The Confessors Come Back

Cornelius to his brother Cyprian: greetings. [a]

We were worried sick over those confessors. They had been taken in, and very nearly tricked away from the church altogether, by the craft and the spite of that sly, subtle man. So our joy answered our anxiety measure for measure, and so did the thanks we gave to Almighty God and to Christ our Lord, when they admitted their mistake, saw the poisoned cunning of that malicious man for what it was, as though they had spotted a snake, and came back — with one heart, as they all declare, and with a single will — to the church they had walked out of.

At first it was brothers of tested faith, men who love peace and want unity, who brought word that the swollen pride of these men had already subsided. Even so, there was no assurance solid enough to make us believe easily that they were thoroughly changed. Later, though, the confessors Urbanus and Sidonius came to our elders and stated that Maximus, who is both a confessor and an elder, wanted to return to the church just as much as they did. But a great deal had gone before this that they themselves had engineered — you have heard about it from our fellow overseers and from my own letters — so they could not be trusted in a hurry. We decided to hear from their own mouths, in their own admission, what they had sent us by messengers.

When they came, and the elders required them to give an account of what they had done, this was laid against them: that only lately they had sent out letter after letter under their own names, full of slander and abuse, to every church, and had thrown nearly all the churches into confusion. They answered that they had been deceived and had not known what was in those letters. It was only because they had been misled, they said, that they had also done what splits a church and had become the founders of a party of their own — to the point of letting hands be laid on that man as though he were being made an overseer. When these charges and others had been brought against them, they begged that all of it might be wiped out and dropped from memory altogether.

So the whole business was put before me, and I decided that the whole body of elders should be called together — five overseers were on hand as well, the same five who were here today — so that on well-grounded advice, and with everyone consenting, it could be settled what ought to be done about these men. And so that you may know how they all felt and what each one advised, I decided to let you know our several opinions too; you will find them written out below. Once that was done, Maximus, Urbanus, Sidonius and a number of brothers who had attached themselves to them came before the elders. They pleaded hard that what had been done before should sink into oblivion and never be mentioned again. From now on, they promised, as though nothing at all had been done or said and everything on both sides had been forgiven, they would show God a clean and undivided heart, following the word of the good news that says,

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

What was left was for the people to be told the whole proceeding, so that they might see settled in the church the very men they had long watched wandering and scattered, and had mourned over. Once the wish of these men was known, a great crowd of the brotherhood gathered. There was one voice from them all, giving thanks to God. Every one of them was letting the joy of his heart out in tears, and they held these men in their arms as if this were the day they had been let out of prison. And to quote their very own words:

“We know that Cornelius is overseer of the most holy universal church, chosen by Almighty God and by Christ our Lord. We admit our mistake. We were the victims of a fraud. We were taken in by tricky treachery and a flood of talk. For although we seemed to have held a kind of communion with a man who had split the church and set up a party of his own, still our mind was always honestly in the church. We are not ignorant that there is one God, and one Christ the Lord whom we have confessed, and one Holy Spirit — and that in the universal church there ought to be one overseer.”

Were we not rightly moved by a declaration like that, to allow that what they had confessed in front of the power of this world they might now make good once they were settled in the church? So we told Maximus the elder to take his own place again, and the rest we received back, with the people warmly approving. But we have left the whole of it to Almighty God, in whose power everything is held in reserve.

So, brother, all this was written to you in the same hour, at the very moment it happened, and sent off. I dispatched Nicephorus the acolyte at once, hurrying him down to the boat, so that without any delay you might give thanks to Almighty God and to Christ our Lord as though you had been standing there yourself among that clergy and in that assembly of the people. And we believe — no, we are certain of it — that the others too who have been drawn up in this error will return to the church before long, once they see their own leaders acting alongside us. I think, brother, that you ought to send these letters on to the other churches as well, so that everyone may know that the craft and the shuffling of this man, who split the church and set up his own party, are being reduced to nothing day by day. Farewell, dearest brother.