an Ecumenical Council, and to annul the enactments of at
least the first four Ecumenical Councils. Had an advocate been instructed
to draw out the abstract case of the English Church, he could not have
described it more exactly than the African Bishops in stating their own.
True, indeed, it is, that the African Bishops were maintaining a right
which not only had never been interrupted, but was universal; while the
English Bishops resumed a power which had been surrendered, not only by
them, but by all the west of Europe, for many hundred years. Accordingly,
the African Bishops did not suffer even a temporary suspension of communion
with Rome, for having both condemned afresh Apiarius, whom the Pope had
restored, and explicitly refused permission to the Pope to interfere in the
ordinary government of their dioceses; while the English Church has ever
since been accused of schism by the rest of the Latin communion. This
decision of the African Bishops, in the year 426, is a proof that the Canon
of the Council of Sardica, conferring, in certain cases, the power of
ordering a cause to be reheard on the Pope, and the most favourable to his
authority of any Canon of an ancient Council, was yet not received even
throughout all the West.

In the year 402, St. Augustin wrote a letter to the Catholics, commonly
called his treatise "on the Unity of the Church." The bearing of this book
on the controversy respecting schism between ourselves and the Roman
Catholics is very remarkable. The Saint refers triumphantly to most express
passages from the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, our Lord's own teaching,
and that of His Apostles, bearing witness to the catholicity of the Church,
an "Ecclesia toto terrarum orbe diffusa." He challenges his adversaries,
the Donatists, to produce a single passage, which either restricted the
Church to the confines of Africa, or declared that it would perish from the
rest of the world, and be restored out of Africa. His test seems decisive
against the Donatists, and against all those who in after times have
restricted the Church to one province, or have declared the Roman Church to
be so corrupt that it is not a part of the true Church. For if it be not,
then the promises of Christ have failed. But while it annihilates the
position of the Donatists, and of the Puritan or Evangelical faction in
these present times, it leaves unassailed that of Andrewes and Ken. St.
Augustin every where appeals to the Church sp