The Fourth Council of Carthage under Cyprian, on Basilides and Martialis

Cyprian, Caecilius, Primus, Polycarp, Nicomedes, Lucilianus, Successus, Sedatus, Fortunatus, Januarius, Secundius, Pomponius, Honoratus, Victor, Aurelius, Satius, Peter, another Januarius, Saturninus, another Aurelius, Venantius, Quietus, Rogatianus, Tenax, Felix, Faustus, Quintus, another Saturninus, Lucius, Vincentius, Libosus, Germinus, Marcellus, Jambus, Adelphius, Victoricus, and Paul, to Felix the presbyter and the many brethren dwelling at Legio, and likewise at Asturica to Laelius the deacon and the people dwelling at Emerita, greeting in the Lord.

When we had gathered together in one place, we read your letter, most beloved brothers, which you sent to us through Felix and Sabinus our fellow-bishops, out of the integrity of your faith and out of fear of God, signifying that Basilides and Martialis, defiled by the certificates of idolatry and bound by the consciousness of unspeakable crimes, ought not to hold the episcopate nor administer the priesthood of God; and you desired that a reply be written to you on these matters, and that your just and likewise necessary concern be relieved by the consolation or assistance of our judgment. But indeed, to this your desire, not so much our counsels as the divine precepts make answer, by which it has long been commanded by a heavenly voice and prescribed by the law of God, who and what manner of men ought to serve at the altar and to celebrate the divine sacrifices.

For in Exodus God speaks to Moses and warns him, saying: Let the priests who draw near to the Lord God sanctify themselves, lest perchance the Lord forsake them. And again: And when they draw near to minister at the altar of the holy place, they shall not bring guilt upon themselves, lest they die. Likewise in Leviticus the Lord commands and says: A man in whom there is a blemish and defect shall not draw near to offer gifts to God.

Since these things have been foretold and made plain to us, it is necessary that our obedience serve the divine precepts; nor can human indulgence show respect of persons in matters of this kind, or grant anything to anyone, where divine prescription intervenes and lays down the law. For we ought not to be unmindful of what the Lord said to the Jews through the prophet Isaiah, rebuking and expressing indignation because, despising the divine precepts, they followed human teachings: This people, he says, 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. The same thing the Lord repeats in the Gospel and says: You reject the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition.

Keeping these things before our eyes and considering them carefully and devoutly, in the ordinations of priests we ought to choose none but unblemished and upright overseers, who, offering sacrifices to God holily and worthily, may be heard in the prayers which they make for the safety of the Lord's people, since it is written: God does not hear a sinner; but if anyone worships God and does his will, him he hears; for which reason with full diligence and sincere examination those ought to be chosen for the priesthood of God who are known to be heard by God.

Nor should the people flatter themselves that they can be free from the contagion of sin by communicating with a sinful priest and lending their consent to the unjust and unlawful episcopate of their superior, since the divine censure threatens through the prophet Hosea and says: Their sacrifices shall be as the bread of mourning; all who eat of them shall be defiled, teaching and showing, that is, that all are altogether bound to sin who have been defiled by the sacrifice of a profane and unjust priest. How many instances likewise we find made manifest in Numbers, when Korah and Dathan and Abiron claimed for themselves the license of sacrificing against Aaron the priest. There also the Lord commanded through Moses that the people be separated from them, lest, joined to the wicked, they too be touched by the same wickedness. Separate yourselves, he says, from the tents of these most hardened men, and touch not the things that belong to them, lest you perish together in their sin.

For which reason the people, obedient to the Lord's commands and fearing God, ought to separate themselves from a sinful superior, and not mingle themselves in the sacrifices of a sacrilegious priest, since the people themselves especially have the power either of choosing worthy priests or of refusing the unworthy.

This same practice we also see to descend from divine authority: a priest is to be chosen with the people present, before the eyes of all, and approved as worthy and fit by public judgment and testimony. Thus the Lord commanded Moses in Numbers, saying: Take Aaron your brother and Eleazar his son and place them on the mountain before the whole Synagogue, and strip Aaron of his robe and put it on Eleazar his son, and Aaron being gathered to his fathers shall die there. Before the whole Synagogue God commands the priest to be appointed, that is, he instructs and shows that ordinations of priests ought to be performed only with the knowledge of the people standing by, so that with the people present either the crimes of the wicked may be detected, or the merits of the good may be proclaimed, and the ordination may be just and lawful because it has been examined by the suffrage and judgment of all.

This is afterwards observed according to the divine teachings in the Acts of the Apostles, when Peter speaks to the people concerning the ordination of an apostle in the place of Judas. Peter arose, it says, in the midst of the disciples, and the number of persons together was about one hundred and twenty. We also observe that the apostles kept this not only in the ordinations of bishops and priests, but also in those of deacons, concerning which also it is written in their Acts: And those twelve, it says, called together the whole people of the disciples and said to them. This was certainly done so carefully and cautiously with the whole people assembled, lest anyone unworthy should creep into the ministry of the altar or into the priestly office.

For that the unworthy are sometimes ordained not according to the will of God but according to human presumption, and that these things displease God which do not come from a lawful and just ordination, God himself makes manifest through the prophet Hosea, saying: They have set up a king for themselves, and not through me.

For which reason it must be observed and maintained diligently, from divine tradition and apostolic observance, as is also maintained among us and in nearly all the provinces, that for the proper celebration of ordinations, the neighboring bishops of the same province should assemble before that people for whom a superior is being ordained, and the bishop be chosen with the people present, who know most fully the life of each individual and have observed the conduct of each one from his manner of life. This we see was also done among you in the ordination of our colleague Sabinus, so that by the suffrage of the whole brotherhood and by the judgment of the bishops who had assembled in person and who had written letters to you concerning him, the episcopate was conferred upon him and hands were laid upon him in the place of Basilides.

Nor can what Basilides did after his crimes were detected and his conscience laid bare even by his own confession, going to Rome and deceiving our colleague Stephen, who was far away and ignorant of the matter and the truth, so as to seek by importunity to be restored unjustly to the episcopate from which he had been rightfully deposed, rescind an ordination rightly performed. This amounts to the fact that the offenses of Basilides have not so much been abolished as multiplied, so that to his earlier sins there has been added also the crime of deceit and circumvention. For he is not so much to be blamed who was carelessly deceived, as he is to be execrated who fraudulently deceived. But if Basilides was able to deceive men, he cannot deceive God, since it is written: God is not mocked.

Nor could deceit profit Martialis so as to prevent him also, entangled in grave offenses, from being required to relinquish the episcopate, since the Apostle also warns and says: A bishop must be blameless, as a steward of God.

Wherefore, since, as you have written, most beloved brothers, and as our colleagues Felix and Sabinus affirm, and as another Felix from Caesaraugusta, a devoted worshipper of the faith and defender of truth, signifies in his letters, Basilides and Martialis have been defiled by the abominable certificate of idolatry, and Basilides moreover, beyond the stain of the certificate, when he lay ill, blasphemed against God and confessed that he had blasphemed, and voluntarily laying down the episcopate on account of the wound of his own conscience turned to doing penance, beseeching God, and counting it a great blessing if it should fall to him even to communicate as a layman; and Martialis also, beyond the shameful and filthy banquets of the gentiles long frequented in the guild, and his sons deposited in the same guild after the manner of foreign nations at profane tombs and buried together with aliens, has also testified in public acts held before the ducenary procurator that he had complied with idolatry and denied Christ; and since there are many other grave offenses by which Basilides and Martialis are held entangled, such men strive in vain to usurp the episcopate for themselves, since it is manifest that men of this kind can neither preside over the Church of Christ nor ought to offer sacrifices to God; especially since our colleague Cornelius, a peaceful and just priest, and also honored with martyrdom by the condescension of the Lord, has long since decreed together with us and with all the bishops established throughout the whole world, that men of this kind may indeed be admitted to doing penance, but are to be barred from the ordination of the clergy and from priestly honor.

Let it not trouble you, most beloved brothers, if among some persons in these last times an unstable faith wavers, or an irreligious fear of God falters, or peaceable concord does not persevere. These things have been foretold as destined to come in the end of the age, and it has been predicted by the voice of the Lord and the testimony of the Apostles that, as the world is now failing and antichrist drawing near, all good things would fail, but evil and adverse things would increase.

Yet not even so, although in the last times, has the evangelical vigor in the Church of God fallen, or the strength of Christian virtue or of faith grown faint, so that there does not remain a portion of priests which by no means succumbs to these ruins of things and shipwrecks of faith, but strong and steadfast guards the honor of the divine majesty and the priestly dignity with full observance of fear. We remember and hold fast that, though others were yielding and giving way, Mattathias vindicated the law of God with courage; that Elijah, while the Jews were failing and withdrawing from divine religion, stood firm and strove sublimely; that Daniel, deterred neither by the solitude of a foreign land nor by the harassment of continual persecution, frequently and bravely gave glorious testimonies; that likewise the three young men, broken neither by their years nor by threats, faithfully withstood the fires of Babylon and conquered the conquering king in his very captivity.

Let the number of the prevaricators or of the traitors look to itself, those who now rise up in the Church against the Church and have begun to undermine faith and truth alike. Among the greater number there abides a sincere mind and an upright religion, and a soul devoted to none but the Lord its God, nor does the Christian faith, through the perfidy of others, sink to ruin, but rather is stirred up and exalted to glory, according as the blessed apostle Paul exhorts and says: For what if some of them have fallen away from the faith, shall their unbelief make void the faith of God? God forbid! For God is true, but every man a liar. But if every man is a liar and God alone is true, what else ought we, the servants, and especially the priests of God, to do but to leave behind human errors and lies, and, keeping the commandments of the Lord, to remain in the truth of God?

Wherefore even if some among our colleagues, most beloved brethren, have arisen who think that divine discipline is to be neglected and rashly communicate with Basilides and Martialis, this matter ought not to disturb our faith, since the Holy Spirit threatens such persons in the Psalms, saying: But thou hast hated discipline, and hast cast my words behind thee. If thou sawest a thief, thou didst run with him, and with adulterers thou didst place thy portion. He shows that those who have been joined to offenders become sharers and partakers of the sins of others. But this same thing the Apostle Paul also writes and says: Whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, injurious, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, who, when they had known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things are worthy of death, not only they who do them but also they who consent to them that do these things; for they who do such things, he says, are worthy of death.

He makes plain and confirms that those are worthy of death and liable to punishment, not only those who do evil, but also those who consent to those doing such things, who, while they mingle in unlawful communion with the wicked and sinners and those who do not do penance, are defiled by contact with the guilty, and while they are joined in fault, so neither are they separated in punishment. On account of which, most beloved brethren, we both praise and approve alike the devout solicitude of your integrity and faith; and we exhort you as much as we can by our letter, that you do not mingle yourselves with profane and defiled priests in sacrilegious communion, but that you preserve the firm steadfastness of your faith whole and sincere with devout fear. I wish you, most dear brethren, always to fare well.