let not prayer cease.  My desire, most dear brother, is that you may always prosper.” [Epist. 57.  Benedict, p. 96.—­Memores nostri invicem simus concordes atque unanimes:  utrobique pro nobis semper oremus, pressuras et angustias mutua caritate relevemus, et si quis istinc nostrum prior divinae dignationis celeritate praecesserit, perseveret apud Dominum nostra dilectio; pro fratribus et sororibus nostris apud misericordiam Patris non cesset oratio.  Opto te, frater carissime, semper bene valere.—­This epistle is by some editors numbered as the 60th, by others as the 61st, the 7th, and the 69th, &c.]

Whether the above view of this passage be founded in reason or not, it matters little to the point at issue.  Let both these passages be accepted in the sense assigned to them by some Roman Catholic writers, yet there is not a shadow of analogy between the language and conduct of Cyprian, and the language and conduct of those who now invoke saints departed.  In each case Cyprian, still in the body, was addressing fellow-creatures still sojourning on earth.  The very utmost which these passages could be forced to countenance would be, that the righteous, when in heaven, may be mindful in their prayers of their friends, who are still exposed to the dangers from which they have themselves finally escaped, and who, when both were on earth, requested them to remember the survivors in their prayers.  But this is a question totally different from our addressing them in supplication and prayer; a difference which I am most anxious that both myself and my readers should keep in mind throughout.

In the extract from Cyprian’s letter, a modern author having rendered the single word “utrobique,” by the words “in this world and the next” I am induced to add a few further observations on the passage. (The Latin original and the version here referred to, will be placed side by side in the Appendix.) It will, I think, appear to most readers on a careful examination of the passage, that the expression “utrobique[62]” “on both sides,” or “on both parts,” whatever be its precise {166} meaning, so far from referring to “this world and the next,” must evidently be confined to the condition of both parties now in this life, because it stands in direct contradistinction to what follows, the supposed case of the death of either of the two; and because it applies no less to the mutual relief of each other’s sufferings and afflictions during their joint lives, than to their mutual prayers:  it cannot mean that all the mutual benefits to be derived from their mutual remembrance of each other, were to come solely through the means of their prayers.  They were doubtless mutually to pray for each other; but, in addition to their prayers, they were also to relieve each other’s pressures and difficulties with mutual love, and that too before the event afterwards contemplated, namely, the removal of one of them by death.

    [Footnote 62:  Utrobique is rendered by Facciolati [Greek: 
    hekaterothi]—­“in utraque parte, utrimque.”]