But Stephen and Cyprian differed about what happened outside the Church. For Cyprian there was no spiritual life at all outside, no ministry, no sacraments, no salvation. Stephen also believed that there was no salvation and no gift of the Holy Ghost through baptism outside the Church. He thought, however, that baptism could be in some sense conferred outside, the character of a baptized Christian could be imparted, through the invocation of the Trinity and the use of water. This could become efficacious when the person so baptized entered the catholic Church, for which he need not be "re-baptized." Practically, this view made it easier for schismatics to return, since they need not repudiate their baptism. Theologically, it raises acute difficulties about the coherence of Church, Ministry, and Sacraments, and there is much to be said for Cyprian's attempt to hold these elements together, though we may be driven to a different conception of the Church if we are to do so. But Rome's point of view prevailed in time. Cyprian's arguments are fully enough expressed in his letters. Stephen's have to be taken at secondhand and from his opponents, unless the anonymous, but contemporary, tract, De Rebaptismate, fairly represents his position.

Cyprian would not budge. He was supported by practically the whole of the African episcopate, which refused, at its council in 256, to acknowledge heretical and schismatic baptism, and would not yield to the Bishop of Rome. Hence Cyprian's relations with Stephen are crucial in the controversy over the nature of the Roman primacy. That he respected Rome and recognized a considerable measure of authority in the apostolic see should not be questioned, but he stopped short of allowing it jurisdiction over other bishops, and he stood rather for a conciliar method of deciding controversies and a collegiate ideal of church government. How the immediate tension between Rome and Carthage would have ended we cannot say, for the situation was changed by the death of Stephen in August, 257 and a fresh outbreak of persecution at the same moment. The ranks were closed.

Valerian's first edict, issued in August, 257, ordered that bishops, presbyters, and deacons should sacrifice to the gods, on pain of exile, and forbade Christians to assemble for worship. Cyprian was arrested, brought before the Proconsul of Africa at Carthage on the 30th August, and banished to Curubis, not far from Carthage, where he had to remain for a year. The second edict ordered, among other things, that bishops

should be put to death. Cyprian appeared before the new Proconsul on the 14th September, 258, refused to sacrifice, and was sentenced to death "under the emperors Valerian and Gallienus, but in the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ."

his son

II

On his conversion Cyprian had renounced secular literature in favour of the Bible, a thing which he carried out with much more consistency than Jerome. Besides the letters, thirteen treatises are extant, if we count Quod Idola Dii non sint, the authorship of which is not certain. If it is Cyprian's, it may well be his earliest Christian work, the new convert's polemic against his former faith, nominal or real. The material is taken largely from Tertullian and, possibly, from Minucius Felix. Another early work, possibly the fruit of his studies under Caecilian, is the collection of biblical Testimonia, in three books, of which the first shows how the Jews have given place to the Church as the People of God, while the second is Christological and the third moral and disciplinary. The Ad Donatum, perhaps of 249, contrasts the blessings of baptism with the misery of the world; De Habitu Virginum imitates Tertullian in matter, though not in style. In 251 come the two most important treatises, the De Unitate (pp. 119-142) and the De Lapsis, the latter describing the consequences of the persecution and exhorting the lapsed to repentance. His disciplinary policy is defined more precisely in the relevant letters. Accepting the order in which Pontius mentions the treatises (Vita, c. 7, which seems to be chronological), the De Dominica Oratione, again modelled on Tertullian, may come in 252, followed by the two tracts evoked by the plague of 252, De Mortalitate, and Ad Demetrianum, replying to a pagan who blamed Christians for the occurrence of the calamity. De Bono Patientiae, much indebted to Tertullian's De Patientia, was certainly written in 256, and was followed by De Zelo et Livore, a slight tract on the evil of envy, with some reference to the faction and schism that beset him. Ad Fortunatum is an encouragement to face martyrdom, written in the autumn of 257 at Curubis. To these works may be added the Sententiae of the eighty-seven bishops at the Council of Carthage, 256, which begin and end with brief pronouncements from Cyprian as president. The majority of these treatises are of little importance. Nevertheless, though moral exhortations are not often thrilling reading to later generations,

they can be of much practical importance in their own day, and in this respect Cyprian was a good bishop. His really important contributions to Christian thought and practice lie within the doctrine of the Church and the Ministry, and these are to be found in the De Unitate and the associated letters, samples of which are given in the present volume.

The Unity of the Catholic Church

I

INTRODUCTION

I

IN THE YEAR A.D. 251 EASTER SUNDAY FELL ON THE 23rd March. Not long afterwards, in April or just possibly in May, a Council was assembled at Carthage to decide the policy of the African Church towards the lapsed, and to this Council Cyprian, its president, read his two tracts (libelli), On the Lapsed and On the Unity of the Catholic Church, which he subsequently sent to Rome (Ep. 54:4). By that time he had perhaps revised them, at least the latter. Faction in Carthage, together with the desire to hold the African episcopate together in its disciplinary policy, would be sufficient cause for such a work as the De Unitate. In its present form, however, it shows knowledge of the troubled situation in Rome. After the long vacancy since the 20th January, 250, it had at last become possible to appoint a new bishop. This was Cornelius, the date of whose consecration is not precisely known, though it would seem overwhelmingly probable that it was in time for Easter. Soon afterwards (again, we do not know quite how soon) Novatian procured consecration in opposition to Cornelius.

These events appear to have been reported to the Council at Carthage in two stages. Having heard first of the election of Cornelius and of certain objections which were being raised, the Council sent two bishops to discover the facts. Before long they heard of Novatian's consecration, and sent two more. It would seem that the Council dispersed without having given formal recognition to Cornelius. Hence Cyprian's subsequent correspondence on the point. All this leaves us in some doubt whether Cyprian could have read the De Unitate to the Council in anything like its present form, with its plain rejection of Novatian. If he did, and it need not have been at

the same time as the reading of the De Lapsis, it must have been at a late stage in the Council, which appears to have sat for a considerable time, and when he had made up his own mind about Novatian, even if no conciliar pronouncement had been made. At any rate, when he sent it to Rome, he had the situation there in mind as well as his own troubles in Carthage.

II

Cyprian's conception of the catholic Church is akin to, and presumably in part derived from, that of Tertullian's De Praescriptionibus Haereticorum. The Church is a single, visible, body, using the apostolic Scriptures in addition to the Old Testament, maintaining the traditional apostolic faith, living under the institutions which have been handed down from apostolic times; and it is further linked with the apostles by the succession of bishops in each see. But circumstances have changed since Tertullian wrote, and the emphasis has changed with them. Cyprian has less need than Tertullian to worry about purity of doctrine. His principal concern is for unity, and with this in view he puts much more emphasis on the authority of bishops and their coherence as a college. To him the episcopate is still, of course, the guardian of the true faith, but in the immediate circumstances it is even more the guardian of unity. Hence the apostolic succession comes to the fore, partly as the means by which the true Church is distinguished from rivals and partly as the source of the bishop's right to obedience.

Theologically, Cyprian holds the unity of the Church to be axiomatic, or rather, biblically and divinely guaranteed. This does not mean simply that all Christians are inwardly and spiritually united (they may not be), but that there is only one concrete, visible body, only one communion, which is the Church, that true and only Church which the Lord established through the apostles. For Cyprian this unity is not ideal, but actual; it cannot be broken. And it is a unity with, or around, a structure, the episcopate in apostolic succession, the succession of the bishops in each local church. Outside the successions there is no church. No one can become a bishop unless he succeeds to a vacant see. Thus Novatian, for all his consecration by other bishops, was no bishop. It was not merely that he lacked jurisdiction. He lacked the character, the orders,