Monday, July 22, 2019

Early Christian Quotes on Schisms

Early Christian Quotes on Schisms

 

Didache 

(1st Century)

4:3:

 

You must not start a disagreement or rift, but reconcile those at strife.

 

 

Barnabas’ Epistle

(1st Century)

Chapter 19:

 

You are not to make a schism or rift, but you should tame and calm those who argue by bringing them together.

 

 

Ignatius’ Letter to the Philadelphians

(Late 1st or Early 2nd Century)

Chapter 3:

 

If any man follows someone who makes a division in the Church, he will not inherit the kingdom of God.

 

 

Cyprian’s Letter Concerning Schismatic Elders

(Mid-3rd Century)

Paragraphs 5 and 7:

 

There is one God, and Christ is one, and there is one Church, and one chair of authority founded upon the rock by the word of the Lord. Another altar cannot be constituted, nor a new priesthood be made, except the one altar and the one priesthood. Whoever gathers elsewhere will scatter. Whatever is appointed by human madness, so that the divine will is violated, is adulterous, is unholy, is sacrilegious. Go far from the plague of this kind of men and run 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 will both fall into the ditch...”

 

But if anybody who is refusing to repent and to make satisfaction to God yields to the party of Felicissimus and joins himself to the unbelieving faction, he cannot return to the Church and take Communion with the bishops and the people of Christ.

 

 

Cyprian’s Letter to the Roman Confessors

(Mid-3rd Century):

 

Do not think that you continue to maintain the Gospel of Christ when you separate yourselves from the flock of Christ and from His peace and unity…For as our consensus and unity should not be divided, and because we cannot forsake the Church and go outside her to come to you, we beg and urge you with what warnings we can, return to the Church, your Mother, and to our brotherhood.

 





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