Daily Reading for September 15 • Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr of Carthage, 258, and James Chisholm, Priest, 1855
Because Christ’s people cannot be rent, his robe, woven and united throughout, is not divided by those who possess it; undivided, united, connected, it shows the coherent concord of our people who put on Christ. By the sacrament and sign of his garment, he has declared the unity of the Church.
Who, then, is so wicked and faithless, who is so insane with the madness of discord, that either he should believe that the unity of God can be divided, or should dare to rend it—the garment of the Lord—the Church of Christ? He himself in his gospel warns us, and teaches, saying, “And there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” And does any one believe that in one place there can be either many shepherds or many flocks? The Apostle Paul, moreover, urging upon us this same unity, beseeches and exhorts, saying, “I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you; but that ye be joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Cor. 1:10). And again, he says, “Forbearing one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). Do you think that you can stand and live if you withdraw from the Church, building for yourself other homes and a different dwelling. . . ?
The flesh of Christ, and the holy of the Lord, cannot be sent abroad, nor is there any other home to believers but the one Church. This home, this household of unanimity, the Holy Spirit designates and points out in the Psalms, saying, “God, who maketh men to dwell with one mind in a house” (Psalm 68:6). In the house of God, in the Church of Christ, men dwell with one mind, and continue in concord and simplicity.
Therefore also the Holy Spirit came as a dove, a simple and joyous creature, not bitter with gall, not cruel in its bite, not violent with the rending of its claws, loving human dwellings, knowing the association of one home; when they have young, bringing forth their young together; when they fly abroad, remaining in their flights by the side of one another, spending their life in mutual intercourse, acknowledging the concord of peace with the kiss of the beak, in all things fulfilling the law of unanimity. This is the simplicity that ought to be known in the Church, this is the charity that ought to be attained, that so the love of the brotherhood may imitate the doves, that their gentleness and meekness may be like the lambs and sheep. What does the fierceness of wolves do in the Christian breast? What the savageness of dogs, and the deadly venom of serpents, and the sanguinary cruelty of wild beasts? . . . Bitterness cannot consist and be associated with sweetness, darkness with light, rain with clearness, battle with peace, barrenness with fertility, drought with springs, storm with tranquillity.
From On the Unity of the Church by Cyprian of Carthage; found at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf05.iv.v.i.html.