Page "Firmilian" Paragraph 5

In the letter, Cyprian's arguments against Pope Stephen are reiterated and reinforced.

Firmilian says: " We have received your writings as our own, and have committed them to memory by repeated reading " ( c. iv ).

Firmilian's reasoning against the validity of heretical baptism is mainly that of Cyprian, that those who are outside the Church and have not the Holy Spirit cannot admit others to the Church or give what they do not possess: " " Very many of us meeting together in Iconium very carefully examined the matter, and we decided that every baptism was altogether to be rejected which is arranged for without the Church.

" Firmilian is fond of dilemmas: for instance, either the heretics do not give the Holy Ghost, in which case rebaptism is necessary, or else they do give it, in which case Stephen should not forbid the laying on of hands.

Firmilian enables us to gather much of the drift of Stephen's letter to Cyprian.

It is " ridiculous " that Stephen demanded nothing but the use of the Trinitarian formula.

He had appealed to tradition from St. Peter and St. Paul: this is an insult to the Apostles, cries Firmilian, for they execrated heretics.

Besides ( this is from Cyprian, Ep.

lxxiv, 2 ), " no one could be so silly as to believe this ", for the heretics are all later than the Apostles!

And Rome has not preserved the Apostolic traditions unchanged, for it differs from Jerusalem as to the observances at Easter and as to other mysteries.

" I am justly indignant with Stephen's obvious and manifest silliness, that he so boasts of his position, and claims that he is the successor of St. Peter on whom were laid the foundations of the Church ; yet he brings in many other rocks, and erects new buildings of many Churches when he defends with his authority the baptism conferred by heretics ; for those who are baptized are without doubt numbered in the Church, and he who approves their baptism affirms that there is among them a Church of the baptized .… Stephen, who declares that he has the Chair of Peter by succession, is excited by no zeal against heretics " ( c. xvii ).

" You have cut yourself off — do not mistake — since he is the true schismatic who makes himself an apostate from the communion of ecclesiastical unity.

For in thinking that all can be excommunicated by you, you have cut off yourself alone from the communion of all " ( c. xxiv ).