Ch. 10. I ask the woman herself, “Tell me, sister, have you sent your husband before in peace?” What will she answer? In discord? In that case she is bound the more to him with whom she has a cause to plead at the bar of God. She is bound to another, she who has not departed from him. But if she say, “In peace,” then she must necessarily persevere in that peace with him whom she will be no longer able to divorce; not that she would marry, even if she had been able to divorce him. Indeed, she prays for his soul, and requests refreshment for him meanwhile, and fellowship in the first resurrection; and she offers on the anniversary of his falling asleep. (_h_) Cyprian, _De Opere et Eleemosynis_, 1, 2, 5. (MSL, 4:625.) Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (249-258), was the most important theologian and ecclesiastic between Tertullian and Augustine. He developed the theology of the former especially in its ecclesiastical lines, and his idea of the Church was accepted by the latter as a matter beyond dispute. His most important contributions to the development of the Church were his hierarchical conceptions, which became generally accepted as the basis of the episcopal organization of the Church (see below, §§ 46, 50, 51). His writings, which are of great importance in the history of the Church, consist only of epistles and brief tracts. His influence did much to determine the lines of development of the Western Church, and especially the church of North Africa. With the following _cf. supra_, § 16.