Waiting for the Proconsul

Cyprian to the elders and deacons and to all the people: greetings. [a]

Word reached us, dearest brothers, that officers had been sent to bring me to Utica, and those closest to me urged me to withdraw for a time from my gardens. There was good reason for it, so I agreed. And the reason is this: an overseer ought to confess the Lord in the city where he presides over the Lord’s church, and the whole people ought to share in that glory when the man set over them makes his confession in their sight. For whatever the confessing overseer says at that moment, he says as the mouth of them all, and it is God who prompts him to say it.

But the honor of our church, glorious as it is, would be cut short if I, an overseer set over a different church, were to receive my sentence — or make my confession — at Utica, and go from there to the Lord as a martyr. For my own sake and for yours I pray without stopping, and beg with every desire I have, that I may confess among you, and suffer there, and go from there to the Lord as I ought. So I am waiting here, out of sight, for the proconsul to return to Carthage. Then I will hear from him what the emperors have commanded about Christian laymen and overseers, and I will say whatever the Lord wants said at that hour.

As for you, dearest brothers: keep the peace and stay quiet. That is the discipline you have always had from me out of the Lord’s commands, and it is what you have heard from me in sermon after sermon. Let none of you stir up a disturbance among the brothers, and let none of you offer himself to the pagans of his own accord. When a man has been arrested and handed over, then he is the one who ought to speak, because at that hour it is the Lord living in us who speaks. He wanted us to confess, not to announce ourselves.

As for the rest — what we ought to do before the proconsul passes sentence on me for confessing the name of God — we will settle that together, with the Lord’s instruction. May our Lord keep you safe in his church, dearest brothers, and see fit to guard you. So may it be, by his mercy.