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On the Church: Select Treatises is unavailable, but you can change that!

St. Cyprian, third-century bishop of Carthage, developed a theory of church unity almost universally accepted up to the European Reformation: to be a member of the Body of Christ you needed to be in communion with a priest who was in communion with a bishop who in turn was in communion with all other bishops in the world. But, how could you discern who was a legitimate bishop? And, on what kind...

This is the pure simplicity to be experienced in the Church, this is the divine affection that is to be attained, so that love for the brotherhood might imitate doves, that clemency and gentleness may equal that of lambs and sheep. What business in the Christian’s heart has the wildness of wolves and the savagery of dogs, and the deadly poison of snakes, and the bloody cruelty of wild beasts? It is cause for thanksgiving when such persons as these are excluded from the Church in order that they might
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