Let Them Knock, Not Break In

To Father Cyprian — from the elders and deacons living at Rome. Greetings.

A mind that knows its own honesty, that leans on the strength of the discipline the good news lays down, and that has been made a true witness to itself in the light of heaven’s own rulings, is used to being satisfied with God as its one judge. It looks for no one else’s praise and dreads no one else’s accusation. Even so, men deserve twice the praise who know they owe their conscience to God as judge and to no one else, and who still want their own brothers to approve what they do. [d]

It is no surprise, brother Cyprian, that this is what you have done. With your usual modesty and the hard work that comes naturally to you, you wanted us to be found not so much judges of your decisions as partners in them — so that by approving what you did we might share the credit for it with you, and, since we agree with your good counsel entirely, might be fellow heirs of it. That way we are all reckoned to have worked at the same task, because we are all seen to stand allied in one and the same judgment and one and the same discipline.

For what suits a time of peace better, or what is more necessary in the war of persecution, than to keep up the strictness that God’s own severity requires? A man who fights against it is bound to wander over the unsteady surface of events, thrown one way and another by the shifting, unpredictable storms of things. The tiller of good judgment is wrenched out of his hands, as it were, and he drives the ship that carries the church’s safety onto the rocks. It seems the church can be kept safe no other way than by beating off everyone who sets himself against her like a wave running the wrong way, and by holding the ever-guarded rule of discipline itself as the rudder that brings a ship through a storm. [e]

And this is not something we have thought of only lately. These are no sudden measures against wrongdoers that have just now occurred to us. Among us this is read of as the ancient strictness, the ancient faith, the ancient discipline. The apostle would never have published such praise of us — “your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world” — unless that strength of ours had already, in those days, drawn the roots of its faith from that source. To have degenerated from such praise and such glory is a very great crime.

It is less of a disgrace never to have been proclaimed at all than to fall from the height of praise. It is a smaller crime never to have been honored with a good report than to lose the honor of the good reports you had. There is less discredit in lying unnoticed, with no announcement of any virtues, ignoble and unpraised, than in being disinherited of the faith and losing the praises that were properly your own. For whatever is proclaimed to a man’s glory swells up into the hatred earned by the worst kind of crime, unless it is kept up by anxious and careful effort.

That we are not saying this dishonestly, our earlier letters have already proved. In them we told you our opinion in the plainest words. We wrote against those who had shown themselves unfaithful by presenting wicked certificates that were not lawfully theirs, as if they thought that would get them out of the devil’s snares — when in fact they were held just as fast as if they had gone up to those wicked altars, by the very fact that they had given their testimony. And we wrote against those who used such certificates once they were made, though they were not present when they were made: by ordering them written that way they certainly did claim to have been present. A man who has ordered a wicked thing done is not innocent of it, and a man by whose consent a crime is publicly spoken of is not clear of it, even though he did not commit it himself. [g]

And since the whole sacred bond of faith is understood to be held in confessing the name of Christ, the man who looks for deceitful tricks to excuse himself has denied Christ; and the man who wants it to look as though he satisfied edicts or laws issued against the good news has obeyed those edicts by the very act by which he wished to appear to obey them. We also declared our faith and our agreement against those who had defiled their hands and their mouths with unlawful sacrifices — men whose minds were defiled first, which is how their hands and their mouths came to be defiled too.

Far be it from the church at Rome to let her strength go slack with so unholy an easiness, or to cut the sinews of her strictness by throwing down the majesty of faith. The wreckage of your ruined brothers is still lying all around you — and still falling. Are cures to be handed out for it at high speed, cures certain to do no good, so that men may be given communion again? Is a false mercy to press new wounds onto the old wounds of their offense, so that even repentance is snatched away from these wretched people, to their greater ruin? For what good is the medicine of leniency, if the physician himself heads off repentance, opens an easy road to new dangers, and only covers the wound instead of letting time do the necessary work of closing the scar? That is not to heal. If we want to speak the truth, that is to kill.

All the same, you have letters from the confessors that agree with ours — men whom the dignity of their confession still keeps shut up here in prison, and whose faith has already once crowned them in a glorious confession in the contest for the good news. In those letters they upheld the strictness of the discipline the good news teaches, and withdrew the petitions that were not lawfully theirs, so as not to bring disgrace on the church. If they had not done that, the ruins of that discipline would not be easy to rebuild. It was fitting for no one so much as for these men to keep the whole force of the good news, and its dignity, unbroken — men who had handed themselves over to be tortured and cut to pieces by furious people for the sake of the good news. They would have deserved to forfeit the honor of martyrdom if, at the very moment of martyrdom, they had wanted to be traitors to the good news. For a man who does not keep what he has on the terms on which he holds it loses what he had, because he has broken the terms. [k]

On that point we owe you great thanks, and we give them. You lit up the darkness of their prison with your letters. You came to them by whatever way you could get in. You refreshed their minds — minds already robust in their own faith and confession — with your words and your letters. You followed up their good fortune with the praises it deserved and set them on fire for a far keener longing after the glory of heaven. You urged them forward. By the force of your speech you put spirit into men who, as we believe and hope, will be victors before long. So although it may all seem to come from the faith of those who confess and from God’s mercy, still, in their martyrdom, they seem in some way to have become debtors to you. [l]

But to come back to the point our letter seems to have wandered from: you will find attached the sort of letters we also sent to Sicily. There is, however, a greater necessity on us to put this business off. Since the departure of Fabian, a man of the noblest memory, we have had no overseer appointed yet, because of the difficulty of the affairs and of the times — no one who can arrange all things of this kind, and who can take account of the lapsed with authority and wisdom.

Still, what you yourself have said in so weighty a matter satisfies us: that the peace of the church must first be kept, and then that a gathering for counsel should be brought together — overseers, elders, deacons and confessors, along with the laypeople who have stood firm — and that we should deal with the case of the lapsed there. For it seems bound to stir up great ill will, and to be a heavy burden, to look into what appears to have been done by many, except by the advice of many; or that one man should give sentence when so great a crime is known to have broken out and spread among so many. A decree cannot stand firm if it does not appear to have had the consent of a great many.

Look at almost the whole world laid waste. See the remains and the ruins of the fallen lying about on every side. Then consider that the counsel called for must be as wide as the crime has plainly spread. Let the medicine not be smaller than the wound; let the remedies not be fewer than the deaths. Those who fell, fell because they were too careless, with a blind rashness; so those who try to set this disaster right should use every restraint in their counsels, in case something done as it should not be is judged by everyone to be worth nothing at all.

So then — with one and the same counsel, with the same prayers and the same tears — let us beg the divine majesty and ask peace for the name of the church: we who up to now seem to have escaped the destruction of these times of ours, and those as well who seem to have fallen into the disasters of the time. Let us take turns praying for one another, and cherish, guard and arm one another. [o]

Let us pray for the lapsed, that they may be lifted up. Let us pray for those who are standing, that they may not be tempted so far as to be destroyed. Let us pray that those who are said to have fallen may recognize how great their sin is, and may see that it needs no momentary cure and no over-hasty one. Let us pray that repentance may follow even upon the effects of pardoning the lapsed — that once they have understood their own crime they may be willing to be patient with us for a while, and may stop disturbing the church in her unsettled state, so that they do not look as though they have lit a persecution inside the church for us, and their restlessness be added to the heap of their sins.

For a sense of shame suits them best of all, since it is exactly a shameless mind that stands condemned in their sin. Let them knock at the doors — but certainly not break them down. Let them present themselves at the threshold of the church — but certainly not leap over it. Let them keep watch at the gates of the heavenly camp — but armed with the shame by which they know themselves to have been deserters. Let them take up the trumpet of their prayers again — but not sound the charge on it. Let them arm themselves with the weapons of shame, and take up again the shield of faith, which they laid down when the fear of death made them deny; but let those who are armed now believe that they are armed against their enemy the devil, not against the church, which grieves over their fall. A petition made with restraint will do much for them, and an entreaty made in shame, and a humility they cannot do without, and a patience that does not go slack. Let them send their tears as envoys for their sufferings; let their groans, brought up out of the deepest part of the heart, do the work of an advocate and prove their grief and their shame for the crime they have committed.

Indeed, if they shudder at the size of the guilt they have taken on; if with a truly healing hand they handle the deadly wound in their heart and conscience and the deep places where this subtle mischief hides — then let them blush even to ask. Except, again, that not to have asked for the help of peace is a greater risk and a greater shame. [s]

But let all of it stay inside the sacred bond. In the very rule of their asking, let the time be taken into account: let it be an entreaty with the eyes down, a petition that has been humbled. The one who is being asked ought to be bent, not provoked. And as God’s clemency must be kept in view, so must God’s censure. It is written, “I forgave you all that debt, because you begged me.” And it is written as well, “Whoever denies me before men, I will deny him too before my Father and before his angels.”

For God is merciful, yes; but he also requires obedience to what he commands, and requires it carefully. He invites men to the banquet; but the man who has no wedding garment he binds hand and foot and throws outside the gathering of his holy people. He has prepared heaven, but he has prepared hell as well. He has prepared places of refreshment, but he has prepared everlasting punishment as well. He has prepared the light that no one can come near, but he has prepared the huge, everlasting gloom of unending night as well.

It is this middle course, held in moderation, that we have wanted to keep in these matters. For a long time now, and a good many of us, and together with some of the overseers who are near us and within reach — and some who were stationed far off, whom the heat of the persecution had driven out of other provinces — we have thought that nothing new should be done before an overseer is appointed. [w]

But we do believe that the care of the lapsed must be handled with moderation. In the meantime, while God withholds the gift of an overseer from us, the case of those who are able to bear the delay of postponement should be held over. As for those whom oncoming death will not allow to bear the delay: if they have repented and have declared over and over how they detest what they did; if with tears, with groans, with weeping they have shown the marks of a grieving and truly repentant spirit, when so far as a man can tell there is no hope left of their living — then, at the last, such careful and cautious help should be given them. God himself knows what he will do with such people, and in what way he will weigh out his judgment. Our own anxious care is that ungodly men should not praise us for being smooth and easy, and that men who have truly repented should not accuse our strictness of cruelty.

We bid you farewell, most blessed and glorious father, always and heartily in the Lord. And keep us in mind.