : and again, we distinguish between doctrine and 
 opinion ; and should distinguish between catholic doctrine, 
 and pious and probable opinion, even if it should happen to 
 be catholic : in the latter it is conceivable, that the whole 
 Church might err, and yet the promise of Christ not fail ; in 
 the former we know not how to believe that this could be the 
 case, and therefore we believe Christ and the Church. 
 
 Besides which it is to be remembered, that whatever weight 
 the judgment of individuals, or even of Churches, may have 
 on such a subject as the times of the end of the world, it must 
 have as an interpretation of prophecy, as yet unfulfilled : and 
 even those among us who place the authority of tradition at 
 the highest, plainly declare, that " the Fathers do not convey 
 to us the interpretation of prophecy, with the same certainty 
 as they convey doctrine." Even, therefore, should it be 
 admitted, for argument's sake, that the Fathers have here as 
 a body, interpreted wrongly, our confidence in their authority, 
 where they ought to be appealed to, is not a whit shaken. 
 But let me remit the reader to the Tract last quoted; the 
 three first pages of which will convince all who know what is
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 189 
 
 the doctrine of Rome on the Authority of Tradition, that 
 that doctrine is not the doctrine of those who wish to remem- 
 ber that, our Church was once stigmatized as the "Church 
 of the Traditioners," l and to convert the imputation into a 
 badge of honour and a pledge of fidelity and truth. As for 
 persuading those who know not what the doctrine of Rome 
 is, that is out of the question ; they want one of the things to 
 be compared, and cannot therefore judge of their disparity. 
 It would be well if they could be persuaded to hold their 
 tongues, until they have qualified themselves to speak. 
 
 Here, too, I cannot withhold a comparison of the modesty 
 of the general expressions of Cyprian, and the rest of the 
 Fathers here quoted, with the temerity of those interpreters 
 (shall I call them ?) of sacred Scripture in these days, who 
 would fix the very year and the very day, at which we are to 
 look for the end of the present system of things. In nothing 
 does Antiquity rebuke modern speculators more severely, 
 though silently, than by the reverence, the holy fear, with 
 which she was wont to touch whatever is sacred, to inquire 
 into whatever is hidden. 
 
 Of Cyprian's belief that the end of the world was at hand, 
 it was an almost necessary part, that Antichrist was also 
 already come, or very soon to be revealed : and accordingly 
 he states most clearly that he looked for the revelation of 
 that mystery of iniquity, as preceding the coming of Christ. 
 " Let it not move you," says he to the brethren of Legio and 
 Asturia, 2 " that in these latter days the faith of some has been 
 wavering ; that the fear of God has diminished among them, 
 and the bonds of union broken. These things have been 
 foretold as the attendants of the end of the world ; and our 
 Lord and His Apostles have agreed in predicting, that at the 
 close of the world, and at the coming of Antichrist, all good 
 things should appear to fail, and all evil things, and all things 
 hostile to the Church, should increase." And again, " Anti- 
 
 1 See note B of the Appendix to Dr Hook's Call to Union on the 
 Principles of the English Reformation. 
 3 Ep. Ixviii. p. 1 20.
 
 igo Life and Tunes of St Cyprian. 
 
 christ is at hand, but Christ also cometh immediately after. 
 The enemy advances in his rage, but the Lord delays not 
 His coming, to avenge our sufferings and afflictions." l 
 
 That Antichrist was very near at hand, was evidently, then, 
 a part of Cyprian's belief ; but when we come to inquire what 
 was his notion concerning the character of Antichrist, and his 
 personality, so to speak, we shall find the same vagueness in 
 him, that we must find in all who cannot avoid the mention of 
 such things as are vaguely set before us in Scripture to excite 
 us to piety and to watchfulness, because the mysterious an- 
 nunciations have become deeply impressed upon their feelings ; 
 but who dare not take such liberties with Holy Writ, as to 
 erect for themselves a figure of full proportions, out of a few 
 striking lineaments. It should seem, however, that Cyprian 
 believed Antichrist to be a man, an individual, as opposed to 
 a sect or party, to a prevailing tone of ethics or divinity, to 
 a system of philosophy, or a spirit of philosophising, or to a 
 vague accession of evils, whether persecution, or moral or 
 religious evil, in which light Antichrist seems to be viewed by 
 different persons at present. For in his testimonies against 
 the Jews, having referred to the prophecy in the fourteenth 
 chapter of Isaiah, especially to the words, " Is this the man 
 that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms, 
 that made the world as a wilderness?" he speaks of Antichrist 
 as of him who shall come as a man. 2 And the following 
 passage may seem to tend the same way : " those virgins (who 
 are cut off in the plague) leave the world in peace, and with 
 an untarnished reputation, and have not to dread the threat, 
 the seductiones et lupanaria, of the approaching Antichrist." 3 
 Here, besides the person of Antichrist, we have also one 
 feature of his character, a heartless and shameless debauchery; 
 in a word, a total moral degradation. 
 
 The assertion that Antiochus, in the very act of persecution 
 
 1 Ep. Ivi. p. 92. 
 
 2 De Antichristo, quod in hominem venial. Test. Jud. lib. iii. 118. 
 
 P- 329- 
 
 3 De Mort. p. 233.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 191 
 
 mentioned in the historical book of the Maccabees, was an 
 impersonation, or at least a precursive figure, of Antichrist, 1 
 also leads to the conclusion, that Cyprian made that mystery 
 of iniquity an individual ; and intimates another part of his 
 expected character and actions, that he should be a savage 
 persecutor. And yet another character of that coming pest 
 is indicated by the assertion of Cyprian, that those who 
 separate the Church, imitate his character, and are actuated 
 by his spirit. " Their perversion," says he, in his Epistle to 
 Cornelius on the schism of Fortunatus and Felicissimus, " is 
 to be lamented even to tears, whom the Devil so thoroughly 
 blinds, that, disregarding the eternal pains of hell, they dare 
 to imitate the approach of the coming Antichrist." * And 
 again: 3 " If we set aside the errors for which men contend, 
 and revert religiously and faithfully to the authority of the 
 Gospel, and to the tradition of Apostolical principles, we 
 shall perceive, that no portion of the grace of the Church, 
 and of salvation, remains at their disposal, who scatter and 
 oppose the Church of Christ ; and who are called adversaries 
 by Christ Himself, but by His Apostles Antichrist" Hence 
 we may collect, I think, as from no obscure hints, that Anti- 
 christ was, in Cyprian's judgment, to be not only a persecutor 
 and an alien from all the hopes and blessings of Christianity, 
 but that he was to be also an apostate ; ravaging that fold to 
 which he had once belonged. 
 
 I have only to add, that there has nothing intervened, that 
 I know of, which should prevent our having the same notions 
 of Antichrist, and the same feelings about his coming, that 
 St Cyprian had : and so long as the end shall be yet future, 
 the words of Cyprian may well express the feelings of those 
 who are on their post as watchmen, and convey a timely 
 warning to the careless. As an appropriate precept and en- 
 couragement to those who deeply feel these things, he reminds 
 Lucius, that he has returned to his Episcopal throne, " that 
 
 1 Rex Antiochus infestus, inimo in Antiocho Antichristus expressus. 
 Ad Fort. p. 270. 
 
 2 Ep. lv. p. 89. 3 Ep. Ixxiii p. 134.
 
 IQ2 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 the Bishop may stand at the Altar of God, to exhort his flock 
 to take up the arms which shall prepare them for confession 
 and martyrdom, and to second his precepts with his actions ; 
 and thus to prepare his soldiers for the battle, while Antichrist 
 is approaching, with the incitements not only of his voice 
 and of his exhortations, but by the example also of his faith 
 and firmness." 1 
 
 1 Ep. Iviii. p. 96.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Weakness of the Roman Empire. Numidian Christians carried captive 
 by Barbarians. Collections made in Carthage to redeem them. 
 Cyprian's Epistle to Caecilius on the Mixed Cup. His Doctrine applied 
 to Half Communion, and other Errors in the present day. 
 
 SUCH was the state of the Roman Empire in this age, that 
 while its very centre was subject to the incursions of the 
 Goths, the confines were exposed to the ravages of the several 
 barbarian nations on whose territories they bordered : and 
 Numidia, with the rest of the frontier provinces, was subject 
 to this kind of border warfare. On one occasion, in the 
 beginning of the year 253, a descent having been made on 
 their territory, a number of Christians were carried off, to- 
 gether with other Numidian ca'ptives, by their barbarian 
 invaders, 1 and the brethren of their own province being too 
 1 It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine who were the barbarians, 
 into whose hands the Numidian brethren had fallen. Some have sup- 
 posed that they were Persians ; but it should seem to be sufficient to set 
 aside this notion, that their victorious invasion of the Roman Empire was 
 not till the year 260, seven years after the events of which we are speaking ; 
 and yet this opinion must be mentioned, because it has had its influence 
 in determining or rather in rendering indeterminable, the date of the 
 Epistle of Cyprian to the Numidian Bishops. Bishop Pearson, in his 
 Annales Cyprianici, argues with great learning, from St Augustine and 
 others, that the invaders in this instance were some warrior nations 
 bordering on Numidia to the south. The Franks seem about this time 
 to have pushed their successes through Spain into Mauritania, and may 
 well have reached Numidia also, in their rapid foray : but perhaps it may 
 be difficult to determine whether this irruption of the Franks exactly 
 synchronises with the Epistle of Cyprian. See Gibbon's Decline and 
 Fall, vol. i. p. 415. 
 
 G
 
 194 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 poor to redeem them from captivity, the Church in Carthage 
 took advantage of the opportunity of relieving the distressed 
 members of a sister Church ; and of acting upon that Christian 
 communion, which binds together all the members of Christ's 
 body, first, individuals with their particular Church, and then, 
 in those Churches, with the whole body. On this occasion, 
 a collection was made in Carthage, at the instance of St 
 Cyprian, to whom the Numidians had applied for assistance ; 
 and notwithstanding the large demands on their charity which 
 had already arisen during the plague, no less than a hundred 
 thousand sesterces (nearly eight hundred pounds) was trans- 
 mitted from the Carthaginians to the distressed Church of the 
 Numidians. 
 
 The Epistle with which Cyprian accompanied this charit- 
 able collection, is replete with the expressions of those 
 sentiments of Christian benevolence, and of those principles 
 of Christian fellowship, which alone entitles even liberality to 
 the name of Charity, and to the reward of a Christian grace. 
 " I read your letter," says he to the Numidian Bishops, "with 
 much emotion, and not without tears at the sad account 
 which you gave of our brethren in Christ. For who can help 
 grieving in such a case, or "refuse to look on their calamity as 
 his own ; since St Paul says, if one member suffer, all the 
 members suffer with it : and again, who is weak, and I am not 
 weak ? The peril therefore and the captivity of our brethren 
 should be felt as if it were our own ; since we are one body 
 with them, and not only natural affection, but religious prin- 
 ciple, should incite us to relieve them. Moreover, since we 
 are told, that they who are baptised have put on Christ ; we 
 should behold Christ Himself in these our suffering members : 
 and He who redeemed us from death, should in them be by 
 us redeemed from danger : He who delivered us from the 
 jaws of the Devil, and is now in the power of the barbarians, 
 should by us be delivered thence : and He who paid for us 
 the ransom of His blood, should now be ransomed by our 
 pecuniary aid. Doubtless He now suffers these events, that 
 our faith may be put to the test ; that it may be seen, whether
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 195 
 
 each of us is willing to do that for others, which he would 
 wish to have done for himself," 1 &c. . . . He afterwards 
 says, that the brethren in Carthage, though they hoped that 
 no such need would occur, yet desired to be acquainted with 
 it, if their help should be again required in a like case. 
 
 In return for this supply, which was the act of fellowship 
 which Cyprian and his Church were enabled to afford, they 
 request the prayers of the poor Numidians, which would be 
 on their part an equal reciprocation of Christian fellowship. 
 " That you may be enabled to return the benefit which you 
 receive from the contributors, by your prayers, and by 
 Eucharistic commemorations, I have subjoined their names," 
 says Cyprian, " together with those of the other Bishops, who, 
 happening to be in Carthage, have contributed according to 
 their ability. We bid you farewell, brethren, and desire your 
 constant remembrance." 
 
 I need not remind the reader, that this fraternal intercourse 
 of giving and receiving between distant Churches, united in 
 one faith, is accordant with the Apostolical precepts and 
 practice. It is also perfectly in the spirit of primitive Chris- 
 tianity, and probably existed in the earlier ages of the Church, 
 to a much greater extent than we are aware. The Church of 
 Rome, distinguished from the earliest ages for its wealth, was 
 also honourably distinguished for its diffusive benevolence ; 
 and it became an established custom to make collections in 
 Rome for the poorer, but more ancient and mother Church 
 at Jerusalem. " Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, writing to the 
 Roman Church in the time of Soter, eleventh Bishop of 
 Rome, about the middle of the second century, says, that ' it 
 had been customary with them from the beginning to benefit 
 all the brethren in various ways ; and to send assistance to 
 many Churches in all cities, thus relieving the poverty of the 
 needy ; and to supply aid to the brethren condemned to the' 
 mines, by the gifts which they had sent even from the begin- 
 ning ; that they preserved as Romans the customs of the 
 Romans, delivered to them from their fathers ; and that their 
 1 Ep. lx. p. 99- 
 
 G 2
 
 1 96 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 blessed Bishop Soter had not only observed this custom, but 
 had increased it by supplying abundantly the provision 
 allotted to the saints, and by comforting with blessed words 
 the brethren who came to him, even as a loving father acts 
 towards his children.' The same mercy and charity of the 
 Roman Church is mentioned by Dionysius Alexandrinus, in 
 the following century, in an Epistle to Stephen, where he 
 states that all Syria and Arabia had received supplies from 
 Rome." ! 
 
 Perhaps it would be well if this practice of making collec- 
 tions for poor Churches with which we are in communion, 
 as well as for the poor under any other name, were more 
 frequent ; for it would be a constantly recurring memorial and 
 exercise of that communion which exists (and ought not to be 
 a dormant or forgotten privilege), as truly between Catholic 
 Churches as corporate bodies, as between Catholic Christians 
 as individuals ; and even more truly than between Christians 
 with all men whoever, as of the same blood with them, and 
 children of the same heavenly Father. And as the poor shall 
 never cease out of the land ; so that we shall never lack the 
 privilege of doing unto Christ the good which they require 
 and receive at our hand ; so also between particular and 
 national Churches there will always be a sufficient disparity 
 to enjoin the duty, and to afford the privilege of communicat- 
 ing in giving and receiving. 
 
 The next Epistle (the sixty-third), written to Cascilius to 
 enforce the necessity of using wine in the Eucharistic cup, is 
 most instructive on the subject of the primitive doctrine of 
 the Holy Communion. A passing indication that it was 
 written during persecution enables us with sufficient accuracy 
 to refer this Epistle to the spring of the year 253. Its first 
 occasion and object are soon related ; but it affords so many 
 indications of Cyprian's opinion upon the doctrine of the 
 Eucharist, that we shall be obliged to examine it at consider- 
 able length. 
 
 At the time of which we are writing, a very frequent, 
 1 Palmer's Treatise on the Church of Christ, vol. ii. p. 498.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 197 
 
 perhaps a daily, participation in the Eucharistic feast was the 
 universal custom among Christians : but there were men, who 
 were induced from a fear that their religion would be betrayed 
 by the smell of the wine, taken in the morning, to consecrate 
 the cup only with water : and thus to avoid an involuntary 
 confession, and the consequent persecution. These persons 
 are to be distinguished from the Aquarii or Encratites ; l 
 a pernicious sect, who refused to consecrate wine at the 
 Eucharist, because, forsooth, they thought it wrong to use 
 either wine or flesh, and would be more holy than Christ 
 Himself. Had he been refuting the error of such persons, 
 Cyprian would have been more indignantly severe : as it is, 
 he exposes the danger and impropriety of the practice in 
 question firmly, indeed, but with much patience and for- 
 bearance ; and the hardest things that he says of those who 
 were Aquarii from timidity, is, that they seem ashamed of 
 Christ's blood, and that, therefore, they cannot hope to be 
 worthy to pour out their own blood for His sake. And he 
 maintains, with arguments only too abundantly conclusive, 
 that wine must at all hazards and at all events be mingled 
 with the cup, and taken by the people, or that the com- 
 municants are deprived of the blood of Christ in the Eucharist. 
 And his expressions in this Epistle are such, and his argu- 
 ments are so conducted, as to afford the most convincing 
 proof, that in two things at least he was most decidedly 
 opposed to the modern Romish system, in that (i) he could 
 never have consented to take the cup from the laity; and (2) 
 he cannot have held the dogma of transubstantiation. 
 
 It would be absurd to make a parade of the evidence 
 which we derive from Cyprian's works, that the laity in his 
 days received the Eucharist in both kinds ; since the custom 
 of the Church for several centuries is confessed on all hands ; 
 and since the only question is, not whether Rome took away 
 the cup from the laity, but whether she did not, in so doing, 
 act presumptuously, tyrannically, and sacrilegiously : presump- 
 tuously, in contradicting our Lord's intention, as collected 
 1 For an account of these Aquarii, see Bingham's Orig. Ecc. xv. ii. 7.
 
 198 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 from the method of His institution, handed down and inter- 
 preted in and by the Apostolical method of administering 
 these most solemn mysteries of our faith : tyrannically, in 
 thus curtailing the people's privileges in this blessed Sacra- 
 ment : and sacrilegiously, in depriving the people of grace, 
 when she took away from them one of the means of its 
 conveyance. I maintain, upon grounds which I proceed to 
 adduce, that Cyprian would have held that Rome has fallen 
 under the whole of this censure. 
 
 " Although," says he, " I know that almost all the Bishops 
 by divine appointment set over the Churches of the Lord 
 throughout the world maintain the order of Gospel truth and 
 divine tradition, and do not depart from that which Christ 
 our Master taught and did, to follow a new invention ; yet 
 since some, either through ignorance or simplicity, do not do 
 that which Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour did and taught, 
 in the consecration of the cup of the Lord, and in the ad- 
 ministering it to the people ; I have thought it as well 
 necessary as religious, to write this Epistle to you, that if any 
 one be still involved in that error, he may receive the light of 
 truth, and return to the root and original of the divine 
 tradition." x Let it be borne in mind, as we read this passage, 
 what it is that Cyprian calls a novel invention, an error ; and 
 in what sort of things he holds the divine tradition, the 
 Gospel truth, the teaching and example of our Lord and 
 Master, to be imperative ; what are the desertions of it which 
 he attributes to ignorance or simplicity at the best ; and what 
 he judges it a matter of religious necessity to set right : and I 
 think it will be sufficiently clear, that he would have pro- 
 nounced precisely the same judgment on the actual taking 
 away the cup from the laity, which he pronounced on the 
 virtual taking it away from the Eucharist altogether by a 
 fancied consecration of that which could not become the 
 blood of Christ. 
 
 But let us again hear the words of Cyprian. " We ought 
 to follow the truth of God, not the custom of men : for God 
 
 1 P. 104.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 199 
 
 saith by the mouth of Isaiah, In vain do they worship Me, 
 teaching the commandments and doctrines of men (Is. xxix. 13, 
 see vers. LXX). And again the Lord Himself repeats this 
 rebuke in the Gospel, saying, Ye reject the commandment of 
 God, that ye may establish your own traditions ; and again in 
 another place he says, He who shall break one of the least of 
 these commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called 
 the least in the kingdom of heaven. Now if it is not lawful to 
 break even the least of the Lord's commandments, how much 
 less is it permitted to change or infringe by any human tradi- 
 tion, a divine rule concerning that which is so great, so im- 
 portant, and so essentially connected with the very Sacrament 
 of our Lord's passion, and our redemption. For if Jesus 
 Christ our Lord and our God is Himself the High Priest of 
 God the Father, and first offered Himself as a sacrifice to the 
 Father, and commanded us to do this in the remembrance of 
 Him ; surely that priest truly discharges the office in the 
 room of Christ, who imitates the actions of Christ ; and he 
 then offers a full and true sacrifice in the Church to God the 
 Father, -when he so enters upon the offering, as Christ also 
 seems to have done," * &c. 
 
 I do not adduce these passages, nor any of those presently 
 quoted, as if they were an expression of his a vowed judgment, 
 upon a point which was never discussed in the Church, till 
 he had long gone to his crown. He does not here afford 
 an actual and specific condemnation of the practice of Rome 
 in withholding the cup from the laity : such a condemnation, 
 preceding the times in which it was to be applied, could only 
 be expected from our divine Lord, who could foresee its future 
 necessity : and such a condemnation we actually have in His 
 words DRINK ye ALL of it: and again, Except ye eat the flesh of the 
 Son of man, AND DRINK HIS BLOOD, ye have no life in you. But 
 such expressions as those just quoted from St Cyprian indicate 
 his mind sufficiently to make us morally certain, that he would 
 at once have protested against the breach of a rule (not 
 sanctified, for it was already divine, but) handed down and 
 1 Pp. 108, 109.
 
 2OO Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 attested by inspired Apostles, and holy Bishops, and martyrs 
 and saints, in short, by the whole Church of the living God, 
 the pillar and ground of the truth, from the first time that the 
 Eucharist was ever celebrated with lay communicants. Surely 
 Cyprian would have judged, that in this Rome acted most 
 presumptuously: and perhaps his opinion would not have 
 been altered, if he had known that the Council of Constance, 
 which first enjoined half communion, would venture to do so ex- 
 pressly, notwithstanding our Lord did appoint it in both kinds. 
 But I maintain farther, that there is every reason to believe, 
 that Cyprian would have judged that Rome acted tyrannically 
 and sacrilegiously ', as well as rashly, in thus mutilating the 
 feast of the Eucharist, and curtailing the privilege of the 
 people, so as to leave it doubtful at the least whether he did 
 not deprive them of grace, in taking from them one of the 
 means by which it is conveyed. For I observe, that in his 
 argument to enforce the necessary presence of wine in the 
 cup, he distinguishes the meaning of each portion of the 
 mixed cup, telling us that the water signifies the people, that 
 the wine signifies the blood of Christ : 1 and that he reasons 
 thus ; that if but one be offered, it will be without the people, 
 or without the blood of Christ respectively. Now if he thus 
 distinguishes between the separate portions of the mixed cup, 
 in one part of the Eucharist; much more surely would he 
 have distinguished between the separate elements of the 
 
 1 See p. 108. It is worth noting, that this reasoning, does not touch 
 the validity of our oblation, and communion without mater in the cup : 
 for though it were most desirable that we should have every possible 
 figure of communion with the brethren in the Eucharistic cup, it is only 
 essential that we have the New Testament in Christ's blood. It may be 
 desirable, that is, that we have the water, but is only essential that we 
 have t/ie wine. By all participating in the same cup, we have the actual 
 communion with the brethren, and may therefore dispense with the figure : 
 but if all do not partake of the cup, they receive neither the figure nor the 
 reality of Christ's blood ; neither the figure nor the reality of communion, 
 either with Christ, or with the Church. Palmer, in his Origines Liturgies, 
 has shown how strong our position is in this matter against the cavils of 
 Rome.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 201 
 
 Eucharist themselves : especially, since for thus doing he 
 would have had ample authority in the words of the Apostle ; 
 the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the 
 blood of Christ 1 The bread which we break, is it not the com- 
 munion of the body of Christ? J and since the whole body of 
 the Church has ever attested the same thing, in the formulary 
 of administering ; where the bread is ever called the body of 
 Christ, and the cup the blood of Christ. 2 But if there is a 
 distinct meaning in, according to the very lowest view of the 
 Sacraments, there is a distinct instruction conveyed by each 
 portion of the Eucharist : and surely to deprive the people of 
 either portion of the instruction, can consist with no proper 
 respect to the institution of God ; with no sound exercise of 
 the Church's love, as the mother of the faithful ; with no 
 common care for the spiritual advantage of the people : and 
 still less can such an act consist with any right view of the 
 dignity and efficacy of the Eucharist, of the duty of the 
 Church, of the privilege of the people, if the Eucharist 
 be more than a means of instruction, even a conveyance of 
 grace. 
 
 But it is not a mere matter of probable deduction that 
 Cyprian would make, he actually does make the cup the 
 instrument of particular blessings, so as to convey the com- 
 plement of the Eucharistic grace, as it certainly forms the 
 complement of the Eucharistic oblation and feast. For he 
 quotes the Psalmist, [saying, Thy exhilarating cup is very 
 good (calix tuus inebrians perquam optimus) ; and spiritualises 
 this into an assertion of the graces conveyed by the Eucha- 
 ristic cup, in a manner which would be wholly inapposite, 
 
 1 i Cor. x. 1 6. 
 
 2 This is true even of the Romish Liturgy of the mass, for in receiving the 
 host the priest says, CORPUS Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodial animam 
 nieurn in vitam aternam : and in receiving the chalice he says, SANGUIS 
 Domini, <5rv. But this is not the only instance in which the Liturgy of the 
 mass, which is, as a whole, more ancient than the doctrines of Rome on 
 the subject of the Eucharist, is very inconveniently adapted to the service 
 of that Church.
 
 2O2 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 as applied to the Eucharistic feast without the cup, as 
 much so indeed as applied to the cup without the wine : 
 and I especially speak here of the feast of the Eucharist, 
 as well as the sacrifice ; because the Romanists also make 
 the cup a part of the sacrifice, though they take it away from 
 the people in the feast. Let this be borne in mind, while we 
 observe that the whole force of Cyprian's reasoning, when 
 he thus applies the Psalmist's words to the matter in hand, 
 is derived from the particular properties of wine, with its effects 
 upon him who drinks it, so as to display his notion of that 
 forming a part of the Eucharistic feast ; and this is all that 
 we want, whether or no his illustration is the happiest that 
 might be imagined. " That exhilaration," says he, " produced 
 by the cup of the Lord and His blood, not being like that which 
 is produced by common wine, the Psalmist declares the exhila- 
 rating cup to be very good : for the cup of the Lord so ex- 
 hilarates those who drink it, as to make them sober." l These 
 few words are sufficient to indicate the drift of his reasoning 
 here ; and to show also, that it would be absurd, if no especial 
 grace was conveyed to the recipients by means of the cup ; 
 or if the whole efficacy of the Eucharist resided in either 
 kind. Indeed, if this latter figment of Rome were true, the 
 practice which Cyprian condemns was quite as absurd, as it 
 was erroneous. Why did not the Aguarii, who feared de- 
 tection from the smell of wine, receive the bread only ? As 
 in the Church of Rome now, the single Priest or Bishop 
 who was required to officiate, might consecrate and offer, 
 and himself receive of the wine, for he had no occasion, 
 his duties and avocations being all clerical, to endanger his 
 safety by mixing with the heathen : and the many of the 
 laity, whose occupation would not permit seclusion, would 
 have been just as safe, as upon the Aquarian plan. There 
 was more reason then to refrain from the wine at the Lord's 
 Supper, if it were both lawful and equally beneficial, than there 
 has ever been since : and if it be in itself unlawful, nothing 
 
 1 P. 107.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 203 
 
 can make it lawful ; if it be any thing short of quite as bene- 
 ficial to the communicant, none without tyranny and sacrilege 
 can deprive the Church, or any member of the Church, of the 
 greater benefit. 
 
 But I go even farther. The pretence of the Roman 
 Church, that the laity in receiving the body of Christ, receive 
 also His blood, would at once have overturned Cyprian's whole 
 argument in this Epistle. A Romanist now could not, without 
 exposing himself to the recoil of his own weapon, refute the 
 very error which Cyprian exposes, upon the same grounds 
 which Cyprian takes, who was unshackled by a future inven- 
 tion of the Church. And. herein, whether he is right or 
 wrong, Cyprian is intensely Anti-Romish. 
 
 One or two more extracts from the Epistle before us will 
 enforce this assertion. "In Baptism the Holy Spirit is re- 
 ceived; and so those who have been baptised, and have 
 received the Holy Spirit, come to the drinking of the cup of the 
 Lord. . . . Baptism is once for all received ; but, on the con- 
 trary, there is always a thirst for the cup of the Lord, and it is 
 constantly drank [Calix Domini in Ecclesiae semper et sititur 
 et bibitur]." * Now who are they who always thirst for the 
 cup of the Lord but the baptised? And who has, or can 
 have, a right to take away from them that for which they have 
 always thirsted, and which they have always received ? 
 
 Again : if it be reasonable to ask, and it is highly reason- 
 able, "How shall we drink new wine of the fruit of the vine 
 with Christ in the kingdom of His Father, if in the sacrifice 
 we offer not the wine of God the Father, and of Christ ; nor 
 mix the cup of Lord according to the divine tradition?" 2 
 Is it not equally reasonable, and even more natural, to ask, 
 How shall we drink of the fruit of the vine new with Christ 
 in His kingdom, unless we drink of the cup of His blood in 
 the Eucharist ? Would not he who asked the first question, 
 most probably have asked the second, if occasion served? 
 And would he not have held it a spiritual tyranny and sacri- 
 lege, to deprive the people of the privilege spoken of in those 
 1 Page 106. - Page 107.
 
 2O4 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 mystical words of Scripture ; or even to have laid them under 
 a reasonable doubt, whether they were deprived of it or no ? 
 
 These remarks having been suggested directly from what 
 Cyprian says, as deducible from his reasoning, by the addition 
 of such steps only as are wholly in accordance both with his 
 tone of argument, and with his known opinions ; I conceive 
 that we might well suppose him to speak thus, if he could be 
 called upon to give his judgment on the depriving the laity of 
 the cup in the blessed Eucharist. 
 
 'There is, then, 1 no excuse for following the practice of 
 any, who may have hitherto administered the Lord's Supper 
 to the people in one kind only, withholding from them the 
 cup, which is the blood of our Lord. For we must ask, whom 
 do they follow ? If in the Sacrament which Christ ordained, 
 Christ alone is to be followed, surely this is our sufficient rule. 
 We must hold to the truth of God, though particular customs 
 of men be against it. Does not Isaiah say, In vain do they 
 worship Me, teaching the doctrines and commandments of men ? 
 And does not the Lord say, Ye reject the commandment of God, 
 that ye may establish your own traditions ? And again : Who- 
 ever shall break one of the least of these commandments, and 
 teach men so, the same shall be called the least in the kingdom of 
 heaven ? And if one of the least of Christ's commandments 
 cannot be broken with impunity, how much less may any of 
 those institutions which we have from Christ Himself, handed 
 down by the Church in all ages hitherto, by Apostles and all 
 holy men, and which form a part of His own appointed 
 method of celebrating those tremendous mysteries of His 
 body and blood ? The priest then only performs his proper 
 office, when he does as Christ did, the great High Priest of 
 our calling : and all religion and sound discipline will 
 be overthrown, if that which was divinely appointed in 
 such a matter is to be broken through or not, at the will of 
 men. 
 
 ' Nor yet are we to view this question as if it concerned 
 
 1 Non est ergo, etc. p. 108. I am not here making a translation, but 
 running a parallel.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 205 
 
 obedience to God alone ; since something is due in all such 
 matters to the Church and to the people of God. And how 
 can you, without tyranny, take away from the people that 
 which is theirs of right ? and since it is so theirs as to be the 
 instrument of grace to them, how can you deprive them of it, 
 without lowering the Church's holiness ? If they receive not 
 the blood of Christ poured out for them, how can they be 
 expected, if occasion should call for it, to pour out their blood 
 for the truth ? If they drink not into Christ's death, how can 
 they be expected to live in newness of life? No. Let not 
 this reproach remain any longer on the Church, or on any 
 party in it ; but do you return to, and let us all hold, the 
 divine, the Apostolical custom and tradition : and maintain in 
 those sacred mysteries a due reverence to God, and a due 
 charity to all men.' 
 
 We proceed to show, in the second place, that the author 
 of the Epistle under consideration could not have held the 
 doctrine of Transubstantiation. 
 
 Here, again, let us first see the ground on which Cyprian 
 stood in respect of the question before us ; lest we should on 
 the one hand expect too much from his testimony, or on the 
 other make too light of that which we have. 
 
 The question last discussed is one of custom ; or rather it 
 is so represented by those who must so represent it, to place 
 it within the bounds even of that exaggerated spiritual power 
 before which they bow. They, with us, confess that the 
 custom was otherwise in Cyprian's days ; yet hold that it has 
 been rightly altered before our own. But the question of 
 Transubstantiation is one of doctrine ; and must have been 
 the same, therefore, through all ages, in all orthodox Churches. 
 Although, therefore, we are just as well able to point out the 
 actual rise and growth of this doctrine, as of the former 
 practice, this is denied by the Romanists, who claim the 
 Church in all ages, and all orthodox Christians, Cyprian of 
 course among the rest, as maintaining their present doctrine. 
 Their claim, however, will not subvert the truth of history; 
 and they are in vain challenged to prove from ancient and
 
 206 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 authentic records, that the doctrine of Transubstantiation was 
 held by the ancient Church, or even by any one divine, through 
 many centuries. 
 
 But this fact of the novelty of the doctrine, which makes it 
 impossible for the Romanists to prove their point from the 
 Fathers, makes it also more difficult to find an express con- 
 demnation of their view of the question by the same Fathers. 
 For who would, who could, except with the spirit of prophecy, 
 condemn a doctrine in express terms, which was not taught 
 till ages after he entered into his rest ? And because Cyprian 
 could never have dreamt that a question should be discussed, 
 which was first mooted in the eighth century; 1 because he 
 could never by anticipation imagine, that a determination of 
 that question should be imposed as a matter of faith necessary 
 to salvation ; it would be unreasonable to look in Cyprian for 
 any express denial or refutation of that doctrine ; or any actual 
 protest against the spiritual tyranny which decreed such a 
 monstrous opinion as necessary to be believed. This, as in 
 the former case, could only be expected from divine inspira- 
 tion, or from our Lord Himself; and there in fact we find it, 
 totidem verbis : for He who said, Drink ye ALL of 'this ', also said, 
 by His Apostle Paul, " As often as ye eat this bread, and drink 
 
 1 There are, however, polemical miracles related as having been wrought 
 in proof of the doctrine in question before this time. For instance, Gregory 
 the Great, seeing a woman laugh at the celebration of the Eucharist, 
 asked her why she laughed ; and was answered, "Because you call the 
 bread which I myself made, the body of our Lord." And at the prayers 
 of the saint the consecrated bread appeared as flesh. Of course this 
 miracle is an after invention ; for, indeed, both the sneer of the woman 
 and the miraculous answer to it, are in the spirit of a much later age. 
 But I mention this miracle as suggesting a remark on others of the like 
 kind ; that they, as well as the writings of the doctors of the Church, bear 
 testimony to the changes which have been made in the doctrine of Tran- 
 substantiation. So long as portions of Christ's body were all that was 
 required for the establishment of the then doctrine of Rome, the bread 
 was in the habit of miraculously assuming the appearance of divided flesh : 
 but when "whole Chtist" was wanted to attest an improvement of the 
 doctrine "whole Christ," a little babe in the cradle, or the like appeared. 
 Romish inventions, not to say the Roman Church, makes Heaven most 
 accommodating in its miraculous tokens.
 
 L ife and Times of St Cyprian. 207 
 
 this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come. Where- 
 fore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the 
 Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the 
 Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of 
 that bread, and drink of that cup." And again, " the bread 
 which we break, is it not the communion of the body of 
 Christ?" 1 
 
 All that we must expect then in Cyprian, touching the fig, 
 ment of transubstantiation, is what we find also in him touch- 
 ing the reveries of Emmanuel Swedenborg, or the inspirations 
 of the Quakers or of the Irvingites ; that is, such a manner of 
 expression as can be accounted for only by his profound 
 ignorance of the doctrine in question. If we find any thing 
 (which in fact we shall not) which may be distorted into a 
 verdict in favour of that doctrine, we shall not be much 
 staggered; because it is natural to fall into a manner of 
 expression not rigidly correct, when error, on either hand, has 
 not yet called for precision : but if it should happen (as it will) 
 that we find something literally adverse to it, its effect will be 
 great in proportion. Any one who will find in a writer so 
 early as St Cyprian a specific condemnation of the doctrine of 
 transubstantiation, will do Rome a great favour, however para- 
 doxical the assertion may appear ; for he will be producing 
 historical evidence of its existence, such as she has never yet 
 been able to find. 
 
 But now, that we may know what it is that we are to com- 
 pare with Cyprian's doctrine, we must state where it is that we 
 are obliged to dissent from Rome ; and how far we should or 
 may go along with her. 
 
 That the bread and wine, then, in the blessed Eucharist, 
 are verily and indeed the body and blood of Christ, we must 
 hold, or desert the Catholic faith, and the doctrine of our own 
 Church, as stated even in her elementary Catechism. Where- 
 in consists the presence of the body and blood of Christ ; that 
 is, how it is present, and how we are to reconcile the verity of 
 its presence with the substance of the bread and wine still 
 1 I Cor. xi. 26-28, and x. 16.
 
 208 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 before us ; we do not absolutely define. We may leave even 
 the Romanist to hold his own view of this (I mean this speci- 
 fically ; the presence of Christ, not the absence of the bread), 
 so he hold it only as a pious opinion, not to be imposed on 
 others as a matter of faith : nay, so far, we may even allow 
 him greater liberty in his faith than the ultraprotestant, who 
 altogether denies, or explains away, the presence of Christ in 
 the Eucharist. But that the bread and wine are no longer 
 present in the Lord's Supper, that we cannot admit ; nay, we 
 may not ; for we cannot if we do receive Christ's words, and 
 those of the Apostles, in their simplicity. 
 
 Perhaps I ought to apologise for all this preparation : but 
 few who have not turned their minds to the subject polemi- 
 cally, are aware of the importance of bearing in mind the 
 position of those whose judgment they would apply to the 
 question, and of forming a precise notion of the matter in 
 dispute. 
 
 But now to the immediate subject. 
 
 What did Melchisedec offer? Bread and wine. In this 
 Melchisedec typified the Eucharist, as Cyprian tells us, with 
 the consent, as I believe, of all the Fathers who have touched 
 upon the subject, and with perfect truth. But how does 
 Cyprian express this? Christ "offered the very same thing 
 which Melchisedec had offered, that is, bread and wine ; that 
 is, in very truth, His own body and blood," [panem et vinum, 
 suum scilicet corpus et sanguinem]. 1 These words are equally 
 strong against the Romish and the Zuinglian doctrine of the 
 Eucharist. The Romanist could not consistently say that 
 Christ offered bread and wine: the Zuinglian will not 
 endure to hear that He offered His own body and blood in the 
 Eucharist. 
 
 Cyprian quotes Genesis xlix. 10. He shall wash his gar- 
 ments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of the grape : and 
 asks, 1 when the blood of the grape is mentioned, what is 
 signified but the wine of the cup of our Lord's blood ? Here 
 the last remark may be repeated. 
 
 1 Page 105.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 209 
 
 But the following passage is one of the most remarkable 
 incidental testimonies against the Romish doctrine of transub- 
 stantiation, that all antiquity affords. 
 
 " That waters signify people, holy Scripture tells us in the 
 Apocalypse, when saying, The waters which thou sawest, upon 
 ivhich that harlot sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and 
 nations of the heathen, and tongues. And the like figure we 
 see is contained in the Sacrament of the cup : for since Christ 
 bare us all, who also bare our sins, we perceive that the people 
 is to be understood in the water, while the blood of Christ is 
 shown in the wine. When, therefore, water is mingled with 
 wine in the cup, the people is made one with Christ, and 
 the host of the believing is associated and joined with Him, 
 in whom they have believed. Which association and con- 
 junction of water and of wine is so made in the cup of the 
 Lord, that there can be no separation of either from the com- 
 mixture. Whence it cometh, that nothing can separate the 
 Church, that is, the multitude constituting the Church, and 
 maintaining faithfully and with unmoved constancy, that faith 
 which it hath received, from Christ, so as to shake their 
 inseparable love, or to put an end to it. Therefore on no 
 account can water be offered alone, in the consecration of the 
 cup, nor wine alone : for if any one offers only wine, the blood 
 of Christ begins to exist without us, but if the water be alone, 
 the people begins to be without Christ : but when both are 
 mixed together, and combined by a perfect union, then is the 
 spiritual and heavenly Sacrament perfected. And so neither 
 water alone, nor wine alone, is the cup of the Lord, unless 
 each be mingled with the other ; just as neither flour alone, 
 nor water alone, can be the body of the Lord ; but both must 
 be joined together, and united in the substance of one loaf. 
 In which Sacrament also the people is displayed united ; for 
 as many grains collected together, and mingled and joined 
 one with another, make one loaf; so in Christ, who is the 
 heavenly bread, we know that there is but one body, with 
 which the whole number of the faithful is conjoined and 
 made one."
 
 2io Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 Now here, either both are transubstantiated, the water and 
 the wine, or neither is : but if the water is transubstantiated, 
 it is into the whole body of Christ's people : that is, water l 
 no longer remains in the cup, but the whole body of Christ's 
 people is there bodily in its stead : but this is absurd : there- 
 fore the wine is not transubstantiated according to the opinion 
 of Cyprian here expressed. 
 
 Or again : either both are represented, Christ's blood and 
 the people, or neither is. But the people are represented; 
 for Cyprian says so (as he does indeed of Christ's blood, 
 though I would overlook for a moment the actual assertion), 
 and therefore according to Cyprian, Christ's blood is repre- 
 sented. But this is not the doctrine of Rome. 2 
 
 There are also in the same Epistle, from which we have 
 been now quoting, several passing expressions decidedly anti- 
 Romish ; and which we should have adduced as affording no 
 vague intimation of Cyprian's judgment, if we had not had 
 the above-mentioned stronger passages to rest our argument 
 upon. Such are, for instance, "Non potest videri sanguis 
 ejus, quo redempti et vivificati sumus, esse in calice quando 
 vinum desk," 3 instead of non potest esse or fieri sanguis ejus 
 in calice. And again, " Quia passionis ejus intentionem 
 in sacrificiis omnibus facimus (passio est enim Domini sacrific- 
 ium quod offerimus) [instead of, Dominus est enim hostia 
 quam offerimus, or the like,] nihil aliud quam quod ille fecit 
 facere debemus." 4 
 
 1 Aquas, &c., p. 108. 
 
 2 In fact, the Romanists do away with the sacramental nature of the 
 Eucharist altogether, by removing wholly the thing signifying : so that 
 there is no outward sign. Moreover in making a miracle of their transub- 
 stantiation, they deprive the presence of Christ in the Eucharist of all 
 mystery : and the solemn name of the Sacrament of the Altar, so common 
 in the old Fathers, the stupendous mysteries, is really inapplicable to that 
 Sacrament according to their view of it. Nor should it be forgotten, that 
 they thus lower a mystery into a miracle, which is spiritually a much 
 inferior thing (greater things than these shall he do ; because I go unto My 
 Father ; John xiv. 12 ; see also John v. 20 and i. 50) in order to provide 
 that which we are expressly told profiteth nothing ; for it is the Spirit that 
 quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. 
 
 3 Page 104. 4 Page 109.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 211 
 
 Surely we have here stronger evidence than we could have 
 expected, under the circumstances, of Cyprian's judgment 
 against Rome, in her innovations in the doctrine of the 
 Eucharist : and were it not that it would extend this chapter 
 unduly, I should show, that we have equally strong, and most 
 express testimony against those who deny the real presence 
 of Christ in the Lord's Supper, and the spiritual virtual change 
 of the elements in that solemn feast. On a review of the whole 
 Epistle to Caecilius, we arrive (as it seems to me) at the fol- 
 lowing doctrines concerning the Eucharist, as taught by St 
 Cyprian : doctrines of the Catholic Church every one of them, 
 and of the Church of England, because she is Catholic ; but 
 not doctrines of those who actually or virtually dissent from 
 Catholic truth and communion ; not doctrines of those who 
 embrace the additional and superinduced dogmas of the Church 
 of Rome. 
 
 ' In the holy Eucharist, there is a commemorative celebra- 
 tion of Christ's death ; for therein we ever mention Christ's 
 passion, which is indeed the sum of our offering. But there 
 is not a commemorative celebration only, but also an oblation 
 to God ; and a feast upon the sacrifice of Christ : wherein we 
 not only express our faith and thankfulness in and for, but 
 receive the benefits of, His death and passion : such as remis- 
 sion of our sins, and grace and strength, according as our 
 need may be. And since our need is daily, daily we should 
 receive this means of grace ; or, at least, as often as may be, 
 as our Lord hath taught us to pray, Give us this day our daily 
 bread. And in this heavenly feast we eat and drink Christ's 
 body and blood virtually, while we eat and drink bread and 
 wine actually ; the one being pressed with our teeth, the other 
 being fed upon by our faith : and so that we receive not the 
 benefit merely as being engaged in a solemn service, or merely 
 as being in general, and by the whole ceremony, excited to a 
 higher devotion, and so blessed with a more singular grace ; 
 but we receive an appropriate and especial grace in the very 
 act of receiving the consecrated elements ; perhaps even a 
 peculiar blessing with each part of the Sacrament. Nor is it
 
 212 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 right to separate any essential part of the Eucharist from the 
 rest ; and the cup is essential, both in the consecration, and in 
 the communion or receiving : therefore the cup may not be 
 taken away, either from the Eucharist, or from the communi- 
 cant ; and those who should take it away from the people 
 would be guilty of an awful boldness in disturbing a divine in- 
 stitution, and an apostolic tradition and custom; and of sacrilege 
 against the sacrament and the Church ; and of tyranny and 
 injustice towards those whom they should deprive of any por- 
 tion of the Sacrament, with its appropriate graces and blessings. 
 
 ' As for those who leave the Church, they deprive themselves 
 of all sacramental benefit in the Eucharist, which can only be 
 validly administered in the Church. We need not much care 
 if some of them teach a lower tone of doctrine concerning 
 these tremendous mysteries, which they imagine that they 
 celebrate; since it is certain that they cannot descend in 
 their doctrinal views, below the efficacy of their own cere- 
 monial : for the Holy Ghost doth not animate a schismatical 
 body ; and where the Holy Ghost is not, the Eucharist can 
 receive no valid consecration, and convey no spiritual benefit. 
 But though viewed relatively to themselves only, the doctrine 
 of the schismatic may not deserve a refutation ; yet if a time 
 should come at which a spirit of liberalism should give import- 
 ance in the eyes of those who maintain the Catholic com- 
 munion, with too little of the Catholic spirit, to the reasonings 
 which would disturb our doctrine, and subvert our discipline 
 (and since Cyprian's day perhaps such a time has come), then 
 it may be necessary to reply specifically to the objections of 
 heretics, and to vindicate the mystery and dignity of the 
 Holy Eucharist from their carnal reasoning, and from their 
 irreverence.' 
 
 If I have added a few light touches to complete this sketch, 
 those who are best able to judge will confess that they are 
 in total harmony with Cyprian's own hand : nay, were it not 
 for the fear of extending this study over a yet more dispropor- 
 tionate part of the work, I believe I could fill up every part of 
 the picture with the lineaments and colours of StCyprian himself.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Revolutions in the Roman Empire. Questions of Fidus touching a lapsed 
 Bishop, and the Case of Infant Baptism. The Case of Fortunianus : 
 Of Basilides and Martialis : Of Marcianus of Aries. The Insolence of 
 Pupianus. 
 
 MEANWHILE revolutions succeeded one another in the Roman 
 empire, which materially benefited the external condition of 
 the Church. We have already mentioned the loss of the 
 Decii in the autumn of 251, and the renewal of the persecu- 
 tion by Gallus. The Goths, before whom the Decii had fallen, 
 though, or rather because, their retreat had been purchased at 
 a great price, still remained formidable enemies of the Roman 
 crown and empire : and while Gallus was reposing in the 
 luxuries of his capital, ^Emilianus, the governor of Pannonia 
 and Maesia, had advanced against the Barbarians in Illyria, 
 and repulsed them. The money collected for a tribute to the 
 Goths, was converted by the victorious general to a more 
 popular and more politic use; distributing it as a donation 
 to the legions, he was proclaimed Emperor on the field. 
 Gallus, who went to meet the usurper, was deserted by his 
 army, and murdered ; and ^Emilianus was confirmed by the 
 senate in the dignity conferred on him by the army. This 
 was in the April of 253. 
 
 But the avenger of Gallus tarried not long. Valerian had 
 been sent to bring the legions of Gaul to Germany, to the aid 
 of Gallus : and though too late to save his master, he arrived 
 in time to receive the fruits of his deposition and murder, 
 without the guilt of either. At the approach of Valerian,
 
 214 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 ^Emilianus was slain by his army, and Valerian was acknow- 
 ledged emperor by the Roman world, with more of unanimity 
 than usually appeared on such occasions. 
 
 The disturbances in the empire following the revolt of 
 ^Emilianus, had occasioned a partial repose in the Church : 
 and Valerian seems to have made it one of the earliest acts 
 of his government, to confirm the security of the Christians. 
 In the first dawn of a less troubled day, the chair of Lucius, 
 at Rome, had been filled by the election and consecration of 
 Stephen, on the thirteenth of May (253), after it had been 
 vacant eight days. And now that a serene day had fully 
 opened upon the Church, Cyprian took the earliest oppor- 
 tunity to convoke a provincial synod of the African Bishops. 
 At this synod sixty-six Bishops were assembled ; and from 
 their consistory an answer was returned to an Epistle of one 
 Fidus (of whom we know nothing), in which two questions 
 had been submitted to Cyprian, the answers to both of which 
 are important, as affording the synodical judgment of a pro- 
 vincial council of those days, with the important concurrence 
 of Cyprian, upon two points of primitive discipline and order. 
 
 Victor, a Presbyter, had lapsed ; and Therapius, Bishop of 
 Bulla, had received him to communion, before he had fulfilled 
 the appointed penitential course. Of this Fidus wrote to 
 acquaint Cyprian ; and he, with his associates at the Synod, 
 proceeded to reprimand Therapius, who was one of their 
 number ; but determined that Victor should retain the privilege 
 improperly, though with a Bishop's authority, extended to him. 
 
 Here we have the important rule recognised, that the act 
 of a Bishop (and by parity of reasoning of any other ecclesias- 
 tical Minister) may be valid, though it be improper and 
 irregular; that is of course, provided that the act itself, 
 supposing it to be done with every circumstance of propriety, 
 is within the limits of his office. For the judgment of the 
 Bishops proceeded upon the principle, that the peace of the 
 Church once given, in whatever manner, by a Bishop, ought 
 not to be recalled. 1 
 
 1 Ep. Hx. p. 98.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 2 1 5 
 
 The second question of Fidus related to the Baptism of 
 new-born infants. He had declared his opinion, that they 
 ought not to be baptised within the second or third days 
 from their birth ; with a doubt whether they ought not to be 
 kept unbaptised even till the eighth day : arguing for the first 
 delay, that children at their birth were in such a sense unclean, 
 as to present a repulsive appearance, and to make us naturally 
 unwilling to impart to them the kiss of peace, which was in 
 those days a part of the ceremonial of Baptism : l and ground- 
 ing his preference for the still longer interval on the analogy 
 of Baptism with the Jewish rite of Circumcision. The issue 
 of this appeal to Cyprian is conclusive against the doctrine 
 and practice of Antipsedobaptists ; and the question of Fidus, 
 both from the answer which it elicited, and from the form in 
 which it is proposed, is almost as important in its results, as 
 it is in itself unsound and absurd. For it is inconceivable 
 that Fidus should have grounded his objection against baptis- 
 ing until after the second or third day on such a whimsical 
 reason, if there had been the shadow of an argument in his 
 favour from the practice of the Church. And as for his 
 reason for deferring Baptism until the eighth day, because of 
 the analogy between Baptism and Circumcision, this argu- 
 ment, which is neither absurd nor fanciful, but in itself pious 
 and reasonable enough, must on that very account have already 
 prevailed with the Church, unless the point had been otherwise 
 settled by Apostolic and Catholic usage. So that by a singular 
 infelicity, the reasonableness of the arguments of Fidus, where 
 they are reasonable, tells as much against his cause, as their 
 absurdity, where they are absurd. 
 
 It is to be observed, moreover, that the reasoning of Fidus 
 from the analogy of Baptism with Circumcision, for delaying 
 Baptism for eight days, is precisely opposed to the reasoning 
 of the Antipaedobaptists of later ages, who will not admit any 
 analogy at all, extending to the age of the recipients, between 
 the initiatory rites of Judaism and Christianity. 
 
 I have anticipated the answer to the question proposed by 
 1 See Bingham, Orig. Ecc. xii. iv, 5.
 
 2 1 6 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 Fidus : it was simply, that Baptism is to be denied to none, 
 on account of their youth or age. As for the strange fancies 
 of Fidus, St Cyprian reminds him (and the allusion contains 
 a hidden rebuke), that to the pure all things are pure ; and 
 that since God fashioneth us even in the womb, the new-born 
 babe coming more immediately from the hands of God, rather 
 claims our more affectionate and reverential embrace. When 
 Elisha raised the widow's son, he put his own mouth and 
 each of his limbs on the mouth and corresponding members 
 of the child ; a thing not to be understood literally, or, at 
 least, not without a spiritual meaning ; for the different 
 dimensions of the man and of the child seem to forbid such a 
 contact : herein then we are taught, that when once fashioned 
 by the hand of God, all men are in a spiritual and divine 
 sense equal. As for Circumcision, the type was done away, 
 when the antitype appeared ; and Christ rising on the eighth 
 day, or the day after the Sabbath, procured for us a spiritual 
 circumcision, into which we may be baptised at any time ; 
 and, in a word, if there be a difficulty in the admission of any 
 to the laver of regeneration and the sacrament of remission, it 
 should rather seem to affect those old and hardened offenders, 
 who have added to their original corruption, many and long 
 offences ; and not infants, who are personally guiltless, and 
 bear the sin and death only of the race from which they 
 spring. 
 
 In the too hasty admission of Victor to communion, we 
 have already seen an instance of the usual attendants upon a 
 temporary repose in the Church, after persecution. We are 
 now called on to notice several other instances of a like kind, 
 though of much greater importance ; for the attention of 
 Cyprian was now variously occupied by the return of Bishops 
 in Africa, in Spain, and in Gaul, to the exercise of the spiritual 
 functions from which they had been justly and canonically de- 
 posed for apostasy. The first case, which is also the simplest, 
 and the least important in itself and in its results, is that of 
 Fortunianus, Bishop of Assuri. It may be told in a few words. 
 
 Fortunianus had fallen in the late persecution into the most
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 217 
 
 grievous form of apostasy, having sacrificed to idols, and 
 incurred the extreme penalty of the Sacrificati. 1 But after 
 the persecution had ceased, he looked back with regret on 
 the forfeited honours and emoluments of his Episcopal 
 functions, 2 and endeavoured again to obtrude himself into 
 the office which he had thus voluntarily rejected; and of 
 which, so far as we are able to judge from the slight notices 
 that we have of him, he had never been worthy. It seems 
 probable, that, on the defection of Fortunianus, Epictetus 
 had been chosen to succeed him ; for it is to him by name, 
 together with the Assuritani in general, that Cyprian directs 
 his Epistle ; and to whom he declares the necessity of main- 
 taining in this, as in every instance, the discipline of the 
 Church ; which appointed, that persons in the situation to 
 which Fortunianus had degraded himself, should never, even 
 after long penance, rise to any station above that of the lay 
 communicants. As for Fortunianus, he says that he had 
 better have spent his time in the appointed and appropriate 
 penance, than sought to approach the Altar of God, after 
 having sacrificed to Devils ; or to exhort others to fidelity 
 and courage, having proved himself a coward and an apostate. 
 If any man worship the beast and his image, he shall be 
 tormented in the presence of the holy Angels ; and shall he 
 who is thus marked out for eternal wrath venture to approach 
 God in so sacred a character, wherein not he only, but the 
 people also are concerned ? Without the Holy Ghost is no 
 Eucharist; and how can he who has denied his Lord, and 
 despises the discipline of the Church, to which the Holy 
 Ghost is promised, look for that Spirit to sanctify his minis- 
 trations ? Fortunianus, then, was on no account to be restored 
 to his forfeited Episcopate. 
 
 I know not that we have any farther account of Fortunianus 
 in ecclesiastical history, and suppose therefore that the judg- 
 ment of Cyprian was held conclusive by all parties. 
 
 1 "Post gravem lapsum." Ep. Ixiv. p. no. "Quasi post aras diaboli 
 accedere ad altare Dei fas sit." P. in. 
 a " Stipes, et oblationes, et lucra desiderant." P. in.
 
 2 1 8 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 A greater complication of circumstances, and the bearing 
 of the whole on the claims of the Church and Bishop of 
 Rome, make the next instance in which the judgment of 
 Cyprian was sought on a like occasion far more important. 
 Basilides and Martialis, two Spanish Bishops, had fallen into 
 many very heinous offences, in the greater part of which they 
 were equally implicated : they had incurred the guilt of the 
 Libdlatid, one of those classes into which the lapsed were 
 distributed for the purpose of apportioning their ecclesiastical 
 penance. The separate offences of these two delinquents 
 Cyprian himself enumerates in the following order : Basilides, 
 besides his apostasy, had blasphemed God in sickness, a 
 crime which he himself confessed ; Martialis had often sat 
 with the college of the heathen priests, at the gross and 
 obscene feasts of the Gentiles; and had followed also the 
 heathen rites of sepulture for his sons, depositing their remains 
 with the bodies of aliens and idolaters : besides which, both 
 had been guilty of other offences. 
 
 Basilides, conscience stricken at the complication of guilt 
 with which he was overwhelmed, had voluntarily confessed 
 his unworthiness to retain his Episcopal functions, and had 
 retreated into the rank of penitents ; confessing that he could 
 justly look for no greater lenity, than to be received in due 
 time as a lay-communicant. Martialis has left no record of 
 his repentance even for a time ; and there is no hint that he 
 ever abdicated his Episcopal chair, or concurred in the justice 
 of the sentence by which he was deprived : both however 
 were judicially deposed from the Order which they had dis- 
 graced ; I say both, for I conceive that the voluntary secession 
 of Basilides would not have so voided his chair as to make 
 the appointment of his successor canonical, which however 
 Cyprian declares it to have been : or perhaps his secession 
 was coetaneous with the sentence of the Bishops ; and, like 
 Uzziah, " they thrust him out from thence ; yea, himself 
 hasted also to go out, because the Lord had smitten him." 
 However, though it is not actually mentioned, I can only 
 suppose that a synod of Bishops, having adjudged the case of
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 219 
 
 both delinquents, declared their seats void, and proceeded to 
 consecrate other Bishops as their successors. This would 
 have been according to the universal custom of the Church ; 
 it is not too much, therefore, thus to fill up the blank in the 
 history. 
 
 However this was, Martialis determined, if possible, to 
 maintain the dignity by cunning, 1 which he had forfeited by 
 crime : and Basilides also, repenting of his repentance, and 
 lamenting not his sins but his degradation, when it kept him 
 from the high station which he had held, in a Church no 
 longer persecuted ; endeavoured also by a bold and nefarious 
 policy, to regain his Episcopate. He sent, therefore, a false 
 statement of the whole affair to Stephen, Bishop of Rome, 
 entreating that he would communicate with him as with a 
 Bishop of the Church; and hoping to deceive the distant 
 Prelate into such a measure, and thus to obtain the powerful 
 countenance of his support The fraud of Basilides succeeded 
 to his heart's content. Stephen was deceived, and en- 
 deavoured to restore him to his forfeited dignity. But the 
 principles of Catholic polity were not to be so readily sur- 
 mounted ; and though he succeeded in the means, Basilides 
 wholly failed in the end which he had in view. 
 
 Yet for a while he seemed to triumph and Martialis 
 shared in the temporary advantage of his scheme. The 
 important sanction of Stephen's support induced many to 
 receive Basilides again, as if he had been duly restored to his 
 forfeited dignity, and to the Episcopal communion : and the 
 similarity of their cases probably induced them to associate 
 Martialis with Basilides, as equally worthy of the same lenity. 2 
 But those who duly respected the sanctity of the Episcopate 
 and the Apostolic order of the Church, still adhered to the 
 
 1 Nee Martiali potest profuisse ///<-<* quo minus ipse quoque elictis 
 gravibus involutus, &c. Ep. Ixviii. p. 119. 
 
 3 I have found it impossible to separate exactly between the acts of 
 those two delinquents, and to give a clear history of Martialis, without 
 sometimes associating him with Basilides (where history does not speak 
 explicitly), whose case is more fully narrated.
 
 22O Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 communion of Felix and Sabinus, who had been consecrated 
 to fill the chairs of the two apostates, in spite of the declared 
 or inferred judgment of the Bishop of Rome. 
 
 These virtuous and wise Christians, however, sought farther 
 support in the concurrence of Cyprian, and accordingly wrote 
 to him an account of what had passed, asking his advice. 
 He wrote therefore the Epistle, from which we derive all our 
 information on this subject, to the people of Legio, Asturia, 
 and Emerita, who were chiefly concerned in the decision of 
 the question. In this Epistle he most clearly and unhesitat- 
 ingly declares that the favourable judgment of Rome in such 
 a case was nothing worth : that Basilides had added to the 
 catalogue of his offences, already sufficiently numerous, by 
 venturing to appeal to Rome : that they who retained his 
 communion on the ground of a favourable judgment from 
 Rome were mistaken in their principle, and wrong in their 
 conduct : and that those who neglected in this case the 
 decree of Pope Stephen, and maintained the Catholic dis- 
 cipline of the Church, were worthy of all praise. And now 
 this Epistle of Cyprian is a standing record of Catholic 
 principles, in direct opposition to more than one branch of 
 the usurped authority of the Bishop of Rome. 1 
 
 Another event occurred about this time, in which the 
 interference of St Cyprian was earnestly sought, after an 
 ineffectual appeal to Stephen, Bishop of Rome ; and in which 
 the conduct of Cyprian admirably exemplifies his principle of 
 the equal and concurrent jurisdiction of Bishops; while the 
 whole affair greatly magnifies his importance in the Church of 
 that age, and displays at the same time his practical wisdom, 
 and his decision of character. 
 
 It will be remembered how decidedly the schism of Nova- 
 
 1 Whatever concerns the Papal supremacy, I have viewed in the light 
 of Cyprian's history and writings in a former work : " The testimony of St 
 Cyprian against Rome; an Essay towards determining the judgment of St 
 Cyprian, touching Papal Supremacy." To this I shall take the liberty of 
 referring, when that particular branch of our controversy with Rome is in 
 question.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 221 
 
 tian in the Church of Rome had been repudiated, and how 
 promptly his errors had been condemned by the whole body 
 of Catholic Bishops. But Marcianus, Bishop of Aries, had 
 joined the party of Novatian, and embraced those erroneous 
 principles of discipline, according to which those who had 
 once fallen were refused the privilege of penance, and cut off 
 from all hope of being received again into Church communion. 
 Upon this, Faustinus, Bishop of Lyons, a neighbouring see, 
 wrote to Stephen of Rome ; who, both for the importance of 
 his see, and for the especial degree in which that Church had 
 been affected by the schism and error of Novatian, was the 
 Bishop most concerned, and whose judgment should naturally 
 have the greatest weight ; beseeching him to interfere in this 
 extremity, for the maintenance of the Catholic faith and unity. 
 This request of Faustinus had been accompanied with the 
 like appeal from other Bishops in the Gallican Provinces; 
 but at present Stephen had not been moved to give any 
 attention to the case. 
 
 In this supineness of Stephen, Faustinus once and again 
 applied to Cyprian ; who was next to Stephen in adventitious 
 importance, whether in general from the greatness of his see, 
 or in the present question from his having been much en- 
 gaged with proceedings touching the case of Novatian ; and 
 whose Episcopate gave him an equal right to interfere (unless 
 he himself greatly mistook the principles of the Catholic 
 Church) ; while his personal character, and his greater ex- 
 perience in the Episcopate, elevated him in moral influence 
 even above the Bishop of Rome, lately elected, and a man, as 
 his after history proves, scarce worthy to sustain the dignity 
 which descended upon him from Saint Cornelius. 
 
 Cyprian, then, bearing in mind the duty of the Episcopal 
 office, to sustain the sound part of the Church at all times 
 against the encroachments of heresy and schism, having been 
 thus twice appealed to, wrote to Stephen, 1 to move him to exer- 
 tion on this occasion, and to suggest (unless one who reads the 
 Epistle will rather say to dictate) the course which he should 
 1 Ep. Ixvii. p. 115.
 
 222 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 pursue. Having briefly mentioned the circumstances before 
 related, and touched upon the duty of Bishops in such a case, 
 he proceeds : " You ought therefore to write very ample letters 
 to our fellow-Bishops in Gaul, that they may no longer surfer 
 Marcianus, in his pride and obstinacy, and in his enmity 
 against true piety and the peace of the Church, to insult over 
 our whole college, as one not excommunicated by us, but as 
 one who has long boasted, that following in the steps of 
 Novatian, he has voluntarily seceded from our fellowship ; 
 whereas in fact Novatian, whom he follows, has been long 
 ago decreed excommunicate, and an enemy to the Church." 
 . . . . " How absurd is it, then, dearest brother, that in spite 
 of the excommunication and total repudiation of Novatian by 
 the Bishops of the whole world, we should now suffer his 
 satellites to make a jest of us, and to erect themselves into 
 judges of the true majesty and dignity of the Church ! Let 
 letters be directed by you to the province and people of 
 Aries, 1 that when Marcianus has been excommunicated, they 
 may proceed to elect another in his place ; and that the flock 
 of Christ, which is at present scattered and wounded by 
 him, and cast under reproach, may be again collected 
 together." 
 
 Cyprian proceeds through the rest of the Epistle to state 
 and apply the principles of ecclesiastical polity, on which his 
 interference was grouuded, and to urge Stephen by every 
 inducement to make the necessary exertions : " The numerous 
 body of Bishops," says he, " is compacted with the cement of 
 mutual agreement, and by the bond of unity ; that if any one 
 of our number should endeavour to introduce heresy, and to 
 tear and scatter the flock of Christ, the rest may interfere, and 
 like good shepherds gather the Lord's sheep into one flock. 
 
 1 In provinciam et ad pkbem Arelate consistantem : and before, Ad 
 coepiscopos nostros. The letters directed to the Bishops of Gaul probably 
 respected the judicial sentence against Marcianus, which they alone could 
 pronounce, and the consequent excommunication, of which they were the 
 proper ministers. The letters to the people of Aries respected, doubtless, 
 the election of a successor to the deprived delinquent, in which they were 
 not without a voice.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 223 
 
 For what, if some port has become unsafe by the destruction 
 of its breakwaters ; do not the sailors run into other neigh- 
 bouring ports, where they may enter without danger, and ride 
 in safety? Or if some inn on the road be infested and 
 occupied by brigands, so that whoever enters it is in danger 
 of being robbed ; do not travellers, so soon as this is known, 
 seek safer inns on their journey, where they may lodge in 
 security and peace ? And so it should be now with us, that 
 we may receive our brethren, who are driven against the rocks 
 of Marcianus, and seek the safe harbour of the Church, and 
 that we may afford to them admission into such a safe inn as 
 that which is mentioned in the Gospel, where those who have 
 fallen among thieves and been wounded, may be hospitably 
 received and attended to." 
 
 And afterwards : " Let him not pronounce but receive 
 sentence ; nor let him act as if it were his part to judge the 
 College of Bishops, when he is himself condemned by their 
 whole number. For the glorious reputation of our predeces- 
 sors, the blessed martyrs Cornelius and Lucius, is to be main- 
 tained ; whose memory since we honour, much more should 
 you, who are their vicar and successor, exalt and maintain it 
 by the weight of your authority. For they, when they were 
 full of the Spirit of God, and were going to martyrdom, 
 thought, with the consent of us all, that the lapsed should 
 be restored to the peace of the Church." ..." Signify to me 
 in plain terms, who is substituted in the place of Marcianus at 
 Aries, that I may know to whom to refer our brethren, and to 
 whom to write." 
 
 We may suppose that this Epistle of Cyprian to Pope 
 Stephen had the desired effect ; we hear not, that I know of, 
 any thing more of Marcianus. However, whatever may have 
 been its use then, it is now one of our most valuable monu- 
 ments of antiquity, towards a just estimate of the authority 
 of the Bishop of Rome : the substance of this letter, and still 
 more its tone, and the circumstances out of which it arose, 
 where an appeal was made to a Bishop of Carthage, sub- 
 sequent to a similar appeal to the Bishop of Rome, can-
 
 224 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 not be fairly reconciled with the present system of Papal 
 Supremacy. 1 
 
 There is something of interest in the character and practices 
 of such men as Novatian ; whose name survives in a party 
 which they originate, and in which their erroneous principles 
 are embodied ; while such men as Fortunianus, Marcianus, 
 Basilides, and Martialis, remembered only for some single 
 scene in which they bore a disgraceful part, would swell the 
 pages of history to worse than no purpose, but that their very 
 vices, calling for the interference of better men, serve as 
 occasions for the practical application of principles which are 
 never antiquated, and never useless. One Pupianus, of whom 
 we have next to speak, falls even into a lower rank than these 
 latter; and without exciting a tinge of interest, or giving 
 occasion for any thing more than the display of patience and 
 forbearance, by his impertinence and conceit, obliges us to 
 record his name and his folly : and yet even to him we owe 
 something ; for the marvellous condescension of Cyprian in 
 affording a circumstantial refutation of his charges, and a full 
 vindication of his own character, has supplied us with many 
 facts, of which we have availed ourselves in the fonner 
 portions of this work. 
 
 The very salutation of the Epistle of Cyprian, to which we 
 allude, has been supposed to afford an indication of one of the 
 impertinences of Pupianus : " Cyprian, who is also called 
 Thascius, to his brother Florentius, who is also called 
 Pupianus, health ! " Thus writes Cyprian, and the most 
 probable reason for this strange address is, that Pupianus had 
 insolently addressed him by his heathen appellation Thascius, 
 as if to deny his worthiness of the Christian name ; an un- 
 righteous taunt, which Cyprian merely retorts, by reminding 
 him also of his Gentile cognomen. 
 
 Not to take up too much time in repeating either the 
 accusation of Pupianus, or the vindication of St Cyprian, we 
 may gather, that in general Pupianus, who had held com- 
 
 1 See Barrtnu on the Pope's Supremacy, p. 346, "Ed. Oxon. 1836 ; or 
 the Testimony of St Cyprian against Rome, pp. no, et seq.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 225 
 
 munion with Cyprian before the Decian persecution, and had 
 even admired his singular virtue and humility, had been so 
 much puffed up by his own confession, while Cyprian had 
 discreetly used his freedom to retire till the heat of the 
 persecution uas past, that he not only judged himself exalted 
 far beyond Cyprian in dignity, but even erected himself into a 
 judge of his character, and a reprover of his actions. Nor yet 
 did he content himself with a harsh judgment upon this 
 particular act ; but making his own inferences from the past 
 occurrences, he attributed all those unhappy dissensions which 
 had divided the Church on occasion of Novatian's schism, to 
 the injudicious and haughty conduct of the Bishop of 
 Carthage : and forgetting what was due to the office and 
 dignity of a Bishop, he believed without farther inquisition, 
 whatever base report the enemies of Cyprian invented, though 
 they were some of them such as it is shameful to mention, 
 and the very Gentiles abhor. Actuated by such shameless 
 reports, Pupianus ventured to declare Cyprian unworthy of 
 the Episcopate, and to renounce his communion. 
 
 Cyprian does not evade any of these charges, nor hesitate 
 to commend himself, as the Apostle Paul had done, when 
 circumstances made it necessary. He reminds Pupianus, that 
 the pains of persecution had not fallen on him alone, saying 
 with something of irony, " The approaching persecution lifted 
 you up, indeed, to the very highest dignity of martyrdom ; 
 but me it degraded with the oppressive weight of a proscrip- 
 tion, when it was publicly proclaimed, If any one possesses or 
 retains any of the goods of Ccecilius Cyprian, a Bishop of the 
 Christians ; that those who would not believe me to be a 
 Bishop, by the choice of God, might at least afford credit to 
 the proscription of the Devil." The accusation of pride, 
 Cyprian refutes from the testimony of the Gentiles, and from 
 the former admission of Pupianus himself; and most justly 
 retorts it upon the insolent assailant. The general charges he 
 repudiates by the witness of the whole Church, both of the 
 Clergy, and of the laity ; of holy widows and virgins ; of 
 martyrs, and of confessors from their prisons. But after all, 
 
 H
 
 226 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 the burden of his vindication against the report of aliens and 
 schismatics, rests on the higher ground of his sacred office : 
 and he pleads the dignity and sanctity of his Episcopate in 
 a tone, which could not be assumed in a parallel case with 
 any effect in these days, when we have learned to look on 
 sanctity without reverence, and on dignity without fear. 
 
 " Is it to be supposed," he asks, " that God, who suffereth 
 not a sparrow to fall to the ground without His knowledge, 
 should suffer Bishops to be ordained without His providence ? 
 If you believe such revolting reports against me, what is it but 
 to believe, that neither by God, nor through Him, Bishops 
 are appointed ? Is my own testimony of myself greater than 
 the witness of God ? And yet now I am called to answer the 
 accusations of men ungodly, cut off from the Church, and 
 deprived of the Holy Ghost, though the witness of God is and 
 has been with me, in my Episcopate. l Is there no force 
 still in the example and precepts of Christ and of the Apostle, 
 who would not insult and revile God's High Priest ; but 
 taught us not to speak evil of the ruler of the people of 
 God ? " 
 
 " What pride ! what arrogance ! That rulers and Bishops 
 should be called before your tribunal ; and that, unless we are 
 acquitted before you, and absolved by your sentence, Lo ! for 
 these six years past the brethren have had no Bishop, the 
 people no leader, the flock no pastor, the Church no ruler, 
 Christ no representative, and God no priest ! Let Pupianus, 
 forsooth, be brought in, to ratify the judgment of God and 
 of Christ, lest so great a number of the faithful, who have been 
 gathered into the Church under our Episcopate, should seem 
 
 1 This principle is preserved in the Scottish Episcopal Church ; or, as 
 I should rather speak, in the Church Catholic in Scotland ; which declares 
 in one of its Canons (XXXVI.), " No accusation shall be received against 
 a Deacon, or Presbyter, or Bishop, unless proceeding from and supported 
 by the testimony of credible persons, who are regular communicants in the 
 Scottish Episcopal Church" I take this opportunity of observing, that the 
 constitution and state of a Church which we hold to be Catholic, and with 
 which, therefore, we maintain communion, is not the most unappropriate 
 part of the information of an Anglican Churchman.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 227 
 
 to have departed without the hope of salvation : lest the mul- 
 titude of converts should be adjudged to have received, through 
 us, a baptism void of grace, and of the Holy Spirit : lest peace 
 and communion, extended to so many penitents, should be 
 null, without your confirmation ! Deign, then, now at least, 
 to pronounce your sentence upon us, and to ratify our Episco- 
 pate by your recognition ; that God and Christ may be at 
 liberty to acknowledge with thanks, that by you a Priest has 
 been restored to their altar, and a ruler to their people ! " 
 
 In such a strain does Cyprian continue his letter, which he 
 closes in these words : " Such is the answer which I have 
 made in the innocency of my conscience, and in my full trust 
 in my Lord and my God. You have my letter, I have yours. 
 At the last day both will be read over before the judgment- 
 seat of Christ." 1 
 
 1 Ep. Ixix. p. 124.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The Question of the Baptism of Heretics, and the Controversy arising out 
 of it. Its origin in Asia Minor : It is discussed in a Synod at Carth- 
 age. Cyprian's Letter to the Bishops of Numidia. The Character of 
 several Objections against his Rule. A Synod of Seventy-Two Bishops 
 assembled at Carthage to determine the question. Cyprian's account 
 to Stephen of the proceedings of the Synod. Cyprian's Letter to 
 Jubaianus. 
 
 THE great controversy concerning the rebaptising of heretics, 
 which is certainly the most remarkable event that has en- 
 gaged our attention, both in its conduct and in its conse- 
 quences, had already excited internal commotion in the 
 Church, and was now to embroil the province over which 
 Cyprian presided, in the general discord. 
 
 There is some difficulty in determining the exact dates 
 of the events to which this controversy gave rise, and the 
 sequence of the several minor occurrences is often obscure. 
 The long and learned note appended to Sect, xviii. Saec. III. 
 of Mosheim's Commentaries of the Affairs of the Church 
 before Constantine, seems to me to present the most judicious 
 arrangement of the several events ; I shall take that historian 
 therefore as my guide. Mosheim, however, is no guide in 
 theology : and it is well, that though the records of those 
 times have left the dates and order of certain occurrences 
 obscure, they speak clearly enough on the theological ques- 
 tions which we are about to touch. 
 
 The broader features of the controversy are readily traced 
 in the Epistles of Cyprian and Firmilian, which afford also
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 229 
 
 some indications of personal character, in the several actors in 
 the busy scene, which may give interest to the repulsive but 
 most important story of theological disputation. The char- 
 acter of Stephen, Bishop of Rome, must be allowed to suffer 
 under the lash of his opponents' satire and arguments, almost 
 as much as the subsequent claims of the Church over which 
 he presided suffer from the development of truly catholic prin- 
 ciples in the conduct of the controversy. If the Epistles of 
 Stephen, which are lost, would have placed the conduct and 
 character of that Prelate in a better light, than that in which 
 they appear in the accounts of his opponents, I sincerely wish 
 that they were forthcoming. His conduct must have been 
 outrageous indeed, to exceed the picture of him which the 
 historian is obliged to present, from existing records ; and yet 
 the Church of Rome has been suspected of suppressing his 
 Epistles, that the character of the Pontiff might not suffer by 
 the additional light which they would throw upon the history 
 of those times. Perhaps, too, the historians of the Roman 
 obedience have needlessly confused the occurrences in which 
 Stephen took so prominent and heartless a part : for this is 
 certainly a page of history on which they can engage with no 
 great complacency ; and they might have rejoiced if Raymond 
 Missorius l had succeeded in his attempt to prove, that the 
 Epistles relating to this controversy, attributed to Cyprian and 
 Firmilian, were forged by the Donatists of Africa, whose error 
 sought support from those records. 
 
 The question agitated was really one of vital importance. 
 Whether or no those who had received baptism from the hands 
 of an heretic, should be admitted into the Church by a second 
 baptism : or rather (for this is the more correct way of stating 
 the question, though the other is the more common and 
 popular), whether the sprinkling by a heretic should be 
 accounted any baptism at all ; and therefore, whether one who 
 had received such a sprinkling should be baptised. This 
 question had never been authoritatively determined in the 
 Church of Christ. The usage of Rome was indeed clear ; but 
 1 A Franciscan of the last century.
 
 230 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 yet no Church at that time imagined the local custom of 
 Rome a rule for the conduct of all Christendom. It had been 
 debated on several occasions ; and perhaps it had received 
 several solutions in different provinces, each particular Church 
 obeying the decision of its several Bishop, or of the synod of 
 the province of which it formed a part. Meanwhile all agreed, 
 if not in the particular rule or discipline, yet in the much more 
 important matter, that the Bishop was the centre of authority 
 in such matters to his own Church, or the synod of provincial 
 Bishops to each province ; and that they did right who fol- 
 lowed the determination of the Bishop or the synod respec- 
 tively, until the paramount authority of the Universal Church 
 should determine the question. 1 
 
 In Asia, synods had been held at Synnada and Iconium, 
 and some other places, in which it had been determined, that 
 heretical baptism was invalid. In Africa, Agrippinus of Carth- 
 age had presided in a Council, at which the same determina- 
 tion was adopted : 2 but the Council was not held to be bind- 
 ing on the whole African Church ; for we shall find a smaller 
 synod of Bishops presently consulting Cyprian on the question, 
 as if it had not been set at rest. In Rome, and in the dio- 
 ceses in its provinces, the opinion seems always to have been, 
 that they who came over from heresy, and had received 
 baptism in their separation from the Church, should be 
 received, nevertheless, without a second baptism; at least 
 Stephen, who advocated that rule, appeals to the tradition of 
 his own Church in support of his opinion. 
 
 The region in which this difference first created dissension 
 with Rome, was in Asia Minor ; Cappadocia, Cilicia, and the 
 neighbouring provinces. Perhaps some Asiatic Christians 
 may have expressed their opinion upon the subject at Rome; 
 
 1 St Augustine to Januarius, Ep. liv. vol. ii. p. 167, thus states the 
 principle which should be adhered to in such matters. " Facial quisque 
 quod in ea ecclesia, in quam venit, invenerit." In the same Epistle 
 Augustine gives the celebrated rule of St Ambrose, "ad quam forte 
 ecclesiam veneris, ejus morem serva, si cuiquam non vis esse scandalo, 
 nee quemquam tibi." 
 
 - Epistles Ixxi. and Ixxiii.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 231 
 
 and if they did this imprudently, still more if they did it in- 
 temperately, they were highly culpable. Perhaps some con- 
 verted heretics, who had been received into the Church at 
 Rome without baptism, may have been rejected on their 
 return to Asia : or some who had been rejected in Asia may 
 have been received at Rome; and in either case, the dis- 
 cipline of a particular Church, which every other Church 
 ought to respect, was dishonoured. But, from whatever 
 causes, Stephen became all at once highly indignant at the 
 error, as he thought it, of the Asiatic Churches, and wrote to 
 Asia concerning Helenus and Firmilian, and the rest of the 
 Bishops of those parts, threatening to withdraw from their 
 communion, because they repeated the baptism of heretics. 1 
 The letter of Firmilian, of which we shall presently have much 
 to say, and of which we are all along making great use, shows, 
 that this threat was carried into execution. 
 
 While affairs were in this posture between Asia and Rome, 
 Cyprian little thought of the storm which was gathering around 
 him, and was soon to burst over his head. He was settling 
 the state of his own Church and province, after the persecu- 
 tion, with the assistance of thirty-two Bishops assembled with 
 him at Carthage. During their session, a question was put 
 to Cyprian by some Numidian Bishops (eighteen in number) 
 upon the very matter which was then embroiling the Eastern 
 Church with Rome. The letter of the Numidians is lost, but 
 Cyprian's answer will afford a sufficient indication of its con- 
 tents, and will put us in possession of his own judgment upon 
 the disputed question, with that of the thirty-two Bishops 
 assembled with him in council. 
 
 This letter contains a very careful and comprehensive state- 
 ment of the principle upon which Cyprian and his adherents 
 determined the question touching heretical baptism. St 
 Cyprian himself evidently views it in that light, for he again 
 and again refers to it, as containing a clear statement of his 
 opinions, and of the ground on which they rested. As it is very 
 short, as compared with its importance, I shall give it entire. 
 1 Eusebius vii. 5.
 
 232 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 " Cyprian and thirty-one others, to Januarius and the other 
 Bishops of Numidia. 
 
 " When we were all assembled in council, we read, dearest 
 brethren, your Epistle to us, on the matter of those who seem 
 to have been baptised 1 among heretics and schismatics, 
 Whether, when they came into the Catholic Church, which is 
 one and true, they ought to be baptised ? And although you 
 yourselves maintain, in constancy and purity, the Catholic 
 rule upon that point ; yet, since you have thought good out 
 of our mutual charity to consult us, we send you our opinion, 
 which is not new, but the same which was established long 
 since by our predecessors, and which we have observed our- 
 selves, with as great unanimity as that which you have 
 evinced ; for this we believe, and hold as an undoubted verity, 
 that no one can be baptised out of the Church, since there is 
 but one baptism appointed, and that in the holy Church ; and 
 since it is written, They have left Me, the fountain of living 
 ivater y and have hewn out for themselves broken fountains, 
 which can hold no water? And again, another Scripture 
 speaks in a voice of warning : Abstain from strange water, and 
 of a fountain of strange water drink not. 3 The water, there- 
 fore, should first be cleansed and sanctified by the Priest, that 
 it may avail by its use in baptism to wash away the sins of 
 him who is immersed in it : wherefore saith the Lord by the 
 prophet Ezekiel, and I will sprinkle clear water upon you, and 
 ye shall be clear from all your filthiness ; and from all your 
 idols will I cleanse you ; a new heart also will I give you, and a 
 new spirit will I put within you* But how can he cleanse and 
 sanctify the water, who is himself unclean, and upon whom 
 the Holy Ghost is not; for the Lord saith, Whatsoever the 
 
 1 " Baptizati videntur." Cyprian constantly makes the distinction be- 
 tween a real and a seeming baptism : and thus he, quite as truly as 
 Stephen, taught, that none could be ^baptised. St Cyril says, " none 
 but heretics are rebaptised, since their former baptism was not baptism." 
 Catechesis, Introductory Lecture, p. 7, in the translation in the Library 
 of Fathers, Oxon., 1838. 
 
 2 Jer. ii. 13. 3 Prov. vi. 24. 
 4 Ezekiel xxxvi. 25, 26.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 233 
 
 unclean person toucheth shall be unclean ? l Or how can one 
 give to another remission of sins in baptism, who cannot him- 
 self lay down his own sins, being without the Church ? 
 
 " Besides, the very intercession which is made at Baptism 
 is a witness of the truth. For when we say, ' Dost thou believe 
 in eternal !ife, and in the remission of sins by the Iwly Church ? ' 
 we mean that remission of sins is not given except in the 
 Church; but that among the heretics, where the Church is 
 not, sins cannot be remitted. They then who assert that 
 heretics can baptise, must either change the interrogation, or 
 must vindicate the truth against their own opinion, by the very 
 use of it ; unless, indeed, they contend, that even those have 
 a Church whose baptism they admit. 
 
 " Moreover, he who is baptised must also be anointed, that 
 when he has received the chrism, that is the unction, he may 
 be indeed the anointed of God, and have in him the grace of 
 Christ. Now there is a Eucharistic oblation of oil, from the 
 matter of which the baptised are anointed, after the oil has 
 been consecrated on the altar; but he cannot have conse- 
 crated the creature of oil, who had neither an altar nof 
 a church. Whence, again, there can be no spiritual unction 
 among heretics, since it is quite clear that oil cannot be con- 
 secrated, and made an Eucharistic oblation, by them. 2 And 
 
 1 Numb. xix. 22. 
 
 - This passage is difficult, and I have seen no explanation which re- 
 moves the difficulty ; I have therefore ventured to render it paraphrasti- 
 cally, conveying an explanation together with a translation ; yet by no 
 means positively asserting that my explanation is the right one. The 
 words in the original are as follows. " Porro autetn Eucharistia est, unde 
 baptizati unguuntur oleo in altari sancttficato. Saitctificare autem non 
 potuit olei creaturatn qui tiff a/tare habuit nee ecclesiam. Unde nee unctio 
 spiritualis apud hareticos potest esse, quando constet oleum sanctificari et 
 Eucharist iam fieri apud Ulos omnino non fosse." The word Eucharistia 
 here, has been always, so far as I know, made to refer to the Eucharist, or 
 the Supper of the Lord, administered to the newly baptised. But though 
 chrism and confirmation were held to be necessary to the completion of 
 Baptism, I know not that the Eucharist ever was : and at any rate, if 
 he had then been speaking of the Supper of the Lord, Cyprian would have 
 made it another member of the argument, and not confused it with the
 
 234 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 we ought to bear in mind the Scripture, Let not the oil of a 
 sinner anoint mine head. 1 And this warning the Holy Spirit 
 
 mention of the oil ; when he had already separated the mention of the oil 
 from that of the water, which are much more on a par, and much more 
 nearly connected theologically speaking. He would have reasoned thus : 
 The heretic cannot consecrate water, ergo he cannot baptise. He cannot 
 consecrate oil, ergo he cannot baptise. Neither can he consecrate the 
 Eucharist, ergo he cannot baptise. But as the reasoning of Cyprian stands, 
 that third proof of his position is sadly confused with the second, to the 
 great detriment of both ; that is, if, which I question, he accepted the 
 third at all, as a part of his reasoning, or if he is there speaking at all ot 
 that oblation which is KOT' efox^", the Eucharist. This reasoning will be 
 seen in its full force by those who will observe in how orderly a manner 
 Cyprian advances, in this Epistle, from one step of his argument to an- 
 other, closing each with a reference to Scripture. It will be felt by those 
 who know how the Christians of that time were accustomed to speak of 
 the tremendous mysteries of the Christian altar ; and who know how very 
 improbable it is, that such an one as St Cyprian should thus speak of those 
 mysteries, as it were, by the way, while the oil of chrism is the real and 
 immediate subject of his reasoning. Thus, neither as an orderly reasoner, 
 nor as a theologian, can Cyprian be supposed to make any reference to 
 the Eucharistic sacrifice in this passage. To speak, too, of the creature of 
 oil, is quite analogous to speaking of the creattires of bread and wine ; 
 which is a usual way of designating those elements, when they were about 
 to be sanctified by an Eucharistic oblation, and invocation of the Holy 
 Ghost. Nor is the analogy between the consecrations of the oil and of 
 the bread and wine too obscure to afford propriety to such a similarity of 
 phrases. St Cyril of Jerusalem says (Cat. Myst. iii. 3 p. 268, of Church's 
 translation), in a passage, by the way, which renders it absolutely im- 
 possible that Cyril can have held the doctrine of transubstantiation. " Be- 
 ware of supposing this to be plain ointment. For as the bread of the 
 Eucharist, after the invocation of the Holy Ghost, is mere bread no longer, 
 but the body of Christ ; so also this holy ointment is no more simple 
 ointment, nor (so to say) common, after the invocation, but the gift of 
 Christ ; and by the presence of His Godhead, it causes in us the Holy 
 Ghost." And in the title of a prayer in the Apostolical constitution we 
 find the very word Eucharist, as applied to a part of the ceremonial of 
 unction ; ETXAPISTI A irepl TOV fivuriKov fiApov. 
 
 I think I have said enough to show, that the Eucharistia of which 
 Cyprian speaks may be connected with the oil of chrism, and not with the 
 Sacrament of the Lord's Supper : and if it may be, some respect to 
 Cyprian's reasoning will bring us to the conclusion, that it is connected 
 with the oil. 
 
 1 Ps. clxi. 5, LXX. and Vulgate.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 235 
 
 gave beforehand in the Psalms, lest any, leaving his proper 
 course, and wandering from the path of truth, should be 
 anointed by heretics, and the enemies of Christ. 
 
 " And, yet again, what sort of prayer can a sacrilegious and 
 sinful priest offer for the baptised, since it is said, God heareth 
 not a sinner ; but if any one worshippeth Him, and doeth His 
 will, him He heareth ? * 
 
 " But who can give that which he hath not ? or how can he, 
 who has himself lost the Holy Spirit, minister spiritual gifts ? 
 
 " On the whole then we conclude, that he is to be baptised 
 and renewed, who comes as a novice to the Church; and 
 that he ought to be sanctified within her pale, by those who 
 are themselves holy ; since it is written, Be ye holy, for I am 
 holy, saith the Lord .-^ so, then, he who has been led into an 
 error, and been baptised without the Church, let him put off 
 this, among his other offences, in the true and Catholic bap- 
 tism, that when he would have come to God, while he sought 
 a true priest, he fell into the hands of a sacrilegious one, 
 through deceit and error. 
 
 " Finally, to consent to the validity of the baptism of 
 heretics and schismatics is in effect to approve of it For in 
 this case, either all or none is validly performed. If the 
 heretic could baptise, he could also give the Holy Ghost. 
 But if he who is without the Church cannot give the Holy 
 Ghost, because he is himself without the Holy Ghost, neither 
 can he baptise the convert : for there is one baptism, and one 
 Holy Spirit, and one Church, founded by the Lord Christ upon 
 Peter [or upon a rock 3 ], so that in its very foundation it may 
 bear the mark of unity. Hence it follows, that since among 
 them everything is false and empty, nothing of their doing in 
 such matters ought to be acknowledged by us. For what can 
 1 John ix. 13. '- Lev. xix. 2. 
 
 3 See the note of the Benedictine Editors. I have no objection to admit 
 that the Church is founded on Peter : but since there can have been no 
 temptation to convert Petrum into pel ram ; while there has been such 
 strong temptation to convert petram into Fetrum ; various readings in such 
 passages really do look suspicious. However, the Romanists must be 
 allowed the benefit of their character for integrity in such matters.
 
 236 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 be ratified and confirmed by God which they do who are 
 called His enemies in the Gospel ? He who is not with Me is 
 against Me ; he who gathercth not with Me scatterethl And 
 the blessed Apostle Saint John also, guarding the command- 
 ments and precepts of his Lord, has written in his Epistle, 
 Ye have heard that Antichrist shall come ; even now are there 
 many Antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time. 
 They went out from us, but they were not of us ; for if they had 
 been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us. 2 And 
 from hence, we ought to consider, whether they who are 
 enemies of the Lord, and who are called Antichrists, can 
 confer the grace of Christ. Wherefore we, who remain with 
 the Lord, and maintain His unity, and administer the priest- 
 hood in His Church according as He has put us in charge, 
 ought to repudiate and reject whatever His adversaries and 
 Antichrists do, and to account it as mere profanation. And 
 to those who escape from error and pravity, and acknowledge 
 the true faith of the one Church, we ought to communicate in 
 all the sacraments of divine grace, and in the verity of unity 
 and faith. 
 
 " Dearest brethren, we wish you continued health." 3 
 Having given this Epistle entire, we have once for all put 
 the reader in possession of Cyprian's judgment on the point 
 at issue, from which he never swerved. As we follow the 
 controversy, however, in its several turns, we shall mark such 
 new arguments as were elicited by the circumstances of the 
 contest, and were adduced from time to time in answer to 
 new objections. 
 
 Though the Council from which the above Epistle was sent, 
 thus confirming the determination of a Numidian Synod, and 
 following the steps of a former Synod in Carthage, may be 
 supposed to have settled the question to the satisfaction of all 
 Catholics in those provinces ; yet there were other parts of 
 Africa which were as yet unsupplied with any authoritative 
 rule for the admission of heretics into the Church ; and whose 
 
 1 Luke xi. 23. a i John ii. 18, 19. 
 
 3 Ep. Ixx. pp. 124, 152, 126.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 237 
 
 Bishops, therefore, being left to their private judgment in this 
 matter, might innocently differ in opinion and practice, one 
 from another, and from the Numidian and Carthaginian 
 Churches. Under such circumstances they would gladly 
 obtain the advice of a Bishop, so eminent, both in character 
 and station, as St Cyprian ; especially after he had presided 
 in a Council where the question had been debated and de- 
 termined. Hence we find Cyprian writing to a Bishop in 
 Mauritania, named Quintus, in answer to a request made 
 through one Lucius, a Presbyter, that he would give him his 
 opinion on that subject. " Lucius, our brother Presbyter, has 
 informed me, dearest brother, of your wish," says Cyprian, 
 " that I should send you my judgment concerning those who 
 have received the semblance of Baptism among heretics and 
 schismatics." l He sends therefore to Quintus a copy of the 
 letter to the Numidians before given ; adding an answer to 
 the objection, that there is but one baptism. " Some will say," 
 says he, " that there is but one baptism. True, but that one 
 must be in the one Catholic Church. But those who admit 
 the baptism of heretics, as well as that of the Church, make 
 two baptisms ; or else, which is still worse, prefer the profane 
 and contaminating sprinkling of the heretics, to the one true 
 and lawful baptism of the Church Catholic. Or at any rate, 
 to make but one baptism, yet to recognise the baptism of 
 heretics, is to admit that heretics may truly baptise, and to 
 allow them the power of washing, cleansing, and sanctifying the 
 spiritual man. But this is to grant too much to them ; for 
 how can they give that which they have not themselves ? We 
 do not say, then, that converts from them to the Church are 
 to be /^baptised, but that they are to be baptised." 
 
 Another objection, which Cyprian discusses in this Epistle, 
 shows that the trick of meeting arguments by reasoning 
 perfectly irrelevant, is by no means peculiar to these days. 
 If the adversaries of truth can find something in ancient 
 custom which looks like a support of their cause on the most 
 superficial view, they are not deterred from adducing it, 
 1 Ep. Ixxi. p. 126.
 
 238 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 though if it be examined more deeply, it tells altogether 
 against them. They know that the mass of the people is 
 taken only by the first aspect of things ; so that the desired 
 effect will be already produced, before a more candid instruc- 
 tor can teach them to look below the surface. 
 
 It had been a primitive and catholic custom, to receive 
 those back again into the Church who had been baptised 
 therein, but had left it, for a time, for the communion of 
 heretics, by penance only and imposition of hands, without 
 a second baptism. This custom respects a case utterly 
 different from that which was now agitated ; and if it could 
 be applied at all to the question, it would rather go to support 
 the peculiar sanctity of Baptism administered in the Catholic 
 Church : yet it was adduced, as establishing their point, by 
 those who were for receiving without baptism schismatics, 
 who had not been baptised in the Church. The fair state- 
 ment of this argument is sufficient for its refutation, without 
 the reasoning of Cyprian ; and I almost wonder (especially 
 since he opposes the misapplication of custom more than 
 sufficiently by the mention of the true custom of Africa, 
 founded on the decision of the Council which met under 
 Agrippinus), that he should condescend to meet it by showing 
 that custom against reason is not to be followed. However, 
 he was right in prudence to argue with men according to their 
 folly : and in a future Epistle (to Jubaianus), with equal 
 condescension, and practical wisdom, we find him refuting 
 two other arguments equally irrelevant, which were adduced 
 by the opponents of his opinion, that heretics should be 
 received into the Church by Baptism. The two arguments to 
 which I allude are, (i) That the Church denied not a 
 martyr's crown to them, who died in the true faith, though 
 before Baptism : and, (2) that those who had been baptised 
 by Philip in Samaria were not rebaptised by Peter and John, 
 but only received imposition of hands. Such are some of the 
 arguments against which Cyprian had to contend. I shall 
 not mention them again in their proper order : they deserve 
 to be strung together for their absurdity, and not to form 
 a link in the historical sequence of events.
 
 Life and Tunes of St Cyprian. 239 
 
 Cyprian's anxiety to determine this question with the 
 greatest possible authority, seems most plainly to indicate, 
 that he was aware of the full extent of the violence with which 
 Stephen, Bishop of Rome, was likely to proceed against those 
 who differed from him in opinion and practice. The antici- 
 pation of a future difference would make him in no degree 
 disposed to submit his judgment to another, or to yield upon 
 any other ground than conclusive reasoning ; for he was 
 certainly no slave to foreign influence, and no moral coward : 
 but the coming struggle which could neither shake nor 
 frighten him, would and should make him very desirous to 
 determine the question, with the full concurrence of his com- 
 provincial Bishops ; both that the question might be discussed 
 with greater opportunities of arriving at the truth ; and that 
 the decision, when made, might carry with it the greater weight. 
 
 Urged by these motives, he assembled, shortly after the last 
 Synod had dispersed, a second Synod of seventy-two Bishops ; 
 some being present from Numidia, in which province the 
 question had been already determined in an assembly of 
 eighteen Bishops, in accordance with the views of Cyprian, 
 and his comprovincials. In this second Council the decision 
 of the former was confirmed ; and a decree was also made 
 upon another matter of discipline, whereby it was ordered, 
 that those who had been ordained by schismatics, and even 
 those who had received Orders in the Church, but had after- 
 wards seceded, should be received, on their return to the 
 Catholic Church, only to lay communion. 
 
 Of the proceedings of this second Synod, Cyprian informs 
 Stephen of Rome in the seventy-second of the Cyprianic 
 Epistles. It will be interesting to the reader to observe the 
 tone in which Cyprian speaks to the Roman Pontiff; and 
 that upon a subject of such vital importance, as to justify, at 
 least in Stephen's opinion, the breach of communion with 
 those who ventured to oppose his views. 
 
 " I found it necessary, for the discussion and determination 
 of many points, to collect a Synod of several Bishops; in 
 which many things were canvassed and determined : and
 
 240 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 having decreed that those who have been washed without the 
 Church, and stained with the contaminating touch of the 
 water used by heretics and schismatics, ought to be baptised, 
 when they come over to us, and to the one Church ; we 
 thought it right to communicate this decree especially to you, 
 that we might confer with your gravity and wisdom on a point 
 which so nearly touches the authority of the priesthood, and 
 the unity and dignity with which the Church Catholic is 
 divinely appointed. We hold it insufficient to lay hands upon 
 them for the receiving of the Holy Ghost, unless they also 
 received the Baptism of the Church : for they can only be 
 accounted sons of God fully sanctified, when they have been 
 born again of both sacraments, 1 since it is written, unless a 
 
 1 That is, of the sacrament of water for the remission of sins ; and of 
 imposition of hands for the receiving of the Holy Ghost : which latter is a 
 sacrament in no other sense than the sign of the cross used in Baptism by 
 us may be called a sacrament ; and is not at all a sacrament in the limited 
 polemical sense, in which we say that there are but two Sacraments, and 
 in which the Romanist says that there are seven. Imposition of hands 
 was held a part and complement of the Sacrament of Baptism. 
 
 To the learned it is sufficiently plain, that instances of the application 
 of the term " sacramenturn, " to any ordinance or other subject by the 
 Fathers of the Church, are quite irrelevant in our controversy with Rome 
 touching the number of the Sacraments ; for we admit in every other than 
 the limited sense in which the word is used in this controversy, that there 
 are other Sacraments : whereas the Romanist will not admit, that in all 
 those things called " sacramenta, " by the writers in question, are Sacra- 
 ments in the same polemical sense. We need not hesitate to speak of the 
 sacrament of unity, of the Lord's Prayer as a sacrament, of the sacrament 
 of imposition of hands or confirmation, if only we be rightly understood to 
 mean just so much as the Fathers meant, and no more : and if more be 
 necessarily intended, then the Romanist will be as little able to employ 
 the terms " sacrantentutn unitatis" as we to speak of the sacrament of 
 confirmation. I know nothing that can better express our view of the 
 matter, than the words of St Augustine, " Sacramentis numero paucissimis, 
 observatione facillimis, significatione pnestantissimis, societatem novi 
 populi [Dominus] colligavit ; sicut est Baptismus Trinitatis nomine 
 consecratus, communicatio corporis et sanguinis ipsius, et si quid aliud in 
 Scripturis canonicis commendatur." \_Ep. liv. vol. ii. p. 164.] Thus 
 does this great Father clearly distinguish between the higher mysteries of 
 Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and those which to avoid misconception 
 we may call rather sacramentals than sacraments.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 241 
 
 man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the 
 kingdom of God. We find it recorded too, in the Acts of the 
 Apostles, that this principle was fully recognised and preserved 
 by the Apostles : so that, when the Holy Spirit had descended 
 upon Gentiles in the house of Cornelius the centurion, who 
 were there present, warm in faith, and believing in the Lord 
 with their whole heart, so that they blessed God in divers 
 tongues, through the divine inspiration ; yet St Peter, mindful 
 of the divine ordinance, and of the Gospel, commanded that 
 they should be baptised, who were already full of the Holy 
 Ghost, that nothing should seem wanting to the perfect 
 observance of the divine ordinance, in the conduct of the 
 Apostles." x 
 
 Then telling Stephen that he sends copies of his letters to 
 Quintus and to the Bishops of Numidia, in which the grounds 
 of this decision were discussed, Cyprian proceeds to mention 
 the decree before alluded to, concerning the reception of 
 lapsed ecclesiastics to lay communion ; and, finally, anticipat- 
 ing Stephen's rejection of the decision of the Council touching 
 the baptism of heretics, he thus concludes: "These things 
 we have made known to you, dearest brother, from regard to 
 our mutual respect, and as befits my sincere regard for you ; 
 trusting that your own piety and soundness in the faith will 
 sufficiently commend to you what is itself religious and or- 
 thodox. We know, however, that some men are unwilling to 
 lay down opinions which they have once taken up, and are 
 not easily persuaded to confess a change in their sentiments ; 
 yet they can retain the opinions which they have once 
 adopted as their own, without sacrificing the peace and unity 
 of their colleagues. And so we, in the matter before us, 
 neither impose restraint, nor dictate a rule of proceeding to 
 any man, since every Bishop has full right to administer the 
 affairs of his own Church according to his own judgment, 
 rendering to the Lord an account of his deeds." 
 
 Another Epistle of Cyprian, written about the same time to 
 Jubaianus, an African Prelate, puts us more fully in possession 
 1 Ep. Ixxii. p. 128.
 
 242 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 of the topics of controversy on this question, than any other 
 of the records of these times. Jubaianus had proposed to 
 Cyprian his own objections to his opinion ; and had sent also 
 a letter from some nameless person, in which other difficulties 
 were proposed. This double attack upon his opinion Cyprian 
 fully meets. He first mentions the two Synods which had 
 been held, and also his letter to Quintus, in which the rule 
 was stated, with the principles on which it was founded. He 
 then proceeds to answer objections. Some it seems argued, 
 that since Novatian affected to baptise those who deserted to 
 him from the Church, therefore the Church ought to receive 
 heretics without baptism, lest Catholics should seem so 
 far to symbolise with Novatian, and to have borrowed his 
 custom. 
 
 In answer to this notable argument, St Cyprian shows, that, 
 to be consistent, Novatian should have been baptised into his 
 own heresy. He insinuates, that it would be as reasonable to 
 put off the proper conduct of humanity, because in some 
 things apes have imitated men ; as for the Church to desert 
 her customs, because they had been aped by Novatian. And 
 he argues, ad hominem (and the argument is of very general 
 application, and well worth repeating), " Is it really to be 
 held a sufficient reason for not doing this, that Novatian has 
 done it ? What then ? since Novatian usurps the honour of 
 an Episcopate, are we to renounce our Episcopacy? Or, 
 because Novatian endeavours to erect an altar, and against 
 all right to offer sacrifice, are we to desert our altar, and to 
 relinquish our sacrifice?" 1 
 
 An argument more worthy of Cyprian's attention occurs 
 next : one, indeed, which hinged on the very principle on 
 which the Church Catholic afterwards determined the present 
 question. I find, says Cyprian, in the letter which you 
 transmitted to me, a notion, that we ought not to inquire who 
 was the minister of Baptism in any particular case ; since the 
 baptised may receive remission of sins, according to that 
 which he believed : as that Marcionites, for instance, need 
 1 Ep. Ixxiii. p. 130.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 243 
 
 not to be baptised, since they have received a semblance of 
 Baptism, in the name of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Let us take Cyprian's solution of this difficulty in his own 
 words. 
 
 "We ought therefore to examine the faith of those who 
 believe, out of the Church, to determine whether it be such as 
 that they can on account of it obtain any grace. For if there 
 be but one faith common to us and to heretics, there may be 
 one grace also. If the Patripassians, for instance, the Valen- 
 tiniani, the Ophitae, the Marcionites, and other pestilent sects, 
 the very poison and dagger of the truth, confess the same 
 Father, the same Son, ths same Holy Spirit, the same Church, 
 that we confess, they may share with us in our Baptism, since 
 their faith also is one with ours. But, not to run through all 
 the heretics, and all their follies and blasphemies (since it is 
 painful to speak of that, at the very knowledge of which one 
 shudders and is ashamed), let us examine the case of Marcion 
 alone, of whom mention was made in the Epistle which you 
 sent to me, whether the validity of his baptism can be reason- 
 ably admitted. 
 
 Now the Lord, when He sent forth His disciples after His 
 resurrection, taught them in what form they ought to baptise, 
 saying, All power is given to Me in heaven and in earth. Go 
 ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name 
 of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. In these 
 words Christ involves the doctrine of the Trinity, and in the 
 mystery of the Trinity were the nations to be baptised. Now 
 does Marcion hold the doctrine of the Trinity? Does he 
 ascribe creation to the same Father with us ? Does he 
 recognise the same Son, Christ born of the Virgin Mary, who 
 is the Word made flesh, who bare our sins, who by His death 
 conquered death, who was the first-fruits and the promise of 
 the resurrection to us, in His flesh, so as to assure His dis- 
 ciples that they also should rise in the same flesh? Far 
 different is the faith of Marcion, and of the rest of the 
 heretics ! Yea, among them is nothing but error and blas- 
 phemy and contention, the foes of holiness and truth. How,
 
 244 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 therefore, can it be made to appear, that they who are 
 baptised among them can receive remission of sins, and the 
 grace of God, on account of their faith, when their very faith 
 itself is a lie ? For if, as some imagine, one who is without 
 the Church, can receive anything according to his faith ; 
 surely he must receive that which he believes ; he then who 
 believes a lie cannot receive the truth ; but rather, according 
 to his faith, he receives impurity and profanation." l 
 
 Cyprian also argues, that if the faith of a heretic might 
 avail to his receiving the grace of Baptism, it would also avail 
 to the receiving of the grace of imposition of hands; with 
 which rite however all were for receiving them ; and after a 
 long interval he proceeds : " There is no pretence for setting 
 up the name of Christ against the truth in this matter, and for 
 saying that they who are baptised in the name of Jesus Christ, 
 wherever and however, have received the grace of Baptism : 
 whereas Christ Himself says, Not every one that saith unto Me 
 Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ; and since 
 He also warns us against being deceived by false prophets, 
 and false Christs, coming in His name ; Many shall come in 
 My name, saith He, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive 
 many ; but He adds, beware ; lo ! I have foretold you all. 
 Whence we learn, that we are not to receive and vindicate 
 what arrogates the name of Christ, but only what is done 
 according to the truth of Christ. It is true that the Apostles 
 taught much of the name of Christ for the remission of sins ; 
 but this was not as if the Son could profit any without or in 
 opposition to the Father ; but that they might evince to the 
 Jews, who boasted that they had the Father, that the Father 
 would profit them nothing, unless they believed in the Son, 
 whom He sent. . . . Finally, since after the resurrection the 
 Apostles were sent forth to baptise the Gentiles in the name 
 of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, how can 
 some venture to say, that a Gentile baptised without the 
 Church, yea, against the Church, anywhere, and in whatever 
 form, so that it be only in the name of Jesus Christ, can 
 1 Ep. Ixxiii. pp. 130, 131.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 245 
 
 obtain remission of sins ; when Christ Himself commands 
 that the nations be baptised in the Trinity in Unity : unless, 
 indeed, he who denies Christ is denied by Christ ; yet he who 
 denies the Father, whom Christ Himself confessed, is not 
 denied by Him ; and unless he who blasphemes Him, whom 
 Christ called His Lord and His God, shall be rewarded by 
 Christ with remission of sins, and the sanctification of Bap- 
 tism." 1 And again: "if one could be baptised among 
 heretics, he might also receive remission of sins : and with 
 remission of sins, sanctification ; and he is made the temple 
 of God. But, I ask, of what God ? Not of the Creator ; for 
 in Him he believes not. Not of Christ ; for he denies that 
 Christ is God. Not of the Holy Ghost ; for since the Three 
 are One God, how can the Holy Ghost be propitiated by him, 
 who is the enemy either of the Father or of the Son ? " ' 
 
 These passages, long as they are, are but extracts from the 
 reasoning of Cyprian against the notion, that heretics might 
 receive grace, according to their faith, in their own mockery 
 of the Baptismal rite. But such expressions were of course 
 open to the imputation of bigotry, from those who could 
 not understand, that the most energetic maintenance of the 
 truth, the utmost hatred of error, is not inconsistent with true 
 love, and personal forbearance. Against the pseudo-charity, 
 therefore, or liberalism of some, he presents the following 
 admirable exposition of a passage from the Epistle to the 
 Philippians, which had been claimed then, as it is continually 
 now, as favouring such principles. 
 
 "As for the fancy of some, that the words of St Paul, Not- 
 withstanding every way, whether in pretence or truth, let Christ 
 be preached, afford any sanction to the proceedings of heretics, 
 we are convinced that they give no support either to heretics 
 or to their abettors. For in truth St Paul was not speaking 
 of heretics, or of anything concerning them. The two classes 
 of persons whose preaching he mentions, were both of the 
 brethren ; though some were disorderly in their conduct, and 
 regardless of the laws of the Church, while the rest preserved 
 1 Pages 134, 135. - Page 133.
 
 246 Life and Times of St Cyprian, 
 
 the truth of the Gospel with a due reverence and fear. Now 
 while some of these constantly and boldly preached the word 
 of the Lord, and some of envy and ill will ; while some main- 
 tained a sincere love for His person, but others were filled 
 with hatred and malevolence ; he patiently endured all, since, 
 whether in pretence or in truth, the name of Christ, which he 
 also preached, came to the knowledge of many ; and the 
 preaching of all, though perhaps some were novices and 
 imperfectly taught, yet prevailed to the spread of truth. Now 
 surely it is one thing for those who arc within the Church 
 to speak of Christ ; and another for those who are without the 
 Church, and its enemies, to baptise in the name of Christ. 
 Let not those then who would vindicate the proceedings of 
 heretics, adduce the expressions of St Paul concerning brethren: 
 but let them point out some place in which he grants that 
 anything is to be conceded to heretics, in which he approves 
 their faith and baptism, in which he has taught that they who 
 are in schism, and are blasphemers, can obtain remission of 
 their sins, without the pale of the Church." l He then pro- 
 ceeds to note what St Paul does say of heretics, and of the 
 zeal with which we should oppose their errors, and the fear 
 with which we should renounce their fellowship. 
 
 The argument of expediency was also pressed against St 
 Cyprian's rule; it was objected, that the necessity of being 
 baptised would repel heretics from the Church, and that it 
 would bring on the Church unnecessary odium. These 
 objections St Cyprian answers with characteristic courage 
 and decision, plainly declaring, that in such cases the boldest 
 way, that of the highest principle is the best. As for the 
 heretics, if their baptism be admitted, it will tend to make 
 them think, from the very testimony of the Church, that they 
 in their separation are not cut off from the privilege of true 
 Christians ; but if they find that their baptism is disallowed, 
 they will, perhaps at least, be startled by a more serious view 
 of their position, and make the greater haste to regain the 
 privileges which they have lost. As for the dreaded odium 
 1 Page 133.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 247 
 
 of rebaptising : if we dare not incur this, shall we not involve 
 ourselves in a greater difficulty ? for if we grant a true baptism 
 to heretics, we grant that not right and presumptive, but mere 
 and usurped possession, is the only title to this privilege : and 
 thus one of the noblest parts of the appanage of the Church 
 is not only seized by others, but yielded by ourselves : but 
 how perilous it may be to surrender our rights in spiritual 
 matters, we are divinely taught by the example of Esau ; who 
 found no place for repentance, having sold his birthright. 
 
 Let us take the conclusion of this Epistle, for the conclusion 
 also of the present chapter ; to which it is very appropriate, 
 forming as it does a sort of transition from the amicable dis- 
 cussion to the violent agitation of this great question. Re- 
 verting to the calm, already ruffled, with regret ; yet looking 
 forward to the storm with the confidence of moral rectitude 
 and courage ; Cyprian appears before the world protesting 
 his love of harmony, and his desire to maintain unity as well 
 as truth ; and desiring for his own part not to be moved from 
 the advantages of a patient continuance in well-doing, whatever 
 may occur. 
 
 "I have written, dearest brother, as briefly as I could, 
 dictating to none, nor daring to condemn those beforehand, 
 who may use their liberty of judging and of acting, to the 
 best of their judgment. If it be possible to avoid it, I will 
 not quarrel on account of heretics with any who are united with 
 me in the bonds of truth and by the peace of the Lord: especially 
 since the Apostle says, if anyone wanteth to be contentious, we 
 have no such custom, neither the Church of God. I hold fast, 
 in patience and meekness, the love of the Christians, the 
 honour of our college, the bond of faith, the unity of the 
 Episcopate : and to this end I have exercised myself in the 
 composition of a book on the advantages of patience, which I 
 have now finished to the best of my weak ability, and with 
 the grace and help of the Lord. Of this book I send you a 
 copy, as a token of our mutual affection." 1 
 
 i Page 137.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Stephen, Bishop of Rome, interferes in the Controversy about the Baptism 
 of Heretics. Cyprian's Epistle to Pompeius. The last Council assem- 
 bled at Carthage to determine the Question ; St Cyprian's opening 
 Address ; And several of the more remarkable Suffrages, The 
 Unanimity of the Council against the Judgment of Stephen, and the 
 Custom of Rome. Irenseus and Victor. Dionysius and Stephen. 
 
 HENCEFORWARD Stephen occupies a place in the foreground 
 of the picture, and the whole scene is troubled. 
 
 About this time, that arrogant and violent Prelate addressed 
 an Epistle to Cyprian, in which he expressed the opinion of 
 his own Church, with something less of humility and temper 
 than became the character of a Bishop. This Epistle is lost ; 
 but Cyprian has himself preserved several parts of it, and these 
 we may suppose the most important parts, since they are 
 selected by Cyprian as most requiring an answer. These 
 detached fragments of Stephen's letter occur in an Epistle of 
 Cyprian to Pompeius, who had requested Cyprian to furnish 
 him with a copy of it. 
 
 "I send you," says Cyprian, "a transcript of Stephen's 
 letter ; and when you read it, you will abundantly discover 
 his error, in labouring to establish the cause of heretics against 
 Christians, and against the Church of God. For among other 
 things which he advances, either arrogantly or impertinently, 
 or which he so states as to be even inconsistent with himself, 
 he has gone so far as to write thus : ' If, then, any are come 
 over to you from any heresy whatever [a quacumque hceresi\ let 
 no new rule be followed, but according to traditional usage let
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 249 
 
 him be received by imposition of hands and penance ; jor even 
 heretics themselves follow in this instance the legitimate custom, 
 and baptise, not their proselytes, but communicate them only.' " l 
 
 Cyprian's answer to this judgment and reasoning of Stephen, 
 will throw some light on the estimation in which the decree 
 of the Roman Pontiff, and the tradition and custom of the 
 Roman Church, were held in the Church Catholic. 
 
 St Cyprian reasons thus : 
 
 He has forbidden that converts from any heresy should be 
 baptised ; that is, he has determined that the baptism of all 
 heretics is lawful and valid. And forasmuch as each heresy 
 has its own baptism, and its distinctive crimes, he has accumu- 
 lated upon himself the baptism and the crimes of all. 
 
 As for the tradition of which he speaks, whence is it? 
 Does it descend from divine and evangelical authority? 
 Have we it from the commands and Epistles of the Apostles ? 
 Divine traditions, divine commands, are to be obeyed. If, 
 then, either in the Gospels, or in the Acts, or in the Apostoli- 
 cal Epistles, we are forbidden to baptise converts from heresy, 
 and required to receive them at once to penance with imposi- 
 tion of hands ; be it so. But if heretics have no other name 
 and character in the sacred Scriptures but that of enemies 
 and antichrists, if we are taught to avoid them, if they are 
 said to be perverse, and self-condemned ; why are we not to 
 condemn those, who, as the Apostle tells us, have condemned 
 themselves ? And now there are even worse heresies in the 
 Church, than in the Apostles' days ; as that of Marcion, for 
 instance. As for those who set up the traditions of men 
 against the divine word, the Apostle teaches us to withdraw 
 ourselves from all such, for they are proud, knowing nothing. 2 
 Again : 
 
 " Neither ought the custom which has crept in unawares 
 among some, to stand in the way of the universal prevalence 
 of truth ; for custom without truth, is but the rust of error. 
 . . . Nor is the cause obscure which is to be followed by those 
 who desire, religiously and in simplicity, to set aside error 
 1 Ep. Ixxiv. p. 138. - I Tim. iv.
 
 250 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 and to discover the truth, and bring it to light. For when we 
 return to the fountain and origin of divine tradition, human 
 error ceases ; and when we have looked into the intention of 
 the heavenly mysteries, whatever before lay hid beneath the 
 obscurity and cloud of darkness, is brought into the full light 
 of truth. If a water-course, which used to flow copiously, 
 suddenly dries up, do we not go to the well-head to discover 
 the cause of the interruption ; whether the spring itself has 
 failed, or whether the stream which flows freely from thence 
 has been diverted in some part of its course : so that if the 
 defect arise from a broken channel, the proper repairs may 
 restore the stream to its accustomed uses, in the same plenty 
 in which it issues from the spring? And such is the course 
 which the Priests of God should pursue, in the maintaining of 
 the divine precepts. If the truth has been lost or obscured in 
 any matter, we should trace it back to its divine origin, and to 
 the tradition of the Apostles, and we then should gather our 
 rules and frame our conduct according to the divine original. 
 Now we find it recorded, that there is one God, and one 
 Christ, and one hope, and one faith, and one Church, and one 
 Baptism appointed in that one Church only ; and whosoever 
 departs from the unity of these things, necessarily has his part 
 with heretics," 1 &c. . . . The application of this rule to the 
 particular question of Baptism we have already seen ; but it is 
 interesting to find Cyprian arguing against the positions of the 
 Roman Church and Pontiff of that day, on precisely the same 
 Catholic ground that our Church now occupies, and is learn- 
 ing to vindicate to herself once again, after the noble example 
 of her early reformers. 
 
 Cyprian proceeds to declare against the reasoning of Stephen : 
 That to adduce the custom of heretics is indeed a notable 
 device. 
 
 That if the name of Christ was sufficient in Baptism, then 
 it would be sufficient in imposition of hands also ; and the 
 heretics who confer the one, according to Stephen, might also 
 confer the other. 
 
 1 Ep. Ixxiv. pp. 141, 142,
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 251 
 
 That a Bishop ought not only to teach, but also to learn ; 
 for he becomes more fit to teach, as he adds daily to his stock 
 of true knowledge. 
 
 Such is the tone (though not the exact words and order) of 
 some of the remarks of Cyprian upon Stephen's authority and 
 reasoning. Among others the following striking passage 
 occurs : " Doth he give glory to God, who communicates with 
 the Baptism of Marcion ? Doth he give glory to God, who 
 thinks that remission of sins can be given among those who 
 blaspheme God ? Doth he give glory to God, who asserts 
 that children of God may be born without the Church of an 
 adulteress and fornicator ? Doth he give honour to God, who 
 vindicates the cause of heresy against the Church ; forsaking 
 the unity and truth which came from the law of God ? Doth 
 he give glory to God, who, the friend of heretics, the enemy of 
 Christ, judges those priests of God worthy of excommunica- 
 tion who defend the truth of Christ and the unity of the 
 Church ? If this be to honour God, if the fear and discipline 
 of God be thus guarded by His priest, let us throw down our 
 arms, let us submit our hands to captivity, let us surrender the 
 administration of the Gospel, the ordinances of Christ, the 
 majesty of God, to the Devil : let the oath of our divine war- 
 fare be dissolved, let the standard of the armies of heaven be 
 betrayed : let the Church yield to heretics, light to darkness, 
 faith to perfidy, hope to despair, reason to error, immortality 
 to death, love to hatred, truth to a lie, Christ to Antichrist. 
 No wonder that schisms and heresies thus arise day after day, 
 and grow with a strange rapidity and strength, and erect their 
 scaly heads against the Church of God, injecting the poison 
 of their error more and more fatally, while both authority and 
 stability is given to them by the advocacy of some ; while their 
 baptism is defended ; while faith and truth are betrayed ; 
 while that which is done against the Church without her pale, 
 is vindicated in the Church itself. But if, dearest brother, we 
 have any love of God, any faith and regard for the truth ; if 
 we keep the law of Christ, if we guard inviolate the purity of 
 His spouse, if the words of the Lord are written in our hearts,
 
 252 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 When the Son of man cometh shall He find faith on the earth ? 
 As faithful soldiers of God, let us fight for a true faith and a 
 pure religion ; with the courage of tried fidelity, let us guard 
 the camp divinely committed to our keeping." 
 
 The Epistle of Stephen to Cyprian was answered, as we 
 collect with probability at least, by the African Church ; which 
 seems with Cyprian to have maintained a far better temper 
 than Stephen, and to have sought his concurrence, so long as 
 it could be hoped for, and his continued communion, until it 
 was denied by himself. 1 This was expressly declared in the 
 first Epistle to him before cited ; and Cyprian continues to 
 call Stephen "brother," which he would not do, unless he 
 still retained him, and wished to retain him, in the unity of 
 the Church. 
 
 The last effort 2 which the Africans made to retain peace 
 with Rome, seems to have been after Stephen had so scan- 
 dalously abused Cyprian, as to call him a false Christ, a false 
 Apostle, a deceitful worker : and after he had fulminated his 
 excommunications against the whole Church of Carthage. 
 Even after this the Africans sent messengers to Rome to bring 
 things to a better state if possible ; but their message was 
 rejected, and their legates treated with disrespect and con- 
 tumely. 
 
 Things being now in such a deplorable condition, Cyprian, 
 seeking countenance in the consent of good and great men in 
 the Church, communicated the whole affair to Firmilian, one 
 of those Asiatic Bishops who were already in the same con- 
 demnation with himself, and for the same cause. Firmilian 
 had been a pupil of Origen ; he was Bishop of Cesarsea, in 
 Cappadocia, and was a Prelate of great note in his day : and 
 
 1 Need I remind the reader, that the Church of England at the Refor- 
 mation pursued precisely the same Catholic course with Rome, and met 
 with precisely the same uncharitable and schismatical return ? We are 
 accused of having left the Church of Rome : the truth is, that the Church 
 of Rome thrust us out against our will, and with the utmost contumely 
 an 1 cruelty. 
 
 See Mosheim, p. 544.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 253 
 
 his long reply to Cyprian's communication amply sustains his 
 character with posterity. It is certainly a masterly produc- 
 tion, or rather the production of a master mind ; for it was 
 written in so great haste, that he himself apologises for its 
 defects on that score. But it is chiefly valuable to us, not as 
 attesting the genius of its author, but as supplying indications 
 which were else wanting of some minor incidents of this con- 
 troversy ; and as affording irrefragable proofs that Rome and 
 its Bishop had not then those exclusive claims to respect and 
 obedience, which she arrogates now over all Bishops and all 
 Churches. In this latter point of view I have considered the 
 Epistle of Firmilian in another work ; ] and I have made con- 
 tinual use of his historical hints, in the present view of this 
 controversy. 
 
 But the most important step which Cyprian took, was the 
 calling a Council of eighty-five Bishops, the last, and the most 
 celebrated of all those that met under his Episcopate, for the 
 discussion of this question. We have no records remaining 
 of the other Councils, but the mention of them in the several 
 Epistles before cited : but of this Council the synodal acts 
 still remain. 
 
 When the far greater part of the Bishops of Africa, Numidia, 
 and Mauritania had assembled, 2 with the Priests and Deacons 
 (much people being also present), and when the letter of 
 Jubaianus to Cyprian concerning the baptising of heretics, 
 with the answer of Cyprian, and also a reply of Jubaianus, ex- 
 pressing his concurrence, had been read, Cyprian rose, and 
 thus addressed the Synod. 
 
 " You have heard, most beloved colleagues, what my fellow 
 Bishop Jubaianus wrote to me, desiring my poor judgment 
 upon the unlawful and profane baptism of heretics : you have 
 heard, too, my reply ; that I thought, as I have always thought 
 and still think, that heretics, on their return to the Church, 
 ought to be baptised and sanctified with the Church's baptism. 
 You have also heard the second Epistle of Jubaianus, in 
 
 1 Testimony of St Cyprian against Rome, pp. 170 178. 
 
 On the first of September, 256.
 
 254 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 which he not only expresses his assent to my judgment, but 
 declares himself thankful also for the information which I had 
 been able to afford him. It remains that we declare, each of 
 us, what we think upon this subject, neither judging any one, 
 nor forbidding any, if he judge otherwise, to communicate his 
 opinion. For neither has any one of us constituted himself a 
 Bishop of Bishops, nor reduced his colleagues to the necessity 
 of conforming to his judgment, by a tyrannical display of 
 terrors ; since every Bishop has a right to judge for himself, 
 and is at liberty to use his own authority, and can no more be 
 judged by another, than he can judge another. But let us all 
 expect the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone hath 
 the power, both to constitute us governors in His Church, and 
 to pronounce judgment upon our conduct." : 
 
 The modesty and forbearance of the opening of the Council 
 by the insulted Cyprian, has the especial praise of Augustine ; 
 who differed from him in his judgment, but could not help 
 admiring the manner in which it was enforced. And indeed 
 it is remarkable, that not only in Cyprian, but in the whole 
 Synod assembled with him, so far as we collect from the 
 several suffrages, the merits of the question were discussed 
 without any undue reference to those feelings which must 
 have been excited by the unwarrantable and rash severity of 
 Stephen. 
 
 Some few of the more remarkable of those suffrages I shall 
 transcribe. 
 
 Cascilius of Bilta, whose suffrage is first in order, seems to 
 have resembled Cyprian as much in his diffuse and oratorical 
 style, as in his judgment. " I acknowledge," says he, " but 
 one baptism within the Church, and without the Church none. 
 That one baptism is only where there is a true hope, and an 
 assured faith. For so it is written : One faith, one hope, one 
 baptism ; not among heretics, where hope there is none, and 
 where faith is falsehood ; where all things are carried on with 
 lying ; where a demoniac exercises, a profane man" puts the 
 baptismal interrogatories, his words eating as a cancer ; when 
 1 Page 329.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 255 
 
 an infidel imposes the faith, the wicked man remits sins, Anti- 
 Christ sprinkles in the name of Christ, he who is cursed of 
 God blesses, the dead promises life, the broiler gives peace, 
 the blasphemer invokes God, the profane man administers the 
 sacred functions, and the sacrilegious consecrates the altar. 
 To all these evils yet another is added, that the chief ministers 
 of Satan dare to offer the Eucharist. Or if these things be 
 not so, let those who join the heretics in their mockeries deny 
 them if they can. Behold, to what iniquities the Church is 
 now compelled to consent, while she is forced to receive such 
 men to communion, without baptism, and without pardon. 
 Surely, my brethren, we ought to flee from such wickedness, 
 and to separate ourselves from such iniquity ; and to hold that 
 one baptism, which is committed to the Church alone." 
 
 Polycarp of Adrumettium spoke third : " They who approve 
 the baptism of heretics, invalidate our own." 
 
 Nicomedes of Segurnse said, " I hold that heretics should 
 be received into the Church by baptism, because they can 
 receive no remission of sins without the Church, and from 
 sinners." 
 
 The suffrage of Mummulus of Galba. " The verity of our 
 mother, the Church Catholic, hath always remained, and yet 
 remains among us, my brethren ; and even more especially in 
 the recognition of the Trinity in Baptism, since our Lord said, 
 Go ye, and baptise ttie nations in the name of the Father, and of 
 the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Since then we are certain 
 that the heretics have neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the 
 Holy Spirit, they who come to the Church our mother, ought 
 to be truly regenerated and baptised : that they may, by the 
 holy and heavenly laver, be delivered from the canker which 
 is destroying them, and from the wrath of damnation, and 
 from the sulliage of error." 
 
 Fortunatus of Tuchaboris said, " Jesus Christ our Lord and 
 God, and the Son of God the Father and Creator, founded 
 His Church on a rock, not upon heresy ; and gave the pri- 
 vilege of Baptism to Bishops, not to heretics. Wherefore 
 they who are without the Church, and opposing themselves to
 
 256 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 CHRIST scatter the sheep of His flock, cannot baptise without 
 the Church." 
 
 Secundinus of Carpi spoke thus. " Are heretics Christians, 
 or are they not ? If they be Christians, why are they not in 
 the Church of Christ ? If they be not Christians, how can 
 they make men Christians ? Or whither tends that word of 
 the Lord, He that is not with Me is against Me, and he who 
 gathereth not with Me scattereth ? Whence it follows, that the 
 Holy Spirit cannot descend, by imposition of hands, upon 
 strange children, and the progeny of Antichrist : since it is 
 clear that heretics have no baptism." 
 
 Adelphius of Thasbalte. " The report that we ^baptise, 
 is false, and as malicious as it is untrue : for the Church does 
 not r^baptise heretics, but baptise them." 
 
 Pelagianus of Luperciana. " It is written, Either the Lord 
 is your God, or Baal is your God ; and now, in like manner, 
 either the Church is the Church, or heresy is the Church. 
 But if heresy be not the Church, how can heretics have at 
 their disposal the Baptism of the Church?" 
 
 Marcellus of Zama. " Since there is no remission of sins, 
 except in the Baptism of the Church, he who baptises not a 
 heretic holds communion with a sinner." 
 
 Zosimus of Tharassa said, "When truth has been revealed, 
 let error yield to truth : for even Peter, who before enjoined 
 circumcision, yielded to the truth which Paul preached." 
 
 The suffrage of Therapius of Bulla. " Who so betrays the 
 Baptism of the Church to heretics, what is he but a Judas to 
 the spouse of Christ ? " 
 
 Verulus of Rusiccas. " A man that is an heretic cannot 
 impart that which himself hath not ; much less a schismatic, 
 who hath lost that which he had." 
 
 Clarus of Massula said, " The intention of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ is clear, from His sending His Apostles, and commit- 
 ting to them alone the authority which was given to Him by 
 the Father; to which Apostles we succeed, governing the 
 Church of the Lord with the same authority, and baptising 
 those who rightly believe. On the other hand, heretics, who
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 257 
 
 have neither authority being without, nor the Church of 
 Christ, can baptise none with the Baptism of Christ." 
 
 Natalis of Oea delivered the proxies of Pompeius and 
 Dioga with his own suffrage, saying, "As well I myself, as 
 Pompeius of Sabra, and Dioga of Leftis-Magna, who have 
 delegated their authority to me, and though absent in body 
 are present in spirit, agree in the judgment of our colleagues, 
 that heretics cannot communicate with us, until they have 
 received the Church's Baptism." 
 
 And last of all spoke Cyprian of Carthage. " My Epistle 
 to Jubaianus declares my opinion at large : That heretics, 
 who are declared by the terms of the Gospel, and by the 
 declaration of the Apostle, to be both adversaries of Christ, 
 and Antichrists, when they come into the Church, ought to be 
 baptised with the one Baptism of the Church ; that of adver- 
 saries they may be made friends, and of Antichrists Christians." 
 
 Thus the eighty-five Bishops assembled at this Council, 
 with two others who voted therein by proxy, unanimously 
 agreed, that heretics ought to be baptised on their conversion 
 to the Church : and thus by their Synodical act, they deli- 
 berately chose the condemnation of Stephen and his Church, 
 (with whatever penalty of right attended it,) before a sub- 
 mission to that authority, when their consciences were opposed 
 to its dictates. 
 
 They were already, indeed, excommunicated by Stephen ; 
 unless we rather hold with Firmilian, that Stephen, by his 
 excommunication of the African Churches, had cut himself 
 off from the Church of Christ. But in thus voluntarily 
 binding the burden of his anathema upon themselves, rather 
 than bending beneath the weight of a new custom imposed 
 by his Church, surely the African Bishops in the Council 
 spoke volumes, as to their judgment of Rome as an infallible 
 Church, and of her Bishop as the centre of unity. 
 
 With this Council ended the controversy upon the baptism 
 of heretics, so far as Africa was concerned ; and henceforth 
 we hear of no farther discussions upon the subject; though 
 there is no shadow of evidence that either Cyprian, and the
 
 258 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 Churches who adhered to his opinion, or Stephen and his 
 party, ever came into a different judgment from that which 
 we have seen them maintaining respectively. Mosheim 
 suggests, that the unanimity of the Africans upon this subject, 
 and the consent of the Asiatics in their judgment, wrought 
 so far at least with Stephen, as to moderate the expression of 
 his anger. The Africans themselves, always disposed to 
 peace, and to holding their own opinions, and maintaining 
 their own customs, while they conceded the same licence to 
 others, were not likely to move the question with needless or 
 untimely violence. That they were cut off from all external 
 fellowship with Rome they must have regretted ; but not 
 imagining that this was tantamount to being cast into a lower 
 hell than is opened for any other but delinquents against the 
 Church of Rome, they needed not to sink the dignity of an 
 independent Church by an idle clamour. Nor yet were they 
 forced by the law of charity, to proselytise their opponents, 
 as if they could so only deliver them from eternal wrath ; for 
 neither was Carthage any more than Rome to be accounted 
 infallible, nor Cyprian, any more than Stephen, to be made 
 the centre of necessary unity to all Christendom. Eventually 
 the evil cured itself, and that peace succeeded, which could 
 never have returned, had the violence of Stephen long irritated 
 the Church, or had it been borne with less patience than that 
 which arose from conscious rectitude, and an absence of all 
 fear. In St Augustine's time, we find the Africans agreeing 
 against the Donatists in the judgment of the Catholic Church, 
 (which was not however the judgment of Stephen, though 
 verbally more near to it than to that of Cyprian,) to which 
 they probably conformed insensibly. 
 
 Besides, as Victor, a former Bishop of Rome, had found 
 in Saint Irenaeus one to advise more moderate measures than 
 he was disposed to adopt, in the controversy concerning the 
 keeping of Easter ; so did Pope Stephen find in Dionysius of 
 Alexandria, one not less disposed nor less able than Irenaus 
 to take the same fraternal part. For Eusebius a preserves a 
 1 Lib. VIT. cap. v.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 259 
 
 portion of a letter from Dionysius to Sixtus of Rome, Stephen's 
 successor, concerning Baptism. Stephen, says the historian, 
 had signified to Helenus and Firmilian, with the other Bishops 
 of Cilicia, Cappadocia, and the neighbouring provinces, that he 
 had henceforth withdrawn his communion from them, because 
 they baptised heretics. " But," says Dionysius to Sixtus, 
 " consider, I beseech you, the importance of this affair. For 
 it has been determined even in great Councils, that those 
 heretics who return to the Catholic Church shall be received 
 into the rank of Catechumens, and that they shall afterwards 
 be cleansed from the impurities which they have contracted 
 with the waters of Baptism. I myself," continues Dionysius, 
 " wrote to Stephen, entreating for them his indulgence." 
 
 Of the precise opinion of Dionysius himself in this impor- 
 tant question we are not able to speak positively. The last 
 citation, from one of his Epistles, seems to favour the views 
 of Cyprian ; perhaps what he says to Sixtus on a subsequent 
 occasion, looks the other way. " I have need," says he, " of 
 your counsel, to guard me from error in a question on which 
 I have been consulted. One of the brethren, who had always 
 been reputed among the faithful, and who had always com- 
 municated not only before my Episcopate, but even before 
 that of the blessed Heraclas, was present one day at the 
 celebration of Baptism, and heard the interrogations put to 
 the candidates, and their answers. This man came to me, 
 and throwing himself at my feet, bewailed his unhappy lot, 
 saying, that the Baptism which he had received at the hand 
 of heretics, was not like ours, nor had any thing in common 
 with it : that the Baptism of which he had partaken was full 
 of impiety and blasphemy ; and that he was grievously afflicted 
 on that account, not daring to raise his eyes to heaven for 
 very shame and remorse. In a word, he besought me to 
 give him the true Baptism, and to confer on him the grace of 
 adoption. I have hitherto ventured to do nothing in this 
 matter, and have told him, that the long time that he has been 
 in communion with the true Church ought to satisfy him ; that 
 he had often been present at the prayers of the faithful, and 
 
 I 2
 
 260 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 answered Amen ; that he had stretched forth his hand to 
 receive the consecrated bread ; that he had again and again 
 partaken of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 I exhorted him on these grounds to be of good courage, and 
 to continue still to communicate in faith and hope : yet he 
 will not be comforted ; he dare not approach the holy table, 
 and we can hardly persuade him to join in the prayers of the 
 Church." l 
 
 Now though this relation seems rather to favour the view of 
 Stephen than that of Cyprian, yet it is only at first sight ; for 
 Dionysius does not ground the propriety of the old man's 
 communicating on the validity of his Baptism, but on the 
 length of time that he had been received to a participation 
 with the Church even in her higher mysteries. I do not mean 
 'that Cyprian would have agreed with . Dionysius (though I 
 cannot deny it), but I say, and that without hesitation, that 
 Stephen would not have reasoned as he did. But whatever 
 might have been the opinion of Dionysius on the abstract 
 question, nothing can be more clear than his condemnation 
 of the way in which one side of it was enforced by Rome. 
 " Of this at least," says he, " I am sure, that the Africans have 
 not now introduced this custom, but that it has the sanction 
 of the practice of ancient Bishops, and the authority of many 
 Councils held as well at Iconium and Synnada as at other 
 places. For my own part, I should be loth to combat their 
 opinions, to oppose their decisions, or to contest the point 
 with them in any way ; for it is written, Thou shalt not remove 
 thy neighbours landmark."' 1 
 
 1 Eusebius VII. ix. 
 
 - Letter of Dionysius to Philemon, a priest of the Church of Rome, afnd 
 Euseb. VII. vii.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A General View of the Principles involved in the Controversy 
 Concerning the Baptism of Heretics. 
 
 THE custom of the Church, established on the authority of 
 General Councils, has subsequently determined the question 
 of the baptism of heretics ; so that the Council of Carthage 
 has now no authority, nor is there any place in the Church for 
 the controversy out of which it arose : but it must always be 
 a matter of interest to enter into the merits of a question, 
 which divided the Church so remarkably, and which was so 
 vigorously disputed in distant parts of the world ; and besides, 
 there are principles recognised throughout the discussion, at 
 least on St Cyprian's part, and in every suffrage in the Coun- 
 cil, which can never be antiquated. I propose, therefore, 
 shortly to review the opinions of the parties here opposed, 
 and to elicit some of the general principles which are involved 
 in the grounds on which the question was discussed. 
 
 This was no contest about terms : the opinions of the con 
 tending parties were quite incompatible ; nor did any friendly 
 mediator, of sufficient weight to be heard, propose the middle 
 course afterwards approved by the Church ; a course which 
 doubtless either of them would have pursued, had it been 
 previously pointed out by such paramount authority; but 
 which nevertheless would have found an advocate, neither in 
 Stephen nor in Cyprian, had it been proposed for the first 
 time during the heat of the debate. 
 
 Those who adhered to Cyprian, without all doubt denied 
 utterly, not the lawfulness only, but the validity, actual or
 
 262 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 possible, present or latent, of the sprinklings and lustrations 
 of heretics and schismatics. We have this position so avowedly 
 occupied, so carefully and zealously defended, that we cannot 
 doubt that it was maintained in all its prominence and with 
 all its consequences. Of Stephen's expressions and reasonings 
 we have no original documents ; and we receive what little 
 we possess through his enemies : hence the exact opinion of 
 Stephen on this point admits a doubt, though I think hardly ; 
 for in the Epistle from Cyprian to Pompeius before cited, it 
 seems probable that we have his very words ; and if so, it is 
 certain that their plain meaning must prevail against any 
 deductions from the Epistle of Firmilian, which the learned 
 Bingham 1 quotes as evidence, that Stephen held the very 
 doctrine which was afterwards sanctioned by the Council of 
 Aries : viz., that the baptism of those heretics only who baptised 
 in the name and in the faith of the Trinity, should be so far 
 recognised as not to be repeated. 
 
 Firmilian, it is true, brings in the opponents of Cyprian, 
 saying, "No enquiry need be made who was the baptiser, 
 since he who was baptized may receive grace on the invocation 
 of the Trinity of Names, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." But 
 if I mistake not, it is more probable that Firmilian here 
 groups together all the objectors and all the objections (in which 
 case some things which are not his will seem to be attributed 
 to Stephen personally, if he be taken as the representative of 
 the whole body), than that Cyprian misrepresents Stephen in 
 a letter which was accompanied with a copy of the very Epistle 
 from which he takes his quotations. Cyprian himself has to 
 answer those who were for allowing a baptism in the name of 
 1 In his scholastic History of Lay Baptism appended to vol. iii. of his 
 Works, Ed. 1836, chap. i. p. 56. Milner also makes the judgment of 
 Stephen the same with that of the Catholic Church afterwards. " Stephen, 
 Bishop of Rome, maintained," says he, "that, if persons had been bap- 
 tized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, imposition 
 of hands would then be sufficient for their reception into the Church : the 
 point was left undecided, because no party had power to compel others ; 
 most Christians, however, have long since agreed with Stephen." Cent. 
 III. chap. xiii.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 263 
 
 Christ only, as well as those who were for admitting every 
 Baptism in the name of the Trinity : so that if such indications 
 were sufficient to determine the judgment of Stephen personally, 
 it must be determined different ways. Moreover, it must be 
 observed, that Cyprian not only quotes Stephen as allowing 
 the broadest recognition of the baptism of all heretics ; but 
 that in refuting Stephen, he refutes the positions of one who 
 held that extreme opinion. Cyprian, then, who surely knew 
 pretty well how the matter stood, took Stephen for the advocate 
 of every heretical baptism : and on the whole, I think, we must 
 conclude, that Stephen took in this case the extreme opposite 
 from the opinion of Cyprian, and that neither the one nor the 
 other held precisely, as the Church afterwards determined, 
 either at Aries, or at Constantinople. 1 
 
 Nor did either party, nor does the decision of the Catholic 
 Church, hold with the modern doctrine of Rome, which falls 
 as much below the lowest depths of Stephen's opinion as 
 Stephen fell below the uncompromising doctrine of Cyprian : 
 and which is quite as much at variance with the subsequent 
 judgment of the Church, as that judgment is at variance with 
 either Stephen or Cyprian. The Church's judgment in few 
 words was this: That all who had been baptised by schismatics, 
 
 1 I must not, however, withhold the unqualified praise with which Vin- 
 centius Lirinensis views the proceedings of Stephen, which would look as 
 if the opinion of Stephen was that of the Catholic Church. But the ques- 
 tion recurs in this form, are not we as well able to judge of the history of 
 these events as Vincentius himself was ? And though in the absence of 
 records Vincentius would be received as the best authority, yet having the 
 same records to consult as he had, are we not equally able to form a history 
 from them ? In fact, Vincentius is not quite correct in his historical notice 
 of this question ; for Agrippinus was not, as he states, the originator of the 
 African custom, unless both Cyprian and Firmilian are wilfully wrong in 
 the matter of fact. And once more, the definite praise which Vincentius 
 awards to Stephen, is not for the precision with which he defined the truth 
 upon this question ; but the way in which he stated the important rule, 
 that no novelty was to be admitted, but that tradition was to be observed. 
 I ought to add, that the work of Vincentius does not owe its value to the 
 precise historical correctness of the examples which he adduces. The 
 reader will do well to refer to sect. vi. of the Commonitorium of Vincentius.
 
 264 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 and by heretics who used the words of the divine institution and 
 in the true sense, should be received into the Church by chrism 
 and imposition of hands, after due penance, and a renunciation 
 of their errors : but that the baptism of those heretics who 
 used not the words of the institution, or who so itsed them as to 
 deny the Trinity, should be repeated. Rome at present teaches, 
 that the baptism even of Jews, infidels, and heretics, in cases 
 of necessity, is valid : though I suppose she does not involve 
 in her anathema against those who deny the validity of the 
 baptism of heretics, those who repudiate the baptism of Jews 
 and infidels ; since these last cannot intend to do what the 
 Church does, seeing they know it not, though the heretic may 
 be supposed to know it, as he who shuns the good, must in 
 some sense know it to avoid it. But according to the Romish 
 doctrine of intention, is there no difficulty in this question from 
 the necessary absence of intention from such baptism ? When 
 one insinuates such things against a Church which professes 
 to follow catholicity and antiquity, it is quite necessary to 
 avoid the suspicion of a little polemical romancing : I have 
 therefore transcribed the declarations to which I refer below. ] 
 Now that Stephen, much more that the Church in her final 
 decree, symbolised with modern Rome in this matter, none 
 but a Romanist will hold, and the Romanist will never prove. 
 But setting aside the allusion to this latter controversy, Stephen 
 holding that the baptism of all heretics and schismatics should 
 be allowed ; Cyprian pointedly denying this position in terms 
 
 1 "Extremus ordo illorum est qui, cogente necessitate, sine solemnibus 
 cseremoniis baptizari possunt ; quo in numero sunt omnes, etiam de populo, 
 sive mares sive feminae, quamcumque illi sectam profiteantur : nam et 
 judseis quoque et infidelibus et hsereticis, cum necessitas cogit hoc munus 
 permissum est ; si tamen id efficere propositum eis fuerit, quod Ecclesia 
 Catholica in eo administrationis genere efficit." Cat. Cone. Trid. De Bap. 
 xxii. "Si quis dixerit, Baptismum qui etiam datus ab hsereticis in nomine 
 Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, cum intentione faciendi quod facit 
 ecclesia, non esse verum Baptismum, anathema sit." Cone. Trid. Sess. 
 vii. can. iv. de bapl. " Si quis dixerit, in ministris, dum sacramenta con- 
 ficiunt, et conferunt, non requiri intentionem saltern faciendi quod facit 
 ecclesia, anathema sit." Cone. Trid. Sess. vii. can. xi. de sac, in gen \
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 265 
 
 equally general ; which was most nearly right ? and which 
 was most excusable in his error, if the nearest to the truth was 
 in error at all? By the Church the question was certainly 
 determined in a way which seemed most to favour the opinion 
 of Stephen : was it so in effect, and in the principles which it 
 involved ? Let us take another view of the final decision of 
 the Church, that we may not forget the exact character .of 
 that which is to be the standard by which the other two are 
 to be measured. 
 
 That a distinction was to be made between heretics and 
 schismatics : and that the baptism of the latter was to be 
 admitted as valid, though by no means as lawful ; as carrying 
 with it a springing efficacy, so to speak, and as not therefore 
 to be repeated, but to be perfected and sanctified by imposition 
 of hands of a Catholic Bishop : and that the baptism of those 
 heretics who were orthodox in respect of the Trinity, and used 
 the words of Christ's institution, was to be accounted of in like 
 manner: but that, on the other hand, the baptism of those 
 heretics who denied the Trinity, and, without all manner of 
 question, of those who baptised not in the name of the Trinity, 
 was to be accounted no baptism at all ; and that they who 
 were converted from such heresies were to be received by 
 baptism into the Church, as if they had been Jews or Pagans ; 
 this is the decree of the Church Catholic : a decree less 
 convenient in its application than that either of Cyprian or of 
 Stephen ; but one of higher authority, and by which therefore 
 the decrees of both those Prelates must submit to be tested. 
 
 Now Stephen's looks more like this decree : Cyprian's, I am 
 bold to say, is more nearly consistent with it. We must enter more 
 deeply into the theory of the subject to appreciate the points 
 of difference, or of accordance, in these several judgments. 
 
 We have first to note, that the Church is the depository 
 and the steward of the Sacraments ; in dispensing which the 
 Bishop, or other ecclesiastic, is but her minister : and it rests 
 with her to determine, with the authority which Christ hath 
 given to her, but with the responsibility also which attends so 
 high a charge, who shall baptise, and who not ; whose baptism
 
 266 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 shall be valid, and whose legitimate; whose perfect, whose 
 only perfectible, and whose utterly null. But there are limits 
 which the Church could not pass, without becoming tainted 
 with the heresy to which she should allow too much : which is 
 indeed impossible ; but we must so express ourselves at pre- 
 sent, for the sake of elucidating our position. Or we may 
 express the same thing in another way: there are some 
 baptisms which it is morally impossible that the Church 
 should allow ; for if she allowed them, she would be sullied 
 with error ; and no such sulliage can ever cleave to her. 
 
 Now it admits a doubt, whether, if the Church had deter- 
 mined with Stephen, and had received the baptism of all 
 heretics ; as of the Marcionites, for instance, who blasphemed 
 the Father, or of Paul of Samosata and his followers, who 
 blasphemed the Son ; it admits a doubt, I say, whether she 
 would not then have been tainted with such profane and 
 sacrilegious errors. The Church, in fact, seems to me to 
 have judged, that she could not do this without incurring 
 such a stain : for while she showed that mercy and liberality 
 was the rule of her proceeding, by extending her favour, so to 
 speak, to converts from other heresies, and deeming their 
 baptisms valid, though not legitimate; she showed equally 
 clearly that some imperative claim rested on her to place 
 bounds to her indulgence, before it had included those ex- 
 treme profanations. Thus with becoming caution did she 
 exert her dispensing power, as steward of the mysteries of 
 God ; showing favour where it could not be claimed from her 
 as of right, but where it was the spontaneous motion of her 
 love, yet not against right. But, on the other hand, was it 
 not imperative on the Church to deny the like favour to the 
 worst heretics ; while it was but an act of her grace to allow 
 it to the less profanely heterodox ? Might she not, with per- 
 fect justice, have judged as Cyprian judged? Could she have 
 judged as Stephen judged, without denying all the principles 
 of authority, of sanctity, and of obedience, by which she was 
 bound to regulate her conduct in this matter ? 
 
 If T am right thus far, it follows that Cyprian was not wrong
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 267 
 
 in this matter ; for he did that in his own Church which it was 
 competent for the whole Church to do : and he did it before 
 the Church had determined otherwise; and while it was 
 competent therefore for him, as Bishop, to do in his own 
 diocese, whatever the Church might do in all Christendom. 
 But Stephen was wrong ; for he did that (before, indeed the 
 Church had declared against him) which the Church could never 
 do, because it was in itself wrong, and the Church does not err. 
 Or even admitting that Stephen's judgment was not incom- 
 patible with sound doctrine and custom ; yet still, the Church 
 in her highest authority being the steward of Baptism ; and 
 until a General Council, the Bishop in each Diocese, or the 
 Synod of Bishops in each Province, being the highest authority 
 in the Church ; it was wholly unwarrantable in Stephen to 
 attempt to obtrude his custom on any other Church, even as 
 Dionysius, before quoted, expressly declares ; and so the 
 great St Basil taught, that in this matter their own custom was 
 to be conceded to particular Churches; of course antece- 
 dently to a decree of the Church universal. The interference 
 then of Stephen was unjustifiable and uncanonical, even 
 supposing his opinion to have been sound. 
 
 And be it observed, that, to this day, one cause of com- 
 plaint against Rome, is often not the error of her doctrine, 
 even where we cannot wholly agree with her, so much as the 
 uncatholic spirit of domination and overbearing dogmatism, 
 by which she would bind her own doctrines and customs on 
 other Churches, and on the consciences of men. For instance ; 
 though we deny, and dare not assent to, the doctrine of Tran- 
 substantiation, yet we should scarce be justified in condemning 
 those who hold it, without breach of charity, and in Christian 
 humility ; but we have good right to complain, if that which 
 cannot be proved by God's word, and was never believed or 
 dreamt of in the Church for many ages, is made a test of our 
 Catholicity, and a term of communion : and if we are either 
 anathematised or burned for withholding our assent to such 
 a dogma so brought in, we may well utter a sad or an indig- 
 nant complaint.
 
 268 Life and Times of Sf Cyprian. 
 
 So far for the merits of this great controversy. As for the 
 comparative skill displayed on either side, it would not be 
 just to Stephen to say, that he seems to have been beyond 
 compare the weakest, whether he was right or wrong in 
 principle, without observing, that we have but obscure hints 
 of the course of argument which he pursued, and those hints 
 collected from his adversaries. Of the conduct of the argu- 
 ment on both sides, we may observe, that both appealed to 
 Scripture and to custom. 1 Custom, if it had been Catholic, 
 could of course have told in favour of one only ; but nothing 
 can be clearer to one who reviews this history, than that there 
 was no Catholic custom ; and none other than Catholic 
 custom was conclusive, at any rate beyond the bounds of 
 particular Churches. Therefore, neither Stephen nor Cyprian 
 did well, if he appealed to custom, /'. e. the particular custom 
 of his own Church, in order to obtrude any rule of discipline 
 upon all other Churches. Now which was it, Stephen or 
 Cyprian, that did this ? 
 
 But it may be said, " If both sides, appealing to custom, 
 yet erred one or both in their conclusions ; is not this an 
 example of the utter uncertainty of this method of judging, 
 and of the uselessness in practice of the rule of Vincentius ? " 
 We answer, That no rule is of universally easy application, 
 and that none can free us from the errors in its application, 
 which may result either from the weakness or from the 
 depravity of men. The error of Stephen (whether of weak- 
 
 1 One or two expressions such as this, Let no man prefer custom to truth , 
 appearing in some of the suffrages in the Council of Carthage, have been 
 adduced to show, that Cyprian's own party perceived the most ancient 
 custom to be against them : but this reasoning is really most unjust : 
 expressions such as these are aimed at Stephen's claim of custom ; and 
 are not admissions in disparagement of their own authorities. The words 
 of Firmilian will convey the spirit of such expressions. " Nos veritati et 
 consuetudinem jungimus ; et consuetudini Romanorum, consuetudinem 
 sed veritatis, opponimus ; ab initio hoc tenentes quod a Christo et ab 
 Apostolis traditum est." We couple truth with custom, and oppose 
 custom, the true custom, to the custom of the Romans : for we hold that 
 which was handed down from the beginning by Christ and his Apostles. 
 Page 149.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 269 
 
 ness or of dishonesty I will not determine) was, that he took 
 a particular for a general custom; and hence his arrogant 
 attempt upon the liberties of all Churches. He argued 
 rightly, but from wrong premises. Cyprian was right, so far 
 as we are able to judge, both in his premises and in his con- 
 clusion; since, pretending only a particular custom, he left 
 every Church at liberty to maintain its own rule. These 
 cases then are not exactly in point. When we speak of 
 Tradition, we mean Catholic Tradition, and our adversaries 
 know that we mean that alone. Wherever there was Catholic 
 tradition to be appealed to, it was triumphant in the days of 
 Cyprian; and the question involved not the principle of 
 Traditions, but the fact of the catholicity of any particular 
 Tradition. Just as, for instance, every contested appeal to 
 Scripture, involves not t)ie sufficiency of Scripture, but the fact 
 on which side Scripture actually decides. At all events, the 
 enemies of Tradition ought for their own sakes to keep every 
 such objection in the background, lest they should irritate us 
 to retort the question in another form : " If you agree among 
 yourselves in almost nothing but in your abhorrence of 
 custom, are you not a standing example of the uncertainty of 
 whatever rule you may please to follow ? " Let me add (that 
 the question may not be misapprehended), that it glances not 
 at Scripture (which is neither uncertain nor insufficient), but 
 at private judgment and individual interpretation. The very 
 controversy before us exemplifies this remark. 
 
 I said, that both Stephen and Cyprian appealed to Scrip- 
 ture : and I say, too, that to Scripture every heresy that ever 
 sprang frcm the ignorance, or folly, or pride, or presumption, 
 or impiety of men, or from the darkest suggestions of the 
 Devil, has appealed, and will appeal, we may be sure, to the 
 end of time. And not unoften heretics have vindicated their 
 claims to particular texts with such a show of reason, as to 
 seem more nearly entitled to them than the Catholic Church. 
 Thus, for instance, Theodoret tells us of the Novatians, of 
 whom we have had occasion to say so much, that they set in 
 array against the truth, the fourth, fifth, and sixth verses of
 
 270 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 the sixth chapter of Hebrews; 1 not understanding that the 
 holy Apostle was then teaching the doctrine of Baptism, and 
 not interdicting the medicines of repentance. 2 Now none 
 can deny the apparent aptitude of this text to serve the cause 
 of the Novatians ; nor fail to perceive that theirs is even the 
 most natural application of the text, though without all ques- 
 tion a wrong one. What is the conclusion ? This is certainly 
 a conclusion (and let those who object to it provide another, 
 for the phenomenon is of too constant recurrence, and of too 
 stupendous effect to be passed over without use or comment), 
 this is a conclusion : that no rule of applying Holy Scripture 
 can defend the Church against every conceivable error, but 
 one that goes tp the Church itself, as the interpreter of 
 Scripture. 
 
 In the particular case before us, Cyprian quoted Scripture 
 with better effect than his opponents: as we have before 
 shown that his judgment was the nearest to the truth ; for 
 though the letter of the texts which he cites scarcely bears 
 out the whole of his reasoning, yet their spirit is quite in his 
 favour ; but Stephen, quoting St Paul's doctrine of One Lord, 
 one Faith, one Baptism, clearly justified the retort, that by 
 receiving the Baptism of heretics, he multiplied Baptisms, so 
 as to make as many Baptisms in the Church, as there were 
 heresies out of the Church. 
 
 The temper with which this controversy was carried on 
 does not seem to me to throw unsullied light on either party : 
 nor can I imagine how the Romish historian can venture to 
 assert, that it was concluded by the consent of the whole 
 Church, and without any rupture during its continuance ; and 
 moreover, that one of the final causes for which our Lord 
 permitted this discussion, was, that posterity might learn from 
 
 1 " It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted 
 of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and 
 have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, 
 if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance : seeing they 
 crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open 
 shame." 
 
 2 Vide Theodoret in locum, vol. iii. p. 579. Ed. Halo 1 1771. 8vo.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 27 1 
 
 the example of the contending parties what was the temper 
 and the conduct which became men under such circum- 
 stances. 1 I believe, however, that none either will or can 
 excuse Stephen personally, if the question is fairly proposed 
 to them ; and though Cyprian's humility and mildness have 
 been commended : and though, as I have before remarked, 
 he does in some respects deserve very high commendation ; 
 and though at any rate as compared with Stephen he was 
 admirable in his temper, and in the whole management of the 
 controversy, yet if I were Cyprian's panegyrist, instead of his 
 historian, I should be disposed to pass very lightly over this 
 page of his history. Controversy, especially personal contro- 
 versy, is not a favourable field for the growth of the Christian 
 virtues. 
 
 If there are any questions agitated in the present day upon 
 which the history of this controversy can throw any light, 
 they are those, I suppose, which are pending between the 
 Church Catholic, and all manifest heretics and schismatics, as 
 to the validity of all or any of the rites administered by their 
 soi-disants pastors. But it must be borne in mind, that since 
 a self-imposed, or invalidly conferred office is as nothing, the 
 
 1 These are such bold misrepresentations of polemical history, that I 
 must quote the very passage to which I refer, lest I should seem to be 
 inventing myself. "Tandem disserendo perveniunt ad celeberrimam 
 illam de baptismo controversiam, in qua non parva hoereticorum aut 
 schismaticorum manus universae Ecclesiae bellum indixit, sed insignes 
 ecclesia;, Africa, Cappadocia, Silicia et finitimse provinciae de re longe 
 gravissima cum aliis ecclesiis decertarunt. Etsi autem in ipso dissentionis 
 incendio luctuosa rerum facies extitit ; tamen ex commodis, qure in 
 Ecclesiam ex hac controversia fluxerunt, facile perspicitur earn Christo 
 providente et dispensante natam fuisse, non solum ut res tanti momenti 
 conflatcJ et conspiranti omnium consensu aliquand' firmaretur, sed etiam 
 ut haberent poster! quid in ejusmodi dissentioribus imitarentur. Nam 
 baptismi hsereticorum defensores fraternae caritatis foedus non ruperunt 
 cum iis, a quibus maximam sacramentis injuriam fieri videbant ; isti 
 autem et cum iis quos ne baptismo quidem initiatos putabant, et cum iis 
 qui baptismum morientibus infantibus denegare, et Eucharistiam non 
 baptizatis porrigere videbantur, communicare non dubitarunt." Vita 
 Samti Cypriani, Opera Ben. Ed. p. cviii.
 
 272 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 ministers of such sectaries, except in the instances compara- 
 tively few in which they have been in their own persons 
 seceders from the Church, and betrayers of her orders, are 
 simply laymen ; or rather less than laymen, notwithstanding 
 their assumed titles. The controversy now therefore is very 
 different from what it was in Cyprian's days, when every 
 schism and heresy maintained a succession of ministers, 
 validly, though not canonically, ordained. Though the 
 sectaries of that age lived in heresy and in schism, as un- 
 thinkingly as any do now, yet were they in respect of a valid 
 ministry in a very different position; and they at least as- 
 sumed, whether justly or no, a higher position. 
 
 Upon the subject of Lay-baptism, to which this branch of 
 the controversy in part resolves itself, I would refer to 
 Bingham's very learned scholastical treatise on that question. 
 Bingham has exhausted the subject, so far as the collection 
 of authorities is concerned.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Valerian instigated by Macrianus to Persecute the Church. Death of 
 Stephen : And election of Sixtus. St Cyprian summoned before the 
 Proconsul : His Confession : His Banishment : His Vision. Diony- 
 sius of Alexandria also Banished. Cyprian recalled to Carthage by 
 Galerius Maximus. He retires for a short time when summoned to 
 Utica. He returns to Carthage, and is brought before the Proconsul. 
 His Examination, Sentence, and Death. 
 
 THE external peace of the Church, which left opportunity for 
 these internal discords, was disturbed, before they were well 
 hushed. Valerian had been hitherto most friendly to the 
 Christians, many of whom had been admitted even within the 
 precincts of the palace : but now, at the instigation of his 
 minister Macrianus, a man equally superstitious in his paganism 
 and barbarous in its support, Valerian became a persecutor, 
 and issued decrees to the several parts of his empire, for the 
 suppression of Christianity. 
 
 The first edict of Valerian savoured almost as much of his 
 own lenience, as of the ferocity of Macrianus, by which it was 
 extorted ; for the assembling of the Christians in their churches 
 and cemeteries, and not the mere profession of the Christian 
 faith, was necessary to bring them within the meaning of the 
 imperial Edict ; and the laity were suffered to depart un- 
 punished even from their assemblies, and no greater pain than 
 banishment was inflicted on the Bishops and Priests who pre- 
 sided in the religious assemblies of the Christians. All that 
 we certainly know of the results of the first Edict of Valerian, 
 accords with this representation of its comparative mildness. 
 We should therefore for the present admit very cautiously
 
 274 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 supposed proofs of the martyrdom of any Christian however 
 eminent ; and we need not hesitate to express a conviction, 
 that Stephen, Bishop of Rome, who died on the second of 
 August, anno 557, long before any appearance of additional 
 severity in the decrees of Valerian, and of the manner of 
 whose death we have no authentic accounts, died a natural 
 death, and not by decollation, as has been pretended. 
 
 On the twenty-fourth of the same month, Sixtus was elected 
 to fill the Chair of Stephen ; l and in the following month 
 (September, 557) the imperial Edict reached Carthage, where 
 Paternus was Proconsul ; and Cyprian, as the most prominent 
 in character and office among the Christians, was the first to 
 be summoned before the heathen tribunal. 2 Of what passed 
 on that occasion, we have a circumstantial record in the acts 
 of St Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr. 
 
 "The most sacred Emperors, Valerian us and Gallienus, 
 have honoured me with their commands," said Paternus, " to 
 exact of those, who worship not the Gods of Rome, a due 
 recognition of the Roman rites. I would examine you there- 
 fore concerning your name and profession : 3 what is your 
 
 1 Were it not that St Augustine, who was most favourably situated for 
 acquiring a knowledge of the subject, and whose argument greatly 
 requires it, is wholly silent on the subject of a reconciliation between the 
 Roman and Carthaginian Churches ; and were it not that all ecclesiastical 
 historians are equally silent on the same subject, I should be inclined to 
 suppose, that, under the Pontificate of Sixtus, full peace, though not per- 
 fect agreement of opinion, was restored between the Churches of Rome 
 and Africa : for now we find the communication with Cyprian, which had 
 been forcibly interrupted by Stephen, restored, apparently, to its previous 
 friendly terms ; and Pontius, the panegyrist of Cyprian, gives to Sixtus 
 the very significant character of a "good and pacific Prelate." To Pon- 
 tius, who viewed everything and every person only as an accessory to the 
 one object of his veneration, this marked praise could scarce seem due to 
 any, who had not fully acknowledged the communion, and justly appreciated 
 the conduct, of St Cyprian. Nothing, however, can more strongly indi- 
 cate the absolute want of all evidence of this desired reconciliation, than 
 the way in which St Augustine speaks of it as in itself likely, though he 
 ventures not even to insinuate a proof that it was effected. 
 
 2 Ep. Ixviii. p. 161. 
 
 3 " Exquisivi ergo de nomine tuo." The answer of Cyprian shows that
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 275 
 
 answer ? " " / am a Christian]' said Cyprian, " and a Bishop. 
 I know no other Gods but that One only and true God, who 
 made heaven and earth, the sea and all that therein is. Him 
 do we Christians serve : Him night and day do we supplicate 
 for ourselves, for all men, and for the preservation of the Em- 
 perors themselves." Paternus asked ; " Do you persist in this 
 determination ? " Cyprian replied ; " A good determination, 
 taken up in the knowledge of God, is unchangeable? " Are you 
 ready, then," said the Proconsul, " according to the Edict of 
 Valerian and Gallienus, to be exiled to the City of Curubis ? " 
 ' ' / am ready" said Cyprian. 
 
 Then the Proconsul, having thus received the profession of 
 Cyprian, and appointed the place of his banishment, en- 
 deavoured to extort from him the names of others who were 
 obnoxious to the same sentence. " My commission extends," 
 said he, " not only to the Bishops, but also to the Presbyters 
 of your party : I ask you then, who are the Presbyters in the 
 city ? " The Bishop replied, " Your laws have well provided 
 against the abuse of informers ; in obedience to them I refuse to 
 betray my brethren : they may be found, however, in their own 
 places" " But I will know who they are now, and in this 
 place," said Paternus. Cyprian said, " // is equally contrary 
 to the discipline of their order, and to the spirit of your laws, 
 that they should expose themselves unforced : yet they may be 
 found by you, if you do but seek them out" Paternus said, 
 " They shall be found out ; for I have commanded that none 
 shall hold assemblies anywhere, nor enter your cemeteries ; 
 and if any venture to disobey this wholesome provision, they 
 shall suffer death." Cyprian replied : " Obey the orders which 
 you have received" * 
 
 Thus as a good Bishop, worthy of his pre-eminence, did 
 Cyprian take the lead in that confession which was required 
 something more than his name was included in the question de nomine. 
 Perhaps if we had ventured to descend to a phrase, it might be rendered, 
 "your denomination." 
 
 1 The personal history of Cyprian is now entirely derived from the acts 
 of his martyrdom, and from his life by Pontius, and this notice will pre- 
 clude the necessity of more minute references.
 
 276 Life and Times of St Cyprian, 
 
 of his flock ; sounding the trumpet with no uncertain sound, 
 to call the soldiers of the faith to the combat ; and receiving 
 in his own person the first assaults of the enemy, while he 
 marshalled his willing followers in the rear. 1 
 
 There was nothing of gratuitous severity in the sentence of 
 Cyprian, nor in the manner in which it was executed. 
 Curubis, 2 to which place he was banished, was agreeable and 
 healthy in its situation ; and the house which was allotted to 
 him was deficient in no comfort which an exiled Bishop could 
 desire. His friends too, among whom was Pontius, his deacon 
 and his future panegyrist, were permitted to accompany him ; 
 and his fame having preceded him to the place of exile, the 
 people received him with respect, and continued, so long as 
 he remained there, to treat him with affection. Such comforts 
 had God mercifully provided for his faithful servant, just fresh 
 from his confession, and hastening rapidly to his martyrdom : 
 though, as Pontius piously remarks, it was impossible that 
 exile, to whatsoever place, could be punishment to such an 
 one as Cyprian ; or that he could be alone, whose God was 
 with him at all times, and under all circumstances. 
 
 And if Cyprian was happy in the place of his banishment, 
 not less happy was Curubis in its illustrious guest. Cyprian 
 was less injured, than Curubis was benefitted by the sentence 
 of Paternus : for whithersoever the confessor was sent, He 
 for whose sake he was an exile accompanied him. For Christ, 
 who said, Lo, 1 am with you always, even to the end of the 
 world, received him as a member of his own body, whitherso- 
 ever the fury of the enemy drove him. Oh, the blindness of 
 a heathen persecutor ! If thou wouldest find a place which 
 shall be a place of exile to a Christian, find one if thou canst 
 from whence Christ can first be banished ! 3 If thou wouldest 
 
 1 Ep. Ixxviii. The Martyrs to Cyprian. 
 
 " A free and maritime city of Zeugitania, in a pleasant situation, a 
 fertile territory, and at the distance of about forty miles from Carthage." 
 Gibbon's Decline and fall, ch. xvi. 
 
 3 Vid. Augustini Sermo, cccix. In Natali Cypriani Martyris, vol. viii. 
 p. 1247.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 277 
 
 not that the Christian faith should be propagated, drive not 
 the confessors from their homes, for they are heralds of 
 Christ's kingdom whithersoever they go ! 1 
 
 The exiled confessor arrived at Curubis on the fourteenth 
 of September ; and on the first night of his residence there 
 he saw one of those visions of which he often speaks. I shall 
 follow Pontius in putting the relation into the mouth of 
 Cyprian himself. 
 
 " I was not yet perfectly asleep, when there appeared to 
 me a youth of gigantic stature, who seemed to lead me away 
 to the praetorium, and to place me at last before the judgment- 
 seat of the Proconsul. He, so soon as he beheld me, began 
 to write my sentence, which I did not see, upon his tables ; 
 but he did not put to me any of the usual interrogatories. 
 An attendant, however, who stood behind, looking on him 
 as he wrote, read the whole sentence ; and since he was not 
 able to speak in that presence, he made me acquainted by 
 signs of what was writtea For with outstretched arm and 
 open hand, he imitated the stroke of the executioner, so that I 
 understood, as well as if I had seen the words, that the 
 sentence was recorded for my death. I began therefore to 
 pray earnestly for a short respite, though it were but for a day, 
 that I might arrange my affairs; and after I had often re- 
 peated this petition, the judge again began to write on his 
 tables. I knew not what he wrote, yet I judged from the 
 mildness of his aspect that he had been moved by my just 
 request : and the young man, who had before made me ac- 
 quainted with the sentence, now informed me, by the same 
 method of signs, that my petition for a day's respite was 
 granted. Although I had not actually read the sentence, I 
 received this intimation of delay with a joyful heart ; yet still 
 I trembled so much with the fear that I had mistaken the 
 interpretation of the latter sign, that my heart beat more 
 quickly for a long time." 
 
 This vision of St Cyprian was interpreted by the event, 
 when a year after, a day being taken for a year in the pre- 
 1 See Acts viii. 4.
 
 278 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 figurative indication of his vision, he was beheaded in pur- 
 suance of the sentence of the Proconsul Galerius Maximus. 
 
 Paternus, the Proconsul at Carthage, seems to have acted 
 upon his determination of searching for the Presbyters, ac- 
 cording to the imperial edict ; for we find intimations of their 
 being brought to confession, before the renewed and more 
 severe provisions for the persecution were promulgated. At 
 any rate in Numidia the Bishops of the Church were treated 
 with less clemency than Cyprian had experienced. They 
 were beaten with clubs, and their faith not being subdued by 
 this brutality, they were fettered, and sent in separate com- 
 panies to the mines. This we learn from Cyprian's letter of 
 congratulation to them on their sufferings and constancy ; in 
 which he modestly postpones his own confession to theirs, and 
 acknowledging the comparative ease of his banishment, speaks 
 of his communion with them in suffering being rather that of 
 a Christian fellowship and love than of actual endurance. 
 They in their turn confess the dignity with which the priority 
 of his confession in point of time, as well as the eminence of 
 his character and station, invested his exile for the cause of 
 Christ. The answers of the confessors to Cyprian are from 
 three separate places, which is the only intimation that we 
 have of the separation of those who were still one in faith, in 
 sufferings, and in religious fellowship. Nothing can be more 
 remarkable than the total absence of all querulous allusions to 
 their sufferings in these letters of the persecuted confessors. 
 If the tale of the sufferings had been left to be gathered from 
 their own Epistles, written in the bitterest of their afflictions, 
 and after some had even fallen a victim to the rigour of the 
 punishment, we should have had no horrors to relate, so 
 greatly do the consolations and high hopes of their condition 
 outweigh in their own expressions the pains and the terrors of 
 their situation : and so entirely do their Christian humility and 
 love obliterate every trace of pride and selfishness from the 
 record of their feelings, that we should almost suppose that 
 the sufferings of every other person whom they mention were 
 greater and more meritorious than theirs.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 279 
 
 In other parts of the world the Christian name was followed 
 with like persecution. We shall here mention the sufferings 
 of those only of whom we have already had occasion to speak. 
 At Alexandria, Dionysius was summoned before ^Emilius the 
 Prefect, with Maximus a Priest, Faustus, Eusebius, and 
 Chseremon, Deacons, and a Roman Christian, then at 
 Alexandria. These persons were his companions in a noble 
 confession, and also in his banishment to the confines of 
 Lybia. The place of his exile was less pleasant than that 
 to which Cyprian had been sent just before; but, like 
 Cyprian, Dionysius carried with him a blessing, which con- 
 soled him in his banishment, and abounded also to the 
 benefit of those among whom his lot was cast. "God," 
 says he, "has opened to us in this place a way for the 
 preaching of His word. At first we were received with 
 execrations, and pelted with stones ; but afterwards many 
 Pagans renounced their idolatry, and they are now enrolled 
 among the faithful." Eventually this illustrious Prelate and 
 his companions were still farther separated ; but wherever the 
 place of their banishment was appointed, and however it was 
 changed, still the same blessings followed their step ; for God 
 was with them. 1 
 
 At Rome, Sixtus and four deacons with him, 2 who were 
 engaged in celebrating divine worship in a cemetery, were 
 seized and put to death. 3 This was on the sixth of August; and 
 
 1 See Euseb. vii., xi. 2 Ep. Ixxxii. p. 165. 
 
 3 Gibbon, in the sixteenth chapter of his "Decline and Fall," desiring 
 to extenuate the dangers which beset the Christian name under the heathen 
 emperors, remarks, "The experience of the life of Cyprian is sufficient to 
 prove, that our fancy has exaggerated the perilous situation of a Christian 
 Bishop ; and that the dangers to which he was exposed were less imminent 
 than those which temporal ambition is always prepared to encounter in 
 the pursuit of honours. Four Roman Emperors, with their families, their 
 favourites, and their adherents, perished by the sword in the space of ten 
 years, during which the Bishop of Carthage guided by his authority and 
 eloquence the counsels of the African Church." Gibbon knew, but he 
 thought perhaps that his less learned readers knew not, or would not 
 remember, that during the same space, four Roman Bishops also had 
 perished for the faith, or, if we allow the reports of Stephen's martyrdom,
 
 280 Life and Times of St Cyprian, 
 
 was among the first effects of a far severer edict which Vale- 
 rian had just issued. Of these events at Rome we are in- 
 formed by a letter of Cyprian to Successus, his brother in the 
 Episcopate, and we are thus called back to the few remaining 
 personal acts of Cyprian. 
 
 Cyprian had been eleven months in his exile at Curubis, 
 and in the interval Galerius Maximus had succeeded Aspasins 
 Paternus in the Proconsulate. The new Proconsul recalled 
 Cyprian from his banishment, though not for any purposes of 
 mercy ; but rather, in all probability, that he might be more 
 entirely within his power. He was allowed, however, to reside 
 in "his gardens;" of which we have before spoken, as the 
 place where he probably wrote his Epistle to Donatus, and 
 as a part of the possessions which he sold, at his conversion, 
 for the benefit of the poorer brethren: this residence was now 
 restored to him by the providence of God ; and though he 
 would again, had he followed his own inclination, have con- 
 verted it into alms, he was deterred from his charitable purpose 
 by the fear of exciting popular jealousy. 1 
 
 The interest with which every breath of news from Rome 
 would be received by the Christians, situated as they now 
 were, may be well imagined. Cyprian took effectual measures 
 to receive authentic information, and in the letter to Succes- 
 sus, to which we before alluded, he conveys the following 
 intelligence : that Valerian ' 2 had directed his rescript to the 
 Senate, in which it was decreed, that Bishops, Priests, and 
 Deacons should be condemned by a summary process ; but 
 that Senators, and other men of noble rank, should be deprived 
 of their dignity, and should forfeit their goods ; and that if 
 they still persisted in the Christian faith, having already 
 forfeited the privilege of rank, they too should be capitally 
 five. The comparison if fairly made will not answer Gibbon's purpose, 
 even though he could persuade us to cast out of the reckoning this very 
 important consideration; that the ambitious competitor for the purple 
 meets a soldier's death as one of the probable consequences of his career ; 
 while violence must turn aside from its appointed course to meet the 
 Christian Bishop, whose profession is peace. 
 
 1 1'ontius. - He was then in his Persian expedition.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 281 
 
 punished. That the possessions of matrons should be for- 
 feited, and themselves banished : and that any of the officers 
 of the royal household who either then professed, or had 
 professed before, the name of Christ, should suffer fine and 
 confiscation, and be sent in chains to the imperial possessions. 
 
 To this rescript Valerian had subjoined the form of his 
 letters to the several governors of provinces, directing them in 
 their proceedings against the Church. The arrival of these 
 imperial instructions at Carthage he daily expected; and, 
 with the intrepid faith of one who knew in whom he believed, 
 even desired. With the example of Sixtus before him, with 
 his knowledge that the heathen officers were determined to 
 carry out their instructions to the utmost, he lived in con- 
 stant expectation of martyrdom ; and only intent on meeting 
 death in a proper manner, his conversation turned more en- 
 tirely than ever on divine things, and he desired that his end, 
 if it might be, should find him discoursing concerning God. 
 
 He had yet, however, more than a month's respite : for 
 Galerius Maximus retiring for a while to Utica, there received 
 the imperial mandates. He sent presently an officer to bring 
 Cyprian to Utica, but the holy Bishop determined on suffering 
 in that place where his blood would most effectually witness 
 to the truths which his lips had spoken ; and where his death 
 might most benefit the flock which he had faithfully guarded 
 during his life. He retired therefore from Carthage, not to 
 avoid his end, but intending to return so soon as the Pro- 
 consul should proceed thither in person. From this his 
 retirement he wrote his last letter to the Clergy and people of 
 his flock, explaining to them the motive which actuated him 
 in the present instance, and exhorting them, as circumstances 
 might demand, to maintain a like prudent courage and con- 
 stancy. " Do you, my dearest brethren, according to the 
 divine rules which you have ever heard from me, possess your 
 souls in quietness and peace ; neither exciting any tumult 
 among the brethren, nor exposing yourselves voluntarily to 
 the Gentiles. But when you are apprehended and delivered 
 up, then speak : and the Lord himself shall speak in you ;
 
 282 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 who would rather that we should confess His name with con- 
 stancy, than profess it rashly. We will consult together, the 
 Lord directing us, as to the course which I myself ought to 
 pursue, when I shall be called to my confession before the 
 Proconsul. And now, my dearest brethren, may the Lord 
 graciously keep you and preserve you in His Church, of His 
 abundant mercy," 1 
 
 It fares ill with the reputation of the wisest and best men, 
 when those who cannot appreciate their wisdom, and have 
 no sympathy with their goodness, are their self- constituted 
 judges. Cyprian has on this occasion, and on account of his 
 former retirement, been accused of cowardice ; though, had 
 he acted otherwise than he did, he might have been justly 
 accused of rashness and folly. If the Christians, excited into 
 an irrepressible enthusiasm, courted martyrdom too earnestly, 
 they were wrong ; and though they may well be forgiven, the 
 very laws of the Christian Church were their accusers : if they 
 yielded even to the most excruciating tortures, they were 
 punished as apostates then, and now they are despised as 
 cowards : but if with Cyprian, consulting the peace of the 
 community, and the good of the Church ; if with Cyprian, 
 obeying the spirit and the very letter of the divine precepts ; 
 if with Cyprian, pursuing a course which they were never 
 ashamed to vindicate and to recommend to others, and in 
 which their own conscience acquitted them of cowardice, as 
 decidedly as the world acquitted them of rashness ; if thus, 
 with Cyprian, they retired from the violence of persecution 
 while they might do so with honour, to present themselves 
 again to its fiercest assaults when it was required of them for 
 the good of the Church, surely they ought to escape every 
 censure and every sneer. 
 
 And the event shows, that Cyprian was not more deficient 
 in courage than in wisdom ; for no sooner did the Proconsul 
 return to Carthage, than Cyprian also came back to his 
 Gardens, and there awaited the summons to confession and 
 death. Nor was his expectation long delayed ; for on the 
 1 Ep. Ixxxiii. p. 1 66.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 283 
 
 thirteenth of September, two officers of the court suddenly 
 came to demand his appearance before Maximus, at a place 
 called Sextus, about six miles from Carthage, where Maximus 
 was residing for his health. These officers placed him be- 
 tween them 1 in a chariot, and thus conveyed him, under 
 guard, to the Proconsul, who remanded him for final examina- 
 tion till the next day. 
 
 The report soon spread through Carthage, that Thascius 
 was apprehended, and crowds assembled to witness the 
 spectacle ; melancholy even to the Gentiles, for the honour 
 in which Cyprian was held, but glorious to the Christians on 
 
 1 St Augustine (Sermo cccix. vol. viii. p. 1248,) finds a parallel here 
 between Cyprian and our blessed Lord crucified between two thieves ; 
 " Christus namque inter duos latrones ligno suspensus, ad exemplum 
 patientite praebebatur ; Cyprianus autem inter duos apparitores, ad pas- 
 sionem cum portatus Christ! vestigia sequebatur." Such a parallel will 
 seem too bold to some persons ; but the truth is, that we cannot judge of 
 such things, without entering into the spirit of those who write them. 
 As a portion of a laboured and merely rhetorical eulogium on St Cyprian, 
 uttered by one who used sacred things as if they were so far only valuable 
 as they added a splendour to his composition, such a passage would be 
 even impious : but from the lips of one who was instinctively alive to 
 every sacred association, and valued it for its own sake ; coming warm 
 from the heart of one who believed with St Paul, that the sufferings of 
 the saints filled up in their bodies what was behind of the sufferings of 
 Christ, and who knew that to live in Christ was to take up our cross and 
 follow Him ; from such an one, and such was St Augustine, it is the 
 expression of a chastened piety, and ought to excite no emotion of disgust. 
 
 In writing these remarks, I have had in view the objections which 
 some have made against the implied parallel between our blessed Lord 
 and Saviour in His sufferings, and the Royal Martyr King Charles, of 
 whom our Church worthily boasts, in his misfortunes and martyrdom, 
 which seems to be recognised in the Church service for the thirtieth of 
 January. Judging the Church which has appointed that service by the 
 same rules which I have suggested for judging St Augustine, (and surely 
 this is not claiming too much,) the reason will not condemn, and the 
 heart will certainly applaud. If the reader would see an example of that 
 sort of parallel between the Saviour and the Saint (so called) which I 
 have before denounced as impious, he may refer to the British Critic, No. 
 xlix. p. 178, for an extract from a Sermon at the dedication of a chapel to 
 Ignatius Loyola, in the Cathedral of Bologna.
 
 284 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 account of the devoted constancy of the Martyr. During his 
 short respite, Cyprian was guarded, but with no unnecessary 
 rigour, in the house of an officer of the court, and the visits of 
 his friends were freely permitted ; while the crowds of persons 
 without, testified their respect and affection by watching the 
 whole night in the street ; thus keeping, as it were, the vigil 
 of their Bishop's glorious nativity. Nor was the composure 
 of Cyprian so disturbed, either by his own situation, or by the 
 expression of sympathy by his people, as to prevent his taking 
 such charge of them as his circumstances permitted ; for he 
 gave especial orders for the protection of the women, who 
 were thus exposed, by their affectionate solicitude for him, to 
 the fatigue and dangers of a night-watch. 
 
 At length the glorious day of his martyrdom dawned, and 
 he was conveyed to the residence of the Proconsul, still 
 accompanied by his affectionate children in the faith. On his 
 way he had to traverse the Stadium ; a happy circumstance, 
 observes Pontius, and as it would seem providential, that he 
 who was to receive his crown, should pass over the place of 
 conflict on his way to it. When he arrived at the Praetorium, 
 the Proconsul had not yet taken his seat on the tribunal ; he 
 was permitted therefore to retire to a less public place, and 
 there, hot and tired with his journey, he reclined upon a seat 
 which had been accidentally left covered with a linen cloth ; 
 so that in the very article of his passion, he was not without 
 some insignia of his sacred function. 1 One of the guard, who 
 had formerly been a Christian, offered him a change of vest- 
 ments, purposing to keep the garments of the Martyr as a 
 valuable relic; but Cyprian rejected the proffered luxury, 
 observing on the folly of too solicitous a use of remedies for 
 those evils which can last but for a day. 
 
 At length Galerius Maximus assumed his place in the judg- 
 ment-hall, and Cyprian being brought before him, he said, 
 
 1 The remark is that of Pontius. " Sedile autem erat fortuito linteo 
 tectum, ut et sub ictu passionis episcopatus, honorefrueretur." This may, 
 perhaps, be but a puerile conceit of Pontius ; but it is valuable as a record 
 of the use of clerical vestments and distinctions in that age.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 285 
 
 " Art thou Thascius Cyprian ? " Cyprian answered, " I am" 
 " Art thou he," said Maximus, " who hath borne the highest 
 offices of their religion, among the Christians ? " " Yes," 
 answered the Bishop. " The most sacred Emperors have 
 commanded that you offer sacrifice," said the Proconsul. " / 
 will not offer sacrifice" replied Cyprian. " Be persuaded," 
 said the Proconsul, " for your own sake." Cyprian replied, 
 "Do thou as thou hast received orders : for me, in so just a cause, 
 no persuasion can move me" 
 
 Maximus, having consulted with his assessors, pronounced 
 the following sentence with much emotion. "Thou hast long 
 lived in impiety and hast made thyself the centre of a band 
 of pestilent conspirators ; thou hast acted as an enemy to the 
 gods and to the sacred laws of Rome : neither the pious and 
 most august princes Valerianus and Gallienus, nor the most 
 noble Caesar Valerian, have been able to recall you to a dutiful 
 adherence to their religion. Since then thou art convicted 
 as the author and instigator of so many iniquities, thou shall 
 become an example to those whom thou hast seduced : the 
 authority of the law shall be vindicated by thy blood." After 
 these words he pronounced the sentence from his tablet, 
 " LET THASCIUS CYPRIAN BE BEHEADED." 
 
 "Thanks be to God!" said Cyprian: and the crowd of 
 Christians who surrounded him exclaimed, " Let us die with 
 him ! " 
 
 The holy martyr was then led away, followed by a great 
 concourse of people, to an open field near the place where he 
 had received his sentence ; and having put off the rest of his 
 garments, and committed them to the Deacons, he first pros- 
 trated himself in prayer to God, and then stood in his inner 
 vestments prepared for the fatal stroke. The executioner, 
 who stood trembling at the office he had to perform, was 
 animated by his encouragement. He tied the bandage over 
 his eyes with his own hands; and that he might owe that 
 office to friends which he could not himself perform, Julian a 
 Presbyter, and a Subdeacon of the same name, bound his 
 hands. To the executioner he appropriated a gift of twenty-
 
 286 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 
 
 five pieces of gold : the Christians, whose avarice was not 
 mercenary, sought no other memorials than handkerchiefs 
 dyed with the blood of their Bishop. The body was for a 
 while exposed to the gaze of the heathen ; but having been 
 removed by night by the brethren, it was buried in the 
 Mappalian Way. Two Churches afterwards marked the spots 
 which had been consecrated by his death and by his burial. 1 
 The anniversary of his death was long observed ; and five 
 sermons of St Augustine, preached on this festival, still remain 
 as memorials of the martyr Cyprian. 
 
 Thus died Thascius Caecilius Cyprian, with a courage too 
 common in those days to excite our surprise, but of such 
 intrinsic merit as to demand our admiration. He was the 
 first Bishop of Carthage who had attained to the crown of 
 martyrdom ; and he was truly worthy of this high distinction. 
 Few men have more forcibly arrested the affections of their 
 associates ; few have more powerfully influenced the opinions 
 of others ; none have been more honoured by posterity. The 
 wish which broke from the tumultuous assembly at his con- 
 demnation, To die with him, was uttered afterwards coolly and 
 solemnly by his Deacon Pontius : but his widowed Church 
 rather lamented her own misfortune than his; and soon 
 learned to glory in his crown more than she lamented her own 
 loss. His name was long a household word with the Church 
 which he had governed, and even the heathen paid to his 
 memory the tribute of respect. 
 
 Neither Carthage nor Africa set bounds to his influence or 
 to his fame. Prudentius says of him, 
 
 Disserit, eloquitur, tractat, docet, instruit, prophetat, 
 Nee Libise populos tantum regit ; exit usque in ortum 
 Solis, et usque obitum : Gallos fovet, imbuit Britannos, 
 Proesidet Hesperix, Christum serit ultimis Hiberis. 
 
 And to this day, whenever any party can claim the support of 
 
 1 One of these Churches was the scene of an affecting incident in the 
 early life of St Augustine. See his Confessions, V. viii. with the note p. 
 75, of the Oxford translation.
 
 Life and Times of St Cyprian. 287 
 
 Cyprian's authority, the claim is made with a confidence which 
 sufficiently determines its value. 
 
 But perhaps the most marked indication of the deserved 
 respect in which the name of Cyprian is held, is its place in 
 the Roman Calendar: not because this is itself a proof of 
 peculiar sanctity, but because it is extorted in the present 
 instance by the voice of the Church, antecedent to the 
 corruptions of Rome, and because here whatever is specifi- 
 cally Romish, has been forced to yield to that which is truly 
 Catholic. The works of Cyprian are a strong protest against 
 the arrogant pretensions of the Bishop and Church of Rome : 
 his theology, like that of every primitive Bishop was opposed 
 to the present system : circumstances even placed him in 
 direct collision with Rome ; his whole energies were exerted 
 for a long while in opposition to the dogma of a Pope and his 
 Clergy ; and he died under what would now be called excom- 
 munication by Rome, though then indeed his position had no 
 such character. And yet St Cyprian, though such an one as 
 would now be anathematised without compunction and with- 
 out mercy by his Holiness of Rome, is worshipped by the 
 Churches of his obedience as a saint : for his title to be 
 enrolled among the saints was already determined by the 
 general voice of Christendom ; and Rome, when she departed 
 from his theology, and deserted all his favourite principles, 
 could not afford to repudiate his name. 
 
 THK F.NI). 
 
 TURNBt'LL AND SPEARS. PRINTERS, EDINBURGH' 
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