No Second Overseer

Cyprian to Cornelius, my brother: greetings. [a]

Beloved brother, there have come to us, sent by Novatian: Maximus the elder, Augendus the deacon, and a certain Machaeus and Longinus. But from the letters they brought with them, and from their own talk and their own statements, we found out that Novatian had been made an overseer. The wickedness of an unlawful ordination, carried through against the whole church, alarmed us, and we decided on the spot that these men had to be kept from sharing our communion.

For the time being we refuted and beat back the claims they kept pressing, stubbornly and obstinately. Meanwhile I and a number of my colleagues, who had gathered with me, waited for our colleagues Caldonius and Fortunatus to arrive. We had lately sent those two to you as our envoys, and to our fellow overseers who were present at your ordination, so that when they came back and reported how the matter really stood, the wickedness of the other side might be put down through them, by weightier authority and by proof anyone could see.

But Pompeius and Stephanus, our colleagues, arrived as well. They too set us right on the business, bringing forward plain proofs and testimony, in keeping with their own seriousness and honesty — so that there was no longer any need to give Novatian’s men a further hearing.

And when they burst into one of our station-day gatherings with spiteful abuse and a great uproar, demanding that the charges they said they had brought and would prove be looked into in public, by us and by the people, we gave them this answer: it did not suit our own seriousness to let the honor of a colleague — a man already chosen, already ordained, already approved by the praiseworthy verdict of many — be dragged into question any further by the abusive shouting of his rivals.

It would take a long while to gather into a letter every point on which they were refuted and silenced, and on which they were shown to be the men who made a heresy by their unlawful attempts. You will hear the whole of it, in full, from Primitivus our fellow elder, when he comes to you.

And their raging boldness never lets up. Here too they are working to pull the members of Christ apart into rival parties, and to cut and tear the one body of the whole church. They run from door to door through many people’s houses, and from town to town through certain districts, hunting for men to share their obstinacy and their error and to join them in their split.

We have given them our answer once, and we will not stop ordering them to do this: to drop their ruinous quarrels and disputes; to realize that deserting their Mother is a sin against the duty they owe; and to acknowledge and understand that once an overseer has been made and approved by the testimony and the judgment of his colleagues and of the people, no other man can possibly be appointed in his place. So then, if they will take thought for their own good, peaceably and faithfully — if they claim to be men who hold to the good news of Christ — they must come back to the church.

Dearest brother, I wish you well always and from my heart.