CYPRIAN. – A priest to whom St Jerome sent Epistle 140. They had already corresponded by letter and then met in person, forming a friendship. Jerome praises him as a most diligent student of God’s law. Cyprian asked him for a simple and clear explanation of Psalm 89, and the above-mentioned letter is Jerome’s reply (PL 22, 1166–79; and I. Hilberg: CSEL, LVI, 269–89).
The exegesis constantly takes into account the Hebrew text, the Septuagint and other versions. There are clear statements of the necessity of grace for performing any good work: “He can do nothing good without Him who granted free will on the condition of not withholding His grace for each individual act, so that free will might not become an occasion for insulting the Creator or for arrogance in the creature who was made free, yet so that he must acknowledge that he is nothing without God” (ch. 5). And again, toward the end: “Where are those who, boasting of the power of free will, make God’s grace—which they think they have obtained—consist in having the power to do or not do either good or evil?” These vigorous assertions recall the Pelagian controversy, in which St Jerome took an active part in defence of orthodoxy. According to Vallarsi, the epistle was written c. 418, when the struggle against Pelagianism was still raging, having been condemned that very year by the Council of Carthage and by Pope Zosimus in his Epistola tractoria.