Bishop of Carthage, held that outside the church, there is no salvation. Also rejected giving blanket pardons, favoring instead a system of readmission based on the degree of seriousness of the sins. Leniency, he said, should be extended to those who had sacrificed at Emperor Decius’s command only after excruciating torture and who well might plead that their bodies, not their spirits, had given way. Those however, who had gone willingly to make sacrifices must receive the severest punishment.
[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Cyprian, Decius, history[/tags]