Appendix tertia: N. Le Nourry, O.S.B., Dissertatio de libris S. Cypriani ad Demetrianum et de idolorum vanitate

THIRD APPENDIX.

DISSERTATION

ON CYPRIAN'S BOOKS TO DEMETRIANUS AND ON THE VANITY OF IDOLS.

BY DOM NICOLAS LE NOURRY, O.S.B.

CHAPTER I.

On the book to Demetrianus.

ARTICLE I.

Analysis of this book.

Demetrianus, utterly devoted to the impious worship of false gods, had often accosted Cyprian in order to dispute with him, not for the sake of ever seeking the truth, but only of defending his own religion (p. 185). For this reason Cyprian disdained the unteachable, quarrelsome and most obstinate man, and judged that he was to be refuted by silence and patience rather than by words, as our sacred Scriptures teach. But when the world was then being harassed by the most dreadful calamities of war, famine and plague, that senseless man began to make a louder clamour, and to cry out openly that very many complained with him, rightly and deservedly, that the Christians were the cause of those calamities because they did not worship the gods of the other nations. Cyprian therefore, lest he should seem by his silence to admit it, at length set about refuting these charges, however foolish and contemptible, in a public writing (p. 186).

And he overturns them utterly with arguments of various weight. For first, he says, these very calamities, very great as they were, showed that the world was growing old and failing in its strength. For in winter there was no longer such abundance of rain, nor such mildness in spring, nor such heat of the sun in summer, nor such plenty of crops and fruits in autumn. Moreover the metals in the bowels of the earth were diminishing; the number of farmers, sailors and soldiers was growing smaller; innocence was lacking in the forum, concord among friends, skill in the arts, discipline in morals. The calamities of an ageing world were therefore no more to be attributed to the Christians than the fact that a man worn out with age is pressed and weighed down by the diseases of old age (p. 187).

Next our author makes it plain that it is by no means the Christians who are the authors of these calamities, but

the gentiles themselves, who had offended God, utterly and completely forsaken [by them], by the wicked worship of false gods, by various superstitions and by countless crimes. For that very reason, and that they might return to a sounder mind, that most just God permitted the world to be shaken and well-nigh overwhelmed by those most deadly disasters which His sacred prophets, cited there by Cyprian, had foretold. But such was the blindness of the impious and wicked gentiles that, not in the least moved by so many and such great plagues, they did not fear the wrath of God, which they were ever provoking with new crimes. Who then would not condemn those who, though they exacted from their own slaves the service due to themselves, and punished those who did not obey their orders with whips, hunger, thirst, nakedness, the sword and prison, were nevertheless unwilling to comply with the will of the Almighty Lord and to serve Him (p. 188)? Those therefore who were not amended by so many and such great plagues, yet lesser than they had deserved, had nothing else awaiting them but the eternal prison and the everlasting punishment of fire.

There he appeals to Demetrianus's own conscience as judge, and asks by what right he, guilty of avarice, envy, lust and every kind of crime, can complain of divine vengeance (p. 189). For what just complaint could he and the other gentiles then make about wars, when there was no peace even among the citizens in the toga? What lament about barrenness and famine, which their rapacity made greater? What grievance about plague, when their own cruelty towards the dying and the dead, and in seizing their goods, was fiercer than the pestilence itself? Were not forgers, poisoners, assassins and most unjust judges even then running riot with impunity? God therefore, with the fullest right, in vengeance for so many crimes, allowed the world to be harassed by the greatest calamities, which He nevertheless could have prevented (p. 190).

Moreover, His most just wrath was stirred by the insatiable fury of the heathen, with which, against every law of equity, they tortured the Christians to death with every most atrocious punishment for their name alone, and

slaughtered. For if the Christians had injured their gods, why did these gods suffer their injuries calmly and with impunity, or leave them to be repelled by those same heathens as by those more powerful? But these gods were so feeble that they needed the protection of men, and, adjured by the Christians, struck by their words no differently than by whips and blows, they were compelled to go out of the bodies they had possessed (p. 191). Indeed, they were even driven openly, in the presence and before the eyes of all, heathens included, to betray their own deceptions and to confess the judgement to come. But what is more foolish and absurd than that these false gods should be worshipped with impious cult and with prostrate body by man, whom his lofty stature and his face raised towards heaven admonished to acknowledge and honour the True and Almighty God (p. 192)?

He therefore exhorts Demetrianus and the other gentiles to turn to the true God, to believe in Christ, and to cease harming His servants, whom their assurance of future vengeance made patient. For God had shortly before given a most manifest proof of His vengeance and of their defence, "by the ruins of kings, the losses of wealth, the loss of soldiers, the diminution of camps." Wherefore our author concludes from this that the public calamities had befallen not as a punishment of and vengeance upon the Christians, but upon the gentiles.

Nor does he allow it to be objected to him that God would be unjust, Who suffers them, like the gentiles, to be involved in and overwhelmed by such great disasters. For it was the gentiles alone who mourned them, and by no means the Christians, who, made certain of the good things to come and living by the spirit rather than by the flesh, overcame the weakness of the body by great firmness of mind (p. 193). They knew moreover that they were tested and strengthened by adversities, and that, although the condition of all in this world is common, as of those dwelling in the same house, yet it would come about that, separated from the heathens after this life, they would enjoy eternal felicity. They were therefore not disturbed by public calamities. For having laid aside their earthly birth and been reborn in the spirit, they lived not indeed for the world but for God, Whom they besought "continually and earnestly by day and by night" for the removal or mitigation of calamities, for the warding off of enemies, for the obtaining of rains, and indeed even for the peace and well-being of the heathens themselves.

The gentiles therefore could not flatter themselves on the ground that in public calamities their condition and that of the Christians was common, at least as regards the body. For the world was being oppressed not on account of the Christians, but on account of the crimes of those same gentiles and in vengeance upon them, as had been foretold by the sacred Prophets (p. 194).

Moreover, the wicked gentiles will be tormented with still crueller punishments after the day of the last judgement, which is very near at hand, and these were likewise foretold by the same Prophets. For just as of old those Israelites escaped safe out of Egypt who had sprinkled the thresholds of their houses with the blood of the lamb, so those alone will escape eternal torments who bear before them the sign of the blood of Christ.

Our author therefore again exhorts the heathens that

they may come to their senses, and, even if late, at length acknowledge God, in Whom, as the Prophets and Christ teach, is life. For Christ must be believed, Who never deceives, Who foretold all these things to come, Who will give the reward of eternal life, Who after the last judgement will order the faithless and unbelieving to be burned up in the living flames of eternal fire (p. 195). And those impious men will be seen tormented with such great torments, who had fed their cruel eyes on the dreadful, yet brief, spectacle of the tortures inflicted on the Christians. But then these very men, as the Prophet says, will marvel at the unhoped-for salvation of those others, and will repent too late of their errors and crimes.

The Christians, moreover, who had learned to hate no one and to return good for evil, repaid the heathen with goodwill in return for hatred, and in return for torments and punishments showed them the way of eternal salvation. But all, as long as anything remains of this world, can attain it, provided that, having taken up the true religion, they make satisfaction to God. For to one who remains in this world no repentance is late, but pardon is given to the one who confesses, and indulgence to the one who believes, which Christ imparts at the price of His own blood. Wherefore Cyprian again exhorts all to follow Him as leader, if it can be done, in such a way that after death they may enjoy eternal happiness with Him (p. 196).

Article II.

It is shown that Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage and martyr, is the true parent of this book; who he was, and whether he was the first martyr in Africa.

Concerning the author of this treatise there has never been, nor can there now be, any question. For all with one voice have always acknowledged, and still admit, that it was written by Thascius Caecilius Cyprian, bishop of Carthage. There is therefore no need for a thing certain, acknowledged, and approved by all with no one objecting, to be proved again by the testimonies of various writers of every age, both of manuscripts and of authors, worthy of all trust. Yet we cannot altogether pass over two men outstanding in their learning and authority, Lactantius and Jerome, of whom the first cites by name this treatise "to Demetrian", which he had without doubt read (Lactant. Inst. bk. 5, ch. 4, p. 471), while the second testifies that it was published "against Demetrian" (Jerome, Ep. 83, to Magnus, p. 655; Dissertation on Lactantius, ch. 3, art. 2). The words of both we have reported in our third dissertation on the Works of Lactantius. Is not this also one of those tractates which Cyprian had composed against the heathen, of which Pontius his deacon made this mention, but only a general one? "Through whom (Cyprian) the blaspheming Gentiles were to be overcome, the things which they heap upon us being thrown back on them" (Pontius, Life of Cyprian, p. 4). For although he does not call this tractate by its name and title, he could scarcely indeed have indicated it in clearer words, as will be evident from what has already been said and what is yet to be said.

We think, moreover, that no one, however little learned, is unaware who that most holy man was who glorified the Church in a truly wonderful manner not only by the holiness of his life and the shedding of his blood, but also by his writings. He was an African by origin, and, as seems more likely, born at Carthage, and had sucked in the impious superstitions of the heathen with his mother's milk. He was still following them when, as Jerome says (Jerome, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, § 67, p. 119), "he taught rhetoric with glory." But afterwards he embraced the Christian religion at the persuasion of the priest Caecilius, whose surname he therefore took. And as soon as he had taken it up, he was inflamed with so great a desire of attaining its perfection that while still a catechumen he resolved to keep continence, and gave away all his goods to the poor, so that, stripped of them, he might imitate the poor Christ more fully. Not long afterwards, on account of his outstanding virtues, he was made a priest, and then bishop of Carthage, although he begged to be excused from both burdens, so far as it could be done. With how great piety, prudence, charity, holiness and the other episcopal virtues he flourished, no one surely can be ignorant, unless he is an utter stranger to Ecclesiastical History. Indeed, "clearer than light," as Jerome says (the same, ibid.), "his works" breathe these admirable virtues of his. The course of so holy a life, moreover, he completed by a most unconquered confession of Christ, for which, beheaded, he merited to be crowned with martyrdom.

But his triumph was certainly the greater in that, "first in the province," says Pontius, he "dedicated the first-fruits" of martyrdom of Africa; and a little after: "he was the first in Africa to stain priestly crowns [with blood]" (Pontius, Life of St Cyprian, p. 10). But Cyprian himself seems to oppose this opinion, who, when Papinianus raised against him a certain scruple, resting only on ridiculous calumnies, so as not to communicate with him, answers thus: "Why have so many fellow bishops, my colleagues, not fallen into this scruple, who either were proscribed when they withdrew from the midst, or, being seized, were in prison and in chains, or who, banished into exile, set out by an illustrious journey to the Lord, or who, executed in certain places, received heavenly crowns from the glorification of the Lord (Cyprian, Letter 66, to Papinianus, p. 166 ff.)?" There, moreover, he mentions several bishops, his colleagues, who without doubt had ended their life by martyrdom in Africa. For why does he call them his colleagues, unless because they had really held the episcopal dignity in his province? Therefore certain more skilled critics, in order to reconcile him with Pontius, the master with the disciple, judge that the passages cited from this Pontius are to be understood not of the whole of Africa, but of the lesser Africa. But what if we say that he does not speak altogether accurately, and by the general name of Africa designates nothing other than Carthage, the head of all Africa? For a very few words later he continues thus: "For from the time when the order of the episcopate is reckoned at Carthage, no one of the good men and priests is recorded to have come to suffering ..... so that in the city itself, in

which he had lived in such a manner, and in which he had been the first to do many splendid things, he should also be the first to adorn the insignia of the heavenly priesthood with glorious blood (Pontius, p. 10).” The meaning of Pontius, therefore, seems to be that Cyprian was the first bishop of Carthage in Africa who obtained the palm of martyrdom by shedding his blood. Some, however, think that these words refer only to the persecution stirred up by Valerian and Gallienus, and that Cyprian was the first of all in Africa who, under these emperors, as Jerome says, “suffered (Jerome, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers § 67, p. 119).” Nor shall we much oppose this opinion, if it is established by sufficiently strong reasons.

Article III.

On the title of this book, and whether it was written against Demetrianus alone.

This book was written “to Demetrianus,” as Lactantius says, or “against Demetrianus,” as Jerome said (in the places cited above). For both titles are found prefixed in our unpublished manuscripts; and first, indeed, in the very ancient Colbert manuscript: “Here begins [the book] of the same (Cyprian) to Demetrianus;” in the Tarnian: “Here begins the book of Caecilius Cyprian against Demetrianus.” In the old editions, however: “Treatise of the blessed Caecilius Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, against Demetrianus,” and in by far the greater number of the rest simply “to Demetrianus.” But in whatever way this title was written, it is certain that this work is not a letter but a treatise, which Cyprian was compelled to bring out into public light against Demetrianus, who was striving with all the powers of his wit to defend the wicked errors of the gentiles.

Although the title of this book bears the name of Demetrianus alone, it is nevertheless clear that not he only but all the heathen as well are refuted in it. For just as he addresses him by name, so indeed he addresses them. For throughout the conclusion of this book, which is certainly not the smallest part of it, he speaks to the gentiles at large and exhorts them to come to their senses and, rejecting the wicked worship of the gods, to embrace the religion of the Christians. And what of the fact that under the name of Demetrianus himself he seems to rebuke all the heathen no less than him in these words: “Either you are puffed up with pride, or drunk with wine, or envious with spite, or unchaste with lust, or violent with cruelty?” (Cyprian, p. 189.) Was Demetrianus, then, guilty of all these crimes? But surely, since Cyprian immediately added: “And you wonder that the wrath of God grows towards the punishment of the human race, when that which is to be punished grows daily (ibid.),” he signifies not obscurely that the wrath of God was stirred up not on account of the crimes of Demetrianus alone but of all the gentiles, and that the world was shaken by public calamities. To this is added the fact that a little later he addresses all the gentiles thus: “See what this very thing is, about which our discourse with you chiefly is: that you have harassed us, who are innocent; that, to the insult of God, you attack and oppress the servants of God. It is little that by the variety of raging vices, that by iniquity

of deadly crimes, that by the gain of bloody plunderings your life is stained, that true religion is overthrown by false superstitions, that God is neither sought nor feared at all. Moreover you still harass with unjust persecutions the servants of God, dedicated to His majesty and name (ibid. p. 190)." In the first Royal codex and in the Tarnian, "flagitatis" (you importune). So too in the older Colbertine codex, except that "flagellatis" (you scourge) is written by a second hand, but in the same script. This reading is shown in the third Royal codex, and in the second "fatigatis" (you weary).

This book, then, was not published by Cyprian against Demetrianus alone, but also against all the heathen, and so that it might come into the hands of all. Further, there is no need of a longer discourse to prove this, since he himself declares it in these very eloquent words: "I answer you, Demetrianus, and equally the others whom you have perhaps stirred up." Yet it is no less certain that it was directed to him in the first place, since Cyprian, provoked again and again by his shameless calumnies, of which we must treat a little later, was at last compelled to set his hand to this writing.

Article IV.

Who was Demetrianus, to whom this book was directed: a proconsul, or a judge of lower rank?

Who Demetrianus was cannot be learned better from anywhere else than from this very book with which we are dealing. From it, however, it is most plainly gathered that he was a pagan who had very often called upon Cyprian, then bishop of Carthage. Yet so easy an access to his house would not have lain open to this Demetrianus had he not been joined to Cyprian, perhaps while the latter was still a heathen, by some old acquaintance. But with as great piety as the one gave his name to the Christian religion, with so great impiety and obstinacy was the other enslaved to the abominable worship of false gods. He had indeed come to Cyprian quite often, but never for the sake of searching out the truth or of learning anything, but with the "sole," as Cyprian says, "zeal (Cyprian, p. 185)" of contradicting, that is, so as to champion with truly astonishing impudence merely the impious worship of false gods and the absurd superstitions of his fellow pagans. But because he strove to defend his errors only with "clamorous" "voices", with an utterly untamed obstinacy, and with no reasoning of even the least weight, Cyprian spurned him, barking against the true God with sacrilegious mouth and clamouring with impious words, as ignorant, blind, deaf, brutish, unteachable, shameless, insane, impious, raving and rabid. For so many epithets, and just as many, are those with which he adorns him.

At that time, then, that furious man was living at Carthage, as Cyprian was, and all consider, and not without reason, that it can be inferred from this very treatise that he had been raised there to some judicial dignity. But what that dignity was, there is indeed no small disagreement among them. For very many have supposed that he

was proconsul of Africa, whose authority in this province was supreme. Others, however, think that he was a judge of lower rank, and perhaps some assessor of the proconsul himself. For it does not seem likely to them that Demetrian, had he been proconsul of all Africa, would have approached Cyprian with such ease and so frequently as to thrust his false religion upon an unwilling man after the manner of wranglers, merely with "clamorous voices". Moreover, why would Cyprian, who judged that persecutors of Christians were to be avoided, have so readily entrusted himself to the good faith of a raging proconsul, and so frequently received him into his own house? Why did he hold in such contempt the man whom he ought to have feared more than the rest, that in so many conversations held at his own house he did not deign to answer by even a single word the man disputing with such ardour, and not about some very slight matter, but about religion? Would not the proconsul, blazing up with anger and innate fury on account of so great contempt, have at once exacted punishment from him, as he was able? Why did a furious man, driven to madness, not immediately cast into chains, or send into exile, or condemn to death Cyprian, by whom he was thus spurned? By what reasoning, finally, would that man, inflamed with so ardent and blind a zeal for his religion, have spared Cyprian alone, who sets out his extreme cruelty towards the Christians in these words: "The innocent, the just, those dear to God, you deprive of home, you strip of patrimony, you weigh down with chains, you shut up in prison, you punish with beasts, the sword, fire. Nor are you content at least with a shortening of our pains and with the simple and swift brevity of punishments; you apply long tortures to bodies to be mangled, you multiply numerous punishments for innards to be torn, nor can your ferocity and savagery be content with customary tortures: ingenious cruelty devises new punishments (Cyprian, p. 190)." Who then will persuade himself that a proconsul of as great power as inhumanity spared Cyprian, bishop and standard-bearer of the Christians, upon whom he could daily and easily have laid hands? Would he not by his slaughter have satisfied both himself and all the other heathens, their implacable enemies?

And why would he not have tried, by killing Cyprian, to win the favour of those people, he who indeed, because of the hatred with which he burned against the Christians, left no stone unturned to rouse the anger of all against them and to draw them over to his side? For Cyprian openly reproached him with this, and in these words: "I answer you, Demetrian, and equally the others whom you have perhaps stirred up, sowing hatreds against us with your slanderous words; you have made many by the sprouting of your root and origin (ibid., p. 186)." Was this too, I ask you, the duty of a proconsul of Africa, to bring others, if it could be done, to the worship of false gods, by stirring up hatred against the Christians with shameless calumnies? Could he not rather have attained that more easily and readily by tormenting and killing them with the most atrocious punishments? Would Cyprian, finally, have assailed a proconsul in a public writing with such harsh and rough words?

Others, however, press the point that by his words to this Demetrian cited a little before it is not obscurely indicated that he truly

was the proconsul of Africa. For who could have tortured and killed the Christians with so many and so great torments, both ordinary and extraordinary, unless he had been endowed with the dignity of proconsul? Then again, Cyprian acknowledges him to be a judge, addressing him in this manner: "You who judge others, be at some time the judge of yourself (ibid., p. 189)." But if he was a judge, he must without doubt have been proconsul. For afterwards he still addresses him thus: "Cease to harm the servants of God and of Christ with your persecutions, whom, when harmed, divine vengeance defends (ibid., p. 192)." He was therefore persecuting the Christians with the utmost inhumanity, and it lay in his power to calm this persecution. And whose was this power, if not the proconsul's?

Others, however, grant that from these words it can be concluded that Demetrianus was some judge of Carthage, and perhaps an assessor of the proconsul, but not on that account the proconsul, as they think has been sufficiently proved by the arguments above. For these men, although judges of a lower bench, with no less cruelty than the proconsuls ordered Christians to be tortured and put to death. But although the matter stood thus, others will argue, Cyprian ought to have feared these men no less than the proconsul. For it lay in their power to lay hands on him, to torture and slaughter him, or at least to drag him before the tribunal of the proconsul. But because the dignity and power of the latter was far greater, it seems hardly probable that he could have been treated by Cyprian with such contempt and with such harsh words. But of whatever rank of judge he was, it is quite certain that he was so inflamed with an utterly untamed ardour for his false gods that, with clamorous voice alone and without ever bringing forward any argument of the least weight, he quite often disputed against the Christians, in order to lead them to the wicked worship of these gods, or to increase the fury of the gentiles against those who refused.

Article V.

For what reasons Cyprian was compelled to write and publish this book.

Although Cyprian had at first judged that no answer should be made to Demetrianus, who was barking against the Christian religion and clamouring against it only with impious words, he was nevertheless afterwards compelled to break his silence. For at that time ruinous wars were shaking the Roman empire, and a most dreadful famine and a horrible plague were wretchedly laying waste and depopulating cities, villages and individual houses. Taking this occasion, Demetrianus, having summoned the associates of his impiety and obstinacy, began to cry out openly that very many were complaining that there was no other cause of such great calamities than the obstinacy and impiety of the Christians, who were unwilling to worship the false gods. Wherefore Cyprian, lest the gentiles, in their usual manner, should attribute the fact that he had kept silent so long to lack of confidence and inability to reply, undertook in this book to repel their vain and futile calumnies: "It is not fitting," he says, "to keep silent any longer, lest the fact that we keep silent should begin to seem a matter no longer of modesty but of lack of confidence; and while the accusations

[which are] false we disdain to refute, we may seem to acknowledge the crime (Cyprian, p. 186).

It ought therefore to be a wonder to no one that he once again washes away such absurd accusations, which, as we have said, had quite often been repelled by other defenders of our religion. For the heathen exploited these bitter misfortunes both more frequently and more boldly, and from them deceived the ignorant worshippers of the gods all the more easily, the greater the misfortunes were and the greater the harm they brought upon the whole world (Dissertation on Arnobius, ch. 4, art. 1 ff.; on Tertullian, ch. 1 ff.). But how fierce and ruinous were the wars with which the Roman Empire was then ablaze, you may gather from this: Decius, after his revolt from the emperor Philip and the civil war, had scarcely begun the third year of his reign when, defeated by the Goths in a great battle, as we shall relate elsewhere, he was killed in pitiable fashion together with his three sons, Decius, Etruscus and Trajan. Gallus, his successor, in the eighteenth month of his reign, as he was about to fight against Aemilianus, who had seized the empire, is slain by the soldiers together with his colleague (Dissertation on Caecilius, book On the Deaths of the Persecutors, ch. 7, art. 1). Nor did Aemilianus long enjoy the fruit of his crime: after three months he ended his life by a similar death. Zosimus and other writers of Roman history committed more about these wars to writing (Zosimus, Hist. bk 1, p. 643 ff.; Orosius, Hist. bk 7, ch. 20 ff.; Eutropius, Breviarium bk 9, p. 123).

Eutropius, however, relates that nothing memorable was done by these emperors, and that their reign was known to men from nothing else than "pestilence and various diseases." This indeed we read confirmed by Orosius as well (Orosius, loc. cit., ch. 21). Concerning both of those public calamities, Zosimus, cited by us a little earlier, recorded the following: "No less than the war that burst forth from every side, the plague too, coming upon cities and villages, destroyed whatever of the human race had been left, never before in times past having wrought so great a destruction of men" (Zosimus, loc. cit., p. 644): "No less than the war, which had emerged as though gushing forth from every side, a pestilential plague also, following in towns and villages, consumed whatever was left of the human race, and certainly never in earlier ages had it caused so great a slaughter of men."

How true these things are, and how widely that deadly pestilence spread, we have witnesses surely above all doubt: Dionysius of Alexandria, Pontius the deacon of our Cyprian, and Cyprian himself. For the first of these, in the fragments of his letters collected by Eusebius, is reported to have related the following about the pestilence that occurred while Gallienus was reigning, immediately after Gallus (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History bk 7, ch. 22, p. 263 ff.). "A plague," he says, "the most fearful and most calamitous of all, raged in a manner hitherto unheard of, chiefly against the gentiles. For everything was full of lamentations, all were mourning, and the whole city resounded on account of the multitude of the dead and of men dying daily. There was clearly no house in which there was not at least one funeral."

Pontius, an eyewitness, describes this plague and its terrible effects in his Life of the same Cyprian thus: « Afterwards there broke out a dreadful pestilence and an excessive, hateful devastation, which, snatching away countless people day by day, each from his own abode, with a sudden onset, invaded house after house of the trembling populace in succession. All shuddered, fled, avoided the contagion, impiously exposed their own, as if, along with the one about to die of the plague, one could also shut out death itself. Meanwhile there lay throughout the whole city no longer bodies but the corpses of very many (Pontius, Life of Cyprian, p. 5). »

Cyprian himself, in that book which he wrote to console the Christians in this calamity, depicted its horrifying force and the unbearable pains of the sick in these words: « That now the bowels, loosened into a flux, drain the strength of the body; that a fire conceived in the marrow burns up into wounds of the throat; that the intestines are shaken with continual vomiting; that the eyes burn with the force of the blood; that the feet of some, or other parts of the limbs, are cut off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction; that, through the losses and injuries of the body, as the weakness breaks forth, either the gait is enfeebled, or the hearing is blocked, or the sight is blinded: this serves as a proof of faith (Cyprian, On Mortality, p. 162). » Not without reason, then, and rightly, do the author of the Eusebian Chronicle (Chronicle of Eusebius, at the year of Christ 253) and Jordanes (Jordanes, On the Affairs of the Goths, ch. 19) refer us to this book of Cyprian, and to the cited letter of Dionysius of Alexandria, so that we may learn how dreadful and horrifying that plague was. And in this book of Cyprian, about which we are disputing, he says of it and of the other calamities that had then arisen: « Wars continue more frequently, barrenness and famine heap up anxiety, health is broken by raging diseases, the human race is laid waste by the ravages of pestilence (ibid., To Demetrian, p. 187). » A little earlier he had said: « There fails in the fields (the older Colbertine manuscript codex [has] (in the ploughlands)) the farmer, at sea the sailor, the soldier in the camps (ibid., p. 186). »

When, therefore, the world was being laid waste by such great disasters and by so great a slaughter of nearly all men, Demetrian and the others whom he had joined to himself cried out loudly and with full cheeks that the world was afflicted by that hitherto unheard-of plague and by the other calamities of famine and war, and was almost wholly overwhelmed, for this reason: because the Christians refused to worship their false gods. Cyprian, therefore, so as at last to stop the foul mouth of Demetrian and the other heathens, and to recall them, if it could be done, to a saner mind, judged it necessary to refute their complaints, however absurd, in this public book with which we are dealing.

Chapter II.

On the subject of this book, its date, the manuscript codices, the editions, and the notes of certain [scholars].

Article One.

On the subject of this work, and whether Cyprian

did not fully discharge the office he had undertaken as defender of the Christian religion, as Lactantius contends.

What we said just now about the occasion and necessity of writing this book makes plain to all what its subject is. For against the false and public accusations of Demetrianus and of the other heathens, Cyprian undertook in it to demonstrate that it is by no means the Christians, who worship the true and only God and lead a life that is pious, chaste and free of crimes, but the gentiles themselves, worshippers of false gods and guilty of all the gravest crimes, who are in truth the cause of the public disasters. He proves this by various weighty arguments, and by many oracles of our sacred Prophets, who, inspired by the divine Spirit, had not only foretold those disasters, but also that God Almighty, the most just avenger of crimes, would one day exact the due penalties from those wicked and impious men.

But Lactantius, as we noted in its place (Dissertation on Lactantius, ch. 3, art. 2; Lactantius, Divine Institutes, book 5, ch. 1, p. 459, and ch. 5, p. 471), not only freely but quite sharply reproaches Cyprian on the ground that he refutes and attacks Demetrianus only with testimonies of sacred Scripture, which that gentile man "considered vain, feigned and invented." Therefore he asserts without hesitation that in "that," as he puts it, "discourse" he fulfilled the office he had undertaken as defender of the Christian religion neither fully nor properly. He thinks, then, that he can be excused in no other way than that, "carried away by his outstanding learning in the divine Scriptures, he was content with those alone on which faith rests."

But although Demetrianus was utterly devoted to the abominable superstitions of the gentiles and rejected the authority of our sacred Scripture, yet our Cyprian not rashly employs its true testimonies to repel his unjust accusations. For at the beginning of this book he cites certain precepts from the books of Proverbs and of Matthew, by which one is forbidden to answer a madman barking foolishly. But what, I ask, prevents these things, which are plainly in accord with right reason and observed by all men of sound mind, from being put forward against any gentile, however obstinate? He also adduced far more other testimonies, by which those public disasters of which the heathens complained had been foretold by our sacred Prophets, as we have said. But since he clearly demonstrates that these predictions obtained their fulfilment, did he not surely draw from them no weak argument against the heathens?

Moreover, Demetrianus had quite often met with Cyprian, as he himself admits and as we have already noted, in order to dispute with him about his own religion and the Christian one. But although he spurned him with prudent silence, as a most inept trifler, and as one crying out as obstinately as falsely that the Christians were the authors of all the public calamities, he did not keep silent

always, however. For «considering these things,» he says, «I have often kept silent (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 185).» You hear him say "often", but not "always kept silent". If, then, he sometimes answered him, could he not at that time have shown how great is the authority of our Old Testament, which we have received from the Jews, though they are our most bitter enemies, as having always been most carefully guarded?

But why, you will say, did he not prove it in the public writing by which he wished to bring not only Demetrianus but other gentiles also «to the good,» as he himself says, «with the truth compelling them»? But what need, I ask you, was there then of this proof, if he had demonstrated it in private conversations with Demetrianus and in another book published earlier? And indeed very many think, as we shall say below, that this was done by him in the book On the Vanity of Idols.

What, moreover, of the fact that in this book to Demetrianus he proves and asserts the chief teachings of the Christian religion concerning the one true God and Christ the Lord by certain arguments drawn from reason alone, by which gentiles not wholly blinded could very easily be convinced? For he plainly shows both by the public confession of the demons, whom the Christians, adjuring them by the name alone of their master Christ, cast out of the possessed bodies of the gentiles themselves (ibid., p. 192). And nothing, as we have seen elsewhere more than once, could be brought forward more certain or clearer than this proof (Dissertation on Minucius, ch. 2, art. 3; and on Lactantius, ch. 9, art. 2; and on Tertullian, ch. 10, art. 7).

Finally, he refutes Demetrianus, who prattled that the Christians were the cause of the public calamities, on this ground too: that these are inflicted as punishment of wicked men. And in that book he made it most evident to anyone that the morals of the gentiles were as corrupt as those of the Christians were chaste and holy. Rightly, therefore, he concludes from this that these calamities are stirred up in the world not, indeed, by these Christians but by the gentiles themselves, calamities by which God chastises wicked men as they deserve, but tests the virtue of the good. And these three heads, and no more, he had set himself to treat in this book. Having undertaken, therefore, the task of vindicating the Christian religion from the calumnies brought against it by Demetrianus and other gentiles, he duly discharged it. Of this censure of Lactantius, moreover, by which he harassed not only Cyprian but also Tertullian and Minucius Felix, we have treated more fully in our earlier dissertations (Dissertation on Tertullian, ch. 2, art. 4; and on Minucius, ch. 2, art. 2).

For the rest, Lactantius did not defraud Cyprian of the praise he deserved, whose genius and eloquence he proclaims in these words: «One stood out as pre-eminent and illustrious, Cyprian, since he had both won great glory for himself from the profession of the art of oratory, and wrote a great many things in his own kind; for he was of a ready, copious, pleasing genius, and, what is the greatest virtue of speech, a clear one; so that you could not discern whether he was more ornate in expressing, or more ready in explaining, or more powerful

in persuading (Lactantius, Institutes book 5, chapter 1, page 459). »

It would be very easy to heap up here very many other praises of him, which writers of every age, and of no doubtful credit, have bestowed on the most holy martyr. But since they have been placed at the front of nearly all the editions of his works, we have not judged that what has already been done should be done again.

Article II.

On the date of this book.

We think, indeed, that there is no one who, having heard what we related a little earlier about the horrible affliction of the plague in Africa, would not readily admit that this book was composed by Cyprian when that plague was raging more cruelly against men. Now it broke out in the year of Christ 250, with Decius already reigning. It is said to have lasted for at least ten years, yet in such a way that at times it seemed to diminish and slacken. Therefore it cannot be inferred with certainty from this at what time precisely this book came out into public light, unless we compare its greater violence with other things done and declared by the same Cyprian. It is agreed, moreover, that it was published by him after he had very often heard Demetrianus at his house, complaining about the plague and other public calamities. He was therefore staying at Carthage, where he admitted Demetrianus into his house, and he was less in fear of the fury and persecution of the tyrants against the Christians. But when Decius, having been made emperor towards the end of the year 249, had stirred up a new [persecution] against them, Cyprian withdrew from Carthage, and returned there in the following year about the month of April, when that same persecution is said to have been calmed. And indeed the councils which he held there prove clearly enough this first return of his. There he remained until the year 258, in which he again avoided another persecution, stirred up by the emperor Valerian, and a little afterwards ended his life by an illustrious martyrdom. He therefore wrote this book between the year 252 and 258. Now we have seen that, while Gallus was reigning, the force of plague and diseases was so great that writers testify that his reign is known only from this, as we have said. But Gallus ruled the Romans after the death of the emperor Decius from the end of the year 251 up to 253. It is therefore not without reason that this book to Demetrianus seems to have been written by Cyprian about this time.

But that it was not written, or at least not published, as long as Gallus reigned can be inferred from the fact that our author himself asserts that God, the most just avenger of crimes, has never let the cruelty of the tyrants against the Christians go unpunished. "For," he says, "to pass over in silence the ancient records, and to recount with no proclamation of the voice the vengeances often repeated on behalf of the worshippers of God, the proof of a recent event is enough, that so swiftly, and in such swiftness so greatly, the vindication followed lately, in the ruin of kings, the loss of wealth, the waste of soldiers, the diminishing of camps (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, page 192)." But some think that by these words is indicated the fatal [end] of Decius,

and of his sons, who, having been destroyed to the last man, their camp despoiled and their wealth plundered, had perished miserably. Nor indeed do we deny this, but we judge that something more is indicated. For when Cyprian was writing these things, the plague had never raged more fiercely, nor brought greater depopulation upon men. But we have shown that this happened in the reign of Gallus, the successor of the same Decius. He, moreover, after the eighteenth month of his reign, and Volusianus his son, whom he had made Caesar, were killed by their own soldiers. Aemilianus too, proclaimed emperor at that time, met a similar fate after three months. Valerian, furthermore, put in his place about the month of August of the year 253, at the beginning of his rule embraced the Christians with singular friendship and affection, until towards the end of the year 256, or at the beginning of the following year, he stirred up a new persecution against them. Cyprian, therefore, having found that time so opportune, may seem more probably to have published this book against Demetrianus and the other gentiles either in the month of September of the same year 253, or a little after. For then with better right than before the death of Gallus and Volusianus could he say that the injuries inflicted on the Christians against all law had been avenged by the supreme and most just God with the ruin of kings. If, however, anyone should still contend that these things are to be understood of the death of Decius alone, and should prove it with stronger arguments, we shall yield at once and subscribe to his opinion.

Article III.

On the manuscript codices of this book.

We have had several manuscript codices of this book from the Royal and the Colbertine library, written out at various times and by various copyists, which, in examining this same book, we collated with the printed editions. The first were supplied to us, at the order of the most illustrious abbot Le Tellier de Louvois, by the second keeper of the same Royal library, Jean Boivin, most celebrated for his learning not only in Greek but in Latin as well. Others were communicated to us by the distinguished man Dom Charles Duchesne, through the customary and never sufficiently praised favour of the most illustrious abbot Colbert. One, moreover, was furnished to us by the Sieur de Targny, doctor of the Sorbonne, and another by the library of our own monastery of Saint-Germain.

Very many others besides are extant in other libraries, of which twenty-one, gathered from all sides, Étienne Baluze, most well known to all both for his writings and his learning, examined for the preparation of the edition of all the Works of Cyprian which he undertook long ago, and he has deigned to communicate their catalogue to us. In describing these and the others we shall follow the order of age in which each of them seems, to the more expert and to Baluze himself, to have been written.

First of all is to be named the Séguier manuscript, which formerly belonged to the library of the most illustrious Chancellor of France, Séguier, but now to the most illustrious du Cambout de Coislin, bishop of the church of Metz, Duke and Peer of France, and prince of the Empire, which

codex indeed is asserted to have been written a thousand years ago.

Five others are said to have been written eight hundred years ago. The first of them is the Pithou codex, the second the Colbert codex, the third is in our monastery of Saint Aubin of Angers, the fourth was formerly in the abbey of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés and is now in the library of the most distinguished Étienne Baluze, and the fifth is held in the library of Saint Martin of Tours.

Three others show an age of 700 or 600 years: the first is the Royal codex, the second a Baluze codex, and the third the codex of Tarnis. Two are 500 years old: one belongs to Saint Pierre le Moustier, and the other to Blessed Mary de Laetitia. Five are 400 years old: the first belongs to Saint Remi of Reims, the second to the Sorbonne, the third and fourth to Saint Victor of Paris, the fifth to the most distinguished Monsieur Bolrier, President of the parlement of Dijon, and the sixth is a Baluze codex. Finally, five are 300 or 250 years old: two belong to our Most Christian King, the third to Saint Denis of Reims, the fourth is the Grenoble codex, and the fifth belongs to the most distinguished Monsieur de la Moignon, President à mortier of the parlement of Paris.

Article IV.

On the editions of this book.

Cyprian's fame was great because of the holiness of his life and his doctrine, and the editions of his Works were multiplied to the same degree. To most people the oldest appears to be the one printed without any indication of date, place or printer, and, as some think, immediately after the art of printing was invented. Another was published at Speyer in the year 1471, but it was marred by errors throughout. After that, another came out at Venice in the year 1483 from the press of Lucas Venetus. After this, at Paris in the year 1512, another was put together by the labour of the printer Rembolt and others, enlarged with certain works of Cyprian, some genuine and some spurious. This edition was revised by Erasmus, who prefixed a preface to it along with some annotations, and it was issued to the public from the press of Froben in the years 1520, 1525 and 1528.

After that, the same Works of Cyprian were printed in the year 1541 by Herwagen, in the same year at Antwerp by Johannes Crinitus, and at Paris by Langelier. After this they were published at Basel in the year 1544 at the Quentel press through the efforts of Henricus Gavius, by the Froben already mentioned in the year 1549, and again by Herwagen in the year 1550.

Just as the Antwerp edition mentioned above was published "in octavo", as they like to say, so too were the Lyon edition in the years 1537, 1549 and 1556, the Venetian edition in the year 1547, and the Froben edition of 1603. But most people judge that these and the earlier editions are neither complete nor accurate.

Afterwards these works of Saint Cyprian were corrected against the manuscript codices through the care and labour of Guillaume Morel, printed in an elegant type, and brought out into public light at Rome in the year 1563. In the following year they were reprinted at Paris, enlarged and more correct. In the same year 1564, the Cyprianic Treatises alone

were published after the Works of Leo the Great at Paris, at the house of Claude Fremy.

Pamelius, however, prepared a new edition of all the Works of Cyprian, corrected from ancient manuscripts and printed copies, which was first committed to print at Antwerp in the year 1568, and afterwards in the same place in the year 1589, and at Paris in 1574. Then in the year 1593 Simon Goulart, a follower of the Calvinist sect, prepared a new edition of the Works of Cyprian, printed by Jean le Preux, which was further published at Paris in the years 1552, 1603 and 1614. But earlier, namely in the year 1616, it came out at Paris from the press of Michel Chapelet, and they attest that it was corrected with the help of the editions of Paulus Manutius and Guillaume Morel, and of several manuscripts.

Next, with fresh labours, Rigault made another [edition] public (Rigault, Observations, p. 170), which he asserts he revised with the help of various readings collected by Pope Marcellus II and Bishop Antonio Agustín from the best, as he says, Veronese and Beneventan copies. He wished us, moreover, to be advised that these variant readings were taken by him from a volume of Cyprian in which Charles de Montchal, archbishop of Toulouse, had copied them out in his own hand; but he presents only nine for this book, taken from that Veronese [copy]. This edition was first given for public use at Paris in the year 1646, and again in the year 1666 with certain observations of Pamelius, from the press of the widow of Mathurin Dupuis.

The latest edition of the Cyprianic Works, published at Oxford in the year 1682, we owe to the illustrious John Fell, bishop of Oxford, who revised and elucidated it against eighteen English manuscripts, written by various hands, and various readings sent to him from England and France, with great labour, deserving praise from all. Nor do we judge worthy of lesser praise the good faith of this most learned writer, who openly professed that he stood far removed from those who, not without notable harm to religion, spend their effort in pointing out the blemishes of the ancient Fathers. But whether he has everywhere and always kept his promises, the most distinguished Étienne Baluze will inform us, who, having gathered from every quarter manuscripts of the Cyprianic writings, has now for a long time been planning a new edition of them. And the more confident we are that it will be more accurate than the rest, the more surely do we await his judgement on all the other editions published hitherto.

Article V.

On the various annotations on this book.

Various are the notes and observations of learned men on this book which we are discussing. Erasmus, however, left only two on it; and in the first he wonders that someone preferred to call this a treatise rather than a letter. There he added that Cyprian seems to have held that this world is made worse by old age. But what we have noted concerning the title of this writing shows sufficiently by what right, as a treatise,

it is inscribed by name. Moreover, our author was not alone, as we shall see below, in thinking that the world grows old and becomes worse with age, or rather that it, no differently from a man, is troubled by the infirmities of old age.

Guillaume Morel published on this book a good many observations, though very brief ones, in which he did nothing else than show how the text of Cyprian is to be corrected from ancient codices or from the books of the sacred Bible. He remarked only one thing, namely that Cyprian speaks of the Exorcists at the point where he argued against the heathen about the demons which Christians cast out of the bodies of the possessed. But to us, as is to be said below, he seems to speak not of the Exorcists alone, but of all Christians without exception.

Pamelius also composed fifty-nine notes on this book; but nearly all of them concern the corruption of its text, while in the other, fewer ones he strives either to elucidate or to confirm the sayings of Cyprian by the authority of other ancient Writers. But because he tried to illustrate the teachings of the Catholic Church by them, not all of them pleased Goulart. He therefore attempted to bend them to the tenets of his own Calvinist sect. Besides, he had all those very observations of Pamelius on this book reprinted, and to them he added a few, distinguished by this mark §. In almost all of these he indicates certain variant readings of a single manuscript codex, communicated to him by Bovaeus. For he added only five to them, the first of which reminds us that the old age of the world consists chiefly in the corruption of morals. The second observes that the long life of the men of old is confirmed by the history of the universal flood. Thirdly, he next remarks that the ancient prayers of Christians were directed to God through Christ without the invocation of the saints. But he ought to have shown whether Cyprian anywhere at least denied it. Fourthly, he admits that the ancient Christians used the outward sign of the cross of Christ, but without superstition and without any lessening of the doctrine of the merit of Christ. It is good indeed that he approves the use of this venerable sign. But who ever approved a superstitious abuse of it, or allowed the doctrine of the merit of Christ to be weakened with impunity? Finally, by various testimonies of the ancient Fathers of the Church he proves that no place for repentance is given after this life. But there he cites as genuine a spurious treatise of Justin Martyr.

Afterwards Rigault put together a few notes on this book, which in his edition of the year 1664 are not distinguished from the others on the Lord's Prayer. For they are no more than nineteen. But nine of them, as we have said, present readings of the Verona codex; in the others, which, with one exception, are very brief, he tries to explain or to confirm certain words of Cyprian.

In the Oxford edition there are two kinds of notes, arranged in a fairly convenient order. In the former, printed in smaller type, are set out variant [readings], indeed of manuscript codices, but by no means of the ancient

editions. Why these were omitted, however, we have not ascertained. The notes of the second kind serve to explain and establish the text of Cyprian. In these, moreover, that learned man had regard for a brevity that is without doubt to be praised. Longer than the rest are the first two, of which one refutes the opinion of those who suppose that Demetrianus was proconsul of Africa. The other replies to Lactantius, who, as we said above, reproaches Cyprian on the ground that he fought with the authority of sacred Scripture against a heathen man who rejected and spurned it plainly and entirely. We cannot, moreover, conceal that some observations of this certainly erudite editor are less to be approved, and above all the penultimate one, in which he contends that purgatorial fires were rejected by Cyprian, of which he had nothing at all in mind. But of these we must treat below in their proper place.

Chapter III.

New observations on this book.

First article.

On the authority of sacred Scripture, and certain passages of it.

With a willing mind we shall certainly admit that what Lactantius asserted is true, that Cyprian was carried away by an exceptional learning in the divine Letters (Lactantius, Institutes book 5, ch. 4, p. 471). For how could he not have been carried away by the teaching of those to which he attributed the authority of divine teaching and of the divine name (Cyprian, book To Demetrianus, p. 185)? In the old editions, however, and in several manuscript copies these two words "and of the name" are absent (ibid. pp. 187 and 188); but they are read in five others, and they do not seem to have been added there rashly. And he proclaims so emphatically the supreme authority of our sacred Scriptures (ibid. pp. 187, 188, 190, 192, 193, 194 and 195) because he was wholly persuaded that God Himself and the Holy Spirit had spoken in them, and that they had been composed by the Prophets and writers who were filled with the same Holy Spirit. This opinion of Cyprian was indeed always constant, and in this treatise and in nearly all his writings, and especially in the three books against the Jews, he lays it down and follows it as certain and in no way doubtful. There is therefore no need for it to be proved by us at greater length.

But it will perhaps be of some value to have observed that certain words of Ezekiel are cited in a different way in this [book] To Demetrianus than in his second book against the Jews. For he puts them before the same Demetrianus (ibid. p. 194) and the other gentiles thus: "Go, and strike, and do not spare with your eyes. Do not pity the elder, or the young man, or the virgin; and kill the little ones and the women, that they may be utterly wiped out. But whoever has the sign written upon him, do not touch. And what this sign is, and on what part of the body it is placed, God makes plain in another place, saying: Pass through the midst of Jerusalem, and you shall mark a sign upon the foreheads of the men who groan and mourn because of the iniquities,

which are done in the midst of them (Ezek. 9:4)." But in the second book against the Jews: "Pass through the midst of Jerusalem, and you shall mark a sign upon the foreheads of the men who groan and grieve over the iniquities which are done in the midst of them. "Likewise in the same place: Go and strike, and do not spare with your eyes..... But everyone upon whom the sign is written, do not touch (the same, Against the Jews book 2, § 22, p. 47)." Now in this second place he follows the order of the sacred Bible, which you see inverted in the former. But no one will ever deny that this was permitted to Cyprian, who wished in this way to connect the course of his discourse with a more fitting transition. To some, therefore, it will perhaps seem more surprising why in this latter place he said, "Likewise in the same place," but in the former: "He makes it plain in another place." For these things are written in the same [place]. Did, then, drowsy copyists err in transcribing the text of our author, who ought to have written "in that place" and not "in another place"? Or did he indeed have in view some other place, which we scarcely believe?

For the rest, there, as elsewhere (the same, To Demetrianus, p. 94), he follows the translation of the Seventy-two, and also where he quoted these words: "Seek God, and your soul shall live (Ps. 68:33)"; which indeed are taken not from the prophet Amos, cited in the Oxford edition, but from Psalm 69, according to the same translation of the Elders.

Greater surprise, perhaps, will be stirred in some by certain words of the New Testament cited by him against a heathen man: but these are very few, and are Christ's own. And he gives us two reasons why he brought them forward. First, because Christ never deceived anyone. Second, because He foretold many things just as they in fact came to pass. Therefore, having used this precaution, he addresses the heathen thus: "Believe Him Who does not deceive at all; believe Him Who foretold that all these things would come (Cyprian, ibid., p. 195)." With better right, however, he presses the testimonies of the Old Testament against those who could not be unaware that the Christians had received them from their most hostile enemies the Jews, by whom it had been preserved whole and sound (Dissertation above, ch. 5, art. 3 ff.).

Article II.

How Cyprian demonstrates that God exists from the upright stature of the human body, from the creation of the sun and of other things, and from the public confession of demons cast out by Christians from possessed bodies.

Although Cyprian in this book to Demetrianus takes it as certain, and as already proved by himself elsewhere, that there is only one God, nevertheless by certain arguments, and those not of the least weight, he demonstrates it as clearly as briefly. The first is that by which he contends thus against the heathen man: "God made you upright..... your stature is lofty, and your face is raised upwards towards the heavens and towards God (the better manuscripts have 'its own' in place of 'upwards'). Look there, raise your eyes there, and seek God in the things above..... set your mind in accord with the stature of your face and body. That you may be able to know God, first know yourself. (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 192).

That God therefore truly exists, and is one, he clearly concludes from this: that if man knows himself and his own soul, if he attends to his own lofty posture, if he seriously considers his face raised towards the heavens, then he will be compelled to confess that he was made by God, and that the heavens and all created things were made by Him. We, for our part, have examined and explained this argument in our dissertation on the books of Lactantius. Moreover, the sun itself, alone, most evidently makes plain to all that its most brilliant (Dissert. on Lactantius, ch. 7, art. 3, and ch. 11, art. 2). as the same Lactantius says, and as we have noted elsewhere, light serves as a proof of a divine and single majesty (ibid. ch. 12, art. 1), that is, that there exists a true and single God, by Whom it was created. Each of them chose the example of the sun and of the sky above all other creatures, because to all men the creation of the sun itself and of the sky demonstrates the supreme majesty and power of Almighty God.

Rightly therefore does Cyprian conclude from this that idols must be abandoned, that is, the false gods of the gentiles which human error had invented, and that the one true God must be acknowledged and worshipped, Who can come to the aid of those who implore His help as easily as the false gods are invoked by the prayers of men in vain.

Then he proves that God exists by another, truly most invincible argument, which he draws from the public confession of the demons, whom the heathen believed to be gods. For these, when adjured by Christians, were not only cast out of the bodies of the possessed by their words, as by spiritual scourges and torments, but were also compelled to confess openly that they were not gods, that they mocked men with their tricks and deceits, and that He alone Whom those same Christians worshipped was God. It is worth noticing, moreover, with what confidence he presses this argument against the heathen. For he addresses Demetrian and all the other heathen in these words: "O if you were willing (our manuscript codices read: if you would) to hear and see when they are adjured by us, and tortured with spiritual scourges, and cast out of possessed bodies by the torments of words, when, wailing and groaning with a human voice, and feeling scourges and blows by divine power, they confess the judgement to come. (Cyprian, To Demetrian, p. 191.)" He presses still more sharply, and challenges them thus to make trial of so great a power and of that public confession of the demons: "Come and know that what we have said is true (the same, book On the Vanity of Idols, p. 14)." Nor did he say this once only, but he repeats it in two other books (book To Donatus, p. 4). Now we have observed (Dissertation above, ch. 10, art. 6 and 79) that the same gentiles were challenged no less boldly by Tertullian, and that this cannot be called into doubt by any man at all, if he be of sound mind.

It is therefore more certain than certain that at that time demons were expelled by Christians from the bodies of the possessed. But if that is wonderful, more wonderful indeed is the manner in which they were put to flight. Not by a human voice, indeed, but by divine power were they compelled to go out of bodies possessed at any time, wailing, says our author, and groaning, and

by the words of the Christians who adjured them, beaten and tortured no differently than by spiritual whips, blows and torments. For this reason he wrote to Donatus that a power had been given to Christians by which they could "compel" these unclean and wandering spirits "to confession with threatening rebukes, drive them with hard blows to withdraw; stretch them out, struggling, wailing and groaning, with the increase of a spreading punishment, beat them with whips, roast them with fire. The thing is done there and is not seen: the blow is hidden, and the punishment manifest. (Cyprian, To Donatus, p. 4)." And again in another book: "You may see them, by our voice and by the working of a hidden majesty, beaten with whips, roasted with fire, stretched out with the increase of a spreading punishment, wailing, groaning and begging (the same, On the Vanity of Idols, p. 14)." Wherefore he said confidently to any Gentile: "You will see us entreated by those whom you entreat, feared by those whom you fear, whom you adore. You will see standing bound under our hand, and trembling as captives, those whom you look up to and venerate as lords. (the same, To Demetrianus, p. 191)."

At that time, then, demons were not only tormented and cast out by Christians, but also, going out of the bodies of possessed people however unwillingly, they were compelled to declare openly by what illusions they deceived people, and that they themselves were not gods, but that there was only one God, the God of the Christians. And certainly nothing was truer, more certain and more manifest than this public confession of theirs. Most deservedly, therefore, and by right, Cyprian draws this conclusion against the heathen: "Surely even in this way you could be put to shame in those errors of yours, when you have beheld your gods, at our questioning, at once betray what they are, and unable, even though you are present, to conceal those illusions and deceits of theirs. (Ibid.)" Or as he had said in another book: "They confess whence they come and when they depart, even in the hearing of those very people who worship them. (the same, On the Vanity of Idols, p. 14)." In other dissertations of ours, moreover, we have worked out this whole argument and made it plain to anyone that it is of such strength that from it it is most invincibly demonstrated both that the gods of the gentiles are false and that God is one, and therefore that the religion of those same gentiles is as false as that of the Christians is true (Dissertation on Minucius, ch. 20, art. 3, and on Lactantius, ch. 10, art. 2, and on Tertullian, ch. 10, arts 6 and 7).

Morel, moreover, in his observations on this book, remarks that Cyprian there spoke of Christian Exorcists, who cast demons out of the bodies of the possessed. But certainly, if he thinks that Cyprian spoke only of those who had been initiated into the order of Exorcists, he is plainly mistaken. For Cyprian, in the book to Donatus already cited, expressly asserts that the power of casting out demons had been granted to any Christian whatever. We too showed in our earlier dissertation that demons were cast out and put to flight by any Christians whatever, just as by Exorcists (Dissertation on Tertullian, at the place cited).

Article III.

That Christ is to be believed, by Whom, at the price of His blood, man

is regenerated by holy Baptism; on the twofold sign of that death; on penance, and in what sense it is said to be too late for no one while he is living this life.

It is not enough for a man to know God; he must also believe Him, and believe Christ, Who, sent by His eternal Father Himself, "redeemed the believer at the price of His blood, reconciling man to God the Father, giving life to the mortal by heavenly regeneration (Cyprian, To Demetrianus)." But what is that heavenly regeneration, if not the sacrament of holy Baptism, by which, as the Apostle says, we have been buried together with Christ "into death, so that, as He rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life"? (St Paul, Epistle to the Romans, ch. 6:4.) For this reason Cyprian had written a little before: "We who, having put off our earthly birth, have been re-created by the Spirit and born again, live no longer to the world but to God (Cyprian, ibid., p. 193)." Now he said "exposita", that is, with the earthly birth laid down and cast off; in which sense Tertullian and Lactantius use this word, as we observed in the preceding dissertations. Nor indeed does our author employ it only once, but elsewhere too, and above all in his treatise To Donatus, where he describes and proclaims the wonderful effects of Baptism with all the powers of his eloquence (the same, To Donatus, p. 3).

But just as he rightly teaches that the grace of Baptism is the price of Christ's blood, so he also asserts that the sign by which whoever is found marked will be kept safe and unharmed belongs to that same blood of His and to the torment of the cross (ibid., p. 191). This he proves by the testimony of Ezekiel cited above, and in addition by these words of Moses in Exodus: "And the blood shall be for a sign to you upon the houses in which you shall be; and I will see the blood, and I will protect you, and there shall be no plague of diminishing when I strike the land of Egypt" (Exod. 12:13). What that sign is, he himself shows us in the twenty-second chapter of the second book against the Jews, where he quoted both those testimonies of Ezekiel and of Moses (Cyprian, bk 2 against the Jews, ch. 22, p. 46). For the title of this chapter is: "That in this sign of the cross there is salvation for all who are marked on their foreheads." We, however, have noted elsewhere, following Augustine, that this and the other chapter headings proceeded from Cyprian himself. Moreover, the words of Exodus cited are written in the same way in this book and in our manuscripts of the treatise To Demetrianus. But in the editions of the latter, in place of "In quibus eritis", we read: "In quibus vos eritis".

He adds that the Paschal lamb was the shadow and image of this sign, the truth of which was fulfilled in Christ dying. And he at once gives this reason: "And as there, when Egypt was struck, the Jewish people could escape only by the sign and blood of the lamb, so also when the world begins to be laid waste and struck, whoever is found in the blood and sign of Christ, he alone will escape (the same, To Demetrianus, p. 194)." By this comparison and argument he proves once more that no one at the end of the world is to be saved unless he has borne before him the sign of the cross of Christ,

just as no one escaped from Egypt safe and unharmed unless marked with the sign and blood of the lamb.

Yet let no one persuade himself that Cyprian thought that anyone at all is saved by that sign of the cross alone, set upon his forehead. For to obtain eternal happiness good works are required besides. Nor did he say in any other sense: "Believe Him Who will give to those who believe the reward of eternal life (ibid. p. 195)." For throughout his writings, and indeed in whole treatises, as in the book On Works and Alms and in the third book Against the Jews, he plainly shows that besides faith and the sign of Christ's cross good works are necessary, by the merit of which we may attain everlasting blessedness.

He also enumerates and commends many good works of Christians, which are to be treated later. But surely no one will deny that one of them is that by which a man repents both of the impious worship of false gods and of his former sins. For if the penitence be true and sincere, "pardon," he says, "is granted to him who confesses, and saving indulgence is conceded from the divine mercy to him who believes (ibid. p. 196)." Nor can anyone in any way plead the difficulty of obtaining it. For, he says, "the approach to God's indulgence lies open, and to those who seek and understand the truth access is easy (ibid.)." Indeed, he will have no one held back, either by infirm or by more advanced age, from attaining salvation once penance has been done; because "while still in this world," he says, "no [repentance] is too late (ibid.)." So great indeed is the price of Christ's blood that "even at the very departure," he says further, "and setting of temporal life, pardon may be granted to him who confesses, and indulgence conceded to him who believes;" and so "one passes to immortality at the very point of death." But here the learned Oxford man, although a bishop of the Anglican Church, shrewdly observes that these words were addressed to a heathen, not yet reborn in the sacred waters of baptism; since to wicked Christians who come to their senses late so easy a pardon cannot be promised. And certainly Cyprian proves this quite often, and especially in his whole treatise On the Lapsed, from which it may suffice now to have copied out this: "As greatly as we have sinned, so abundantly let us weep. For a deep wound let not careful and long medicine be lacking: let the penance not be less than the crime (Book On the Lapsed, p. 157)."

Article IV.

Whether Cyprian denied the purgatorial fires; how expressly he asserts that the punishments of the damned will be eternal, whose brief enjoyment for the eyes will be paid for by a perpetual sight, and with what various and horrible tortures Christians had been mangled by them.

After this life, says Cyprian, there is no place for penance and satisfaction, but "here life is either lost or kept (Cyprian, To Demetrian, p. 197)." But the clearer and more certain these latter words are, the less probable to us appears this remark of the Oxford bishop: "As for the purgatorial fires," he says, "there is no reason for anyone to flatter himself, and

hope for a return to life from the underworld? » For did Cyprian there deny the purgatorial fires, of which he made no mention there? Was he necessarily bound to note them there? By no means. For, as the same bishop of Oxford admits, he is there disputing against the gentiles, who, if they persevere until death in the impious worship of false gods, will be tormented with the eternal punishments and fires of hell; but if, with death approaching, they believe and are converted « and by heavenly regeneration, » that is, regenerated by baptism, depart from this life, they will at once attain blessed immortality. But who does not see that nothing can be concluded from this against the purgatorial fires?

But after our author had plainly declared that the souls of unbelieving and wicked men would be tormented together with their bodies in eternal pains and punishments, he immediately added: « He who here looked upon us for a time will there be looked upon by us for ever, and the brief enjoyment of cruel eyes in the persecutions carried out will be repaid by a perpetual sight (ibid. p. 195). » But again the bishop of Oxford observes that in these words the vain and savage delights of the theatres, which fed the eyes of the gentiles and of the persecutors of the Christian religion, are being assailed. But with the learned man's leave let us be permitted to say that Cyprian is not speaking there, nay did not even think, of the public delights of the theatres, but of the most cruel spectacle of the gentiles, who most eagerly watched Christians being butchered and put to death with the most dreadful tortures. His sense, therefore, is that the brief enjoyment of the cruel eyes with which the heathen, not without great delight, watched Christians tortured and slain with monstrous ferocity in the persecutions « will be repaid by a perpetual sight, » that is, will be weighed and assessed: « according to the faith of Holy Scripture, » as he says in the same place, « which says: Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be a sight to all flesh (Isa. 66:24). »

But although he said that the enjoyment of the gentiles, who delighted their cruel eyes with the horrible spectacle of Christians being slaughtered, was brief, yet these same Christians were very often put to death with tortures as long as they were horrible. And Cyprian depicted their various kinds thus: « You deprive the innocent of their home, you strip them of their patrimony, you weigh them down with chains, you shut them up in prison, you punish them with beasts, the sword, and fire. Nor are you content at least with a short course of our sufferings and with a simple and swift brevity of punishments; you apply long torments to bodies to be mangled, you multiply numerous punishments upon flesh to be torn, nor can your ferocity and savagery be content with the customary torments; ingenious cruelty devises new punishments (Cyprian, ibid. p. 190). » He thus makes it plain that the punishments with which our most holy martyrs were tormented were of two kinds. Some indeed were ordinary, namely exile, the confiscation of goods; chains, with which they were weighed down; prison, in which they were shut up; beasts, by which they were devoured; the sword, with which they were beheaded; fires, in which they were customarily burned. Others, however, were extraordinary, namely longer, multiplied, and all those things which ingenious cruelty, and

as he further says: "the insatiable fury of butchery, and the inexhaustible lust of cruelty (Ibid.)" could ever devise. But of these things we have treated abundantly in our earlier dissertations, and they will be treated further in the following one (Dissertation on Lactantius, chapter 10, article 2, and on Tertullian, chapter 16, article 1, and on Lucius Caecilius, chapter 8, chapter 12).

Article V.

With how great injustice the heathen condemned the Christians, neither defended nor heard; how wonderful was the patience of those whose number was ever increasing, and whom God avenged by the downfall of kings, the loss of wealth, the wasting of soldiers, and the diminishing of camps.

The greater the cruelty of the heathen in butchering and killing the Christians, the greater was the injustice in condemning them. For against the prescribed laws of natural, divine and human right they tortured, condemned and killed them, neither defended nor heard, with any kinds of punishment whatever, unheard of until then. Therefore Cyprian overthrows and refutes those most unjust men with this argument: "To be a Christian either is a crime or it is not (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 191)." If it is not a crime, the innocent man surely ought to have been acquitted. But if it is a crime, he who denied that he was a Christian ought to have been tortured under examination after the manner of other accused persons, until he confessed his crime. For examination of the accused was established by the laws for this purpose, that by pain of the body it might be wrung out whether the crime of the accused is true. But the heathen, scorning these most equitable laws, strove by most cruel examination to force one who confessed of his own accord and repeatedly that he was a Christian, crying it aloud in the very forum and in the hearing of magistrates and governors, and overthrowing the false gods of the Gentiles, to deny that he was a Christian, that is, what they thought a crime. Cyprian therefore assails the heathen with these words: "Since I confess of my own accord, and cry out, and with frequent and repeated words again and again testify that I am a Christian, why do you apply torments to one who confesses? ... While I proclaim myself a Christian in a crowded place, with the people standing round, and confound both you and your gods by clear and public proclamation, why do you turn to the weakness of the body? Why do you contend with the frailty of the flesh? (Ibid.)" But who will deny that nothing could ever be done more unjust, and more contrary to all human, civil and divine right, than to compel a man by most dreadful torments to deny the crime of which he is accused, even by deceiving falsehood, and then to acquit him when he so denies? This whole line of argument, moreover, we have set out and examined in our earlier dissertations on the books of Minucius Felix and Tertullian, from which Cyprian appears, not at all undeservedly, to have drawn it (Dissertation on Minucius, chapter 8, article 2, and on Tertullian, chapter 17, article 2).

But he presses further, and rightly teaches that a Christian is to be compelled to reject or deny his religion neither by force nor by torments, but is to be overcome by reason, and his faith destroyed by strong arguments. Wherefore he addresses the heathen man thus: "With

vigour of mind engage, break down the strength of the intellect, destroy the faith, conquer by debate if you can, conquer by reason. (Cyprian, ibid.)" The same, as we have shown, is the argumentation of Tertullian and of Lactantius, which the latter expresses in this way: "Religion cannot be compelled. The matter must be handled by words rather than by blows, so that there may be free will." But on these things we have argued at greater length, and, unless we are mistaken, quite abundantly enough, in our earlier dissertations (Lactantius, Institutes book 5, chap. 19, p. 518; Dissertation on Lactantius, chap. 10, art. 3, and on Tertullian, chap. 19, art. 1).

But although the Christians saw that they were condemned and slaughtered by the heathen with the utmost injustice of all and on account of their name alone, they nevertheless endured horrible tortures without any ill will towards their persecutors, but with as much patience indeed as fortitude of mind. For they knew that it had been commanded them by God that they should never hold any man in hatred, and that they should love even their very enemies (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 197). Therefore they returned no requital for injury, but goodwill for hatred, and in return for the punishments inflicted on them they showed the way of salvation (Ibid., p. 172). And so no one seized by the tyrants resisted; rather, when tortured to the flesh, he gloried and gave thanks. These things indeed have been explained in our earlier dissertation (Dissertation on Tertullian, chap. 21, art. 1).

Nor yet is this to be ascribed to weakness or powerlessness: for, as Cyprian says, their number was very great and abundant (Cyprian, loc. cit.). And indeed we have seen how great their multitude was in Tertullian's time; and since they were multiplying daily, they must without doubt have been far more numerous while our author was writing these things (Dissertation on Tertullian, loc. cit.). He therefore did not think it needed proving, since it was very well known to all, and the gentiles bore it with the greatest annoyance. By their multitude, then, the Christians could easily have avenged the cruelty of the gentiles, as has also been demonstrated by us in the earlier dissertation (Ibid., chap. 22, art. 1).

Moreover, they knew for certain that the horrible savagery of the gentiles would not be let go unpunished by God, the most just judge: “Patient,” therefore, says Cyprian, “did their security about the vengeance to follow make them (Cyprian, ibid., p. 192).” But whence, someone will say, such great security? First indeed, because the almighty God Himself had promised in express and solemn words that this would come to pass. Then, that He in fact stood by His promises our author concludes from this: that “never,” he says, “is there an uprising against our name through the wickedness of the impious, but that vengeance from God at once accompanies it (Ibid.).” Nor did he declare that this was difficult for him to prove, since it was established from all the histories of past events. And so he thought it enough for him to bring forward an example of recent memory, by which God exacted the heaviest penalties from the persecutors of the Christians, “by the ruin of kings, the losses of wealth, the waste of soldiers, the diminishing of camps.” Now we have seen that by these words of his is denoted the most calamitous, that of the emperor Decius and of his sons Decius, Trajan

and Etruscus, slaughter and death. How evident and how remarkable that proof of divine vengeance was, as our author puts it, we shall show in the following dissertation on the book of Lucius Caecilius On the Deaths of the Persecutors, in which, by this and many other examples, he made plain to all what penalties, and how great, Decius and the other most savage tyrants of the Christians paid to God. In other dissertations of ours too we have clearly weighed how strong and unconquerable an argument is drawn from these things for vindicating the truth of the Christian religion (Dissert. on Luc. Caecil. ch. 7, art. 1).

Chapter IV.

The arguments of Cyprian are weighed by which he refutes Demetrian and the other gentiles, who accused the Christians of being the cause of the public calamities of war, famine and plague.

Article One.

Cyprian's first argument, taken from the old age of the world, is examined.

We have seen in our earlier dissertations how often and how shamelessly the heathen charged that the Christians were the cause of all the public calamities by which the world was troubled, for the reason that they did not worship their gods (Dissertat. on Arnobius ch. 6, art. 1 ff.; on Tertullian ch. 23, art. 1 ff.). But although that senseless accusation had been overthrown from its foundations by the defenders of our religion as often as it was repeated by those same heathen, Demetrian and others were nevertheless not ashamed to renew it, when in the time of our Cyprian the world was oppressed by the threefold scourge of war, famine and dreadful plague. Cyprian therefore, as we have noted, was compelled to write this book to refute them once again. And since he crushes their shamelessness, already more than sufficiently repelled by others, with certain new weighty reasons, these must now be examined in our accustomed manner. First, then, he shows that these and other public disasters, whether regarded in general or one by one, are stirred up not at all by the Christians, but sometimes by natural causes, and far more often by the very great crimes of the gentiles themselves, and always for the punishment of wicked men. That they are to be attributed in general to natural causes he thinks can be inferred from the old age of the world, which he judged to be declining towards its setting and destruction (Cyprian, To Demetrian p. 186). For, he said, the four seasons of the year had been turned upside down. There was less abundance of rain in winter; in summer, less heat of the sun; in springtime, less mildness of the sky; and in autumn, less fruitfulness of the crops. Moreover gold, silver and the other metals were dwindling in the bowels of the earth, and everywhere farmers, sailors and soldiers were failing. Indeed, "we see grey hairs in boys," he says, "the hair fails before it grows, and age does not end in old age, but begins from old age (Ibid. p. 187)." Finally the corruption of morals was very great. And from all these things he concludes that the world is growing old, and that it is no wonder if in its, as

in that of other living things, old age all things degenerate and fail.

But just as there is no room for doubting that all these things are true which Cyprian so assertively affirms, so, by the leave of the most holy Martyr, let it be permitted us to say that these things did not happen because the world, which for so many centuries after his death has continued intact, had already then grown old and was close to its end. Then again, gold and silver were decreasing because their veins had been exhausted in certain places only, not everywhere on earth. More frequent deaths of men could have come about from the unwholesomeness and corruption of the air, whence also had arisen that dreadful plague which was laying everything waste. A most pestilential air could also have brought it about that greyness of hair in boys was wholly premature, and that their strength, which ought to have been increasing in them, was diminished as in old men. But although it should be most evidently proved that all these things arose from natural causes, it is nonetheless no less certain that such great disasters happened, as we shall soon see, in punishment of wicked men.

Moreover, Cyprian's opinion on the nearness of the end of the world was not peculiar to him, but common to him with other Fathers of various ages. Lactantius indeed and very many others, as we have observed in its place, were persuaded that the whole world would be destroyed when the number of six thousand years from its beginning had been completed. Others, however, such as Tertullian, thought that its ruin and that of the Roman Empire would be one and the same. Others finally, such as Ambrose and Gregory the Great, like our Cyprian, proclaimed that the end of the world was imminent as often as it was afflicted by public famine, plague and other extraordinary calamities (Dissert. on Lactantius ch. 29, art. 1; and on Tertullian ch. 15, art. 1 and ch. 21, art. 1; Ambrose book 10, Exposition on Luke, § 10, p. 1506; Gregory, Homily 35 on the Gospels, p. 1612). But do not, I beg you, easily persuade your mind that this was pronounced by all of them as certain and not at all doubtful, which they had learned from the surer words of Christ to be known to God alone. Rather, because they saw that certain signs of the world's decline foretold by the same Christ had come to pass, they judged that Christians should be warned of these, so that, being wholly uncertain of what would follow, they might lead a holier life and not promise themselves a longer one. Furthermore, from public calamities, as from the corruption of morals, no one could ever with certainty conclude that the end of the world was near. But no one either, as we think, can deny that our Cyprian most rightly concludes that the public calamities were set in motion by the most grievous outrages of the gentiles, by their crimes, their impious superstitions and the common corruption of morals. Let us now, if you please, weigh how he draws his second argument from this.

Article II.

How clearly Cyprian demonstrates that the public calamities happened not because the Christians worshipped the true God, but because the heathen worshipped false gods and were guilty of other most grievous crimes; where [he speaks] of the punishments of slaves.

It is certainly established that the world not of itself, as elsewhere we have shown,

had been created, but by the true and almighty God, by Whose nod and will all things are governed, and Whom men and all creatures ought to obey and serve (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 187). But He commanded that false gods should never be worshipped and adored, but He Himself alone, by all men. For "by a divine voice," says Cyprian, "He had commanded: You shall adore the Lord your God, and Him alone shall you serve" (Deut. 6:13). In another book, moreover, he reported these same words, word for word, and testifies that they are written in Deuteronomy (Cyprian, Exhortation to Martyrdom, p. 171, and book 3 Against the Jews, § 2, p. 65). In the Greek translation of the Elders, however, it reads: "You shall fear the Lord your God, and Him alone shall you serve." But in the Gospel of Matthew and of Luke there is found proskynēseis, "you shall adore", instead of phobēthēsē: "you shall fear". Elsewhere, again, God forbade that gods fashioned by men should ever be worshipped by anyone. And these are His very words as cited by Cyprian: "There shall be no strange gods for you apart from Me" (Exod. 20:3). He repeats the same in another book (Cyprian, Exhortation to Martyrdom, ibid.), which the Elders rendered thus in Greek: "There shall not be for you other gods besides Me." In Latin, however, in the Vulgate: "You shall not have strange gods before Me." Jeremiah too, cited by the same author of ours, had announced to the Jews and to all others that prophets had been sent by God to warn them that His wrath was provoked by this impious worship of strange gods. "Do not," he said, "serve strange gods and adore them: do not provoke Me in the works of your hands to the destroying of you" (Jer. 26:6). And he reported these same words, word for word, in another book (Cyprian, Against the Jews, book 1, § 2, p. 21; likewise To Demetrianus, p. 189); the Septuagint, however, in Greek: "so that you do not provoke Me to anger in the works of your hands, to do you harm." In the Vulgate, moreover, we read: "Nor provoke Me to wrath in the works of your hands, so that I do not afflict you." But the crime of the gentiles was all the graver in that they not only worshipped false gods and spurned the true and only God, but also condemned the Christians who worshipped Him, against all laws, as we have seen, human and divine, without ever hearing them or allowing them a defence, and put them to death with every kind of torment. With full justice, therefore, God, offended by such great iniquity and impiety of theirs, avenged these and many other crimes of theirs by public calamities.

But indeed, besides those two enormities, of idolatry and of the utmost injustice: "Innocence," says our author, "had failed in the forum, justice in the courts, concord in friendships, discipline in morals" (ibid., p. 186). He pursues these things much more fully in his book To Donatus, where he gives the reasons why he himself, having bidden farewell to the abominable superstitions of the heathen, embraced the Christian religion: "Though the laws," he says, "be engraved on twelve tables, and rights be prescribed publicly on bronze set up before all, offences are committed amid the laws themselves, sin is committed amid the rights. Innocence is not preserved even there where it is defended. The fury of men at odds with one another rages, and amid the togas, peace being broken, the forum bellows, mad with lawsuits ... Crimes blaze everywhere, and on every side, in a manifold variety of sinning, through wicked minds the harmful

poison is at work..... To be innocent among the guilty is now a crime. Whoever does not imitate the wicked gives offence. The laws have come to terms with sins, and what is public has begun to be lawful (Cyprian, To Donatus, p. 7 and following)." The rest, which it would be too long to copy out here, you will be able to read there. And how true these things are, if anyone could doubt it, he will be made still more certain of it from what has quite often been observed in our earlier dissertations on the utterly corrupt morals of the heathen, and from what is to be said a little later.

The heathen, therefore, since they were overturning divine and human laws by so many and such great crimes with truly astonishing audacity and recklessness, could certainly not complain that God chastised them with public disasters. But Cyprian moreover refutes them outright with a comparison of master and slave obvious to all. If you have a slave who is insolent, impudent, faithless, and who does not obey your orders, do you not "flog" him, says Cyprian, "beat him, afflict and torture him with hunger, thirst, nakedness, often with iron and prison (ibid., To Demetrianus, p. 188)?" But, someone will say, was it lawful for masters to chastise their slaves with such manifold punishments? Yes, we say, and with many others besides, which Plautus expressed in these verses:

To Perfidy we deservedly give praises and great thanks, / together with our tricks, deceits and cunning ways, / relying on the boldness of our shoulder-blades, on the stoutness of the elm-rods (another reading: of our shoulders), / who [have held out] against goads, hot plates, crosses and fetters, / thongs, chains, prisons, neck-stocks, foot-shackles, collars, / and the fiercest instructors, well acquainted with our back, / who have often before now set scars upon our shoulder-blades.

But someone else will ask us why Cyprian added "with iron" there. Could masters, he will say, kill their slaves with impunity? We reply that under the most ancient Roman law the power of life and death over slaves was indeed granted to masters. Later, however, the emperor Hadrian, as Spartianus attests, not only forbade slaves to be killed by their masters, but also ordered that masters be condemned by the judges if they were convicted of having punished their slaves too harshly (Spartianus, Life of Hadrian, after the middle; Theodosian Code, book IX, title 11, On the Correction of Slaves, laws 1 and 2, p. 79). In the books of the Institutes, moreover, mention is made of a law issued by Antoninus, by which "whoever kills his own slave without cause is ordered to be punished no less than if he had killed another's slave. And excessive harshness of masters is also restrained by a constitution of the same prince" (Institutes, book I, title 8, On those who are in their own power). Finally Constantine the Great by a twofold law wholly and entirely took away this right of masters over slaves, and moreover forbade them ever to rage against them too cruelly. In the Theodosian Code cited above you have both those laws. However, although in Cyprian's time masters could still have killed their slaves, we shall nevertheless be readily persuaded that by the word "iron" this power is certainly not meant, but rather certain iron instruments, such as the plates mentioned by Plautus, or red-hot tablets of bronze and iron, with which slaves were tortured.

However, although a master may not have the right of life and death over his slave, from him nonetheless, who is of the same nature as himself, the servitude owed he rightly

demands. When, therefore, he chastises one who resists and does not obey, that slave is himself the cause of his own punishments. How much more, then, are wicked men the cause of public calamities, who, having abandoned the true God, the Lord and ruler of all things, and having spurned and undermined all His laws, worship false gods and wallow in every kind of crime! But these were not Christians but Gentiles, and their complaint about the public disasters was therefore most unjust. Therefore Cyprian rightly presses them thus: "Do not say that evils happen because your gods are not worshipped by us; but know (so in the very ancient Colbertine codex) that this wrath of God is a censure, so that He who is not understood through benefits may at least be understood through blows" (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 194). But these things will become clearer and more evident still from what he said about the individual disasters, which are now to be explained.

Article III.

How Cyprian proved that by no means the Christians, but the Gentiles, had been the cause of the wars.

Great indeed was the remonstrance of the heathen about wars, or, to use Cyprian's words: You complain that an enemy rises up (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 189), who was laying waste and depopulating the Roman empire. But certainly this was by no means to be attributed to the Christians, but to these very gentiles themselves: For whom, as though, even if an enemy were lacking, there could be peace among the togas themselves, as our author says further (ibid.). By the name of togas he includes all the Roman magistrates, governors and toga-clad judges. For we have already seen how great were the quarrels and dissensions among them, how great the crimes of avarice and injustice, by which men were very often harassed more cruelly than by war.

To this is added the fact that, "although the extreme" (our very ancient and other manuscripts, and the printed codices, have external) "arms and dangers from the barbarians are repressed," yet internal and domestic wars were waged more savagely "with calumnies and injuries," by which these men seized the goods of others. For was not less damage inflicted on the commonwealth by wars than when, as he says, "a crime is committed by the guilty man, and no innocent man is found to avenge it, and there is no fear of accuser or judge? The wicked obtain impunity; while the modest are silent, the accomplices are afraid, and those who are to judge are for sale (ibid., p. 190)."

But concerning these things he wrote more fully to Donatus in these words: "Crimes blaze everywhere....... Here one substitutes a will, there another draws up a false one with capital fraud. Here children are shut out from inheritances, there strangers are endowed with goods. The enemy accuses, the slanderer attacks, the witness defames; on both sides the venal audacity of a prostituted voice runs riot in the falsehood of charges, while meanwhile the guilty do not even perish together with the innocent." (The same, To Donatus, p. 7.)

Since, therefore, there was so great a contempt of the laws, and so great an impunity even of the gravest crimes, "of transgressing," he says, "there is no fear" (this word is missing in several manuscript copies) "or shame; and so sin is committed as though one were made more pleasing through the sins themselves (The same, To Demetrianus, p. 189)." What then

wonder if so many and such impious and shameful men were found everywhere? What wonder, if "forgers and poisoners" shamelessly raised their deadly head? What wonder, if there were seen "in the middle of the city assassins, as headlong in sinning as they are unpunished in sinning"? (Ibid. p. 190.) But these most criminal men were dealt with in the preceding dissertation (Dissertation on Tertullian, ch. 24, art. 4). And who doubts that these internal wars were far worse than the external ones which were being waged at the farthest borders of the Roman Empire? But see, I ask, whether by these words, "external arms from the barbarians", he aimed chiefly at those wars in which Decius and the other emperors, who, as we saw above, raged more fiercely against the Christians, were cut down to utter destruction and paid by their death the penalty of their cruelty.

But these wars, says Cyprian, were waged neither by some chance accident, nor in vengeance upon the Christians, but upon the Gentiles, who had provoked God. For "it is clear," he says, "and manifest, that not through us, but for us" (so the older manuscripts and those of better note) "all those things happen which come down from the indignation of God (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 192)." These disasters of war, then, did not befall "through us", that is, on our account and because we do not worship false gods, but "for us", since by these wars God was avenging the wrongs done to us, and by punishing our persecutors was restoring to our Churches the peace they longed for.

Article IV.

By what reasoning Cyprian shows that not the Christians, but the gentiles are the cause of barrenness and famine.

The heathen were further crying out that they were being killed by famine, by the barrenness of the fields and by the scarcity of crops, for this reason: because the Christians did not venerate their gods (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 189). But this second complaint of theirs was plainly foolish. For the true God willed that the world be afflicted by this public calamity, not indeed on account of the Christians, who worshipped Him piously and obeyed His precepts, but on account of the Gentiles themselves, who denied that He was the true God and were ever offending Him with the gravest crimes. For although the world was struck with so great a plague by the just judgement of God, the heathen did not on that account become better. For avaricious men, so as to sell their grain more dearly, shut up their granaries, and preferred that the poor be consumed by famine rather than that their own wealth not be increased by the others' want. Thus their rapacity and avarice made a greater and far crueller famine than the barrenness of the earth. For what, as Gregory Nazianzen rightly argues, "is heavier and more bitter than the cruelty and insatiable greed of those who hold grain? For they watch for the difficulties of the times, and make traffic of famine, and reap a harvest from the calamities of others." (Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 20, p. 558.) Wherefore savage and wild men, who had stripped off all humanity, are detestable both to God and to other men. For Solomon, in the Proverbs cited by the same Gregory and by our Cyprian,

pronounces this: "He who hoards the corn supply is accursed among the people (Greg. ibid.; Cypr. bk 3 Against the Jews § 61, p. 82)"; or as we read in the Vulgate: He who hides the grain is cursed among the peoples. Nor is this cruelty condemned by divine laws only, but by human ones too. For we have as witness Paul the jurist, who left it written: "It is above all the Dardanarii who are accustomed to manipulate and harass the corn supply, whose avarice has been opposed both by mandates and by constitutions." (Digest bk 60, title 11, On Extraordinary Crimes, law 6.)

But those hard and iron-hearted gentiles trampled these most equitable laws underfoot, and moreover held at naught the salutary warnings of God, by which His holy prophets had foretold a coming famine on account of their offences. For what is clearer than this forewarning of Haggai cited by Cyprian (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 187)? Because My house is deserted, but you pursue, διώκετε (Vulgate, you hasten), each one to his own house, therefore the sky will withhold its dew, and the earth will hold back its produce, and I will bring a sword upon the earth, καὶ ἐπάξω ῥομφαίαν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν. The Vulgate: And I called a drought upon the land, and upon the grain, and upon the wine, and upon the oil, and upon men, and upon beasts of burden, and upon all the labours of their hands (Hag. 1:9–10). He had therefore foretold a future barrenness of the land, because men were going to abandon the house of God, that is, His worship, or the house in which He used to be worshipped, so that each might go off to his own house, in which they would venerate idols and false gods. And although Cyprian, following the Seventy elders, said sword, nevertheless by that name is without doubt signified drought and barrenness, by which death was brought upon men.

For this reason he added this prophecy of the prophet Amos: And I will rain, the Septuagint καὶ βρέξω, the Vulgate, as a little later: And I rained upon one city, and upon another I will not rain: and two and three cities will gather into one city for the sake of drinking water, and they will not be satisfied. And you do not turn to, says the Lord (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 187; Amos 4:17 ff.). But so far were they from turning then to this true and only God, that rather they offended Him more grievously, not only in the time of famine and barrenness, but also in that of the plague raging more bitterly, as must now be shown.

Article 5.

That the heathen, so far from taking care in the time of plague to appease God, offended by their crimes, rather provoked Him with graver outrages.

It has already been observed by us in how horrible a manner, unheard of until then, a most calamitous plague, as Cyprian, Eusebius and others record, laid everything waste (above, ch. 1, art. 5). But what do you suppose was then done by the heathen, who accused the Christians of this third disaster? Were they made better by it? Not at all. For God, Whom, on account of their own outrages, to chastise them with this horrible plague

they had compelled, they provoked with new crimes never sufficiently to be detested. For "with the pestilence itself and the plague," says Cyprian, "the crimes of individuals have been either laid bare or increased, while neither is mercy shown to the sick, and avarice and plunder gape after the dead" (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 189). Now he censures a twofold kind of crimes, into which men as cruel as they were avaricious rushed openly. The first was the extreme inhumanity of those men, horrible to tell, towards the sick, towards the dying and the dead. For they brought no help to those suffering from the pestilence, they utterly and completely abandoned the dying, they fled the funerals of the dying, and they left the bodies of the dead unburied, no differently than those of dogs. But Pontius, Cyprian's deacon and an eyewitness, depicts these things in colours as natural as they are tragic: "All shuddered," he says, "fled, avoided the contagion, impiously exposed their own....... Meanwhile throughout the whole city there lay no longer bodies but the corpses of very many; and by the contemplation of a common lot they demanded mercy for themselves from those passing by. No one regarded anything except cruel gains. No one trembled at the recollection of a like outcome. No one did to another what he wished done to himself" (Pontius, Life of Cyprian, p. 5). Dionysius of Alexandria also wrote the same things about the same Gentiles: "Those who were beginning to fall sick they thrust away, and they fled from those dearest to them, and they cast them half-dead into the roads, and they threw out the dead unburied like refuse, shunning the spread and communication of death, which, even for those who contrived many means, it was not easy to avoid": "Those who had begun to be sick they drove out, they fled from those most dear, and they abandoned them half-dead in the roads, or they threw out the dead unburied, turning away from participation and fellowship in death; which, however, even when manifold caution and diligence had been applied, they were not able to avoid" (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 7, chapter 22, p. 269).

But the second kind of outrage of these men, plainly destitute of every sense of humanity, and no less than the former, was that by which they were seen to have abandoned the dying for this reason, "lest they might escape while they were being cared for" (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 189). For they did not wish for their recovery, but for the swiftest death, so that they might rush the sooner upon their goods and possessions. For no one, as Pontius, just now cited by us, said, regarded anything other than cruel gains. Nor indeed did they conceal it. For "of plundering," Cyprian says further, "there is no concealment, no hesitation, no fear" (ibid., p. 190). Rather, one could see them running about everywhere, seizing and taking possession of the goods of the dead. And lest anyone else, with equal avarice gaping, should forestall their plunder, forgers were at hand, who substituted false wills of the dying, and these were at once approved as though genuine by the authority of judges corrupted by a bribe.

So far, therefore, were these most wicked men, harassed by so many and such great calamities, from coming to their senses, that, not fearing the wrath of God, they ever more sharply stirred it up against themselves by graver outrages (ibid., p. 188). Rightly therefore the Prophets cited by our author

complained that those who neither grieved nor were willing to receive discipline were beaten and flogged with these blows in vain (Jer. 2:30). What then, says Cyprian, would they not have done, if they had not been struck? Would not the boldness of sinning have grown through impunity for crimes? And these indeed are the arguments by which our author plainly demonstrates that the gentiles are the cause of the public calamities, and by no means the Christians, as has still to be proved.

Article VI.

How great the works of mercy were that the Christians showed to any whatever who were infected with plague, dying, and dead.

The public calamities by which the world was shaken on account of so many and such great crimes of the heathen, as we have said, the Christians, if they could not avert them, tried to lighten by pious works, or to obtain from almighty God that a limit be set to them. For by days and nights "continually and urgently," says Cyprian, they besought Him "for the warding off of enemies, and for obtaining rains, and for removing or tempering adversities, and for your peace and safety," that is, of the Gentiles (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 193). There, however, it is noted below by the one in charge of the Oxford edition that in these words Cyprian had in view the memorable deed of the Christians who under the emperor Aurelius obtained by divine power the rain, about which we treated in the previous dissertation, which was altogether necessary for the army. But since Cyprian said that the Christians implored the mercy of God "continually and urgently," did he not rather denote by these words their daily prayers, with which, both privately and publicly in their synaxes, as we have noted before, they prayed to God for the emperors and for the state of the world (Dissertation on Tertullian, ch. 19, art. 2, and ch. 23, art. 4; ibid., ch. 15, art. 1)?

But as great as was the inhumanity of the heathen towards their own companions, labouring with plague, or dying, or dead, as we were saying just now, and the insatiable cruelty of greedy men, so great was the piety, charity and compassion of the Christians towards them. For at the peril of their own life they brought every help to the sick and the dead. Cyprian indeed, having at once gathered the people entrusted to him, as Pontius relates, exhorted them with such force of eloquence to show all the works of mercy to the sick, that what was performed by the Christians can scarcely be set forth (Pontius, Life of Cyprian, pp. 5 and 6). To each indeed ministries were assigned according to his condition, by which they might bring their help to those infected with plague. And with no delay interposed, the rich bestowed with wonderful liberality all those things that were necessary for the needy. The poorer, however, supplied by their own labour a reward dearer than all riches. But in this they surpassed the incomparable piety of Tobias, by whose leave Pontius wished that to be said, in this, that by these offices of mercy they tried to relieve not only those of the household of faith, but also the gentiles most hostile to themselves, whom, even when dead, they committed to burial no differently from Christians.

But Dionysius of Alexandria explains these things more fully. Very many, he says, while they constantly ministered to the sick and restored their health, themselves perished by a death as holy as it was glorious. Others, after they had closed the eyes and mouths of the dead, after they had carried their bodies on their own shoulders, had washed them, laid them out and adorned them with garments in the customary manner, themselves died a little later and received the same offices from others. And this kind of death, as Dionysius indeed rightly says, on account of its piety and constancy of faith is judged not inferior to martyrdom (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 7, chapter 22, p. 269). But who would not see how different were the works of the Christians and of the gentiles in that calamitous time of plague, and which of them had offended God, or had been able to appease Him when angered?

Article VII.

Why the Christians, though wholly innocent, were afflicted by the same public calamities as the wicked gentiles.

The gentiles, not in the least moved by the truly wonderful and very great works of piety of the Christians towards all, pressed on all the more sharply, and openly cried out that God would be altogether unjust if, in punishing the wicked by public calamities, He should by them harass and overwhelm the deserving and the undeserving alike (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 192). But this argument, repeated by them quite often, as we have seen, our Cyprian refutes with reasons of various weight (Dissertation on Tertullian, chapter 23, articles 1 and 5; Cyprian, ibid., p. 192). For first he acknowledges that God is able, whenever He pleases, to prevent those evils, but that He was unwilling to do so because of the wickedness and crimes of the heathens, as we have shown, which, as the Prophet says, separate men from Him (Isa. 59:2). If, then, the heathens had not sinned, or if they had done sincere penance for their crimes, then, not being separated from God, they would surely have had no cause for complaint about Him and about the Christians. Then, further, although the Christians led an altogether pious and chaste life, yet because, as long as they are in this world, their condition and that of the gentiles must be equal as regards the body, like that of men dwelling in the same house, both must therefore be affected by the same adverse and troublesome things. But as regards the spirit they were far unlike. For which of them could be said to be afflicted and thrown into confusion by the public disasters? Was it not the gentiles alone, who grieved, lamented, and bewailed their wretched lot in a voice as clamorous as it was querulous? The Christians on the contrary, says Cyprian, "living in the spirit rather than in the flesh," overcame "the weakness of the body by firmness of mind" (Cyprian, ibid., p. 193). Wherefore, never dismayed or broken in mind by any adversities, they never grieved or muttered about them.

Moreover the gentiles wept over their miseries and hardships, because only in this world could it go well with them, and nothing remained for them afterwards but punishment and pain (ibid., p. 192). But the mind of the Christians, who despised the perishable goods of this life, was on the contrary upright amid these very ruins of a collapsing world, with immovable

virtue, joyful patience, firm faith, and a sure hope and expectation of the eternal happiness promised them by God.

Next, the world was not oppressed by so many disasters because the Christians did not worship the false gods; rather, the true God permitted it to be harassed by these, so that "He Who," says Cyprian, "is not understood through benefits may at least be understood through blows (Ibid. p. 195)." The heathen, therefore, were punished with these calamities so that they might repent of their crimes and, having at last cast off the insane worship of false gods, might acknowledge and worship the one almighty God and embrace the true religion.

Moreover, the Christians knew, and were confident, that they were tested and strengthened by these same adversities. Therefore Cyprian, in another book, said: "How necessary it is that this pestilence and plague, which seems horrible and deadly, searches out the righteousness of each person: whether the healthy serve the sick, whether relatives love their kin dutifully, whether masters have pity on their ailing servants, whether physicians do not desert the sick who implore them, whether the grasping extinguish, at least through fear of death, the ever insatiable heat of raging avarice, whether the proud bend their necks, whether the wicked soften their boldness, whether the rich, when their dear ones are perishing, at least in this way bestow and give something, being about to die without an heir (Ibid. p. 193; the same, book On Mortality, p. 162)." For just as a pilot's skill is discerned in a storm, just as a soldier's courage is proved in the battle line, just as Abraham's faith was tested by the command to sacrifice his son, so by these public disasters the virtue and patience of the Christians was proved, and once proved was crowned (Ibid.). Why so? "Because unless," he says, "battle has gone before, there cannot be victory; when there has been victory in the clash of battle, then the crown too is given to the victors (Ibid. p. 160)." And after he had confirmed this by the examples of certain persons, and above all of Paul the apostle, and also by his words and those of Ecclesiastes, he then concludes that the condition of the Christians was far different from that of the gentiles and the Jews in the public calamity of the plague and in other adversities. For to these enemies of Christ the dreadful plague, of which we have said enough, was an incurable and deadly blow, by which the dying were swept away to everlasting punishment, but for Christians it was a salutary departure, by which they were called to eternal refreshment (Ibid. p. 161).

As much, then, as the gentiles and the Jews complained and grieved about plague, famine and war, so much did the Christians, with calm and joyful mind, show to be true (the same, Against Demetrianus, p. 193) what the prophet Habakkuk, cited by Cyprian, had foretold long before in these words: "The fig tree will not bear fruit, and there will be no produce in the vines: [It] will not bear fruit and there will be no produce in the vines. The work of the olive will fail, and the fields will not furnish food. The sheep will fail from the pasture: The sheep have failed from food. And there will be no oxen in the stalls. But I will rejoice in the Lord, and in God my saviour: I will rejoice in God my saviour." (Hab. 4:17–18.) Nor indeed was their joy feigned or empty; because

they firmly expected that eternal happiness would be given to them by God.

Afterwards, however, Cyprian confirms this with far more words, taken from the book of Wisdom, which he reported in full in one place, and in another place only the last part of them (Cyprian, To Demetrianus, p. 195). Solomon, to whom this very book is expressly attributed by him, there relates clearly how bitterly the impious and wicked, tormented by the eternal fires of hell, will bewail their most wretched lot and eternal damnation once they have seen the blessedness of the Christians (Wis. 5:1ff.; Cyprian, Testimonies book 3, p. 68; On the Dress of Virgins, p. 97; and On the Exhortation to Martyrdom, p. 182).

Moreover, in our earlier dissertations we have seen that this argument of the gentiles, drawn from the adversities and persecutions of the Christians, fights not so much against them as against the providence of God; and how it is refuted and overturned by the most learned defenders of the Christian religion.

Chapter V.

ON CYPRIAN'S BOOK ON THE VANITY OF IDOLS.

FIRST ARTICLE.

Analysis of this book.

This book is divided into three parts, in the first of which Cyprian shows that the gods of the heathen are altogether false (Cyprian, On the Vanity of Idols, p. 11). For dead kings began to be worshipped by them, and then their features were reproduced in images, temples were built, victims were sacrificed, and feast days were celebrated in their honour. In this way were made gods not only Melicertes and Leucothea, Castor and Pollux, Aesculapius, Apollo, Neptune, but also Jupiter, whose tomb is visited in Crete, and Saturn, who gave Latium its name, who first taught in Italy how to print letters and to stamp coins. Him, when he had been put to flight by Jove, two-faced Janus received, from whom the Janiculum and the month of January took their names. But the Moors, certainly, worshipped their kings more plainly and openly. Furthermore, by this unbridled and impious licence the religion of the gentiles was spread abroad. For throughout the provinces each people venerated not one true god, but many gods fashioned by their ancestors. This our author proves by the letter of Alexander the Great, and he makes it plain that nothing more absurd can be said than that the power of begetting other gods was either given to or taken away from gods of this kind (ibid., p. 12).

Nor does he allow it to be objected to him that the Romans earned the empire of the whole world by their piety towards their gods. For they never received it from their own native gods or goddesses, nor from others, foreign and adopted from elsewhere. Not, indeed, from the former, such as Romulus, Picus, Tiberinus, Pilumnus, Consus, Viduus, Scansus, Forculus, Limentinus; nor yet from the goddesses Cloacina, Fear, Pallor, Fever, or Acca and Flora, both of them harlots, or Cardea and Orbona. For truly, to name such gods and goddesses is to refute them (p. 13).

By the same reasoning, indeed, or rather by a still stronger one,

foreign gods of the Romans, such as Mars of Thrace and of Crete, or adopted goddesses, such as Juno of Argos, or of Samos, or the Punic Juno, or Diana of Tauris, or the Idaean Mother of the gods, or the Bald Venus gave the Romans their empire, or extended it. For those who were [not] able to protect the kingdoms of those by whom they were worshipped, how could they found and increase the empire of others, to whom they had never been known? Add to this that the Penates, which Aeneas carried with him into Italy, were conquered. Moreover, before the Romans there flourished the kingdoms of the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, the Egyptians and the Greeks. The gods of the Romans, therefore, dispense neither those kingdoms nor any others.

But come, tell us, I ask, on account of what piety towards their gods was empire conferred on the Romans, an empire that began from parricide, the rape of virgins and other unspeakable crimes? Nor should you say that it was increased by auspices, auguries and other superstitions of this kind, by which either certain future things were foretold, or something was believed to happen outside the customary order of nature. For the examples of Regulus, of Mancinus and of Gaius Caesar demonstrate their falsity. What of the fact that these things, and indeed all the others which the gentiles marvelled at, were not done by the power of their false gods, but by the frauds and illusions of demons, who were known to the poets, to Socrates, to the Magi, to Hostanes and to Plato, although both Hostanes and Plato taught that there is only one God (p. 14)? For these demons are insincere and lost spirits, who, lurking beneath the statues and images of the gods, tried to persuade credulous and incautious men that these things were done by those very gods, so that they might not be drawn away from their worship to the true religion. Indeed all their deceits and frauds were uncovered when the Christians, adjuring them by the true God, compelled them not only to go out of the bodies they had possessed, but also to confess openly who they themselves were, and that He in Whose name they were being adjured is the one and true God.

Passing then to the second part of this treatise, Cyprian proves most plainly that He alone is God, the Creator of all things. For the supreme sublimity of the Godhead, he says, can neither be divided nor endure a partner. Indeed even earthly kings, such as "the brotherhood of the Thebans", the Roman twins, and the kinsmen by marriage Pompey and Caesar, could not bear the partnership of another reigning beside them. What indeed of this: if we look at natural things, do we not see that bees, flocks and herds have one leader, just as there is one Ruler of the world, Who can neither be seen, nor grasped, nor ever sufficiently estimated? And since He is one, He is not called by many names, but His whole name is God. And because He is diffused everywhere, He cannot be enclosed within one small shrine, but His temple is the whole world. Finally the common people, however unlearned, by exclaiming again and again, naturally call upon Him and confess that He exists.

Finally, in the third part of this work, Cyprian makes plain to all what the genuine doctrine of the Christians concerning Christ is. Now the kingdom of the Jews, he says, flourished for as long as they obeyed the divine precepts.

But after they spurned those things, they lost the grace given to them by God, and, exiles from their soil and sky, they wander dispersed through the whole world. God therefore, as He had promised, chose for Himself another and more faithful people, which should receive the grace and indulgence lost by the Jews. At the appointed time, therefore, He sent His Son, Who is word, power, reason, wisdom and glory. He, descending into a virgin with the Holy Spirit cooperating, was made man, mingled with God. He is therefore the arbiter of Christians, their master, illuminator, teacher and mediator, Who leads us to the Father.

The Jews indeed knew that this was He Whom their sacred Prophets had foretold would come both at that time and at the end of the world; but, blinded by their crimes, they deny this first coming of His and await the second. Yet because He performed almost countless miracles, they said that He was great. And certainly, when He Himself lived as a man among men, all those things came to pass which had been foretold of Him by those same prophets. Towards the end of His life, however, the teachers and leading men of the Jews, provoked by His divine teaching, extorted from Pontius Pilate, who was governing Syria on the Roman side, that He should be fastened to a cross. But He, dying on it, gave up His spirit of His own accord, and on the third day thereafter, returned to life, He showed Himself to be seen by His disciples. For forty days He taught those with whom He kept company the things which they were afterwards to teach others. Finally He was taken up into heaven, whence He will come, when the world has been destroyed, to judge all men. His disciples, for their part, spread everywhere the teaching received from Him, which they demonstrated to be true not only by their voice but by tortures, crosses and other kinds of punishment, endured with wonderful constancy even unto death.

Article II.

On the author, title, beginning, integrity and argument of this book; and why it is sometimes inscribed with the name of a letter.

All with one voice and with great agreement of mind acknowledge, and have always acknowledged, that Cyprian is the author of this book. And who can doubt this, which Augustine indicates in no obscure way in these words? "A follower of the Apostolic rule, the bishop Cyprian, disputing about the one true God against the worshippers of many and false gods, brings forward many testimonies from their books, whose authors they regard as distinguished, that is, from that truth which they hold in iniquity (Augustine, book against Petilian on the one Baptism, chapter 4, § 6, page 530, volume 9)." More expressly still, Jerome wrote to Magnus: "With what brevity, with what knowledge of all histories, with what splendour of words and meanings did Cyprian treat [the theme] that idols are not gods (Jerome, Letter 83, page 937)?" Moreover, to cite many other writers of different ages, all attesting the same thing, would be as easy for us as it would be useless to others. Is there any need, then, for that to be proved at greater length which is called into controversy by no one?

But it seems far more difficult to say what the true and genuine title of this book is, and what its beginning is. For in the older Colbertine manuscript, a book written 800 years ago, as they suppose, it reads thus: « Here begins That idols are not gods. » Then straight away the book begins thus: « That idols are not gods, and that God is one, and that in believers given (read datum, 'it is given') that those whom the common people worship are not gods, is known from this. Kings once, etc. » The very same is presented in the royal codex 3974 and in several others, except that in the title there is added 'against the Pagans', which two words were certainly never Cyprian's.

In the ancient copy of our monastery, however, formerly of Corbie, which is said to be of almost the same age as the Colbertine, we read this: « Here begins the Letter of Cecilius Cyprian, That idols are not gods. » The first three words, however, were not written originally, but were added afterwards, though by the same hand. The book, or, as it is called there, the Letter, begins thus: « That those whom the common people worship are not gods is known from this. Kings once, etc. » And not very different from these are the words written thus in the Tarnian codex: « Letter of Cecilius Cyprian on this, that idols are not gods. » Then next: « That those whom the common people worship are not gods is known from this. Kings once, etc. » The more recent Colbertine codex, however, has this opening without a title: « That those whom the world worships are not gods is known from this, » etc. And at the end: « That idols are not gods ends. »

The most distinguished Baluze, moreover, has informed us that in almost all the manuscript codices of this book which he has in his possession and has gathered from elsewhere, it begins, without any other title, with the words which we have just noted are written in the Colbertine copy.

We have also seen certain codices mutilated by half and more, at whose beginning is prefixed an index of all the books of Cyprian which had been copied in them. In this index this simple title of the present book is given: « That idols are not gods. » Whether the copyists transcribed it from the words of Jerome already cited, or from elsewhere, no one could easily say. But it is certain and plain that this title is incomplete, since it represents only the first part of this treatise.

Nor do the editions vary any less. For in those which were printed in the year 1540 and the following year, it is entitled: « Fourth Treatise, on the Vanity of Idols; » and the beginning of the book is: « That idols are not gods, and that God is one, and that it has been given to believers that those whom the common people worship are not gods, is known from this. Kings once, etc. » In the edition prepared by Morel in the year 1564, however, this is the title: « That idols are not gods: » and the opening of the book: « That idols are not gods, and that God is one, etc., » as in the earlier edition. But in others, of the years 1593 and 1606, this is the title: « That idols are not gods and that God is one, and that Christ has been given as salvation to believers, or on the vanity of idols; » and the beginning of the book: « That those whom the common people worship are not gods is known from this. Kings once, etc. »

Rigaltius kept both the same title and the same beginning of the book in the careful edition he produced. Finally the one in charge of the Oxford [edition] rejected all these, prefixed this title, « On the Vanity of Idols, » and began the book with these words: « That those whom the common people worship are not gods is known from this. Kings once, etc. » He testifies that he kept only those things which seemed to him better suited to describing the book. But who will deny that this title of the book is not better than that one, « That Idols Are Not Gods, » which can be confirmed by the authority of Jerome? But, as we have said, it presents only the argument of the first part of this book, not its whole argument.

We cannot, therefore, affirm with certainty what the true inscription of this book is, and what its opening. Erasmus, indeed, suspected that those things had been added by some learned man, and that nothing else remains to us but a fragment of this work, which has had its head cut off (Erasmus, Notes on this book). For, he says, Lactantius is our witness that very many volumes were written by Cyprian. But Lactantius did indeed say that many were published by him, but was entirely silent on what subject they were written, and afterwards made mention by name of only one discourse, that to Demetrianus (Lactantius, book 5; Institutes ch. 1, p. 459, and ch. 4, p. 471). Erasmus could, however, also have cited Augustine and Jerome, whom we quoted a little before, the first of whom attested that many testimonies of them were brought forward by Cyprian in his book against the heathen, while the second [attested] that a knowledge of all histories is displayed in it (Augustine, book against Petilian on the One Baptism, ch. 4, § 6, p. 530, vol. 9). But this latter said that this was done with the utmost brevity. And certainly in this book only the notable volume of Alexander the Great to his mother is cited under its own name. But because Cyprian gathered very many things against the gentiles concerning their gods, which had been handed down by many through memory and writings, it is for this reason without doubt that Augustine said that these things too are proved by the testimonies of heathen writers.

Erasmus moreover draws another conjecture that this book is mutilated from the fact that it begins abruptly. Nor shall we oppose him and the others who will judge, and will show, that in the first codices, or in others copied a little after Cyprian's age, there was no inscription, and that it began with these words: « Kings once, etc. » But they will have to prove what is most difficult, namely to whom the omission of this title is to be ascribed: whether to Cyprian himself, writing in great haste, or to the negligence of the scribes, who in a not unusual manner had left an empty space in which they would write that title in larger letters, and in red lead as well. Further, let it suffice to have noted that the one which is read in so different a manner in various codices, both unpublished and published, does not seem to have come from Cyprian. Moreover, several judge that the fragment in the first part of this book, of which we shall treat later, is spurious and supposititious. There is therefore no small reason for doubting whether this book has come down to us wholly uncorrupted.

But the more obscure this is, the more evidently by

all is it perceived what its subject is. For who, once he has read it through with running eyes (it is very short), does not at once notice that it demonstrates that the gods of the gentiles are false, that there is one God, and that Christ His Son is our teacher and redeemer?

Finally, we have already seen that this little work is headed with the name of Letter in many manuscript copies. But this ought to seem strange to no one, since most of Cyprian's works are called Letters, Treatises and Books indifferently by the ancient writers. Nor is there any need for us to demonstrate what has been more than sufficiently proved by others, and especially by the Bishop of Oxford. But since this composition bears no appearance of a letter, it seems better to abide by the judgement of those who held that it should be placed among the treatises (Oxford Preface, in the Annals of Cyprian, p. 4).

Article III.

At what time, and how hastily, this book was written by Cyprian.

Although no indication of the time at which this book was written is to be found in it, some nevertheless think that it was brought out by Cyprian as soon as he had been regenerated in the sacred waters of Baptism, and before he was initiated into the order of the presbyterate. They strive, moreover, to confirm their opinion by certain conjectures. The first they draw from this, that the more learned men who, having rejected the false religion of the heathen, embraced the Christian one were accustomed to prove by some public writing how sincere their conversion was. But did all, I do not say Christians, but defenders of the Christian religion, write books immediately from the beginning of their conversion, by which to give a surer pledge and monument of their faith? No one, surely, would say so. Then again, Cyprian, before he published this book, had sufficiently proved the integrity of his faith both by writing and by deed. For he had already written, as they admit, the book to Donatus, in which he openly gave the reason for the Christian religion he had taken up. Moreover, he gave a most certain pledge of it when, while still a catechumen, he was inflamed with such ardour for Christian perfection that, having sold all his estates, he distributed the money collected from them to the poor. What further need was there, then, that by publishing another book he should prove again a faith already more than sufficiently proved?

The second conjecture of those who think that this book was composed by Cyprian when he had very recently become a Christian is taken from this, that in this book he used words that are by no means Christian, such as these: "Kingdoms ..... are changed by lot;" and afterwards, of Christ recalled to life, "To return again to those above (Cyprian, On the Vanity of Idols, pp. 13 and 16). Cyprian also, they say, heaped together many profane histories, and did not cite testimonies of sacred Scripture, which in other books he adduced abundantly and sometimes, as they further say, more often than was fitting. Finally, this whole book is composed of things which from Minucius

Felix's and Tertullian's books he sometimes copied out word for word. In his other books, however, we see nothing at all similar. From all these weighty reasons, moreover, they think it is rightly concluded that this book was published by Cyprian as soon as he gave his name to the Christian religion.

But those who argue in this way cannot be unaware that the noun sors [lot] is frequently taken in the sacred Scriptures of both the Old and the New Testament in the same sense as by Cyprian (Num. 26:33 and 36; Josh. 16, 17, etc.). What, moreover, is less Christian in these words concerning Christ, "To return to those above," than in these of Christ Himself: "You are from beneath, I am from the heights," that is, from the heights, or the seats above (Luke 1; Acts 1, etc.; John 8:23)? Cyprian, further, said that Christ, raised from the dead, "returns to those above," meaning not indeed the gods but the earth, which is higher than the lower regions to which He had descended when dead. As for profane histories, do not Tertullian and Minucius Felix, do not Arnobius and Lactantius, do not other defenders of the Christians argue against the heathen with the same or similar ones? Nor ought it to seem strange to anyone that in this book, which he wrote in haste, he drew a good deal from Tertullian and Minucius Felix, that he brings forward no testimonies of sacred Scripture expressly, that in it he does not speak so elegantly as in his others, and finally that he borrowed not his own arguments, which he had no leisure to devise, but those of others, and sometimes their words.

For how great the haste was with which he composed this book, infer from this: what is written in its second part, though it is shorter than the other two, could easily have been brought into better order. Moreover, where he discourses on earthly kingdoms, he there repeats the adverb caeterum [moreover] three times within a few lines. First: "Moreover," he says, "the Assyrians held kingdoms" (Cyprian, p. 14). And two lines later: "Moreover, if you return to the order." Finally, a little after: "Moreover, Regulus too observed the auspices" (ibid., p. 13).

Since, then, he was compelled to finish this book with great speed, can this not be an indication that it was published by him when he withdrew from Carthage in order to flee the persecution? For at that time he judged it part of his pastoral office to strengthen Christians in the faith, to refute the gentiles, and to check the reckless attacks of Demetrianus, who, as we said in the preceding chapter, had often come to him, and indeed for no other reason than to defend his false religion with clamorous cries. But on these conjectures of ours and of others the more expert will judge. For nothing at all certain presents itself by which the true date of this treatise may be assigned. A judgement on it could certainly be passed with more certainty if we had its genuine title and a beginning in no way doubtful.

Article IV.

On the manuscript and printed copies of this book and the notes of various [scholars] on it.

Several copies of this little work, by copyists of various ages

written, are found in various libraries. We ourselves had four to hand: an older Colbert manuscript copied 800 years ago; a Corbie manuscript of equal antiquity, now of Saint-Germain; a third, from Tarnia, one century later than these; and lastly a fourth, another Colbert manuscript written 300 years ago. Baluze, however, collected many others for preparing a new edition of the works of Cyprian, and he gave us this list of them. The first four are 800 years old, namely the Pithou manuscript, that of Saint-Corneille of Compiègne, that of Saint-Martin of Tours, and that of Saint-Remi of Reims. One is 700 years old, that of the monastery of Saint-Michel in peril of the sea. Two are 600 years old, that of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés and the Baluze manuscript. Three are 500 years old, of which the first is from the monastery of Saint-Pierre in the Nivernais, the second from Saint-Victor of Paris, and the third from Blessed Mary of Liessies. Five other codices are 400 years old: a Baluze manuscript, another of Bouhier, one of the Sorbonne, one of Saint-Éloi of Arras, and one of Saint-Victor of Paris. Lastly, four are 300 or 250 years old: that of Saint-Denis of Reims, that of Saint-Corneille of Compiègne, that of Grenoble, and that of the Lord de Lamoignon, mitred president of the Parlement of Paris.

As for the editions of this book, they are the same as those of the others printed together with it, which we have reviewed above. There is therefore no need for the thread of our discourse to be drawn out any further about them.

Notes and observations on this one were composed by the same men who composed them on the preceding book. Erasmus published one on it, which, as we have already said, concerns the title and opening of this little work. Pamelius wrote seventy-nine, and in the first forty-nine he explains the things that Cyprian puts forward in the first part of this book to overthrow the false religion of the pagans. The remaining ones, on the other two parts of the same book, in which the same Cyprian sets out and establishes the teaching of Christians about God and Christ the Lord, are shorter.

Further, Goulart had all these annotations reprinted word for word in the edition of Cyprian's Works that he prepared. He added nothing of his own to them, except that the crime of idolatry is very ancient, which he thinks arose from the descendants of Noah when, after the flood, they fell away from the worship of God. For where, he says, in the book of Genesis Rachel is said to have stolen her father's idols (Gen. 31:19 and 54), they are spoken of as things then widespread and common. But others certainly hold that the origin of idolatry was far older, as we have shown elsewhere (Vol. 1 of the Apparatus, p. 720 ff.).

Next, the observations produced by Rigault serve to emend the text by means of the various readings of old codices. In some others he has tried to explain Cyprian's words, or to elucidate and confirm them by testimonies of other ancient writers.

Further, the man in charge of the Oxford edition prepared notes of two kinds, just as on the preceding and other works of Cyprian. In the first kind he presents the various readings of certain ancient codices, collected

by himself, or transmitted to him by others. But in the second [ones], which are certainly quite lengthy, he explains, or confirms by the authority of others, the things that are said in the first part of this book against the fictitious gods of the gentiles; in the others, however, he is far briefer.

Chapter VI.

NEW OBSERVATIONS ON THIS BOOK.

FIRST ARTICLE.

On the things which Cyprian excerpted from Tertullian and Minucius Felix, and how in two other books he proved by testimonies of sacred Scripture the things which in this one he briefly recounts concerning the Jews, the Christians, and Christ the Lord.

There are three parts of this book, of which Cyprian took the first and second, as we have said, from the Octavius of Minucius, the third from the Apologeticum of Tertullian, and sometimes in the very words of each, and especially of the latter (Tertullian, Apologeticum, ch. 21, p. 21). What he drew from Minucius, nearly all of it we have reported together in our dissertation on that author's Octavius. The other things, which he borrowed from Tertullian his master, have been explained in our preceding dissertation (Dissertation on Minucius, ch. 2, art. 6, and on Tertullian, ch. 9, art. 2 and following). Yet it does not seem to us that he took each and every thing from the one rather than from the other. For no one can affirm either with certainty or with ease whether what he related in the first part of this book about demons was drawn from Minucius Felix rather than from Tertullian. If anyone, moreover, should wish to investigate more curiously where in our dissertations we undertake to explain the passages of Cyprian taken from either, he will without difficulty find them marked in the summaries of the chapters, or in the general index of our whole book. There is therefore no need to review these things one by one, which to most would be tedious and to not many of great use.

Since, too, we have tried in those same dissertations of ours to unravel, illustrate, and smooth out nearly all the things that occur as difficult or rather obscure in this treatise of Cyprian, it would likewise be a useless labour for our observations to be now repeated and printed again. Therefore we shall touch only on those things which are peculiar to our author, and which we ought not to pass over without some remark.

First, then, it must be noted that the things which Cyprian related in the third part of this book concerning the Jews, rejected by God on account of their crimes, concerning the Christians put in their place, concerning Christ, God and man, and His mortal life, are clearly demonstrated by many testimonies of sacred Scripture in his two books to Quirinus against the Jews (Cyprian, book On the Vanity of Idols, p. 15 and following). And indeed in their preface he speaks thus: "I have composed two little books, regulated with equal measure, one in which we have endeavoured to show that the Jews, according to the things which had been foretold beforehand, have departed from God, and have lost the favour of the Lord, which had long ago been given to them and had been promised for the future:

but that the Christians have succeeded into their place, meriting the Lord by faith, and coming from all nations and from the whole world. Likewise another little book contains the mystery of Christ: that He has come Who was announced according to the Scriptures, and has done and accomplished all the things by which it can be understood and known that He is the One Who was foretold (the same, Against the Jews, preface, p. 18)." By these two books, therefore, the most holy Martyr satisfied those who could desire that the things he had handed down in this one in a briefer exposition concerning all these matters should be proved by the testimonies of sacred Scripture.

Article II.

How clearly Cyprian asserts the orthodox teaching concerning the supreme divinity of Christ and the mystery of the most holy Trinity.

We may not pass over without some remark how plainly Cyprian asserts and proclaims the supreme divinity of the Son of God, Christ the Lord. For after he had most evidently proved against the heathen, by various weighty arguments which have been examined in our earlier dissertations, that God is one and almighty, he declares this concerning Christ: "This is our God, this is Christ." (Cyprian, On the Vanity of Idols, p. 15.) Since, therefore, he first demonstrated against all the gentiles that there is only one God, and now most eloquently asserts that Christ also is God, it necessarily follows from this that he and all the other Christians of his time believed that the divinity of Christ and of His eternal Father is the same. For if by these words he had wished to signify that They are two Gods, or one more powerful than the other, he would have offered his throat to his gentile adversaries, who were vaunting that there are many gods, and that Jupiter is more powerful than the others. He therefore affirms emphatically that Christ is true God and one God with His Father. For this reason he added in the same place without any hesitation: "This is the power of God, this His reason, this His wisdom and glory"; and a little before, "the Word and Son of God (ibid.)". But the power, reason, Word and Son of God is of the same nature, substance and eternity as His eternal Father Himself, as we demonstrated in the preceding dissertation (Dissertation on Tertullian, ch. 8, art. 1 ff.).

Moreover he declares without hesitation that Christ was recalled from death to life for this reason, "that He might show the power of the divine majesty (Cyprian, ibid., p. 16)."

But what divinity could He show, except that very one which He had before and always had? Therefore, when He returned to life not by another's power but by His own, He then showed that He had always had the power of the divine majesty, that is, the same divinity as His Father.

Nor is this said by him only in that book, but also once and again in his letter to Caecilius: "Jesus Christ our Lord and God (the same, Letter 63, to Caecilius, pp. 148 and 155)." And elsewhere, where he discourses on His second coming at the end of the world, he teaches there that He is foretold by these words of the Psalmist: God will come manifestly, our God, and will not keep silence, and by these

also of Isaiah: The Lord God of hosts shall go forth. And after he has proved this, he draws this conclusion: "This is our God, that is, not the God of all, but of the faithful and believing, Who, when He comes manifest in His second advent, will not keep silent" (The same, On the Good of Patience, p. 220; Ps. 49:3; Isa. 42:13). But by what means, pray, did he so often and so many times say and repeat that Christ is God, unless he held it as altogether certain that this was the belief both of those to whom he was writing and of the rest of the Christians, heretics excepted?

Yet he did not stop there, but goes further, and plainly and openly declares that Christ ascended into the heavens, "so that the disciples, spread throughout the world, with their Master and God admonishing them, might give the precepts of God unto salvation" (Cyprian, On the Vanity of Idols, p. 16). Do you see how distinctly Christ is called by him not only the Master of His disciples, but also God, true God indeed and the same as the Father, since there cannot be several gods, as he had shown in the same place? Moreover, in the second book against the Jews he proves clearly, by various testimonies of sacred Scripture, that He is true God and coeternal with His Father (The same, Book 2 Against the Jews, §§ 5 and 6, pp. 34 ff.).

No less clearly does he assert and proclaim the divinity of the Holy Spirit, and the orthodox teaching on the Most Holy Trinity, in that letter which he had written in his own name and that of his colleagues, his fellow bishops assembled in synod, to Jubaianus on the Baptism of heretics. For first he laid down in it that the Baptism of these is valid: "If they confess with us the same Father, the same Son, the same Holy Spirit, the same Church" (The same, Letter 73, to Jubaianus, p. 200). Then, if anyone baptized among the heretics has been made a temple of God: "I ask," he says, "of which God? If of the Creator, he could not," become the temple of Him "in Whom," like the Marcionite, "he has not believed. If of Christ, neither can he become His temple who denies that Christ is God. If of the Holy Spirit, since the three are one, how can the Holy Spirit be reconciled to him who is the enemy either of the Father," as the Patripassians are, "or of the Son," as the Anthropians are, "and the other," as he himself puts it, "plagues of heretics?" (Ibid.) But when he said there that those three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity are one, does he not there follow Tertullian his teacher, who, as we noted in the preceding dissertation, had said in his book against Praxeas: "Which three are one [thing], not one [person]" (Dissertation on Tertullian, ch. 8, art. 3)? Who then does not see that the belief of both concerning the three divine Persons, and their one and the same nature, is the same? And how can three be one, except because the three divine Persons have one nature, by which those three are one and the same God?

Finally, a little later he teaches that by this command of Christ, that the nations be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, they are ordered "to be baptized in the full and united Trinity" (Cyprian, ibid., p. 206). But how can the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

be one and a united Trinity, unless their nature is the same, and they are one and the same God?

Nor let anyone raise against us the words of Cyprian that follow, in which he said openly that the Father is called by Christ "His Lord and God." For there he is speaking of Him who, insofar as He is man, asks to be glorified by the Father, and obeyed Him even unto death. Away, then, with the most witless cavils of a certain impious Socinian, who from this and from some other similar ways of speaking wished to infer that the divinity of Christ was denied by Cyprian, which he proclaimed as often as he did openly and clearly.

Article III.

On Christ as man, and in what sense it could be said, "The Holy Spirit is clothed with flesh."

Let us proceed, if you please, and see how clearly and plainly Cyprian asserts that Christ is not only true God, but also true man. He was sent, he says, doubtless by His eternal Father, as "the Enlightener and Teacher of the human race," just as it had been foretold beforehand "through all the prophets" (Cyprian, On the Vanity of Idols, p. 15). He did indeed say "all the prophets," but because he was aiming at brevity in this work, he did not think it should be proved there at greater length. But this he certainly proved with deliberate care, chiefly in the second book against the Jews (the same, book 2 against the Jews, § 10, p. 37). To that end, moreover, all those testimonies of the ancient Testament contribute, by which, as he shows, it had been foretold that the old law was to be abrogated and a new one substituted, that Christ was to come, and that the true religion was to be founded by Him (and book 1, p. 17 ff.). And since no one can deny that all these things concern the same Christ and His mortal life, Cyprian therefore without doubt concluded that He had been announced through all the prophets. For some foretold His coming, some more things, others fewer things about Him. Furthermore, in our earlier dissertations we have set forth and explained many predictions of the sacred seers concerning the Christ who was to come, cited by Lactantius and Tertullian.

Then next Cyprian says: "This Word and Son of God descends into the Virgin; with the Holy Spirit cooperating He is clothed with flesh." And so indeed it reads in the printed editions and in certain more recent manuscript codices. But in the margin of the older editions this is noted: "Otherwise: the spirit is clothed with flesh." But what, I ask you, is signified by this annotation other than that this was the reading of other copies? And certainly it is so written not only in the Corbie, or Saint-Germain, codex, but also in others, at least seven, older copies and of better repute. In some, however, "flesh by the Holy Spirit"; in the Tarnian codex, "He is clothed with flesh by the operation of the Holy Spirit." You see indeed how varied the readings of the codices are in this place.

But because these words, "the Spirit (in some 'Holy' is added) is clothed with flesh," could seem rather harsh to some, in the margin of the codex of Saint Martin of Tournai, and of two others cited by Pamelius, this was added by way of explanation: "When he says, with flesh the Spirit

Holy is clothed, he does not take the Person of the Holy Spirit, but that of the Son, Who Himself too is called spirit, according to that [saying]: God is spirit." These words Pamelius testifies were thrust into the very text of Cyprian by the copyists of the Affligem and Blandinian manuscripts.

Rigaltius, however, although he admitted the former reading, with the Holy Spirit cooperating, into the text of Cyprian, nevertheless in his notes plainly repudiates it, as having been devised by the subtler school of later ages. But if it is spurious, and fabricated by the sharper scholastics, why did he leave it in the text of Cyprian? And on what reasoning did he reject the other, which, as he himself admits, is found in the more ancient copies, and which he shows can be explained in this catholic sense: the Holy Spirit, that is, the person of the Son of God, Who is spirit, is clothed with flesh? But this explanation is far older than Rigaltius, which we pointed out a little earlier is found in the margins of three old manuscripts and in the text of two others.

But since Cyprian, as we have said, drew this part of his book chiefly from Tertullian, it will perhaps be not unprofitably worth the effort if we weigh a little more carefully whether the words of the Master can shed some light on this passage of his Disciple. Now Tertullian had said: the Word, or Speech of God, "having descended into a certain Virgin, and having been formed as flesh in her womb, is born man, mingled with God: the flesh, furnished with spirit, is nourished, grows up, speaks, teaches, works, and is Christ." (Tertullian, Apology, ch. 21, p. 21.) Do you see that these things were delivered by him in more words, which Cyprian rendered in fewer? Since, therefore, the mind of both is the same and the sense the same, we must indeed inquire what Tertullian, and consequently Cyprian, understood by the name of "flesh and spirit." Now by the name of flesh he seems quite often to signify the whole human nature of Christ, by which, formed in the womb of the Virgin, "He is born man"; doubtless because the evangelist had written: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." (John 1:14.) But if the matter is so, it must be said that Tertullian by the name "Spirit," or Holy Spirit, did not indeed designate the third [Person] of the Most Holy Trinity, but the second Person, of the divine Word, which is truly spirit and holy.

Nevertheless, if some room for conjecture were granted us, we would propose this one to you. Can it not be said that Tertullian there by the name "flesh" indicated only the body of Christ, and by the word spirit His soul? For "the flesh," he says, "furnished with spirit," that is, His flesh, or body, was furnished and informed with spirit, or soul. For although by this very name of flesh he quite often designates the whole man, that is, body and soul, this nevertheless does not prevent him from often also understanding by the name of flesh the body alone. For what else does he do in the whole book On the Flesh of Christ, except to show against the heretics that the flesh assumed by Him was not fictitious and feigned, but true? And there by the name of flesh he seems to denote only His body. In the same way, in the following book On the Resurrection of the Flesh

in disputing, he sets it over against the soul (On the Resurrection, ch. 8, p. 330 ff.). Yet in the book On the Soul he expressly defines the soul and the spirit of man as one and the same (same author, On the Soul, ch. 11, p. 271). For, to pass over more: “When the matter concerns the soul and the spirit,” he says, “the soul itself will be the spirit, just as the day [is] the light itself.”

What then prevents [us from holding] that in the Apologeticum he said that the flesh of Christ, formed in the Virgin's womb and furnished with spirit or soul, performed all the works of His human and mortal life? But if this is the true sense of Tertullian, can we not say that this same is the sense of Cyprian: The Word of God, having descended into the Virgin, is clothed with flesh [and] spirit, that is, His soul. Nor does it matter much, certainly, whether after spiritus the word sanctus was added. For who does not know that the soul of Christ is holy? However, we put forward this explanation only to those who can at times grant indulgence to conjectures, which we rarely indulge in.

Finally, our author said: “God is mingled with man,” which he has likewise drawn from these words of his master Tertullian: “Man is born mingled with God.” Again, then, you see the same things stated by both, but in different words. How they are to be understood, however, we have made plain in the preceding dissertation (Dissertation on Tertullian, ch. 9, art. 1).

Article IV.

On the origin of idolatry, and on certain ridiculous gods of the Romans noted in a doubtful or spurious fragment of this book, and on the cruel beginning of the Roman consuls.

All that Cyprian argues against the heathen concerning the origin of idolatry and their many false gods, everything that is worthy of any remark, we have striven to unfold and illustrate in our preceding dissertations. Very little therefore remains for us to observe. From the very beginning of the book, when our author traces the origin of the impious worship of false gods back to Saturn, he follows his teacher Tertullian, as we have already noted. A little later, moreover, just like the same Tertullian and Minucius Felix, he refutes the pagan Romans, who prated that by their piety towards the gods they had earned the empire of the whole circle of the earth (Cyprian, On the Vanity of Idols, p. 15; Dissertation on Tertullian, ch. 25, art. 1; Dissertation on Minucius, ch. 18 and 19, and on Tertullian, ch. 27, art. 3 ff.). But there, in the Rigaltian, the Oxford and certain other editions, these words are read: “Acca, Flora, harlots. So far indeed are names of gods invented among the Romans that there is among them even a god Viduus, who widows the body of the soul, who, as being deathly and funereal, is not kept within the walls but is placed outside, and nevertheless, because he has been made an exile, is condemned by the Roman religion rather than worshipped. There is also Scansus, named from ascents, and Forculus from doors, and Limentinus from thresholds, and Cardea from hinges, and Orbona from bereavements. These are the gods of the Romans” (Cyprian, same place, pp. 12 and 13). In our manuscripts, however, only this is found: “Acca and Flora

harlots. These are the gods of the Romans;” but all the rest is lacking, as in the editions published in the years 1540, 1541, 1564 and 1593. The editor of the Oxford edition also admits that these words are missing in the most approved copies, and that Cyprian's sense is disturbed by them. Yet he retained them in his text for this reason, because, he says, they are read in the Beneventan codex, in the Veronese, in at least one of the four Vossian codices, and in the Corbie codex. But what is to be said about the first three, which he cited on another's authority and which we have not seen, we have been able to learn nothing at all. This, however, we know for certain: that none of these words is found in the Corbie, or Saint-Germain, codex, which we have in hand. It is therefore remarkable how these words, and not a few of them, could have been omitted in so many codices, written in various ages and in different regions. Do they not, then, smell plainly enough of a pure and simple addition? But the knot of this difficulty will doubtless be untied, with his customary sagacity, by that most distinguished man Étienne Baluze, who, as we have said, consulted so many manuscript codices which we were not permitted to see.

But although these words are plainly spurious and adulterated, some will nevertheless perhaps ask us who those gods were. To such curious persons, therefore, if there are any, we shall reply that Forculus, Limentinus, Cardea and Orbana have already been dealt with by us in our dissertation on the books of Arnobius. (Dissert. on Arnobius, ch. 13, art. 5 and 6.) There indeed we showed plainly that these deities were placed by the Gentiles among the number of those whom they had dreamed to be set over each and every thing. Such also were Viduus and Scansus, described clearly enough in the annotated editions of this book with which we are dealing. But Augustine reported more about all these ridiculous gods from Varro, whom it is very easy for anyone to consult. (Aug., City of God book 4,

chap. 8, p. 93 and following, and book 6, chap. 9, p. 150.) Finally, Cyprian shows that the empire was neither given to the Romans nor increased on account of their piety towards their fictitious gods. "For we see," he says, "that the consulship began just as the kingship did. Brutus kills his sons, so that the commendation of his office may grow from the approval of a crime." (Cyprian, On the Vanity of Idols, p. 13.) Now the story of Tarquin the Proud, who was driven from the kingship by the Romans, is known to all. Brutus, who afterwards became the first consul, ordered his own sons and his wife's brothers to be beaten with rods and beheaded, because they had conspired with others to bring Tarquin back. If you want a witness on this matter, you have Virgil, quoted by Augustine, whose verses are these:

Do you wish to see also the Tarquin kings, and the proud soul of Brutus the avenger, and the fasces won back? He shall be the first to receive the power of a consul and the cruel axes, and as a father he shall summon his sons, who were stirring up new wars, to punishment for the sake of fair liberty. (Virgil, Aeneid 6.812 and following.)

If you want more, go to Servius on these verses of Maro; to Titus Livy; to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Valerius Maximus, and the other writers of Roman history. Furthermore, by many other weighty arguments Cyprian plainly proves how false and absurd was the boast of the Romans, by which they babbled that their empire had been founded and spread to the farthest parts of the world on account of their piety towards their gods. (Augustine, City of God, book 3, chap. 16, p. 72; Livy, beginning of book 2; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, book 5; Valerius Maximus, book 5, chap. 8, § 1.) But these arguments have been sufficiently explained in our earlier dissertations, unless we are quite mistaken. (Dissertation on Minucius, chaps. 18 and 19; and on Lactantius, chap. 32, art. 1 and following; and on Tertullian, chap. 27, art. 3 and following.)