Cipriano

“ I must stand in another world, and act in another world.—Politics must go their own way, and society must do as it will. Leave me alone, Cipriano. I know you want me to be another Porfirio Diaz, or something like that. But for me that would be failure pure and simple.”
Cipriano was watching Ramón with black, guarded eyes, in which was an element of love, and of fear, and of trust, but also incomprehension, and the suspicion that goes with incomprehension. ”

“ Only in the heart of the cosmos man can look for strength. And if he can keep his soul in touch with the heart of the world, then from the heart of the world new blood will beat in strength and stillness into him, fulfilling his manhood.
[Pg 209]
Cipriano turned his black eyes to the courtyard. His soldiers had drawn near, in a little group. Three or four men were standing in dark serapes, round the fire. Cipriano stood brilliant like a cardinal bird, next to Ramón. Even his sandals were bright, sealing-wax red, and his loose linen trousers were bound at the ankles with red and black bands. ”

“ Ramón smiled. Already he saw in Cipriano’s eye the gleam of a Holy War.
“I would like,” he said smiling, “to be one of the Initiates of the Earth. One of the Initiators. Every country its own Saviour, Cipriano: or every people its own Saviour. And the First Men of every people, forming a Natural Aristocracy of the World. One must have aristocrats, that we know. But natural ones, not artificial. And in some way the world must be organically united: the world of man. But in the concrete, not in the abstract. Leagues and Covenants and International Programmes. Ah! Cipriano! ”

“ Cipriano smiled subtly. He knew well enough.
“We’ve got to open the oyster of the cosmos, and get our manhood out of it. Till we’ve got the pearl, we are only gnats on the surface of the ocean,” said Ramón.
“My manhood is like a devil inside me,” said Cipriano.
“It’s very true,” said Ramón. “That’s because the old oyster has him shut up, like a black pearl. You must let him walk out.”
“Ramón,” said Cipriano, “Wouldn’t it be good to be a serpent, and be big enough to wrap one’s folds round the globe of the world, and crush it like that egg?” ”

“ Ah, the soul! The soul was always flashing and darkening into new shapes, each one strange to the other. She had thought Ramón and she had looked into each other’s souls. And now, he was this pale, distant man, with a curious gleam, like a messenger from the beyond, in his soul. And he was remote, remote from any woman.
Whereas Cipriano had suddenly opened a new world to her, a world of twilight, with the dark, half-visible face of the god-demon Pan, who can never perish, but ever returns upon mankind from the shadows. ”

“ Cipriano: “What woman enticed the grey dog forth?”
The guards came forward with the woman.
Guards: “This woman, Maruca, my Lord, with the grey bitch heart.”
Cipriano: “Is it she, indeed?”
Guards: “It is she.”
Cipriano: “The grey dog, and the grey bitch, we kill, for their mouths are yellow with poison? Is it well, men of Huitzilopochtli?”
Guards: “It is very well, my Lord.”
The guards stripped the peon Guillermo of his white clothes, leaving him naked, in a grey loin-cloth, with a grey-white cross painted on his naked breast. The woman, too, had a grey-white cross painted on her body. ”

“ She thought of the sea. The Pacific was not very far away. The sea seemed to have retreated entirely out of her consciousness. Yet she knew she needed its breath again.
Cipriano was going down to bathe. She saw him walk out on the masonry of the square basin which was their own tiny harbour. He threw off his wrap and stood dark in silhouette against the pale, unlit water. How dark he was! Dark as a Malay. Curious that his body was as dark, almost, as his face. And with that strange archaic fulness of physique, with the full chest and the full, yet beautiful buttocks of men on old Greek coins. ”

“ Cipriano, a real Indian, was offended in his pride, and the little black imperial on his chin seemed to become portentous.
“That’s rather an unfair way of putting it!” laughed Kate.
The black eyes of Cipriano glanced at her in hostility. He thought she was laughing at him. And so, at the depths of her female soul, she was. She was jeering at him inwardly. Which no man can stand, least of all a dark-skinned man.
“No!” she said. “There’s something else besides that.”
[Pg 273]
“Ah!” said Ramón. “Take care! A little mercy is a dangerous thing.” ”

“ Because a drunken man has lost his second strength, and a man loses his strength in bad women, and a thief is a coward, and the red Huitzilopochtli hates a coward.
“Try! Try for the second strength. When we have it, the others will lose it.”
Cipriano struggled hard with his army. The curse of any army is the having nothing to do. Cipriano made all his men cook and wash for themselves, clean and paint the barracks, make a great garden to grow vegetables, and plant trees wherever there was water. ”

“ Therefore they who were condemned with us give you before God the greatest thanks, beloved Cyprian, that in your letter you have refreshed their suffering breasts; have healed their limbs wounded with clubs; have loosened their feet bound with fetters; have smoothed the hair of their half-shorn head; have illuminated the darkness of the dungeon; have brought down the mountains of the mine to a smooth surface; have even placed fragrant flowers to their nostrils, and have shut out the foul odour of the smoke. ”

“ To our dearest and best beloved Cyprian, Felix, Jader, Polianus, together with the presbyters and all who are abiding with us at the mine of Sigua, eternal health in the Lord. We reply to your salutation, dearest brother, by Herennianus the sub-deacon, Lucian and Maximus our brethren, strong and safe by the aid of your prayers, from whom we have received a sum under the name of an offering, together with your letter which you wrote, and in which you have condescended to comfort us as if we were sons, out of the heavenly words. ”

“ Unless perchance I was a priest to you before the persecution, when you held communion with me, and ceased to be a priest after the persecution! For the persecution, when it came, lifted you to the highest sublimity of martyrdom. But it depressed me with the burden of proscription, since it was publicly declared, “If any one holds or possesses any of the property of Cæcilius Cyprian, bishop of the Christians;” so that even they who did not believe in God appointing a bishop, could still believe in the devil proscribing a bishop. ”

“ Then in a cloud spread around Him He was lifted up into heaven, that as a conqueror He might bring to the Father, Man whom He loved, whom He put on, whom He shielded from death; soon to come from heaven for the punishment of the devil and to the judgment of the human race, with the force of an avenger and with the power of a judge ”

“ Cyprian himself is sufficient for us, through whose mouth the Lord poured forth so many thunders in most perfect truth, and uttered so many useful precepts about envy and malignity. Let us therefore read the letter of Cyprian about envy and malignity, and see how great an evil it is to envy those better than ourselves,—an evil whose origin he shows in memorable words to have sprung from the devil himself. "To feel jealousy," he says, "of what you regard as good, and to envy those who are better than yourselves, to some, dearest brethren, seems a light and minute offence." ”

“ Thunderstruck at this portent, Cyprian becomes a Christian. Half-naked, ecstatic, taken for a madman, he bears witness loudly and persistently to the power, wisdom, and goodness of the one true God; and, since the persecution of Decius is then going on, he is hurried away to martyrdom. His lady, sentenced also for the same cause, encourages him by her heroic attitude and words. Their earthly passion is dead; but their souls are united in death and in immortality. ”

“ I think that Cyprian knew that all the prophets and apostles or saints of any kind soever who pleased the Lord at any time were righteous—“not in comparison with the wicked,” as they falsely assert that we say, “but by the rule of virtue,” as they boast that they say; although Cyprian says, nevertheless, no one can be without sin, and whoever should assert that he is blameless is either proud or a fool. ”

“ Nemesianus, Dativus, Felix, and Victor, to their brother Cyprian, in the Lord eternal salvation. You speak, dearly beloved Cyprian, in your letters always with deep meaning, as suits the condition of the time, by the assiduous reading of which letters both the wicked are corrected and men of good faith are confirmed. For while you do not cease in your writings to lay bare the hidden mysteries, you thus make us to grow in faith, and men from the world to draw near to belief. ”

“ LIVIA. If THEY fancy to be Christians, What have WE done to offend them? MOSCON. Much: 'tis crime enough for us That we happen to be servants. CLARIN. Flying peril in the mountain, I find here a greater peril. SCENE XXV. A Servant.—THE SAME. SERVANT. The Lord Governor Aurelius Summons Cyprian to his presence, And Justina. JUSTINA. Ah! how happy, If 'tis for the wished-for ending. Do not, Cyprian, be disheartened. CYPRIAN. Faith, zeal, courage, all possess me: For if life must be the ransom Of my slavery to the devil, He who gave his soul for thee, Will he not give God his person? ”

“ Had such been Cyprian’s idea, his Treatise on Unity must have proceeded thus: (1) “Our Lord said to Peter only, I will give unto thee the keys; (2) to the rest of the apostles He gave only an inferior and subject authority; (3) to the successor of Peter, therefore, at Rome, all other bishops and churches must be subject; for (4) in this subjection the law of unity consists; and (5) if even all the other apostles were alive to this day, they would be subject to Stephen, as Prince of the Apostles, or would be rebels against Christ.” ”

“ Cyprian to the martyrs and confessors, his beloved brethren, greeting. The anxiety of my situation and the fear of the Lord constrain me, my brave and beloved brethren, to admonish you in my letters, that those who so devotedly and bravely maintain the faith of the Lord should also maintain the law and discipline of the Lord. For while it behoves all Christ’s soldiers to keep the precepts of their commander; to you it is more especially fitting that you should obey His precepts, inasmuch as you have been made an example to others, both of valour and of the fear of God. ”

“ I have seen his ways, and have healed him, and I have comforted him, and I have given to him the true consolation, and peace upon peace to those who are afar off, and to those that are near. And the Lord said, I have healed them; but the unrighteous, as a troubled sea, are thus tossed about and cannot rest. There is no joy to the wicked, saith the Lord. ”

“ Therefore the most blessed Cyprian felt, and in the truth of the divine Scriptures saw, that even the life of the apostles themselves, however good, holy, and righteous, suffered some involvements of worldly entanglements, was obnoxious to some sins and vices of the flesh; and that they desired death that they might be free from those evils, and that they might attain to that perfect righteousness which would not suffer such things, and which would no more have to be achieved in the way of command merely, but to be received in the way of reward. ”

“ The Lord, when, after His resurrection, He sent forth His apostles, charges them, saying, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” [2] And the Apostle John, remembering this charge, subsequently lays it down in his epistle: “Hereby,” says he, “we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. ”

“ She must see him before Monday's matinée.
Her way instantaneously seemed to grow clear and hard, like a path on ice. Perhaps Cyprian had escaped the rules of captivity away there among his lonely scattered mines.
Cyprian, who had come to her rescue in nursery-days when Hell loomed before her in the glowing grate, near the yawning tomb of the toy-cupboard and when the night-light, which should have illumined the tired pilgrim's path to a Heaven of sunny dreams, had blown out.... "And ... you will always like me best, Cyprian?" ... "Of course ... Of course." ”

“ Then he gave the same to all the apostles, that each one of them might comprehend that what St. Peter had, he had: it was an undivided and indivisible authority. “Each particular church,” says the Oxford translator, “being the miniature of the whole, each bishop the representative of Christ, the Chief Bishop; so that, all bishops being, in their several stations, one and the same (as representing the Same) , there was, as it were, but one bishop.” Such was Cyprian’s exposition of the ἀρχαῖα ἔθη: I am not so forgetful as to introduce anything of my own. ”

“ Nobody can understand the history of Latin Christianity without mastering the system of Cyprian, and comprehending the entirely hostile and uncatholic system of the Decretals.
6. I am not anxious to conceal the fact that I profoundly sympathize with the free spirit, the true benignity, and the moral purity which are everywhere rejected in the writings of Cyprian. If ever American Romanism becomes sufficiently enlightened and purified to comprehend this great Carthaginian Father, and to speak in his tones to the Bishop of Rome, a glorious reformation of this alien religion will be the result ”