t 52, 4. PREFACE. moment, to act alone. Meanwhile, his faith in God's protecting Presence in His Church was his stay. What duty required could not turn out to evil to any who were really His; those plants only would be finally rooted up, which the Heavenly Father had not planted. Appreciating in this way also, the unity of the Body of Christ, he wished what was enacted to be the act of the whole body, not in the modern way of suffrage, but by "advice of the Clergy, conP 14, 5. currence of the laity"." 59, 8. Any one who follows the course of the Epistles of this period, must be filled with admiration at his stedfast, unvarying course. He kept in view the point to which the vessel of the Church must be guided, but felt that there was One only, Whose Presence in the ship could bring it immediately to the land whither they went." For the present, he saw that so deep a wound could not be slightly healed; most could but recover slowly, if at all, from a fall so exceeding; hasty and indiscriminate restoration had been but 15, 1. to profane Things Holy', and emperil those on whom they 31, 7. 15, 2. were prematurely bestowed'; they who had cast themselves 16,2.17. out of the body of Christ, were, if possible, to be roused to feel the intensity of their loss, that the sharp torture of their privation might awaken their dormant life, the fear of everlasting fire nerve them to overcome all other fears, the fearfulness of being without Christ gather up all their 19. 55. energies, that they be not without Him for ever. It is thus §. 2. cf. de Laps, that God Himself often deals with the soul, withdrawing His Presence and allowing it to be tortured and darkened by the spectres and shadows of its former sins. It was easier perhaps, from having denied Christ to become His martyr, than to repent amid an easy restoration. Penitence after such falls must be itself a martyrdom. fin. p. 176. * 20. His very energy at this time is employed in gaining all to his own patience and self-possession, that all might delay acting prematurely, in order that when God should permit them to be gathered together, all might act advisedly and as with one soul. To the Roman Clergy', the Martyrs and u 16. 19. * 17.43. a с d 30, 8. Confessors', his own Clergy", his people, the lapsed them- 15. selves, he writes in one even tone, pressing on all the 26. 32. 34. §. 2. necessity of one well-balanced tenor of action; he seems like one marshalling those scattered by the grievous inroad 33. of the persecution into one united army; a centre of unity, attracting all to his own poised and stedfast rest. Acting himself stedfastly on the principle, that "what concerned all in common," he " dared not to prejudge and claim to himself 26. alone;" that what as a precedent", "concerned not a few, nor 34, 3. one Church, nor one Province," must be waited for "from the whole Church;" he could, with consistent energy, inculcate 20. 56. that "one rule of discipline and one consent be observed by 25 fin. all, according to the Lord's commands." Meantime, in conjunction with the Clergy of Rome, (who, with several neighbouring Bishops, concurred in the wisdom of his decision,) he made provision for the care of the lapsed, when sick, and had regard to individual cases, whenever this did not forestall the judgment of the Church'. From the first, he indicates the course which he thought healthful. The complaint that certain Presbyters admitted the lapsed to Communion without the due period of public penitence and formal restoration by the Bishop and Clergy of such as were approved", and his 15. 16. request to the Confessors that they would restrain their recommendations to such as had by penitence made "very nearly full amends"," indicate that he was prepared to restore 15 fin. such as had fulfilled these conditions. But denying to himself the exercise of his individual authority, he carried with him the judgment of the whole Church; the counsel, suggested by one, became the act of all; and out of the perplexities of a new decision, when the variety of natural temperament, strictness, lenity, firmness, pliableness, or the 7 Antonianus occurs as an instance of those within the Church, who were perplexed by the milder course taken, (Ep. 55.) and the very detail in which St. C. meets his difficulties implies the extent to which they were entertained. The strictness of the African Church appears also incidentally in that some had wholly denied reconciliation to adulterers, (§. 17.) the very extent to 11. 18. 24. 25. 17. 26. divers relations to the lapsed themselves, might have occasioned much disharmony, the Church emerged, reflecting in the unbroken unity of its mode of action the Oneness of its Author. The same wonderful union of caution and promptness is visible in his measures to obtain the unanimous recognition of Cornelius. Convinced of the rectitude of his election from the first, he at once announced his consecration to the i 45, 1. Church at Carthage', refusing to allow lying reports to defile 44.45. the sanctity of the priesthood or the presence of the Altar*. Yet in obtaining his recognition he awaited such evidence from Rome, as should overbear all doubt and ensure the 145, 2. uniform recognition at the hands of all'. 48, 2. Even in that question, in which he for the time failed, on heretical baptism, his measures seem most wonderfully adapted for obtaining unity. He overrules none, yet wins almost all; and there is perhaps hardly any more remarkable memorial of the unperceived influence of one mind over others, than the way in which the letter of Firmilian and the Council of Carthage echo his maxims and grounds of Scripture, so that the Council seems by the mouths of many to be uttering the thoughts of one. And even here it should be observed that the question was of practice only, not of principles or doctrines; for on the inefficacy of the Sacraments out of the Church S. Augustine concurred with S. Cyprian, while controverting the practice derived from it. The practice itself which S. Cyprian retained in the African Church, remained in the Eastern, and appears to be adopted, although unrecognised, by the Roman Communion among ourselves. Wisdom must have it in common with mere policy, that she chooses her measures well; it need hardly be said, that the measures of a great Saint cannot be chosen with a view to any thing merely external, not even the peace of the Church itself. Unity was the great object of S. Cyprian's of those sifted by it. The strictness of 59, 20. 1. 8 see, at length, Note G. on Tert. de Bapt. p. 280 sqq. mil. 75. §. 3. 63, 10. 69, 4. 45, 1. 69, 5. 73, 9. life, because it is the very centre of his doctrine, as flowing from love, the bond of all. Unity being an effluence from the Unity of God, a fruit of the Indwelling of His Spirit, His Bond, knitting and joining together His own", typifieds. Firin the Sacraments" and itself a Sacrament, faith in love, its maintenance was not the maintenance of any thing outward, but the developement of an inward grace. It must suffer of course from any injury of its outward form, but over and above any effects, one learns, on the very surface of S. Cyprian, something of its intrinsic beauty and propriety. As being of grace, it is graceful, lovely, in and for itself; it is the visible expression of what is heavenly. As being a grace, it must emanate from within. The peace of the Church then must be the result of the peace of individuals, as heresy and schism are of their restlessness. S. Cyprian, in cultivating unity, cultivated it as a Christian grace; as such, it was an end in itself; the free union of different wills in one consent was an antagonist to self-will, a present cultivation of grace, a sight pleasing to Him Who purchased and "gave peace" to His own, a practising and prelude of the everlasting harmony. The same temper then which S. Cyprian laboured to form in the whole Church, he studied to foster in his own; what he was in the greatest questions, that he was in the least: to his own people the same as to the whole Church. As he would not in the case of the lapsed forestall the judgment of the Church, so neither that of his own people as to subdeacons who had retired in persecution. "I cannot make P 34, 3. myself sole judge," are the words of one, who, by a moral necessity, could not act out of the unity in which he lived, whose individual existence was inseparable from the body of which he was the visible head. He would be nothing of himself, except the bond which binds all together, and thus he becomes (so to speak) the animating life of all, since his life is his Lord's in him. A proof how "the meek inherit 9 of this sort, seems the fitness which St. C. sees in "one rule of discipline and one consent," e. g. Ep. 25. 12, 28. fin. 66.69. 75. xiv 66 PREFACE. the earth," and "having nothing, possess all things;" an instance also, that the highest conceptions of Episcopal authority lead in a well-ordered mind to the most selfdenying moderation in their exercise. Episcopal authority, apart from the doctrine of the mystical unity of the Church, would be liable to be secular, arbitrary, despotic; in connection with it, it derives its qualities from Him, of Whom it is, and is essentially spiritual, parental, self-sacrificing. The Bishop, as conceived by S. Cyprian, though set over the Church, is yet in and of her; not, like a secular power, external to those it rules, nor again deriving authority from 91 Cor. it, yet" set in her;" the visible representative of the InEp. 48. visible Head; the joint, compacting the members together, yet one with the Church, as the Church with him; on the 33. 45. one hand, deriving his authority by vicarious succession' from the Apostles," chosen," "ordained," "ruled," "inspired," strengthened," "protected," by Christ", on the other, by the unity of the Spirit which holds together invisibly each part of the Church and its whole, " in the Church, as the 66, 7. Church in the Bishop "." The Bishop, independent in authority, was one organic whole with the Church. It belonged, then, to the oneness of the Church, that whatever was done, should emanate from her oneness and love, as the result of a concordant will, not be accepted only by a cold unparticipating obedience. The maxim accordingly of S. Ignatius for the people, "to do nothing without the Bishop," finds in S. Cyprian the counterpart for the Bishop, "do nothing without the Presbytery and the concurrence of the people;" in his well-known words, "from the beginning of my Episcopate, I resolved to do nothing of my own private judgment without your advice and the concurrence of the 14, 5. people." If possible, he abated from his right', in order to gain the more loving concurrence to what he saw to be right. In the abstract he asserted his right to exercise alone the authority committed to him of God; held it back", while he might; when necessary he exercised it. But in pro 3 u 35. x 34. 10 Ep. 48 fin. see other passages in Index, v. Bishop. |