Certificates for the Lapsed

Cyprian to the martyrs and confessors, his dearly loved brothers: greetings.

The anxiety of my position and the fear of the Lord compel me, my brave and dearly loved brothers, to warn you by letter. Men who hold to the Lord’s faith as devotedly and as bravely as you do ought to hold to the Lord’s law and discipline as well. Every soldier of Christ is bound to keep his commander’s orders; but it is more fitting for you than for anyone else to obey them, since you have been made an example to the rest, both of courage and of the fear of God. [e]

I had believed that the elders and deacons who are there with you would be instructing you more fully about the law of the Gospel, as was always done in the past under my predecessors, when the deacons going in and out of the prison guided what the martyrs wanted by their advice and by the rules of Scripture. Instead, to my great sorrow, I gather that God’s commands are not being put before you by them at all — that they are actually being held back. What you yourselves do carefully, out of regard for God, and respectfully, out of regard for God’s priest, certain elders are loosening, men who take account neither of the fear of God nor of the honor owed the overseer.

You sent me letters asking that your wishes be looked into, and that peace be granted to certain of the lapsed as soon as the persecution ends and we can begin meeting with our clergy and gathering together again. But those elders — against the law of the Gospel, and against your own respectful request — dare to make the offering on the lapsed people’s behalf and to give them the thanksgiving. They do it before any penance has been completed, before there has even been a confession of the gravest and most shocking of sins, before hands have been laid on the repentant by the overseers and the clergy. That is to profane the sacred body of the Lord, though it stands written: “Whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.”

The lapsed themselves may be forgiven for wanting it. What dead man would not rush to be brought back to life? Who would not be desperate to reach his own salvation? But it is the duty of the men set over them to keep the rule, and to teach those who are in too much of a hurry or who simply do not know — so that shepherds of the sheep do not turn into their butchers. To grant what leads to destruction is to deceive. That is not how a fallen man is raised; by offending God he is driven further toward ruin. [i]

So let them learn, even from you, what they should have been teaching. Let them keep your petitions and your requests for the overseers, and let them wait for settled and peaceable times to give peace at your asking. The first thing is that the Mother should receive her own peace from the Lord; then, in line with your wishes, the peace of her children can be considered.

And since I hear, my very brave and dearly loved brothers, that you are being pressed by the shamelessness of some people, and that your own restraint is being trampled on, I beg you as earnestly as I know how. Remember the Gospel. Think what your predecessors the martyrs granted in the past, and in what sort of cases, and how careful they were about everything. Weigh anxiously and cautiously what the men who petition you are asking for. You are the Lord’s friends, and you will one day exercise judgment along with him: you have to examine each man’s conduct, and what he has done, and what he deserves. Consider as well what kinds of sins they are and how grave they are, so that nothing is promised by you, or done by me, in haste and unworthily, and our church has to blush in front of the pagans themselves. [k]

For we are visited and corrected often, and we are warned to keep the Lord’s commands unbroken and uncorrupted — and I find that this has not stopped among you either, so that God’s own judgment is teaching a good many of you as well the discipline of the church. All of it can be managed if you will govern what is asked of you by weighing carefully what reverence for God requires: watching for those who play favorites, either handing out your benefits as favors or hunting for profit out of a trade that is not lawful, and holding them back.

I have written about this both to the clergy and to the people, and I have given orders that both letters be read to you. But you should also take the matter back in hand and correct it, with your usual care, in this way: name the individuals to whom you want peace granted. For I hear that certificates are being given to some people in a form that says, “Let so-and-so be received into communion along with his friends.” The martyrs never did that in a single case, and a vague and blind petition like it is bound to heap reproach on us later. “So-and-so with his friends” opens a very wide door. Twenty or thirty men or more may be brought to us, who can be claimed to be neighbors and relations and freedmen and household slaves of the man who holds the certificate. [m]

For that reason I beg you to write down in the certificate, by name, those you yourselves have seen, those you have known, those whose repentance you can see is very near to full satisfaction — and then send us letters that agree with faith and discipline. I wish you well always in the Lord, my very brave and dearly loved brothers; and remember me. Farewell.