To Pompey, Against the Epistle of Stephen on the Baptism of Heretics

Cyprian to his brother Pompeius, greeting. Although we have set forth nearly all that needed to be said concerning the baptizing of heretics in the letters of which we sent you copies, dearest brother, yet because you desired to be informed of what our brother Stephen has written back to us in reply to our letter, I have sent you a copy of his reply: upon reading which, you will note his error more and more, as he strives to assert the cause of heretics against Christians and against the Church of God. For among other things, either arrogant, or irrelevant, or self-contradictory, which he has written unskillfully and rashly, he also added this: that he said: If anyone therefore comes to you from any heresy whatsoever, let nothing be innovated except what has been handed down, that hands be laid upon him in penitence, since the heretics themselves do not properly baptize those who come to them from one another, but only admit them to communion.

He forbade one coming from any heresy whatsoever to be baptized in the Church, that is, he judged the baptisms of all heretics to be just and lawful. And since individual heresies have individual baptisms and diverse sins, he, by communicating with the baptism of all, has heaped and gathered into his own bosom the accumulated offenses of all. And he commanded that nothing else be innovated except what has been handed down; as though it were he who innovates who, holding unity, claims one baptism for the one Church, and not rather he who, forgetful of unity, usurps the lies and contaminations of a profane dipping. Let nothing be innovated, he says, except what has been handed down. Whence comes this tradition? Does it descend from the authority of the Lord and the Gospel, or does it come from the commands and letters of the apostles?

For God testifies and forewarns that those things which are written must be done, saying to Joshua the son of Nun: The book of this law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do all things that are written therein. Likewise the Lord, sending forth his apostles, commands that the nations be baptized and taught to observe all things whatsoever he commanded. If therefore it is either commanded in the Gospel or contained in the letters or Acts of the apostles that those coming from any heresy whatsoever should not be baptized, but only have hands laid upon them in penitence, let this divine and holy tradition be observed. But if heretics are everywhere called nothing other than adversaries and Antichrists, if they are declared to be persons to be avoided, and perverse, and condemned by themselves, what manner of thing is it that those should seem not to be condemned by us who are established by apostolic testimony to have been condemned by themselves?

So that no one ought to defame the apostles, as though they had approved the baptisms of heretics, or had communicated with them without the baptism of the Church, when the apostles wrote such things about heretics, and this when the more virulent heretical plagues had not yet broken out, nor had Marcion of Pontus yet emerged from Pontus, whose master Cerdon came to Rome under bishop Hyginus, who was then the ninth in the city; whom Marcion followed, adding to the crime with further aggravations, and set about blaspheming against God the Father and Creator more shamelessly and abruptly than the rest, and armed the heretical fury rebelling against the Church with more wicked and grievous sacrilegious weapons.

But if it is established that more and worse heresies arose afterward, and if nowhere at all in former times was it commanded or written down that only hands should be laid upon a heretic in penitence, and so communion be given to him, and if there is but one baptism, which is among us, and is within, and has been granted by divine condescension to the Church alone, what is this obstinacy, what is this presumption, to set human tradition before the divine ordinance, and not to perceive that God is indignant and angry whenever divine precepts are dissolved and human tradition overrides them, as he cries out and says through the prophet Isaiah: This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far separated from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching the commandments and doctrines of men. Likewise the Lord in the Gospel, rebuking and reproving in like manner, sets forth and says: You reject the commandment of God that you may establish your own tradition.

Mindful of this precept, the blessed Apostle himself also admonishes and instructs, saying: If anyone teaches otherwise, and does not consent to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and to his doctrine, he is puffed up with pride, knowing nothing; depart from such a one.

A splendid and lawful tradition, forsooth, is set forth with our brother Stephen as its teacher, one that may furnish us with fitting authority. For in the same place of his letter he added and appended: Since the heretics themselves do not properly baptize those who come to them from one another, but only admit them to communion. Has the Church of God, the Bride of Christ, fallen into such evils, that she should follow the examples of heretics, that light should borrow discipline from darkness for the celebration of heavenly sacraments, and that Christians should do what Antichrists do? But what blindness of mind is this, what perversity, to be unwilling to acknowledge the unity of faith coming from God the Father and from the tradition of Jesus Christ our Lord and God?

For if the Church is not among heretics because she is one and cannot be divided, and if the Holy Spirit is not there because he is one and cannot be among the profane and strangers, then certainly baptism also, which consists in that same unity, cannot be among heretics, because it can be separated neither from the Church nor from the Holy Spirit.

Or if they attribute the effect of baptism to the majesty of the name, so that those who are baptized anywhere and in any manner in the name of Jesus Christ are judged to be renewed and sanctified, why is not the hand also laid there upon the baptized person in the name of the same Christ to receive the Holy Spirit, why does not the same majesty of the same name prevail in the laying on of hands as they contend it prevailed in the sanctification of baptism? For if one born outside the Church can become a temple of God, why cannot the Holy Spirit also be poured out upon the temple?

For he who has been sanctified by having his sins laid bare in baptism and spiritually reformed into a new man has been made fit to receive the Holy Spirit, since the Apostle says: As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ; he who, baptized among heretics, can put on Christ, can much more receive the Holy Spirit whom Christ sent. Otherwise, the one sent will be greater than the one who sent him, so that one baptized outside should begin to have put on Christ indeed, but not to have been able to receive the Holy Spirit; as though Christ could be put on without the Spirit, or the Spirit be separated from Christ. How inept also is this: that since the second birth is spiritual, by which we are born in Christ through the washing of regeneration, they say that one can be born spiritually among heretics, where they deny the Spirit to be. For water alone cannot purge sins and sanctify a man, unless it also have the Holy Spirit.

Wherefore they must either necessarily concede that the Holy Spirit is there where they say baptism is, or else baptism cannot exist without the Holy Spirit.

But what manner of thing is it to assert and contend that there can be sons of God who have not been born in the Church? For that baptism exists in which the old man dies and the new is born, the blessed Apostle makes manifest and proves, saying: He saved us through the washing of regeneration. But if regeneration is in the washing, that is, in baptism, how can heresy through Christ beget sons for God, since it is not the Bride of Christ? For it is the Church alone which, joined and united to Christ, spiritually begets sons, the same Apostle again saying: Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her that he might sanctify her, cleansing her with the washing of water. If therefore she is the beloved and the Bride who alone is sanctified by Christ and alone is cleansed by his washing, it is manifest that heresy, which is not the Bride of Christ, can neither be cleansed nor sanctified by his washing, nor beget sons for God.

Furthermore, a person is not born through the laying on of hands when he receives the Holy Spirit, but in the baptism of the Church, so that, already born, he may receive the Holy Spirit, as was done in the first man Adam. For God first formed him, and then breathed into his face the breath of life.

For the Spirit cannot be received unless there first be one who can receive him. But since the birth of Christians is in baptism, and the generation and sanctification of baptism belongs to the Bride of Christ alone, who is able to bear spiritually and to beget sons for God, where and from whom and to whom is one born who is not a son of the Church, so that anyone could have God as Father before having the Church as mother? But since no heresy at all, nor even any schism, can possess outside the sanctification of saving baptism, why has the obstinacy of our brother Stephen broken out so harshly as to contend even concerning the baptism of Marcion, and likewise of Valentinus and Apelles, and the rest who blaspheme against God the Father, that sons are born to God there, and to say that in the name of Jesus Christ remission of sins is given there where blasphemy is uttered against the Father and against the Lord God Christ?

In this place it must be considered, dearest brother, for the sake of the faith and religion of the priestly office which we discharge, whether the account of a priest of God can stand on the day of judgment when he asserts and proves and counts as acceptable the baptisms of blasphemers, since the Lord threatens and says: And now this commandment is to you, O priests; if you will not hear, and if you will not lay it to heart to give glory to my name, says the Lord Almighty, I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. Does he give honor to God who communicates with the baptism of Marcion? Does he give honor to God who judges that remission of sins is given among those who blaspheme against God? Does he give honor to God who asserts that sons are born to God outside from an adulteress and a harlot?

Does he give honor to God who, not holding the unity and truth coming from the divine law, defends heresies against the Church? Does he give honor to God who, as a friend of heretics and an enemy of Christians, thinks that the priests of God who guard the truth of Christ and the unity of the Church ought to be cut off from communion? If honor is thus given to God, if the fear and discipline of God is thus preserved by his worshippers and priests, let us cast down our arms, let us surrender ourselves into captivity, let us hand over to the devil the ordering of the Gospel, the dispensation of Christ, the majesty of God; let the sacraments of divine warfare be dissolved, let the standards of the heavenly camp be betrayed, let the Church yield and give way to heretics, light to darkness, faith to faithlessness, hope to despair, reason to error, immortality to death, charity to hatred, truth to falsehood, Christ to Antichrist.

Deservedly and thus do schisms and heresies arise day by day, growing more frequently and more abundantly, and, sprouting with serpentine locks, they pour forth against the Church of God with greater force the venom of their poisons, while the advocacy and authority and firmness of certain persons is furnished to them, while their baptism is defended, while faith, while truth is betrayed, while that which is done against the Church outside is vindicated within the Church itself.

But if there is among us, most beloved brother, the fear of God, if the tenor of faith prevails, if we keep the commandments of Christ, if we guard the uncorrupted and inviolate holiness of His Spouse, if the words of the Lord saying this dwell in our senses and hearts: Thinkest thou that when the Son of man cometh, he shall find faith on the earth? Because we are faithful soldiers of God, who serve God with faith and sincere devotion, let us guard with faithful valor the camp entrusted to us by God. Nor should custom, which had crept in among some, hinder truth from prevailing and conquering. For custom without truth is the antiquity of error. Wherefore, leaving error behind, let us follow truth, knowing that even in Esdras truth conquers, as it is written: Truth endureth and is strong for ever, and liveth and conquereth for ever and ever.

And there is no accepting of persons with her nor differences, but she doeth the things that are just, nor is there in her judgment anything unrighteous, but strength, and the kingdom and the power and the majesty of all ages. Blessed be the God of truth. Which truth Christ, showing it to us in His Gospel, says: I am the truth. Wherefore if we are in Christ and have Christ in us, if we abide in truth and truth abides in us, let us hold fast those things which are true and right. But it comes about through the zeal of presumption and contumacy that one rather defends his own perverse and false positions than consents to the right and true positions of another. Foreseeing which matter, the blessed apostle Paul writes to Timothy and warns that a bishop ought not to be quarrelsome nor contentious, but gentle and apt to teach. Now he is apt to teach who is gentle and mild in patience of hearing.

For a bishop ought not only to teach, but also to learn, because he also teaches better who grows and advances daily by learning better things. Which same thing also the same apostle Paul teaches, forewarning that if anything be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace. It is moreover a brief matter for religious and simple minds both to lay aside error and to find and bring forth truth. For if we return to the head and origin of divine tradition, human error ceases, and the reason of the heavenly sacraments being perceived, whatever lay hidden in obscurity under the darkness and cloud of shadows is opened into the light of truth.

If a channel carrying water, which previously flowed copiously and abundantly, should suddenly fail, is one not to go to the fountain, that there the reason for the failure may be known, whether the water has dried up at the head through the veins running dry, or whether it runs out whole and full from there but has stopped somewhere along the way; so that if it has come about through the fault of a broken or leaking channel that the water did not flow continuously, steadily, and without interruption, the channel being repaired and restored, the water gathered may be presented for the use and drink of the city with the same abundance and integrity with which it proceeds from the fountain.

Which also the priests of God ought now to do, keeping the divine commandments, and if in anything the truth has wavered and faltered, let us return to the Lord's origin and to the evangelical and apostolic tradition, and from thence let the reason of our action arise, from whence both the order and the origin arose. For it has been handed down to us that there is one God, and one Christ, and one hope, and one faith, and one Church, and one baptism established in the one Church alone; from which unity whoever has departed must needs be found among heretics. By defending such people against the Church, he attacks the sacrament of divine tradition. The sacrament of which unity we see expressed also in the Canticle of Canticles in the person of Christ saying: A garden enclosed, my sister, my spouse, a fountain sealed, a well of living water, a paradise with the fruit of trees.

But if His Church is an enclosed garden and a sealed fountain, how can one who is not in the Church enter into that garden or drink from its fountain? Likewise Peter himself also, demonstrating and vindicating unity, commanded and warned that we cannot be saved except through the one baptism of the one Church. In the ark, he says, of Noah a few, that is, eight souls of men were saved through water, which baptism shall in like manner save you. With what brief and spiritual compactness he made manifest the sacrament of unity! For just as in that baptism of the world, by which the ancient iniquity was purged, one who was not in the ark of Noah could not be saved through water, so neither now can one who has been baptized outside the Church be seen to be saved through baptism, since the Church is founded upon the sacrament of the one ark by the Lord's unity.

It is therefore observed and held by us, dearest brother, the truth having been examined and perceived, that all who are converted from any heresy whatsoever to the Church are to be baptized with the one and lawful baptism of the Church, excepting those who had previously been baptized in the Church and had so passed over to the heretics. For those, when they return, ought, after penance has been performed, to be received by the laying on of hands alone and to be restored by the shepherd to the fold from which they had strayed. I wish you, dearest brother, always good health.