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J. Patout Burns
Cyprian the Bishop -----
 
Allen Brent
Cyprian and Roman Carthage |
Epistle LXIII.
13. For because Christ bore us all, in that He also bore our sins, we see that
in the water is understood the people, but in the wine is showed the blood of
Christ. But when the water is mingled in the cup with wine, the people is made
one with Christ, and the assembly of believers is associated and conjoined with
Him on whom it believes; which association and conjunction of water and wine is
so mingled in the Lord’s cup, that that mixture cannot any more be separated.
Whence, moreover, nothing can separate the Church—that is, the people
established in the Church, faithfully and firmly persevering in that which they
have believed—from Christ, in such a way as to prevent their undivided love from
always abiding and adhering. Thus, therefore, in consecrating the cup of the
Lord, water alone cannot be offered, even as wine alone cannot be offered. For
if any one offer wine only, the blood of Christ is dissociated from us; but if
the water be alone, the people are dissociated from Christ; but when both are
mingled, and are joined with one another by a close union, there is completed a
spiritual and heavenly sacrament. Thus the cup of the Lord is not indeed water
alone, nor wine alone, unless each be mingled with the other; just as, on the
other hand, the body of the Lord cannot be flour alone or water alone, unless
both should be united and joined together and compacted in the mass of one
bread; in which very sacrament our people are shown to be made one, so that in
like manner as many grains, collected, and ground, and mixed together into one
mass, make one bread; so in Christ, who is the heavenly bread, we may know that
there is one body, with which our number is joined and united.
14. There is then no reason, dearest brother, for any one to think that the
custom of certain persons is to be followed, who have thought in time past that
water alone should be offered in the cup of the Lord. For we must inquire whom
they themselves have followed. For if in the sacrifice which Christ offered none
is to be followed but Christ, assuredly it behoves us to obey and do that which
Christ did, and what He commanded to be done, since He Himself says in the
Gospel, “If ye do whatsoever I command you, henceforth I call you not servants,
but friends.” And that Christ alone ought to be heard, the Father also testifies
from heaven, saying, “This is my well-beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased;
hear ye Him.” Wherefore, if Christ alone must be heard, we ought not to give
heed to what another before us may have thought was to be done, but what Christ,
who is before all, first did. Neither is it becoming to follow the practice of
man, but the truth of God; since God speaks by Isaiah the prophet, and says, “In
vain do they worship me, teaching the commandments and doctrines of men.” And
again the Lord in the Gospel repeats this same saying, and says, “Ye reject the
commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.” Moreover, in another
place He establishes it, saying, “Whosoever shall break one of these least
commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the
kingdom of heaven.” But if we may not break even the least of the Lord’s
commandments, how much rather is it forbidden to infringe such important ones,
so great, so pertaining to the very sacrament of our Lord’s passion and our own
redemption, or to change it by human tradition into anything else than what was
divinely appointed! For if Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, is Himself the chief
priest of God the Father, and has first offered Himself a sacrifice to the
Father, and has commanded this to be done in commemoration of Himself, certainly
that priest truly discharges the office of Christ, who imitates that which
Christ did; and he then offers a true and full sacrifice in the Church to God
the Father, when he proceeds to offer it according to what he sees Christ
Himself to have offered.
15. But the discipline of all religion and truth is overturned, unless what is
spiritually prescribed be faithfully observed; unless indeed any one should fear
in the morning sacrifices, lest by the taste of wine he should be redolent of
the blood of Christ. Therefore thus the brotherhood is beginning even to be kept
back from the passion of Christ in persecutions, by learning in the offerings to
be disturbed concerning His blood and His blood-shedding. Moreover, however, the
Lord says in the Gospel, “Whosoever shall be ashamed of me, of him shall the Son
of man be ashamed.” And the apostle also speaks, saying, “If I pleased men, I
should not be the servant of Christ.” But how can we shed our blood for Christ,
who blush to drink the blood of Christ?
16. Does any one perchance flatter himself with this notion, that although in
the morning, water alone is seen to be offered, yet when we come to supper we
offer the mingled cup? But when we sup, we cannot call the people together to
our banquet, so as to celebrate the truth of the sacrament in the presence of
all the brotherhood. But still it was not in the morning, but after supper, that
the Lord offered the mingled cup. Ought we then to celebrate the Lord’s cup
after supper, that so by continual repetition of the Lord’s supper we may offer
the mingled cup? It behoved Christ to offer about the evening of the day, that
the very hour of sacrifice might show the setting and the evening of the world;
as it is written in Exodus, “And all the people of the synagogue of the children
of Israel shall kill it in the evening.” And again in the Psalms, “Let the
lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice.” But we celebrate the
resurrection of the Lord in the morning.
17. And because we make mention of His passion in all sacrifices (for the Lord’s
passion is the sacrifice which we offer), we ought to do nothing else than what
He did. For Scripture says, “For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this
cup, ye do show forth the Lord’s death till He come.” As often, therefore, as we
offer the cup in commemoration of the Lord and of His passion, let us do what it
is known the Lord did. And let this conclusion be reached, dearest brother: if
from among our predecessors any have either by ignorance or simplicity not
observed and kept this which the Lord by His example and teaching has instructed
us to do, he may, by the mercy of the Lord, have pardon granted to his
simplicity. But we cannot be pardoned who are now admonished and instructed by
the Lord to offer the cup of the Lord mingled with wine according to what the
Lord offered, and to direct letters to our colleagues also about this, so that
the evangelical law and the Lord’s tradition may be everywhere kept, and there
be no departure from what Christ both taught and did.
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