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
He went on to say, “You neatly set aside the command of God to maintain your own tradition.
“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."”
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?
“From some-ah, misery!-all these things have fallen away, and have passed from memory. They indeed did not wait to be apprehended ere they ascended, or to be interrogated ere they denied. Many were conquered before the battle, prostrated before the attack.”
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
“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."”
And when you stand to pray, if you hold anything against another, forgive it, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your trespasses as well.”
“He has clearly joined herewith and added the law, and has bound us by a certain condition anti engagement, that we should ask that our debts be forgiven us in such a manner as we ourselves forgive our debtors, knowing that that which we seek…”
So be on your guard; I have told you everything in advance.
“Yet let not the excessive and headlong faithlessness of many move or disturb us, but rather strengthen our faith in the truthfulness which has foretold the matter.”
Then some of them began to spit on Him. They blindfolded Him, struck Him with their fists, and said to Him, “Prophesy!”
“Who is this strange one who says that he had been silent before, but would not always be silent?”
But to Pilate’s amazement, Jesus made no further reply.
“He is the One who, although he was silent in his passion, will not be silent finally in the day of reckoning. He is our God, even if unrecognized. He is already known among the faithful and all who believe.”
And wishing to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed Him over to be crucified.
“He himself suffered the lash, in whose name his servants now scourge the devil and his angels. He who now crowns the martyrs with eternal garlands was himself crowned with thorns.”
They dressed Him in a purple robe, twisted together a crown of thorns, and set it on His head.
“He who now gives true palms to the victors was beaten in the face with hostile palms; he who clothes all others with the garment of immortality was stripped of his earthly garment.”
They kept striking His head with a staff and spitting on Him. And they knelt down and bowed before Him.
“In that very hour of his passion and cross, before they had come to the cruel act of his slaughter and the shedding of his blood, what violent abuses he listened to with patience, and what shameful insults he endured!”
After they had mocked Him, they removed the purple robe and put His own clothes back on Him. Then they led Him out to crucify Him.
“He who has given the food of heaven was fed with gall; he who has offered us the cup of salvation was given vinegar to drink.”