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Cyprian: The Churchman

By
John Alfr'ed Faulkner
Professor of Historical Theology in Drew
Theological Seminary

CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM
NEW YORK: EATO N AND MAINS

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Copyright, 1906, By
Jennings & Graham

CONTENTS

Chapter Page
I. Carthage and the Church, 5
II. Conversion, - 18
III. Cyprian's Judgment of Heathenism, 26
IV. A Pope, - 36
V. Before the Storm, 47
VI. The Decian Persecution, 58
VII. A New Question in Discipline, 74
VIII. Cyprian, the Lapsed, and the Church
in Carthage, - - 84
IX. The Novatian Church, 102
X. Mercy and Help, - 122
XI. The Lord's Prayer, - - 140
XII. Cyprian, the Catholic, 147
XIII. Was Cyprian a Roman Catholic? 163
XIV. The Great Controversy with Rome, 176
XV. The Crowning, - - 18c
3

APPENDICES

Page
I. The Interpolations in the De Unitate
Ecclesle, - ... 208
II. Chronological Order of the Epistles, 216
III. Select Literature, - - 219

Index, - ... 225

NOTE
Readers who wish to verify statements in this book, or to
study further Cyprian's life and testimony, will please remember
that in the references to his Epistles the numbering of the Oxford
edition (followed by Hartel) is first given, and then in parentheses
that of Migne (followed by the Ante-Nicene Library). In the
case of a few of the Epistles the numbering is the same in both
editions. 4

Cyprian: The Churchman.

CHAPTER I.
CARTHAGE AND THE CHURCH.
Sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar from
the west, one passes Morocco on the south for about
200 miles, and then Algeria for 600, — both the an
cient Mauretania, only the northern edge of which
was taken possession of by the Roman Empire. A
small Eastern section of Algiers was the province
of Numidia, conquered by Rome B. C. 46 and en
tirely incorporated into the empire, in which was
the town of Hippo Regius on the coast, about 120
miles directly west of Carthage, the seat of the
bishopric of the greatest man God ever gave to the
Ancient Church — Augustine. The eastern section
of that high Algerian coastline until it turns directly
south and runs south for 300 miles, is Tunis, ancient
5

6 Cyprian: The; Churchman.
Carthage, which, with part of Numidia and the
coast of Tripoli, formed the province of Africa Pro-
consularis. Then the mariner sails on east a thou
sand miles till he comes to the famous city of Alex
andria, 500 miles south from Carthage, separated
on land by vast wastes. The reader will thus see
how misleading our rough and ready designation of
North Africa is in giving us a glimpse of ancient
relations. The provinces of Egypt and Africa had
no more to do with each other than India and
Canada to-day. Egypt was imperial province, oc
cupied by an army, and under the emperor's imme
diate control; Africa was a senatorial province,
governed by one of the consuls chosen by lot.
Carthage was only one hundred miles from
Sicily, which was the connecting link between Italy
and the South. Its position made it of great im
portance to Rome. Who controls Carthage con
trols the Mediterranean, or at least goes a good
way toward controlling it. So thought France,
which in 1881 brought Tunis under her wing, and
thus offset the possession of Gibraltar by England.
No doubt war between Rome and Carthage was in
evitable. There could not be two masters of the
western Mediterranean. It is not necessary to give
here the history of those fearful Punic wars, in one

Carthage; and the; Church. 7
of which the greatest general in all history — a man
against a nation — performed prodigious, apparently
impossible, feats, and brought Rome to the verge
of ruin. Suffice it to say that finally, B. C. 146,
Carthage fell into Roman hands and like Jerusalem
later, was razed to the ground. Twenty years after,
Caius Gracchus tried to found a colony there but
failed. Julius Caesar saw the importance of this,
but fell under Brutus's dagger before he could carry
out his intentions. The first emperor, Augustus,
however, succeeded in establishing a Roman colony
on the site of Carthage, which in the third century
when our hero came on the stage, was one of the
chief cities of the empire.
The Carthaginians were Phoenicians or Canaan-
ites. They were a Semitic race, but had none of
the ennobling religious conceptions of their kindred,
the Jews. They are an everlasting object lesson by
contrast of what Divine revelation can do for a
people. "Who made thee to differ?" They were one
of the bloodiest and crudest races of antiquity, and
"their religion the most hideous ever practiced by
a people emerged from barbarism." If there had to
be a war between Carthage and Rome, it was for
the infinite gain of the world that Rome was con
queror. But they were not exterminated; in the

8 Cyprian: The Churchman.
new Carthage they lived on with the Romans. But
the city became Roman through and through: its
baths, its games, its monuments, its pursuits. The
Third Legion was quartered there, and great and
useful works were executed under their supervision.
That there was intermingling of blood there can be
no doubt. But in any given case we can not tell
exactly how the matter stood. Did Cyprian have
Carthaginian blood?
It is not necessary to say that the Roman civili
zation which took the place of the Punic had its de
fects, yes, its fearful faults. It was also coarse,
cruel, and licentious, though not in the same de
gree, and idolatrous, though without human sacri
fices. What old Carthage was we can read in the tre
mendous novel "Salammbo" by Flaubert, who has
gone into the conditions with minute and exhaustive
learning. In the papers of the restive and tumultu
ous Carthaginian, Tertullian, a greater man than
Cyprian, thought not historically so significant, we
have a picture drawn from life of that civilization
which came after. It is sufficient to read only one
book — that "On the Shows." Pompey consecrated
the theaters to Venus, and made them in a sense a
temple. Other shows had been devoted to Bacchus.
So, says Tertullian, we have these two evil spirits

Carthage and the Church. 9
in sworn confederacy with each other, as the patrons
of drunkenness and lust. The theater is im
modesty's peculiar abode, where nothing is in repute
but what elsewhere is disreputable. So the best
path to the highest favor of its god is the vileness
with which the Atellan gesticulates. The very har
lots are brought upon the stage. Let the senate, let
all ranks blush for very shame. The tragedies and
the comedies are the bloody and wanton, the im
pious and licentious inventors of crimes and lusts.
If it is right to indulge in the cruel, the impious,
and the fierce, let us go to the theater and games.
Let us regale ourselves there with human blood.1
In a students' club of a German university I
once heard one of the members highly laud old
Rome, and say that a minister could not do better
than to study the Greek and Latin classics, and take
from them his models. How far the speaker was
in solemn earnest, or how far he spoke in banter
or bravado, I do not know. But for such a one a
course in Tertullian would be an excellent disci
pline. There were redeeming features of course in
the Roman. The Roman farmer worked and made
every one who belonged to him work. But even
here pagan hardness appeared, which left its im-

1 De Spectaculis, chs. 10, 17, 19.

10 Cyprian: The Churchman^
press on European civilization from that day to this.
"Pliny saw him or his native tenent in Byzacium
yoking an old woman with an ass, a practice not
dropped till late." Is it dropped? I have often
seen women harnessed to milk wagons, and sturdy
girls helping the dogs pull home loads of clothes for
Monday's wash. The Roman knew how to civilize
in his way; he had a fine military and civil or
ganization. He represented the majesty of law,
to which Paul appealed, and under which the new
faith made its way. But, as Archbishop Benson
finely says, a "fearful shadow dogged all this na
tional and individual vigor, the inherent vice of
the Roman spirit, the scornful inhumanity with
which uncivilized populations were unhelped and
repelled. It was this, with its ever pursuing train
of consequences, this and not the Vandals, which
brought the last wreck."2
Who introduced Christianity into Carthage or
when, we shall never know. When Cyprian meets
us it was already widely established over Numidia
and proconsular Africa. It was nothing to him to
bring together fifty or eighty bishops. Doubtless
numerous Christians came with the early colonists,
and with the constant intercourse between Carthage
2 Cyprian : His Life, His Times, His Work, XXVII, XXVIII.

Carthage and the Church. ii
and Rome, like that between Boston and Halifax,
it was inevitable that an aggressive and attractive
faith like Christianity would be widely represented.
Africa was a second Italy — it belonged rather to
Europe than to our Africa. Its literature was
Latin. When the Church at Rome was a Greek
exotic, its clergy, its literature, its language all
Greek, the Church in Africa was Latin. The great
African Tertullian opened Latin literature in the
closing years of the second century before what
we know as the Latin Church was born.3 Africa
had a Latin Bible before Rome — she was the mother
land of Christian Latin literature, and in this, as
Harnack says, she had a world-historical signifi
cance.* Far from being the teaching Church of
the west, Rome for two centuries had not a writer
of note, while in Tertullian Africa produced a
writer of range, power, and fertility.
But Carthage, like Rome, had its Greek element.
For the play lovers of his city Tertullian wrote his
books on plays in Greek.5 Her lovely and noble
martyr, Perpetua, spoke Greek with Bishop Opta-

S It is not meant to deny the priority of Minucius Felix, which, in the
opinion of many, Ebert has set beyond question ; but, as a fact of large
historical significance, the above statement stands. Harnack still holds
that Tertullian was first.
4 Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums, Leipz. 1902, S. 515.
De Corona, 6.

12 Cyprian: The Churchman.
tus and Presbyter Aspasius. The Greek transla
tions of the oldest African Martyr Acts may be as
old as the Acts themselves.6 This Greek element,
however, was not a .preponderating one, as it was
in Rome. Africa was the first Latin Church.
At any rate when the first historical notice of
the African Church meets us in Tertullian we have
a strong and wide-spread society. "Our numbers
are so great," he says, "constituting all but the ma
jority in every city. What will you make of so
many thousands, of such a multitude of men and
women, of every age and every dignity? What
will be the anguish of Carthage herself, which you
will have to decimate, etc.? Spare Carthage if not
thyself."7 As to the extent and influence of Chris
tianity, Asia Minor was the only parallel. It had
even gone among the original Carthaginians, though
to what extent at the time of Tertullian and Cyprian
we do not know. Probably not largely, as the names
of the third century are almost altogether Latin.
But among the martyrs there were Punic names —
in fact, the first African martyr, A. D. 180, was a
Pune. In the fourth century it was necessary, or
at least very desirable, for the bishops and priests

6 Harnack, Ibid. 514.
7 Ad Scap., 2 and 5. Cf Apol., A. D. 197, chs. 2 and 37.

Carthage and the Church. 13
to know Punic, though there never was any Punic
translation of the Bible. To the Punes the Bible
was read through an interpreter, or they had their
sermons in Punic.8 But there was no Punic Chris
tianity as there was a Celtic.
A most interesting fact is noted by Harnack,
which may help us in our search for the origin of
Christianity in Carthage. And that is the strong
military element in the speech of the Church writers
there. Not only in Tertullian, a son of a soldier,
but more strikingly in Cyprian, where military lan
guage is almost standard and prescriptive. So also
the large use of legal language, which can not be
referred entirely to the converted lawyers, Tertul
lian and Cyprian. The Church speech, says Har
nack, which was created in Africa, shows that, so
far as it was not the common speech, it was the
product of immigrant officials and military men.9
Does not that mean that Christianity owed its origin
and support in Africa, as elsewhere, in part to con
verted soldiers?
The greatest man in the African Church was
Tertullian, and the greatest man in the Christian
world of his age (say 155-230). He is well worthy

8 See Zahn, Geschichte des Neutestamentlichen Kanons, I, 40-44.
Harnack, Mission und Ausbreitung, 515. 9 Ibid. 516.

14 Cyprian: The Churchman.
of treatment in this series. Not a single life of him
exists in English, except the old study by the
learned Bishop Kaye (1826, 3d ed. 1845), and
hardly an essay in the Theological Reviews,10
though the Germans have a whole shelf of books on
him. The greatest literary master of Church his
tory in Germany, Professor Albert Hauck, of Leip
zig, sprang into fame by his fine life of Tertullian
in 1877. Tertullian was the watershed of ancient
Church history, the turning point of primitive and
Catholic Christianity. The Church owes a vast
debt to him, because for her he wrote the strongest
defense she had received up to that time — an
apology of tremendous power and. effectiveness.
Then his little book "To Scapula," proconsul of
Africa, is one of the noblest pleas for toleration ever
made. In variety, strength, and volume of literary
output he far exceeds Cyprian, and he always main
tained a more genuinely Christian attitude. It is
true that, disgusted with the worldliness of the
Church, he later became a Montanist, and on ac
count of this divergence from the so-called Catholic
Church, which he criticised with relentless severity,
the later Church omitted him from her roll of saints.
Cyprian fed his soul on him. Some of his books

10 But see J. B. Mayor in The Expositor, July, 1902.

Carthage and the Church. 15
are but the echoes of Tertullian. "Hand me the
Master" {Da Magistrum), he would say to his sec
retary when asking for the rolls of Tertullian.11
He said truly. Of all the Christian men who lived
in the dying years of that fateful second century,
Tertullian was the master.
I have already mentioned the large number of
bishops in the African provinces. At a council,
A. D. 240, ninety were present. That means a
widely diffused episcopal organization, but no dioc
esan organization. In other words, every little
town had its bishop, — and entirely distinct from
presbyter, be it remembered. Of detached presby
ters and deacons we hear nothing. Harnack says
that the episcopal organization in Africa was formed
on the model of the municipal organization there,
which itself was derived from the Phoenicians. He
quotes Mommsen to the effect that when Roman
rule began in Africa, the Carthaginian country at
that time consisted essentially of small city societies,
administered by their suffetes, of which small city
organizations there were about 300, and that Rome
allowed that arrangement to stand.12 And on that
old Punic civic platform the Church imposed her
already developed episcopate.
11 Jerome, De Vir. 111., 53.
Ii Harnack, Ibid. 516, note 5. Mommsen, Rom. Gesch. V, 644.

16 Cyprian: The Churchman.
What circumstances contributed to make Chris
tianity so strong in Africa we do not know. It may
be because such powerful personalities as Tertul
lian and Cyprian were given to the Church. For a
hundred years Carthage was the cynosure of all
eyes. Cyprian stood forth like the governor of a
province. In the middle years of the third cen
tury he and not the Roman bishop was pre-emi
nently the pope. Under him the number of con
verts among the heathen were greatly increased.
"The new crowd of believers," he calls them.13
Strong men are as necessary to impress heathens
to-day as then. Piety is indispensable to a mission
ary, but it will not make up for brain power and
learning. So Carthage was the central city of
Christianity in the middle of the third century, and
this was largely due to Cyprian. He corresponded
with bishops in Rome, Spain, Gaul, Cappadocia;
he looked to it that his letters on the. lapsed should
come to the notice of all the Church,14 and he ruled
the Church of North Africa from Syrtis to Maure-
tania.15 And what that Church was is brought home
to us by the estimate of Harnack that in procon
sular Africa and near-by provinces there were about
150 bishops.16 What if as strong men as Cyprian

18Ep.66(68),s. M Ibid. 55 (51), 5. 16 Harnack, 517, note 2. 16 Ibid. 519.

Carthage and the Church. 17
had succeeded to the Carthaginian bishopric!
Would Rome have won her supremacy so easily?
And what if Vandal and Mohammed had not
decimated the African Church! Might there not
have been one large section of Christendom outside
of the Roman "sphere of influence ?"

CHAPTER II.
CONVERSION.
Thascius Cyprian was born we know not when
nor where, but probably near Carthage in the early
years of the third century. His parents were rich,
and for a child of pagan parents only two pro
fessions lay open — arms or law, this latter including
rhetoric. Like Tertullian he chose law, and in
Carthage attained high standing in it. "He gained
great glory to himself," says Lactantius, "by the
profession of the art of oratory."1 The lawyer and
rhetorician of ancient times was supposed to be a
master of all the sciences that then were. He had
not only to know what to speak, but how to speak
and to act, to be a master of grace as well as of
reason. He had not only to be a man of learning,
but to have his learning and every other accom
plishment in readiness for the persuasion and con
vincing of men. The average modern lawyer would
shine poorly by the side of the wide and persevering
culture of the ancient advocate. At thirty Cicero
1 Div. Inst. V. i. 18

Conversion. 19
was still under the tuition of Molon. How per
sistent they were in technical perfection.2 A rhetori
cian of Cyprian's time was so highly honored that
his daughter was espoused to the Emperor Gordian.
Is it any wonder that when such men as Minucius
Felix and Tertullian and Cyprian were converted,
they exercised immense influence on the higher
classes ?
Africa was the special "nurse of pleaders," re
minding Archbishop Benson of the fervor and elo
quence with which Ireland has "enriched the Eng
lish bar." Not the least of them was Cyprian. He
had pursued the highest culture of his time. "What
gold, what silver, what raiment," exclaims Augus
tine, "he brought with him out of Egypt!" When
Jerome wants to illustrate the greatest power of
Christianity, viz., that of converting men of learn
ing and culture, men "who are the last of all to
learn the word, yet at length, like the Ninevites
descend from their thrones to plebeian levels, lay
aside the radiance of their eloquence, put away the
intoxicating draught of words, and thenceforth con
tent themselves with the majesty of Christian
thoughts," he selects Cyprian as an example.3 It
was indeed a trophy for Christianity.

2 Aug. Chr. Doc. bk. 4. S Comm. in Jon. v.. 3.

20 Cyprian: The Churchman.
What about the circumstances of Cyprian's con
version ? Alas ! here we know almost next to noth
ing. But a careful study of Pontius's "Life of
Cyprian" (Pontius was his deacon and friend) and
of Cyprian's own letter to Donatus throws a little
light. Pontius refers his conversion- to the influence
of Caecilius, a presbyter, whose name he took in
baptism, as Neander did the names of his friends.
"He had close association among us with a just
man of praiseworthy memory, by name Caecilius,4
in age as well as in honor a presbyter, who had
converted him from his worldly errors to the ac
knowledgment of the true divinity. This man he
loved with entire honor and all observance, regard
ing him with an obedient veneration, not only the
friend and comrade of his soul, but as the parent of
his new life."5 But of this faithful soul-winner
we know nothing more. He has vanished from the
horizon of the Church, just as many another worker
has done after bringing some one to the Savior who
has been a burning and shining light. It was per
sonal service, personal friendship, the strength and
beauty of Christian testimony of the unknown
Caecilius, which gave us Cyprian.
In the letter to Donatus there is none of the

i Hartel's MSS. have Caecilianus, 5 Vita Cyp. 4.

Conversion. 21
intimate personal heart history which makes the
confessions of Augustine so fascinating and so
famous. There are striking figures but no clear
soul-history, rhetoric but not much light. "While
I was still lying in darkness and gloomy night, wav
ering hither and thither, tossed about on the foam
of this boastful age, uncertain of my wandering
steps, knowing nothing of my real life, and remote
from truth and light, I used to regard it as a diffi
cult matter that a man should be born again, a
truth which the Divine Mercy had announced for
my salvation, and that a man quickened to a new
life in the laver of saving water should be able to
put off what he had formerly been, and, although
retaining his bodily stature, should be himself
changed in heart and soul."6 This shows that he
became convicted of sin, so that his old life ap
peared in its right colors; and it shows also that
he had often thought of Christianity and of its doc
trine of the new birth. He then goes on to say that
he came to acquiesce in a sinful life as inevitable,
indulge his evil habits as "actual parts of me," until
finally by the "help of the water of the new birth,
the stain of former sins had been wiped away, and
the light from above serene and pure had been in-

6 Ad. Donat. 3 (Ep. 1).

22 Cyprian: The Churchman.
fused into my reconciled heart, after that by the
agency of the Spirit breathed from heaven a second
birth had restored me to a new man ; then in a won
drous manner doubtful things at once began to as
sure themselves to me, hidden things to be re
vealed, dark things to be enlightened, so that I was
able to acknowledge that what previously being
born of the flesh had been living in the practice
of sins, was of the earth earthy, but had now be
gun to be glad, and was anointed by the spirit of
holiness."7 By the instructions and example of Caecilius he
had gradually come to a knowledge of himself, and
to a desire to become a Christian, and apparently at
or after baptism his faith laid hold on Christ, and
he was transformed into a new creature in Him.
It is evident also by the epistle of Donatus that
another element contributed to his conversion, viz.,
the comparative purity of the morals of Christians.
His association with Caecilius and his observation
of other Christians, was making hideous to
him by contrast the pagan civilization in which
he had been brought up, revealing it in
all its cruelty, rottenness, and shame. For
in this letter, a kind of confession, a kind of

7 Ad. Donat. 4 (Ep, 1),

Conversion. 23
justification and explanation of his change, he de
votes the chief space to a frank description of the
heathenism he had left. "I will draw away the veil
from the darkness of this hidden world." And he
gives a picture of it as he knew it, and he knew it,
this cultured wealthy lawyer of the great city. It
is a picture that can well be commended to the ad
mirers of pagan ethics and art, who think we could
well exchange Christianity for Greek philosophy.
There is no doubt that on the part of many Chris
tians there was a sad lack, as we shall see, in show
ing forth the moral beauty of their religion, but at
the worst the latter was so infinitely superior to
paganism to the keen eyes of this observant and
practiced lawyer, that he was unconsciously and
irresistibly drawn towards it.
After these descriptions he pictures a soul freed
from this bondage. Withdrawn from the eddies of
a distracting world, he lifts his eyes to heaven ; and,
having been admitted to the gift of God, he can
boast that whatever in human affairs seem lofty
and proud, lies beneath his care. He who is greater
than the world can desire nothing from the world.
There he is free, stable, fitted for the light of im
mortality. This new power and dignity is a gift
from God, and it is accessible to all. "As the sun

24 Cyprian: The Churchman.
shines spontaneously, as the day gives light, as the
fountain flows, as the shower yields moisture, so
does the heavenly spirit infuse itself into us. When
the soul in its gaze into heaven has recognized its
author, it rises higher than the sun, and far tran
scends all this earthly power, and begins to be what
it believes itself to be."8 Gold ceilings and mosaic
marbles will seem mean to one who knows that it
is himself who is to be perfected, is to be adorned,
and that the all-important temple is the temple of
the soul in which the Holy Spirit has begun to make
His abode. All other beauty shall perish but this
remains, "perpetual, vivid, in perfect honor, in per
manent splendor."9
Cyprian's conversion was radical from the start.
In this respect it was like that of the early Meth
odists. He abode in no half-way house, partly
Christian, partly pagan. He was now Christ's, and
he served Him henceforth according to his light
with undeviating loyalty. The Christianity to which
he was converted was not entirely that of Paul —
200 years lay between; it was the semi-Scriptural,
semi-Catholic Christianity of A. D. 250, various
traits of which we shall see as we go forward. But
such as it was, Cyprian accepted it with intelligent
8 Ad. Donat. 14 (Ep. 1). 9 Ibid. 13.

Conversion. 25
and unselfish devotion from which he never swerved
for a moment. To show and test his genuineness this
rich rhetorician sold the most of his possessions and
gave to the Church for distribution to the poor,
sick, and other stricken classes. His house in
Carthage, however, was bought back by the Church
and given to him again. He entered upon a life of
fasting, prayer, and especially of the diligent study
of the Holy Scriptures, of which his writings re
veal large and exact acquaintance, not neglecting
the Church teachers before him, and especially his
beloved Tertullian.
The year of his baptism we do not know exactly
— probably about 245 or 246. But the day on which
the Carthaginian Roman lawyer, Thascius Cyprian,
went under what he calls the "birth-giving water"
— probably on the beach of his own beautiful bay —
was one of the most important days in the history
of men. In him the Catholic era became crystal
lized in forms one sees in almost every church one
passes.

CHAPTER III.
CYPRIAN'S JUDGMENT OF HEATH
ENISM.
IT is hardly conceivable that so thoughtful and
well-read a man as Cyprian could have had much
heart in his paganism. He must have been like
many in that Graeco-Roman world — externally at
tached to the faith of the State, but with no love
for it, no interior drawing. As soon as he is con
verted and has to justify his new attitude, he turns
against the religious life of heathenism with an
earnestness and intelligence and moral revulsion
which show that the old religion came to him but
found nothing in him.
Like others of the fathers, Cyprian believed the
gods were demons who had gotten men in their
possession and persuaded them to worship them in
stead of God. These demons were themselves cast
out by Christians, which is a sure proof to him of
their frailty and contemptibleness. He challenges
the heathen: O, would you but see them and hear
26

Cyprian's Judgment OF Heathenism. 27
them (the demons) when they are adjured by us,
and tortured with spiritual scourges, and are ejected
from possessed bodies, when, howling and groaning
at the voice of man and the power of God, they
confess the judgment to come. These demons
(gods) are subject to Christians! And yet you
worship them. You will see that we are entreated
by those whom you entreat, that we are feared by
those whom you fear, whom you adore. You will
see that under our hands they stand bound and
tremble as captives, whom you look up to and ven
erate as gods. Can you not be convinced as to
what kind of gods you worship when you see and
hear them upon our interrogation betraying what
they are, and even in your presence unable to con
ceal those deceits and trickeries of theirs ?1
The casting out of demons was a large function
in the early Church. Some have seen in this an evi
dence of the credulity and childishness of the times.
But as to the reality of the phenomena, the reality
of the cures, there can be no doubt. The question
is as to their interpretation. The true view is that
in certain ages of civilization, and in certain stages
of moral lapse, evil spirit or spirits really take pos
session in some sense of the person, and according
1 Ad Demetrianum, 15.

28 Cyprian: The Churchman.
to the laws of the soul work there to his physical,
mental, and moral ruin. It is not more irrational
to believe in the existence of evil spirits than in
that of good spirits, or even that of bad men. And
if they exist, it is according to the laws of psychol
ogy that they may obtain control of human spirits.
What was seen in the early Church is seen to-day
in some countries.2 In this realm of evil possession
the Church wrought mighty victories for sanity and
morality. But interpreting the demons as heathen
gods was another matter.
The author of "Quod idola dii non sint" (That
Idols are not Gods), generally attributed to
Cyprian, has another philosophy of the gods. He
says that the gods were formerly kings, who as soon
as they died began to be adored by their people.
Hence temples were founded to them, images made
to them, sacrifice paid and festal days appointed.
So to posterity these rites became sacred which at
first had been adopted as a consolation. He proves
this by the stories of the works of these gods on
earth. Apollo fed the flocks of Admetus, Nep
tune founded walls for Laomedon, the cave of Jupi
ter is seen in Crete, and his sepulcher is shown,3 etc.

2 See the valuable book of Nevius, Demon Possession and Allied
Themes, New York, 1894. 3 Quod Idola, 1, 2.

Cyprian's Judgment of Heathenism. 29
When it is said that to these gods Rome owes
its greatness, the writer replies that that is due sim
ply to the vicissitudes and chances of fortune. But
Rome has no real moral greatness, and never had.
A lot of criminals and profligates come together,
found an asylum, by impunity for crimes made
their number great. Romulus himself was a frat
ricide. When they want marriage they begin that
"affair of concord by discords." They steal, they
do violence, they deceive, — anything to get people.
Their marriage consists of broken covenants of
hospitality and cruel wars with their fathers-in-
law. Brutus puts his sons to death that the com
mendation of his dignity may increase by the ap
proval of his wickedness.4 How did this plain
speaking strike the haughty Roman ?
But this author gets round to the demon theory.
They are impure and wandering spirits, who after
having been steeped in worldly vices, lost their
celestial vigor by the contagion of earth, and now,
ruined themselves, seek to ruin others. Even poets
acknowledge the existence of demons, and Socrates
said he was instructed by one. From them magi
have power for mischief or for mockery, though
the chief of them, Hostanes, said that the form of

4 Quod Idola, 5.

30 Cyprian: The Churchman.
the true God can not be seen, and that true angels
stand around His throne. Plato believed this also,
maintaining one God, the rest angels or demons.
Hermes Trismegistus believed, too, in one God in
comprehensible, beyond our ken.5
As to the moral content of paganism Cyprian
did not mince his words. Nor was he haranguing a
crowd or advocating a cause before a jury, when
he might be tempted, like our political orator, to
exaggerate; but he is giving his sober thoughts to
a friend who could not be deceived. Both knew
their world. Cyprian, at least, we may assume,
knew it thoroughly. And he finds nothing to re
gret for having left it: the roads blocked up with
robbers, seas beset with pirates, wars everywhere."
The world is wet with mutual blood and murder,
which for an individual is called a crime, is called
a virtue when it is committed wholesale.6 Was there
ever a finer description of most wars than that?
The quickened conscience of the early Christians

5 Quod Idola, 6. Though scholars are now generally agreed that the
Quod Idola dii non sint is not the work of Cyprian (see Haussleiter,
Cypr. Studien. Comment. Woefflin, Leipz. 1891, 379 ff, Ehrhard, Die alt-
christliche Literatur und ihre Erforschung, Freib. i. B, 1900, 462), yet it is
undeniable that its thought moves in the Cyprianic circle. It is a compila
tion from Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and Cyprian. As the latter borrowed
wholesale from the others, one may fairly take the Quod Idola as repre
senting Cyprian also.
6 Ad Donatum, 6,

Cyprian's Judgment of Heathenism. 31
detested war, but they did not detest it more than
it deserved. He then turns his attention to that beloved in-
stitution of paganism — the gladiatorial shows. Men
who have committed no crime are fattened for this
slaughter. "Man is slaughtered that man may be
gratified and the skill that is best able to kill is an
exercise of an art. Men train to murder. Men of
ripe age and beautiful person offer themselves for
this horrible combat. Think of it! Fathers look
down on their sons; a brother is in the arena and
his sister hard by. The increased pomp of the show
makes the tickets higher, yet even the mother will
pay the increased price to witness her child's death-
wound on a gala-day. Yet with all these frightful
scenes they are not at all conscious that they are
parricides with their eyes."7 And it needed the in
troduction of Christianity to distinguish between
murder, torture, a thousand deaths and — sport!
As to the theater, though it does not take life
like the gladiatorial shows, it kills virtue — and it
must be confessed that, though it has changed for
the better under Christianity, it is still sufficiently
true to its reputation in Cyprian's time. Parricide
and incest are unfolded in action, so that as the ages

7 Ad Donatum, 7.

32 Cyprian: The Churchman.
pass, -old crimes may not be forgotten. On the
stage the old wickedness and impiety still live on.
By the teaching of infamies in the mimes the specta
tor is reminded of what he may have done or may
yet do. Adultery is learnt while it is seen; and
having public authority this mischief panders to
vices and works havoc among modest women. Be
sides "what a degradation of morals, what a stimu
lus to abominable deeds, what a food for vice, to be
polluted by stage gestures, and against the covenant
and law of one's birth to gaze in detail upon in
cestuous abominations." They show Venus im
modest, Mars adulterous, and that Jupiter of theirs
not more supreme in dominion than in vice, etc.
And now put the question, says Cyprian: Can he
who looks upon such things be healthy-minded or
modest? Men immitate the god they adore, — their
crimes become their religion.8
This Zola-like painter of a world he knew so
well then refers to that vice9 which ancient litera
ture reveals as frightfully common, — impossible to
believe as our feelings make it. Is it possible that
paganism, glorified by our freethinkers, had first to
hear from the new despised faith protests against
the unnatural diabolical lusts which its best men

8 Ad Donatum, 8. 9 Rom. i, 26, 27.

Cyprian's Judgment of Heathenism. 33
looked upon as a matter of course ? But in Cyprian's
day it would seem that the higher morality of Chris
tianity was bringing some of the guilty to conscious
ness at least. He speaks of these accusing others
in order to escape their own condemnation, — ac
cusers in public criminals in private ; people - im-
bruted with the madness of vice deny what they
have done, and yet hasten to do.10
The sacred seat of law itself is defiled. Wick
edness is done in the very face of the statutes, and
the Forum echoes with the madness of strife. Then
the punishments — the claw that tears, the rack that
stretches, the fire that burns — and of these the poor
Christians had knowledge. Who is to help? The
patron? He deceives. The Judge? He sells his
sentence. The very judge becomes the culprit that
the innocent may perish. Crimes are everywhere.
One man forges a will, another makes a false oath ;
children are robbed of their inheritances; on all
sides the "venal impudence of hired voices falsifies
the charges, while the guilty do not even perish
with the innocent. There is no fear about the laws ;
no concern for, either inquisitor or judge ; when the
sentence can be bought off for money, it is not cared
for."11 We often hear about the majesty of Roman

10 Ad Donatum, 9.
3

fYM" fatio'i'i 3UiO*.a

A

e*tfa,er.,-

-AV

V

34 Cyprian: The Churchman.
law, the respect for justice, and all that, and there
was a time and a season in which these things were
realities; but the relentless pen of Rome's own
lawyers uncovered the rottenness of an age and a
civilization which our easy-going pagan idealists
hold up for admiration.
In another place, speaking of plagues, Cyprian
says that they only give opportunity for avarice and
rapine. In these times people do not show affection,
but are rash in quest of impious gains. They shun
the deaths of the dying, but crave the spoils of the
dead, so that it looks as if the wretched were for
saken in their sickness, lest being cared for they
might recover. Everywhere there is seizing, every
where taking possession — no dissimulation about
spoiling, no delay. Thieves conceal themselves in
ravines and rob under cover of darkness. Avarice
rages openly, exposes its weapons in the. market
place. "Thence cheats, thence poisoners, thence as
sassins in the midst of the city, — these are eager foe-
wickedness as they are wicked with impunity."
Judges are for sale. It might appear from such
books as Steffens's "Shame of the Cities" (New
York, 1904), that corruption could not well be more
appalling in the Roman Empire than in some of the
cities of our Christian America, and especially in

Cyprian's Judgment of Heathenism. 35
Philadelphia, which, under the Quay ring and its
successor, seems to bear the palm for political and
financial and other debauchery. But as a matter of
fact, such towns are as the isles of Araby the Blest
by the side of conditions revealed to us in both the
pagan and Christian literature of ancient times.

CHAPTER IV.
A POPE.
One of the first books written by Cyprian after
his conversion was his "Testimonies Against the
Jews," though it was not written till he had sat
urated himself through and through with the Scrip
tures. His method is simple. After the manner of
a lawyer he presents his case in a series of brief
numbered propositions, and then takes each thesis
in order and proves it simply by quotations from
both Old and New Testaments, especially the Old.
His book is dedicated to a young Christian friend,
Quirinus, to whom he says that if he wants strength
and intelligence, he must "examine more fully the
Scriptures, old and new, and read through the com
plete volume of the spiritual books." All patristic
literature is evidence of the loyal and hearty atti
tude of the Christians to the Bible, undeterred by
the fear least some would read it too much or be
misled by their own interpretations. Cyprian calls
the Scriptures the "spring of the divine fullness,"
36

A Pope. 37
and he urges Quirinus "to drink more plentifully
and be more abundantly satisfied."1
The propositions concerning the Jews which
he seeks to prove are such as these : that they have
fallen under the wrath of God because they have
left Him for idols ; because they slew the prophets ;
that they do not understand their Scriptures and
never will until they believe on Christ; that it was
foretold that they would lose their land, that their
old law would cease, that a new one would come,
that a new prophet would arise, that Gentiles would
receive the Christ, that they would take the place
of the Jews in the Divine favor, but that the Jews
can still be saved if they with baptism wash away
the blood of Christ slain, and passing over into the
Church obey His precepts. These and other proposi
tions are thus proved in order simply by quotations
from the Scriptures.
The second book is taken up with propositions
concerning Christ, which show that Cyprian would
have been a stanch supporter of Athanasius. Christ
is the First-born, the Wisdom of God, the Word of
God, is God, was incarnated in our race, born of a
virgin, Man and God, Son of man and Son of God ;
that in the passion and sign of the cross is all virtue

1 Test. adv. Jud., Introd.

38 Cyprian: The Churchman.
and power ; that it is impossible to attain to God the
Father except through Christ the Son, and the latter
is to come as Judge, and is to reign as King forever.
The last book is a series of miscellaneous proposi
tions in religion and morals proved in the same way.
The only apocryphal book quoted is Ecclesiasticus.
His use of Scripture is of course entirely arbitrary ;
and though he often hits upon apposite and telling
passages to prove his points, he shows no scientific
principles of interpretation, and seizes upon Old
Testament passages helter-skelter as though they
were all equally literal and equally applicable to the
Christian religion and to present circumstances.
A prominent rhetorician, who upon his conver
sion sold his estate and devoted himself to sacred
studies, showed immediately that he was called to
the ministry. He was therefore made deacon im
mediately, in 247 was made presbyter, and in 248
bishop. He went through the two first years so
quickly and so soon made a bishop that we have
hardly any account of his activity in the last sta
tions. What was a bishop about 250, and how was
he elected? The laity were the commons or plebs, the clergy,
the or do, that is, the senatorial order of the Church.2

See Benson, 19, who has correctly represented the facts here.

A Pope. 39
Both had distinctive rights, for both belonged to the
flock of Christ. The laity had privileges of which
they have long since been robbed by the hierarch
ical Church. As the senators in court and in basil
ica had the common bench (consessus), so had the
clergy in the congregation. Did this difference be
tween commons (laity) and senators (orders, or
clergy) rest upon a divine anointing of the latter
which set them apart as in essence a separate caste
through whom alone the life of God could come to
men? Were they the indispensable means of com
municating grace on account of a sacred function
which they shared among themselves solitary and
incommunicable? Or was their place rather that
of custom and use, for good order and decency of
administration, by the ordinance of the Church,
divine (of course) in a sense, but not as excluding
laymen from the same grace and functions if neces
sity should arise? Was the source of their power
God acting solely through clerical officers, or God
acting through the whole Church?
The "Master" Tertullian did not answer these
questions in the present "Catholic" sense. He re
mained true, at least measurably, to the original
democratic and spiritual conception of the Church.
"The authority of the Church," he says, "makes the

40 Cyprian: The Churchman.
difference between order [ordinem, clergy] and
people, and honor [or office of the clergy] is con
secrated by the common bench of the order.. Where
there is no common bench [of the clergy] you
[laymen] offer [administer the Lord's Supper], you
baptize, and you are priest alone for yourself.
For where three are the Church is, even if
they are laymen."3 Tertullian is always true to
that conception. He does indeed except women
from any ministerial function, but that is entirely
on account of their sex.4 He blames the heretics
also for inextricably mixing up laity and clergy,
and observing no decent order, capriciously "en
joining sacerdotal offices on laymen," but he is here
speaking of an apparently reckless disregard of all
order.5 In his work on baptism he also has in mind
this observance of decent administration. He says
the chief priest, that is, the bishop, has the right of
administering baptism if he is present, after him
the presbyters and deacons, though not without the
bishop's authority, "on account of the honor of the
Church, which being preserved peace is preserved.
Beside these, laymen have the right, for what is
equally received can be equally given. Unless

8 De Exhort. Cast. 7. 4 De Veland. Virg. 9. 5 De Prasscrip.
Haeret. 41.

A Pope. 41
bishops or priest or deacons be on the spot, other
disciples are called to the work." Tertullian lays
down the great principle that ought to be dear to
every Christian : The Word of the Lord ought not
to be hidden by any, a principle on which the early
Methodists went, by which they won their triumphs.
"In like manner, too, baptism, which is equally God's
property, may be administered by all."8 In Tertul-
lian's mind all Christian men are as really priests
as the Jewish priests, and so he thought that all
Christians, like the Jewish priests, were bound to
single marriages only.7 The Levitical priesthood
typified to Tertullian not the sacerdotal ordo
(clergy), but the universal priesthood of Christians.
"In his time," says Benson well, "the substant
ive priesthood of the laity was an understood
reality."8 He believed of course in the official priest
hood of the clergy, and I do not say that he had
thought through the doctrine of the ministry ac
cording to Christianity. But he came much nearer
to it than Cyprian.
In the twenty-five years that had elapsed be
tween the two great Carthaginians, the Catholic tide
had not stood still, and Cyprian was farther up the
shore than Tertullian. With him the bishop was

6 De Baptismo, 17. 1 De Monog. 7. 8 Cyprian, 21.

42 Cyprian: The Churchman.
not simply the representative of the people in their
priestly capacity, officially taking up in himself their
priestly character. No, he is much greater. He
represents not the people but Christ Himself. He
is the priest, not so much episcopus as sacerdos.
The Jewish priesthood typifies not the Christian na
tion of priests, but the clergy. The rights and privi
leges of the old priesthood passed at the crucifixion
to the Christian bishop; each congregation is the
"congregation of Israel ;" the election of a bishop is
made in accordance with the law of Moses; the
presbyters are the Levites, and when they approach
the people are to rise up, as Lev. xix, 32, commands.
The bishops are also apostles, they succeed in ordi
nation from the apostles ; they stand by divine crea
tion, not by historic or ecclesiastical right alone;
the diaconate may be a human institution, but not
the bishops. These are also judges. They judge
in Christ's stead. To dispute the bishop's decision
is to be a heretic. Even to keep the faith and the
true worship, and yet invade the office of bishop is
the sin of Korah. The Old Testament laws about
High Priest apply to bishops alone.9 "Verily he
[the bishop] officiates as a priest in the place of

9 Ep. 8 (2), i ; 67, i, 4, 9 ; 65, 2 ; 3 (64), 3 ; 66 (68), 4 ; 59 (54), 5 ; 66 (68)
3 N) J 59 (54) J 43 (39)-

A PopE. 43
Christ, because he imitates what Christ did, and
offers the sacrifice true and full [in the Lord's Sup
per] in the Church to God the Father."10
It will not do to say that all this was an air-
castle, though it was ; so far as resting on any real
basis in Scripture or in fact it was as unsubstantial
as last year's dreams. But to Cyprian it was the
most real thing in the world. And it was suffi
ciently in accord with the Catholic evolution of the
second and third centuries as — when supported by
Cyprian's piety, reputation, persistence, and exege
sis (arbitrary, fantastic, false though it was) — to
make a profound impression, set the results of that
evolution in permanent shape, and make his little
cycle in that Tunisian city the determining reckon
ing for all Christians and for all time.
When Cyprian came on the scene, the bishop
was the head officer in the local Church, there being
a bishop in every town. Against him persecution
was directed; the confiscation of his property was
sometimes the only edict of the magistrate; he sat
in the center of the row of presbyters or on a chair
above them ; he was the chief preacher ; only he ad
ministered communion, or in his. absence those
whom he commissioned; baptism was also mainly

10 Ep. 63 (62), 14.

44 Cyprian: The Churchman.
confined to him ; he was judge in disputes and the
chief office as to disqualifications for Church func
tions. Cyprian added nothing to the substance of
the bishop's power, he only placed it on a religious
basis. He sanctified it with the halo of the Old
Testament law.
How was the bishop elected? The laity gave
Cyprian to the Church. If the filling the vacancy
caused by the death of Donatus had been left to the
clergy, we would never have heard of him. The
latter thought he was immature in religious expe
rience, a novice, and so, according to Paul ( i Tim.
iii, 6), ineligible for Church office. Cyprian thought
so himself and declined, wishing an older presbyter
to be elected. But the people were inexorable. They
looked upon him as the strongest and wisest min
ister in the city, and they would not be refused.
They surrounded his house, filled all approaches,
cut off escape, and compelled him to accept. Ac
cording to Cyprian there were three or four things
necessary in every election of bishop : the judgment
of God, the voice of the people, the choice of the
bishops of the province, and the testimony of the
clergy. But what was the relation of each of these
elements to the other, the relative importance of
each one, and how each was expressed, we do not
know. He says it is divine tradition and apostolic

A PopE. 45
observance — it was not, Cyprian had no exact his
torical knowledge — that "for the proper celebra
tions of ordinations all the neighboring bishops of
the same province shall assemble with that people
for which a prelate is ordained. And the bishop
shall be chosen in the presence of the people, who
have most fully known the life of each one, by the
suffrage of the brotherhood and by the sentence of
the bishops assembled."11 He emphasizes the suf
frage of the people,12 and once the testimony of his
colleagues.13 It does not appear that the neighbor
ing bishops gave any formal vote to the election of
Cyprian, nor that his co-presbyters did, but that the
one decisive factor was the clamant call of the peo
ple. In other words he was elected by acclamation
of the people, which was confirmed by the later
assent of all the presbyters except five, and by the
ordination of the bishops. According to Cyprian,
the assembled bishops had the right of election, with
the co-operation of the clergy; but as Bohringer
well says, the election itself depended in the last
instance upon the consent or veto of the congrega
tion.14 The laity had the first and the last and de
cisive voice, though probably did not vote as in a
formal election. In fact, we do not know from
Cyprian's Epistles that any one cast a vote. But
11 Ep. 67, 5. 12 59 (54), 5- 6- 13 44 (4°). '¦
1* Cyprianus, in Die Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen, 2. Ausg. IV, 841.

46 Cyprian: The Churchman.
it is striking that the greatest Churchman of the
third century was really made a bishop by laymen,
that there was still existing by the side of the grow
ing hierarchy this instructive survival of original
Congregationalism.15 Cyprian was the first pope, that is, the first bishop
repeatedly called papa, papas, or pope,16 and that
too, on the part of the Roman Church. I do not lay
stress on this, but call attention to it as showing
that the exclusive use of the word by Rome since
the decree of Hildebrand, 1073, and the generally
exclusive use since the eighth century, is on par
with most of her usurpations. Apparently the first
bishop to be so called was Heraclas of Alexandria,17
who died about 246, the first Roman bishop Marcel-
linus, 249-304, and in the fourth century bishops of
various sees large and small are called pope. If
we import the later thought into the word, that is,
if we think of the pope as the ruling spirit in the
Church, the Roman presbyters are entirely justified
in giving the title to him of Carthage, because he
and no other was pope in the short but troubled
time of his episcopate.18
IS For the part of the laity in the election of bishops, as witnessed by
Origen, Eusebius, etc., see Haddon, art. Bishop in Diet. Chr. Antiq. i, 214.
16 Eps. 30 ; 31 (25) ; 36 (29) ; 23 (16) ; 8 (2) ; at beginning.
17 Eus., H. E. 7, 7.
18 On the title pope see Benson, 29-31. Mullinger, in Diet. Chr. Ant
ii, 165a, 1663-4.

CHAPTER V.
BEFORE THE STORM.
Cyprian became bishop probably in July, 248,
and the Decian persecution began at the end of
249 or the beginning of 250. The Church had had
peace since the death of Sulpicius Severus, Febru
ary 4, 211 — almost forty years. What chance for
quiet growth and development, for missionary work,
- for literary achievements, etc. ? But alas ! this prom
ise was not kept, or only partially kept. The Church
grew, indeed, but at the expense of purity, and there
was little of literary work between Tertullian and
Cyprian. Then were laid the seeds of the Novatian
schism. A time of peace for nation or Church im
poses special obligations of watchfulness and dis
cipline and self-denial, lest corruptions creep in and
the inheritance be lost. And in a Catholic Church
these corruptions are almost inevitable. When sac
raments take the place of a transforming faith in a
personal Savior, when Church absolution takes the
place of divine forgiveness and conversion, when
47

48 Cyprian: The Churchman.
harmony with the bishop is practically substituted
for ethical and spiritual harmony of the life with
God, union with Christ interpreted in terms of union
with the Church, when Christianity is thus external
ized and superficialized as it is in the so-called
Catholic Churches, a series of miracles is necessary
to keep the Church pure. That God will not pre
vent by extraordinary means what may be avoided
by the simple paths of His Gospel, history is a wit
ness. Look at Russia, to-day, whose battleships are
furnished with both icons and harlots, or in France
where priests and mistresses used to jostle each
other in the corridors of the' Most Catholic King.
In the eighteen months of Cyprian's episcopate
before the outbreak of the persecution, it was his
noble aim to purify the Church as well as he could
by discipline. "Long peace had corrupted," he said,
"a divinely delivered discipline ; faith had been tak
ing her ease and was half asleep."1 First he tried
to break up the practice of the clergy assuming
worldly responsibility, whether as tutor or in trades
or professions. It is well known that for hundreds
of years it was not uncommon for ministers to be
engaged in secular occupations, like the local
preachers of Methodism. "A clergyman, learned
1 De Lapsis, 5.

Before the Storm. 49
in the Word of God," says an ancient statute, "May
seek support by work as much as he likes;" and
again : "A clergyman may satisfy himself with food
and clothing by working as an artisan or by agri
culture, barring detriment to his office."2 We read
of one who tended sheep, another (a bishop) a
weaver, another a shipbuilder, a lawyer, etc.3 By
and by this was practically done away by a salary or
regular Church income.4 During the peace the
clergy, including even the bishops, not only worked
or traded for a living, but pushed their secular work
with vigor for pure* gain, — "they with insatiable
ardor of covetousness devoted themselves to the in
crease of their property." The bishops "despised the
divine charge, became agents in business, deserted
their people, wandered about in foreign provinces,
hunted the markets for gainful merchandise, while
brethren were starving in the Church. They sought
to possess money in hoards, they seized estates by
crafty deceits, they increased their gains by multi
plying usuries."5
A case was presented to Cyprian of one who in

2 Statuta Eccl. Antiqua, cc. 51, 52.
8 Socrates, H. E. 1, 12; Sozomen, 7, 28 ; Greg. Mag. Ep. 13, 26; see
note 23 in Hatch, Organization, etc., p. 151 ; Ludlow in Diet. Chr. Ant. I
409-11 ; Hatch in same, II, 1489-91.
4 On this see von Schubert's Moller, KG. I, 368-g.
5 Cypr., De Lapsis, 6.

50 Cyprian: The Churchman.
his will had appointed Faustinus, a presbyter, as
executor (tutor) or curator of his property. The
bishop meets the case with decision. No offering
shall be made for the deceased, nor sacrifices cele
brated for his repose. The poor fellow must get along
as best he can in the other world without the prayers
and offerings of the living. Cyprian refers to a rule
passed by the bishops excluding ministers from
serving as executors (though the Roman law made
the filling of such appointments obligatory) so that
they "may not be called from their divine adminis
tration nor be tied down by ^worldly anxieties and
matters."6 But this severity, though no doubf ef
fective for a time, did not at all break up the secular
work of the clergy. He cites the Levitical tithe,
argues at this early stage in his usual hierarchical
way — the absolute distinction between secular and
sacred, the obligatoriness of the Old Testament law,
the minister to do only with the altar, — a concep
tion "altogether in contradiction to the original
Christian views and forms of organization."7
An interesting question was presented by a let
ter from a distant town. It appears an actor had
been received into the Church, having first, of

6 Ep. i (6s). For offerings for the dead, already in Tertullian, see De
Monog. 10. 7 Bohringer, 816.

Beeore the Storm. 51
course, given up his profession. But on the ground
of necessity of living he had been training boys to
the same life. The bishop of the little town where
the actor lived wrote Cyprian asking whether this
could be allowed. The reply is in the true spirit of
Tertullian, and in this case in the true spirit of
Christian. He refers to the "disgraceful and in
famous practices of the theater, emasculation of
boys and men,8 men putting on women's garments,
immodest gestures, and the gratification of the de
sire by the sins of a corrupted and enervated body."
If it is a sin for one to act in the theater, is it not to
teach others the same ? If he is compelled to this by
poverty, let>the Church support him frugally, and if
the Church is not able, let him come to us. Such was
the advice of Cyprian. The Church denied baptism
and communion to frequenters of the theater, not
to speak of actors, and she did wisely in this, be
cause the theater was not only connected with idol
atry, but was an inciter and purveyor to sin and
vice in various and influential ways, — it was then
and ever has remained the foremost opponent to

8 The late Bishop A. Cleveland Coxe is authority for the statement
that in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican the fine music is obtained by re
course to this expedient inflicted upon children. Note to his edition ol
Wallis's transl. of Cyprian, p. 356, note 3. See art. Eunuch in Chambers's
Encyclopsedia ed. 1893 or later. Cyp. Ep. 2 (60).

52 Cyprian: The Churchman.
all the ideals for which the Church stands.9 Later
the Church found she could not carry out such
strict laws, as she finds to-day. The theater was
too much for her. Then her leaders, like Chrysos
tom, Cyril, and Salvian, had to content themselves
with sharp denunciations of it and warnings
against it.
To Christians of to-day, virgins occupying the
same house with men, often the same room and even
the same bed, could not be understood. But in the
early centuries that was a common custom, prob
ably due to the necessity of finding homes for con- .
verted girls and women who had been disowned by
parents. Then, in the exaltation of Christian en
thusiasm, in that prophetic ecstasy which charac
terized some early Christians, in that exaggerated
estimate of virginity which was very early intro
duced, with the freshness of faith in the power of
the new life, there can be no doubt that this relation
of dwelling together of men and women pledged
to virginity, was often, as Achelis has shown, abso
lutely innocent of immorality. But as time passed
and the old enthusiasm died away, and especially
as the persecutions ceased and crowds came into the
Church, it is evident that this spiritual bond did not
9 See Bingham, Antiquities, bk. n, ch. 5, sections 6, 9; bk. x6, ch. 4,
section 10; and ch. xx. section 12.

Before the Storm. 53
always remain spiritual. This was recognized by
the Council of Nicea, A. D. 325, which prohibited
the practice,10 as did also that of Carthage of
348.11 Cyprian had to meet this scandal, as he
recognizes it, and he does it in a thorough and
straightforward manner. He cuts up the whole
custom, root and branch. Virgins must not even
live with men in this way, not to speak of anything
else. Those who have slept with men must be ex
amined by midwives before they can receive com
munion again. Purity must be kept at all hazards.
Cyprian's letter is a noble plea for discipline. No
doubt it had its effect, but the continuance of the
practice for centuries shows that the question of the
relation of men to women, of both to pledges to
virginity, had not been solved by the ancient Cath
olic Church, which very early adopted a false and
unchristian asceticism, and thus helped along the
condition referred to as well as the corruption with
which monasticism has made us familiar. Perhaps
they were too near to the universal pagan customs
of bathing and sleeping together. A new civiliza
tion had to come.12

10 Can. 3. 11 Can. 3, 4.
12 Cyprian Ep. 4 (61). See also Coxe in Ante Nie. Fathers II, 57-8;
Benson, 54 and notes ; Venables, in Diet. Chr. Antiq. II, 1939-41 ; and esp.
H. Achelis, Virgines Subintroductae ; ein Beitrag, etc., Leipz. 1902.

54 Cyprian: The Churchman.
Great Christians from Tertullian to Wesley have
not considered woman's dress a subject too insig
nificant for treatment. Cyprian wrote one of his
most vigorous treatises on this subject. No doubt
he had more provocation than Wesley, for heathen
society fostered adornments, luxurious, excessive,
unchaste, to which doubtless the eighteenth century
at its worst could not approach. But many of Ter-
tullian's and Cyprian's (who borrowed from him
wholesale) denunciations are as appropriate to-day
as then. Has God willed, asks Cyprian, who as a
mere man could not see either the beauty or right of
self-mutilations and dyeings and the efforts to im
prove on God, — has God willed that holes should
be made in the ears, by which the children should
be put to pain, so that subsequently heavy beads
should be hung? Such arts as the sinning and apos
tate angels put forth. It was they who taught
women to pain the eyes around with a black circle,
to stain the cheeks with a deceitful red, to change
the hair, and drive out truth both of face and head.
Then adulterations and various colorings are lay
ing hands on God, whose work is perfect. Cyprian
lashes all this artificial making-up with burning
words. In fact, for virgins who are given to Christ
he repudiates adornments of any kind. Why should

Beeore the Storm. 55
she walk out adorned ? Why with dressed hair, as
if she either had or sought for a husband? Rather
let her dread to please, if she is a virgin; let her
not invite her own risk if she is keeping herself for
better and divine things. These should also keep
away from marriage parties, with their lascivious
talk, with their disgraceful words and drunken ban
quets, where the "bride is animated to bear, and the
bridegroom to dare lewdness." So also she should
flee the baths, where modesty is laid aside, vice is en
ticed, — these promiscuous baths, "fouler than a
theater." Is it any wonder the Church mourns
over her virgins ; hence she groans over their scan
dalous and detestable stories; hence the flower of
her virgins is extinguished. At the close Cyprian
praises virginity, which is free from the sorrows
and pains of women, the pangs of child-bearing, the
worship of husband, which possesses already the
glory of the resurrection, which passing through the
world without the contagion of the world is equal
to the angels of God.13
From these earliest writings of Cyprian we can
readily see the conditions of the Christian Church
on the eve of the Decian persecution. Some bishops
were so engrossed in money-making that they neg-

18 De Hab. Virg. 4, 14, 18, ig, 20, 22.

56 Cyprian: The Churchman.
lected their work, some were even usurers. There
was a free-living bishop who made his office a
means of gain, ready to abjure the faith on occa
sion, and ready to take it up again when danger was
over. "Cyprian had," says Augustine,14 "not a pri
vate table, but God's altar in common with his col
leagues, — usurers, the insidious, cheats, robbers."
Some were mixed up with dishonest practices in
fairs and others in the slave trade of the Sahara.
"Some were too ignorant to prepare their catechu
mens for baptism, or to avoid heretical phrases in
their public prayers," and too ignorant or too care
less not to use in their liturgies the compositions of
well-known heretics. Among the clergy there were
makers of idols and compounders of incense, and
among the laity astrologers and theatrical trainers.15
Not a moment too soon did Cyprian come on
the scene. His remedy was "discipline, — discipline
the safeguard of hope, the bond of faith, the guide
of the way of salvation, the stimulus and nourish
ment of good dispositions, the teacher of virtue,
which causes us to abide always in Christ, and to
live continually for God, and to attain the heavenly
promises and the divine rewards."16 The remedy

14 Aug. De Bap. t. Donat. VII, 45 (89).
M Tertullian, De Idolatr. 7, 9; Oyp. Ep. 2 (60). 16 De Hab. Virg. ».

Before the Storm. 57
was good, and woe to the Church where discipline
is a lost art. But the disease was deep, and Cyprian's
remedy touched the surface only. What was needed
was a true Christianity. That was then historically
impossible, but a storm was at the doors which did
the work in another fashion.

CHAPTER VI.
THE DECIAN PERSECUTION.
Why did Rome persecute the Christians ? That
is a question whose answer at first seems easy, but
the more one studies it the more difficult it becomes.
The law of the Twelve Tables forbade strictly any
one to worship strange gods unless they were
adopted by the State. But what would be done
when foreign lands were conquered? Would their
gods be virtually adopted by Rome, who took in,
as a matter of fact, the whole Greek pantheon?
Now as it never was an offense for the native to
worship his native gods, it is evident that Rome
either winked at these strange cults or in effect
adopted them as her own. The former was the
fact. The Isis worshiper had long been domiciled
in the capital, and, excepting the bloody Druid re
ligion of Gaul, Rome never interfered in the slight
est with .the aboriginal faith of her conquered lands.
But what was the matter with Christianity that it
could not share a like toleration ? Chiefly this, that
58

The Decian Persecution. 59
it claimed to be a monotheistic religion, the only
true, absolute religion, and a missionary religion
too, destined for universal conquest, whom every
man must receive to be saved. Well, what of it?
Why could not Rome stand that ? Because her own
religion was identified with the State, glorified and
made divine by the State, which in its turn it glori
fied and made divine. It was the State in its god
ward or religious aspect. The State found its head,
its incarnation, in the emperor, who thus became
himself divine. Now the polytheistic religions
found no fault in this. Each one was a State re
ligion, and they did not stumble in acknowledging
the supreme Roman religion over all. For this
reason the boasted tolerance of Rome stopped at
Christianity. As a great Church historian says, the
"tolerance of the "State had polytheism as a presup
position."1 But Judaism was monotheistic, and
that was tolerated. Yes, but Judaism was a na
tional faith which did not try to make proselytes,
and which as to its chief center of worship had
ceased to exist after A. D. 70. It did not present
at all the same problem to the State as Christianity.
It is true that popular clamor imputed fearful

lVon Schubert's Moller, Kirchengeschichte, I, 181 (1902). So also
Harnack in the Hauck-Herzog. 3 Aufl. Ill, 827-8 (1897).

60 Cyprian: The Churchman.
crimes to the Christians, — murder, incest, child-eat
ing, and abominable deeds of darkness, and it may
be there were cases in which the adverse decision
of the magistrate was determined by these alleged
crimes. But it is a fact that they, play no part —
or at least a very small part — in our historical
sources. Almost always the action turns on the
charge of sacrilege and treason (lose majeste), and
the former because of the latter. The accused is
asked to sacrifice to the gods or to the emperor's
image, — one or both, and it made no difference
which. If he refused the former, he was guilty of
sacrilege (sacrilegium) , if the latter, majestas or
treason, but every time the former had fatal conse
quences only because it implied in the mind of the
pagan Roman the latter. As a mere religion Chris
tianity might have been tolerated. Most of its re
ligious peculiarities were a matter of indifference to
the authorities, and its moral teachings often com
mended it to them. It was only when the political
side of its monotheism came out that the sword
fell. When Tertullian in his powerful Apology
speaks of the Roman religion as a religion, he
treats it with jokes, scorn and derision : he knew he
could do that. But when he comes to the political
side of it in its bearing upon the Christians he

The Decian Persecution. 6i
labors hard and soberly to show that the political
side receives no injury, that the Christians are loyal
and reverent to the emperor. Though they will not
offer to him, they pray for him, and are absolutely
faithful to him in every political relation.
It must be remembered that until Decius there
were no express laws against the Christians as such.
Their trials proceeded always under the general
police or criminal jurisprudence of the empire;
which was not closely defined or limited, but was
general and elastic, and left large play to the in
dividual judgment or caprice of the president of
the court who was the prefect, proconsul, or gov
ernor. The civil law of Rome was fixed fast, with
well understood rules; the criminal law was not.
It was something like the police power of a modern
State, which can soon override the people's lib
erties in case of assumed necessity, like an uproar,
mutiny, riot, etc., or like the power of a ship cap
tain. For this reason a tolerant and free thinking
governor, or even a careless and Gallio-like one,
could let the Christians go if he thought there were
no immediate danger to the State ; while an upright
and strict ruler, patriotic and devoted to the na
tional ideals, could easily set the forces of persecu
tion at work. Strictly speaking, as Harnack says,

62 Cyprian: The Churchman.
there were no persecutions (except perhaps that of
Nero) in ancient times. They were always covered
by the general law of police — a nation's law of self-
preservation. But emperors and governors would
interpret and apply the law according to their char
acter or disposition, or according to circumstances,
the local situation, etc. Popular clamor, too, played
a far larger part than it ought in both pagan and
Christian Rome's persecutions, as it plays to-day in
lynch-law and other outbreaks in the United States.
At any rate, all can understand from this why per
secutions were sporadic and intermittent, why there
were long stretches of time with comparative peace,
when the Church therefore grew with leaps and
bounds. Probably there was not a decade, perhaps
not a year, without its persecutions; still up to the
time of Decius no general or far-reaching measures
of repression were undertaken. Origen says that
only a few suffered for the Christian cause.2 "In
increasing measure," says Harnack, "Christians
were in all conditions in life and in all professions,

2 He was writing about 245, and his words are : " For in order to re
mind others that by seeing a few engaged in the struggle for their religion
they also might be better fitted to despise death, some on special occasions,
and these individuals, which could be easily numbered, endured death for
the sake of Christianity, — God not permitting the whole nation to be ex
terminated, but desiring that it should 'continue, and that the whole world
should be filled with this salutary and religious doctrine," — Contra. Cels.
3,8.

The Decian Persecution. 63
whose Christian position was notorious3 without a
hair of their head being crumpled; on the other
hand, at times, in some provinces (at the discretion
of the governor), and under some emperors, they
had to suffer severely."4
The Samson athlete, Emperor Maximin the
Thracian (235-8), was the first to issue an edict
which had for its object the total destruction of the
Church as an organization by the destruction of its
officers. Happily his edict was still-born. It was
left to Decius (249-51) to break the long peace,
and to inaugurate the most widespread and relent
less persecution which had been known up to his
time. I should have said that in these trials for
sacrilege and (religious) treason, not only did the
president wait for some popular impulse or clamor
or appearance of sedition, and, after Trajan, uni
formly demand specific charges, though he could
go on his own initiative if he wished, in the trials
themselves much was also left to the discretion of
the court. There were no binding forms in this
police court, no universally recognized precedents.
The trial might not take over five minutes, — ap
parently the last hearing of Cyprian did not. Are
you a Christian? Yes. Will you offer to the gods
3 Ter., Ap. i, 42. 4 Hauck-Herzog, 3. Aufl. Ill, 829.

64 Cyprian: The Churchman.
and to the emperor? No. Let him be punished.
Sometimes other forms were used. Almost always
the accused could immediately vindicate his loyalty
by then and there offering to the gods and to the
emperor's image, or by swearing by the genius of
the emperor. When he did he was immediately set
free, though even this was in part at the discretion
of the court. He could be examined by torture, and
in the Decian outbreak that horrible method both
of securing evidence and of punishing was fre
quently used. As to punishment, if found guilty,
much was also left free. Death was the normal,
by beheading, by crucifixion, by being thrown to
wild beasts, by starving and other prison tortures.
The Roman citizen gained no advantage in trials
for sacrilege and majestas; if guilty he could be
burned or tortured to death as quickly as a bar
barian, though the judge might respect his rank
and citizenship and order beheading. But here
again the president was free. He was not abso
lutely compelled to sentence to death, he could im
prison, or banish, or sentence to the mines (gen
erally the Sardinian mines, and a fearful punish
ment). He could, and often did, exhort to peni
tence, defer the trial, and by various means, fair
and foul, induce recantation. Strange uncertainties

The Decian Persecution. 65
hung around these Roman criminal-police trials.
Did these uncertainties make the Christian's lot
lighter or harder? As to maidens or women, it
was wild beasts, burning, imprisonment, banish
ment, or often houses of ill-fame.
Decius was born near Sirmium from a Roman
or Romanized family, was governor of Dacia and
Moesia under Philip the Arabian, was commissioned
against the Goths, called to the empire by his troops,
and defeated and slew Philip, his predecessor, at
Verona, 249. What led him to come out against
the Christians is not clear. From hints here and
there we gather that wrath and jealousy filled him
because the national worship was being pushed in
the background by the new faith,5 for which he
must therefore have had a genuine regard. He
would rather have seen a rival prince than a priest
of God established in Rome.6 He was especially
furious against the priests, says Cyprian (tyrannus
infestus sacerdotibus), and Gregory of Nyssa adds
that he tried to break up the whole organization of
the Church.7 From this it appears that the growth
of Church government in a Catholic direction, a
growth which had been stimulated so greatly by

S Greg. Nyss. De Vita Greg. Thaum., Migne (Greek) 46, 944.
6 Cypr. Ep. 55 (51), 9. 1 Greg. Nyss. Ibid. 946.
5

66 Cyprian: The Churchman.
the heresies of the second century, which had now
reached a climax in the close world-wide network
of deacons, priests, and bishops, and which even
now gave to the bishop in Rome a moral supremacy,
though more in high-sounding words than in sub
stance, this spiritual kingdom which stood over
against the empire, aggressive, infectious, penetrat
ing, a State within a State — it was this organization
which excited the jealousy and fear of the emperor
and his censor Valerian, his adviser and right hand
man, and finally his successor on the throne and on
the track of the Christians. Besides he looked upon
the clergy as in a sense partisans of his murdered
predecessor, Philip the Arabian. Then the millennial
anniversary of the founding of Rome, celebrated
by that emperor with pomp and games, April 21,
248, served to deepen and clarify the national con
sciousness, and to sharpen it against those who
could not join in the festivities with any heart.8
The policy of opportunism which had ruled from
Trajan (98ff) to himself was brushed aside. The
first determined, systematic, and general measures
against the Christians were set on foot in the epoch-
making edict of 250. Its wording is lost, but its

8 On these millennial celebrations see Gibbon, Ch. VII, Ed. Smith,
I, 459-60.

The Decian Persecution. 67
purport is all too well known. All Christians, with
out regard to age and sex, shall be asked to sacri
fice and to take part in the sacrificial meal ; torture
shall be used if necessary; if the Christians deny
the faith the matter is left to the discretion of the
judge ; but it is not left to his discretion whether he
shall carry out the decree, for that is secured by
threats of punishment, and withal by a special sac
rificial commission.9 Sometimes those who con
fessed were sent away to immediate death by cruci
fixion, fire, beheading, stoning, or hunger ; at other
times they were labored with or imprisoned, hoping
for recantation. In prison it was expected to break
them down by hunger, thirst, heat, or other tortures,
so as to save them at last. Celerinus at Rome was even
personally besought by either Decius or Valerian
to abandon his faith, but without success. "He lay
in punishments, but the stronger for them ; impris
oned, but greater than those who imprisoned him;
lying prostrate, but loftier than those who stood;
bound, but firmer than the chains ; judged, but more
sublime than those who judged him," etc.10 Among
the bishops slain was Fabian in Rome, Alexander in
Jerusalem, Babylas in Antioch; while others saved

9 Cypr. Ep. 43 (39) : "Five leaders lately associated with a magistrate
in an edict." See also the libelli quoted below. 10 Ep. 39 (33), 2.

68 Cyprian: The Churchman.
themselves by flight, as Cyprian in Carthage, Diony
sius in Alexandria, Chseremon of Nilus, and Greg
ory the Wonder Worker in Neo Csesarea. The
goods of the fled were confiscated, and many of
the fugitives were destroyed by the sufferings of
the way.
It is unnecessary to say that, with a spiritual
condition of the Church such as I have already
described, thousands fell away. Would more stand
to-day? The majority of the congregation in Car
thage immediately disowned Christianity. They could
not quickly enough crowd around the officers and
get certificates of quittance.11 When the magis
trates wanted to put off the examinations with the
coming on of evening, the Christians could hardly
submit to the delay. Cyprian scorches them with
burning words for this unseemly haste spiritually to
destroy themselves. "Why bring with you, O
wretched man, a sacrifice? Why immolate a vic
tim? You yourself have come to the altar an of
fering, you yourself have come a victim; there you
have immolated upon salvation your hope; there
you have burnt up your faith in the deadly fires."12
It was the same in other cities, though in Rome
more stood firm. "The Church in Rome stands

11 Cyp. de Lapsis, 7. VI Ibid. 8.

The Decian Persecution. 69
firmly in faith, though some have been driven by
terror."13 It was a universal picture of devastation
— "look upon the world devastated, and thrown
everywhere are the relics and ruins of the fallen."1*
Cyprian sees himself placed "among the ruins of the
wailing, the relics of the fearing, the great slaughter
of the yielding, and the little firmness of those stand
ing."15 It was a world-wide sorrow. The confess
ors felt themselves "placed among various and
manifold griefs, on account of the present desola
tions of many brethren throughout almost the whole
world."16 Perhaps worse than straightforward denial was
the bribery of corrupt officials to place the names
of the bribe-givers on the list of the offering ones
(acta facientes), generally by the presentation of
an officially certified paper that such an one had
sacrificed (libellatici) , by which personal appear
ance before the authorities was avoided. Cyprian
says these must repent exactly the same as though
they had sacrificed,17 though he describes some of
them as not going to the heathen altars through
conscientious motives, and as sending a friend to
the officers with the frank avowal that they are
Christians and can not come to the demons' "altars,"
IS Cyp. Ep. 8 (2), ». M Ibid. 30, 5. P« Ibid. 11 (7), 8.
16 Ibid. 31 (25), 1. 11 De Lapsis, 27.

70 Cyprian: The Churchman.
and that therefore they "pay a price for not doing
what is not lawful for me to do."18 This shows
the easy corruptibility of the pagan officers, who
almost tempted the Christians to buy their lives
("when the opportunity of securing a certificate
was offered"). Let it be said to Cyprian's credit
that his ethical sense here was perfectly sound.19
Who would have believed that after centuries
and more there would have been unearthed these
very tell-tale certificates? Did those poor Chris
tians who thus, moved by mortal fear, purchased
their safety ever think that their falseness would
come forth in the far-off years and condemn them
out of the very sands? An interesting illustration
of the solemn word, "There is nothing hid that shall
not be revealed."20 In 1893 and 1894 two of these
testimonials were dug up in the province of
Faioum, southwest of Cairo. One is in the
Breugsch collection of the Berlin Museum, the other
in that of Archduke Rainer in Vienna. They are
little pieces of papyrus leaf, written in Greek, much
damaged after their long waiting for the light.
They have been skillfully integrated and deciphered,
one (the Brugsch) by Dr. Fritz Krebs, the other by
Professor K. Wessely. The Rainer papyrus is ac-
18 Ep. 55 (5i), 14- W Ep. 30, 3.
20 Matt, x, 26 ; Mark iv, 22 ; Luke xii, 2.

The Decian Persecution. 71
cessible to our readers in the Hurst "History of the
Christian Church," I, 243, and I copy here a trans
lation of the Krebs :
"To the commissioners of sacrifice of the village
of Alexander's island from Aurelius Diogenes (son
of) Satabus, of the village of Alexander's Island.
About 72. Scar on right eyebrow. I was both con
stant in ever sacrificing to the gods, and now in
your presence, according to the precepts, I sacri
ficed and drank and tasted of the victims, and I
beseech you to certify this. May you ever prosper.
I, Aurelius Diogenes have delivered this." (Then
follows in another handwriting, hardly readable,
the certificate of the officers) "I Aurelius 
( ? saw) him sacrificing. I, Nys (thes, son of) ....
non have signed.
"First year of the Emperor Csesar.
Gaius Messius Quintus
Trajanus Decius Pius
Felix Augustus.
2d day of Epiphi.21 (June 26, 250.)
21 For the Brugsch papyrus see Krebs in Sitzungsberichte d. Konig.
Preus. Akademie d. Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 30. Nov. 1893 (47, 100) ; Har
nack in Theol. Litz. 20. Jan. 1894, 38-41 ; Kruger,"Die neuen Funde auf dem
Gebiete der altesten Kirchengeschichte (1889-1898), Giesen 1898, 17, 18 ;
J. Wordsworth in The Guardian, Jan. 31, 1894, 167. For the Rainer see
Wessely in Sitzungsb. d. K. Akad. Wissensch., Phil. Hist. Classe, 141-B
Wien. 1894; Harnack in Theol. Litz. 17. Marz, 1894, 162-3; A- J- Mason
in Guardian, March 21, 1894, 431. For both see Appendix B. in Benson,
Cyprian 541-4.

72 Cyprian: The Churchman.
But there were thousands of brave ones who
would not deny their Lord. The Martyr Acts give
us accounts of Pionius and his companions in
Smyrna, of Maximus, of Lucianus, and Marcianus,
and other names are in the letter of Dionysius to
Eusebius22 and in the letters of Cyprian. The
prisons were full of sufferers, and many, especially
the clergy, were put to death. We must never
think, however, of the wholesale executions — not
to speak of massacres — which characterized the
Roman Catholic suppression of the Protestants.
Nothing like the rescript of Trajan is known in
these later annals, and the methodical and carefully
legal, though relentless, forms of Decius and Gale-
rius would have seemed almost like Paradise to those
who suffered in the wholesale butcheries of the six
teenth century. And to the poor Jews of the Middle
Ages, the worst Roman emperor by the side of
their Christian persecutors shone white and fair.
We need not be surprised if the devastating
effects of the Decian onslaught made a profound
impression on the imagination of the Church. It
reminded Dionysius of Alexander of the last times
before the coming of the Lord;23 Lucian calls De-

22 Eus. H. E. 6, 40-42. For the martyrologies see Ruinart and the se
lections of von Gebhardt, 1902, and Preuschen, 1905.
23 Eus. 6, 41, 10.

The Decian Persecution. 73
cius the "pioneer of antichrist ;"24 Hilary of Poitiers
places his persecution together with that of Nero ;25
Optatus of Mileve thinks of the four beasts of Dan
iel, and says: "The first beast was as a lion: this
was the persecution under Decius and Valerian;"28
but the worst was the judgment of Lactantius —
"the execrable animal Decius."27
Professor Victor Schultze makes the point that
this persecution can not strictly be called a general
one, even if it was so intended. The imperial order
was not caried out in some places, and in others
only apparently. It was chiefly confined to the
cities, though not altogether, as the libelli just re
ferred to show. "The unquiet political relations did
not allow systematic measures strongly and con
sistently to be carried through, and these measures
therefore never went farther than having the effect
of a quickly passing convulsion."28

24 In Cyp. Ep. 22 (21), 1 : metator antichristi. Metator is a land
measurer, and sometimes the surveyor who goes before to measure land for
the camp. 26 Contra Constantium, 4. 26 De Schism. Don. 3, 8.
27 De Mort. Persec, 4. 28 Art. Decius in Hauck-Herzog, 3. Aufl. IV, 528.

CHAPTER VII.
A NEW QUESTION IN DISCIPLINE.
When the storm burst Cyprian secured himself
by flight. The heathens of the city cried out vio
lently in the circus and on the streets, "Cyprian to
the lions !" His presence in the city made the storm
heavier for the Christians, and to relieve them, to
save himself for the congregation at a difficult time
when they specially needed his guiding and con
trolling hand, he obeyed the Lord's command,1 and
fled for refuge elsewhere. His hiding place was a
secret to the authorities, though known to faithful
friends, through whom by letters Cyprian exercised
a careful and conscientious oversight over his flock.
However little we can blame him, his flight gave to
the five dissatisfied presbyters a handle for criti
cism. They accused him of cowardice and aban
doning his flock, and what was specially odious,
they wrote to other Churches, especially to Rome,
and placed his flight in the worst light. Rome had
1 Matt, x, 23 ; cf. John xviii, 8. 74

A New Question in Discipline. 75
lost her own bishop by martyrdom, and doubtless
there were some there who would wonder at this
apparent lack of fidelity. They therefore wrote him
a letter, which did contain indirect and yet not in
distinct reflections.2 Cyprian defended himself in
a letter to his clergy and later to Cornelius in Rome,
showed the motive which led him to flee, and besides
that already mentioned, referred to visions and
Divine commands.
A new question now arose — that is, what is to
be done with apostates who desire to return to the
Churcft ? This, of course, was not absolutely a new
question, because in every persecution there had
been such cases. But in the thirty-eight years of
peace a new generation had come on the scene. Be
sides never before had the Church been struck so
hard, so suddenly and so universally, and there were
crowds of lapsed in nearly every large town. When
the persecution ceased after eighteen months, and
even before it ceased, many of the unfaithful ones
desired to be taken back. With thousands clamor
ing for admission, the question was by no means so
easy as when the Church had only to impose pen
ance on a few. Still more, the question was com
plicated by martyr certificates, of which later.
2 Ep. 8 (2).

76 Cyprian: The Churchman.
What would the apostolic Church have done
with one who in storm of persecution had gone back
to heathenism, and later desired to return? After
penitence, he would have been received back into
full membership. By and by there grew up an ar
tificial distinction in regard to both virtue and sin,
at which perhaps asceticism lay at the root. Instead
of a heart converted to God and serving Him gladly
in the joy of a new life, the Catholic conception of
morality grew up which looked upon perfection as
the rare attainment of few, notably the abstinent.
Then certain sins came to be regarded as so heinous
that when once a Christian had committed them,
though penitence was required and final salvation
not denied, yet the Church herself would not re
ceive the sinner into her ranks again. By the end
of the second century this appears to have been the
rule. Already in Hermas, about 150, the adulterer
can only be received back after the first offense.
The second cuts him off finally.3 Besides, Christ
is coming soon, and he will decide the matter Him
self. With the exaggerated emphasis on baptism, due
also to the Catholic evolution, it came to be con-

3 Mand. 4 : 1, 8. For cropping out of Catholic ideas, see Did. 6, Anc.
Horn. (=" 2 Clem ") y, 3, Herm. Sim. 5, 3.

A New Question in Discipline. 77
sidered that while baptism wiped away effectually
all former scores, grave sins committed after bap
tism could find no formal forgiveness here, though
the Church would still pray for the offender and
hope for the best from God.4 This conception was
all the harder, as Moeller well says, for with the
consolidation of the societies into the Catholic
Church, which was going on in the latter part of
the second century and all through the third, ex
clusion from one society meant exclusion from the
whole Church.5 The three sins which fell into the
category of mortal irremissible sins were murder,
adultery, and apostasy to heathenism, and perhaps
sins nearly related to them. As early as 177, at
Lyons and Vienne in France, it would appear that
the guilt of apostasy could be wiped out only by a
manful confession at the same or a subsequent per
secution,6 though at Corinth at the same time ap
parently all sinners could be restored.7 At about
200 there was a regular scale for penance and pun
ishments; the lighter was confession of ordinary
sins and the daily prayer for forgiveness, with
warning and correction; the heavier involved ex
clusion, followed with severe confessions and pen-

4 Iren. 4: 27, 2 ; Ter., De Pud. 7. » Von Schubert-Moller, KG.
I, 279. 6 Eus. 5 : 1, 33, 46. 1 1bid. 4 : 23, 6.

78 Cyprian: The Churchman.
ances, but ending in return to Church fellowship;
the heaviest of all (for the three deadly sins men
tioned above) was exclusion from the Church for
all time, the offender being placed in the ranks of
lifelong penitents and the final decision being re
ferred to God.
Along with this there came the idea of merit,
that pardon might be more readily received by as
cetic virtues, and that these might compensate for
the graver sins and their eternal punishment.8 So
sprung up the idea of satisfaction, which hoped from
fasting, kneeling, wearing sackcloth and ashes, etc.,
to receive special grace and favor,9 whereas at the
beginning the self-denials served only to prove the
earnestness of the penitent. The two great Roman
jurists, Tertullian and Cyprian, helped to bring in
this legal idea, — an externalization of the relations
between man and God which has ruled Latin theol
ogy from that day to this. If therefore the sinner
could in some way get these penitential works to his
credit, the way would be opened for his readmit-
tance, even if he were a mortal sinner. '
I said a moment ago that the case was compli
cated in Carthage by the letters of the martyrs.
These were simply certificates or briefs issued by
8 Ter. De Poen. 9. 9 De Poen. 9 ; De Pud. 5 ; De Pat. 13.

A New Question in Discipline. 79
confessors and martyrs to the effect that the person
receiving the letter had done penance for his apos
tasy from Christianity, and praying or demanding
that he be taken in again. The lapsed thronged
around the cells of the sufferers, and by impor
tunity, flatteries, weeping, etc., obtains from them
those letters of peace, or martyr's certificates of
favor. But why did they go to these ? Here again
we must go back a little. At the beginning the
congregation received the penitent acting through
the president or elders.10 But the apostles and
prophets, as special bearers of the Spirit, were al
ways looked upon as competent to represent the
society in these or other functions, and if any pre
cedence was granted, it was these and not the elders
or bishops who enjoyed it.11 Now after these char
ismatic offices of apostles and prophets had van
ished, martyrs or confessors came to be regarded as
having authority something similar, inasmuch as
they had stood the highest test of Christianity in the
face of threatened death, and thus proved that the
power of the Spirit specially dwelt in them.12 They
therefore could forgive sins or mediate the forgive
ness of the society. Inasmuch as martyrdom itself

10 Ter. Ap. 39. 11 1 Cor. v, 3, 4. Did. 10, 7.
12 Hip. De Christ, et Antichrist. 59 ; Hermas, Vis. 3, 5.

80 Cyprian: The Churchman.
wiped away the stains of the worst sins,13 it created
merit in overabundance, from which it could be
communicated to the needy.14
One can readily see, therefore, how the martyrs'
letters of peace came to play such a large part in the
Decian persecution, and how there might arise a
jealousy on the part of the bishops in regard to
the too zealous exercise of their prerogatives. Lit
tle by little, but with the relentlessness of an on
coming tide, the standing office, especially that of
bishop, replaced the free charismatic office of apostle
and prophet. By the time the second century had
passed this substitution was well-nigh complete. By
the bishop's mouth the society proclaimed to the sin
ner forgiveness or excommunication. He had
taken into his hands the watching over both doctrine
and life. He forgave the lighter sins; he was, in
fact, the doorkeeper of the Church.15 At the bot
tom Tertullian always looked upon the society itself
as proper possessor of the power of the keys,16 but
with that the bishops, as the successors of the apos
tles, were generally thought of as those who had the
right of holding and loosing sins. As a matter of
course, the more the official importance of the
bishop, the objective worth of his office as mediat-
18 Ter., De Pud. 22. 14 Eus. H. E. 5 : 2, 6, 7.
IS Ter., De Pud. 14, 18. 16 Ibid. 21.

A New Question in Discipline. 8i
ing salvation, waxed, the more his real importance
as a man representing the holiness of the Gospel,
his subjective character of moral purity, waned.
Office took the place of character. "The bishops'
office was the natural ally of lax penitential disci
pline."17 It is interesting to see the mixing of these two
streams in Tertullian. He considered everything a
heavy sin which carries with it an injury of the con
gregation as the temple of God,18 and he ap
propriates the utterance of the Paraclete that the
Church has a right to forgive sins because she has
the Spirit in her prophets, though from pedagogic
motives, she actually does not do it.19 Idolatry,
adultery, and murder are unforgivable sins, so far
as Churchly recognition is concerned.20 The bishop
as the organ of the society has the right to forgive
lighter sins (delicta leviora), that is, those which do
not belong to the three major.21
A new stage enters with Callistus, bishop of
Rome, who in 217-8 peremptorally issued an edict
in which on his own motion he said : "To those who
have done penance I remit the sins of adultery and
fornication."22 This novel decree was all the more

17 Von Schubert-Moll er, I, 282. 18 De Pud. 19. Cf. the 7 cap
ital sins in Adv. Marc. 4, 9. 19 Do Pud. 21. 20 Ibid. 1, 4.
21 Ibid. 18. 22 Ibid. x.

82 Cyprian: The Churchman.
offensive on account of the history of the man who
gave it, — a slave and runaway defrauder, deported to
the Sardinian mines for his crimes.23 In this decree,
while admitting that the rights of the congregation
and of the martyrs must be preserved, Callistus
says that the bishop is the only possessor of the
power of the keys in virtue of his apostolic suc
cession. This leads Tertullian to scorn with cut
ting words the assumption of the "apostolicus," and
to reply that as little as the bishops have prophecy
and miraculous power, so little have they power of
binding and loosing, but rather the prophets.24
This union of hierarchical claims with loose dis
cipline brought in by the former scoundrel and thief,
Bishop Callistus, of Rome, set the pace for Roman
Catholic history. It was a principle of Callistus that
no bishop could be deposed even for mortal sin, and
that the Church must necessarily be composed of
sinners, as the tares grew with the wheat.25 This
meant in fact a complete transformation of the idea
of the Church. In place of the apostolic thought of
the Church as a body of holy people, "called to be
saints," the Church became an institution of salva
tion, in which by an objective holy office the work
23 Hip. Ref. 9, 12. 24 That is, the Motanist prophets, De Pud.
ax. The Montanists kept up the old institution of the prophets, which the
general Church had allowed to lapse. 25 Hip. Ref. 9, 12.

A New Question in Discipline. 83
of instruction is carried on for the sinful members
of the society. "The Church is" — not the saints, the
believing members of Christ — but, "the number of
the bishops."26 With this elevation of the bishops
as the teachers and leaders of the societies, comes
also with Callistus the first use of Matt, xvi, 18, as
the exclusive property of the Roman see. So his
peremptory decision is the preparation for the
Roman primacy, and as von Schubert well says, the
scornful pleasantries of Tertullian when he derides
his brother at Rome, — "pontifex maximus is the
bishop of bishops"27 — is a "prophecy of the future."
26 See Tertullian, De Pud. 21 ; von Schubert-Moller, I, 284.
27 De Pud. 1.

CHAPTER VIII.
CYPRIAN, THE LAPSED, AND THE
CHURCH IN CARTHAGE.
The treatment of apostates to heathenism at
Carthage is one of the most difficult questions in
Church history. It has to be worked out with in
finite patience from the Epistles of Cyprian, and to
arrange these epistles in order of time is itself a per
plexing problem. Thanks to Cyprian experts like
Fechtrup, Otto Ritschl, Benson, and Karl Muller,
we have now a light and broad path through this
thorny thicket. In this chapter I shall follow the
guide of Professor Karl Muller, formerly of Bres-
lau, now of Tubingen, who, I think, gives the clear
est and most satisfactory statement.1
First, as to terms used. Those who were im
prisoned or banished for their faith were called
confessors by Cyprian. When tortures were used,

1 " Die Bussinstitution in Karthago unter Cyprian," in Zeitschrift
fiir Kirchengeschichte, XVI, 1-44, 187-219 (1895).

Cyprian, the Lapsed. 85
which was frequently done, especially the laceration
of the iron claw, under which death sometimes came
as a welcome relief, the sufferers were called mar
tyrs, a term which was also used of confessors who
die for any reason. Later Cyprian employed the
same word to designate those banished to the mines,
but under the expectation of their death.
Now what was the cause of the trouble between
Cyprian and some in his Church? The ordinary
treatment of the lapsed, as we saw in the last chap
ter, was simple exclusion — not from the prayers and
sympathies of the Church, but from readmittance.
But a new element came in when the martyrs and
even confessors gave to the deniers of Christ libelli,
or letters of peace, testifying to their penitence, for
giving their sins in effect if not in form, and peti
tioning for their admission. It is unfortunate that
the papyrus hunters have not dug up a libellus of
this kind, so that we do not know exactly their tenor.
On account of the relation of the martyrs to the
Spirit referred to before,2 it was understood that
they could give these letters of forgiveness, and that
such letters would be favorably considered. But
not only did those expecting death give the letters,

2 " Die Bussinstitution in Karthago unter Cyprian," in Zeitschrift
fiir Kirchengeschichte, XVI, 1-44, 187-219 (1895.)

86 Cyprian: The Churchman.
but non-tortured confessors who did not expect
death. Later the confessors united and gave letters
to all the fallen, to go into effect in case they (the
confessors) died. If they did not die, the lapsed in
voked the general grant of peace given in the name
of the martyr Paulus. This right of the martyrs to
forgive mortal sin was a survival of the old power of
the prophets, and excited no special comment, — not
at least till Callistus struck at the martyrs in favor of
the bishops, so that the custom soon came to be for
readmission to be carried out by the bishops and
congregation alone, though in Carthage still with
the co-operation of martyrs.
Cyprian's legal training and conservative spirit
made him cling to the martyr's prerogative. No
lapsed shall be taken in again who is not supported
by the intercession of martyrs. And after he had
determined, according to the example of Rome,
whose decision ordinarily had great weight with
him, that mortal sinners could be received again, he
made the condition that they must show a martyr's
letter. But this at first only had reference to those
lapsed who were sick unto death. For the others
Cyprian said that they must wait until the bishops
were back from their hiding places and could hold
a council in safety, when they would decide what

Cyprian, the Lapsed. 87
weight would be accorded to the martyrs' and con
fessors' letters to the general run of the lapsed.
In this the martyrs agreed. It does not appear
(contrary to Ritschl) that Cyprian and the mar
tyrs were fundamentally at variance, or that the lat
ter expected letters to be immediately acted upon;
but rather that they should wait till the persecution
was over, the lapsed assembled, and investigation
made into each case. The old Callistian emphasis
on the bishop was thus completely at home in Car
thage. What Cyprian is anxious for is not that the
martyrs should not have all their rights, but that
moral discipline should be guarded. When the con
fessors communicate to Cyprian (Ep. 23 [16])
that they have granted peace to all the lapsed, he
does not see in that a slap at himself, but he fears
a despising of his exhortations to moderation in re
gard to libelli and of evangelical principle in re
gard to discipline. Lucian, the principal confessor,
does not know the Holy Scriptures (Ep. 27
[22] ), — right principles as to discipline. The thing
will cause hate and difficulties among the lapsed,
and the bishop's strictures and reserve will be seen
in bad contrast to the large-heartedness of the con
fessors. It is only the universality with which peace
is there given which appears to Cyprian the danger :

88 Cyprian: The Churchman.
it threatens to tear discipline to pieces and endan
gers the bishop's moral position. The Confessors
do not threaten in Ep. 23 (16) to withdraw com
munion from Cyprian, nor do they understand any
thing more than that the bishops must act on
tlieir pardons after sufficient penance on the part of
the lapsed, and that these pardons can come into
force only at the end of the persecution. Nor do
they blame him for his flight.3 The confessors had
never taken up churchly communion with the fallen,
to whom they had granted peace. The bishops must
first speak, then comes peace.
Now what was the attitude of the presbyters in
Carthage to this question ? Without waiting for the
decision of the bishops, these, on the strength of
the peace letters of the martyrs, opened communion
immediately with the lapsed.4 Was this due to the
letter of the Roman presbyters to their Carthaginian
colleagues,5 as Ritschl and Harnack think? No.
The old view is not well founded that a sharp oppo
sition existed between the presbyters as a whole and
their bishop. What happened was that four presby
ters6 wrote to Cyprian in the first stage of the per
secution (between February and April, 250) to
3 See Eps. 26 (17) and 27 (22) for Cyprian's reply.
4 Ep. 15 (10), 1 ; 16 (9) : 2, 3 ; 17 (n), 2. 6 Ep. 8 (2).
6 Donatus, Fortunatus, Novatus, and Gordius.

Cyprian, the Lapsed. 89
move him to show mildness to the fallen, and to
give peace anyhow to the dying. Cyprian did not
comply.7 Soon after came the second stage of the
persecution when there was a possibility to help the
fallen by the martyrs. Now a pa*rt of the presbyters
take advantage of this, and on their own motion
grant Church communion to the lapsed who possess
martyr's certificates without waiting for the de
cision of the bishop. That is, at the daily offering
(what we call the Lord's Supper) they receive their
gifts, present their offerings for them, and let them
take part in their whole celebration and in the
Eucharistic meal.8
The situation becomes clearer when we look at
Alexandria. There the martyrs gave prayer and
table communion to the penitent lapsed, and Bishop
Dionysius asks his Antioch colleague whether he
will indorse this.9 There (in Alexandria) the
bishop had no right to decide the case himself. The
martyr-libellus was sufficient. The bishop followed
as a matter of course. This gives us a clear view
of the old Church practice. There was no formal
solemn declaration of the martyrs and of other
pneumatics; they simply get the conviction that

7 Ep. 14 (5), 4. 8 15 (10), 1; 16 (9), 2; and other passages. See
Muller, p. 85, note 2. 9 Eusebius vi, 42.

go Cyprian: The Churchman.
God has forgiven the penitent sinners, and so com
munion was naturally opened to them.10
Compare now the behavior of the Carthaginian
presbyters. They disown the right of the bishop to
decide, and took it upon themselves. Their be
havior is therefore a dishonor to the episcopate, and
a despisal of his priesthood and of his chair.11
That is, they act as was customary at Alexandria
at that time. But their behavior appears in a dif
ferent light to Cyprian, because the right of the
bishop had developed otherwise in Carthage than
it had in Alexandria. Callistus's exaltation of the
bishop had struck home more deeply in Carthage.
But the presbyters at length come around. They
break off communion with the lapsed.12 They con
fess that their decision is only for the time being,
and that in any case the bishop had to decide. The
opposition therefore could not have been as heavy
as it has been represented. At the bottom they did
not oppose Cyprian's episcopal rights as he con
ceived them. They only waived them at the start
If they belonged to an older generation who had
known other ways in the persecution of Septimius
Severus (reigned 193-211), their conduct is quite
natural.

10 Sohm agrees with this. 11 Ep. 17 (11). 12 Ep. 20 (14), 2.'

Cyprian, the Lapsed. 91
Still there were presbyters whose opposition
went deeper — especially Fortunatus and Novatus.
For the latter, who was on the lax side at Carthage
and the strict side in Rome, it was probably opposi
tion to Cyprian himself.13 They even wrote to
Rome to urge denial of all communion to Cyprian.14
Cyprian defends himself to the satisfaction, it seems
to me, of all impartial students.15
Probably Novatus was the leading spirit in this
irreconcilable opposition, who worked on the sym
pathies of his colleagues for former customs, — ¦
those "good old times," perhaps, when the bishops
did not loom so high.
We come now to the lapsed. They stormed the
confessors and martyrs, as we have seen, and re
ceived libelli by the thousand. But their hopes were
all dashed to the ground when the presbyters with
drew the communion they had first granted. This
created a critical situation. All the lapsed without
exception had received letters of peace from the
confessors, — a gross abuse of privilege. The lapsed
cried aloud for the communion promised. In the
provinces the pressure was so great that the bishops
gave in, at least in part. In Carthage the clergy
18 See Cyprian's portrayal of this old hate in Epistle 43 (39), 1.
14 If we may so interpret what is back of Epistle 20 (14).
16 Ep. 20(14).

92 Cyprian: The Churchman.
wavered. Cyprian must meet them half way. In
formed of the difficult position of the clergy, Cyprian
concluded to concede something. On his own ini
tiative he wrote saying that in the prospect of death
peace could be granted to those who could show
martyr's certificates, that is, they would be received
into full communion with the Church.16 That was
the standpoint that the Roman society had taken at
the beginning of the persecution, only without hav
ing regard to martyr's certificates. In fact, in
Rome the martyrs and confessors would have noth
ing to do with the lapsed.
Cyprian made no further concessions, the Afri
can bishops assented to his principles, Rome came
out in the same way, and most of the lapsed quieted
themselves.17 A part, however, remained defiant.
The martyr Paul had given them peace ; they had it
therefore already in heaven; let the Church give it
also, to which they already belonged in a true
sense.18 It will be seen from this that if the dis
satisfied lapsed attach themselves to the dissatisfied
presbyters, we have the materials for a new Church
in Carthage. And so we come to the so-called schism of Feli-
cissimus, — a dark corner in Church history, though
16 Ep. 18 (n). 17 32 (31), *. 18 33 (26); 35 (=8); and 36 (29), 1.

Cyprian, the Lapsed. 93
Karl Muller has thrown welcome light into it. About
March, 251, the persecution over, Cyprian prepared
to go back to Carthage. The confessors had not yet
dared to assemble in full public meeting. Only
three presbyters are faithful from Cyprian's point
of view; the others are either scattered or as un
trustworthy as a part of the society. Some of the
lapsed are still in revolt. Cyprian sends therefore a
commission of two bishops and one or two Cartha
ginian presbyters to attend to some things before
he ventures himself. They are to distribute finan
cial help from the Church treasury to the needy,
particularly to those who need help in business,
making Careful inquiry as to conditions, worthiness,
etc. They are also to note the able and faithful in
the Church, and those who are eligible to Church
office. No sooner is the commission at work than
Felicissimus steps out against them and threatens
the brethren who applied for aid, that, if they take
the money and obey the bishops, he would not per
mit them to communicate even on deathbed. A
part then fell back, but the majority took the money.
Why this passionate interference of Felicissi
mus ? And why did a part of the society hold with
him? With the expected return of the bishop it was

94 Cyprian: The Churchman.
a fitting time for the opposition to come to a. head
Otherwise the investigations of the commission
might overawe and their subventions win. Besides,
as soon as Cyprian returns, he will begin a careful
inquiry into each case of the lapsed. Will this in
vestigation be favorable ? Will those who rushed to
the tribunals to deny Christ shine well beside those
who were overcome by torture? But both classes
had already received letters of peace from the mar
tyrs or in their name. Look at the hardness of the
bishop in going behind the letters to weigh each
case ! This is the moment, therefore, to assert their
rights, and standing on the prerogative of the mar
tyrs, claim their place in the Church.
It is probable that Felicissimus was only a
spokesman for the five presbyters who are always
seen at his side. And as a prominent layman —
there is no evidence for the common idea that he
was a deacon at this time — it may have been sup
posed that he would influence the lay members to
revolt. Cyprian acted with promptness. He sent
word to the commission to exclude Felicissimus, an
other layman, Augendus, and any others who held
with them, from the Church. This they did. There
fore the schism.
Hitherto it had been largely a layman's move-

Cyprian, the Lapsed. 95
ment. Now the five presbyters came out boldly on
the side of Felicissimus, some of whom had com
municated with the lapsed. They now open the
doors of communion to this class. They lead the
lapsed to destruction, says Cyprian.19 They slight
the decree of Cyprian and of the Roman clergy and
confessors, as well as all the bishops of this and of
the other side of the sea. They create a new sacri
legious tradition. They erect another altar, a new
priesthood. So they separate themselves froni the
Church, for in it is only one altar, that of the
bishop. The latter need not exclude them: they
have excluded themselves before all the world.
Did the presbyters and Felicissimus so think?
Evidently not. After the martyrs have granted for
giveness to the penitent lapsed, they really have
peace in heaven, and no bishop is justified in for
bidding another to hold communion with them.
That is, the presbyters really place themselves upon
the old standpoint of the precatholic time when the
charismatic ministry, the prophets and apostles, who
spoke in the Holy Ghost, were still living forces in
the world. Their voice was now heard, so to speak,
in the martyrs, who had shown by their heroic tes
timony that they had succeeded to the spiritual

19 Ep. 43 (39).

96 Cyprian: The Churchman.
power of apostles. Whatsoever they bind or loose
on earth is bound or loosed in heaven. Cyprian's
attempt to tie this prerogative to an official class,
the bishops, evidently made no impression on some
of the older generation in Carthage. It is" the old
story of the prophet against the priest. But one
part was struggling against, the other for, the cur
rent of the age, and that makes all the difference in
the world as to success or failure, though not as to
right or wrong.
But the new Church continued. Felicissimus
was ordained deacon. Cyprian returned on or after
Easter, 251, and therewith ceases his correspondence
with the society. A great synod was held in Car
thage in 251 to deliberate on the question. It ex
communicated Felicissimus and the five presbyters,
and as to the lapsed decided (1) that there should
be a careful examination of each case ; (2) that the
lapsed who had not sacrificed, such, for instance, as
the thuriticati or those who only burned or threw
incense to the emperor's image or at the altars of the
gods, and such as had bought certificates from the
officers, — that these could be restored to full mem
bership after penance and public application to the
bishop; (3) that the sacrvHcati should be restored
at the hour of death, if they continued penitent; (4)

Cyprian, the Lapsed. 97
but that those who showed penitence only in sick
ness or at approaching death should be refused.20
This was certainly a sensible middle way, — keep
ing something of the former strictness, and yet con
ceding a good deal to the actual facts and to the
necessities of souls. It will be noticed that the
bishop's prerogative is fully secured, and that the
martyr's libelli are left out in the cold. The day
of the bishop had fully come.
Why this strictness to those who sacrificed, how
ever, and tenderness to the rest of the lapsed ? Were
they sinners above all others? It was impossible
that a compromise like that, however well meaning
and on the whole just, should stand, especially in a
time when a fresh persecution might at any moment
bring penitent lapsed to the jaws of death. The
Church must either go back to the second century
conception of remissible and irremissible sins, or go
back farther to the apostolic conception of the par-
donableness of all sins, except such as from their
nature reveal a heart deliberately and irrecoverably
given to evil.21 But the Church does not know the
heart, and all she can act on is the presumption of
the genuineness of the penitence. The main ques
tion with the Christian is not, Has he sinned ? The
20 Ep. 54 (50), and especially 55 (51).
21 See Matt, xii, 31-2 ; Heb. x, 26-31 ; 1 John v, 16-7.
7

98 Cyprian: The Churchman.
affirmative may be assumed, at least for sins of
thought, neglect, inadvertence. The real question
is, Is he truly penitent? The Church can not go
back of that record, even if she has to follow her
Master in His staggering severities.22 We need not
be surprised, therefore, if a year or two later a
second synod, in view of a threatening persecution,
gave peace to all the lapsed, who had kept them
selves to the Church and had faithfully done pen
ance. This was coming round to the position of
the presbyters and Felicissimus, though for another
reas6n and by another road. But these continued
their independent action, had Fortunatus conse
crated bishop of Carthage, sent an embassy to Rome
to win recognition there, and kept up their Church
for some time. How long we do not know. The
movement had no reason for existence after the ac
tion of the second Cyprianic council, and apparently
died a natural death soon after that. With such a
bishop as Cyprian to pass on questions of the lapsed,
it was just as well that it died.
Now as to the results. We see how Cyprian
changed. First, he was disinclined to grant peace
to the lapsed. Then he was willing to grant it to
the dying who had martyr's letters. After that
22 Matt, xviii, 22.

Cyprian, the Lapsed. 99
when his first council left martyrs and confessors
entirely out of the account, and decided that whole
classes of lapsed should have peace during life,
Cyprian agreed, as he did finally when the second
council decided that all could have peace. Why
was this? Evidently it was because each advance
left the bishop more and more in possession of the
field. Notice the development of the Church generally.
Formerly the martyrs had the right to give com
munion to those whose sins they forgave, or of
whom they said, in virtue of their possession of the
Spirit, that God had forgiven. But that did not
compel the society to take in the offender, it only
enabled it to do so. Where the bishop had to de
cide as to the participation in the Eucharistic sacri
fice, no sinner could come to that offering without
his consent. (Customs may have varied more or
less in different cities.) But that did not mean that
the bishop had the initiative alone, and that the
judgment of a martyr might remain in suspense.
The society itself or a part of it could grant com
munion to a fallen brother on a martyr's claim, and
with their weight press the bishop to a favorable ac
tion. Only the last decision remained with the
bishop, because he presided at the offering.

ioo Cyprian: The Churchman.
In all this Callistus, as far as we know, was the
first to make a change. He left the martyrs out,
and shoved in between them and the society the
decision of the bishop. Their claim has no power
till the bishop indorses it. This principle was
adopted at once in the West, at least in Carthage.
Still some sections in the Church held to the old
practice, as the presbyters in Carthage, and the
lapsed grasped so eagerly at it that they expected
the bishop and the society without more ado to
govern themselves according to the letters of the
martyrs. But their fate was sealed, because the lat
ter never once put in an absolute claim of deciding
their admission. That they left to the bishops and
congregation. Cyprian was victor. He advances, martyrs dis
appear, the bishop alone is left. Finally, the bishop
can go his own way, if necessary, even in spite of the
will of the congregation. With that is reached the
first step that can be called Catholic in the full sense.
History is being made with a vengeance. No mor
tal sin excludes : adultery, murder, apostasy — all can
'. be fixed up in the regular penitential institution of
j the Church.
In the East, however, the old conditions re
mained for some time. In Alexandria, about 250,

Cyprian, the Lapsed. ioi
the bishop had no clearly defined right to vise the
decision or pardon of a martyr, nor was it cus
tomary. As late as the Diocletian persecution
(303 ff) the martyrs played a similar role in that
city, as they did in Carthage in 250. But these are
only unessential fragments of a time forever flown.23

28 Prof. Karl Muller, whom I have followed in this exposition. See
oote, p. 84.

CHAPTER IX.
THE NOVATIAN CHURCH.
IP the Felicissimus movement in Carthage,
growing out of the disciplinary and penitential con
troversy in which Cyprian had such a large share,
came to nothing, so far as a separate Church was
concerned, that can not be said of a movement that
sprang from the same cause in Rome, of which the
letters of Cyprian are our chief contemporary in
formation. That spread from R/>me west to Spain
and east to Syria, and continued a separate and dis
tinct Church life Catholic in essentials and ortho
dox for five centuries. This had so close a relation
to movements in which Cyprian was a chief actor
that a brief statement concerning it is in place. It
is one of the most significant outgrowths of the
Cyprianic age.
We have already seen that in the second and
early part of the third century it was customary to
exclude definitely and finally from the Church those
guilty of idolatry, adultery, and related sins, and
murder, reserving for the penitents of this class the

The Novatian Church. 103
mercy of God in the next world. This shows clearly
that at that time the Church was not thought of as
coextensive with salvation; that is, one might be
saved and yet not be a member of the Church. This
strict exclusion was broken up by the Roman bishop,
Callistus (218-23), who made an exception of sins
of impurity, though alleviations were permitted by
the custom of honoring martyrs' intercessions and
forgiveness. It is evident that in Cyprian's time
absolution for gross sins of the flesh was not un
common.1 One of the consequences of Callistus's
looseness was the separate Church of Hippolytus
in Rome. But as the Hippolytan Church had al
ready amalgamated with the general Church before
250, there had probably been a sharpening of dis
cipline by Callistus's successors. This does not
mean that fleshly sinners were finally excluded in
Rome, for absolution for such sins was no longer
a matter of controversy there. As to idolatry — that
was another matter.
The Decian persecution changed the whole sit
uation. The number of the lapsed was so great that
to keep up the old rule imperiled the existence of
congregations. Even Tertullian seemed to feel that
overstrictness in some cases here might be unjust,

1 Ep. 4 (61); 55 (sx), 20.

104 Cyprian: The Churchman.
for in torture one might deny the faith as it were
involuntarily, while keeping it unspotted in his
heart.2 Besides, the doctrine of the Church de
manded a change. If the Church is the hierarchy,
"outside of which there is no salvation," then the
old belief is deceptive that God could receive the
penitent sinner to grace to whom the Church had
denied absolution. There is no doubt that the
Decian persecution greatly helped this theory.
Would it be merciful to relegate vast masses of
penitents to the uncovenanted mercies of God, when
their reception again into the Church might make
their salvation certain ? Besides, it was the custom
almost universal in 250 to give remission just be
fore death. Why not make assurance doubly sure ?
Who knows when death may come ? Why keep the
penitent in this miserable uncertainty? If the
Church forgives, they are forgiven. "The longing
of the lapsed after reconciliation, the insecurity as to
salvation where Churchly absolution failed, even
with earnest penitence,3 shows most distinctly that
the Church was forced by her laity to hold herself
as the indispensable condition of salvation."4 It

2 De Pud. 22. 8 Eus. 6, 44.
4 Harnack, art. on Novatianism in the Hauck-Herzog, 3. Aufl. XIV,
223-42 (1904). Harnack has gone into this matter with characteristic Ger
man thoroughness, but with his own lucidity, and I follow his conclusions
in this chapter.

The Novatian Church. 105
was carrying this theory out to its logical result, the
theory that the Church, through her officers, has
the power of the keys, that she opens or shuts the
kingdom of heaven, and that only those to whom
she opens go in, — it was this thoroughly Cyprianic
theory which at the bottom caused by way of pro
test -the great Novatian Church.
Novatian was a presbyter of the Roman
Church, one of the holiest and ablest of her clergy.
He was the only theologian of the Roman Church
for three centuries. He was learned, eloquent, and
a thinker, and it has been left to recent research to
restore to his name some books which Catholic
copyists later either could not or would not assign
to their real author — him whom they looked upon as
a schismatic — but knew it was perfectly safe to
father upon Cyprian. Could an arch-schismatic
write such books as those on the "Spectacles," on
"Modesty," on the "Praise of Martyrdom," on the
"Jews?" Horrors! Never! Put them down to
Cyprian! The poverty of the Roman Church in
learning and theological power is a striking fact in
the history of the early Church. Her uninstructed
presbyters when they write letters to Carthage,
printed in Cyprian, can not command decent Latin.
Therefore during the fifteen months' vacancy in the

106 Cyprian: The Churchman.
chair after the martyrdom of Fabian (January 20,
250), when the government of the Church reverted
according to the primitive custom to the presbyters
with the laity, their literary spokesman was Nova
tian. He conducted the correspondence of the so
ciety. "A maintainer of the Gospel and of Christ,"
Cyprian scornfully calls him — Cyprian was a dealer
in sarcasm — after he became the leader of an inde
pendent Church.5 His conduct was blameless, and
even his enemies can charge nothing against him.
The presbyter college in Rome, when not decimated
by persecution, consisted of fifty-three persons,8
and at their head in moral weight after the death of
Fabian stood Novatian, while of their next bishop,
Cornelius, we hear nothing.
We have three letters of the Roman presbyters
in Cyprian (other letters are lost), of which two
are by Novatian.7 In the first it is said that it is
the custom to give absolution to the sick penitent
lapsed, a custom which Cyprian now follows im
plicitly,8 though at first he was stricter. In Epistle
30, written by Novatian, the practice followed by
Cyprian is praised, and, with all strictness against
the libellatici, the possibility of a reception again

S Ep. 44 (40), 3. 6 Eus. 6 : 43, xx. *7 Eps. 8 (2) in uncouth Latin,
and 30 and 36 (29) by Novatian. 8 See Eps. 18 («2); 19 (13); 20 (14), 3.

The Novatian Church. 107
into the Church is not cut off. When peace is re
stored, the matter of the lapsed shall be treated in
a great council. Until that time let them show a
proper penitence. "We will pray that upon the
penitence of the lapsed the effect of the pardon shall
follow, and that they in knowledge of their trans
gression shall prove their patience in the mean
time."9 This middle path, he says, we have fol
lowed in common with some neighboring bishops
and those present in Rome. No new practice shall
be introduced, not at least till a bishop is elected.
In the other epistle, Novatian shows perfect agree
ment with Cyprian, and strongly supports him in
his conflict with lax confessors and their letters of
peace. So the letters which Cyprian sends to Roman
confessors show harmony both in Rome itself and
between Cyprian and Rome.10 Up to the beginning
of spring, 251, therefore, there was no sign of an
independent Church in Rome. While Novatian
was characterized by the moral earnestness and de
cision with which he asserted evangelical vigor and
a robust faith, he did not differ materially from
Cyprian and the Church of his time as to dealing
with the lapsed.
Like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky all this is
9 Ep. 30, 6. 10 Eps. 28 (24); 31 (25); 37 (15).

108 Cyprian: The Churchman.
changed. In March, 251, after the Decian perse
cution stopped, Cornelius, a novice who had been
clothed with all the clerical offices one after the
other, was elected bishop of Rome by the majority.
But the minority, consisting among others of at
least five presbyters and the most honored con
fessors, immediately elected Novatian bishop, and
had him ordained according to the ordinary cus
tom by three bishops. There we have the start of
the second independent Catholic Church in Rome.11
Why was this?
It has been shown by Harnack that formally and
on the surface the difference that caused the move
ment was a purely personal one. The presbyters
and confessors simply did not like Cornelius ; they
distrusted him ; they had no respect for him. But
they had perfect confidence in Novatian and re
spected him profoundly. It has been one of the
frequent mistakes revealed by Church history, —
the election of men to high office who do not com
mand the entire respect of all whose duty calls them
to judge. 11 The view of some old Protestant writers and some modern Baptists
that the Novatian Church was a reaction in favor of primitive Christianity
is not well founded. As to moral discipline, it was stricter than the general
Church, and its idea as to the power of the keys more spiritual ; but in
nearly all its customs and doctrines it did not differ one iota from the main
Church, This is admitted by the eminent Baptist scholar, Prof. Albert
Henry Newman, in his Church History, I, 207 (1900}.

The Novatian Church. 109
But the personal objection was unconsciously
mixed up with another partly personal, partly
theoretical. During the persecution and after, Cor
nelius's behavior was not entirely above suspicion.
Even if the accusation that he was a libellaticus was
unfounded, he had been in communion with bishops
who had offered to idols, especially with Trophi-
mus, who had given up strict discipline.12 Corne
lius, therefore, notoriously represented a lax disci
pline, and he was therefore unacceptable to the
stricter members of the society. The majority
elected him (as Harnack well says) in the interest
of self-preservation, believing that he would govern
mildly. It is evident also that Novatian was not
himself the inciter to the second Church, — but was
pressed into it. "If thou against thy will," says
Dionysius of Alexandria in his letter to him, "as
thou sayest, have been carried along, then prove it
by coming freely back again.'"13 More easily said
than done. The matter went deeper than Dionysius
thought. Over against the threatening loose rule
under the slippery Cornelius, Novatian decided to
emphasize again the old penitential discipline, and
to admit exceptions no more. Starting with per
sonal dislike, the thing went forward to material

32 Ep. 55 (51), 10. W Eus. 6, 45.

no Cyprian: The Churchman.
differences. It was an eternal lesson to the Church
to elect men as pastors and bishops upon whom all
can unite in respect and love. "If one considers,"
says Harnack, "how for a long time in the East and
West the lax and strict practice existed peacefully
together (even after the Novatian Church) without
any schism until far on into the fourth century and
even longer, if we remember that at the beginning
Cyprian always blames the fact of the schism not
the theory of the schismatics, one can not doubt
that the differences would have been borne with
farther by both sides if they had not been poisoned
in one and the same congregation by irreconcilable
cpposition between personalities."14 On the other
hand, as Harnack admits, the range which the No
vatian movement took and its long duration show
that the fundamental differences in principle were
after all the chief ones.
Now what attitude did Cyprian take to this
movement ? If it is evident that the lofty character
and theological attainments of Novatian and the
naturally rather strict views of the Carthaginian
would have won him completely to Novatian's side
if it had not been for two things. Thejirst was the
situation in Carthage itself. On account of the

14 In Hauck-Herzog, 3. Aufl. XIV, 233.

The Novatian Church. iii
open schism of Felicissimus, Cyprian had been com
pelled to yield so far as to grant the taking in again
of the lapsed.16 He was veering more and more to
moderate views on this. Second, his Church views
made recognition of Novatian impossible. The
Church is clergy and laity gathered around one law
fully elected bishop. There could be no more two
bishops in one city, in one local Church, than there
could be two heads on one man. To hold to one
bishop is the essence of Christianity. Since Corne
lius was lawfully elected, he is the God-appointed
head of the Roman Church, and not to gather with
him is to gather with the adversary, Satan. That
there could be two independent Churches in Rome,
one in love and loyalty to Christ, one in faith, hope,
and charity, but with different discipline, different
government, different heads independent of each
other but not independent of the Church and of
Christ, — that is a thought that never entered
Cyprian's head, or, if it did, to be repudiated in
stantly. He was too much a child of the third cen
tury for that. But it is evident that the strictly
Catholic evolution had not gone so far that it had
carried every one to his position. If it had, the
greatest spirit in the Roman Church in the third

w Ep. 43 (39). esP' 11 a. 6-

112 Cyprian : The Churchman.
century would not have allowed himself to be
elected as a bishop of the Roman Church, nor would
presbyters, confessors, and laymen have united in
electing him. For the previous legal election of
Cornelius was incontestable.
But the majority were with him who had the
seat. At a great Roman synod where there were
sixty bishops and many presbyters and deacons,18
Novatian was excommunicated, and penance only
(not lifelong exclusion) proclaimed for all the
fallen. Novatian tried by letters and embassies to
win recognition from brother bishops. Nor was he
altogether unsuccessful. Fabius of Antioch favored
him, and numerous synods at least did not disown
him. Not so Cyprian. He wrote to the Roman
confessors trying to call them off from the schism,
so called, which as usual he covered with opprobrious
epithets.17 I might have added to the two reasons
which led Cyprian to oppose Novatian a third, viz.,
that his enemy in Carthage, the presbyter Novatus,
who had been one of the chief supporters of Felicis
simus, went to Rome and instead of favoring the
lax side of Cornelius, as he naturally would if his
principle had not been, Anything to beat Cyprian, he
went over to the camp of Novatian, and/did what
16 Eus., 6, 43. 17 Ep. 46 (43).

The Novatian Church. 113
he could to help him and hurt Cornelius and
Cyprian. Is it any wonder that Cyprian stood by
Cornelius ?
Novatus makes the Carthaginian furious. He
attacks him with all his accustomed venom, perhaps
more. Novatus is "always greedy of novelty, rag
ing with insatiable avarice, inflated with arrogance
and stupidity of swelling pride ; always known with
bad repute to the bishops; always condemned by
the voice of all the priests as a heretic and perfid
ious ; always inquisitive that he may betray ; flatters
that he may deceive; never faithful that he may
love; a torch and a fire to blow up the flames of
sedition, a whirlwind and tempest to make ship
wrecks of the faith; the foe of quiet," etc. "Or
phans despoiled by him, widows defrauded, moneys
of the Church withheld; his father died of hunger
in the street, and left unburied. The womb of his
wife was smitten by a blow of his heel, and in the
miscarriage that followed the offspring was brought
forth, the fruit of the father's murder."18 That's
Cyprian. I wonder how much of this was personal
hatred of an opponent, the exaggerated rhetoric of
the advocate, and how much the actual description
of a scoundrel priest. In the first case it is a bad

18 Ep. 52 (48), 2.
8

114 Cyprian: The Churchman.
reflection on Cyprian; in the second, it is a worse
reflection on the Church. But it is inconceivable
how a man of Novatus's reputation, as Cyprian
described it, could exert the influence he did in
Rome, according to Cyprian's account, who makes
him the chief cause of the Novatian movement.19
Anyhow, as Harnack says, the solidarity between
Cornelius and Cyprian received its strongest seal
in the common opposition against Novatus.
Cyprian now tried to win the Roman confessors
from the side of Novatian. He succeeded. Corne
lius wrote to him that the glorious confessors, Max-
imus and his companions, had forsaken Novatian
and returned to the Church, and that they had said
that they had been deceived by the malice, cunning,
lies, perjury, and wolf like friendship of the de
ceiving and crafty beast, the schismatic and heret
ical Novatian.20 But when the confessors them
selves came to tell to Cyprian the story of their
leaving Novatian they practically make Cornelius
a liar, as they allege no faults in Novatian, but sim
ply their concern for the welfare of the Church.
They say: "We are certain, dearest brother, that
you also rejoice together with us with equal ear-

19 The Liberian Catalogue does the same. It says : "At that time
Novatus came over from Africa, and separated Novatian and certain per
sons from the Church." 20 Ep. 49 (45).

The Novatian Church. 115
nestness that we having taken advice, and espe
cially considering the interests of peace of the
Church, having passed by all other matters, and
reserved them to God's judgment, have made peace
with Cornelius, our brother, as well as with the
whole clergy."21 Here they hinted at heavy ob
jections to Cornelius, but they have been persuaded
for the sake of unity to waive them, leave them to
a Higher Judgment. In order to confirm them,
Cyprian writes and sends them a copy of his great
book on the "Unity of the Church," on which a
word later.
' Novatian did not give up his cause, but sought
all the more to push on the institution of new
bishops.22 A second embassy of Novatian agita
tors went to Carthage, among them Novatus him
self, while Cornelius immediately sent his own peo
ple for counter effect, and characterized the others
as transgressors and knaves. The Novatian em
bassy succeeded in gathering a society in Carthage,
over which Maximus (not to be confounded with
the confessor) was made bishop. There were now
three independent Churches and bishops in Car
thage — Cyprian, Fortunatus (Felicissimus), and
Maximus, representing the moderate, the lax, and
21 Ep. 53 (49)- 22 S5 (Si). *4-

116 Cyprian: The Churchman.
the strict theories of discipline, but all being alike
Catholic in doctrine and polity. But Cyprian, in
spite of all his passionateness against the "lax,"23
had to make more concessions, which, of course,
sharpened the opposition of the Novatian Church.
These concessions were the forebodings of the ac
tion of the Carthaginian council of May, 253, when
under the threatening clouds of the new persecution,
that of Gallus, it was decided that all the penitent
lapsed should be immediately received.2* A sensible
decision, say we of to-day, but what a fall from the
olden times. One of the reasons for this decision
was alleged to be visions and revelations,25 to which
Cyprian, no doubt with absolute honesty and per
haps truth, laid claim, and which reminds me of
the "private wire" of my late lamented colleague,
Professor Samuel F. Upham, who used to say in his
inimitably droll way, "Brethren, beware of the man
who has a private wire to heaven." The council,
however, did not renounce the communion with
bishops who still kept up the old practice, only
threatening them with the judgment of God for their
strictness. They evidently did not want to make it
necessary (says Harnack) for any one to go over
to the Novatian camp.

23 Ep. 59 (54), 12. 24 57 (53). 25 Ibid. l\ 2, 5.

The Novatian Church. 117
The persecution of Gallus was not really as se
vere as was feared. Nevertheless it gave oppor
tunity for many of the lapsed in the Decian to wit
ness a courageous confession, and thus show the
genuineness of their penitence and standing as
Christians. By the banishment of Cornelius it en
abled his friends to celebrate him as a confessor,
and they now said that God himself had legitimated
him over against Novatian. The latter henceforth
drops out of the Cyprianic letters. Many bishops
kept up the strict practice without joining Novatian.
At the great council of Antioch, though Novatian .
was acknowledged as bishop, the loose practice won
the day. While some Churches came back to the so-
called Catholic Church, the Novatian movement
spread over Egypt, Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, even
as far as Mesopotamia, and at the beginning had
great success.26
At the bottom what was the difference between
the parties? What did the Novatian Church stand
for? While at the start Novatian did not differ
materially from Cyprian, he came back under the
stress of the lax drift and from aversion to the per
son and views of Cornelius to the older view which
limited the power of the keys to remissible sins. He

86 Eus. 7, 5;Ep. 55 (5i), «4-

118 Cyprian: The Churchman.
went on to explain Matt, x, 32-33 as the kernel
of the Gospel, therefore to deny absolution in any
case to one who had lapsed into heathenism ; while
the most conservative of the other party allowed
absolution to the penitent in view of death, to be fol
lowed soon by a much more general application of
the mercy of the Church. Understand that Nova
tian did not deny eternal salvation to the lapsed on
the strength of Matt, x, 33, nor deny the efficacy of
penitence, but said only that the Scriptures left the
decision to God, and the Church had no right to
anticipate this judgment and grant absolution in
cases reserved to Himself. Harnack makes the
whole question come to this: What is the Church
and what are her powers ? If she is the indispensa
ble institute of salvation to the extent that out of
her no one can be saved (Cyprian), then it is fear
ful cruelty to deny to any penitent admission some
time before death-. Cyprian's doctrine of the Church
must inevitably lead to generous dealings with all
sinners, and we see in the so-called Catholic
Churches to-day (Roman, Anglican, Greek, Rus
sian, Armenian, etc.). Cyprian did not say, of course,
that all in the Church would be saved, only that
none outside of her would be. On the other hand,
if the Church is the institute of salvation in the

The Novatian Church. 119
sense that she has the Gospel, the means of grace,
etc., but that salvation is not absolutely bound up
with her, that God still works outside of her, then
leaving apostates outside, while giving them prayers,
sympathy, exhortation, etc., is not cruelty, because
they can still be saved. And the Church will not for
these sinners go beyond the Word.
Besides, the Cyprianic and soon the general
Church theory means, as I have just hinted, a lib
eral interpretation of the parable of the wheat and
the tares. The Church is not the society of the
saints, of the elect, but she is the ground on which
they grow. Her religious character is represented,
not by the character of her members, but by her
possession of the keys, of sacramental absolution,
of ordination, of exclusive grace. These are in
dispensable to salvation, but they do not guarantee
salvation. But she instructs for salvation, and
stimulates to virtue, and only in her has virtue any
worth from God.2T All this meant further exter
nalizing, for we have to tell the inquirer where the
Church is. This led to the priesthood, especially
to the episcopate, which in its unity guarantees the
legitimacy of the Church. So every schism becomes
in effect a heresy, — an advance beyond Irenaeus and
27 Ep. 54 (50); 57 (S3), 4-

120 Cyprian: The Churchman.
Tertullian. On the other hand, Novatian said, the
Church must exclude great sinners ; she can not ab
solve idolators, but must refer their case to God,
who alone has the power to forgive such sins.28 "It
is not necessary," he said, "to have peace from the
bishops in order to share in the glory of the martyrs,
— greater peace is to be received through the au
thority of the Lord."20 He believed also that mortal
sin in any member of the society stains in a sense
the whole Church.30 The Church's formal forgive
ness is not necessary to salvation ; ' God reserves
some authority to Himself. The chief matter is
union with Christ. The Church ,must be really
what she is ostensibly, — a Church of saints.
To an evangelical Christian the Novatian move
ment must look as a well-meant but belated and vain
effort to "save the face" of primitive Christianity
in an ill-timed emphasis on second-century features
of pentitential discipline by those who knew apos
tolic Christianity almost as little as their opponents.
Both were Catholic, not evangelical. If the Church
must be Catholic, perhaps the bishops were as wise
as Novatian. The greatest transformation Chris
tianity ever underwent — that from the Gospel of
faith and love of the first century to the hierarchical

88 Soc. 4, 28. 29 Ep. 57 (53), 4. 80 55 (5I), 27.

The Novatian Church. 121
and sacramental Catholicism of the second and
third — that transformation the bishops carried
through, Harnack thinks, with moderation and dis
cretion. And if that transformation was an his
torical necessity, back current eddies like Nova-
tian's, the Donatist, etc., were as futile as they were
illogical. Still they are interesting as reminders of
another and truer age.

CHAPTER X.
MERCY AND HELP.
The glory of ancient Christianity was as much
its love as its faith. The love was the fruit of the
faith and showed its genuineness and its power.
This was the talisman which opened the hearts of
many pagans: Behold how these Christians love
one another. An instance or two of this in Cyp
rian's life shows that great bishop and Christian in
his most attractive light.
The barbaric tribes who were driven back from
the fertile coast line of Africa by the Romans were
never entirely subdued, but ever and anon made
raids on the peaceful settlements, — prophecy of the
coming time when Vandal and Saracen would sweep
away African Christianity and the civilization which
went with it. "In the year 252 there was a concen
trated general advance. Mauretania felt them.
They broke out of Aures through the grand chain
of fortress settlements, harassing the domains of the
strongest towns, Thubunae in the salt marsh, and
122

Mercy and Help. 123
the vast soldier colony of Lambaesis. From the
Sahara they came right through the province itself
into the terebinth woods of Tucca and to the great
center of traffic, Assuras, little more than a hundred
miles from Carthage. The Christian population of
at least eight sees was thus lacerated."1 It was
principally the women and children whom the Ber
bers thus kidnaped.
These Berber raids seem in real cruelty to have
been child's play beside the Turkish massacres
of Bulgarians in 1876 and of Armenians in 1895,
but they were sufficiently devastating. As to kid
naping, that is an old practice which seems in
digenous to those Eastern lands, of which our own
generation has had reminders in the cases of the
accomplished and devoted Miss Stone, kidnaped
by revolutionists restive under Turkish misrule in
1901, and the American Perdicaris, kidnaped by a
Mohammedan insurrectionary chief in this same
Mauretania in 1904, when we had Roosevelt's
famous message, "Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead !"
The redeeming of captives was not specifically
a Christian virtue. Cicero praises it as especially
becoming senators: "That benignity is useful to

1 Benson, 236-7. Benson is wonderfully careful and accurate in all
geographical, antiquarian, and legal information.

i24 Cyprian: The Churchman.
the State by which captives are redeemed from slav
ery, and the poor are enriched. That it was the
common custom with our order we see copiously
described in the speech of Crassus. This kind of
bounty I prefer far before the munificent exhibition
of shows. That is the part of grave men and of
great, this of flatterers of the populace."2 But it is
doubtful how much pure benevolence in the Chris
tian sense there was in this, or whether it was not
something like the modern practice of exchanging
prisoners of war. At any rate in rescuing the Ber
ber captives everybody contributed, rich and poor —
the spontaneous pouring out of affection for those
in distress. In the Church of Carthage about one
hundred thousand sesterces (about $4,006) were
contributed, — an enormous sum for a Church just
decimated by persecution, which always meant con
fiscation of property, as well as the imprisonment,
banishment, or death of bread-winners. It shows,
however, the tremendous hold Christianity had got
ten on all classes of society — not less among the
rich — in the third century.
An interesting letter is that which Cyprian sends
with the contribution.3 The cold lawyer of heathen-

2 De Officiis, 2, 18. The liberal " redeem those captured by robbers,"
etc. (2, 16). 8Ep. 62 (59).

Mercy and Help. 125
ism, whose old sternness had not left him, however,
in dealing with men of his own faith who had left
his kind of unity, has been transformed by the beau
tiful spirit of Christian piety. "With excessive
grief and with tears, dearest brethren, I have read
your letter, which, from the solicitude of your love,
you wrote to me concerning the captivity of your
brethren and sisters." He then quotes the fine
passages of Paul, 1 Cor. xii, 26, 2 Cor. xi, 29, and
says : "The captivity of our brethren must be reck
oned our captivity, and the grief of those in danger
our grief, since indeed there is one body of our
union ; and not love only, but religion ought to in
stigate and strengthen us to redeem the members of
the brethren." He then refers to the possible fate
of women and girls, and adds: "Our brotherhood
considering all these things according to your let
ter, and sorrowfully examining, have all promptly
and willingly and liberally gathered together sup
plies of money for the brethren, being indeed always
according to the strength of their faith prone to
the work of God, but now once more stimulated to
salutary works by consideration of so great a suffer
ing, we have then sent you a sum of one hundred
thousand sesterces, which have been collected here
in the Church over which, by the Lord's mercy, we

126 Cyprian: The Churchman.
preside, by the contributions of the clergy and peo
ple established with us, which you will there dis
pense with what diligence you may." He deprecates
the coming of such a calamity again, but says that
if it should come the Church in Carthage "will will
ingly and liberally render help." He encloses sep
arately the names of contributors, especially "of my
colleagues and fellow-priests," and asks the Numid-
ian Church to remember them in prayer.
Perhaps a severer test was the terrible plague
which visited Africa in 252. It was a kind of malig
nant typhoid fever, complicated with other horrible
symptoms or diseases. Nothing tests fidelity to al
truistic ideals better than a fearful visitation like
this. Modern Christendom hardly knows what this
means, though India and .Ireland have known
famine; and occasionally tropical diseases, the off
spring of insanitary living and effluvia of the ac
cumulated filth of ages, have struck civilized lands,
(e. g., yellow fever, New Orleans, 1878, 1905.)
The last time a great plague spread from the east
and south as far north as England was in 1663-5,
though portions of Europe were devastated more
than once in the eighteenth century, and parts of
the East frequently in the nineteenth. The fatality
of these epidemics is something awful, the Black

Mercy and Help. 127
Death of 1348-50 carrying away, it is said, a quar
ter of the population of Europe. We need not be
surprised, then, at the agony and mortal terror of
pagan populations when such a specter stepped into
their midst. Those that could fled to uninfected
places or anywhere to escape the dread disease.
They left their sick behind, or thrust them out of
their houses to die in the streets, and left their dead
bodies unburied. " Before mine eyes in opposition sits
Grim death, my son and foe."
What a commentary on that generous and beautiful
paganism some of our moderns praise !
For twenty years this plague went to and fro
through Mediterranean lands. It came back to
Alexandria in 261 and in four years it had reduced
the population one-half. It was the ally of the Per- ¦
sian in his war with the Roman Emperor Valerian,
for it slew more Romans than his sword. In 262
five thousand died in Rome, and — if the historian
Trebellius Pollio is considered correct — the same
number in Achaia in a single day ! Is it any won
der that to contemporaries it seemed the darkest
misery that every visited mankind ?
The heathen struck coins and raised altars to

128 Cyprian: The Churchman.
"Healthful Apollo" (Apollo Salutaris). But their
effective remedy has just been mentioned, — flights,
desertions, barred gates, assassinations, drugged
possets, seizures of fortunes of the sick and dying.
Let the simple story of Cyprian's Deacon Pon
tius tell how both sides met the "hateful disease"
which invaded every house in succession of the
trembling populace, carrying off, day by day, with
sudden attack, numberless people, every one from
his own house. All were shuddering, fleeing, shun
ning the contagion, impiously exposing their own
friends, as if with the shutting out of the person
who was sure to die of the plague, one could shut
out death itself. Meanwhile over the whole city
there lay the carcasses of many, and by contempla
tion of a lot which in their turn would be theirs, de
manded the pity of the passers-by for themselves.
No one regarded anything but his cruel gains. No
one trembled at the remembrance of a similar event.
No one did to another what he wished for himself.
In these circumstances it would be wrong to pass
over what the pontiff of Christ (Cyprian) did, who
excelled the pontiffs of the world in the love, as he
did in the truth, of religion. As the people as
sembled together in one place he urged the benefits
of mercy, teaching by example the same lessons how

Mercy and Help. 129
greatly the duties of benevolence avail to deserve
well of God. Then he said that there was nothing
wonderful in our cherishing our own people only
with the needed attentions of love, but that he might
become perfect who would do something more than
the publicans and the heathen. He must overcome
evil with good, practice a clemency like the divine
clemency, love even his enemies, pray for his per
secutors, as the Lord exhorts. God continually
makes his sun to shine and sends , showers upon
aliens as well as His own. And if a man professes
to be a son of God, why does he not imitate the
example of his Father? It becomes us, he said, to
answer to our birth (respondere natalibus), and it
is not fitting that those who are evidently born of
God should be degenerate, but rather that the propa
gation of a good Father should be proved in His
offspring by the emulation of His goodness."*
The congregation responded nobly. They raised
an abundant fund, formed a staff for nursing the
sick, another for the burial of the dead, and covered
the stricken city with a network of relief. What
impression did this make upon the heathen? Ap
parently not very much. They were enraged be
cause the Christians did not join in their offerings

4 Vita Cyp. 9.
9

130 Cyprian: The Churchman.
to Health, to Apollo, and to Coelestis, Queen of
Heaven (compare the offerings of Roman Catholics
to Mary, Queen of Heaven, under similar and other
circumstances). The populace clamored for the
blood of the overseer, Cyprian, who was prompting
the noblest relief for them. "To the lions," they
called out in circus and amphitheater, and had him
officially proscribed :5 pagan to Cyprian, Jew to his
Master after the raising of Lazarus.6 Pontius
speaks of his later banishment as a pagan recom
pense for benevolent civic activity, for his "with
drawing from living sight a horror like that of
hell, for saving his country from becoming the
empty shell of an exiled population."'
Cyprian's book, "Of Works and Alms," may be
considered an echo of this great self-sacrifice of
the Carthaginian Church. It is his philosophy of
good deeds, his doctrine of merit. Is he here Cath
olic or Protestant? I think he does not belie his
age nor himself. "God can be appeased by alms
giving alone."8 "By works of righteousness God is
satisfied, and with the deserts of mercy sins are
cleansed."9 He quotes the angel Raphael : "Prayer
is good, and fasting, and alms; because alms also

5 Ep. 54 (59), 6. 6 John xi, 53. 7 Vita Cyp. 11.
8 De Opere et Eleemosynis, 4. 9 Ibid. 5.

Mercy and Help. 131
doth deliver from death, and it purgeth away sins."10
Prayer alone is of little avail unless it be made suffi
cient by good works. He takes Christ's words in
Matt, xix, 21, as the law of the Gospel, and not sim
ply the instruction which at that time the wise
Teacher saw was best for the case before him. God
"distributes to our merits and good works the prom
ised rewards." "The Lord will never fail of giving
a reward for our merits."11
On the other hand, the treatise "Of Works and
Alms," is a noble plea for beneficence and good
deeds. He strikes home upon those who by the
"coveteousness of money do nothing for the fruit
of their salvation," and he hopes that the "blush of
dishonor and disgrace may strike upon their sordid
consciences." He boldly represents Satan twit
ting Christ with the devotion of his (Satan's) fol
lowers, the rich gifts they give to Him, and the
meanness of Christ's people. "Show, O Christ, such
givers as these of Thine — those rich men, those
men affluent with abounding wealth — whether in
the Church wherein Thou presidest and beholdest
they set forth a gift of that kind, having pledged
or scattered their riches, yea having transferred
them then by the change of their possessions for

ID Tob. xii, 8, 9. 11 De Op. et El. 26.

132 Cyprian: The Churchman.
the better, into heavenly treasures ! In those spec
tacles of mine, perishing and earthly as they are, no
one is fed, no one is clothed, no one is sustained by
the comfort of any meat or drink. All things be
tween the madness of the exhibitor and the mistake
of the spectator are perishing in a prodigal and fool
ish vanity of deceiving pleasures. There in thy poor
thou art clothed and fed. Thou providest eternal
life for those who labor for Thee, and scarcely are
Thy people made equal to mine that perish, although
they are honored by Thee with divine wages and
heavenly rewards."12 How beautiful his praise of
charity : "An illustrious and divine thing is the sav
ing labor of charity ; a great comfort to believers, a
wholesome guard of our security, a protection of
hope, a safeguard of faith, a remedy for sin, a thing
placed in the power of the doer, a thing both great
and easy, a crown of peace without the risk of per
secution ; the true and greatest gift of God, needful
for the weak, glorious for the strong, assisted by
which the Christian accomplishes spiritual grace,
deserves well of Christ the Judge, accounts God
his debtor. For the palmt>f work of salvation let
us gladly and readily strive, let us all in the struggle
of righteousness run with God and Christ looking
12 De Op. et El. 22.

Mercy and Help. 133
on. And let us who have already begun to be
greater than this life and the world slacken our
course by no desire of this life and of this world.
If the day shall find us, whether it be the day of
reward or of oppression, furnished, if swift, if run
ning in this contest of charity, the Lord will never
fail of giving a reward for our merits : in peace He
will give to us who conquer a white crown for labor,
in persecution a purple one for death."13 We have
here the words of a holy and devoted shepherd of
souls, though of one steeped in Catholic ideas.
The sufferings which come to Christians and
heathen brought up the two questions: (1) Why do
calamities come to the world? and (2) Why do
Christians suffer? It will be interesting to notice
how these puzzling everlasting questions are an
swered by Cyprian.
In one of his most interesting books he takes up
the first question. It seems that Demetrianus, pro
consul of Africa, had charged upon the Christians
that they were the cause of all the terrible plagues,
etc., which were now falling upon the empire. This
opinion of his lent zest to his persecuting measures.
Cyprian meets it in this book "Ad Demetrianum" in
two ways. First, he says that such things must be

is De Op. et El. 26.

134 Cyprian: The Churchman.
expected in the old age of the world, when the
forces of nature are drying up and all things hasten
ing to a common ruin.14 How foolish to impute
to Christians what is due to nature. "No one
should wonder that everything begins to fail in the
world when the whole world itself is in process of
failing, and in its end." Second, so far from calam
ities being punishments for Christians' impiety, they
are direct punishments for heathen idolatry. All
these natural evils — pestilence, disease, failure of
crops, famine, etc. — are "in consequence of the sins
which provoke them." They are all stripes of the
Lord. The treatise is a terrific arraignment of the
evils of the time, and a proof that Cyprian's hiding
from persecution was not due to cowardice, for no
coward could write in this strain. "You complain
that the enemy rises up, as if, even though external
arms and dangers from barbarians were repressed,
the weapons of destructive assault, the calamities
and wrongs of powerful citizens, would not be more
ferocious and more harshly wielded within. You
complain of barrenness and famine, as if drought
made a greater famine than rapacity, as if the fierce
ness of want did not increase more terribly from
grasping at the increase of the year's produce and
14 This striking passage is inserted in the Hurst Ch. Hist. I, 198-9.

Mercy and Help. 135
the accumulation of their price. You complain that
the heaven is shut up from showers, although ir.
the same way the barns are shut up on earth. You
complain that now less is produced, as if what al
ready had been produced is given to the indigent.
You reproach plague and disease, while by plague
itself or disease the crimes of individuals are either
detected or increased, while mercy is not manifested
to the weak, and avarice and rapine are waiting
open-mouthed for the dead. The same men are
timid in the duties of affection, but rash in quest of
impious gains, shunning the deaths of the dying, and
craving the spoils of the dead; forsaking sick
wretches lest they by being cured may escape the
hand clutching for their estate."15
Cyprian denounces the heathen method of deal
ing with Christians, tearing their bodies, lacerating
their vitals, or devising new tortures.18 Besides in
this case tortures, which are used to extort con
fessions of crime, are not necessary ; because Chris
tians readily confess their Christianity. Publicly,
openly, in the hearing of your magistrates and gov
ernors I freely confess that I am a Christian ; why
then do you apply tortures to one who thus openly
destroys your gods ?17 But as to the main question,
It Ad. Demet. 10. 16 Ibid. 12. 17 Ibid. 13.

136 Cyprian: The Churchman.
Why are these evils permitted? they are the direct
judgments of the Almighty.
As to the second question, Why do Christians
suffer ? Cyprian came to that in his beautiful treatise
"On Mortality," written to comfort the Christians
in the plague. The first reason is the common
humanity which Christians have with others. All
the ordinary disabilities of the flesh, all ordinary
disasters, must necessarily be common to all who
wear the common body.18 The second reason is the
fact that Christians are attacked by the devil more
than others.19 Besides, they must be tried as sol
diers, that their courage and constancy may appear.
Their trials perfect faith, strengthen virtue.20 After
describing the horrible symptoms of the plague he
says: "What grandeur of spirit it is to struggle
with all the powers of an unshaken mind against so
many onsets of devastation and death ! What sub
limity to stand erect amid the desolations of the
human race and not to lie prostrate with those who
have no faith in God! But rather to rejoice, by
suffering and showing forth our faith going for
ward to Christ by the narrow way that Christ trod,
we may receive the reward of his life and faith ac
cording to His own judgment."21 As consolation
18 De Mort. 8. 19 Ibid. 9. 20 Ibid. 13. 21 Ibid. 14.

Mercy and Help. 137
Cyprian looks away to the other life — it is Paul's,
The sufferings of this present time are not worthy
to be compared with the glory that shall be re
vealed.22 But there are compensations here: the
plague snatches virgins away from the danger of
brothels, boys from the perils of their unstable age,
and matrons from the torments of the executioner.
Besides by all these things the "lukewarm are in
flamed, the slack are nerved up, slothful stimulated,
deserters compelled to return, heathens constrained
to believe, the ancient congregation of the faithful
called to rest, the new and abundant congregation
of the faithful gathered to battle with a braver vigor
to fight without fear of death when the battle shall
come."23 In addition Cyprian sees in the plague a kind
of probation, a testing. This proves its pertinence
and necessity. It searches the righteousness of each
one; it proves whether the healthy tend the sick,
whether relatives love their kindred, masters pity
servants, physicians forsake patients, the fierce sup
press their violence, rapacious their avarice, the
haughty bend their neck, wicked soften their bold
ness, the rich give. It trains Christians for martyr
dom by teaching them not to fear death. "These are
22 Rom. viii, 18. 23 De Mort. 15.

138 Cyprian: The Churchman.
trainings for us, not deaths. They give the mind
the glory of fortitude; by contempt of death they
prepare for the crown."24.
The best part of the treatise is devoted to a
beautiful exhortation to fidelity on account of the
heavenly rewards that await the faithful. Here
Cyprian appears at his best. Why should we bewail
those who are "not lost but gone before?'"25 Why
should we wear black here for those who wear
white there ? Will we lay ourselves open to the re
proach of the heathen that the heart does not in
dorse the testimony of the mouth?26 Death is the
entrance to life. Therefore let us hail the day that
calls us home. There our dear ones are waiting for
us — parents, brothers, children, all longing for us
and solicitous for our salvation. To attain their
presence and embrace — what a gladness for them
and us. There death can not enter. Then think of the
company ; the glorious company of the apostles, the
host of rejoicing prophets, innumerable multitudes
of martyrs,27 the triumphant virgins, the men of
mercy who won the reward of kindness to the poor.
To these let us hasten with eager desire ; let us crave

24 De Mort. 16. 25 Sciamus non eos amitti sed praemitti. 26 Ibid. 20.
27 Apostolorum gloriosus chorus ;
Prophetarum exulantium numurus ;
Martyrum innumerabilis populus.

Mercy and Help. 139
to be quickly with them and come quickly to Christ !
May God behold our eager desire; may the Lord
Christ -look upon this purpose of our mind and
faith ! He will give the larger rewards of his glory
to those whose desires in respect of Himself were
greater.28 28 De Mort. 26.

CHAPTER XI.
THE LORD'S PRAYER.
That the Lord's Prayer was intended as a model
and help rather than a form to be strictly followed,
is apparent from the fact that Christianity is a re
ligion of the spirit, and from the additional fact
that in New Testament times it is never once, re
ferred to, and in the post-apos colic writings only
in the so-called Teaching of the Apostles (viii, 2).
Tertullian is the first to treat it (about the close of
the second century). In the third or fourth cen
tury it entered into the liturgy of the Church, and
ever since that has been used by liturgical and
many non-liturgical Churches, — by some in the
heathen way rebuked by Christ.1 It speaks highly
for Cyprian that in the midst of the anguish of the
plague and the care of the Church he could find
heart and time to write a treatise on the Lord's
Prayer. Cyprian has a good idea of prayer. After com-
1 Matt, vi, 7. I40

The Lord's Prayer. 141
mending secret prayer, he says that when we come
together in one place to "celebrate divine sacrifices
with God's priest," we must observe modesty and
discipline, not throw abroad our prayers indiscrim
inately, with loud voices, "nor cast to God with
tumultuous wordiness a petition that ought to be
commended to God by modesty, for God is the
hearer not of the voice, but of the heart," — a caution
that reminds one of the anxious question of a little
boy in Pittston, Pa., on hearing the boisterous plead
ing of some preacher, "Mother, is his God deaf?"
God need not be clamorously reminded, says Cyp
rian, since he sees men's thoughts.2
The text of the prayer Cyprian used ran : "Our
Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven
so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And
forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
And suffer us not to be led into temptation, but de
liver us from evil (or the evil one) . Amen."
The first point made is the unselfishness of the
prayer. It is not my Father, it is not, my daily
bread, but our Father, our daily bread, our debts,
lead us not, etc. But Cyprian's mind is not so much
en the unselfishness of the prayer as on its teaching

2 De Dom. Orat. 4.

142 Cyprian: The Churchman.
of unity. "Our prayer is public and common ; when
we pray, we pray not for one, but for the whole
people, because we, the whole people, are one."3
Unity is taught everywhere. That is all important.
As to "Father," Cyprian does not see at all any
hint of Christ's teaching as to the universal Father
hood of God. It is only those who believe in Christ,
and who in baptism have put Him on, who are God's
sons. A sinful people can not be a son, but only
those who have received remission of sins and to
whom immortality is promised.*
"Hallowed be Thy name" means that His name
may be hallowed in us by our continual sanctifica-
tion. This was begun in baptism, which washed us
from our sins, but the cleansing must be continued
through the grace of God, received in the "name
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our
God."5 As to the kingdom ("Thy kingdom come")
Cyprian does not have a very clear idea. He ap
parently makes it equivalent with our rejoicing
with Christ hereafter. He says also that Christ
himself may be the kingdom of God, "whom we day
by day desire to come, whose advent we crave to be
quickly manifested to us." As to a progressive ex-

S De Dom. Orat. 8. 4 Ibid. 9, 10. 6 Ibid. 12.

The Lord's Prayer. 143
pansion of Christianity until the kingdoms of busi
ness, of pleasure, of national affairs, etc., become
the kingdoms of Christ, or as to any missionary ap
plication of the prayer, Cyprian is silent.6
He has excellent remarks on "Thy will be done."
He still speaks to us here. The will of God is what
Christ taught and did. "Humility in conversation ;
steadfastness in faith ; modesty in words ; justice in
deeds ; mercifulness in works ; discipline in morals ;
to be unable to do a wrong, and to be able to bear
a wrong when done ; to keep peace with the breth
ren; to love God with all one's heart; to love Him
because He is a Father ; to fear Him because He is
God ; to prefer nothing whatever to Christ because
He did not prefer anything to us ; to adhere insep
arably to His love; to stand by His cross bravely
and faithfully ; when there is any contest on behalf
of his name and honor, to show in words constancy
in confession, in torture that confidence wherewith
we do battle, in death that patience whereby we are
crowned, this is to desire to be fellow-heirs with
Christ ; this is to do the commandment of God ; this
is to fulfill the will of the Father."7 Surely these are
golden words. We should also pray for those who
are not in the Church, that they "who are as yet in

6 De Dom. Orat. 13. 7 Ibid. 15.

144 Cyprian: The Churchman.
their first birth of earth, may, being born of water
and of the Spirit, begin to be of heaven."
The petition as to our daily bread Cyprian in
terprets as referring to ordinary food and wealth
and to the Eucharist. In the one case we must not
long for earthly food, for riches are deceitful and
vanishing, besides being a snare to the soul. He
takes literally Matt, vi, 34. The Christian is "pro
hibited from thinking of the morrow ; it is a contra
diction and a repugnant thing for us to seek to live
long in the world since we ask that the kingdom
of God should come quickly." The true daily bread
is the Eucharistic food of salvation, which we re
ceive daily. This is the body of Christ referred to
in John vi, 53, 58. If we remain separate from
Christ's body as thus interpreted we can not be
saved.8 Here we have a foundation of monasticism
on the one hand and of the highest sacramentarian-
ism on the other.
"Forgive us our debts" makes the spirit of love,
the spirit which forgives our enemies, absolutely in
dispensable to salvation or to the reception of any
spiritual grace. No sacrifice is as important as this.
Even the blood of martyrdom can not help us here.
But Cyprian can not help bringing in even under
8 De Dom. Orat. 18, 19.

The Lord's Prayer. 145
this head the great principle of unity. "Our peace
and brotherly agreement is a greater sacrifice to
God, — and a people united in one in the unity of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."9
Cyprian has a beautiful thought in regard to the
petition, "Suffer us not to be led into temptation,"
when he says that that takes away all boasting. We
can not assume anything to ourselves in confession
or suffering. "All is attributed to God, and what
ever is sought for suppliantly with fear and honor
of God, may be granted by His own lovingkind-
ness."10 We have the first witness to the Sursum Corda
(upward, hearts). When we stand praying, says
Cyprian (standing was the usual posture of prayer
in the ancient Church, and always on Sunday), we
ought to be watchful and earnest with our whole
heart, intent on our prayers. The soul must think
on nothing but the object of 'its prayer. "For this
reason also the priest, by the way of preface before
his prayer, prepares the minds of his brethren by
saying: 'Lift up your hearts,' that so upon the peo
ple's response, 'We lift them up unto the Lord,' he
may be reminded that he himself ought to think of
nothing but the Lord."11
9 De Dom. Orat. 23. 10 Ibid. 26. n Ibid. 31.
10

146 Cyprian: The Churchman.
Cyprian closes with some excellent rules as to
prayer. (1) Be intent on what you ask. (2) Have
a background of faithful, holy, and loving living to
your prayers. Alms and good deeds are strong
backers. (3) Observe regular hours of prayer.
Daniel observed the third, sixth, and ninth hour, "as
it were for a sacrament of the Trinity, which in the
last times had to be manifested."15 Besides this we
must pray in the morning, according to Ps. v, 2, and
in the evening, because when the light of day de
parts we must ask for the advent of Christ, who
shall give us the grace of everlasting light. There
is no hour excepted for Christians wherein God
ought not frequently and always to be worshiped.
Day and night, therefore, let us pray.13

12 De Dom. Orat. 34, 13 Ibid. 35-6.

CHAPTER XII.
CYPRIAN THE CATHOLIC.
It is not necessary to say that Cyprian — a Chris
tian than whom a more sincere and devoted never
lived — held to all those ideas which the Churches
Catholic and Protestant have in common. If the
Apostles' and Nicene creeds had been presented to
him he would have assented to them heartily. All
the main facts of Christianity he held to tenaciously.
In this chapter an effort will be made to state
wherein he differed from evangelical Protestantism,
wherein he shows that the world in which he lived
in the middle of the third century was a Catholic
world.1 I shall attempt no special logical arrange
ment in the order of topics.
Few Protestants would find fault with the state
ment of the nineteenth article of the Church of Eng
land. That the "visible Church of Christ is a congre
gation of faithful men, in which the pure word of

1 1 use the word Catholic here as the opposite of Protestant, — those
points in which the Roman, Greek, Armenian, and other Eastern Churches
agree among themselves, but differ from Protestantism.
147

148 Cyprian: The Churchman.
God is preached, and the sacraments duly ministered
according to Christ's ordinance in all those things
that of necessity are requisite to the same." Here
the Church is not the clergy, or the bishop, or a com
pany gathered around them, but a collection of be
lievers in Christ who chiefly exalt the word of God,
and who in their time and place receive the sacra
ments. What was Cyprian's view of the Church?
It is a company gathered around the bishops, who
hold their authority from the apostles, and chiefly
from Peter, who received first the commission of
authority from Christ, and so is in a sense the foun
dation or origin of unity. All apostles have equal
power with Peter, but since Peter was the first who
was designated as the rock, he makes the beginning
one and not many. So although there are many
bishops who preside in the Church, yet the episco
pate is one and undivided, because it is the one chair
of Peter.2 In order to show forth this unity there
can necessarily be only one bishop in a place, union
with whom is the same as union with Christ. The
Church is in the bishop because he is all, and to sep
arate one's self from the bishop is death and hell.8
"Does any one believe that in one place there can be
either many shepherds or many flocks?"4 Those
2 De Unit. Eccl. 4, 5. 3 Ibid. 5, 6. 4 Ibid, 8.

Gyprian the Catholic. 149
who separate from the Church as thus understood
are lost. Their baptisms are spurious, all their ap
parent Christian acts are of the devil.5 In fact, they
never do thus separate unless they are themselves al
ready apostate. Their separation is on account of a
perverse, strife-loving heart.6 Even if they should
give themselves in martyrdom for the Name, it
would avail nothing. "He can not be a martyr who
is not in the Church."7
As to baptism, it is not a sign or seal of grace
received by faith, which is the o»ly effective means
of salvation, the root of the whole process, but it is
itself the gate of salvation. In it we lay aside our
earthly birth, are freed from death and the devil,
are cleansed from sin, and regenerated. Baptism
is the water of salvation and the water of life ; by it
we live again ; it is the resurrection with Christ, the
birth of Christians, the heavenly and spiritual birth,
the second birth, the new birth. By it we become
children of God and are made into the image of
God.8 Nothing could be more Catholic than Cyp
rian's idea of baptism. With baptism anointing was
connected as to-day in Catholic Churches. "It is

& De Unit. Eccl. n, 12. 6 Ibid. 13. 7 Ibid. 14.
8 See K. G. Goetz, Das Christentum Cyprians, Giessen, 1896, 62-4,
where references to Hartel's edition are given for each of the above state
ments.

150 Cyprian: The Churchman.
also necessary that he should be anointed who is
baptized, so that, having received the chrism, that is,
the anointing, he may be anointed of God, and have
in him the grace of Christ."9 This attachment of
spiritual grace to material means is thoroughly
congenial to the mechanism of Catholicism.
Equally "high" is his view of the Eucharist. It
is the "protection of Christ's body and blood, ap
pointed to be a safeguard to the receivers that they
may be armed against the adversary with the pro
tection of the Lord's abundance."10 The Eucha-
ristic bread is the food of salvation, the bread of
heaven, prefigured Ly the manna; the cup makes
us oblivious to the old man and the former evil life ;
it brings back spiritual wisdom; it is the intoxicating
healthgiving cup ("the Holy Spirit is not silent con
cerning the sacrament in the Psalms, making men
tion of the cup of the Lord and saying, 'Thy best
inebriating cup' "). Christ has drunk the saving
cup ; his blood is wine, for he says, "I am the true
vine."11 Everywhere in Cyprian the Eucharist is a
true offering. It is both a priestly self-
offering of Christ, and an offering in his mem
ory. As both it is offered in the Church of God
and partaken of. The Eucharist is the high priestly
9 Ep. 70 (69), *. 10 Ep. 57 (53), *. 11 See K. G. Goetz, 67.

Cyprian the Catholic 151
memorial offering, the offering of food and drink,
which accompanies the bloody offering of Christ,
and therefore, as the old high priestly offering of
food, is celebrated morning and evening. It is the
sacrifice of the new covenant, and it is valid as a
sin-offering. The Eucharist is the self-offering of
the Lord, not because it is a memorial offering for
him on account of his sufferings, but because in the
same Christ body and blood are indicated as bread
and wine, and in their full meaning are made ap
parent and figuratively communicated. "And be
cause," says Cyprian, "we make mention of His
passion (sufferings and death) in all sacrifice, for it
is the passion which we offer as the sacrifice of the
Lord ; for we ought to do nothing else than He did.
For the Scripture says that as often as we offer the
cup in commemoration of the Lord and of His pas
sion, we do the same that it is evident the Lord
did."18 It would be too much too say that Cyprian
had the fully developed sacrificial conception of the
Eucharist common to later Catholicism, but he was
a good way on the road, and he would be perfectly
at home in the idea, if not in the method, of a High

18 Hartel, 714. See K. G. Goetz, 87, whose thorough exposition ot
Cyprian's views is objective and reliable, though his divisional terminology
is whimsical, and calls forth the well-deserved rebuke of Ludemann in
Theol. Jahresb. 16 (1896), 163.

152 Cyprian: The Churchman.
Church celebration. So the minister, or rather the
bishop, is always a priest with him.
An interesting question is that concerning the
Churchly forgiveness granted to the penitent lapsed.
Was this an act simply of earthly local jurisdiction,
such as the taking back of a sinner in a Protestant
Church, a recognition by the Church of what might
be charitably assumed to have taken place between
the sinner and God, or was it a real judicial com
munication in the name of Christ and in His earthly
place of forgiveness and peace? In other words,
was Catholic absolution as early as Cyprian? On
one side of the question is Karl Goetz, on the other
side is Karl Miiller.14 The former has given us an
exceedingly valuable pamphlet, but I can not but
think that Muller is nearer the mind of Cyprian.
With Cyprian the Church is a divine institution in
the fullest sense. What she, through her bishops, in
communion with her presbyters, binds or looses on
earth is bound or loosed in heaven. The Church is
the bride of God, His house, His temple. To belong
to her, to be at peace with her, is essential to the
hope of salvation. These principles led Cyprian to

14 Goetz (to be distinguished from K. G. Goetz), Die Busslehre
Cyprians, Konigsb. in Pr., 1895; Miller, "Die Bussinstitution in Karthago
unter Cyprian," 3d part, in Zeitschrift f. Kirchengeschichte, Oct. 1895
(xvi), 187 ff.

Cyprian The Catholic. 153
be more and more lenient with the lapsed, in regard
to their return to the Church, as we have seen. In
some way the Church must try to get them back
before they die. Peace with her is necessary, if
they would have peace with God. Her absolution of
the penitent holds before God. Of course, this is only
in the case God has Himself forgiven the penitent,
and to assure the Church of that the martyrs' testi
monies come in. The role of martyrs has already
been described. Their part in this feature of
Church life has passed away; but in all Catholic
Churches it still remains true — whatever differences
in detail or in form may be seen in granting the ab
solution — that the Church as the indispensable
vehicle of salvation hands out to the penitent the
certificate of peace, without which (except to those
debarred without their fault) salvation is impos
sible. This is the eternal note of Catholicism, and
it goes straight back to Cyprian. The Catholic
Church did well to canonize him.15 The wholesale
remission by martyrs or confessors Cyprian, re
pudiated ;10 but when the full amount of penitential
works was accomplished, then remission by mar

is " I remit everything. . . . I almost sin myself in remitting sins
more than I ought." (Ep. 59 (54), 16.) The sinner must confess his sins in
this world, " while the satisfaction and remission made by the priests are
pleasing to the Lord." (De Lapsis, 29.) 16 De Lapsis, 18.

154 Cyprian: The Churchman.
tyrs or bishops was entirely valid. In fact, it was
necessary if the lapsed should be saved.17
Muller calls attention to the fact that all along it
had been recognized that those endowed with the
Spirit could forgive sin.18 What Cyprian did was
to expand this to include the bishops as the divinely
appointed heads of the Church, through whom the
Spirit spake as really as through the Spirit-gifted
of old. Nor was it new with Cyprian that outside
of the Church there is no salvation ; what was new
was his definition of unity as centered in his kind
of bishops. Even the martyr outside of Cyprian's
kind of unity is lost.19 Of course, no more than in
the Catholic Church to-day does membership in
itself guarantee salvation, but with Cyprian the
earthly and heavenly Church coincided thus far that
all penitents forgiven by the former were received
by the latter, and only those. Cyprian never dreamed
of that modern gloss invented by Jesuit and other
theologians, that one might belong to the soul of
the .Church without actual membership in the body
itself, and thus make a loophole for Protestants.
With him no piety or good works outside of unity
avail. He, like the older Roman Catholics, would
have consigned all Protestants to hell without a

17 Ep. 57 (S3), i. w Z. K-G., 16, 199. 19 Ep. 55 (51): 17, 29.

Cyprian the Catholic. 155
moment's hesitation. The moderns in this respect
are better Christians, but worse Catholics.
It is not meant, of course, that the Roman Cath
olic paraphernalia of forgiveness was installed as
early as Cyprian. That came after a long develop
ment. But the substance was there. The penitent
sinner the Church forgave through her bishops, and
what she loosed was loosed above.
In regard to merit also Cyprian was Catholic.
He had a well defined plan of salvation which he
sketches in his book "Of Works and Alms." First,
there is the atonement of Christ. "The Father sent
the Son to preserve us and give us life; the Son
was willing to be sent and to become the Son of
man that He might make us sons of God ; humbled
Himself that He might raise up the people who be
fore were apostate ; was wounded that He might heal
our wounds ; served that He might draw out to lib
erty those who were in bondage; and died that he
might set forth immortality to mortals.20 Then,
there is baptism which through the "blood and sanc-
tification of Christ" washes away the stains of venial
sin, and in the case of adults (penitence and faith
in Christ being assumed) all the sins committed be
fore baptism. Now what about sins committed af-

I De Op. et Eleem. x.

156 Cyprian: The Churchman.
ter baptism ? Cyprian sees through the whole process
with a lawyer's clearness. What would we do, he
says, considering our weakness and human frailty,
"unless the Divine mercy coming once more to our
aid, should open some way of securing salvation by
pointing out works of justice and mercy, so that by
almsgiving we may wash away whatever foulness
we subsequently contract."21 He quotes Prov. xvi,
6, "By almsgiving and faith sins are purged,"22 and
Ecclesiasticus iii, 3, "As water extinguisheth fire, so
almsgiving quencheth sin," and attributes both
passages to the Holy Spirit. "Here also," he adds,
"it is shown and proved, that as in the laver of sav
ing water the fire of Gehenna is extinguished, so by
almsgiving and work of righteousness the flames of
sin are subdued. And because in baptism remission
of sins is granted once for all, constant and cease
less labor, following the likeness of baptism, once
more bestows the mercy of God."28 Then by mis
quotation and misunderstanding of Luke xi, 41, he
makes Christ responsible for this same teaching;
after we have become foul after baptism, Christ
teaches (Cyprian says) that by alms we may be
come clean.24

21 De Op. et Eleem. i. 22 Septuagint. 23 De Op. et Eleem. 2.
24 For the interpretation of Luke xi, 41, see Meyer ad loc ; and
Grimm, N. T. Lex. Ed. Thayer, s. epeipt. Perhaps better still : things
within the soul; that is, see that ye have soul qualities out ol which ye can
eive alms, then your good deeds will be acceptable.

Cyprian the Catholic. 157
Cyprian is thoroughly committed to a work-holi
ness Christianity. This is partly due to his taking
the Old Testament Apocrypha as law and gospel.
If he had studied Paul more and Tobit less he might
have reached different results. The "wholesome
remedy which God has provided for the curing of
our wounds anew"25 is alms. In fact, by these God
is propitiated. "By works of righteousness God is
satisfied, and with the deserts of mercy sins are
cleansed."26 "Prayer is good, with fasting and
alms ; because alms doth deliver from death, it purg-
eth away sins."27 This passage, says Cyprian, shows
that our petitions become efficacious by almsgiving,
that life is redeemed from dangers by almsgiving,
that souls are delivered from death by almsgiving.28
The commercialism inherent in all forms of
Catholicism comes out plainly in Ep. 76, I, where
the reward to the martyrs in the mines is graduated
exactly according to their hardship and tortures —
"advancing by the tediousness of their tortures to
more ample titles of merits, to receive as many pay
ments (tot mer cedes) in heavenly rewards as days
counted in punishments." He has in view the
"merit of religion and faith," so that they shall re-

25 De Op. et Eleem. 3. 2« Ibid. 5. 27 Tob. 12 : 8, 9.
28 De Op. et El. 5.

158 Cyprian: The Churchman.
ceive from the Lord, the "crown of their merits,"
by which the divine esteem (divina dignatio) has
honored them.29
We get the same thing in the offerings of the
Lord's Supper. Harnack says that Cyprian has ad
vanced the idea of offering or sacrifice in the cultus
of the Church in three ways: 1. He assigned to a
specific priesthood a specific offering, viz., the offer
ing at the Lord's Supper. 2. He has designated the
passion of the Lord, even the blood of Christ and
the Lord's host (dominica hostia) as the subject or
object of Eucharistic offering. 3. He has definitely
placed the celebration of the Lord's Supper under
the point of view of the incorporation of the con
gregation and its single members in Christ, and
was the first to witness in a distinct way that to the
commemoration of those who make the offering
(the living and the dead) a special significance is to
be ascribed ; though this is nothing but a strength
ened petition.30 "In the sacrifices," says Cyprian,
"I offer prayer with many, remembering you," etc.31
The Numidian captives were to present the names
of the donors to their release in the sacrifices and
prayers,32 where sacrifice means the Eucharistic of-
28 Dignatio is mistranslated by Wallis "condescension." It is a recog
nition of worth, esteem founded on merit. 80 Dogmengeschichte 3. Aufl.
I, 428 f ; Eng. tr. II, 136-7. 31 Ep. 37 (15), I# 82 Ibid. 62 (59), 4.

Cyprian the Catholic. 159
fering. This offering could go to the credit of the
dead as well as of the living.33 We must not think
cf this as the full-fledged Catholic purgatory and
prayers for the release of souls therefrom, for there
was no doubt that the martyrs at least were in the
full felicity of Christ ; but it was the beginning of it.
The Eucharistic offering availed for much. A man
offers for his dead wife on the anniversary of her
home-going in order, says Tertullian, "to help along
her eternal quickening and her participation in the
first resurrection." "It is the beginning of a cus
tom which afterwards was built up into the doctrine
of purgatory, which was the chief lever for charity
in the Middle Ages, yes, the central point around
which it revolves. From a thank-offering the
Eucharistic oblation becomes a work directed to
the obtaining of grace."34
It seems also that in Cyprian we have the rudi
ments of the doctrine of the treasury of merits laid
up with God, out of which help can come to those
in need.36 He says that the perogatives of the mar
tyrs are able to help before God those who have re-

SS For the living see 17 (11), 2 ; for the dead 39 (33), 3 ; 12 (36), z.
84 Uhlhorn, Christliche Liebesthatigkeit in der alten Kirche, a. Aufl.,
Stuttg. 1882, 138.
35 This is the opinion of Wirth in his able and exhaustive Der Ver-
dienst-Begriff in der christlichen Kirche, II, Der Verdienst-Begriff bei
Cyprian. Leipz. 1901. See pp. 89 f., 138 ff., 143 f.

160 Cyprian: The Churchman.
ceived from them letters of peace,36 — help them
even with regard to their sins.37 In extending favor
to returning sinners God can have regard to what
martyrs have asked for them or priests have done.38
Martyrs have merits more than sufficient for them
selves. Their martyrdom admits them to glory,
so that alt their other holiness, heroism, merits,
fidelity, etc., is superfluous, so far as being neces
sary for them alone. It therefore goes to help others
for whom they pray. This help will especially ac
crue at the Day of Judgment. We believe, he says,
that the merits of martyrs and the works of the
righteous are of great avail with the Judge; but
that will be when the Day of Judgment shall come,
when at the end of the world His people shall stand
before the tribunal of Christ.89
These intercessions the saints departed also offer,
If any of us shall go hence the first, our love may
continue in the presence of the Lord, and our
prayers for our brethren and sisters not cease in the
presence of the Father's mercy.40 O remember us,
he asks the virgins, when virginity shall begin to be
rewarded in you.41
This whole Catholic doctrine of merit as founded

86 Ep. 18 (12), 1. 87 Ibid. 19 (13), ¦<.. 38 De Lapsis, 36.
39 Ibid. 17, Cf. Peters, Cyprian von Karthago, 154-5.
40 Ep. 60 (56), 5. 41 De Habitu Virg. 24.

Cyprian the Catholic 161
by Tertullian and Cyprian is as false as it is plausi
ble. We all owe to God a perfect service ; none of
us has rendered it. What we are we have received,
and what we have done we have done through God's
grace. God rewards our good works, but this very
reward is of grace. The holiest martyr has done
only his duty, and if that should be put over against
his sins, which would weigh the heavier? Good
works are among the indispensable conditions of sal
vation for those who have opportunity to do them,
because they are the fruit of love, which is the fruit
and test of faith. But the philosophy of Christianity
is in the familiar lines :
" Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling." ffi
Cyprian also laid the foundation of monasticism.
The monastic spirit breathes all through his treatise
"On the Dress of Virgins." All who are baptized
have put off the old man in the saving laver, and
have been renewed by the Spirit in a second na
tivity ; but the greater holiness and truth of that re
peated birth belongs to you (virgins) who have no
longer any desires of the flesh and of the body.

42 See also Wirth, lib. eit. 145!!, and the literature he refers to in the
notes. II

162 Cyprian: The Churchman.
Only the things which belong to virtue and the
Spirit have remained in you to glory.43 There is the
lower life for ordinary Christians, and the higher
for those who crucify the flesh. He tells the lapsed
that such sins as theirs require extraordinary sever
ities. They must wear out their nights in watchings
and wailings, occupy all their time in lamentation,
lie on the ground, cling close to the ashes, and be
surrounded with sackcloth and filth. "After losing
the raiment of Christ you must be willing now to
have no clothing; after the devil's meat you must
prefer fasting; be earnest in righteous works
whereby sins may be purged ; frequently apply your
self to almsgiving whereby souls are freed from
death. . . . Let all your estate be laid out for
the healing of your wound."44 Virginity, almsgiv
ing, poverty, coarseness and scantiness of clothing,
despisal of the world, — all these are specially mer
itorious before God.45 All the roots of monasticism
are in Cyprian. To live ascetically, says Pontius,
was his highest ideal.46

43 De Hab. Virg. 23. 44 De Lapsis, 35.
45 See Wirth, 65, with notes. 46 Vita Cypriani, 2. See Boh-
ringer, 835.^

CHAPTER XIII.
WAS CYPRIAN A ROMAN CATHOLIC?
WE must not suppose that Cyprian's Catholicism
was that of later times. Ever and anon Christian
sentiments burst forth, and principles both in doc
trine and life thoroughly in accordance with the
Gospel. For it is written, he says, that the just shall
live by faith. If ye are just and live by faith, if you
truly believe in Christ, why, since you are about to
be with Christ, and die secure of the Lord's prom
ise, do you not embrace the assurance that ye are
called to Christ, rejoice that ye are freed from the
devil?1 Though such passages are rare, though
Cyprian looks upon justification in a thoroughly
legal way, as Wirth has abundantly shown in his
section on his use of justificare, Justus, justitia,2
though the idea of merit is hardly absent in any of
these passages, yet it was the Catholicism of the
middle of the third century (not even of the fourth)
which Cyprian represents. There is no purgatory

1 De Mortal. 3. 2 Wirth, 128 ff.
I63

164 Cyprian: The Churchman.
in his writings, though there is, as we have seen, the
helpful intercession of saints here and hereafter.
God's people depart immediately at death to the
celestial land to be with Christ. This is the under
tone everywhere of his book on "Mortality."
This does not mean that the dead could not be bene
fited by the prayers and eucharistic commemora
tions of the living, for such commemorations were
well established in Cyprian's time. "We always
offer sacrifices for them, as you remember, as often
as we celebrate the passions and days of the martyrs
in the annual commemoration."3 A man had ap
pointed a clergyman executor to his estate, contrary
to the action of some council, and Cyprian, with his
high priestly views, thought that these secular
duties, which ministers then and long afterwards
performed, interfered with their calling, and he
therefore advises that "no offering shall be made
to him, nor any sacrifice be celebrated for his re
pose." No prayer shall be made in the Church for
him.4 It therefore appears that, though the offer
ings for the martyrs were in the nature of commemo
rative thanksgivings and not to alleviate their lot
(for they went immediately into full felicity), yet it
was believed that for others prayers and sacrifices

3 Ep. 39 (33), 3. See also 12 (36), *. 4 Ibid. 1 (65), *.

Was Cyprian a Roman Catholic? 165
could conduce to their repose, — where we have the
germs of the mediaeval purgatory, indulgencies, etc.
There is no mariolatry in Cyprian. If Mary's
name is ever mentioned, it is only casually.
The chief question is Cyprian's relation to the
see of Rome. Did he acknowledge the bishop of
Rome as supreme pontiff of the Church, whose au
thority as a ruler and infallibility as a teacher must
be respected at all hazards? We have already seen
that Cyprian's conception of the Church was that
of an organization grouped around the bishops.
The bishop was the center of the Church, and each
bishop was co-ordinate with every other. Their
united decision in council was binding on the
province which they represented, though in mat
ters of conscience each bishop could take his own
line, so long as he remained in external unity with
his brethren. There could only be one canonically
elected bishop in a town. If another is elected he is
by that very fact outside of the Church, outside of
salvation, outside of the covenanted mercies of God.
"They are a Church, who are a people united to a
priest, and the flock which adheres to its pastor.
Whence you ought to know that the bishop is in the
Church, and the Church in the bishop; and if any
one be not with the bishop, he is not in the Church.

166 Cyprian: The Churchman.
The Church which is catholic and one is not cut
nor divided, but is indeed connected and bound to
gether by the cement of priests who cohere with
one another."5 "There is one God," he says, "and
one Christ, one altar, one priesthood, and one chair
founded upon the rock of the word of the Lord."6
That was the chair of Peter upon which the Church
was to be built. Now the question is : Is that chair
the see of Rome to which all must be obedient, from
which all must receive law, or is it the episcopate
which traces its descent back to the apostles,7 and
especially to Peter as the first in time to whom
Christ granted authority in the Church? Or if
agreement with the chair of Peter (Rome) is neces
sary, is it only when that chair remains in union
with the Christian tradition and the universal epis
copate? In the last analysis, who rules the Church,
the episcopate or the Roman bishop ?
The bishops demand and weigh the evidence of
the election and fitness of Cornelius as Bishop of
Rome, and only after that do they acknowledge him.
They labor to maintain the unity delivered by the
Lord through His apostles and to us, his successors,
and it is ours to gather in the wandering sheep,8 —
5 Ep. 66 (68), 8. Priest and priesthood generally mean bishop and
episcopate with Cyprian. 6 Ibid. 43 (39), 5.
7 "Christ says to the apostles, and thereby to all chief rulers who by
vicarious ordination succeed to the apostles," 66 (68), 4. 8 45 (41), 3.

Was Cyprian a Roman Catholic? 167
a passage which makes the episcopate the guardians
of unity. The bishop of Rome, however, is part of
that unity, and they therefore feel it necessary to
support him,9 him who occupies the place of Peter
and the grade or degree (gradus) of the sacerdotal
chair.10 Rome is the chair of Peter and the chief
(principalis) Church, whence sacerdotal unity takes
its rise,11 — one of those delightful complimentary ex
pressions which may mean much or little, and whose
meaning must after all be interpreted by the whole
life history of the man who used it, and who evi
dently did not place all the weight on it a later
Roman would, for in this very letter he denounces
those who carry appeals from Africa to Rome, as
though (he says sarcastically) the authority of the
bishops in Africa seems too little. But even Peter,
says Cyprian, whom first (primum) the Lord chose,
and upon whom He built His Church, when Paul
disputed with him concerning circumcision, did not
claim anything to himself insolently, nor arrogantly
assume anything so as to say that he held the pri
macy, or that he ought to be obeyed by novices and
those lately come,12 — from which it is apparent that,
although in Cyprian's mind Peter had a certain

9 Ep. 48 (44), 3. 10 Ep. 55 (51), 8. U Ep. 59 (54), 14.
12 Ep. 71 (70), 3.

i68 ., Cyprian : The Churchman.
primac)' (not necessarily the same as supremacy),
it did not show itself either in the Tightness of his
opinions or in his insisting on them.
Another interesting passage seems to confirm
the impression already received that Peter's primacy
was due to simple priority in time, that thus he was
the source of unity, but that in all substantial re
spects other apostles were fully equal to him. He
is speaking of the power of remitting sins in
baptism. He says that "first of all the Lord gave
that power to Peter,, upon whom He built the
Church, and whence he appointed the source of
unity — the power, namely, that whatsoever he
loosed on earth should be loosed in heaven. After
the resurrection He speaks to the apostles, saying
(here he quotes John xx, 21-23). Whence we per
ceive, says Cyprian, that all those who are set over
the Church and established in the Gospel law, are
allowed to baptize and to give remission of sins
(not those outside). Here the primacy of all the
apostles is made co-ordinate in spiritual functions
with the prior chronological primacy of Peter.13
The token or source of unity is Peter, because to him
alone the charge was first given; but the powers

13 Ep. 73 (72), 7. The same thought is in Firmilian to Cyprian,
75 (74), 16.

Was Cyprian a Roman Catholic? 169
thus given were subsequently shared by all abso
lutely alike. That is Cyprian's thought.
More interesting still is the inference of Firmil-
ian, who echoes Cyprian, that the Roman bishop is
only in the succession of Peter when he is true to
Peter's doctrine. He is denouncing Stephen, the
bishop of Rome, for advocating the efficacy of bap
tism by heretics. "Nor does he (Stephen) under
stand that the truth of the Christian rock is over
shadowed and in some measure abolished by him
when he thus betrays or deserts unity."14
Nor does it appear that this general result is
affected by the famous passage in his early book
(251), the "De Unitate Ecclesiae," even with the
alleged interpolations (in italics), which I now cite:
The Lord said unto Peter (here follows Matt.
xvi, 18, 19). And to the same He says after His
resurrection, Feed My sheep. He builds His
Church upon that one and to him intrusts His sheep
to be fed. And although after His resurrection He
assigns equal power to all His apostles and says
(cites John xx, 21-23). Nevertheless in order to
make the unity manifest He established one chair,
and by His own authority appointed origin of the
same unity beginning from one. Certainly the rest

14 Ep. 75 (74), 17.

170 Cyprian: The Churchman.
of the apostles were that which Peter also was,
endued with equal partnership both of honor and
office, but the beginning sets out from unity, and
primacy is given to Peter that one Church of Christ
and one chair may be pointed out; that all are
apostles, and one Hock is shown to be fed by all the
apostles with one-hearted accord — that one Church
of Christ may be pointed out. It is this Church
which the Holy Spirit in the person of the Lord
speaks of in the Song of Songs, saying : "My dove
is one, My perfect one, one is she to her mother,
elect to her who brought her forth." He who holds
not this unity of the Church, does he believe that
he holds the faith? He who strives and rebels
against the Church, he who deserts the chair of
Peter on which the Church is founded, does he trust
that he is in the Church ?15
Here we have the Cyprianic principles of unity
just as in his Epistles, (i.) Unity springs from
Peter, because he was the beginning of these grants
of power from Christ. We must hold, therefore,
with him. (2.) Exactly the same power was given
to all the apostles, who derive this, not from Peter,
but from Christ. But in true-hearted accord they
stand in with Peter, whose chair is the beginning
15 De Unit. Eccl. 4. For full textual apparatus see Benson, 549-52.

Was Cyprian a Roman Catholic? 171
and symbol of unity. Nothing is said here about the
authority and the infallibility of the bishops of
Rome, whether those bishops might not err, or if
they did what should be the proper attitude toward
them. If the italicized words are really interpolated,
would they not have stated the Roman claims more
explicitly, would they not have echoed later con
troversies, would they have simply been content to
round out the passage to bring it into harmony with
later utterances of Cyprian ? It is by no means true
that Cyprian is represented here as teaching
the cardinal doctrine of the Roman see.16 It is a
cardinal teaching, but it is not her special doctrine.
Protestants believe that the Church was founded
upon Peter in a special sense, historically shown
by his work with the Jews in Acts ii and with the
Gentiles in Acts x. They believe it is necessary to
hold with him in order to be in the unity of the
Church, and they believe firmly that if the chief
pastors in Rome had always remained true to him,
union with them would also be in a sense a symbol
and test of unity. There is nothing specially Roman
in the full text, interpolated or not, in the Unity of
the Church.
The real questions are: Did Cyprian hold that

16 Benson is wrong here, 203.

173 Cyprian: The Churchman.
the bishop of Rome had in himself plenary authority
in the Church? That he was an infallible teacher?
That all bishops are under him and hold from him ?
In other words, did the fact that Peter was the be
ginning and foundation of unity guarantee the later
claims for those who were supposed to sit on his
seat? Two or three facts from Cyprian's life will
answer these questions.
Two Spanish bishops, Basilides, of Leon, and
Martial, of Merida, had received certificates of idol
atry, and thus according to the custom of the Church
had debarred themselves for life from office. Ba
silides had also blasphemed Christ in sickness, and
Martial had joined a pagan guild or college with
its heathen rites, and had two of his children buried
with these rites. They subsequently repented, went
to Rome, and apparently received assurances from
Stephen, the new bishop there, that he would still
regard them as bishops. Cyprian apologizes for
Stephen on account of distance and ignorance
("went to Rome and deceived Stephen our col
league, placed at a distance, and ignorant of what
had been done, and of the truth, to canvass that he
[Basilides] might be replaced unjustly in the epis
copate"). This created a new situation. Who
were the real bishops of Leon and Merida — the de-

Was Cyprian a Roman Catholic? 173
posed bishops, bishops recognized still by Stephen;
or their successors, lawfully elected and dedicated?
For advice as to this the Churches themselves ap
peal not to Stephen, but to Cyprian and his African
brethren. A council is held at Carthage, 254 (the
Fourth Cyprianiac Council), and the result is given
in Cyprian's letter 67.
This is a most interesting letter. It gives Cyp
rian's answer to the question, Qoes grave sin in
validate ministerial acts? He answers with an
emphatic Yes — buttressed as usual with Old Testa
ment passages like Ex. xix, 22 ; xxviii, 43. And all
who can unite with such a priest share in his defile
ment. The letter also shows that the laymen of the
local Churches must be present at the election of a
bishop, not, it would appear, formally to elect by
casting votes, but to investigate as to character of
the nominee and to signify to the bishops present as
to his fitness, — the final decision being with the
clergy and bishops present, but never without the
presence and co-operation of the laymen. Some
times the laymen, as we have seen, played the con
trolling role. The neighboring bishops laid on hands
in consecration. But the significance of the letter
here is that Stephen's part in this Spanish business
is brushed aside as of no account whatever, and de-

174 Cyprian: The Churchman.
cision given according to the well-known Cyprianic
principles, as though there were no Roman bishop
in the world.17
Marcian, bishop of Aries in France, had joined
the Novatians so far as not to admit the lapsed,
however penitent and desirous. As this in Cyprian's
opinion endangered their souls, he was much exer
cised over it. A bishop of Lyons had called his at
tention to it. If the neighboring bishops would not
do their duty in electing a successor to Marcian, it
was the bishop of Rome's duty, as the bishop of
the nearest so-called apostolic see and of the great
est Church of the West, to urge them to do it. But
Stephen was apparently unconcerned. Therefore
Cyprian writes him, calling his attention to the
moral responsibility of all the bishops of the uni
versal flock, and urging him to write to the laymen
of the Aries Church to the effect that Marcian be
excommunicated and another substituted. He is
also asked to write to the bishops of the province

17 Ep. 67. Peters (Cyprian von Karthago, 483) is in error in saying
that on the return of Basilides from Rome most of the Spanish bishops
changed their attitude toward him and Martial, and acknowledged them
as brothers in office. All that Cyprian says is that " some among our col
leagues rashly hold communion with Basilides" (67,9), though whether
Stephen's action had anything to do with it we do not know. Peters also
says (p. 486) that Cyprian is not giving a judgment, but an opinion.- But
the utmost decision and positiveness rings through the letter ; there is not
the least consciousness of a revision of its judgment being possible.

Was Cyprian a Roman Catholic? 175
to see to it that Marcian no longer "insults an as
sembly." It does not appear that Stephen's action
would be different from that of any other promi
nent bishop in urging discipline on neighboring
Churches. Cyprian's whole letter, with its freedom
of address and consciousness of equality, does not
bespeak the papacy in the historic sense.18 The re
mark of Peters that Cyprian here acknowledges
Stephen's ordinance and immediate jurisdiction over
the whole Church is so nearly made out of whole
cloth that it may be taken as a type of such state
ments made by Roman partisan historians.19
The most famous case, however, is the. quarrel
with Stephen over the baptismal question, and that
deserves a separate chapter.

18 Ep. 68 (66).
19 Peters, 479. My judgment of this whole aspect of Cyprian's
Catholicism is borne out by K. G. Goetz, who says that for Cyprian the
" basis of the Church is an intellectual legal conception which expresses
itself in the political institution of the episcopate as a college, as a body
(corpus), not of the Roman episcopate alone." He says that the fact that
Cyprian designates the universal episcopate as a college (collegium) shows
that he ascribes to all the bishops equal power and equal right (Recht), and
he quotes Mommsen (Abriss d. rom. Staatsrecht, 120) as saying that the
" fact of being in a college (Collegialitat) demands the equality in rights of
the officers in the college, therefore the equal title and equal authority in
office." See Goetz, Das Christentum Cyprians, 128, and note. Substan
tially the same view comes out in the thorough study of a Roman Catholic
scholar, J. Delarochelle, I/idee de Teglise dans St. Cyprien, in Etudes
d'Hist. et deLitter. relig. 1896, No. x, 519-33. Though the Roman bishop
was the official representative of unity, all bishops were equal in power
and honor. He says that Cyprian's conception of the Church was an
imperfect one, and did not comport with the fact of the Roman primacy.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE GREAT CONTROVERSY WITH
ROME.
It was the universal belief in the third century
that baptism washed away the stain of original sin,
made the baptized a child of God, and thus brought
him into the family of the redeemed. Along with
this was the idea of the Church as the ark of salva
tion, outside of which all were swept away by the
devouring floods. Now as soon as movements
arose which the larger Church disowned, or forced
out into separate existence, the question arose,
What about the baptism administered by those out
side, either by those heretical, or schismatic, or
both? Does their baptism give life, does it incor
porate into Christ, does their repetition of the Name
give the blessing of the Name? If so baptism need
not be repeated; if not, all baptized by heretics or
schismatics must be baptized again, their former
baptism not being a real baptism at all. On the one
side of this question stood Cyprian, on the other,
Stephen, bishop of Rome. 176

The Great Controversy with Rome. 177
It must be confessed that Cyprian had the better
tradition, so far as testimonies attest it. Clement of
Alexandria called baptism by heretics no proper and
genuine baptism.1 Tertullian energetically pro
tested on the same side. Heretics have nothing
common with the Church, not the same God, nor the
same Christ, and therefore not the same baptism,
and therefore one can not receive baptism from
them.2 In the latter half of the second century, the
Montanists of Asia Minor, who agreed with the
Church on all essential matters of doctrine, precipi
tated a discussion of the subject, and at synods
held at Iconium and at Synnada, baptism outside of
the Church was rejected.3 "Heretics can neither
baptize nor do anything holy and with the Spirit
because they are foreign to spiritual and divine
sanctity."4 Hippolytus says that Callistus was the
first to introduce a repetition of baptism in Rome.5
We do not know how the controversy begun.
The first document seems to be a letter of Cyprian
to Magnus, A. D. 205, in answer to a question
whether the Novatianists in returning to the so-

1 Strom, i, 19.
S De Bapt. is, written in premontanist period, says Bonwetsch, against
Benson, 338. See the admirable article by Bonwetsch, Kettertaufe und
Streit dariiber, in Hauck-Rerzog, Realencyk. f. protest. Theol. u. Kirche,
(1901), 270-3. 3 Eusebius H. E. 7 : 7, 5. Firmilian in Cypr. Ep. 75 (74), 7.
•1 Firmilian, as in rote 3. ' Philos, 9, 7.

178 Cyprian: The Churchman.
called Catholic Church should be rebaptized.
Cyprian answers with his usual decision and per-
emptoriness. He never balks at the fact that Novatian
held the Catholic faith ; the mere fact that he is out
side of what he (Cyprian) calls the Catholic Church
decided the issue. He has departed from "charity
and the unity of the Catholic Church," and on the
ground of Matt, xviii, 17, he is worse than a heathen
and a publican, because. he has "forged false altars,
lawless priesthoods and sacrilegious sacrifices, and
has corrupted names." The Church is one, bap
tism is one, and baptism is in the Church only, ac
cording to Eph. v, 26 ; how then can any one outside
be cleansed with the saving laver? If any one says
that they hold the same Trinity and the same inter
rogatory in baptizing as the Church — and Cyprian
quotes the interrogatory, Dost thou believe the re
mission of sins and life eternal through the holy
Church? — then the answer is, They lie, since they
have not the Church. Cyprian refers to the history
of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who knew the same
God as Moses, yet because they set up in opposition
to Aaron, they were punished for their irreligious and
lawless endeavors. All who joined with them were
punished also, as it shall be also with the schismatics
and all who follow them. How can those without

The Great Controversy with Rome. 179
the Holy Ghost confer the Holy Ghost, as baptism
does ? Baptism is the remission of sins, and it is there
fore necessary that those who baptize should have
the Holy Ghost. But by the fact that it is the uni-
versal custom of the Church in receiving those bap
tized without to lay hands on them that they may
receive the Holy Ghost, it is confessed that they
have not the Spirit. It is certain, therefore, that those
thus baptized have not received the remission of
sins. To receive this, then, they must be baptized
with the baptism of the Church, where only re
mission of sins may be had.6
False and arbitrary exegesis was not wanting.

6 Ep. 69 (75). This epistle closes (12-16) with an answer to the ques
tion whether those who have been sprinkled on a sick-bed are sanctified
(so-called clinic baptism). While Cyprian distinguishes this from the reg
ular "washing of salvation," from "ecclesiastical baptism," which at this
time was always by immersion, he says it is valid and need not be supple
mented by ordinary baptism. If the clinics have had faith, if their subse
quent life shows the reality of their faith, they received the full mercy of
God. Nothing need be added. For (1) washing of sins is a different mat
ter from the washing of the body, where water and saltpeter and the other
appliances are needed. " In another way is the heart of the believer
washed ; in another way is the mind of man purified by the merit of faith."
(2) Sprinkling was recognized by God as a symbol of cleansing, according
to Ezek. xxxvi, 25-6 ; Num. viii, 5-7 ; xix, 8-13. Hence sprinkling of water
" avails equally with the washing of salvation ; and when this is done in the
Church (that is, in the society, or in communion with the Church), where
the faith both of the giver and the receiver is sound, all things hold, and
may be consummated perfectly by the majesty of the Lord and by the
truth of faith." (3) Facts show that those " baptized by urgent necessity
in sickness, and obtain grace, are free from the unclean spirit, and live in
the Church in praise and honor," which is a proof that they have received
the Spirit.

180 Cyprian: The Churchman.
"They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living
waters, and have hewed out broken cisterns which
can hold no water,"7 refers to the schismatics. Of
their baptism the warning applies, "Keep thee from
strange water, and drink not from the fountain of
strange water."8 John's prophecy of antichrists
refers to them.9 .Can these give the grace of Christ?
The water used in baptism must first be cleansed
and sanctified by the priest. But how can a schis
matic priest cleanse when he himself is unclean.
"Whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be
unclean."10 Besides, every baptized person is also
anointed with oil so that he may be anointed of God,
and have in him the grace of Christ. But the oil is
sanctified on the altar, where the Eucharist is of
fered; but how can a heretic or schismatic do that
when he has neither the Church nor the altar ? See,
too, what the Holy Spirit says in the Psalms : "Let
not the oil of the sinner anoint my head."11 Again
what prayer can a priest who is impious or a sin
ner offer for a baptized person ? Since it is written,
"God heareth not a sinner, but if any man be a
worshiper of God, and doeth His will, him He hear
eth."12 With such relentless logic, built on such
perverted Scripture, did the good bishop condemn
7 Jer. ii, 13. 8 Prov. ix, 19 (LXX). 9 1 John ii, 18, 19.
10 Num. xix, *. 11 Ps. cxii, 15 (LXX). 12 John ix, 31.

The Great Controversy with Rome. 181
the baptism of all outside his episcopal unity as
sacrilegious, and their persons as utterly lost to
the grace and mercy of God.18 "He that is bap
tized by one dead, what availeth his washing?"14
What were the arguments of Stephen? Unfor
tunately we have not an epistle of his extant. All
we can do is to get a glimpse here and there of the
contrary arguments from the correspondence of
Cyprian. First, "they say they follow ancient cus
tom."15 Cyprian explains this by the fact that the
first heretics had previously been baptized in the
Church, and, of course, when they returned it was
not necessary to rebaptize them. Besides, he says,
no custom can stand against reason. Again it is
said: He who is baptized might receive remission
of sins according to what he believed.16 Cyprian
replies to this that no one can have true faith out
side of the Church. Either they are manifestly
heretical like Marcion and other heretics, or they
are perfidious, blasphemous, and contentious, which
makes their faith no faith. Some quoted Phil, i,
18, but that refers to envious brethren within the
Church, not to baptism by those outside.17 Others
say : All who are baptized anywhere and anyhow in

18 Ep. 70 (69). 14 Ecclus. xxxiv, 25, (Ep. 71 (70), 1).
li Ep. 71 (70), *. W Ep. 73 (72), 4. W Ibid, g 14.

182 Cyprian: The Churchman.
the name of Christ have obtained the grace of bap
tism.18 Not so, replies Cyprian, for not every one
that says, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of
heaven. Only those things which are done in the
truth of Christ are accepted by Him. It is said that
this non-acknowledgment will debar heretics from
coming back. Not at all ; it will have just the con
trary effect. Why should he come back if he has
true baptism? Having that, they will think they
have everything. But when they know that no re
mission of sins can be given outside of the Church,
they will eagerly hasten back to us.19
The two chief points of Stephen were tradition
and the majesty of the Name. While Cyprian will
not acknowledge that there is any true tradition on
Stephen's side, he makes a powerful plea against
tradition dominating truth.20 One can almost hear
the strains of the old Protestants controverting
Rome. "What obstinacy, what presumption to pre
fer human tradition to Divine ordinance, and not to
observe that God is angry when tradition relaxes
or passes by the divine precepts, as he says by
Isaiah, 'This people honoreth Me with their lips,
but their heart is far from Me. In vain do they
18 Ep, 73 (72), 16 ff. In these sections of this great epistle Cyprian
argues cogently against the validity of baptism by Gnostic Christians.
19 Ep. 73 (72), 24. 20 Ep. 74 (73). 2-4, 9.

The Great Controversy with Rome. 183
worship me, teaching the doctrines and command
ments of men.' " "Nor ought custom, which had
crept in among some, prevent the truth from con
quering, for custom without truth is the old age of
error." As to the Name availing, they really confess that
it does not avail, because they (Stephen and his
party) always lay their hands on the returning
heretic that he may receive the Holy Spirit. But by
allowing his baptism they allow that in a real sense
he has already received the Holy Ghost. He has
been sanctified, his sins have been washed away, he
has put on Christ, and can Christ be put on without
the Spirit, or the Spirit be separated from Christ?
Water alone is not able to sanctify, unless a man has
also the Holy Spirit. Later he receives the Holy
Spirit in fuller measure in the anointing and im
position of hands, but this would be impossible if
he had not already been born by baptism into the
Holy Spirit.21
As to the merit of the arguments of the two con
testants, it is evident that if we grant Cyprian's prem
ises we must grant his conclusions. No writings of
Cyprian, except his plea against the pagans, have
such power, vigor, swing, and ring, as these six

21 Ep. 74 (73). 5-7-

184 Cyprian: The Churchman.
epistles.22 No wonder the man who wrote them
dominated his age. The Roman bishops of the time
are names only who would hardly be known were it
not for Cyprian's writings. Besides, his premises
were the premises of the Church. His main points
rested deep in the ecclesiastical consciousness of his
time. No one believed that a heretic could be saved,
or that there was salvation outside of the Church.
What was baptism then, administered there? An
empty, unauthorized rite, a sacrilege. It could have
no more saving efficacy than a boy's swim. Its ac
knowledgment as granting remission of sins in view
of the repetition of a formula was both on the one
hand the crassest magic, and on the other, the log
ical subversion of every principle held by the Cath
olic Church. As a true Catholic and a sharp-sighted
reasoner, Cyprian went straight to the mark. If
heretics had true baptism, they had remission of
sins ; if they had^remission of sins, they had sanc-
tification; and if they had sanctification, they had
the temple of God.28 Against that Stephen's feeble
arguments broke as waves against a rock.
But what do these famous six letters teach as to
Cyprian's attitude to the Roman bishop as the
teacher and ruler of Christendom? Does the unity
22 Ep. 69-74 (75, 69-73). 23 Ibid. 73 (72), 12.

The Great Controversy with Rome. 185
of the Church which goes back to Peter, and which
consists in the mutual concord of forbearance and
independence of the bishops, guarantee the purity
of doctrine and supremacy of rule of all who chance
later to occupy Peter's alleged chair? Here the
great Carthaginian holds another line. Throughout
his letter to Stephen there is not the slightest con
sciousness that he is to defer to him.2* He gives his
judgment on the question at hand, and presents his
arguments, with not more feeling of dependence on
Stephen's decision, than one Methodist bishop
would do in relation to another in arguing for lay
delegation, or an Anglican to his brother bishop
against the compulsory use of the Athanasian Creed.
The historical situation behind these six epistles
(seven, counting the strong and remarkable letter
of Firmilian to Cyprian25) is as different as day
from night from that assumed in the Roman view.
If that view is true, we are as historians in a topsy
turvy world.
Let us hear Cyprian himself on Stephen. He
says that faith and religion of the sacerdotal office
compel us to ask whether that priest can render a
satisfactory account to God on the day of judgment
who maintains the baptism of blasphemers, and he

24 Ep. 72 (71). 26 Ibid. 7s (74).

186 Cyprian: The Churchman.
quotes Mai. ii, 12, where God says that if priests
will not give glory to Him He will send a curse
upon them, and will even curse their blessings. Then
Cyprian launches forth in this terrible indictment of
Stephen, who, according to the Roman view, is the
infallible teacher of all Christians. Does he give
glory to God who communicates with the baptism
of Marcion? Does he give glory to God who
judges that remission of sins is granted among those
who blaspheme our God? Does he give glory to
God who affirms that sons are born to God without,
of an adulterer and harlot? Does he give glory to
God who does not hold the unity and truth that
spring from the law divine, but maintains heresies
against the Church? Does he give glory to God,
who, a friend of heretics and an enemy of Chris
tians, thinks that the priests of God who support
the truth of Christ and the unity of the Church are
to be excommunicated? If glory is thus given to
God, if the fear and the discipline of God is thus
preserved by His worshipers and priests, let us cast
away our arms ; let us give ourselves up to captivity ;
let us hand over to the devil the ordination of the
Gospel, the appointment of Christ, the majesty of
God; let the sacraments of the divine warfare be
loosed; let the standards of the heavenly camp be

The Great Controversy with Rome. 187
betrayed ; and let the Church succumb and yield to
heretics, light to darkness, faith to perfidity, hope
to despair, reason to error, immortality to death,
love to hatred, truth to falsehood, Christ to Anti
christ. Deservedly thus do heresies and schisms.
arise day by day, grow up more often and more
fruitfully, and with serpents' locks shoot forth and
cast against the Church of God with greater force
the poison of their venom; whilst by the advocacy
of some, both authority and support are afforded
them, whilst their baptism is defended, truth is be
trayed, and that which is done outside against the
Church is defended within the very Church itself.26
But letters were not the only weapons used
against Rome. Three councils were held in Car
thage, 255-6, the second with seventy-one bishops,
the third with eighty-seven from the provinces of
Africa, Numidia, and Mauretania, all with presby
ters and deacons and laity, and reached a unanimous
(in the second and third, almost in the first) con
clusion to baptize all heretics and schismatics com
ing to them, on the ground that their former bap
tism was null or profane.27 How different this from
26 Ep. 74 (73), 8.
27 On the first council see Ep. 70 (69) ; on the second see 72 (71) ; and
on the third see Sententise Episcoporum, or the judgment of 87 bishops on
the baptism of heretics (the seventh council of Carthage under Cyprian)
in Migne 3, 1079-1102, and transl. in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Edinb. ed.
13, 199 ff; N. Y. ed. 5, 565 ff.

188 Cyprian: The Churchman.
the modern Roman theory by which no council can
be held without the permission of the pope, and
when held its conclusions are invalid until he in
dorses them. They did things differently then.
It should be said that, however intense Cyprian's
beliefs and feelings on this question, so hearty was
his regard for the independence of each bishop, for
mutual respect and tolerance inside the Church, that
he said distinctly that no bishop is compelled against
his conscience to adopt his views or those of his
compeers.28 I prescribe to no one, says Cyprian, I
prejudge no one, I prevent no bishop doing what
he thinks well. Let each have the free exercise of
his judgment. Charity and priestly concord must
be maintained with patience and gentleness.29
Stephen broke with him, he did not break with
Stephen.30

28 Ep. 69 (75), 17. 29 Ibid. 73 (72) 16.
30 On the question whether Stephen actually excommunicated Cyprian
the best view is that of Ernst, " War der HI. Cyprian Exkommuniniziert,"
in Zeitschrift fur Katholische Theologie, 18 (1894) 473 ff., that while Cyprian
was threatened with the Church ban, it never actually fell upon him. In
the latter case a formal schism would have taken place between Africa and
Rome, and this did not happen. From a supposition expressed in Augus
tine, it has been supposed by some that Cyprian later retracted his senti
ments on this question. This in an article in the same journal, r9 (1895)
234 ff ), Ernst also shows to be unfounded. Nor did Firmilian and the
Asiatic bishops ever retract. For the later history of this baptismal strife
see the article by Bonwetsch mentioned in note 2, p. 177, above.

CHAPTER XV.
THE CROWNING.
Cyprian had almost six years of uninterrupted
activity in Carthage as a bishop, March or April,
251 — June, 257. But the end was near. Valerian,
an emperor of some noble qualities, who reigned
253-60, was at first friendly to the Christians, think
ing thus to win them. But under the influence of
his prime minister, Macrian, helped along by the
vague terror of pestilence and barbarian invasions,
believing that the close knit society — firmly held to
gether by the bishops in a compact organization that
nothing could shake — was a menace to the unity of
the State, whose interior disunion through the Chris
tian Church within was now meeting the disinte
gration threatened by Franks, Alemanni, and other
tribes without — under this stimulus the patriotic
Valerian determined to break up the Church as an
organization. In June, 257, he issued his first edict
to this end. There was to be no general persecu
tion of private Christians, but the united external
189

190 Cyprian: The Churchman.
life of the Church was to be destroyed. All as
semblies of Christians were forbidden, as well as
meetings in graveyards and at the tombs of mar
tyrs, and this by penalty of death. The clergy were
to be banished and in every possible way isolated
and watched.1 The expectation was that, cut off
from their leaders, the people would naturally and
inevitably go back to their old gods. Dionysius, the
great and pacific bishop of Alexandria, was ban
ished, and it soon came Cyprian's turn. Genuine
Acts give the story.2
The proconsul Aspasius Paternus. The most
sacred emperors, Valerian and Gallienus, have done
me the honor to send me a dispatch in which they
have directed that persons not following the Roman
religion must conform to the Roman ceremonies. I
have, in consequence, made inquiries as to how you
call yourself. What answer have you to give me?
[Notice the method of trial by interrogation. Ac
cused assumed to be guilty, and must prove him
self innocent. This was the beauty of Roman law,
and was followed in all the heresy trials to within
modern times. Happy the accused for whom tor
ture did not also form a part of the question.]
Cyprian. I am a Christian and a bishop. I
1 Eusebius, H. E. vii, ix ; Cyprian. Act. procons, i.
2 I follow here the version of Benson, Cyprian, 465-6.

The Crowning. 191
know no other gods than the one and true God,
who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in
them is. He is the God whom we Christians wholly
serve. Him we supplicate night and day for our
selves and for all men and for the safety of the
emperors themselves.
Patemus. In this purpose, then, you persevere ?
Cyprian. That a good purpose, formed in the
knowledge of God, should be altered is impossible.
Patemus. Well, will it be "possible" for you, in
accordance with the directions of Valerian and
Gallienus, to take your departure as an exile to the
city of Curubis?
Cyprian. I depart.
Patemus. They have done me the honor of
writing to me not about bishops only, but about
presbyters, too. I would therefore know from you
who are the presbyters who reside in this city.
[Compare the similar question of Annas to Christ,
John xviii, 19.]
Cyprian. You have by your own laws made
good serviceable laws against the very existence of
informers. Accordingly it is not in my power to
discover and delate them. However, they will be
found in their several cities. [Wise answer by the
sage old lawyer.]

192 Cyprian: The Churchman.
Patemus. My question refers to this day and to
this place.
Cyprian. Inasmuch as our discipline forbids any
to offer themselves spontaneously, and this would
also go counter to your legislation, they are unable
to offer themselves. But if you search for them
they are to be found.
Patemus. I shall have them found. They [the
emperors] have directed further that no assemblies
are to be held, and they are not to enter cemeteries.
So if any one fails to observe this salutary direc
tion he will be capitally punished.
Cyprian. Do as you are directed.
Then the Acts add: Thereupon Paternus sen
tenced the blessed Bishop Cyprian to be deported
(deportari) into exile.3
This sentence carried with it loss of citizenship.
It required special direction from the emperor be
fore it could be inflicted, and for that reason the
proconsul quoted the "praecept" of Valerian for
banishing him to Curubis.4
Curubis (Kourba) was a little coast town fifty
miles from Carthage at the back of the eastward
promontory of the Gulf of Tunis. It was a para
dise compared with some places to which exiles
were sent.

3 Acta Proc. i, 21. 4 See Benson, 466-7.

The Crowning. 193
The first night in which Cyprian slept at Curubis
he Rad a dream of the proconsul, in which he had
a premonition of his fate. It was one of those
strange, circumstantial dreams which, either by laws
of the soul not yet fully understood, or by some
impression from above, reveals the future with life
like vividness. Many instances of such dreams are
on record, and thousands have occurred of which
the record was hid in the heart of the person af
fected, or the matter told only to immediate friends.
Some explain them as simply a coincidence, others
bring in a higher law.5
Compared with Cyprian's lot in exile, that of
nine of the thirty-one Numidian bishops who had
sat with him in council was hard indeed. They
were doomed to chained labor in the mines, where
their treatment was so cruel that some died under
it, and others were in prison. They had been beaten
with cudgels, which showed that they belonged to
the lower classes, and is at the same time an indi
cation of the democratic character of ancient Chris
tianity as to the orders in society to whom it made
its chief appeal, and from whom it drew its offi
cers. These bishops, presbyters, and others "toiled
in the dark at piles of ore, choked with the smoke

6 For this dream see Pontius, Vita Cypriani, ia; Benson, 469-70.
13

194 Cyprian : The Churchman.
of smelting furnaces, half fed, half clothed, half
their hair dipt off, sleeping on the ground." Cyprian
contributed to their needs, and also sent them a
letter full of praise for their sufferings and heroic
endurance. He says they "advance by the tedious-
ness of their tortures to more ample titles of merit,
to receive as many payments in heavenly rewards
as days are now counted in their punishments." The
Lord has lifted them to the lofty height of glory, and
Cyprian interprets this in noble and sympathetic
spirit as but the rewards of their fidelity, seeing
that they have guarded the faith, kept firmly the
Lord's commands, in simplicity have preserved in
nocence, in charity concord, modesty in humility,
diligence in administration, watchfulness in help
ing those that suffer, mercy in cherishing the poor,
constancy in defending the truth, and judgment in
severity of discipline, — a description of the model
minister or bishop as valid to-day as in 257. With
all Cyprian's Catholic sacramentarianism he recog
nized the fact that now while "there is given no
opportunity to God's priests for offering and cele
brating the divine sacrifices," they are all the while
by their sufferings in Christ's name "offering a
sacrifice to God equally precious and glorious, and
that will greatly profit you in heavenly rewards."

The Crowning. 195
He then quotes Ps. li, 17, and says : "You celebrate
this sacrifice day and night, being made victims to
God, and exhibiting yourselves as holy and un
spotted offerings, as the apostle exalts," in Rom.
xii, 12. Thus it is that "our works with greater
deserts are successful in earning God's good will."6
The answer of the martyrs of the mines throbs
with loving appreciation of Cyprian, his character,
his words, his example, and his gifts. By these
things he has refreshed their suffering breasts, has
healed their limbs wounded with clubs, has loosened
their feet bound with fetters, has illuminated the
darkness of their dungeon, has brought down the
mountains of the mine to a smooth surface, and
shut out the foul odor of the smoke.7 O ye mutual
sufferers ! your spirit of love and unselfish en
durance, your heroic constancy for Christ, breathes
upon us across the centuries, shames our ease and
listless devotion, and stimulates us to do and dare
for your Master and ours !
The result of the edict of 257 did not suit Vale
rian or his councilors. The Church was not being
uprooted fast enough. The senate had apparently
so represented matters to the emperor. The latter
accordingly sends a second rescript in the summer
6 Ep. 76. 1 1bid. 77.

196 Cyprian: The Churchman.
of 258. It ran thus in its steel-like sharpness and
precision :
"That bishops, presbyters, and deacons be im
mediately punished with death. Senators and men
of high rank and knights of Rome forfeit their dig
nity, be deprived of their goods, and if after being
deprived of their means they persist in being Chris
tians, be also capitally punished; their matrons be
deprived of their goods or relegated into exile ; and
that all Cesareans [inferior officers of the fiscus,
or imperial treasury, who were under the rationalis
or chancellor of the exchequer]8 who have either
confessed before or confess now suffer confiscation,
be put in bonds, entered in the slave lists, and sent
to work on Caesar's estates."9
It is evident that the author of this edict in
tended to destroy Christianity root and branch. "It
is plain that the higher ranks were felt to be honey
combed by Christianity," which shows that with all
its attraction to the poor, Christianity was universal
in its appeal and power, "while the special provision
about the Csesarians illustrate the kind of employ
ments into which, as free from idolatrous taint, the

8 Csesariani were not palace officers, as often understood, nor " people
of Caesar's household,"as Wallis translates, but under-officials of the treas
ury. See Benson, note 8, p. 480, whose legal and antiquarian information
is accurate and minute. 9 Ep. 80 (81), 1

The Crowning, 197
Christians crowded." And the edict was imme
diately put into effect. Confiscation and executions
began at once. Sixtus (Xistus or Xystus), bishop
of Rome, visited a forbidden cemetery on Sunday,
August 6, 258, and was then and there put to death,
along with four of the seven deacons of the city.
Rumors of an impending change in policy had
been rife, and to secure the facts Cyprian had dis
patched messengers to Rome to find out "in what
manner it had been decreed respecting us." Almost
before the edict had reached Africa, Cyprian knew
its exact purport. He wrote immediately to a
brother bishop, Successus, who was himself soon
martyred, gave him the terms of the rescript, the
latest news from Rome as to its execution, aud
urged him and his brethren to constancy. Let these
things be made known to our colleagues, he says,
that everywhere the brotherhood may be strength
ened and prepared for the spiritual conflict, that
every one of us may think less of death than of
deathlessness, and, dedicated to God, with full faith
and courage may have no dread, only gladness, in
this confession, in which we know the soldiers of
God and Christ are not slain but crowned.10
The new proconsul Galerius Maximus, on re-

10 Ep. 80 (81), ¦.

198 Cyprian: The Churchman.
ceiving the rescript, summoned Cyprian from his
exile in Curubis to appear before him. Apparently
by illness Galerius was detained at Utica, twenty
miles northwest of Carthage. He ordered Cyprian
to keep to his own house in Carthage until he could
hear him. Strange luck that he should have had a
few final days in his own beautiful gardens ! In
fluential friends, Christian and pagan, urged him to
flee. But he felt no inward promptings, and abode
'his time. Soon Galerius sent messengers to bring
him to Utica, but Cyprian got wind of it, and pre
ferring to die in Carthage, absented himself till the
proconsul was well enough to come to Carthage
itself. From this retreat Cyprian wrote his last let
ter of that marvelous correspondence to which we
are so greatly indebted for the knowledge of the
Church history and polity of the third century. This
short letter is so interesting as the last word of one
of the greatest and bravest of the Church's wit
nesses that the reader ought to have it before him
in full : •
"Cyprian to the presbyters and deacons and all
the people, greeting. When it had been told us,
dearest brethren, that the military clerks had been
sent to bring me to Utica, and I had been persuaded
by the counsel of those dearest to me to withdraw

The Crowning. 199
for a time from my gardens, and as a just reason
was offered, I consented. For the reason that in
this city in which he presides over the Church of
the Lord is the place where the bishop ought to
confess his Lord and to glorify his whole commons
(the people) by the confession of their own prelate
in their presence. But the honor of our Church,
glorious as it is,, will be mutilated if I, a bishop
placed over another Church, receiving my sentence
or my confession at Utica, should go there as a
martyr to the Lord, when, indeed, for my sake and
yours, I pray with continual supplication and en
treaty with all my desires that I may confess among
you and suffer there, and thence depart to the Lord
as I ought. Therefore here in a hidden retreat I
await the arrival of the proconsul at Carthage, and
hear from him what the emperors have commanded
concerning Christian laymen and bishops, and may
say what the Lord may wish to be said at that hour.
"But do you, dearest brethren, according to the
discipline which you have read from me out of the
Lord's commands, and according to what you have
so often learnt from my discourses, keep peace and
tranquillity, nor let any of you stir up any tumult
for the brethren, or voluntarily offer himself to
the Gentiles. For when arrested he ought to speak,

200 Cyprian : The Churchman.
inasmuch as the Lord abiding in us speaks in that
hour, who willed that we should rather confess than
profess. But for the rest, what it is fitting that we
should observe before the proconsul passes sen
tence on me for the confession of the name of God,
we will with the instruction of the Lord arrange in
common. May our Lord make you, dearest breth
ren, to remain safe in His Church, and condescend
to keep you. So be it through His mercy."11
It was a common opinion in times of persecution
that in the last supreme act of witnessing the Holy
Spirit breathed a special message through the one
about to suffer,12 and it was that opinion which
Cyprian voices in this letter. He naturally wanted
to utter any word of that kind among his own flock.
But at the last, as we shall see, the Spirit gave no
sign, and Cyprian was silent. The martyrdom itself
was sufficient.
Soon the proconsul arrived in Carthage, and
Cyprian returned to his gardens. On September
13, 258, a chariot drove through them to the door
of Cyprian's villa. In it were two principes or cen
turions, — one an officer of the legion and the pro
consul's strator or equerry, the other a prison guard
or officer. They find Cyprian at once, lift him into

11 Ep, 81 (82). 12 For instances see Benson, 496.

The Crowning. 201
the chariot, and drove away. His .wish was ful
filled, he was to die among his people. Pontius, his
deacon-biographer, tells us how his "serious joyous-
ness" of expression was transfigured by the manful
heart to lofty eagerness and almost mirthfulness.13
"For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh
the world; and this is the victory that hath over
come the world, — our faith."1* The proconsul was
not well enough to proceed with the case. He there
fore postponed the hearing till the morrow, and
committed Cyprian to the safe-keeping of one of the
officers, who kept him in his own house.
The next day he was taken before the proconsul.
He was arraigned for sacrilege, which included
every offense against religion, as the Romans un
derstood it, and Cyprian would be the last man to
deny that he was guilty of it. The proceedings
were by questions and answers as before, but this
time even more brief.
The Proconsul Galerius 'Maximus. You are
Thascius Cyprianus.
Cyprian. I am.
Galerius. You have lent yourself to be a pope to
persons of sacrilegious views.
Cyprian. I have.

13 Vita Cypriani, 6, 15. 1* 1 John v, 4.

202 Cyprian : The Churchman.
Galerius. The most hallowed emperors have
ordered you to perform the rite.
Cyprian. I do not offer.
Galerius. Do consider yourself.
Cyprian. Do what you are charged to do. In a
matter so straightforward there is nothing to con
sider. How brief, yet how fateful! The proconsul
conferred with the council, as that was required in
serious sentences, though he was not necessarily
bound by their opinions. Then he said :
Galerius. Your life has long been led in a sacri
legious mode of thought ; you have associated your
self with a large number of persons in criminal com
plicity; you have constituted yourself an antagonist
to the gods of Rome and their sacred observances.
Nor have our pious and most hallowed princes,
Valerian and Gallienus the Augusti, and Valerian
the most noble Caesar, been able to recall you to the
obedience of their own ceremonial. And, therefore,
whereas, you have been clearly detected as the insti
gator and standard-bearer in very bad offenses, you
shall in your own person be a lesson to those whom
you have by guilt of your own associated with you.
Discipline shall be ratified with your blood. [He
then took the prepared tablet and read :] Our pleas-

The Crowning. 203
ure is that Thascius Cyprianus be executed with the
sword. Cyprian. Thanks be to God.16
The Christian multitude standing around sent
up the cry: "And let us be beheaded, too, along
with him." Surrounded by a guard from the Third
Legion, Cyprian was led out to an open level space
in the city, followed by thousands of his fellow-
citizens, Christian and pagan. Many of the latter
were in sympathy with him, partly on account of his
shining life, partly on account of the masterly and
loving way in which he showed himself the city's
friend in the time of her awful visitation. In the
midst of his deacons and presbyters Cyprian stood.
He took off his white woolen cape, and then knelt
on the ground in prayer. After this would have
been the time for that word of the Lord, if any
were to be given him. But he did not speak. He
who had visions and occasional revelations from the
Lord, as he believed (and the age of the prophets
was still in the memory of the Church, and his great
teacher, the Master, Tertullian, was himself a Mon-
tanist), was denied anything like that now. There
was nothing that he could distinguish from his own
thoughts. So he was silent. "He might disappoint

16 Acta Proc. 3, 4. See Benson, 501 ff.

204 Cyprian: The Churchman.
the people, but he would not delude them for their
own good."
It was the headman's office to execute the sen
tence, — the carnifex, or speculator, not the cen
turion who had command of the party. Unnerved
by the large sum given him by Cyprian, or touched
by sympathy, or for some other reason, the heads
man could scarcely grasp the hilt of his great sword.
Noticing him tremble, the centurion immediately
stepped forward, and to the kneeling and blind
folded bishop did the work with one powerful
stroke. "And so suffered the blessed Cyprian."18
The age of suffering unto death for conscience'
sake, is, we trust, gone forever. But the last words
of his last book were: "If persecution finds God's
soldier in this mind, . . . and he is called away
without suffering martyrdom, the faith which was
ready to welcome it will not lose its reward. The
wages of God are paid in good interest without any
deduction for lack of opportunity. The crown is
given for field service in time of persecution; in
time of peace it is given to him who is certain of
his will."17
What is the abiding significance of Cyprian?

16 Acta Proc. 5. W Ad Fortunatum, at end.

The Crowning. 205
In history he is known as the great Churchman.
Full credit is given in this book to the wonderful
active persistence, and even self-sacrifice, with which
he defended and illustrated his High Churchly views.
It is shown how they underlay all his thinking and
work, and how his consistency and earnestness here
even led him to his great breach with his brother
of Rome, a breach which must have cost him heart-
agony. And his intellectual and literary power and
fertility, his piety and single-hearted devotion to
Christ, and the almost preternatural insight with
which he saw the real meaning and drift of the
Catholic Church of his time, which found its truest
incarnation in him, and the energy and enthusiasm
with which he set that Church forward, — all this
brought it about that the essential things for which
Cyprian stood passed into the very blood of the
ancient Church. In every Catholic Church of Chris
tendom to-day, Roman, Greek, Russian, Armenian,
and High Anglican, — he still live,s and moves and
has his being. Such world-significance is surely
justification enough for treatment in a series like
the present.
But from the standpoint of Christianity this is
not the chief significance of Cyprian. We know that
his view of the Church, all his so-called Catholic

206 Cyprian : The Churchman.
views, were narrow, mechanical, false, unscriptural.
We know, too, that if he had never lived the Cath
olic development would not have been essentially
different. He represented his age, he did not create
it. Old Ignatius said in germ most of the things
he said. No, the eternal lesson of Cyprian is not
here. It is here: a true soldier of Jesus Christ.
According to his light, according to his conscience,
he served Him from his conversion to his martyrdom
with utter fidelity and with brave-hearted and broad-
hearted love. On this account he speaks to us to
day, to every layman, and especially to every min
ister. O brother men! across the fields of history
do we hear his voice urging us as true soldiers to
stand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand ?
"Gazing down on us amid the conflict of his name,"
he says, "God approves those who are willing, aids
the fighters, crowns the conquerors."18 And let
every minister hear himself described in the vivid
military imagery, of the mine-martyrs to Cyprian:
"As a sounding trumpet thou hast caused the sol
diers of God equipped with heavenly armor for the
shock of battle, and in the forefront thou hast slain
the devil with the sword of the Spirit. On this side
18 Ep. 76, 4.

The Crowning. 207
and on that thou hast marshaled the lines of the
brethren by thy words, so that snares might be laid
in all directions for the foe, the sinews of the com
mon enemy be severed, and carcasses trodden under
foot."19 W Ep. 77, a.

APPENDIX I.
The Interpolations in the "De Unitate
Ecclesiae."
The famous passage in chapter 4 of the "De
Unitate Ecclesiae" is quoted above, page 169, the
italicized portions being those usually designated as
interpolated. In my judgment the matter is not of
great importance, as the interpolations are par
alleled by other utterances of Cyprian, whose gen
uineness has never been disputed; and as they do
not and can not affect one's judgment of Cyprian's
real view as to Roman supremacy, which rests on
evidence demonstrably certain, therefore in the
exposition of that view above I have made no cap
ital out of the interpolations. We may therefore
in a quiet spirit estimate the evidence.
There are no manuscripts of Cyprian extant
which are earlier than the sixth or seventh century.
The two oldest are S. and V., — the Seguier of the
library of Paris, which contains the most genuine
readings and the oldest forms of words, and the
208

Appendix I. 209
Verona, given to Charles Borromeo by the canons
of Verona. Both. are of the sixth or seventh cen
tury, it is not certain which. Both are without the
interpolations. The next oldest series are the Benventanus, or
the Neapolitanus (date not assigned), W (Wurz-
burg) of the eighth or ninth, some say seventh,
century, R (Reginensis), and the G (San Gallen-
sis) of the ninth. Not one of these has the ad
dition. Now as there was no reason in the ancient
Church to leave out the words, if they were genu
ine, the evidence of Lower Criticism is decidedly
against them. Such evidence against a disputed
Bible text would be decisive.
On the same side are the following facts. A
great scholar, Latini, who was working in Rome
about 1550, said he had seen seven Cyprian manu
scripts in the Vatican in which all these words in
question were wanting. Baluze, who published his
edition of Cyprian in Paris in 1726, said that he had
examined twenty-seven manuscripts, not one of
which had th'e interpolations. Bishop Fell, in his
Oxford edition of 1682, used four English codices,
not one of which had the italicized words. Other
English texts have the post-resurrection charge to
14

210 Cyprian : The Churchman.
Peter, but not the interpolated words. These are of
the tenth century or later. Bajuze says that the
German MSS. of the eleventh century did not con
tain the words, nor are they found in any of the
editions of Cyprian which appeared before that of
Manutius in 1563, and which represent many of the
MSS. now lost. See the exhaustive discussion of
Benson, 200 ff. On the principles of text criticism
the disputed words are doubtful. Their absence
from nearly all of the oldest manuscripts is a
weighty fact.
Harnack says that Pelagius I, in a letter of 558-
60, first edited by Lowenfeld (Epp. PofltifF. Rom.
inedita 1885, 15.), cites the "De Unitate" 4 with
out knowing the interpolated sentences ; while Mer-
cati shows that the sentences are presupposed in a
letter of Pelagius II about 585. They are found in
Q. (Troyes codex of the eighth or ninth century),
in M. (Monacensis or the Munich codex of the
ninth), and in a Bodleian of the tenth or eleventh,
all of which go back to one original, a lost manu
script. From this Harnack concluded in 1899 that
the interpolation is not much later than the middle
of the sixth century, and is of Roman origin. See
Theol. Liter aturzeitung, 1899, No. 18, 517.
The disputed words appeared first in print in the

Appendix I. 21]
edition of Paulus Manutius, Rome, 1563. Latino
Latini did the editing in a conscientious and ac
curate manner. When the edition was going
through the press certain changes and additions
were made. "Whether," says Latini, "it was at the
mere pleasure of certain persons or of set design,
he knew not, some passages were retained contrary
to the evidence of the manuscripts, and even some
additions made." This so disgusted Latini that he
withdrew both his name and his anotations from the
edition, nor would the Vatican authorities allow Up.
8 (2) — the Roman clergy to Cyprian — to appear in
this edition, nor the famous letter of Firmilian (75
[74] ). In a copy of Manutius's edition in the Uni
versity Library in Gottingen there are copies of
manuscript notes by Latini. Against this passage
in Un. 4 is the note : "These words were added out
of a single manuscript belonging to Virosius [cler
ical error for Vianesius], of Bologna, now in the
Vatican, by P. Gabriel, the Poenitentiary, with the
consent of the master of the sacred palace." From
this interesting history it is fortunate that all the
editions of Cyprian before 1563 (except the old
Black Letter of 1471) were published outside of
Rome, — and there had been about seventeen of
them.

212 Cyprian : The Churchman.
In the Revue Benedictine, Abbaye de Maredsous,
Belgium, Nos. 3 and 4, 1902, No. 1, 1903, Dom John
Chapman has given a defense of the genuineness
of the disputed text. There is a brief reply to this
by E. W. Watson, Professor of Ecclesiastical His
tory in King's College, London, in the Journal of
Theological Studies, London, April, 1904, 432 ff.,
with a defense by Chapman in the next number of
the same Journal, 634 ff. The reasons given by the
learned Benedictine are as follows :
( 1 ) The thought in the alleged interpolations is
thoroughly Cyprianic. There was no necessity for
a forgery. (2) The style is also unmistakably Cyprianic.
Watson agrees with these two points. "There is
nothing inconsistent either in style or in thought
in the so-called interpolations with the Cyprianic
authorship," — Watson, 433.
(3) No one living at that time could have been
the author but Cyprian. (But look at the swarm of
writings of that age and later which went under
Cyprian's name, and of so close imitation that they
deceived the very elect. Even now Cyprian experts
are at variance as to some of these writings.)
(4) Not only Bede, but fathers of the fifth and
even of the fourth century knew the text as inter-

Appendix I. 213
polated, and from the circumstances of the origins
of the interpolations, they must belong* to the third
century. If they went back so far they must have
had a Cyprianic origin. But besides chapter 19
was changed in the copy intended for Rome. If
chapter 19, why not chapter 4 ?
(5) The mystery of the texts is solved in this
way. Cyprian wrote first a copy of the De Unitate
for the congregation at Carthage in view of the
threatened schism of Felicissimus. This copy was
the original, and did not have the alleged interpola
tions. Soon after he wrote another copy to meet
conditions in Rome, the schism of the confessors,
Novatians, etc. In this copy he enlarged his first
draft, calling attention to the Petrine chair, the
necessity of union with it, etc. Now the Carthagin
ian copy was the basis of all the later copies. When
the collections of Cyprian's writings were made it
was always the Carthaginian De Unitate which hap
pened to be included, not the enlarged Roman. But
some manuscripts did preserve the Roman reading,
which explains the existence of the enlarged chap
ter 4 in a manuscript nearly as old as the oldest.
The Carthaginian shorter copy was that, however,
which happened to be at the back of nearly all the
existing manuscripts.

214 Cyprian: The Churchman.
This thesis of Chapman's has won the weighty
approval of Harnack and of the enthusiastic young
Cyprian scholar, von Soden. The former says that
although Chapman's view is not free from objec
tion, it is admirably established, and, in his opinion,
is correct. He says that the interpolations must
belong to the fourth century, perhaps to the third,
and that, moreover, Cyprian says here no more than
he says elsewhere. The thought belongs to the
third century. It is no mere Roman falsification.
See Theol. Literaturzeitung, 1903, Nr. 9, 262-3.
Von Soden gives his indorsement to Chapman in
his "Die Cyprianische Briefsammlung," Leipz. 1904,
p. 21, note, p. 202.
It seems to me, however, that Watson shows
here better critical sense. This theory of two
Cyprianic editions of the "De Unitate," one for
Carthage and another enlarged for Rome, and that
the lean kine of the former ate up the fat kine of
the latter, that the. African copy in a country that
was later decimated by Vandal and Mohammedan,
became the predominant type, so that manuscripts
of Roman reading became well-nigh lost, — this
theory, it must be confessed, is a large draft on
credulity. Would not Rome have immense inter
est in circulating her edition ? Would it not in time

Appendix I. 215
entirely supplant the scanty and far-away Cartha
ginian product, especially after the disappearance of
the Carthaginian Church? Would not this bring
it about that the shorter recension, if it survived at
all, would have been considered doubtful, and even
spurious ?
On the supposition of later interpolations these
huge improbabilities are avoided. The fact seems
to be that some one in the papal interest, well versed
in Cyprian, added to the "De Unitate" words and
sentences taken from other places in his writings
or having his stamp, in order to make him speak
there much more decidedly for Peter's chair.

APPENDIX II.
Chronological Order of the Epistles.
This must be made out by the most careful and
patient study of the epistles themselves, with all
the light that can be obtained from every other
source. The old Oxford scholars, Pearson, Fell,
and Dodwell, tried their hand at this, and their re
sults appeared in the Cyprianic publications of 1682
and 1684 (See App. III). Their arrangement was
accepted in the critical edition of Hartel, and is
that used in all scientific work since. Migne fol
lows the order of Baluzius, and gives besides under
each epistle the numbers of Erasmus, Pamelius
(1574, last ed. 1664), Rigaltius (Paris, 1648), Ox
ford, Leipzig, and Paris (1836). His order is that
unfortunately accepted in the Ante-Nicene Chris-
tion Library (Ante-Nicene Fathers). I suggest to
each owner of the latter, who is especially inter
ested in Cyprian, to make out his own key of the
Oxford-Migne arrangement by noticing the Oxford
216

Appendix II. 217
number given in a note under each epistle in the
Ante-Nicene edition. Otto Ritschl subjected this
question to a restudy in the most thorough fashion,
as appears in his Latin Licentiate thesis, "De Epis-
tolis Cyprianicis," Hallis Saxonum, 1885. See also
his Anhang, "Die Chronologie der Cyprianischen
Briefe," in his "Cyprian und die Verfassung der
Kirche," pp. 238-49. He there prefers the follow
ing ortler (using Oxford-Hartel numbering) : 63,
1, 7, 5> 6, 8> 9> J3. 14. I2> TI> IO, 2I> 22> J5, 16.
17, 18, 19, 20, 24, 25, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32,
33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 44, 48,
46, 47, 50, 49, 53, 51, 52, 54, 55, 64, 59, 65, 56, 57,
58, 60, 62, 61, 66, 2, 4, 3, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 67,
72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81. Fechtrup's order
for 5-19 is 5-7, 13, 14, 12, 11, 10, 15-19. Of the
epistles in this order he places all to 12 before A. D.
250, nth at the beginning of a new persecution,
the rest in July-August, 250.
As to subject groups, 39 epistles (5-43 Oxford-
Hartel numbering) belong to the first period of
Cyprian's episcopate, during his absence from
Carthage in the Decian persecution ; 23 (44-61, 64-
8) are concerned with questions which arose out of
the persecution after its close and after his return ;
7 (69-75) on rebaptism ; the last 6 (76-81) belong to

218 Cyprian: The Churchman.
Valerian's persecution and the closing year of
Cyprian's life; the six remaining (1-4, 62, 63) are
outside of the main development of the history. See
"Cyprian's Correspondence" in Church Quarterly
Review, July, 1892, 381 ff (vol. 34).

APPENDIX III.
Select Literature.
The first edition of Cyprian's works appeared in
Rome, 147 1, and an independent edition at Venice
the same year. An early edition was without year
or name of printer, the editio innominata. The six
teenth century was prolific, a sign of the awakened
interest in patristic study due to the revival of learn
ing and the Reformation. There were no less than
twenty-one editions and reprints, the first being the
Paris edition by Rembott, 15 12, and the Basel edi
tion by Erasmus, 1520, which last was celebrated
as containing the "De Duplici Martyris ad For-
tunatum," which was written by Erasmus himself
and passed off as Cyprian's. The seventeenth cen
tury saw many editions, notably these, Rigaltius,
Paris, 1648, and Fell and Pearson, Oxford, 1682.
The most important of the later are: Baluzius
(with the Mauriner Maranus after Baluzius's
death) Paris, 1726, Goldhorn, Leipzig, 2 vols.,
1838-9, Migne, Paris, 1844, and the careful and
219

220 Cyprian: The Churchman.
critical edition of Hartel, Vienna, 3 vols., 1868-71,
which is that used and referred to in all books and
articles on Cyprian published since 1871.
Cyprian's friend and deacon, Pontius, wrote his
life (De Vita Cypriani) published in all editions
and translations of his works. The genuine Acta
Proconsularia Martyrii Cypriani appears in Ruinart,
"Acta Martyrum," Amsterdam, 1713, and in von
Gebhardt's "Acta Martyrum selecta," Berlin, 1902,
124-8. Modern lives, often with dissertations on
various Cyprianic questions, are by Pearson, "An
nates Cyprianici," Oxford, 1682, Maranus, Vita
Cypriani, in Baluzius, Paris, 1726; H. Dodwell,
"Dissertationes Cyprianicae," Oxford, 1684; in the
great collection of Tillemant, "Memoires" IV, 76 ff,
Ceilier, III, and Lumper XI ; separate lives by Rett-
berg, Gottingen, 1831 ; Poole, Oxford, 1840 (super
seded by Benson) ; Reitmeier, Augsb., 1848; Blam-
bignon, Paris, 1861 ; Peters (Prof, in R. C. Episco
pal seminary at Luxemburg), Regensburg, 1877
(able, but written from strictly Roman point of
view) ; Fechtrup, Munster, 1878 (the best German
life written as a separate work, but lacking in some
points; see Harnack in Theol. Literatur -zeitung,
1879, nr. 6, 125-7) > Benson, London and New
York, 1897. Archbishop Benson devoted thirty or

Appendix III. 221
forty years to the study of the life and times of
Cyprian, and his book is one of the greatest mono
graphs in Church history ever written. He has
poured into notes the abundant fruits of amazing
and minute learning. His book is written con
amore, from the High Church point of view, with
glowing admiration for his hero, but not without
criticism here and there. It ranks with Lightfoot's
Clement of Rome and Ignatius among the very
greatest English patristic studies of the nineteenth
century. The New York edition (from same
plates) is out of print. Benson's "Catholic" stand
point occasioned the admirable brief Sir William
Muir's "Cyprian, His Life and Teachings," Edinb :
T. and T. Clark, 1898, 40 pp. On Benson see the
London Quarterly Review, January 1898, 253-70, —
an excellent article ; Church Quarterly Review, Lon
don, October, 1897, 25-53 ; G. Kruger in Theol. Lit.-
Zeit., 1899, nr. 14, 413-15; F. Johnson in Amer.
Journ. of Theol., April, 1898, 422-6; F. H. Chase in
Critical Rev., July, 1897, 341-52 ; H. Liidemann in
Theol. Jahresbericht, 1897, Berlin, 1898, 195-6. Long
and excellent treatments of Cyprian are also found in
the "Church Histories" of Schrock, Vol 4 ; Neander,
Boston ed., vol. I; Bohringer, "Die Kirche Christi
und ihre Zeugen, oder die Kirchengeschichte in

222 Cyprian: The Churchman.
Biographien," vol. 4, 2. Aufl. 1874, pp. 813-1039,
which is often found printed separately ; and Farrar,
"Lives of the Fathers," Lond., 1889, vol. II, pp.
185-260. There are many monographs and special articles,
for which see the bibliography prefixed to Leim-
bach's article in the Hauck-Herzog Realencyklopd-
die, 3. Aufl. 1898, 367 ff ., Bardenhewer, Patrologie,
2. Aufl. 1901, 167-175; and (for late lit.) the ad
mirable work of Prof. Ehrhard in the Strassburger
Theol. Studien, viz., "Die Altchristliche Literatur
und ihre Erforschung von 1884-1900," 1. Abt.
Freib. in B. 1900, 455-81. It will be sufficient to
mention here Otto Ritschl (Son of Albrecht),
"Cyprian von Carthago und die Verfassung der
Kirche," Gottingen, 1885, an able and independent
study, especially valuable in the second part, but
specially original in the first part, in which are new
combinations and results, some of which, I think,
are overdrawn, as e. g., his main achievement, that
Cyprian's view of the Church is the result of the
pressure of circumstances, the response (so to
speak) to the historical situation in which he found
himself, an evolution drawn out by the opposition
of the presbyters, confessors, and the Novatian
movement, something invented to meet contingen-

Appendix III. 223
cies. See the long and, on the whole, very favorable
review by Zoepffel, the Theol. Lit.-Zeit, 1885, nr.
13, 229-304, nr. 14, 326-30; also Th. Jahresb. 5
(1885), 149. Carl Goetz, "Die Busslehre Cyprian,"
Konigsb. in Pr., 1895, — an earnest scientific piece
of work, corrected, however, in one main conclusion
by K. Muller in "Zeitschrift f. Kirchengeschichte,"
16 : 187 ff K. G. Goetz, "Das Christentum Cyprians,"
Giessen, 1896, a careful and impartial work, but
partially spoiled by a new and arbitrary terminology
and method of division, on which see Liidemann in
Th. Jahresb. 1896, 163-4. K. H. Wirth, "Der Ver-
dienst-Begriff in der Christlichen Kirche, II Der
Verdienst-Begriff bei Cyprian," Leipzig, 1901, an
excellent and exhaustive study. Hans Freiherr von
Soden, "Die Cyprianische Briefsammlung," Leipz.,
1904. Von Soden shows the early wide diffusion
and use of Cyprian's letters. He says that numerous
copies were circulated even in his own lifetime ; that
he himself prepared compendia of his letters (Ep.
27 [22] : 4) ; and that before Cyprian died his let
ters had a place in the devotional literature of the
Church. The writings of Cyprian which are known
to us, but which have perished, were lost at a very
early date. Von Soden thinks that the oldest col
lection of letters was intended for confessors and

224 Cyprian : The Churchman.
martyrs, and the next collection for the strife with
the heretics. "Bishop Lucifer, of Calaris, in his
treatise, made use of nothing but the Holy Scrip
tures and the writings of Cyprian." See Tasker in
Expository Times, June, 1904, 410.
Three English translations of Cyprian's com
plete works exist: (1) by Nathan Marshall, 4to,
Lond, 1717; (2) by Chas. Thornton and H. Carey,
in Oxford Library of Fathers, 2 vols., Oxf. 1839,
1844; and (3) by Ernest Wallis in Ante-Nicene
Fathers, Edinb., 1868-9, N. Y., 1886.

INDEX

Page
Absolution  152-5
Actor, Case of  50
Alexandria, Treatment of
lapsed at  89, 100-1
Asceticism ... 76, 78, 144, 166-2
Atonement  155
Baptism —
Regeneration in. . . 21, 142, 149
By Heretics  176-88
Post-baptismal Sins  76-7
Sick-bed Baptism, (note) 197
Basilides of Leon, Case of. . 172
Berber Raids  122
Bible, Ancient attitude to . . 36
Bibliography, Cyprianic 219-24
Bishop —
Office of ace. to Cyp
rian  41-3, in
Privileges of  43, 165
How elected  44
Degeneration of  55-6
His new part in Discip
line  80-3
See also whole ch. 8.
See Church.
Callistus, his new decree
as to penitents  81,100
Captives, redeeming  123
Carthage  1-17
Certificates —
Sacrificial  69-71
Martyrs'  78-80, 8sfF. , 99
Christ, Doctrine of  37
Church, Doctrine of. 118-20, 148
153-4
Clergy- Catholic theory of,  39
Ace. to Cyprian  41-3
As traders and laborers. 48-9
Orders invalidated
by grave sin  173

Page
Cyprian —
His training  18
Conversion  20-5
Opinion on the gods  26
On paganism  30-4
His book against the Jews 36
His view of Christ  37
Made Bishop  38
On Church and Ministry 39-44
Pope  46
Work for Discipline. . . 48-57
Flees persecution  74
Dealing with the lapsed 84 ff
Returns  96
Attitude to Novatian. . . 110-5
Incites to charity in giv
ing to captives  124-6
To care for sick  128
On merit of good deeds ... 130
Writes "To Demetrian." 133
"On Mortality"  136
" On the Lord's Prayer " 140 ff
As a Catholic  147^
Was he a Roman Cath
olic  163 ff
His quarrel with Stephen,
of Rome  176-8
His first trial  190
Banished  192
Summoned back  198
Last letter  198-200
His second trial  201
His execution  202-4
Abiding significance ...205-7
Dead, Prayers and offerings
for  50, 159, 164
Demons, Casting out  26-8
Episcopate, Carthaginian
modeled on civil or
ganization  15

15

225

226

Index.

Page
Epistles, Cyprian's, chrono
logical order  216
Eucharist, See Supper,
Lord's.
Felicissimus, Schism
of  92-6, 98
Gods, Origin of heathen 26, 28-9
Jews, Cyprian on  37
Lawyers —
Ancient  18
Corrupt  33
Laity- Place of  38
Active in electing Bish
op  44-6, 173
Lapsed —
The (apostates to heathen
ism) question of . . 75 ff,84 ff
Final disposition of their
case  96, 116
Marcian of Arles, Case
of  174
Merit —
Beginning of  78
Cyprian on  130, 155-8
Treasury of  159
Military element in Cartha- .
ginian language  13
Mines, Labor in, as punish
ment  64, 193
Monasticism. See Asceticism.
Novatian and his move
ment  102 ff
Novatus  112-5
Pederasty  32
Paganism —
Moral condition of  22-3
Treatment of sick . . . . 127-8
Cruelty of  134
Persecution of Christians —
Reasons for  58-63
Decian  63 ff
Tortures  135
Peter, Primacy of  148
Plague of 252 ff.  126-30

Page
Pope —
Title, when and for whom
first used  46
Of Rome, his head
ship  165-75
See Stephen.
Prayer —
Posture in  145
Rules for  146
Lord's, Cyprian on  140 ff
Purgatory. See Dead.
Saints, Intercession of . . . . 160
Shows, Gladiatorial  31
Sins, Artificial Cath. dis
tinction in  76 ff
Stephen, Bishop of Koine —
His relation to two Span
ish bishops  172
Prompted to duty by
Cyprian  174
Opposed by Cyprian on
question of Doctrine
and Discipline  176-88
Suffering, Why permitted 133-8
Supper, Lord's, referred to
in Lord's Prayer  144
Cyprian's Views of.... 150-2,
158-9.
Tertullian —
As writer  8, 11
His significance  13-15
His view of the minis
try  39-41
On merit  78
On mortal sins  81
Against assumptions of
Roman bishops  82
Theater  8, 9, 31, 51
Trades, Ministers in  48-9
Unity, Interpolations in
Cyprian's book on 169, 208 ff
Valerian persecution  189
Virgines subintroductse  52
War reprobated by early
Christians  30