Let a more earnest care, moreover, be bestowed upon the glorious confessors. And although I know that very many of those have been maintained by the vow and by the love of the brethren, yet if there be any who are in want either of clothing or maintenance, let them be supplied, with whatever things are necessary, as I formerly wrote to you, while they were still kept in prison, - only let them know from you and be instructed, and learn what, according to the authority of Scripture, the discipline of the Church requires of them, that they ought to be humble and modest and peaceable (Epistle 5.2)

But if in Holy Scripture discipline is frequently and everywhere prescribed, and the whole foundation of religion and of faith proceeds from obedience and fear; what is more fitting for us urgently to desire, what more to wish for and to hold fast, than to stand with roots strongly fixed, and with our houses based with solid mass upon the rock unshaken by the storms and whirlwinds of the world, so that we may come by the divine precepts to the rewards of God? (On the Dress of Virgins, 2).

But what stripes, what blows, do we not deserve, when even confessors, who ought to be an example of virtuous life to others, do not maintain discipline? (Epistle 7.1).

To these glorious beginnings of confession and the omens of a victorious warfare, has been added the maintenance of discipline ... and as much as I congratulate the martyrs there honoured for the glory of their strength, so much do I also equally congratulate you for the crown of the Lord's discipline (Epistle 24.2).

It would appear that the Church's safety can be no otherwise secured, than by repelling any who set themselves against it as adverse waves, and by maintaining the ever-guarded rule of discipline itself as if it were the rudder of safety in the tempest (Epistle 30.2).

If wholesome counsel cannot recall to the way of salvation certain leaders of schisms and originators of dissensions, who abide in blind and obstinate madness, yet do you others, if either taken in simplicity, or induced by error, or deceived by some craftiness of misleading cunning, loose yourselves from the nets of deceit, free your wandering steps from errors, acknowledge the straight way of the heavenly road ... We must withdraw, nay rather must flee, from those who fall away, lest, while any one is associated with those who walk wickedly, and goes on in ways of error and of sin, he himself also, wandering away from the path of the true road, should be found in like guilt (On the Unity of the Church, 23).

Linked with apostates and unbelievers, they take hold of error instead of truth: they regard a communion as valid with those who are not communicants; they believe men against God, although they have not believed God against men. Flee from such men as much as you can; avoid with a wholesome caution those who adhere to their mischievous contact. Their word doth eat as doth a cancer; their conversation advances like a contagion; their noxious and envenomed persuasion kills worse than persecution itself. In such a case there remains only penitence which can make atonement. But they who take away repentance for a crime, close the way of atonement. Thus it happens that, while by the rashness of some a false safety is either promised or trusted, the hope of true safety is taken away (On the Lapsed, 33-34).

Depart far from the contagion of men of this kind. and flee from their words, avoiding them as a cancer and a plague, as the Lord warns you and says, "They are blind leaders of the blind. But if the blind lead the blind, they shall both fall into the ditch." They intercept your prayers, which you pour forth with us to God day and night, to appease Him with a righteous satisfaction (Epistle 39.5).

If any unrestrained and impetuous person, whether of our presbyters or deacons or of strangers, should dare, before our decree, to communicate with the lapsed, let him be expelled from our communion, and plead the cause of his rashness before all of us when, by the Lord's permission, we shall assemble together again (Epistle 27.3).

Fortunatianus, formerly bishop among you, after the sad lapse of his fall, was now wishing to act as if he were sound, and beginning to claim for himself the episcopate ... when he ought to be making atonement, and to give himself to the work of entreating the Lord night and day, by tears, and supplications, and prayers, dares still to claim to himself the priesthood which he has betrayed, as if it were right, from the altars of the devil, to approach to the altar of God (Epistle 63.1).

(Cyprian to Stephen): Wherefore it behoves you to write a very copious letter to our fellow-bishops appointed in Gaul, not to suffer any longer that Marcian, froward and haughty, and hostile to the divine mercy and to the salvation of the brotherhood, should insult our assembly, because he does not yet seem to be excommunicated by us ... as he had attempted to erect a profane altar, and to set up an adulterous throne, and to offer sacrilegious sacrifices opposed to the true priest ... Let letters be directed by you into the province and to the people abiding at Arles, by which, Marcian being excommunicated, another may be substituted in his place, and Christ's flock, which even to this day is contemned as scattered and wounded by him, may be gathered together (Epistle 66.2-3).

Intimate plainly to us who has been substituted at Arles in the place of Marcian, that we may know to whom to direct our brethren, and to whom we ought to write (Epistle 66.4).

Nor let the people flatter themselves that they can be free from the contagion of sin, while communicating with a priest who is a sinner, and yielding their consent to the unjust and unlawful episcopacy of their overseer ... On which account a people obedient to the Lord's precepts, and fearing God, ought to separate themselves from a sinful prelate, and not to associate themselves with the sacrifices of a sacrilegious priest, especially since they themselves have the power either of choosing worthy priests, or of rejecting unworthy ones (Epistle 67.3).

By the suffrage of the whole brotherhood, and by the sentence of the bishops who had assembled in their presence, and who had written letters to you concerning him, the episcopate was conferred upon him, and hands were imposed on him in the place of Basilides (Epistle 67.5).

We not only approve, but applaud, dearly beloved brethren, the religious solicitude of your integrity and faith, and exhort you as much as we can by our letters, not to mingle in sacrilegious communion with profane and polluted priests, but maintain the sound and sincere constancy of your faith with religious fear (Epistle 67.9).

Cyprian was a Carthaginian bishop who deserted his flock no sooner Decius initiated his clampdown on the Christian communities; although the Decian decree was not long enforced, he never regained office. His alleged letters obscurely reported that when a disturbance arose the Lord bade him withdraw. An exile or else a concealed fugitive, his patrimony and his episcopal power stood nonetheless undiminished throughout the epistolary narrative. Both absent and present, he imperturbably ruled the African Church, presided over large councils and played an outstanding role in Roman, Gallic or Iberian conflicts. Sometimes he solemnly declared that bishops were only accountable to God, but on other occasions he urged other prelates, or even the laity, to remove them. A Novatus whom he often mistook for Novatian ruthlessly resisted him. Entirely unaware of the existence of any previous African martyrs –not even in Tertullian’s time– when Valerian selectively persecuted upright churchmen while sparing his schismatic opponents, he proclaimed that such dire events had long been foretold. 

An entirely different perspective is submitted in Did Tertullian really exist? Did Cyprian? Did Hippolytus? , which contends that the aforesaid apologists were no more than literary champions brought down from the preceding century to uphold either of the religious factions that struggled for the control of the churches after Diocletian’s resignation. Whereas 4^th-century African and Roman rigorists denounced an entrenched clergy intent on preserving its former pre-eminence despite the reprehensible conduct of many of its members, the hierarchical organization under attack disparaged them as raging and unmerciful apostates. Caecilian and Donatus fought each other through the writings of Cyprian and Tertullian.

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