honour
to God, who, the friend of heretics and the enemy of Christians, deems the
priests of God, maintaining the truth of Christ and the unity of the
Church, worthy of excommunication?" St. Stephen had inflicted this on the
African prelates, until they should give up their judgment on the point in
question.... "Nor ought the custom, which has crept in _among certain
persons_, to hinder truth from prevailing and conquering. For custom
without truth is but old error."... "But it is hurried away by presumption
and contumacy that a person rather defends his own perverseness and falsity
than accedes to the right and truth of another. Which thing the blessed
apostle Paul foreseeing, writes to Timothy and warns, that a Bishop must
not be quarrelsome, nor contentious, but gentle and teachable. Now he is
teachable, who is mild and gentle to learn patiently. For a Bishop ought
not only to teach, but also to learn, because he teaches better who daily
improves and profits by learning better." Even as we copy this language
used concerning a Pope by a great Bishop and Martyr of the third century,
who elsewhere writes, [20]"That our Lord built His Church upon Peter alone,
and though He gave to all the apostles an equal power, yet in order to
manifest unity He has by His own authority so placed the source of the same
unity as to begin from one;" we feel the contrast to be almost overpowering
with the tone in which the first Patriarch of the Latin Church, however
good his cause might be, would now venture to address the Supreme Pontiff.
Towards the conclusion of this letter he says, instead of admitting that
the Pope's judgment terminated the matter--"This now the priests of God
ought to do, preserving the Divine precepts, so that if in anything truth
has been shaken and tottered, we may return to the fountain-head of the
Lord, and to the evangelical and apostolical tradition, and that the rule
of our acting may spring thence, whence its order and origin arose."

After receiving the Pope's rescript, and his excommunication, St. Cyprian
convoked another Council of the three provinces of Africa, Numidia, and
Mauritania, which was held at Carthage on the 1st of Sept. 256. It was
attended by eighty-five Bishops, among whom were fifteen Confessors, beside
Priests and Deacons, and a great part of the people. St. Cyprian opened it,
observing: "It remains for us each to deliver our sentiments on this
matter, judging no one, nor removing any one