I’ve been reading some of the Early Church Fathers and I periodically post a section one of them has written. This is from St. Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage, and was written around 250 A.D., before the Bible had been compiled as a single book. Of course, Cyprian quotes heavily from Scripture since most Catholics at the time understood most of the books in the Bible to be inspired by God. Anyway, thought this was interesting:
The spouse of Christ [Ed. note: the Church] cannot be defiled, she is inviolate and chaste; she knows one home alone, in all modesty she keeps faithfully to only one couch. It is she who rescues us for God, she who seals for the kingdom the sons whom she has borne. Whoever breaks with the Church and enters on an adulterous union, cuts himself off from the promises made to the Church; and he who has turned his back on the Church of Christ shall not come to the rewards of Christ: he is an alien, a worldling, an enemy. You cannot have God for your Father if you have not the Church for your mother. If there was escape for anyone who was outside the ark of Noe [Noah], there is escape too for one who is found to be outside the Church. Our Lord warns us when he says: He that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth. Whoever breaks the peace and harmony of Christ acts against Christ; whoever gathers elsewhere than in the Church, scatters the Church of Christ. Our Lord says: I and the Father are One; and again, of Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit it is written: And the three are One. Does anyone think then that this oneness, which derives from the stability of God and is welded together after the celestial pattern, can be sundered in the Church and divided by the clash of discordant wills?
Just so everyone knows, the Catholic Church does not teach that at this point, but it’s interesting to see how a prominent member of the early Church viewed those breaking away. This is from The Unity of the Catholic Church, chap 6.
God bless,
Jay
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