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may be hence understood, because to Peter alone Christ said, Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven; and again, in the Gospel, when on the Apostles alone Christ breathed and said, Receive the Holy Ghost: whose sins ye remit they are remitted, and whose ye retain, they are retained. _Therefore the power of remitting sins was given to the Apostles and the Churches which they, being sent by Christ, set up, and to the Bishops who have succeeded them by ordination in their stead_.... And here I am justly indignant at this so open and manifest folly of Stephen, because, glorying as he does in the rank of his Episcopate, and maintaining that he holds the succession of Peter, upon whom the foundations of the Church were laid, he introduces many other rocks, and sets up new buildings of many Churches, while he affirms, on his own authority, that Baptism is in them.... Nor does he perceive that the truth of the Christian rock is clouded over by him, and in a manner abolished, who thus betrays and deserts unity.... You Africans can say against Stephen, that, when the truth became known to you, you relinquished an erroneous custom. But we join custom also to truth, and to the custom of the Romans oppose a custom indeed, but that of truth, holding from the beginning this which has been delivered down from Christ, and from the Apostles." He had said before, "One may know that those who are at Rome do not in all things observe what has been delivered down from the beginning, and vainly allege the authority of the Apostles, even by this, that in celebrating Easter, and in many other sacred rites, one may see there is among them certain variations; nor are all things there kept as they are kept at Jerusalem; just as in very many other provinces also, according to the diversity of places and names, there are variations; nor yet on this account have the peace and unity of the Catholic Church ever been departed from. Which now Stephen has dared to do, breaking peace towards you, which his predecessors always kept with you, in reciprocal love and honour; casting, too, shameful reproach (infamans) on the blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, as if they had handed this down, &c." The letter concludes with an apostrophe to Stephen, which only a regard to truth induces us to quote, so painful is its vehemence, though it proves _ex abundanti_ the point we are upon
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