Cyprian to his brother Antonianus, greeting. I received your first letter, dearest brother, firmly maintaining the concord of the priestly college and cleaving to the catholic church, in which you indicated that you were not in communion with Novatian but followed our counsel and … [that I should forward a copy] of that same letter to our colleague Cornelius, so that, laying aside all anxiety, he might now know that you were in communion with him, that is, with the catholic church. But then another letter of yours arrived, sent by our fellow presbyter Quintus, in which I noticed that your mind, moved by Novatian's letter, had begun to waver. For although you had first firmly fixed your counsel and consent, you asked in this letter that I write back to you what heresy Novatian had introduced, or on what grounds Cornelius is in communion with Trophimus and with those who offered incense. If indeed you take anxious care for the faith and search out with concern the truth of a doubtful matter, the anxious hesitation of a mind in turmoil in the fear of God is not to be blamed. Yet since I see that after the first opinion in your letter you were afterward shaken by Novatian's letter, I put this first, dearest brother: serious men, once founded upon the rock with solid firmness, are moved, I do not say by a light breeze, but not even by wind or whirlwind, so that a doubtful and uncertain mind is not repeatedly tossed by various opinions as by blasts of assailing winds and be changed from its purpose with some reproach of fickleness. That Novatian's letter may not do this with you or with anyone, I will briefly set out the matter for you, brother, as you asked. And first, since you seem also to be troubled about my own conduct, my person and my case must be cleared before you, so that no one thinks I have lightly departed from my purpose, and that, although at first and at the beginning I defended the rigor of the gospel, I afterward seem to have turned my mind from my former discipline and severity, so as to have thought that peace should be granted too easily to those who have stained their conscience with certificates or committed the unspeakable sacrifices. Both of these I did not do without a reason long weighed and considered. For while the battle was still at hand and the fight of the glorious contest was raging in the persecution, the strength of the soldiers had to be roused with every exhortation and full force, and above all the minds of the lapsed had to be stirred by the trumpet, as it were, of our voice, so that they might follow the way of penance not only with prayers and laments but, since the opportunity was given of renewing the contest and recovering salvation, might be spurred by our rebukes rather to the ardor of confession and the glory of martyrdom. Accordingly, when the presbyters and deacons had written to me about some who were unrestrained and were pressing hastily to receive communion, in writing back to them in my letter, which is extant, I added this too: “If they are in too great a hurry, they have in their own power what they ask, the time itself granting them more than they ask. The battle is still being waged, and the contest is celebrated daily. If they truly and firmly repent of what they have committed, and the warmth of faith prevails, he who cannot be put off can be crowned.” But I deferred what should be decided about the case of the lapsed, so that, when quiet and tranquility had been granted and divine indulgence allowed the bishops to meet together, then, counsel being shared and weighed by the conference of all, we might decide what ought to be done; and if anyone before our council, and before a sentence settled by the counsel of all, wished rashly to give communion to the lapsed, he himself should be kept from communion. This I also wrote most fully to Rome, to the clergy, who were then still without a bishop, and to the confessors, the presbyter Maximus and the others then held in custody, now joined with Cornelius in the church; that I wrote this you can learn from their replies. For in their letter they put it thus: “Although in so great a matter we agree with what you yourself have discussed, that the peace of the church must first be awaited, and then, a conference of counsels being held with bishops, presbyters, deacons, confessors, and also laymen who stood firm, the case of the lapsed be treated.” It was also added, Novatian then writing and reading aloud with his own voice what he had written, and the presbyter Moyses, then still a confessor and now a martyr, subscribing, that peace should be given to the lapsed who were sick and at the point of death. This letter was sent through the whole world and brought to the knowledge of all the churches and of all the brothers. Nevertheless, in accordance with what had been determined before, when the persecution had died down and the opportunity was given of meeting together, a large number of bishops, whom their faith and the Lord's protection had kept whole and unharmed, came together; and, the Scriptures having been brought forward on both sides, we weighed a balance with wholesome moderation, so that hope of communion and peace should not be wholly denied to the lapsed, so that they do not fail even more through despair and, because the church was shut against them, follow the world and live as heathens; nor yet, on the other hand, should the rigor of the gospel be loosened so that they rush rashly to communion; but that penance should be drawn out long, and the fatherly mercy be sought with sorrow, and the cases, intentions, and necessities of each be examined, according to what is contained in the booklet which I trust has reached you, in which the several heads of our decisions are written down. And in case the number of bishops in Africa should seem too small, we also wrote to Rome on this matter to our colleague Cornelius, who himself, having held a council with very many fellow bishops, agreed with us in the same sentence with equal seriousness and wholesome moderation. I had to write this to you now so that you may know that I did nothing lightly, but, according to what I had set out before in my letters, deferred everything to the common counsel of our council; that I gave communion to none of the lapsed earlier, while there was still a way by which a lapsed person might receive not only pardon but also a crown; but that afterward, as both the concord of the college and the benefit of gathering the brotherhood and healing its wound required, I yielded to the necessity of the times and thought that the salvation of many must be provided for; and that I do not now depart from what was once agreed in our council by common conference, although many things are bandied about by the voices of many, and lies uttered against the priests of God from the devil's mouth are hurled everywhere to break the concord of catholic unity. But it befits you, as a good brother and a like-minded fellow priest, not easily to accept what the malicious and apostates say, but to weigh what your colleagues, modest and serious men, do, from an examination of our life and discipline. I come now, dearest brother, to the person of our colleague Cornelius, so that you may know Cornelius more truly with us, not from the lies of the malicious and slanderers, but from the judgment of God, who made him bishop, and from the testimony of his fellow bishops, the whole number of whom throughout the world has agreed with harmonious unanimity. For what commends our dearest Cornelius with praiseworthy report to God, to Christ and his church, and also to all his fellow priests is this: he did not come to the episcopate suddenly, but, promoted through all the church's offices and having often deserved well of the Lord in the divine ministries, he ascended through every grade of religion to the lofty summit of the priesthood. Then he neither asked for nor wanted the episcopate itself, nor did he seize it, like others whom the swelling of their arrogance and pride puffs up; but, quiet in other ways and modest, and such as those are accustomed to be who are chosen for this place by God, out of the modesty of his virginal continence and the humility of the reserve inborn in him and guarded, he did not, as some have, use force to become bishop, but himself suffered force, so that he accepted the episcopate under compulsion. And he was made bishop by very many of our colleagues who were then present in the city of Rome, who sent us letters about his ordination that were honorable and full of praise and distinguished by the testimony of their report. Cornelius was made bishop by the judgment of God and his Christ, by the testimony of almost all the clergy, by the vote of the people who were then present, and by the assembly of aged priests and good men, when no one had been made before him, when the place of Fabian, that is, the place of Peter and the rank of the priestly chair, was vacant. Once that place has been filled and confirmed by the will of God and the consent of all of us, whoever now wishes to be made bishop must of necessity be made outside, and he does not have the church's ordination who does not hold the unity of the church. Whoever he may be, however much he boasts of himself and claims for himself, he is profane, he is an alien, he is outside. And since there cannot be a second after the first, whoever is made after the one who ought to be alone is no longer second but nothing. Then, after an episcopate neither canvassed for nor extorted, but received by the will of God who makes priests, how great was the courage in the very taking up of his episcopate, how great the strength of soul, what firmness of faith, which we ought with a simple heart both to see thoroughly and to praise: that he sat fearless at Rome in the priestly chair at a time when a tyrant hostile to God's priests was threatening things speakable and unspeakable, when he would hear with far more patience and tolerance that a rival prince was rising against him than that a priest of God was being appointed at Rome. Is not this man, dearest brother, to be proclaimed with the highest testimony of courage and faith? Is he not to be counted among the glorious confessors and martyrs, who sat so long awaiting the executioners of his body and the avengers of a raging tyrant, who might attack Cornelius, as he resisted the deadly edicts and trampled threats and torments and tortures underfoot by the vigor of his faith, with the sword, or crucify him, or roast him with fire, or tear his entrails and limbs with some unheard-of kind of punishment? Even if the majesty and goodness of the Lord who protects him guarded, once made, the priest whom he willed to be made, yet Cornelius, as far as his devotion and fear are concerned, suffered whatever he could suffer, and by his priesthood first conquered the tyrant who was afterward conquered by arms and war. As for the shameful and grave things that are bandied about concerning him, I would not have you wonder, since you know that it is always the devil's work to tear the servants of God with lies and defame a glorious name with false opinions, so that those who shine in the light of their own conscience may be sullied by others' rumors. But know that our colleagues have investigated and found out most truly that he was not stained, as some keep boasting, by any taint of a certificate; nor did he mingle sacrilegious communion with bishops who had sacrificed, but joined with us only those whose case had been heard and whose innocence had been proven. As for Trophimus, about whom you asked to be written to, the matter is not as rumor and the lies of the malicious brought it to you. For, as our predecessors also often did, our dearest brother yielded to necessity in gathering back our brothers. And since the greatest part of the people had gone away with Trophimus, now that Trophimus was returning to the church, making satisfaction, confessing his former error with the penance of supplication, and calling back with full humility and satisfaction the brotherhood he had lately drawn away, his prayers were heard, and not so much Trophimus as a very great number of brothers who had been with Trophimus were admitted into the Lord's church; all of them would not have returned to the church unless they had come with Trophimus accompanying them. So, after discussion there with very many colleagues, Trophimus was received, the return of the brothers and the restored salvation of many making satisfaction for him. Yet Trophimus was admitted on the terms that he communicates as a layman, not, as the letters of the malicious reported to you, as if he were usurping a priestly place. And the report to you that Cornelius indiscriminately gives communion to those who sacrificed, this too springs from the invented rumors of apostates. For those who withdraw cannot praise us, nor ought we to expect to please those who, displeased with us and rebelling against the church, violently press on to lure brothers away from the church. Therefore, whatever is bandied about concerning Cornelius and concerning us, do not readily listen to it or believe it, dearest brother. For if any are overtaken by sickness, help is given them in their danger, as was decided. But after help has been given and peace granted to those in danger, they cannot be smothered by us, or crushed, or pushed by our force and hand to the end of death, as if, because peace is given to the dying, those who have received peace must die; when rather the sign of divine kindness and fatherly gentleness appears in this, that those who receive the pledge of life in the peace granted are also held here in life after peace has been received. And therefore, if after peace is received a reprieve is given by God, no one ought to blame the priests for this, once it has been decided that the brothers should be helped in their danger. And do not think, dearest brother, as it seems to some, that those who took certificates ought to be put on a level with those who sacrificed, since even among those who sacrificed the circumstances and the case often differ. For he is not to be put on a level who leapt at once of his own will to the unspeakable sacrifice, and he who, having resisted and struggled long, came to this deadly deed under necessity; he who betrayed both himself and all his household, and he who, going himself into danger for all, protected his wife, his children, and his whole house by the bargain of his own peril; he who compelled his tenants or friends to the crime, and he who spared his tenants and farmers, and even received into his own roof and hospitality very many brothers who were withdrawing as exiles and fugitives, showing and offering to the Lord many souls living and unharmed to plead for one that is wounded. Since, then, there is great difference even among those who sacrificed, what unmercifulness it is, and what bitter harshness, to join those who took certificates with those who sacrificed, when the one who received a certificate may say: “I had read before, and had learned from the bishop's teaching, that one must not sacrifice to idols and that a servant of God ought not to worship images; and therefore, so as not to do what was not permitted, when the opportunity of a certificate was offered (which I would not have taken either, had the opportunity not been shown me), I either went to the magistrate or, another going for me, sent word that I was a Christian, that it was not lawful for me to sacrifice, that I could not come to the devil's altars, and that I was paying for this reason, so as not to do what is not lawful.” Yet now even this one who is stained by a certificate, after he has learned from our admonition that he ought not to have done even this, and that, although his hand is clean and no contact with the deadly food has polluted his mouth, his conscience is nevertheless polluted, weeps on hearing us and laments; and, now admonished of how he has sinned, deceived not so much by crime as by error, he testifies that from now on he is instructed and prepared. If we reject the penance of those who have some confidence in a conscience that can be borne, at once, with their wives and children whom they had kept unharmed, they are snatched away into heresy or schism at the devil's invitation; and it will be written against us on the day of judgment that we did not care for the wounded sheep, and for the sake of one wounded lost many whole ones. And whereas the Lord, leaving the ninety-nine sound, sought the one that was wandering and weary and, when he found it, carried it himself on his shoulders, we should not only not seek the weary but even drive away those who come; and while false prophets do not cease now to lay waste and tear the flock of Christ, we should give an opening to dogs and wolves, so that those whom hostile persecution did not destroy we destroy by our harshness and inhumanity. And where, dearest brother, will be what the apostle says: “I please all in all things, not seeking what is profitable to me, but to many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ”? And again: “I became weak to the weak, that I might gain the weak.” And again: “If one member suffers, the other members suffer with it; and if one member rejoices, the other members rejoice with it.” The reasoning of the philosophers and Stoics is another thing, dearest brother: they say that all sins are equal and that a serious man ought not easily to be swayed. But between Christians and philosophers there is a very great distance. And since the apostle says: “See that no one plunders you through philosophy and empty deceit,” we must avoid what does not come from the clemency of God but descends from the presumption of a harsher philosophy. Of Moses we read it said in the Scriptures: “And Moses was a very gentle man.” And the Lord says in his gospel: “Be merciful, as your Father also has had mercy on you.” And again: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” What medicine can he practice who says: “I cure only the healthy, who have no need of a physician”? We ought to offer our help, our healing, to the wounded. Nor let us think that those whom we see wounded by the deadly persecution are dead, but rather that they lie half alive; for if they were wholly dead, confessors and martyrs would never afterward be made from them. But since there is in them something that, with penance following, may regain strength for faith, and from penance their vigor is armed for courage (which cannot be armed if one fails from despair, if, harshly and cruelly separated from the church, he turns to the ways of the heathen and worldly works, or, rejected by the church, goes over to heretics and schismatics, where, even if he is afterward killed for the Name, being placed outside the church and divided from unity and love, he cannot be crowned in death), therefore it was decided, dearest brother, after examination of each one's case, that those who took certificates should be admitted meanwhile, and those who sacrificed be helped at the end, because there is no confession in the underworld, nor can anyone be compelled by us to penance if the fruit of penance is taken away. If battle comes first, he will be found strengthened by us for battle; but if sickness presses him before battle, he departs with the comfort of peace and communion. For we do not prejudge the Lord who is to judge, so that, if he finds the sinner's penance full and just, he may then ratify what has been decided by us here. But if anyone has deceived us by a pretense of penance, let God, who is not mocked and who looks upon the heart of man, judge concerning what we have not seen clearly, and let the Lord amend the sentence of his servants. Only, brother, we ought to remember that it is written: “A brother helping a brother will be exalted”; and that the apostle too said: “Watching yourself, so that you too are not tempted, bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ”; and also what he sets down in his letter, rebuking the proud and breaking arrogance: “And let him who thinks he stands see that he does not fall”; and in another place he says: “Who are you that judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. But he will stand, for God is able to make him stand.” John also proves that Jesus Christ our Lord is advocate and intercessor for our sins, saying: “My little children, I write these things to you that you may not sin; and if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins.” And the apostle Paul too put in his letter: “If, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, much more now, justified by his blood, shall we be delivered through him from anger.” Thinking of his kindness and clemency, we ought not to be so bitter, nor so harsh, nor inhuman in caring for our brothers, but to grieve with those who grieve and weep with those who weep, and to raise them up as far as we can with the help and comfort of our love; neither so ungentle and stubborn as to beat back their penance, nor again so lax and easy as to relax communion rashly. See, a brother lies wounded, struck by the adversary in the battle. On one side the devil tries to kill the one he has wounded; on the other Christ urges that the one he has redeemed should not wholly perish. Which of the two do we stand by? On whose side do we stand? Do we favor the devil, that he may destroy, and pass by our brother lying half dead, like the priest and Levite in the gospel? Or rather, as priests of God and Christ, imitating what Christ both taught and did, do we snatch the wounded man from the adversary's jaws, and, having cared for him, reserve him for God the judge? Nor think, dearest brother, that on this account either the courage of the brothers is lessened or martyrdoms fail, because penance has been relaxed for the lapsed and hope of peace offered to the penitent. The strength of those who truly trust remains unmoved, and among those who fear and love God with their whole heart integrity perseveres firm and strong. For to adulterers too a time of penance is granted by us, and peace is given. Yet virginity does not therefore fail in the church, nor does the glorious resolve of continence grow feeble through others' sins. The church flourishes, crowned with so many virgins, and chastity and modesty keep the course of their glory; nor is the vigor of continence broken because penance and pardon are relaxed for the adulterer. It is one thing to stand waiting for pardon, another to attain to glory; one thing, sent into prison, not to come out from there until one pays the last farthing, another at once to receive the reward of faith and courage; one thing to be tormented with long grief for one's sins and to be cleansed and purged a long time by fire, another to have purged all sins by suffering; one thing, in short, to hang on the Lord's sentence on the day of judgment, another to be crowned at once by the Lord. And indeed, among our predecessors, some of the bishops here in our province thought that peace should not be given to adulterers, and wholly closed the place of penance against adulteries. Yet they did not withdraw from the college of their fellow bishops, nor break the unity of the catholic church by the obstinacy of their harshness or severity, so that, because peace was given to adulterers by others, the one who did not give it should be separated from the church. While the bond of concord remains and the undivided sacrament of the catholic church endures, each bishop arranges and directs his own conduct, as one who will give account of his decision to the Lord. I am amazed that some are so obstinate as to think that penance should not be given to the lapsed, or to judge that pardon must be denied to the penitent, when it is written: “Remember from where you have fallen, and do penance, and do the first works.” This is said, surely, to one who has evidently fallen and whom the Lord urges to rise again by works, because it is written: “Almsgiving frees from death,”⁠a and surely not from that death which the blood of Christ once extinguished and from which the water of saving baptism and the grace of our Redeemer have freed us, but from that which creeps in afterward through sins. In another place likewise a time of penance is given, and the Lord threatens the one who does not do penance: “I have much against you,” he says, “that you allow your wife Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat of sacrifice; and I gave her time to do penance, and she will not repent of her immorality. Look, I cast her into a bed, and those who have committed immorality with her into very great tribulation, unless they do penance for their works.” The Lord would surely not urge to penance unless he promised pardon to the penitent. And in the gospel: “I say to you,” he says, “so there will be joy in heaven over one sinner doing penance, more than over ninety-nine righteous who have no need of penance.” For since it is written, “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living,”⁠b surely he who wills that no one perish desires that sinners do penance and through penance return again to life. Therefore he also cries through the prophet Joel and says: “And now the Lord your God says: Return to me with your whole heart, and with fasting and weeping and mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments, and return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and kind and patient and of great mercy, and one who turns his sentence away from the evil threatened.” In the Psalms too we read the severity and likewise the clemency of God, at once threatening and sparing, punishing to correct and, when he has corrected, preserving: “I will visit their crimes with the rod,” he says, “and their sins with scourges; but my mercy I will not scatter from them.” The Lord too, showing in the gospel the kindness of God the Father, says: “Which man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will hand him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, will hand him a serpent? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him?” Here the Lord compares a father according to the flesh with the eternal and bountiful kindness of God the Father. If that evil father on earth, gravely offended by a sinful and wicked son, yet afterward sees him reformed and, the sins of his former life laid aside, corrected by the sorrow of penance to sober and good habits and to the discipline of innocence, rejoices and is glad and, taking back the one he had cast off, embraces him with the longing of a father's exultation, how much more does that one and true Father, good, merciful, and kind, indeed goodness and mercy and kindness itself, rejoice in the penance of his children, and do not threaten anger to the penitent, nor punishment to those who mourn and lament, but rather promise pardon and forgiveness! Hence the Lord in the gospel calls those who mourn blessed, because he who mourns calls forth mercy, while he who is stubborn and proud heaps up for himself anger and the punishment of the coming judgment. And therefore, dearest brother, we have decided that those who do not do penance, nor testify to sorrow for their sins with their whole heart and the open profession of their lament, are to be wholly barred from the hope of communion and peace if they begin to plead in sickness and danger, because what drives them to ask is not penance for their sin but the warning of pressing death; and he is not worthy to receive comfort in death who did not reflect that he would die. As for the person of Novatian, dearest brother, about whom you asked to be written to, what heresy he had introduced, know first of all that we ought not even to be curious about what he teaches, since he teaches outside. Whoever he is and whatever he is, he is not a Christian who is not in the church of Christ. Let him boast and proclaim his philosophy or eloquence with proud words: he who has kept neither brotherly love nor the church's unity has lost even what he had been before. Unless he seems a bishop to you who, when a bishop had been made in the church by sixteen fellow bishops, strives by intrigue to be made an adulterous and alien bishop by deserters; and who, although the church has been divided by Christ into many members throughout the whole world, and likewise the episcopate is one, spread abroad in the harmonious multitude of many bishops, after God's tradition, after the unity of the catholic church linked and everywhere joined together, tries to make a human church and sends his new apostles through very many cities to lay certain fresh foundations of his own institution; and although long ago bishops have been ordained through all the provinces and in every city, old in years, sound in faith, proven in affliction, proscribed in persecution, he dares to create other false bishops over them: as if he could either travel the whole world by the obstinacy of his new attempt or tear apart the frame of the church's body by sowing his discord, not knowing that schismatics are always fervent at the beginning but cannot grow or increase what they have unlawfully begun, but at once fail together with their perverse rivalry. But he could not hold the episcopate even if, having been made bishop first, he broke away from the body of his fellow bishops and from the unity of the church, since the apostle admonishes us to bear with one another, so that we do not withdraw from the unity which God has established, and says: “Bearing with one another in love, taking care to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” He, then, who keeps neither the unity of the Spirit nor the bond of peace, and separates himself from the bond of the church and from the college of priests, can have neither the power nor the honor of a bishop, since he would hold neither the unity nor the peace of the episcopate. Then, further, how great is the swelling of arrogance, how great the forgetfulness of humility and gentleness, how great the boasting of his arrogance, that anyone should either dare or believe himself able to do what the Lord did not grant even to the apostles: to think that he can distinguish the tares from the wheat, or, as if it had been granted to him to carry the fan and cleanse the threshing floor, to try to separate the chaff from the wheat; and, whereas the apostle says, “In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of clay,” to seem to choose out the vessels of gold and silver and to despise, cast away, and condemn those of wood and clay, when only on the day of the Lord will the vessels of wood be burned by the blaze of divine fire, and those of clay be broken by him to whom the rod of iron has been given. Or if he has set himself up as searcher and judge of the heart and innermost thoughts, let him judge equally in all things; and since he knows it is written, “Look, you have been made whole; sin no more, so that something worse does not happen to you,” let him separate the defrauders and adulterers from his side and company, since the case of the adulterer is far graver and worse than that of one who took a certificate: the latter sinned under necessity, the former by will; the latter, thinking it enough for himself that he had not sacrificed, was deceived by error; the former, a violator of another's marriage, or one who entered a brothel, into the sewer and filthy pit of the crowd, has violated a sanctified body and God's temple with loathsome defilement, as the apostle says: “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits adultery sins against his own body.” Yet even to these penance is granted, and hope of lamenting and making satisfaction is left, according to the same apostle who says: “I fear that perhaps, when I come to you, I may mourn over many of those who sinned before and did not do penance for the uncleanness and sexual immorality and lusts that they committed.” Nor let the new heretics flatter themselves in this, that they say they do not hold communion with idolaters, since among them there are both adulterers and defrauders who are held guilty of the crime of idolatry, according to the apostle who says: “For know this, understanding that every sexually immoral or unclean person or defrauder, which is idolatry, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” And again: “Put to death, therefore, your members which are on earth, putting off sexual immorality, uncleanness, and evil desire and greed, which are the service of idols, on account of which the anger of God comes.” For since our bodies are members of Christ and each of us is a temple of God, whoever violates the temple of God by adultery violates God; and whoever does the devil's will in committing sins serves demons and idols. For evil deeds do not come from the Holy Spirit, but the lusts born of the adversary's prompting and of the unclean spirit compel men to act against God and serve the devil. So it follows that, if they say that one person is defiled by another's sin and contend by their assertion that the idolatry of the sinner passes over to the one who does not sin, they cannot, by their own word, be excused from the crime of idolatry, since it is established by the apostle's proof that the adulterers and defrauders with whom they hold communion are idolaters. But for us, according to our faith and the form given by the divine preaching, the rule of truth holds that each is held in his own sin, and one cannot become guilty for another, since the Lord forewarns and says: “The righteousness of the righteous will be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon him.” And again: “Fathers shall not die for sons, nor shall sons die for fathers; each shall die in his own sin.” Reading and holding this, we think that no one is to be kept from the fruit of satisfaction and the hope of peace, since we know, according to the faith of the divine Scriptures, with God himself as author and encourager, both that sinners are brought back to do penance and that pardon and forgiveness are not denied to the penitent. And oh, the mockery of frustrating the brotherhood! Oh, the same deception of wretched mourners! Oh, the ineffective and empty tradition of heretical teaching: to urge men to the penance of satisfaction and to take away the medicine from the satisfaction; to say to our brothers: “Mourn and shed tears and groan day and night, and work generously and often to wash away and cleanse your sin; but after all this you will die outside the church. You will do whatever pertains to peace, but you will receive none of the peace you seek.” Who would not perish at once, who would not fail from very despair, who would not turn his mind from the purpose of lamenting? Do you think a farmer could work if you said: “Work the field with all the skill of husbandry, apply yourself diligently to cultivation, but you will reap no harvest, you will gather no fruit of your olive grove, you will pick no fruit from the trees”? Or if you were urging someone to the ownership and use of ships and said: “Buy timber, brother, from the finest forests; frame the keel with very strong and choice oak; work to have the ship built and fitted with rudder, ropes, and sails; but when you have done this, you will see no fruit from its voyages and runs.” It is to shut off and cut off the road of sorrow and the way of repenting, so that, whereas in the Scriptures the Lord God speaks gently to those who return to him and repent, by our harshness and cruelty, while the fruit of penance is intercepted, penance itself is taken away. But if we find that no one ought to be prevented from doing penance, and that to those who beg and plead for the Lord's mercy peace can be granted through his priests, according as he is merciful and kind, then the groaning of mourners must be admitted and the fruit of penance must not be denied to those who grieve. And since in the underworld there is no confession, nor can confession be made there, those who have repented with their whole heart and have asked ought meanwhile to be received into the church and reserved in it for the Lord, who, when he comes to his church, will judge concerning those whom he finds within it. But apostates and deserters, or adversaries and enemies and those who scatter the church of Christ, even if they have been killed for the Name outside, cannot, according to the apostle, be admitted to the peace of the church, since they have kept neither the unity of the Spirit nor that of the church. These few things out of many, dearest brother, I have run through briefly for now as best I could, both to satisfy your wish and to join you more and more in the fellowship of our college and body. But if you have the opportunity and means of coming to us, we shall be able to confer on more things together and to discuss more fully and richly what makes for a saving concord. I wish you, dearest brother, good health always.