A.D. 248. And so it was that Cæcilius, comforted by such attentions, was 6. For evidence of his good works, I suppose this is enough, that by the judgment of God and the good will of the people, he was chosen for the office of the Priesthood, and the rank of the Episcopate, while yet a neophyte, and, as was considered, a novice". Although still in the first days of his faith, and in the rudimental season of his spiritual life, in such sort did his noble disposition shine out, that, resplendent in the brightness at least of hope, though not of office, he promised a full performance of the duties of the priesthood, which was coming on him. Nor will I pass over that special circumstance, how, while the whole people, God influencing, poured itself out in love and honour of him, he on the other hand humbly withdrew himself, yielding to older men, and deeming himself unworthy of the title of such honour, whereby he became the more worthy. For he is but made more worthy, who declines what he deserves. With such emotion was the excited people at that time agitated, longing with spiritual desire, as the event proves, not a Bishop merely; but in him who had hid himself, and whom it was by a divine presage so demanding, seeking, not à Priest only, but a Martyr to come. A numerous brotherhood had beset the doors of his house; solicitous love poured itself around all the approaches. What befel the Apostle might then perhaps have been granted to him, as he wished it, to be let down through a window; had he already shared with the Apostle the honour of ordination. Clerics, however, "by the Canons of the African Church, could not become trustees to the property of their brethren, on the ground that they were bound to serve nought but the altar and sacrifice, and to keep their time for supplications and prayers." Fell in Cypr. Epist. 1. vid. Conc. Carthag. A.D. 348. The same rule may be alluded to in One might see all others Treatise vi.4.infra. "Numerous Bishops, despising their sacred calling, engaged themselves in secular vocations,""divinâ procuratione contemptâ, procuratores rerum secularium fieri.” h Vid. 1 Tim. iii. 6. S. Ambrose, Nectarius, Eusebius of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, and others, were made Bishops under the same circumstances. in anxious suspense waiting for his coming, and receiving him with excess of joy when he came. I say it unwillingly, but I must say it. Some resisted him', even that he might obtain his wish. Whom however, how forbearingly, how patiently, how kindly he bore with! how indulgently he forgave, reckoning them afterwards among his most intimate and familiar friends, to the wonder of many! for who, but might count it miraculous that so retentive a memory should become so oblivious? 7. How henceforth he bore himself, who would suffice to relate how great was his loving-kindness, his strength of mind! his mercy, his severity! Such sanctity and grace shone forth from his countenance as to confuse the gazer. His look was grave and glad; neither a sternness which was sad, nor overmuch good nature; but a just mixture of both; so that one might doubt whether he claimed more our reverence or our love, except that he claimed both. Nor did his dress belie his countenance, subdued, as it was, to the middle course. He was not the man to be inflated with the pride of the world's fashions; yet neither to grovel in a studious penury; in that the latter style of dress is as boastful, as that so ambitious frugality is ostentatious. How, when a Bishop, he acted towards the poor, whom he already loved as a catechumen, let the priests of mercifulness consider; whether taught in the office of good works by the discipline of their very order, or obliged to the duty of love by the general bond of the Gospel Sacrament. As for Cyprian, what he was, such his Bishop's seat found him ready made, and did not make him. 8. And so it was that for such merits he forthwith obtained A.D. 250. also the glory of proscription. Nor was it other than fitting that one, who within the retreat of conscience so abounded in the full honours of religion and faith, should also have a public name among the Gentiles. Indeed he might even then, for the rapidity with which he developed into all things, have hastened to the appointed crown of Martyrdom; especially 1 Five Priests opposed his consecration, one of them being Novatus; they afterwards fomented the disorders of which the Confessors were made the instrument, (vid. infra Introd, to Trea tise v.) and joined the party of Felicis- vid. Treat. i. since the cries were frequent which called him "to the lion;" had it not been meet that he should pass through all degrees of glory before he came to the highest, and had not the ruin of the Church which then threatened needed the aid of so fertile a mind. For imagine him taken hence at that time by the high reward of Martyrdom; who was there to shew the gains of grace making progress by faith? who to curb the single women as it were with the bridle of the vid. iv. Lord's lessons into a congruous rule of chastity, and a dress vid. vi. becoming their holiness? who to teach penitence to the vid. vii. Lapsed? truth to heretics, unity to schismatics? to the sons of God peace and the law of Gospel prayer? who to be the vid. ii. instrument of overthrowing blaspheming Gentiles, by retorting on them their charges on us? by whom were Christians, grieved vid. xi. at loss of friends with excess of fondness or (what is worse) and viii. defect of faith, by whom to be comforted with the hope of vid. x. things to come? from whom should we else learn mercy? vid. xi. from whom patience? who was there to repress the evil vid. xii. feeling springing from the malignity of poisonous envy, with vid. xiii. the sweetness of a salutary remedy? who to cheer the host of Martyrs with the exhortation of a divine discourse,—who lastly to hasten with a stirring heavenly trumpet those many confessors, signed with a second inscription on their brow, and reserved as living examples of Martyrdom? Well surely it was ordered then, well and indeed divinely, that a man so necessary for so many and so good objects, was retarded from a Martyr's consummation'. 9. You wish to be sure that that retirement of his which now took place, was not from fear"; not to allege other kChristianos ad Leonem." Tertullian Apol. 40. de Spect. 26. 1 S. Jerome relates, that he had seen an old man, who professed to have seen in his youth an amanuensis of S. Cyprian's, who was in the habit of relating that the latter never passed a day without reading Tertullian, continually saying to him, Da Magistrum; Hand me my Master. vid. Jerom. de Vir. Illustr. 53. also Introd. to Treatise iv. That S. Cyprian however did not follow Tertullian implicitly is plain from his retiring from the persecution, not to mention other points of difference. m On the subject of flight in persecution, vid. infra note g, on vi. 8. vid. also Ep. 34. fin. ed. Fell. Tertullian in his Montanistic Tract De fugâ in Persecutione maintains that flight is unlawful. The Roman Clergy (Ep. 8.) find fault with S. Cyprian's flight: he defends himself, (Ep. 20.) saying he withdrew to hinder a riot. His warrant for doing so was a divine direction. vid. Ep. 16. "When a persecution impended, the Bishops used to assemble the people, and exhort them to constancy. Then they baptized infants and catechumens and divided the Eucha evidence, he did suffer afterwards; which suffering of course he would have shrunk from according to his wont, had he shrunk from it before. But in truth, fear it was, but right fear; fear of offending the Lord, fear which had rather be dutiful to God's precepts, than be crowned together with the breach of them. A mind surrendered in all things to God, and a faith enslaved to the divine directions, considered that it would be sinning in very suffering, unless it had obeyed the Lord who then ordered that retreat. Something more must here be said on the advantage of the postponement, though already I have touched on the subject. By what seems shortly to have taken place, we may prove, as follows, that that retirement did not issue from human pusillanimity, but, as is the case, was really divine. The people of God had been ravaged with the extraordinary and fierce assaults of a harrassing persecution; and, whereas the crafty enemy could not deceive all by one and the same artifice, therefore raging against them in manifold ways, wherever the incautious soldier exposed his side, there he worsted each by various overthrows. Some one was required who, when wounds had been received, and darts cast by the changeful art of the torturing enemy, had heavenly remedies at hand according to the nature of each, now to pierce and now to sooth; and then was preserved a man of a mind beyond all others divinely tempered, to steer the Church in a steady middle course between the rebounding waves of colliding schisms. Let me ask then, is not such design divine? could it have been without God's governance? Let them look to it who think that such things happen by chance. The Church answers to them with loud voice, declaring that she does not allow, does not believe, that these her necessary champions are reserved without the providence of God. 10. However, let me be allowed to run through the rest. A. D. A dreadful pestilence broke out afterwards", and the extra rist among the faithful." Vales. in Euseb. Hist. viii. 11. S. Dionysius was accused of having retired without first attending to these necessary duties. ibid. For a description of the pestilence, vid. infra ix. 9. vid. also the letters of Dionysius of Alexandria (Euseb. Hist. 252. ordinary ravages of a hateful sickness entered house after house of the trembling populace in succession, carrying off with sudden violence numberless people daily, each from his own home. There was a general panic, flight, shrinking from the infection, unnatural exposure of infected friends; as though to carry the dying out of doors, were to rid one's self of death itself. Meanwhile multitudes lay about the whole city, not bodies, but by this time corpses; and called on the pity of passers-by from the view of a fortune common to both parties. No one looked to aught beyond his cruel gain. No one was alarmed from the recollection of parallel instances. No one did to another what he wished done to himself. It were a crime to pass over what in such circumstances was the conduct of this Pontiff of Christ and God, who had surpassed the Pontiffs of this world as much in benevolence as in truth of doctrine. First he assembled the people in one place, urged on them the excellence of mercifulness, taught them by instances from holy Scripture how much the offices of benevolence avail to merit with God. Then he subjoined that there was nothing wonderful in cherishing our own with the fitting dutifulness of charity; that he became the perfect man, who did somewhat more than publican or heathen, who, overcoming evil with good and exercising what resembled a divine clemency, loved even his enemies, who prayed, as the Lord admonishes and exhorts, for the well-being of those who are persecuting him. He then makes His sun rise, and bestows rain from time to time to foster the seed, shewing forth all these benefits not only to His own, but to strangers also; and he, who professes himself even God's son, why follows he not the example of his Father? "We should answer to our birth," he says; "it is not fit that they should be degenerate who are known to have been born again by God; rather the seed of a good Father should be evidenced in the offspring, by our copying of His goodness." I pass over many other things and those important, which my limits will not allow me to detail; about which let it suffice to have noticed thus |