at an end. Perhaps this Eighth Day itself had been assigned to circumcision in order to give to a carnal rite some touch of spiritual association with the Resurrection Day, the First of the New Week. The first weeping of the 'helpless new-born babe' sounded to the heathen like a foreboding of the misery of living, to the Christian ear it was a prayer and an appeal.

These beautiful thoughts helped the straightforward reasoning to shatter in Christian spirits the petty pleas of Fidus, with whatever of Judaizing lay behind them.

With this letter in his hand', at Carthage upon S. Gaudentius' day, a hundred and sixty years later, in the Basilica where lay Perpetua and Felicitas, Augustine defended against Pelagius the principles of Infant Baptism.

And we may remember in a yet earlier essay how there can be nothing broader and freer than Cyprian's recognition that Christian Baptism is truly a re-assertion of our human Childhood and Sonship to God. "All who by the hallowing "force of baptism come to the gift and patrimony of God, "there, by the healthful laver's grace, put off the 'old man,' are remade by the Holy Spirit, and in a second nativity are "cleansed from the old infectious plague spots."

1 Aug. de Gestis Pelagii xi. § 25. See also contra ii. Epistolas Pelagg. lib. IV. c. viii. § 23.

2 Basilica Majorum ? Majorini ? Major. The MSS. of Victor Vitensis Hist. Persecut. i. 3 have Majorum, except W (Vindobon. sec. xi.) and L (Berolin. sec. xii.), but Petschenig has thought fit to prefer in this place the reading of these two, Majorem. The titles of Aug. Sermm. 34 Ad Majores and 165 and 294 support Majorum, but 258 has Majorem. It is impossible not to remember the recently explored great Basilica of Carthage close outside the walls, with its nine aisles, its large baptistery and vast semicircular narthex and trilobate 'martyrium.'

3 De Habitu Virgg. 23 Omnes quidem qui ad divinum munus et patrimonium baptismi sanctificatione perveniunt hominem illic veterem gratia lavacri salutaris exponunt et innovati Spiritu Sancto a sordibus contagionis antiquæ iterata nativitate purgantur.' Compare also De Habitu Virgg. 2 'scientes quod templa Dei sint membra nostra ab omni fæce contagionis antiquæ lavacri vitalis sanctificatione purgata.'

I must with most editions and seven of Baluze's codices, in spite of S, W, D and Hartel, maintain patrimonium, which Goldhorn restores and Baluze (p. 533) allows. 'Divinum munus et patrium' is not Cyprianic order or sense.

Objection to Council III on account of its Antipelagianism.

It has been ironically observed that the question of Fidus 'gives 'Cyprian the opportunity of making a thoroughly antipelagian dis'course'a wild statement and misleading to those incapable of following it up. The letter has been treated as spurious on the alleged grounds, first that it resembles the later Canon Cx of the African Code, and secondly that its language shews it to be later than the Pelagian controversy1.

Now, that CXth canon is against those who object to Infant Baptism, or hold it to be a sort of dramatic fiction, on the ground that there is no original sin2.

But Fidus has not a word either for or against the doctrine of Original Sin. He approved of Infant Baptism; only, for certain small reasons, not till the infant was eight days old. And the answer observes that besides the irrelevance and unkindness of his ideas, the innocent child was at least as worthy of acceptance as a sin-laden man: a not very antipelagian doctrine.

Then, as to the language; it is impossible that it can have been penned after the Pelagian controversy. There is not one technical term in it. So far as verbal likeness goes the Cyprianic fathers might have almost seemed rather against the Augustinian thought. This defines original sin to be 'both another's and our own.' They say 'The sins remitted to the infant are the sins of others, not his own.' Thus nothing can be more different than the purview of the canon and the epistle except the language itself; and while no forger after the controversy could have helped using recognised terms, we have in the language of Cyprian just the clear but untechnical style which marks the catholic doctrine in an age prior to a controversy, but which cannot perhaps for ages afterward be recurred to as adequate and used accordingly.

1 Shepherd, pp. 31, 32, and p. 11, letter 2.

3 προγονικὴ ἁμαρτία —ὅπερ ἥλκυσαν EK Tŷs ȧρxaιoyovías. Justel. Cod. Cann. Eccles. Afric. 110.

No 'Originale Peccatum,' 'Peccatum originis' or 'Contagium Peccati.' Contagium mortis antiquæ is the true but untechnical consequence of our first

birth.

Precisely the same treatment of the same doctrines with the same freedom from technicality exists in the de Op. et Eleem. and de Mortalit. ap. Aug. Contra i. Epp. Pelagg. l. IV. c. viii. § 21, and see the list of ancient authors to the same effect quoted by Routh, R. S. vol. III. pp. 148, 9.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ROMAN CHAIR.

I.

The End of CORNELIUS.

WE have anticipated by three months at Carthage a great change which had occurred at Rome. Cornelius had been suddenly1 banished to Centumcella-that Cività Vecchia which has been so fateful for his line. The first intention had been to isolate him. But his apprehension was the signal for a crowd of the Lapsed' to revoke and expiate their Denial. They thus justified Cyprian's policy of penance with hope of restitution. They were hurried away with him as were also the Confessors who had lately escaped to him from the influence of Novatian. Their numbers were such as to impress at least themselves, and perhaps the government, with the idea that, if they had been so minded, they might have made something at least of a stand. 'It was a confessorship of the whole church of Rome. Such an exile then was a happy reunion of extreme factions, and breathing

1 Repentina persecutio...sæcularis potestas subito proruperit, Ep. 61. 3. Cf. Ep. 60. 2 'quasi minus paratos et minus cautos.'

2 Quot illic Lapsi gloriosa confessione sunt restituti...nec jam stare ad criminis veniam sed ad passionis coronam, Ep. 60. 2. Confessorem populum, ibid. 1. Compare the Liberian Catalogue, '...confessores qui se separaverunt a Cornelio cum Maximo presbytero, qui cum Moyse fuit, ad ecclesiam sunt reversi. Post hoc Centumcellis expulsi. Ibi cum

gloria dormicionem accepit.' There is no ground for accepting Lipsius' alteration to pulsus, p. 123. On the contrary a banishment on a large scale is intended, such as Cyprian describes. 3 Ipso dolore pænitentiæ facti ad prælium fortiores, Ep. 60. 2.

• Adversarius ... intellexit ... Christi milites...nec repugnare contra impugnantes, cum occidere innocentibus nec nocentem liceat, Ep. 60. 2. Ecclesia omnis Romana confessa, Ep. 60. 1.

this consolation Cornelius died with glory' in June A.D. 2531.

The Antipope was too inconspicuous to the Magistracy to be in danger. In Cyprian's eyes his immunity otherwise unexplained ought to have been to him evidence of his Divine rejection. Quid ad hæc Novatianus? Quid ad hæc Novatianus? The outburst was the open seal of heaven's favour and hell's hostility to the true priest and people, and was clearly designed for this very end2.

Cornelius has been ranked as a martyr by the church of Rome since the middle of the fourth century, and his festival kept with Cyprian's on the 14th of September. The statement is first found in Jerome that 'they suffered on the same day though not in the same year.'

In the contemporary sense of the word a Martyr he was, as dying in exile'. Cyprian who in writing to him speaks of his 'glorious witness,' afterward speaks of him and Lucius (who was not a martyr either in our sense of the word) as

1 That the month of his decease must have been June is shewn above (chap. II. p. 127 note). Pearson (who is however misled by the traditional September of his legendary martyrdom) argues justly that the events and changes which occurred after May 15, 252, and before his death could not have been crowded into the June of 252-viz. the ordination of Fortunatus, his voyage, rejection and fresh attempt, with all the letters which passed between Cyprian and Cornelius, the latter in security at Rome, the former in daily expectation of death. Again Dionysius of Alexandria mentions in a letter to Cornelius the death of Fabius of Antioch, and the consecration of his successor Demetrian. (Eus. H. E. vi. 46.) According to the Chronicle of Eusebius this was in the consulship of Valerian and Gallienus I., or in the year 2272 after

Abraham, A.D. 253-4 (Lipsius, op. cit. p. 210). This is a strictly independent testimony in support of the most accurate catalogues which, giving to his seat 2 years 3 months and 10 days, bring the year of his death to 253 A.D. Jerome makes the strange statement 'Rexit ecclesiam sub Gallo Volusiano duobus annis.' De Viris Ill. 66.

Pearson (Annal. Cypr. 252, xiii.) accuses the Roman Breviary of placing his death under Decius. At present however it reads Gallo et Volusiano consulibus which though incorrect is Pearson's own. He relied on the faulty (Lipsius, op. cit. p. 209) consular list of the Liberian Catalogue.

2 Ep. 60. 3. Ep. 61. 3 'tota cordis luce perspicimus, &c.'

3 De Viris Ill. cc. 66, 67.
Sup. p. 91.

4

'planted together in glorious martyrdom,' and again styles him a Blessed Martyr'.

However, these terms are familiar enough to us as used of living prisoners or exiles, and by no early authority is he said to have been put to death. His name is not on the Liberian martyr-roll, nor yet in the Deposition of Bishops. All accords with the more modest antient record 'There with glory he took sleep". His remains were carried to Rome, and were laid near to the older bishops but not among them3. He rested amid the ashes-so it must seem-of his patrician house, and with his name cut in Latin, and not like his predecessors in Greek".

Salonina, the wife of Gallienus, whom his father Valerian immediately associated with himself, in this October was both a Cornelia and a Christian'. We might without over