In the middle of the third century, Cyprian [Jerom, vol. iv. p. 342.], a
man of substance and a rhetorician of Carthage, was converted to
Christianity. He was then fifty years of age; and his learning, virtues,
and devotedness to the cause which he had espoused, very soon raised him
to the dignity, the responsibility, and, in those days, the great
danger, of the Episcopate. (Cyprian is said to have been converted about
A.D. 246, to have been consecrated A.D. 248, and to have suffered
martyrdom A.D. 258.) Many of his writings of undoubted genuineness are
preserved, and they have been appealed to in every age as the works of a
faithful son of the Catholic Church. On the subject of prayer he has
written very powerfully and affectingly; but I find no expression which
can by possibility imply that he practised or countenanced the
invocation of saints and angels. I have carefully examined every
sentence alleged by its most strenuous defenders, and I cannot extract
from them one single grain of evidence which can bear the test of
inquiry. Even did the passages quoted require to be taken in the sense
affixed to them {163} by those advocates, they prove nothing; they do
not bear even remotely upon the subject, whilst I am persuaded that to
every unprejudiced mind a meaning will appear to have been attached to
them which the author did not intend to convey.
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