Voices and influences
Cyprian
The bishop of Carthage who stayed through plague and persecution, then paid his own executioner.
Summary
This site quotes Cyprian 87 times across 31 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 258.
- Quoted here most in Mark: 11 of 87.
Cyprian
- Lived
- died 258
- Tradition
- Early Church
5 of 87 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Cyprian died in 258 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
This Hannah does in the first book of Kings [Samuel], portraying a type of the church, [she] prays to God not with a noisy petition but silently and modestly within the very recesses of her heart.
The rest of the quotation
She spoke with a hidden prayer but with manifest faith. She did not speak with the voice but with the heart, because she knew that so the Lord hears, and she effectually obtained what she sought, because she asked with faith.
1 Samuel 1:13–14 Hannah was praying in her heart, and though her lips were moving, her voice could not be heard. So Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, “How long will you be drunk? Put away your wine!” BSB
In the Gospel there is a proof of this mystery of unity, this inseparable bond of harmony, when the coat of the Lord Jesus Christ is not cut or rent at all.
The rest of the quotation
The garment is received whole and the coat taken into possession unspoiled and undivided by those who cast lots for Christ's garment, asking who should put on Christ. Holy Scripture says of this, "But for the coat, because it was not sewn but woven from the top throughout, they said to each other: Let us not rend it but casts lots for it, whose it shall be."
1 Kings 11:31–32 and said to Jeroboam, “Take ten pieces for yourself, for this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and I will give you ten tribes. But one tribe will remain for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel. BSB
Likewise at the setting of the sun and at the end of the day necessarily there must again be prayer.
The rest of the quotation
For since Christ is the true Sun and the true Day, as the sun and the day of the world recede, when we pray and petition that the light come on us again, we pray for the coming of Christ to provide us with the grace of eternal light. Moreover, the Holy Spirit in the Psalms declares that Christ is called the Day. He says, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
Psalms 118:22–23 The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is from the LORD, and it is marvelous in our eyes. BSB
These, doubtless, they imitate and follow, who, despising God's tradition, seek after strange doctrines, and bring in teachings of human appointment, whom the Lord rebukes and reproves in His Gospel, saying, "Ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition."
The rest of the quotation
This is a worse crime than that which the lapsed seem to have fallen into, who nevertheless, standing as penitents for their crime, beseech God with full satisfactions.
Mark 7:9 He went on to say, “You neatly set aside the command of God to maintain your own tradition. BSB
That faith is of advantage altogether, and that we can do as much as we believe. In Genesis: "And Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness." Also in Isaiah: "And if ye do not believe, neither shall ye understand."
Treatise XII. Three Books of Testimonies Against the Jews., 258
The rest of the quotation
Also in the Gospel according to Matthew: "O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? " Also in the same place: "If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Pass over from here to that place, and it shall pass over; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."
Mark 11:24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Cyprian 87 times across 31 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus was a wealthy man in Carthage — a teacher of rhetoric, a public figure, a landowner — until an old presbyter named Caecilianus led him to Christ around 246. He was baptized, sold estates to feed the poor, and within about two years the people of Carthage acclaimed him their bishop, over the objection of several senior presbyters who never forgave it. He had barely a year of quiet. In 250 the emperor Decius ordered every inhabitant of the empire to sacrifice and obtain a certificate proving it. Carthage broke. Christians queued at the temples in numbers that shocked their own clergy. Cyprian withdrew into hiding and governed the church by letter for over a year. He was attacked for it then and has been since. His own answer was that a hunted bishop in the open would have brought the mob down on the whole congregation, and that his letters — dozens of them survive — kept the church working. When the persecution eased, the hardest question in the third-century church landed on his desk: what to do with the lapsed. Confessors who had suffered were handing out letters of peace restoring the fallen wholesale. Rigorists said the fallen could never be restored at all. Cyprian took the middle and made it stick — restoration, but after penance, graded by what each person had actually done, and decided by the bishop in council, not by individuals. He wrote it up in On the Lapsed, and then wrote On the Unity of the Catholic Church to argue that a church that fragments over the question has already lost. In 252 plague swept North Africa. Bodies lay in the streets and pagan Carthage blamed the Christians. Cyprian gathered his congregation and organized them to nurse and bury the sick of the whole city — including the people who had been demanding their deaths. His biographer Pontius, who watched it, recorded it. He fought Stephen of Rome to a standstill over whether converts baptized by heretics needed rebaptism, holding his ground without breaking communion. Valerian's persecution took him in 257. Exiled first to Curubis, he was recalled, tried by the proconsul Galerius Maximus, and sentenced. The court record survives. On 14 September 258 he walked to the place of execution, took off his outer garment, knelt and prayed, bound his own eyes, and ordered twenty-five gold pieces given to the man who was about to behead him. Sources: Pontius, Life of Cyprian; the Acta Proconsularia of Cyprian; Cyprian, Letters, On the Lapsed, On the Unity of the Church (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5); Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 2.
87 quotations across 31 books
Where this voice is quoted
I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree together, so that there may be no divisions among you and that…
“Who, then, is so wicked and faithless, who is so insane with the madness of discord, that either he should believe that the unity of God can be divided, or should dare to rend it-the garment of the Lord-the Church of Christ?”
Jews demand signs and Greeks search for wisdom,
“That He also is both the wisdom and the power of God, Paul proves in his first Epistle to the Corinthians.”
Let no one deceive himself. If any of you thinks he is wise in this age, he should become a fool, so that he may become wise.
“Philosophers also profess that they pursue this virtue; but in their case the patience is as false as their wisdom also is. For whence can he be either wise or patient, who has neither known the wisdom nor the patience of God?”
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.
“That we must labour not with words, but with deeds. In Solomon, in Ecclesiasticus: "Be not hasty in thy tongue, and in thy deeds useless and remiss."”
Everyone who competes in the games trains with strict discipline. They do it for a crown that is perishable, but we do it for a crown that is imperishable.
“This is the struggle of our faith in which we engage, in which we conquer, in which we are crowned.”
And indeed, there must be differences among you to show which of you are approved.
“Hence heresies not only have frequently been originated, but continue to be so; while the perverted mind has no peace-while a discordant faithlessness does not maintain unity.”
Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.
“Moreover, beloved brethren, a new kind of devastation has appeared; and, as if the storm of persecution had raged too little, there has been added to the heap, under the title of mercy, a deceiving mischief and a fair-seeming calamity.”
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
“Charity is the bond of brotherhood, the foundation of peace, the holdfast and security of unity, which is greater than both hope and faith, which excels both good works and martyrdoms, which will abide with us always, eternal with God in the kingdom of heaven.”
Women are to be silent in the churches. They are not permitted to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.
“That a woman ought to be silent in the church. In the first Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians: "Let women be silent in the church. But if any wish to learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home."”
I face death every day, brothers, as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord.
“That we receive more as the reward of our suffering than what we endure here in the suffering itself, The blessed Apostle Paul proves; who by the divine condescension, being caught up into the third heaven and into paradise, testifies that he heard unspeakable words…”