And according as we say, "Our Father," because He is The Father of those who understand and believe; so also we call it "our Bread," because Christ is The Bread of those who are in union with His Body. And we ask that this Bread should be given to us daily, that we who are in Christ, and daily receive The Eucharist for the Food of Salvation, may not by the interposition of some heinous sin...be separated from Christ's Body.
CyprianWhereas there can be but one Baptism, they think they can Baptize; they have abandoned the fountain of life, yet promise the life and grace of the waters of salvation. It is not cleansing which men find there, but soiling; their sins are not washed away, but only added to. That being "born again" does not bring forth sons to God but to the Devil. Born of a lie, they cannot inherit the things which Truth has promised; begotten by the faithless, they are deprived of the grace of faith.
CyprianIf, in the case of the worst sinners and those who formerly sinned much against God, when afterwards they believe, the remission of their sins is granted and no one is held back from baptism and grace, how much more, then, should an infant not be held back, who, having but recently been born, has done no sin, except that, born of the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of that old death from his first being born. For this very reason does he [an infant] approach more easily to receive the remission of sins: because the sins forgiven him are not his own but those of another
CyprianTheir property held them in chains...chains which shackled their courage and choked their faith and hampered their judgment and throttled their soul...If they stored up their treasure in heaven, they would not now have an enemy and a thief within their own household...They think of themselves as owners, whereas it is they rather who are owned: enslaved as they are to their own property, they are not the masters of their money but its slaves.
CyprianPeter, in showing that the Church is one and that only those who are in the Church can be saved, said: "In the Ark of Noah certain persons, numbering only eight, were saved by water, which Baptism effects in like manner for you" (1 Peter 3:20). He proves and demonstrates that the solitary Ark of Noah was the figure of the One Church. If, at the time of this Baptism of the world anyone could have been saved without having been in the Ark of Noah, then he who is outside the Church could now be brought to life by Baptism.
Cyprian