To Magnus, on Baptizing the Novatians, and Those Who Obtain Grace on a Sick-Bed

Cyprian to his son Magnus, greeting. In your religious diligence you have consulted our humble self, dearest son, whether among the other heretics, those also who come from Novatian ought, after his profane washing, to be baptized and sanctified in the catholic Church by the lawful and true and sole baptism of the Church. Concerning this matter, as much as the capacity of our faith and the holiness and truth of the divine Scriptures suggest, we say that all heretics and schismatics whatsoever have no power or right. For this reason Novatian neither ought nor can be excepted from being reckoned, he too, among adversaries and antichrists, standing as he does outside the Church and acting against the peace and love of Christ.

For our Lord Jesus Christ, when He testified in His Gospel that those who were not with Him were His adversaries, did not designate any particular kind of heresy, but showed that all without exception who were not with Him and who, instead of gathering His flock with Him, scattered it, were His adversaries, saying: He who is not with me is against me; and he who does not gather with me scatters. Likewise the blessed apostle John himself also made no distinction between any heresy or schism, nor set apart any persons specifically, but called all who had gone out from the Church and who acted against the Church antichrists, saying: You have heard that Antichrist is coming, but now many antichrists have arisen. By this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us.

Hence it appears that all are adversaries of the Lord and antichrists who are established to have withdrawn from the love and unity of the catholic Church. Furthermore the Lord also sets forth in His Gospel and says: But if he also despise the Church, let him be to you as a heathen and a publican. But if those who despise the Church are counted as heathens and publicans, how much more must rebels and enemies who fabricate false altars and unlawful priesthoods and sacrilegious sacrifices and counterfeit names necessarily be reckoned among heathens and publicans, when those who sin in lesser things and are merely despisers of the Church are judged as heathens and publicans by the sentence of the Lord.

Now that the Church is one, the Holy Spirit declares in the Song of Songs, speaking in the person of Christ: My dove is one, my perfect one is one, she is the only one of her mother, the chosen one of her that bore her; of which He likewise says again: A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a fountain sealed, a well of living water. But if the Spouse of Christ, which is the Church, is an enclosed garden, that which is closed cannot lie open to strangers and the profane. And if it is a sealed fountain, neither can one drink from it nor be sealed who, being placed outside, has no access to the fountain. Also if the well of living water is one, and that same well is within, one who is placed outside cannot be vivified and sanctified by that water, the use and drink of which is granted only to those who are within.

This Peter also shows, setting forth and saying that the Church is one and that only those who are in the Church can be baptized: In Noah's ark a few, that is, eight souls of men, were saved through water, which baptism shall in like manner save you also, proving and attesting that the one ark of Noah was a type of the one Church. If at that time, in that baptism of the world being expiated and purified, one who was not in Noah's ark could have been saved through water, then one who is not in the Church, to which alone baptism has been granted, can also now be vivified through baptism. But also the apostle Paul, making this same thing still more openly and clearly manifest, writes to the Ephesians and says: Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify her, cleansing her with the washing of water.

But if the Church is one, which is loved by Christ and alone purified by His washing, how can one who is not in the Church either be loved by Christ or be washed and purified by His washing?

Therefore, since the Church alone has the living water and the power of baptizing and washing man, whoever says that someone can be baptized and sanctified among the Novatianists must first show and teach that Novatian is in the Church or presides over the Church. For the Church is one, which is one and cannot be both within and without at the same time. For if it is among the Novatianists, it was not among Cornelius. But if it was among Cornelius, who succeeded Bishop Fabian by lawful ordination, and whom the Lord glorified not only with the honor of the priesthood but also with martyrdom, then Novatian is not in the Church, nor can he be counted a bishop, who, with the evangelical and apostolic tradition despised, succeeding no one, arose from himself. For he can in no way have or hold the Church who has not been ordained in the Church.

For that the Church cannot be outside, nor be split or divided against itself, but holds the unity of an inseparable and indivisible house, the testimony of divine Scripture makes manifest, since concerning the sacrament of the Passover and of the Lamb—which Lamb prefigured Christ—it is written: It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not carry the flesh outside the house. Which we likewise see expressed concerning Rahab, who herself also bore a type of the Church, to whom it is commanded and said: Your father and your mother and your brothers and all the household of your father you shall gather to yourself into your house, and whoever shall go out of the door of your house into the street, his blood shall be upon his own head.

By which sacrament it is declared that those who are to live and to escape the destruction of the world must be gathered into one house alone, that is, into the Church; and whoever of those gathered shall go outside, that is, if anyone, though having obtained grace in the Church, shall withdraw and go out from the Church, shall be guilty on his own account, that is, shall impute to himself his own perishing. This the apostle Paul explains, teaching and commanding that a heretic is to be avoided as perverse and sinful and self-condemned. For the one who, not cast out by a bishop but of his own accord a fugitive from the Church, is self-condemned by heretical presumption shall be guilty on his own account.

And therefore the Lord, impressing upon us the unity that comes from divine authority, sets forth and says: I and the Father are one. Bringing His Church back to that unity He says again: And there shall be one flock and one shepherd. But if the flock is one, how can one who is not in the number of the flock be counted among the flock? Or how can one be held to be a shepherd who, while the true shepherd remains and presides in the Church of God by successive ordination, succeeding no one and beginning from himself, becomes a stranger and a profane person, an enemy of the Lord's peace and of divine unity, not dwelling in the house of God, that is, in the Church of God, in which none but the harmonious and unanimous dwell, the Holy Spirit speaking in the Psalms and saying: God who makes the unanimous to dwell in a house.

Finally, the very sacrifices of the Lord declare that Christian unanimity is bound together with firm and inseparable charity. For when the Lord calls His body bread, made up from the union of many grains, He indicates our people whom He bore as united together; and when He calls His blood wine, pressed out from many clusters and grapes and gathered into one, He likewise signifies our flock joined together by the mingling of a united multitude. If Novatian has been united to this bread of the Lord, if he too has been mingled with the people of Christ, it might be possible to see that he could have the grace of the one ecclesiastical baptism, if he should establish that he holds the unity of the Church.

Finally, how inseparable the sacrament of unity is, and how hopeless they are, and how great a destruction they bring upon themselves through the indignation of God, who make a schism and, forsaking their bishop, set up for themselves another pseudo-bishop outside, the divine Scripture declares in the Books of Kings, where ten tribes were cut off from the three of Judah and Benjamin, and forsaking their own king, set up another for themselves outside: And the Lord was angry, it says, with all the seed of Israel, and removed them, and gave them over to plundering until He cast them away from His face, because Israel was scattered from the house of David, and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king over them. He says that the Lord was angry and gave them over to destruction because they had been scattered from unity and had set up another king for themselves.

And so great was the indignation of the Lord against those who had made the schism, that even when a man of God was sent to Jeroboam to reproach him for his sins and to foretell the punishment to come, he was forbidden even to eat bread or drink water among them. And when he had not observed this and had dined with him contrary to the commandment of God, he was immediately struck by the majesty of divine censure, so that on his return journey he was killed by the attack and bite of a lion. And does anyone dare to say that the saving water of baptism and the heavenly grace can be held in common with schismatics, with whom not even earthly food nor worldly drink ought to be shared?

The Lord satisfies us still further in His Gospel and makes manifest a greater light of understanding, in that those same people who had then cut themselves off from the tribe of Judah and Benjamin and, forsaking Jerusalem, had withdrawn to Samaria, were to be counted among the profane and the gentiles. For when He first sent His disciples into the ministry of salvation, He commanded and said: Go not into the way of the nations, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans. Sending them first to the Jews, He commands the gentiles still to be passed by. But by adding that the city of the Samaritans also, where the schismatics were, must be omitted, He shows that schismatics are to be equated with gentiles.

But if anyone objects to this by saying that Novatian holds the same rule of faith as the Catholic Church holds, that he baptizes with the same Creed as we do, that he acknowledges the same God the Father, the same Son Christ, the same Holy Spirit, and that on this account he can claim the power of baptizing because he seems not to differ from us in the interrogation of baptism, let whoever thinks this objection must be raised know, first, that the rule of the Creed is not one and the same for us and for schismatics, nor is the interrogation the same. For when they say: Do you believe the remission of sins and life eternal through the holy Church, they lie in the interrogation, since they do not have the Church. Then furthermore by their own voice they themselves confess that remission of sins cannot be given except through the holy Church; and by not having it, they show that sins cannot be remitted there.

But as for the claim that they know the same God the Father as we do, the same Son Christ, the same Holy Spirit, not even this can help such persons. For Korah and Dathan and Abiram knew the same God as the priest Aaron and Moses, living by equal law and religion, and they invoked the one true God who was to be worshipped and invoked. Yet because they transgressed the ministry of their own place and claimed for themselves the license of offering sacrifice against Aaron the priest, who had received the legitimate priesthood by the grace of God and the ordination of the Lord, they were struck by divine power and immediately paid the penalty for their unlawful attempts, nor could the sacrifices offered irreligiously and unlawfully against the right of divine ordinance be valid or avail anything.

The censers too, in which incense had been unlawfully offered, were by the Lord's command melted down, purged by fire, beaten into thin plates, and fastened to the altar, so that they would not thereafter be used by the priests but would instead serve as a corrective memorial for posterity of divine indignation and vengeance, according to what the divine Scripture says: A memorial, it says, for the children of Israel, that no stranger who is not of the seed of Aaron should come near to offer incense before the Lord, that he be not as Korah. And yet those men had not made a schism, nor had they gone outside and rebelliously and hostilely risen up against the priests of God, as these people now do, who rend the Church and, rebelling against the peace and unity of Christ, strive to set up a chair for themselves and to assume the primacy and to claim the license of baptizing and of offering.

How can they accomplish what they do, or obtain anything from God by unlawful attempts, who strive against God in what is not permitted to them? Wherefore those who take the part of Novatian or of other schismatics of this kind contend in vain that anyone can be baptized and sanctified there with saving baptism, where it is established that the one baptizing does not have the license of baptizing. And that it might be more fully understood what the divine judgment is against audacity of this kind, we find that in such a crime not only the leaders and authors but also the participants are destined for punishment, unless they have separated themselves from communion with the wicked, the Lord commanding through Moses and saying: Separate yourselves from the tents of these most hardened men, and touch nothing of all that belongs to them, lest you perish together in their sin.

And what the Lord had threatened through Moses he fulfilled, so that whoever had not separated himself from Korah and Dathan and Abiram immediately paid the penalty for impious communion. By which example it is shown and proved that all who have mixed themselves with schismatics against their superiors and priests with irreligious rashness will be liable both to guilt and to punishment. As also the Holy Spirit testifies through the prophet Hosea and says: Their sacrifices are as the bread of mourning, all who eat of them shall be defiled, teaching and showing, that is, that all who have been contaminated by the sin are joined together with the authors in punishment.

What merits therefore before God can they have upon whom punishments are divinely inflicted? Or how can such persons justify and sanctify those they baptize, who, as enemies of the priests, strive to usurp what is another's and unlawful and conceded to them by no right? We do not wonder, however, that these very persons contend according to their own wickedness. For each one necessarily asserts what he does, and they are unwilling, when overcome, to yield easily, even though they know that what they do is not lawful. What is to be wondered at, or rather what is to be indignantly resented and lamented, is that Christians stand by antichrists, and that betrayers of the faith and traitors to the Church stand within the Church itself against the Church.

These persons, though otherwise obstinate and unteachable, yet confess this much, that all heretics and schismatics alike do not have the Holy Spirit, and therefore can indeed baptize, but cannot give the Holy Spirit; and in this very point they are held by us as to where we are tending, namely that those who do not have the Holy Spirit can in no way baptize.

For since in baptism each person's sins are remitted, the Lord proves and declares in his Gospel that sins can be remitted only through those who have the Holy Spirit. For after the resurrection, sending his disciples, he speaks to them and says: As the Father sent me, so I send you. When he had said this, he breathed upon them and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit. If you remit the sins of any, they are remitted to them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained. In which place he shows that he alone can baptize and give remission of sins who has the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, John, who was about to baptize Christ our Lord himself, received the Holy Spirit beforehand while he was still in his mother's womb, so that it might be certain and manifest that none can baptize except those who have the Holy Spirit. Therefore let those who take the part of heretics or schismatics answer us whether they have the Holy Spirit or do not have it. If they have it, why is the hand laid upon those baptized there when they come to us, for the receiving of the Holy Spirit, since it would already have been received there where, if it was present, it could have been given? But if those heretics and schismatics who have been dipped outside do not have the Holy Spirit, and therefore the hand is laid upon them with us so that here may be received what is neither present nor can be given there, it is manifest that neither can remission of sins be given through those who are established to have no Holy Spirit.

And therefore, that in accordance with divine ordinance and evangelical truth they may obtain remission of sins and be sanctified and become temples of God, all without exception who come from adversaries and antichrists to the Church of Christ must be baptized with the baptism of the Church.

You also asked, dearest son, what my view is concerning those who obtain the grace of God in sickness and weakness, whether they are to be considered legitimate Christians, on the ground that they have not been washed but sprinkled with the saving water. In this matter our modesty and reserve prejudges no one so as to prevent each person from thinking what he thinks and doing what he has thought. We, for our part, as far as our limited understanding conceives, judge that the benefits of God cannot in any way be mutilated and weakened, nor can anything be lacking there where, with the full and complete faith of both the giver and the receiver, what is drawn from the divine gifts is received. For the contagions of sins are not washed away in the saving sacrament as the filth of skin and body is washed away in a carnal and worldly bath, so that nitre and other aids and a tub and a pool are needed by which the little body can be washed and cleansed.

In one way the breast of the believer is washed, in another way the mind of a man is cleansed through the merits of faith. In the saving sacraments, when necessity compels and God grants his indulgence, the divine compendiums confer everything upon believers. Nor should anyone be troubled that the sick seem to be sprinkled or poured upon when they obtain the grace of the Lord, since the holy Scripture speaks through the prophet Ezekiel and says: And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be cleansed from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will give within you. Likewise in Numbers: And the man who shall be unclean until evening, he shall be purified on the third day and on the seventh day, and shall be clean.

But if he be not purified on the third day and on the seventh day, he shall not be clean, and that soul shall be cut off from Israel, because the water of sprinkling was not sprinkled upon him. And again: And the Lord spoke to Moses saying: Take the Levites from the midst of the children of Israel, and purify them. And thus shall you do to them for their purification. You shall sprinkle the water of purification upon them. And again: The water of sprinkling is a purification. Whence it appears that the sprinkling of water also has the force of the saving laver, and when these things are done in the Church, where the faith of both the receiver and the giver is whole, all things stand and can be consummated and perfected by the majesty of the Lord and the truth of faith.

Furthermore, as for the fact that those who have obtained the grace of Christ through legitimate faith with saving water are called not Christians but the bedridden, I do not find whence they take this name, unless perhaps those who have read more widely and more recondite matters have found these bedridden people in Hippocrates or Soranus. For I, who know the bedridden man from the Gospel, know that nothing in his infirmity availed against that paralytic and feeble man lying on his bed through the long course of his years to prevent him from arriving most fully at heavenly health, and that not only was he raised from his pallet by the Lord's indulgence, but that he himself, with his strength restored and renewed, carried his own pallet. And therefore, as far as it is given to us to conceive and perceive by faith, my opinion is this: that he is to be judged a legitimate Christian who has obtained divine grace in the Church by the rule and right of faith.

Or if anyone thinks that those have obtained nothing because they have only been sprinkled with saving water, and that they are empty and void, let them not be deceived, so that if they escape the inconvenience of their illness and recover, they be baptized. But if those cannot be baptized who have already been sanctified by ecclesiastical baptism, why are they scandalized in their faith and in the Lord's indulgence? Or have they indeed obtained the grace of the Lord, but in a shorter and lesser measure of the divine gift and of the Holy Spirit, so that they are held to be Christians, yet are not to be equated with the rest?

Nay rather, the Holy Spirit is not given by measure, but is poured out wholly upon the believer. For if the day is born equally for all, and if the sun is spread over all with equal and impartial light, how much more does Christ, the true Sun and Day, bestow the light of eternal life in His Church with equal impartiality? The sacrament of this equality we see celebrated in Exodus, when manna flowed down from heaven and, by a prefiguration of things to come, showed forth the nourishment of heavenly bread and the food of Christ who was to come. For there a gomor was gathered equally by each individual without distinction of sex or age. Whereby it appeared that the indulgence of Christ and the heavenly grace that was afterward to follow would be divided equally among all, without variety of sex, without distinction of years, without respect of persons, and that the gift of spiritual grace would be poured out upon all the people of God.

Plainly the same spiritual grace, which is received equally in baptism by believers, is afterward either diminished or increased by our manner of life and conduct; just as in the Gospel the seed of the Lord is sown equally, but according to the variety of the soil one portion is consumed and another is heaped up in manifold abundance with the fruit of the thirtyfold or sixtyfold or hundredfold number overflowing. Moreover, since each one is called to receive a denarius, why should that which is distributed equally by God be diminished by human interpretation? But if anyone is troubled by the fact that some of those who are baptized while sick are still tempted by unclean spirits, let him know that the persistent wickedness of the devil prevails up to the saving water, but in Baptism loses all the venom of its wickedness.

This example we perceive in King Pharaoh, who, long resisting and persisting in his perfidy, was able to resist and prevail so long until he came to the water: when he had come to it, he was both overcome and destroyed. That the sea was a sacrament of baptism the blessed Apostle Paul declares, saying: For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea. And he added, saying: Now all these things were figures of us. Which is also done today, so that through exorcists the devil is scourged and burned and tormented by human voice and divine power, and although he often says that he is going out and will leave the men of God, yet in what he says he deceives, and exercises the same lie of obstinacy and fraud as was previously enacted through Pharaoh.

Nevertheless, when one comes to the saving water and to the sanctification of baptism, we ought to know and to trust that there the devil is crushed, and the man consecrated to God is set free by divine indulgence. For if, just as scorpions and serpents, which prevail on dry land, when cast into water cannot prevail or retain their venom, so also evil spirits, which are called scorpions and serpents, and yet are trodden down through us by the power given by the Lord, can no longer remain in the body of a man in whom, once baptized and sanctified, the Holy Spirit begins to dwell. This finally we also prove by actual experience, that those who are baptized under the compulsion of necessity in sickness and have obtained grace are free from the unclean spirit by which they were previously moved, and live praiseworthy and approved lives in the Church, and advance day by day in the increase of heavenly grace through growth in faith.

And on the other hand, often some of those who are baptized in health, if they afterward begin to sin, are shaken by the return of an unclean spirit; so that it is made manifest that the devil is excluded in baptism by the faith of the believer, and if faith afterward fails, returns. Unless perhaps it seems just to some that those who outside the Church are defiled with profane water among adversaries and antichrists should be judged baptized, while those who are baptized in the Church should appear to have obtained less of divine indulgence and grace, and so great honor should be paid to heretics that those coming from them are not asked whether they were washed or sprinkled, whether they are bedridden or walking, yet among us something should be taken away from the full truth of faith, and the majesty and holiness of ecclesiastical baptism should be diminished.

I have written back, dearest son, to your letter as much as our small and humble capacity has been able, and have shown what we think, not so much as our own view, prescribing to no one, so that each bishop may determine what he thinks, being about to render an account of his conduct to the Lord, as the blessed Apostle Paul writes and says in his letter to the Romans: For every one of us shall give account of himself to God. Let us not therefore judge one another. I wish you, dearest son, always good health.