“Whence you ought to know that the bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the bishop”
Whence you ought to know that the bishop is in the Church, and the Church in the bishop
Cyprian · The Epistles · ANF V, Epistle LXVIII, 8
Written to a bishop who had listened to accusations against Cyprian himself. The claim is mutual and it is the reason a succession list is worth keeping: the bishop is not an officer set over the church but the point at which it is visible, so that a people united to its priest is what the word Church denotes.
How this is known
These words were matched, word for word, against this project’s own copy of the volume cited.
Quoted from the Ante-Nicene Fathers translation this project holds in full, and checked against those bytes at every rebuild — the words, the work and the place in it.
Read in Wallis, ANF vol. 5 (1886) · Ernest Wallis
Also by
- Cyprian every saying recorded of this person, and their page