On the Mortality Chapter 1
Editor's note
The dead were in the streets of Carthage and the sick were being put out of doors by their own households. Cyprian had the church of the city organized into burial and nursing parties who did not ask whose the bodies were. He wrote this for Christians who found that they were afraid, and who were ashamed of being afraid because they had spent years saying they wanted to be with Christ.
Although in very many of you, dearly beloved brethren, there is a stedfast mind and a firm faith, and a devoted spirit that is not disturbed at the frequency of this present mortality, but, like a strong and stable rock, rather shatters the turbulent onsets of the world and the raging waves of time, while it is not itself shattered, and is not overcome but tried by these temptations; yet because I observe that among the people some, either through weakness of mind, or through decay of faith, or through the sweetness of this worldly life, or through the softness of their sex, or what is of still greater account, through error from the truth, are standing less steadily, and are not exerting the divine and unvanquished vigour of their heart, the matter may not be disguised nor kept in silence, but as far as my feeble powers suffice with my full strength, and with a discourse gathered from the Lord’s lessons, the slothfulness of a luxurious disposition must be restrained, and he who has begun to be already a man of God and of Christ, must be found worthy of God and of Christ.
Chapter 2
The next chapter opens when you reach the end.