And now those who think that communion may be given, without baptism, to such men coming to the Church, do not consider that they are communicating in others' sins—nay, in eternal sins—by admitting without baptism those who can lay aside the sins of their blasphemies only in baptism. How vain, moreover, and how perverse it is, that, when the heretics themselves, having repudiated and abandoned the error or the wickedness in which they formerly were, acknowledge the truth of the Church, we should mutilate the rights and sacraments of that same truth, and say to those coming and repenting that they have obtained remission of sins—when they themselves confess that they have sinned, and on this account come to the indulgence of the Church!
Wherefore, dearest brother, we ought firmly to hold and to teach the faith and truth of the Catholic Church, and through all the evangelical and apostolic precepts to display the reason of the divine arrangement and unity. Can the power of baptism be greater or more excellent than confession, than passion—that one should confess Christ before men, that one should be baptized in his own blood? And yet not even this baptism profits a heretic, although he be slain outside the Church after confessing Christ:
unless indeed the patrons and advocates of heretics proclaim as martyrs those heretics slain in a false confession of Christ, and—contrary to the apostle's testimony, who says that nothing can profit them, though they be burned and slain—assign to them the glory and crown of passion. But if not even the baptism of public confession and of blood can profit a heretic toward salvation, because there is no salvation outside the Church, how much more shall nothing profit him if, in a hiding-place and in a den of robbers, dipped by the contagion of adulterous water, he has not only not put off his old sins, but rather has heaped up still newer and greater ones?
Wherefore baptism cannot be common to us and to heretics, with whom neither God the Father, nor the Son Christ, nor the Holy Spirit, nor the faith, nor the Church herself is common. And therefore those who come from heresy to the Church ought to be baptized, so that those who by the lawful and true and only baptism of the holy Church are prepared by divine regeneration for the kingdom of God may be born of both sacraments; for it is written: 'Unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.'
At this point certain men, as though they could empty out the truth of evangelical preaching by human argumentation, set the catechumens before us: whether, if any of these be apprehended and slain in the confession of the Name before he is baptized in the Church, he loses the hope of salvation and the reward of his confession, because he has not first been born again of water.
Let such men, supporters and abettors of heretics, therefore know that those catechumens, first, hold the integral faith and the truth of the Church, and advance from the divine camp to do battle against the devil with a full and sincere knowledge of God the Father and of Christ and of the Holy Spirit; and next, that they are not deprived of the sacrament of baptism, inasmuch as they are baptized with the most glorious and greatest baptism of blood—of which the Lord also said that He had another baptism to be baptized with.
That those baptized in their own blood and sanctified by passion are perfected and obtain the grace of the divine promise, the same Lord declares in the Gospel, when He speaks to the robber who believed and confessed in the very passion, and promises that he shall be with Him in paradise. Wherefore we who preside over faith and truth ought not to deceive and beguile those who come to faith and truth and, doing penance, beg that their sins be remitted to them; but, corrected and reformed by us, we ought to instruct them with heavenly disciplines for the kingdom of heaven. But someone says:
'What then will become of those who in time past, coming from heresy to the Church, were admitted without baptism?' The Lord is able by His mercy to give indulgence, and not to separate from the gifts of His Church those who, having been admitted simply into the Church, have fallen asleep within the Church. Yet not because an error was once committed must it therefore always be erred in; since it rather befits the wise and the God-fearing willingly and without hesitation to obey the truth once it has been laid open and clearly seen, than stubbornly and obstinately to struggle against brethren and against priests on behalf of heretics. Nor let anyone suppose that heretics, because baptism is set against them, are retarded from coming to the Church as if scandalized by the term of a second baptism.
Nay rather, by this very thing they are the more compelled to the necessity of coming, by the testimony of the truth shown and proved to them. For if they see it decreed and established by our judgment and sentence that the baptism by which they are baptized there is to be reckoned as just and lawful, they will think that they justly and lawfully possess also the Church and the rest of the Church's gifts; nor will there be any reason for coming to us, when, having baptism, they seem to have the rest as well.
But further, when they recognize that there is no baptism outside, and that remission of sins cannot be given outside the Church, they hasten to us the more eagerly and readily, and implore the gifts and bounties of the Church their mother, certain that they cannot at all attain to the true promise of divine grace unless they first come to the truth of the Church. Nor will heretics refuse to be baptized among us with the lawful and true baptism of the Church, when they have learned from us that those too were baptized by Paul who had already been baptized with the baptism of John, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles.
And now among certain of our own people it is asserted that the baptism of heretics is 'something already taken possession of,' and by a kind of envy it is held to be a sacrilege to baptize after the enemies of God, as though rebaptizing—whereas we find that those whom John had baptized were baptized again: that John, accounted the greatest among the prophets; that John, filled with divine grace while yet in his mother's womb; that John, upheld by the spirit and power of Elijah, who was not the adversary of the Lord but His forerunner and herald, who not only foretold the Lord in words but also pointed Him out to the eyes, who baptized Christ Himself, by whom the rest are baptized. But if a heretic could therefore obtain the right of baptism because he baptized first, then baptism will no longer belong to the possessor but to the one who seizes first:
and since baptism and the Church cannot be separated and divided from one another at all, whoever could seize baptism first has likewise seized the Church; and you begin to seem the heretic to him, you who, being forestalled, have begun to be the later one, who by yielding and giving your hands have abandoned the right which you had received. But how perilous it is in divine matters that anyone should yield his right and power, holy Scripture declares, when in Genesis Esau lost his birthright therefrom, and could not afterward recover what he had once surrendered. These things we have written back to you briefly, dearest brother, according to our mediocrity, prescribing or prejudging to no one, but that each of the bishops may do what he thinks, having the free power of his own judgment.
We, as far as in us lies, do not contend with our colleagues and fellow-bishops on account of heretics, with whom we hold the divine concord and the Lord's peace, especially since the apostle also says: 'But if anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the Church of God.' By us the charity of the spirit, the honor of the college, the bond of faith, the concord of the priesthood is preserved patiently and gently. For this reason also we have now, as far as our mediocrity availed, by the Lord's permission and inspiration, composed a little book On the Good of Patience, which we have sent to you out of mutual love. I wish you, dearest brother, ever to fare well. Cyprian to his brother Pompeius, greeting.
Although we have fully embraced the things that ought to be said about baptizing heretics in the letters whose copies we sent you, dearest brother, yet because you desired that it be brought to your knowledge what our brother Stephen wrote back to me in answer to our letters, I have sent you a copy of his reply; reading which, you will more and more mark his error, who endeavors to assert the cause of heretics against Christians and against the Church of God. For among the rest of the things he wrote, things either arrogant or irrelevant or self-contradictory, which he set down imprudently, he also added this, so as to say:
('If therefore any shall come to you from any heresy whatsoever, let nothing be innovated except what has been handed down, namely that the hand be laid upon them unto repentance—since the heretics themselves properly do not baptize those who come over to them from one another, but only admit them to communion.') He forbade anyone coming from any heresy whatsoever to be baptized in the Church, that is, he judged the baptisms of all heretics to be just and lawful. And since the several heresies have several baptisms and divers sins, he, communicating here with the baptism of them all, has heaped up into his own bosom the offenses of them all gathered together.
And he commanded that nothing be innovated except what has been handed down—as though he innovates who, holding unity, claims one baptism for the one Church, and not rather that man who, forgetful of unity, usurps the lies and contagions of a profane washing. 'Let nothing be innovated,' he says, 'except what has been handed down.' Whence is that tradition? Does it descend from the Lord's and the evangelical authority, or come from the commands and epistles of the apostles? For that those things which are written ought to be done, God testifies and forewarns, saying to Joshua: 'The book of this law shall not depart out of your mouth, and you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do all the things that are written therein.'
Likewise the Lord, when sending out His apostles, commands that the nations be baptized and taught to observe all things whatsoever He had enjoined. If, therefore, it is either commanded in the Gospel or contained in the epistles or acts of the apostles that those coming from any heresy should not be baptized, but that hands only should be laid upon them unto repentance, then let this divine and holy tradition be observed. But if everywhere heretics are called nothing other than adversaries and antichrists, if they are pronounced to be shunned, perverse, and self-condemned, what manner of thing is it that those should be thought not to be condemned by us whom it is established, by the apostolic testimony, to have condemned themselves?
so that no one ought to defame the apostles, as though they had approved the baptisms of heretics, or had held communion with them apart from the baptism of the Church; since the apostles wrote such things concerning heretics, and this at a time when the more virulent heretical plagues had not yet broken forth, nor had Marcion of Pontus yet emerged out of Pontus, whose teacher Cerdo came to Rome under the bishop Hyginus, who was the ninth in the city; whom Marcion followed, and with additions heaped upon his crime, more shamelessly and more abruptly than the rest he set about to blaspheme against God the Father and Creator, and more wickedly and grievously armed the heretical fury that rebelled with sacrilegious arms against the Church.
But if it is established that heresies, more numerous and worse, arose afterward, and if in former times it was nowhere at all commanded nor written that hands only should be laid upon a heretic unto repentance and that thus he should be admitted to communion; and if there is but one baptism, which is among us and within, granted by divine condescension to the Church alone—what obstinacy is this, what presumption, to prefer human tradition to the divine appointment, and not to perceive that God is indignant and angry as often as human tradition looses and passes over the divine precepts? As He cries out and says through the prophet Isaiah: This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far removed from Me.
And in vain do they worship Me, teaching the commandments and doctrines of men. Likewise the Lord in the Gospel, rebuking and reproving in like manner, sets it down and says: You reject the commandment of God that you may establish your own tradition. Mindful of this precept, the blessed apostle Paul himself also admonishes and instructs, saying: If any man teaches otherwise and does not consent to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and to His doctrine, being puffed up with pride and knowing nothing, withdraw from such a one. A truly splendid and lawful tradition, forsooth, is set forth by the teaching of our brother Stephen, one to afford us suitable authority! For in the same place of his letter he added and appended:
that the heretics themselves do not properly baptize those who come over to them from one another, but only admit them to communion. To this depth of evils has the Church of God and the bride of Christ been brought down—that she should follow the examples of heretics, that for celebrating the heavenly sacraments light should borrow its discipline from darkness, and that Christians should do what antichrists do! But what blindness of mind is this, what perversity, to refuse to acknowledge the unity of faith which comes from God the Father and from the tradition of Jesus Christ our Lord and God? For if the Church is not among heretics for this reason, that she is one and cannot be divided, and if for this reason the Holy Spirit is not there, that He is one and cannot be among the profane and the outsiders—
then surely baptism also, which consists in that same unity, cannot be among heretics, since it can be separated neither from the Church nor from the Holy Spirit. Or if they ascribe the effect of baptism to the majesty of the Name—so that those who are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, wherever and however, are judged to be renewed and sanctified—why is it that hands are not laid upon the baptized there too in the name of the same Christ, that they may receive the Holy Spirit? Why does not the same majesty of the same Name prevail in the laying on of hands as they contend it availed in the sanctification of baptism? For if one who is born outside the Church can become the temple of God, why cannot the Holy Spirit also be poured out upon the temple?
For he who, having his sins put away in baptism, has been sanctified and spiritually reformed into a new man, has been made fit to receive the Holy Spirit—since the apostle says: As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. He who, baptized among heretics, can put on Christ, much more can receive the Holy Spirit whom Christ sent. Otherwise the one who is sent will be greater than the one who sends, so that the one baptized outside should begin to have put on Christ indeed, but to have been unable to receive the Holy Spirit—as though Christ could either be put on without the Spirit, or the Spirit be separated from Christ.
That too is absurd: that, since the second birth is spiritual—the birth by which we are born in Christ through the laver of regeneration—they should say that one can be born spiritually among heretics, where they deny that the Spirit is. For water alone cannot cleanse away sins and sanctify a man, unless it also has the Holy Spirit. Wherefore either they must grant that the Spirit is there too where they say baptism is, or there is no baptism where the Spirit is not, since baptism cannot exist without the Spirit. But what kind of thing is it to assert and contend that those can be sons of God who are not born in the Church? For the blessed apostle makes manifest and proves that baptism is that in which the old man dies and the new is born, saying:
He saved us through the laver of regeneration. But if in the laver, that is, in baptism, there is regeneration, how can heresy beget sons to God through Christ, when it is not the bride of Christ? For the Church alone is she who, joined and united to Christ, spiritually begets sons, the same apostle again saying: Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, cleansing her with the laver of water. If, therefore, this is the beloved and the bride who alone is sanctified by Christ and alone is cleansed by His laver, it is manifest that heresy, which is not the bride of Christ and cannot be cleansed or sanctified by His laver, cannot beget sons to God.
Furthermore, it is not through the laying on of hands that one is born when he receives the Holy Spirit, but in baptism—so that, being already born, he may receive the Spirit, just as it came to pass in the first man, Adam. First God formed him, then breathed into his face the breath of life. For the Spirit cannot be received unless he who is to receive first exists. But since the birth of Christians is in baptism, and the generation and sanctification of baptism is with the bride of Christ alone, who can bring forth and beget sons to God spiritually—where, and from whom, and to whom, is he born who is not a son of the Church? So that, in order that one may have God for his Father, let him first have the Church for his mother.
But while no heresy at all, and indeed no schism either, can possess outside the sanctification of the saving baptism, to such a degree has the hard obstinacy of our brother Stephen broken forth that he contends that sons are born to God even from the baptism of Marcion, likewise of Valentinus and Apelles and the rest who blaspheme against God the Father, and says that there, where God the Father and the Lord God Christ are blasphemed, remission of sins is given in the name of Jesus Christ. On which point it must be considered, dearest brother, for the sake of the faith and religion of the priestly office which we fill, whether an account can stand for a priest of God on the day of judgment who asserts and approves and reckons valid the baptisms of blasphemers, when the Lord threatens and says:
And now this command is to you, O priests: if you will not hear, and if you will not lay it to heart to give glory to My name, says the Lord Almighty, I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessing. Does he give glory to God who holds communion with the baptism of Marcion? Does he give glory to God who judges that remission of sins is given among those who blaspheme against God? Does he give glory to God who asserts that sons of God are born outside, of an adulteress and harlot? Does he give glory to God who, not holding the unity and truth that come from the divine law, defends heresies against the Church?
Does he give glory to God who, a friend of heretics and an enemy of Christians, thinks that the priests of God who guard the truth of Christ and the unity of the Church ought to be excommunicated? If glory is given to God in this way, if in this way fear of God and discipline are kept by His worshipers and priests—then let us cast away our arms, let us yield ourselves into captivity, let us surrender to the devil the ordering of the Gospel, the appointment of Christ, the majesty of God; let the sacraments of the divine warfare be loosed, let the standards of the heavenly camp be given up; let the Church succumb and yield to the heretics, light to darkness, faith to faithlessness, hope to despair, reason to error, immortality to death, love to hatred, truth to falsehood, Christ to antichrist.
Deservedly, then, do schisms and heresies thus arise day by day, growing forth more frequently and more abundantly, so that, sprouting like serpent-locks, they pour out the venom of their poisons against the Church of God with greater force—while by the patronage of certain persons both authority and firmness are afforded them, while their baptism is defended, while faith, while truth is betrayed, while that which is done outside against the Church is vindicated within, in the Church herself.
But if among us, most beloved brother, there is the fear of God, if the steadfastness of faith prevails, if we keep the precepts of Christ, if we guard the unsullied and inviolate holiness of His bride, if the words of the Lord cling to our minds and hearts when He says, Do you think that when the Son of Man comes, He will find faith on the earth?—then let us, faithful soldiers of God who serve God in faith and sincere religion, guard with faithful courage the camp committed to us by God. Nor ought the custom which had crept in among certain men to hinder the truth from prevailing and conquering. For custom without truth is but the antiquity of error. Wherefore, leaving error, let us follow the truth, knowing that even in Esdras the truth conquered, as it is written:
Truth abides and grows strong forever, and lives and prevails unto ages of ages. With her there is no accepting of persons nor distinctions, but she does the things that are just; nor is there anything unjust in her judgment, but strength and kingdom and majesty and power of all ages. Blessed be the God of truth. This truth Christ, showing it to us in His Gospel, says: I am the truth. Wherefore, if we are in Christ and have Christ in us, and if we abide in the truth and the truth abides in us, let us hold fast the things that are true. But it comes to pass through the zeal of presumption and obstinacy that a man should rather defend his own depraved and false notions than consent to the right and true things of another.
Foreseeing this matter, the blessed apostle Paul writes to Timothy and warns that a bishop ought not to be litigious nor contentious, but gentle and teachable. Now he is teachable who is meek and gentle for the patience of learning. For bishops ought not only to teach, but also to learn, since he too teaches better who daily grows and advances by learning better things. This very thing the same apostle Paul also teaches and forewarns, that if anything better be revealed to another who is sitting by, the first should keep silence. And it is a ready way, among religious and simple minds, both to lay aside error and to find and dig out the truth.
For if we return to the head and source of the divine tradition, human error ceases; and, the principle of the heavenly sacraments having been clearly perceived, whatever lay hidden and obscure under the gloom and cloud of darkness is opened up into the light of truth:
just as, if a channel conducting water, which before flowed forth copiously and abundantly, should suddenly fail, do we not go to the spring, that there the cause of the failure may be known—whether the wave has dried up at the source because the veins are running dry, or whether, flowing forth from there whole and full, it has stopped midway in its course? So that, if it has come about, through the fault of a broken or leaking channel, that the water did not flow on continuously and steadily, then, the channel having been repaired and made firm, the water gathered may be presented again for the use and drinking of the city in the same abundance and integrity with which it issues from the spring. This too the priests of God ought now to do, keeping the divine precepts: that if in any point the truth has wavered and faltered, we should return to the dominical origin and to the evangelical and apostolic tradition, and that from there the principle of our action should arise, whence both its order and its origin arose.
For it has been handed down to us that there is one God, and one Christ, and one hope, and one faith, and one Church, and one baptism appointed only in the one Church; from which unity whoever departs must of necessity be found among heretics, and while he vindicates them against the Church, he assails the sacrament of the divine tradition. The sacrament of which unity we see expressed also in the Song of Songs, from the person of Christ saying: A garden enclosed is my sister, my bride, a fountain sealed, a well of living water, a paradise with the fruit of apples. But if His Church is a garden enclosed and a fountain sealed, how can he who is not in the Church enter into that same garden, or drink from its fountain?
Likewise Peter himself also, demonstrating and vindicating unity, enjoined and warned that we can be saved only through the one baptism of the one Church, saying: In the ark of Noah a few, that is, eight souls of men, were saved through water; which also shall in like manner save you, even baptism. By which brief and spiritual summary he made manifest the sacrament of unity. For just as in that baptism of the world, by which the ancient iniquity was purged, he who was not in the ark of Noah could not be saved through water, so too now he cannot be seen to be saved through baptism who has not been baptized in the Church, which is founded by the dominical unity after the sacrament of the one ark.
And so it is observed and held by us, dearest brother, the truth having been searched out and clearly seen, that all who from any heresy are converted to the Church should be baptized with the one and lawful baptism of the Church—except those who had previously been baptized in the Church and had thus passed over to the heretics. For these, when they return, ought, after repentance has been performed, to be received by the laying on of hands alone, and to be restored by the Shepherd to the fold from which they had strayed. I desire, dearest brother, that you may ever fare well. FIRMILIAN TO HIS BROTHER CYPRIAN, GREETING IN THE LORD.
We have received, through our most beloved deacon Rogatianus sent by you, the letter which you wrote to us, dearest brother, and we have given the greatest thanks to God on this account: that it has come to pass that we who are separated from one another in body should be so united in spirit as though we held not merely one region, but were dwelling together in one and the same house. And this is fitting to say, since the spiritual house of God is one. For it shall come to pass, He says, in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord shall be made manifest, and the house of God upon the tops of the mountains. Gathering in which, they are united with joy, according to that which is also asked of the Lord in the psalm: to dwell in the house of God all the days of life.
Whence also in another place it is made manifest that among the saints there is a great love of the will to come together into one. Behold, He says, how good and how pleasant it is that brethren dwell together in unity. For union and peace and concord afford the greatest delight not only to faithful men who know the truth, but even to the heavenly angels themselves, of whom the divine word says that there is joy over one sinner who does penance and returns to the bond of unity.
This certainly would not be said of the angels who have their dwelling in the heavens, unless they too were united to us, who rejoice at our union—just as, on the contrary, they are assuredly grieved when they see the diverse minds of certain men and their sundered wills, since they not only do not call upon one and the same God together, but, being separated and divided from one another, there can no longer be any conversing or common speech. Except that in this matter we can give thanks to Stephen, that through his inhumanity it has now come to pass that we should take a proof of your faith and wisdom. Yet not, because we have received this grace of benefit on Stephen's account, has Stephen straightway done deeds worthy of benefit and grace.