He was a prosperous Carhtaginian by birth, and enjoyed the benefits of a good education in rhetoric and law.
He often experienced supernatural visions. He says’ “It seemed best to us through many and clear visions.” 19
“For beside the visions of the night, even in the daytime, the innocent age of boys is among us filled with the Holy Spirit, seeing in an ecstasy with their eyes, and hearing and speaking those things wherby the Lord condescends to war and instruct us.” 20
He saw regeneration as taking place in true baptism and the reception of the Holy Spirit as occurring thereafter through the laying on of hands.
For he who has been sanctified, his dins being put away in baptism, and has been spiritually reformed into a new man, has become fitted for receiving the Holy Spirit.” 21
“One is not born by the imposition of hands when he receives the Holy Ghost, but in baptism, that so, being already born, he may receive the Holy Spirit, even as it happened to the first man Adam. For first God formed him and then breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” 22
The reason for the decline of spiritual gifts after this time. Professor James L. Ash, Jr. says that virtually all historians of Christianity agree that the institutionalization of the early church was accompanied by the demise of the charismatic gifts. 1
19. Cyprian, Letters, vol. 51 of The Fathers of the Church, 161
20. Cyprian, The Epistles of Cyprian, vol. 5 of the Ante-Nicene Christian Library, 290
21. The Epistles of Cyprian, 387
22. Ibid., 388
23. James L. Ash Jr., The Decline of Ecstatic Prophecy in the Early Church, 227.
Eddie L Hyatt. 2000 Years Of Charismatic Christianity: A 21st century look at church history from a pentecostal/charismatic prospective