Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/The Decretals/The Epistle of Pope Urban First/Preface

by Various

The Epistle of Pope Urban First.^[1]

To All Christians.

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Of the church’s receiving only the property of the faithful, and not the price of the same, as in the times of the apostles; and as to why elevated seats should be prepared in the churches for the bishops; and as to the fact that no one should have intercourse with those whom the bishops excommunicate, and that no one should receive those whom they have cast out in any manner whatever.^[2]

Urban, bishop, to all Christians, in sanctification of the spirit, in obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ our Lord, greeting.

It becomes all Christians, most dearly beloved, to imitate Him whose name they have received.  “What doth it profit, my brethren,” says the Apostle James, “though a man say he hath faith, and have not works?”^[3]  “My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that ye receive (sumitis) the greater condemnation; for in many things we offend all.”^[4]  “Let him who is a wise man, and endued with knowledge among you, show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.”^[5]

Footnotes

1. Urban was the successor of Callistus.  The letter ascribed to him is one of the pseudo-Isidorian forgeries.
2. Mansi, Concil. Collect., i. p. 748.
3. Jas ii. 14.
4. Jas. iii. 1, 2.
5. Jas. iii. 13.