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The Church Fathers · 251
On the Unity of the Catholic Church
De Unitate Ecclesiae
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
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What it is
Written during a schism over how to receive Christians who had lapsed under persecution. Cyprian argues that the church's unity is not an aspiration but a given, and that a bishop who breaks from it takes nothing with him.
Why it lasted
The text every later argument about schism has had to answer, quoted with equal conviction by Rome and by its critics.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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