1.
Cyprian to his brother Pompeius, greeting. Although I have fully comprised what is to be said concerning the baptism of heretics in the letters of which I sent you copies, dearest brother, yet, since you have desired that what Stephen our brother replied to my letters should be brought to your knowledge, I have sent you a copy of his reply; on the reading of which, you will more and more observe his error in endeavouring to maintain the cause of heretics against Christians, and against the Church of God. 1 For among other matters, which were either haughtily assumed, or were not pertaining to the matter, or contradictory to his own view, which he unskilfully and without foresight wrote, he moreover added this saying: "If any one, therefore, come to you from any heresy whatever, let nothing be innovated (or done) which has not been handed down, to wit, that hands be imposed on him for repentance; 2 since the heretics themselves, in their own proper character, do not baptize such as come to them from one another, but only admit them to communion."
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[It will be seen, more and more, that this entire conviction of Cyprian as to Stephen's absolute equality with himself, results from the Ante-Nicene system, and accords with his theory of the divine organization of the Church. So Augustine, as quoted in the "Argument."] ↩
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Meaning, probably, heretics with regard to the doctrine of the Trinity, Stephen not regarding the Novatians as "properly" heretics. [See Oxford translator, note m, p. 261.] ↩
