Divine precepts, so that if in anything truth has been shaken and tottered, we may return to the fountain-head of the Lord, and to the evangelical and apostolical tradition, and that the rule of our acting may spring thence, whence its order and origin arose."
After receiving the Pope's rescript, and his excommunication, St. Cyprian convoked another Council of the three provinces of Africa, Numidia, and Mauritania, which was held at Carthage on the 1st of Sept. 256. It was attended by eighty-five Bishops, among whom were fifteen Confessors, beside Priests and Deacons, and a great part of the people. St. Cyprian opened it, observing: "It remains for us each to deliver our sentiments on this matter, judging no one, nor removing any one, if he be of a different opinion, from the right of Communion. For no one of us sets himself up to be a Bishop of Bishops, or by fear of his tyranny compels his colleagues to the necessity of obedience, since every Bishop according to his recognised liberty and power possesses a free choice, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another. But let us all await the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who singly and alone has the power both of setting us up in the government of His Church, and of judging our proceedings."21 The Bishops delivered their judgments seriatim, finishing with St. Cyprian, and unanimously ratified what they had agreed upon before, that heretics should be admitted into the Church by baptism, and not merely by the imposition of hands: and thus an African Council of the third century treated a judgment of the Pope, and his sentence of excommunication until they altered their practice.
But these last words of St. Cyprian are so remarkable in themselves, and have such a bearing on the present Papal claims, that they deserve further notice. Now, lest we should imagine that St. Cyprian was hurried away by the ardour of his defence of a favourite doctrine, and his sense of the Pope's severity, into unjustifiable expressions concerning the rights of Bishops, it so happens that we possess the comment of the greatest of the Fathers on these very words. St. Augustin, writing 140 years after, and fully agreeing with the judgment of Pope Stephen, as had the whole Church finally, quotes the whole passage. "'It remains for us each to deliver our sentiments on this matter, judging no one, nor removing any one, if he be of a different opinion, from the right of communion.'22 There he not only permits me without loss of communion further to seek the truth, but even to be of a different judgment. 'For no one of us,' saith he, 'sets himself up to be a Bishop of Bishops, or by fear of his tyranny compels his colleagues to the necessity of obedience.' What can be more gentle? What more humble? Certainly no authority deters us from seeking what is the truth: 'since,' he says, 'every Bishop according to his recognised liberty and power possesses a free choice, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another:' certainly, I imagine, in those questions which have not yet been thoroughly and completely settled. For he knew how great and mysterious a sacrament the whole Church was then with various reasonings considering, and he left open a freedom of inquiry, that the truth might by search be laid open… I cannot by any means be induced to believe that Cyprian, a Catholic Bishop, a Catholic Martyr, and the greater he was the more in every respect humbling himself, that he might find grace before God, did, especially in a holy Council of his colleagues, utter with his mouth other than what he carried in his heart, particularly as he adds – 'But let us all await the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who singly and alone has the power both of setting us up in the government of His Church, and of judging our proceedings.' Under appeal then to so great a judgment, expecting to hear the truth from his colleagues, should he offer them the first example of falsehood? God avert such a madness from any Christian, how much more from Cyprian. We possess then a free power of inquiry, admitted us by Cyprian's own most gentle and true language."
Who can conclude otherwise than that St. Augustin in the year 400, as St. Cyprian in the year 256, was utterly ignorant of any such power as is now claimed for the See of Rome, under cover of that original Primacy to which both these great saints have borne indubitable witness? For the words of St. Cyprian, attested and approved by St. Augustin, contain the most explicit denial of that power lodged in the see of Rome as distinct from an Œcumenical Council, by which alone, if at all, the Church of England has been declared schismatical and excommunicate.
These are Bishops of the West speaking, but the East also must give its voice. St. Dionysius of Alexandria, and many other Eastern Prelates, among the rest Firmilian, Metropolitan of Cesarea, in Cappadocia, supported St. Cyprian on the question of rebaptization. The latter had been informed of St. Stephen's strong judgment and decided proceedings in the matter, who had threatened to separate the Bishops of the East also from his communion, if they did not comply with his rule. Firmilian wrote a long letter to Cyprian, which contains very remarkable expressions. He alludes in it more than once to the Primacy of St. Peter, and to that of Stephen as descending from him. 23"But what is the error, and how great the blindness of him (i. e. the Pope) who says, remission of sins can be given in the meetings of heretics, nor remains in the foundation of the one Church which was once fixed by Christ upon the rock, may be hence understood, because to Peter alone Christ said, Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven; and again, in the Gospel, when on the Apostles alone Christ breathed and said, Receive the Holy Ghost: whose sins ye remit they are remitted, and whose ye retain, they are retained. Therefore the power of remitting sins was given to the Apostles and the Churches which they, being sent by Christ, set up, and to the Bishops who have succeeded them by ordination in their stead… And here I am justly indignant at this so open and manifest folly of Stephen, because, glorying as he does in the rank of his Episcopate, and maintaining that he holds the succession of Peter, upon whom the foundations of the Church were laid, he introduces many other rocks, and sets up new buildings of many Churches, while he affirms, on his own authority, that Baptism is in them… Nor does he perceive that the truth of the Christian rock is clouded over by him, and in a manner abolished, who thus betrays and deserts unity… You Africans can say against Stephen, that, when the truth became known to you, you relinquished an erroneous custom. But we join custom also to truth, and to the custom of the Romans oppose a custom indeed, but that of truth, holding from the beginning this which has been delivered down from Christ, and from the Apostles." He had said before, "One may know that those who are at Rome do not in all things observe what has been delivered down from the beginning, and vainly allege the authority of the Apostles, even by this, that in celebrating Easter, and in many other sacred rites, one may see there is among them certain variations; nor are all things there kept as they are kept at Jerusalem; just as in very many other provinces also, according to the diversity of places and names, there are variations; nor yet on this account have the peace and unity of the Catholic Church ever been departed from. Which now Stephen has dared to do, breaking peace towards you, which his predecessors always kept with you, in reciprocal love and honour; casting, too, shameful reproach (infamans) on the blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, as if they had handed this down, &c." The letter concludes with an apostrophe to Stephen, which only a regard to truth induces us to quote, so painful is its vehemence, though it proves ex abundanti the point we are upon: "And Stephen is not ashamed to assert this, that remission of sins can be given through those who are themselves in all their sins… But thou art worse than all heretics; for whilst many, acknowledging their error, come to thee thence to receive the true light of the Church, thou assistest the errors of those so coming… Nor understandest that their souls will be demanded at thy hand, when the day of judgment is come, who to the thirsting hast denied the Church's draught, and hast been the cause of death to those who would live. And moreover thou art indignant! See with what ignorance thou venturest to censure those who strive for the truth against falsehood. For who had most right to be angry at another; he who supports the enemies of God, or he who argues for the truth of the Church against him who supports God's enemies? except that it is evident that the ignorant are also passionate and wrathful, whilst, through lack of wisdom and discourse, they readily betake themselves to passion, so that it is of none other than thee that Holy Scripture says, 'The passionate man prepares quarrels, and the wrathful man heaps up sins;' for what quarrels and dissensions hast thou caused through the Churches of the whole world! But how great a sin hast thou heaped upon thyself, when thou didst cut thyself off from so many flocks; for thou hast destroyed
Op. St. Cypr. p. 329. ed. Baluz.
Tom. ix. p. 110.
S. Cyp. Ep. 75.
