Greater Than He Left It

Cyprian, with his colleagues, to Lucius his brother: greetings.

Not long ago we congratulated you, dearest brother, when God in his gracious favor set you over the care of his church with a double honor, making you a confessor and a priest at once. Now we congratulate you no less — you, and the men who were with you, and the whole brotherhood — that the Lord’s kind and open-handed protection has brought you back again to his own people, with the same glory and with praise for you: so that the shepherd might be restored to feed his flock, the pilot to steer his ship, the ruler to govern his people. It is plain, then, that your banishment was arranged by God — not so that the church should be left without the overseer who had been banished and driven out, but so that he should come back to the church greater than he left it. [d]

For the three young men lost none of the dignity of martyrdom because their death was thwarted and they came out of the blazing furnace unhurt. Daniel did not fall short of the praise he had earned because, after being thrown to the lions for their prey, he was protected by the Lord and lived on to glory. Among those who confess Christ, a martyrdom put off does not lessen the worth of the confession; it shows how great God’s protection is. [h]

We see acted out in you what those brave and famous young men announced in front of the king: that they were ready to be burned in the flames rather than serve his gods or worship the image he had made, but that the God they worshipped — the God we worship too — was able even to rescue them from the blazing furnace, and to deliver them out of the king’s hands and out of the sufferings standing right in front of them. That is what we now find carried out in the faith of your confession and in the Lord’s protection over you. You stood ready and willing to undergo any punishment, and the Lord drew you back from punishment and kept you for the church.

In your return the dignity of the confession has not been cut short in the overseer; rather, the priestly authority has grown. A priest now stands at God’s altar who urges the people to take up the weapons of confession and to face martyrdom — not by his words but by his deeds; and, with Antichrist close at hand, he makes the soldiers ready for the battle not only by the urging of his speech and his words, but by the example of his own faith and courage.

We understand, dearest brother — we see it with all the light our heart has — the saving and holy plans of the divine majesty: why the persecution recently broke out so suddenly where you are, and why the power of the state suddenly burst out against the church of Christ, and against Cornelius the overseer, the blessed martyr, and against all of you. It was so that, to the confusion and beating down of the heretics, the Lord might show which one is the church; which is her one overseer, chosen by God’s appointment; which elders are joined to the overseer in priestly honor; which is the united and true people of Christ, bound together in the love of the Lord’s flock; who they were that the enemy would harry; and whom, on the other hand, the devil would spare as being already his own. [k]

For Christ’s adversary does not persecute or attack anyone except Christ’s camp and Christ’s soldiers. Heretics, once thrown down and made his own, he despises and passes by. He tries to throw down the ones he sees standing.

And I wish, dearest brother, that we were free to be there with you now that you have come back — that we ourselves, who love you as you love us, might be present with the rest and take our own share of the great joy of your arrival. What celebration there must be among all the brothers there; what running together, what embracing of each one as they come! You can hardly be given enough kisses by the people clinging to you; their faces and their eyes can hardly get their fill of looking at you. In the joy of your coming, the brotherhood there has begun to recognize what a joy, and how great a joy, will follow when Christ comes. For since his coming will soon be here, a kind of picture of it has gone ahead in you. Just as John came as his forerunner, the man who prepared his way, and preached that Christ had come, so now, when an overseer comes back as a confessor of the Lord and as his priest, it looks as though the Lord himself is coming back. [n]

But I and my colleagues and the whole brotherhood send you this letter in our place, dearest brother. While we set our joy before you in a letter, we express the faithful bent of our love here as well, in our sacrifices and our prayers. We do not stop giving thanks to God the Father and to Christ his Son our Lord, and praying and pleading that he who is perfect, and who makes others perfect, will keep and complete in you the glorious crown of your confession — he who has perhaps called you back for this very reason, so that your glory should not be hidden if the martyrdom of your confession were finished away from home. For a victim that gives the brotherhood an example of courage and of faith ought to be offered while the brothers are there to see it. We wish you, dearest brother, always and heartily, farewell.