(opera et eleemosynae) made their way into the
absolution system of the Church, and were assigned a permanent place in
it. Even the Christian who has forfeited his Church membership by
abjuration may ultimately recover it by deeds of sacrifice, of course
under the guidance and intercessory cooeperation of the Church. The
dogmatic dilemma we find here cannot be more clearly characterised than
by simply placing the two doctrines professed by Cyprian side by side.
These are:--(1) that the sinfulness common to each individual can only
be once extirpated by the power of baptism derived from the work of
Christ, and (2) that transgressions committed after baptism, inclusive
of mortal sins, can and must be expiated solely by spontaneous acts of
sacrifice under the guidance of kind mother Church.[274] A Church
capable of being permanently satisfied with such doctrines would very
soon have lost the last remains of her Christian character. What was
wanted was a means of grace, similar to baptism and granted by God
through Christ, to which the _opera et eleemosynae_ are merely to bear
the relation of _accompanying_ acts. But Cyprian was no dogmatist and
was not able to form a doctrine of the means of grace. He never got
beyond his "propitiate God the judge by sacrifices after baptism"
("promereri deum judicem post baptismum sacrificiis"), and merely
hinted, in an obscure way, that the absolution of him who has committed
a deadly sin after baptism emanates from the same readiness of God to
forgive as is expressed in that rite, and that membership in the Church
is a condition of absolution. His whole theory as to the legal nature of
man's (the Christian's) relationship to God, and the practice,
inaugurated by Tertullian, of designating this connection by terms
derived from Roman law continued to prevail in the West down to
Augustine's time.[275] But, during this whole interval, no book was
written by a Western Churchman which made the salvation of the sinful
Christian dependent on ascetic offerings of atonement, with so little
regard to Christ's grace and the divine factor in the case, as Cyprian's
work _de opere et eleemosynis_.

No less significant is Cyprian's advance as regards the idea of the
sacrifice in public worship, and that in three respects. To begin with,
Cyprian was the first to associate the specific offering, i.e., the
Lord's Supper[276] with the specific priesthood. Secondly, he was the
first to designate the _passi