Safe Harbors of the Church

Cyprian to his brother Stephen: greetings.

Our colleague Faustinus, who lives at Lyons, has written to me more than once, dearest brother, telling me what I am certain has also been reported to you — by him and by the other overseers settled in that same province. Marcian, who lives at Arles, has thrown in his lot with Novatian and has broken away from the unity of the church everywhere, and from the agreement of our own body and priesthood. He holds the worst of all the twisted notions heretics presume to hold: that the comfort and help of God’s love and a father’s tenderness are shut against servants of God who repent, and mourn, and knock at the door of the church with tears and groans and grief; that people already wounded are not to be let in so their wounds can be eased, but are to be abandoned with no hope of peace or of a share in our common life, and thrown out to be prey for wolves and plunder for the devil. [d]

This is a matter, dearest brother, that we are bound to take counsel over and to help with. We are the men who keep God’s mercy in view and who hold the scales in the governing of the church, and so we deal out a strict rebuke to sinners in such a way that we still do not refuse the medicine of God’s goodness and compassion for raising the lapsed and healing the wounded.

So you ought to write a full letter to our fellow overseers appointed in Gaul, and not put up any longer with Marcian — stubborn and arrogant, an enemy of God’s mercy and of the saving of the brotherhood — insulting our assembly on the ground that he does not yet appear to have been cut off by us. For a long time now he has been boasting and announcing that he has left our fellowship, because he sticks to Novatian and follows his stubbornness. Yet Novatian himself, whom he follows, was cut off long ago and judged an enemy of the church. When Novatian sent envoys to us here in Africa asking to be received into our fellowship, the answer he got back from a council of the several priests who were present was this: he had shut himself out, and none of us could receive him. He had tried to raise an unhallowed altar, to set up an adulterous chair, and to offer sacrilegious sacrifices against the true priest — while Cornelius the overseer had been ordained in the church everywhere by the judgment of God and by the votes of the clergy and the people. [h]

So if Novatian were willing to come to a right mind and come back to himself, he would repent and return to the church as a suppliant. How pointless it is, dearest brother — when Novatian has just been thrown back and rejected and cut off by God’s priests the world over — for us to go on letting his flatterers make sport of us and pass judgment on the majesty and dignity of the church!

Send letters into the province and to the people living at Arles, so that Marcian may be cut off, another put in his place, and Christ’s flock gathered together again — the flock that to this day he leaves scattered and wounded and held in contempt. It is enough that in those parts, over these last years, many of our brothers have died without peace. Surely the ones still left ought to be helped: people who groan day and night, and who beg God’s fatherly mercy and plead with us for the comfort of our help. This, dearest brother, is exactly why the body of priests is so large, and joined together by the bond of a shared harmony and the link of unity — so that if any one of our college sets out to start a heresy, and to tear and lay waste Christ’s flock, the rest may come to the rescue and, like useful and merciful shepherds, gather the Lord’s sheep back into the flock. [l]

Suppose a harbor on the coast turns treacherous and dangerous for ships because its defenses have given way. Do the sailors not steer for other ports nearby, where the approach is safe and workable and the anchorage secure? Or suppose an inn along the road is taken over and held by bandits, so that whoever goes in is set upon by the men lying in wait there. As soon as the place is known for what it is, do travelers not look for other lodgings along the road — safer ones, where the room can be trusted and the inn is no danger to the guest?

That is how it should be with us now, dearest brother. Our brothers have been thrown against the rocks of Marcian and are looking for the safe harbors of the church; we should take them in promptly and treat them kindly. And we should provide travelers the sort of lodging the Gospel tells of, where those who have been wounded and maimed by robbers can be taken in and cared for and kept safe by the innkeeper.

What greater or worthier care do overseers have than to provide, by careful concern and healing medicine, for the nurturing and the keeping of the sheep? For the Lord speaks and says: “You have not strengthened the diseased, nor healed the sick, nor bound up what was broken, nor brought back what was driven away, nor looked for what was lost. And my sheep were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and they became food for all the wild animals of the field, and no one searched for them or looked for them. Therefore this is what the Lord says: See, I am against the shepherds. I will require my flock at their hands, and stop them from feeding the flock, and they will feed them no more; for I will rescue my sheep out of their mouth, and I will feed them with judgment.” [n]

Since the Lord threatens shepherds like that — shepherds through whom the Lord’s sheep are neglected and perish — what else should we do, dearest brother, than show every diligence in gathering and restoring the sheep of Christ, and lay the medicine of a father’s affection on the wounds of the lapsed? The Lord warns us in the Gospel as well: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”

For though we are many shepherds, we feed one flock, and we ought to gather in and cherish all the sheep that Christ sought out with his blood and his suffering. We must not let our brothers, pleading and mourning as they are, be cruelly despised and trampled by the arrogant presumption of certain people. For it is written: “The proud and boastful man will bring nothing at all to completion — the man who has made his soul as wide as the grave.” And in his Gospel the Lord blames and condemns men of that kind: “You are the ones who make yourselves out to be righteous in front of other people, but God knows your hearts; for what is prized highly among men is detestable in God’s sight.”

He is saying that men of that kind are cursed and loathsome — men who please themselves, who swell and puff themselves up and arrogantly claim things for themselves. So, since Marcian has begun to be one of these, and has allied himself with Novatian and set himself up as the opponent of mercy and love, let him not pronounce sentence but receive it. Let him not act as though it were his place to judge the college of priests, when he himself is judged by all the priests.

The glorious honor of our predecessors, the blessed martyrs Cornelius and Lucius, must be kept up. We hold their memory in honor; how much more ought you, dearest brother, to honor and cherish it with all your weight and authority, since you have taken their place and succeeded them. For they were full of the Spirit of God and were set fast in a glorious martyrdom, and they judged that peace should be granted to the lapsed, and that once repentance had been carried through, the reward of peace and of our common life was not to be refused. They put this in writing in their letters, and all of us everywhere, without exception, have judged the very same thing. There could not have been a difference of feeling among us, in whom there was one Spirit. And so it is plain that a man we see thinking differently from the rest does not hold the truth of the Holy Spirit. [r]

Tell us plainly who has been put in Marcian’s place at Arles, so that we may know where to send our brothers, and to whom we ought to write. I wish you, dearest brother, always and heartily, farewell.