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Cyprian
How differently our Lord must have settled this inquiry had He given the supremacy to one of the Apostles, or had He designed the supremacy of any single pastor to be perpetual in His Church! “Who should be greatest?” ask this question of any Romanist theologian, and he answers, in the words of the Creed of Pius IV., “the Bishop of Rome, successor to St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Christ.” But why was no such answer given by our Lord? And why does St. Peter know nothing of it when he says, “The elders who are among you I exhort, who am also an elder…feed the flock of God, taking the oversight…not as being lords over God’s heritage,” etc. So also in the Council of Jerusalem, how humbly he sits under the presidency of James,[4656] and again how cheerfully he permits the apostles to send him forth, and “give him mission” to Samaria![4657] St. Paul, moreover, who was “not a whit behind the chiefest of the Apostles,”[4658] overrules him, and reforms his judgment.[4659]
If I have forborne in these notes to refer frequently to the Treatise of Bishop Sage, who often elucidates our author in a very learned manner, it is because he is almost wholly a controvertist, and therefore not to my purpose in this work. For his Cyprian,[4660] however, I entertain a sincere respect; and, as it might seem otherwise should I omit all reference to that work, I place its title in the footnote. Profoundly do I feel what another Scottish Doctor[4661] has beautifully said, “It is a loss, even to those that oppose errors and divisions, that they are forced to be busied that way.”
The text of Cyprian[4662] is: “Catulus leonis Juda, de frutice fili mi ascendisti, recubans obdormisti velut leo, et velut catulus leonis.” Now, with this compare the comment of Calmet, citing the Septuagint (ἐκ βλαστοῦ = e germine), and rendering by metaphrase, “e medio plantarum, sive herbarum germinantium, ascendisti.”
Here, then, we have the idea precisely equivalent to Jer. xlix. 19: “Ecce quasi leo ascendet de superbia Jordanis.” The lion is recumbent among the sprouting twigs (frutice, or foliage) of the Jordan’s banks in the springtime. The swelling of the river, which the melting of snows from Lebanon causes to overflow, rouses the reposing creature; and he goes up into the mountains. But Cyprian had in hand the old African,[4663] which seems to follow the LXX., and St. Jerome’s vulgate did not; and this word frutice animates Cyprian’s poetic genius. Its springtide imagery corresponding with Easter,[4664] he reads into it all the New Testament fulfilment: “Thou layedst down and sleepedst as a lion, and as a lion’s whelp—but, from the shooting of the first verdure in spring, thou hast gone up on high—thou hast ascended.” “Quis excitabit illum” is separated from this in the Paris text, and in the Septuagint, which the Old Latin followed, and so I have pointed it, though the Edinburgh reads: “and as a lion’s whelp; who shall stir him up?”
Quirinus, Cyprian’s “son” in the Gospel, seems to me to have been a catechumen of the competent class, i.e., preparing for baptism at Easter; or possibly of the higher sort, preparing for the first communion. Many tokens lead me to surmise that he may have been of Jewish birth; and, if so, he was probably baptized Quirinus after St. Luke ii. 2, as St. Paul borrowed his Roman name from Sergius Paulus.[4665] The use of the word secta, here rendered “school,” suggests to me that the Vulgate got it (and so our English version) out of the old African Latin in Acts xxviii. 22. If Quirinus was a Hebrew, there is a playful irony in Cyprian’s use of the word in expounding the pure morality of “the sect” everywhere spoken against.
Origen’s treatise Against Celsus shows how cunningly the adversaries of the Gospel could assume a Jewish position against it;[4666] and the first two books of that work are designed to establish a perfect harmony between the Old Testament and the New, proving Christ to be the substance and sum of both. Cyprian may have foreseen the perils menacing the Church from the school of Plotinus, already rising, and which soon sent forth the venomous Porphyry. He was but a presbyter when he wrote this excellent defence of the faith; and his earnest pastoral care for his pupil is shown by his addition of a third book, entirely practical. The catechetical system of St. Luke’s day[4667] had become a developed feature of the Church (St. Cyril’s lectures in the succeeding century show how it was further expanded), and it also illustrates the purity of her moral teaching. Our author harmonizes faith and works, and presents her simple scriptural precepts in marked contrast with the putrid casuistry[4668] which Pascal exposes, and which grew up in the West with the enforcement of auricular confession by Innocent III., a.d. 1215. The theory of transubstantiation was also made a dogma at the same time, and operated, with the other, to the total extinguishment of the primitive discipline and worship. The withholding of the chalice in the Holy Communion followed, a.d. 1415.
Clement was able to remind the heathen, half a century before,[4669] that Christ had “already made the universe an ocean of blessings.” Here we have the moral canons of Christianity reflecting the Light of the World, and they show us how practically it operated. As I have noted, the first Christian hospital was founded (a.d. 350) by Ephraem Syrus. His example was followed by St. Basil, who also founded another for lepers. The founding of hostels as refuges for travellers was an institution of the Nicene period. “In the time of Chrysostom,” says one not too well disposed towards the Gospel,[4670] “the church of Antioch supported three thousand widows and virgins, besides strangers and sick. Legacies for the poor became common; and it was not infrequent for men and women who desired to live a life of especial sanctity, and especially for priests who attained the episcopacy, as a first act, to bestow their properties in charity. A Christian, it was maintained, should devote at least one-tenth of his profits to the poor. A priest named Thalasius collected blind beggars in an asylum on the banks of the Euphrates. A merchant named Apollinus founded on Mount Nitria a gratuitous dispensary.”
So here our author’s canons enforce (1) works of mercy; (2) almsdeeds; (3) brotherly love; (4) mutual support; (5) forgiveness of injuries; (6) the example of Christ’s holy living; (7) forbearance; (8) suppression of idle talk; (9) love of enemies; (10) abhorrence of usury, (11) and avarice, (12) and carnal impurity: also, (13) obedience to parents; (14) parental love; (15) consideration of servants; (16) respect for the aged; (17) moderation, even in use of things lawful; (18) control of the tongue; (19) abstinence from detraction; (20) to visit the sick; (21) care of widows and orphans; (22) not to flatter; (23) to practise the Golden Rule; and (24) to abstain from bloodshed. In short, we have here the outgrowth of the Sermon on the Mount, and of St. Paul’s epitome, “Whatsoever things are true,” etc.[4671]
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