Relevant
books
available at Amazon
Many Cyprian
translations
and studies with links to Amazon
A selection below
 
J. Patout Burns
Cyprian the Bishop -----
 
Allen Brent
Cyprian and Roman Carthage -----
 
Everett Ferguson
Baptism in the Early Church
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Epistle LXXIII.
To Pompey, Against the Epistle of Stephen About the Baptism of Heretics.
Argument.—The Purport of This Epistle is Given in St. Augustine’s
“Contra Donatistas,” Lib. V. Cap. 23. He Says There: “Cyprian, Moreover, Writes
to Pompey on the Same Subject, When He Plainly Signifies that Stephen, Who, as
We Learn, Was Then a Bishop of the Roman Church, Not Only Did Not Agree with Him
on Those Points, But Even Had Written and Charged in Opposition to Him.”
1. Cyprian to his brother Pompeius, greeting. Although I have fully comprised
what is to be said concerning the baptism of heretics in the letters of which I
sent you copies, dearest brother, yet, since you have desired that what Stephen
our brother replied to my letters should be brought to your knowledge, I have
sent you a copy of his reply; on the reading of which, you will more and more
observe his error in endeavouring to maintain the cause of heretics against
Christians, and against the Church of God. For among other matters, which were
either haughtily assumed, or were not pertaining to the matter, or contradictory
to his own view, which he unskilfully and without foresight wrote, he moreover
added this saying: “If any one, therefore, come to you from any heresy whatever,
let nothing be innovated (or done) which has not been handed down, to wit, that
hands be imposed on him for repentance; since the heretics themselves, in their
own proper character, do not baptize such as come to them from one another, but
only admit them to communion.”
2. He forbade one coming from any heresy to be baptized in the Church; that is,
he judged the baptism of all heretics to be just and lawful. And although
special heresies have special baptisms and different sins, he, holding communion
with the baptism of all, gathered up the sins of all, heaped together into his
own bosom. And he charged that nothing should be innovated except what had been
handed down; as if he were an innovator, who, holding the unity, claims for the
one Church one baptism; and not manifestly he who, forgetful of unity, adopts
the lies and the contagions of a profane washing. Let nothing be innovated, says
he, nothing maintained, except what has been handed down. Whence is that
tradition? Whether does it descend from the authority of the Lord and of the
Gospel, or does it come from the commands and the epistles of the apostles? For
that those things which are written must be done, God witnesses and admonishes,
saying to Joshua the son of Nun: “The book of this law shall not depart out of
thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate in it day and night, that thou mayest observe
to do according to all that is written therein.” Also the Lord, sending His
apostles, commands that the nations should be baptized, and taught to observe
all things which He commanded. If, therefore, it is either prescribed in the
Gospel, or contained in the epistles or Acts of the Apostles, that those who
come from any heresy should not be baptized, but only hands laid upon them to
repentance, let this divine and holy tradition be observed. But if everywhere
heretics are called nothing else than adversaries and antichrists, if they are
pronounced to be people to be avoided, and to be perverted and condemned of
their own selves, wherefore is it that they should not be thought worthy of
being condemned by us, since it is evident from the apostolic testimony that
they are of their own selves condemned? So that no one ought to defame the
apostles as if they had approved of the baptisms of heretics, or had
communicated with them without the Church’s baptism, when they, the apostles,
wrote such things of the heretics. And this, too, while as yet the more terrible
plagues of heresy had not broken forth; while Marcion of Pontus had not yet
emerged from Pontus, whose master Cerdon came to Rome,—while Hyginus was still
bishop, who was the ninth bishop in that city,—whom Marcion followed, and with
greater impudence adding other enhancements to his crime, and more daringly set
himself to blaspheme against God the Father, the Creator, and armed with
sacrilegious arms the heretical madness that rebelled against the Church with
greater wickedness and determination.
3. But if it is evident that subsequently heresies became more numerous and
worse; and if, in time past, it was never at all prescribed nor written that
only hands should be laid upon a heretic for repentance, and that so he might be
communicated with; and if there is only one baptism, which is with us, and is
within, and is granted of the divine condescension to the Church alone, what
obstinacy is that, or what presumption, to prefer human tradition to divine
ordinance, and not to observe that God is indignant and angry as often as human
tradition relaxes and passes by the divine precepts, as He cries out, and says
by Isaiah the prophet, “This people honoureth me with their lips, but their
heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching the doctrines and
commandments of men.” Also the Lord in the Gospel, similarly rebuking and
reproving, utters and says, “Ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep
your own tradition.” Mindful of which precept, the blessed Apostle Paul himself
also warns and instructs, saying, “If any man teach otherwise, and consent not
to the wholesome words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to His doctrine, he is
proud, knowing nothing: from such withdraw thyself.”
4. Certainly an excellent and lawful tradition is set before us by the teaching
of our brother Stephen, which may afford us a suitable authority! For in the
same place of his epistle he has added and continued: “Since those who are
specially heretics do not baptize those who come to them from one another, but
only receive them to communion.” To this point of evil has the Church of God and
spouse of Christ been developed, that she follows the examples of heretics; that
for the purpose of celebrating the celestial sacraments, light should borrow her
discipline from darkness, and Christians should do that which antichrists do.
But what is that blindness of soul, what is that degradation of faith, to refuse
to recognise the unity which comes from God the Father, and from the tradition
of Jesus Christ the Lord and our God! For if the Church is not with heretics,
therefore, because it is one, and cannot be divided; and if thus the Holy Spirit
is not there, because He is one, and cannot be among profane persons, and those
who are without; certainly also baptism, which consists in the same unity,
cannot be among heretics, because it can neither be separated from the Church
nor from the Holy Spirit.
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