Cyprian of Carthage, On the Lapsed 15

A new kind of disaster has arisen, my most beloved brothers, and as if the storm of persecution had not raged fiercely enough, a deceitful evil and a flattering ruin have been heaped upon us under the guise of mercy. In defiance of the Gospel's power and the law of the Lord and God, the communion of the unwary is loosened by the recklessness of certain men; it is a hollow and false peace, dangerous to those who give it and useless to those who receive it. They do not seek the patience that brings healing, nor the true medicine of satisfaction. Repentance has been shaken out of their hearts, and the memory of the gravest and most final sin has been erased. They bandage the wounds of the dying, concealing the lethal blow driven deep into the innermost organs, masking the pain and covering it over. Returning from the altars of the devil, they draw near to the Lord's holy altar with filthy, infected hands. Still all but belching the deadly food of idols, their very throats now exhaling their crime and reeking with fatal contagion, they invade the body of the Lord — just when divine Scripture confronts them and cries out: 'Everyone shall eat the flesh, and any person who eats of the flesh of the sacrifice of salvation that belongs to the Lord, while his uncleanness remains on him, that person shall be cut off from his people' (Leviticus 7:20). The Apostle also testifies and says: 'You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons' (1 Corinthians 10:21). He threatens and warns the obstinate and perverse with the same words: 'Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord' (1 Corinthians 11:27).