A Fallen Overseer’s Return

Cyprian to his brother Epictetus, and to the people settled at Assurae: greetings.

I was deeply and painfully disturbed, dearest brothers, to learn that Fortunatianus, once your overseer, after the wretched collapse of his fall, now wants to carry on as though he were sound, and has begun to claim the overseer’s office for himself. [b]

The thing distressed me, first of all for his own sake. Wretched man that he is, he has either been blinded completely in the darkness of the devil, or been deceived by the sacrilegious persuasion of certain people. He ought to be making amends, giving himself night and day to the work of pleading with the Lord in tears and petitions and prayers. Instead he dares to claim again the priesthood he betrayed — as if a man could come from the altars of the devil to the altar of God and it be right. As if he would not be calling down on himself a heavier anger and indignation of the Lord on the day of judgment: unable to be a guide to the brothers in faith and courage, he sets himself up as a teacher of treachery, of audacity, of recklessness; and the man who did not teach the brothers to stand bravely in the fight now teaches those who are already beaten and flat on the ground not even to ask for pardon.

And yet the Lord says: “To them you have poured out a drink offering, and to them you have brought a grain offering. Shall I not be angry at these things? says the Lord.” And in another place: “Whoever sacrifices to any god except the Lord alone shall be destroyed.” The Lord speaks again and says: “They have worshiped what their own fingers made; and the common man bows down and the great man humbles himself, and I will not forgive them.” In Revelation too we read the anger of the Lord threatening, and saying: “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, that same person will drink the wine of the wrath of God, mixed in the cup of his anger; and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torments will go up forever and ever; and they will have no rest day or night, those who worship the beast and his image.”

Since, then, the Lord threatens these torments and these punishments on the day of judgment against people who obey the devil and sacrifice to idols, how does this man imagine he can act as a priest of God when he has obeyed and served the priests of the devil? How does he think that the hand which was a prisoner of sacrilege and crime can now be moved across to the sacrifice of God and the prayer of the Lord? In the holy Scriptures God forbids priests to come near the sacrifice even when their guilt is lighter than this. He says in Leviticus: “The man who has any blemish or stain on him shall not come near to offer gifts to God.” And in Exodus: “And let the priests who come near to the Lord God make themselves holy, or the Lord may abandon them.” And again: “And when they come near to serve at the altar of the Holy One, they shall not bring sin upon themselves, or they will die.” [f]

So men who have brought grave sins upon themselves — men who by sacrificing to idols have made sacrilegious offerings — cannot claim the priesthood of God for themselves, and cannot make any prayer for their brothers in his sight, since it is written in the Gospel, “God does not listen to a sinner; but if anyone worships God and does his will, God listens to him.” All the same, the thick gloom of the falling darkness has so blinded the hearts of some that no light reaches them from these healthy commands. Once turned off the straight line of the true road, they are swept headlong and all at once by the night and the error of their sins.

It is no wonder if men who have denied the Lord now reject our advice, or the Lord’s own commands. What they want is gifts and offerings and profit — the things they used to watch over with a hunger nothing could fill. They still long for dinners and banquets too, belching up last night’s excess in an indigestion that runs on into the day. Nothing could show more plainly that what they served before was not religion but their own belly and their own gain, with an unholy craving. [i]

So we see, and we believe, that this correction has come from God’s own testing: that such men should not go on standing at the altar, and should have nothing further to do with purity, being unchaste; nothing to do with faith, being treacherous; nothing to do with religion, being profane; nothing to do with the things of God, being earthly; nothing to do with holy things, being sacrilegious. That men like this may not come back to profane the altar and infect the brothers, we have to keep watch with everything in us and strain with all our strength, so that, as far as it lies with us, we may hold them back from this brazen wickedness and they may not try any longer to play the priest — men who have been thrown down into the lowest pit of death and have gone down headlong under the weight of a destruction greater than the fall of the laity.

But if these men out of their minds keep on in their incurable madness, and the Holy Spirit withdraws and the blindness that has begun stays on in its deep night, then our advice will be to separate the brothers one by one from their deceit, and to keep them clear of the infection, so that no one runs into the net of their error. For the offering cannot be made holy where the Holy Spirit is not; nor can the Lord be of any benefit to anyone through the prayers and petitions of someone who has himself insulted the Lord. [k]

But if Fortunatianus keeps on in this madness of his — whether the blindness the devil brought on him has made him forget his crime, or he has become the devil’s agent and servant for deceiving the brotherhood — then you, as far as it lies with you, must work at it. In this darkness of the devil’s rage, call the minds of the brothers back from their error, so that they do not lightly go along with another man’s madness, and do not make themselves partners in the crimes of men who have given themselves up. Let them stay sound instead, and hold the steady course of their own salvation and of the wholeness they have kept and guarded.

As for those who lapsed, though — those who recognize how great their sin is — let them not give up pleading with the Lord, and let them not abandon the catholic church, which the Lord appointed to be one and one only. Let them keep on making amends and begging for the Lord’s mercy, and knock at the door of the church, so that they may be taken back where they once were, and may return to Christ, whom they left. They must not listen to men who mislead them with a false and deadly enticement, since it is written, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience; so do not be partners with them.” [m]

So let no one join himself to the defiant, to men who have no fear of God, to men who cut themselves off from the church altogether. But if anyone cannot bear to keep pleading with the Lord he has offended, and will not listen to us, and follows desperate and abandoned men instead, he will have himself to blame when the day of judgment comes. For how will he be able to plead with the Lord on that day — a man who denied Christ before this, and now denies the church of Christ as well, and who, refusing to obey overseers who are sound and whole and alive, has made himself the associate and partner of the dying? I pray that you, dearest brothers, whom I long to see, may always be well.