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“Cyprian On The Holy Spirit and the Image of a Dove - Latin Text with English translation”
On the Unity of the Church, 9
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Relevant
books Many Cyprian
translations A selection below J. Patout Burns ----- Allen Brent |
9. Therefore also the Holy Spirit came as a dove, a simple and joyous
creature, not bitter with gall, not cruel in its bite, not violent with the
rending of its claws, loving human dwellings, knowing the association of one
home; when they have young, bringing forth their young together; when they
fly abroad, remaining in their flights by the side of one another, spending
their life in mutual intercourse, acknowledging the concord of peace with
the kiss of the beak, in all things fulfilling the law of unanimity. This is
the simplicity that ought to be known in the Church, this is the charity
that ought to be attained, that so the love of the brotherhood may imitate
the doves, that their gentleness and meekness may be like the lambs and
sheep. What does the fierceness of wolves do in the Christian breast? What
the savageness of dogs, and the deadly venom of serpents, and the sanguinary
cruelty of wild beasts? We are to be congratulated when such as these are
separated from the Church, lest they should lay waste the doves and sheep of
Christ with their cruel and envenomed contagion. Bitterness cannot consist
and be associated with sweetness, darkness with light, rain with clearness,
battle with peace, barrenness with fertility, drought with springs, storm
with tranquillity. Let none think that the good can depart from the Church.
The wind does not carry away the wheat, nor does the hurricane uproot the
tree that is based on a solid root. The light straws are tossed about by the
tempest, the feeble trees are overthrown by the onset of the whirlwind. The
Apostle John execrates and severely assails these, when he says, “They went
forth from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, surely
they would have continued with us.” |
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Cyprian De Unitate Ecclesiae - Latin Text with English
translation
Holy Spirit
Image of a dove
Migne Latin
Patrologiae Latinae Cursus Completus
Patrologia Latina