Cyprian Quotes

A good purpose, which has known God, cannot be changed.

The spouse of Christ cannot be defiled; she is uncorrupted and chaste.

And according as we say, "Our Father," because He is The Father of those who understand and believe; so also we call it "our Bread," because Christ is The Bread of those who are in union with His Body. And we ask that this Bread should be given to us daily, that we who are in Christ, and daily receive The Eucharist for the Food of Salvation, may not by the interposition of some heinous sin ... be separated from Christ's Body.

Think not that you are thus maintaining the Gospel of Christ when you separate yourselves from the flock of Christ.

But later, by the help of the water of new birth, the stain of former years was washed away, and a light from above - serene and pure - was infused into my reconciled heart. Then through the Spirit breathed from heaven, a second birth restored me to a new man.

No one can have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.

There is one God and one Christ, and one Church, and one chair founded on Peter by the word of the Lord. It is not possible to set up another altar or for there to be another priesthood besides that one altar and that one priesthood. Whoever has gathered elsewhere is scattering.

Custom, though never so ancient, without truth, is but an old error.

For the helmsman is recognized in the tempest; in the warfare the soldier is proved.

This supernatural bread and this consecrated chalice are for the health and salvation of mankind.

No one is strong in his own strength, but he is safe by the grace and mercy of God.

The Lord withdraws when He is denied, and what is taken by the undeserving does not avail them unto salvation, since the saving grace is turned into ashes and holiness departs.

Peter, in showing that the Church is one and that only those who are in the Church can be saved, said: "In the Ark of Noah certain persons, numbering only eight, were saved by water, which Baptism effects in like manner for you" (1 Peter 3:20). He proves and demonstrates that the solitary Ark of Noah was the figure of the One Church. If, at the time of this Baptism of the world anyone could have been saved without having been in the Ark of Noah, then he who is outside the Church could now be brought to life by Baptism.

The world is going mad in mutual extermination, and murder, considered as a crime when committed individually, becomes a virtue when it is committed by large numbers. It is the multiplication of the frenzy that assures impunity to the assassins.

They are blind guides,' He says, 'of the blind. But if a blind man guide a blind man, both shall fall into a pit.' 4 Such a one is to be turned away from, and whoever has separated himself from the Church is to be shunned. Such a man is perverted and sins and is condemned by his very self. Does he seem to himself to be with Christ, who acts contrary to the priests of Christ, who separates himself from association with His clergy and His people? That man bears arms against the Church; he fights against God's plan. An enemy of the altar, a rebel against the sacrifice of Christ, for the faith faithless, for religion sacrilegious, a disobedient servant, an impious son, a hostile brother, despising the bishops and abandoning the priests of God, he dares to set up another altar, to compose another prayer with unauthorized words, to profane the truth of the Lord's offering by false sacrifices, and not to know that he who struggles against God's plan on account of his rash daring is punished by divine censure.

Since the baptismal rebirth takes place only with the one Bride of Christ, where could he be born who is not a son of the Church?

Custom is often only the antiquity of error.

None of us offers resistance when he is seized, or avenges himself for your unjust violence, although our people are numerous and plentiful ... it is not lawful for us to hate, and so we please God more when we render no requital for injury ... we repay your hatred with kindness.

Baptism pertains to the Church alone.

When we pray to God with entire assurance, it is Himself who has given us the spirit of prayer.

Let us, then, who in Baptism have both died and been buried in respect to the carnal sins of the old man, who have risen again with Christ in the heavenly regeneration, both think upon and do the things that are Christ's.

If, in the case of the worst sinners and those who formerly sinned much against God, when afterwards they believe, the remission of their sins is granted and no one is held back from baptism and grace, how much more, then, should an infant not be held back, who, having but recently been born, has done no sin, except that, born of the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of that old death from his first being born. For this very reason does he [an infant] approach more easily to receive the remission of sins: because the sins forgiven him are not his own but those of another

As to what pertains to the case of infants: You [Fidus] said that they ought not to be baptized within the second or third day after their birth, that the old law of circumcision must be taken into consideration, and that you did not think that one should be baptized and sanctified within the eighth day after his birth. In our council it seemed to us far otherwise. No one agreed to the course which you thought should be taken. Rather, we all judge that the mercy and grace of God ought to be denied to no man born

If a murder is committed privately it is considered a crime. But if it happens with the authority of the state, they call it courage.

Their property held them in chains ... chains which shackled their courage and choked their faith and hampered their judgment and throttled their soul ... If they stored up their treasure in heaven, they would not now have an enemy and a thief within their own household ... They think of themselves as owners, whereas it is they rather who are owned: enslaved as they are to their own property, they are not the masters of their money but its slaves.

Knowing that there is one Baptism, we who hold the head and root of the One Church know for certain that to him who is outside the Church nothing is lawful.

"If any man thirst, let him come and drink from the rivers of living water" (cf. John 7:38). Where shall he who thirsts come? To heretics where the fountain and river of water is in no way life-giving? Or to the Church, which is One?

Men imitate the gods whom they adore, and to such miserable beings their crimes become their religion.

Whereas there can be but one Baptism, they think they can Baptize; they have abandoned the fountain of life, yet promise the life and grace of the waters of salvation. It is not cleansing which men find there, but soiling; their sins are not washed away, but only added to. That being "born again" does not bring forth sons to God but to the Devil. Born of a lie, they cannot inherit the things which Truth has promised; begotten by the faithless, they are deprived of the grace of faith.