granted a rehearing of his case in his own province or its neighborhood. On the contrary, we can prove from St. Cyprian's letters that no such right of appeal was recognized by two churches most likely, one might have said, to furnish examples of it, namely, those of North Africa and Spain.

(a) The African Church refused most firmly to revise its judgments, or allow them to be revised, because of any contrary impressions at Rome. Take Cyprian's letter to Cornelius of Rome concerning Fortunatus and Felicissimus, a bishop and a deacon, who had been to Rome with complaints of bad treatment in their own province. It is letter lix., § 19, in the Oxford Library of the Fathers; liv., § 14, in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library. St. Cyprian did not believe in appeals to Rome. These are his words: "For since it has been decreed by our whole body and is alike equitable and just, that every cause should be there heard, where the offence has been committed. . . . It therefore behooves those over whom we are set, not to run about from place to place, nor by their crafty and deceitful boldness break the harmonious concord of bishops, but there to plead their cause where they will have both accusers and witnesses of their crime."

But it may be suggested that this is still consistent with the Sardican scheme. The objection would lie against a trial in Italy, but not against

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St. Cornelius's ordering one in the next province. But hear St. Cyprian again. He does much more than disapprove of people's running from Africa to Rome. He gives notice that the case is settled, and nothing that Rome can say can unsettle it again. Already has their cause been heard; already has sentence been given concerning them ; nor does it accord with the dignity of prelates to incur blame for the levity of a changeable and inconstant mind." It is a plain declaration from a scholar and saint and martyr: "When the African Church has judged a case among its own members, Rome shall not be allowed to interfere."

(b) After writing thus to his brother, Cornelius, St. Cyprian is found a few years later encouraging certain Spanish Christians to pay no attention to Cornelius's successor, Stephen. Basilides, Bishop of Leon, has been deposed on a charge of lapsing into idolatry in time of persecution. He has gone to Rome and persuaded Bishop Stephen that he is a much abused man. Stephen has granted communion to this Spaniard and endeavored to get him restored to his see, for which another had already been consecrated. What Stephen may have written to the Spanish churches, we know not. But we do know of their appealing to the African bishops for advice, and this is part of what they got in return.

St. Cyprian writes for himself and thirty-six other bishops-the letter is numbered lxvii. in both of the libraries before referred to-to say that the Spaniards have done perfectly right and could not have done anything else. "Neither," he says in § 5-" Neither can it rescind an ordination rightly perfected, that Basilides, after the detection of his crimes and the baring of his own conscience even by his own confession, went to Rome and deceived Stephen, our colleague, placed at a distance, and ignorant of what had been done and of the truth, to canvass that he might be replaced unjustly in the episcopate from which he had been righteously deposed."

The point of St. Cyprian's contention plainly is not only that "Stephen, our colleague," had been deceived, but that the affairs of the Spanish churches were none of his proper business anyhow. Suppose that a man who has a right to sit as an appellate judge, and is so sitting, or suppose that a man who simply has the right suggested at Sardica, to send a case to a court somewhere else for a new trial, has been grossly deceived, and being so deceived, has pronounced a legal decision. It is of no avail to say that the judge was deceived. It is of no avail to prove that fact ten times over. The unjust decision of the deceived. judge must stand till it is reversed in some legal way. If the judge himself found out the decep

tion, that would not of itself reverse his unjust sentence. St. Cyprian was too good a lawyer, and too sensible a man not to know all that. If Basilides had deceived a real judge, a person who had a judicial claim to hear his appeal, the deception would have accomplished a great deal. But to St. Cyprian the Bishop of Rome was simply not a judge at all, outside of the "Roman Diocese," and therefore his judgment need not be considered by those who knew it to be a misjudgment.*

In fact, St. Cyprian's letters prove abundantly that in the second century there was no such thing as a recognized judicial appeal to the Roman See from Africa; there was no such appeal from Spain.

2. I must now add that if there was no general

* Much more than this, this unfortunate "Stephen, our colleague," gets the following severe measure dealt out to him in the close (9) of the letter: 'Wherefore, although there have been found some among our colleagues, dearest brethren, who think that the godly discipline may be neglected, and who rashly hold communion with Basilides and Martial, such a thing as this ought not to trouble our faith, since the Holy Spirit threatens such in the Psalms, saying, 'But thou hatest instruction, and didst cast my words behind thee: when thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst unto him, and hast been partaker with adulterers He shows that they are partakers and sharers with other men's sins, who are associated with the delinquents."

After more of this sort, he concludes:

"For which reason,

Church law before the Council of Sardica, granting an appeal to Rome, the Sardican scheme itself was certainly not such a law. I have reserved till now the important question what authority those bishops at Sardica had any way, to impose a new law upon all Catholic Christendom. The answer is simply, "None whatever." If they had been the bishops of a province, they could have made laws for their province. If they had been the bishops of a diocese, they could have made laws for their diocese. If they had been the bishops of the world, they could have made laws for the world. As a fact, they were less than one hundred in number.* They certainly did not represent the hundreds of provinces and thousands of bishops of that day in such wise as to give any

we not only approve, but applaud, dearly beloved brethren, the religious solicitude of your integrity and faith, and exhort you, as much as we can by our letters, not to mingle in sacrilegious communion with profane and polluted priests, but maintain the sound and sincere constancy of your faith with religious fear. I bid you, dearest brethren, ever heartily farewell." St. Cyprian evidently regarded his colleague of Rome as guilty of "sacrilegious communion with profane and polluted priests," and as partaker with their sins, and he didn't hesitate to say so.

* The whole original number was about 170, according to St. Athanasius, who was there. The seceders numbered 76, which would leave about 94. Hefele gives reason for fixing

the number conjecturally at 97.