ibit to all men an example of simplicity and humility. For as
to our brother Faustinus, since the wretched Apiarius is cut off from the
Church, we depend confidently on your goodness, that, without violating
brotherly charity, Africa shall be no longer forced to endure him. Such is
the letter of the Council of Africa to Pope St. Coelestine."[47]

I confess it was not without astonishment that I first read this passage of
history; so exactly had the African Bishops, in 426, when the greatest
father of the Church was one of them, anticipated and pleaded the cause of
the English Church, in 1534. It is precisely the same claim made in both
instances, viz. that these two laws should be observed, on which the
stability of the government of the whole Church Catholic rests; as
Thomassin remarks:--first, that the action of the Bishop in his own
diocese, in matters proper to that diocese, should not be interfered with;
secondly, that the action of the Metropolitan with his Suffragans, in
matters belonging to his province, should be left equally free. Who ever
accused the African Bishops, and St. Augustin, of schism, for maintaining a
right which had come down to them from all antiquity, was possessed and
acted on all over the Church, was specifically enacted at the greatest
Ecumenical Council, and recognised in every provincial Council held up to
that time? This was all that the Church of England claimed; she based her
claim on the unvarying practice of the whole Church during, at least, the
first six centuries. We repeat, it is not a case of doubt, of conflicting
testimony, in words elsewhere quoted, "of Popes against Popes, Councils
against Councils, some Fathers against others, the same Fathers against
themselves; a consent of Fathers of one age against a consent of Fathers of
another age, the Church of one age against the Church of another age."[48]
It is the Church of the Martyrs, the Church of the Fathers, of Athanasius,
Basil, Gregory, and Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustin, and Gregory the
Great, bearing one unbiassed indisputable witness, attested in a hundred
Councils, denied in none, for the Patriarchal system, and against a power
assumed by one Bishop, though the greatest, most venerable, and most
illustrious in his own see, to interfere, dispense with, suspend, or
abrogate, the authority of the Bishop in his Diocese, and of the
Metropolitan in his Council; to exercise singly, by himself, powers which
belong only to