Cornelius would be to contradict the Treatise on the Unity of the Church, to attribute to St. Cyprian two contradictory doctrines, and consequently to take from him all logic and all authority.
Those who have given such high importance to the text of St. Cyprian, taken from his letter to Cornelius, have forgotten another that so well explains it that it is difficult to understand how they have omitted it. It is that in which he declares that, "Rome should precede Carthage, because of its great size — pro magnitudine sua.[1]" This doctrine agrees with that of St, Irenæus and the other Fathers, who have never mentioned any divine prerogative with which the Church of Rome had been favored.
St. Optatus, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and many other Western Fathers have praised the Church of Rome as an Apostolic Church, and have attached a high importance to her testimony in questions of faith. But not one of them ascribes to her any such doctrinal authority that her testimony would of itself be sufficient to determine questions under discussion. It must even be remarked that St. Augustine sets up the authority of the Oriental churches against the Donatists, and does not mention that of Rome, although she was the Apostolic Church of the West. St. Irenæus would be the only one to sustain that doctrine, if we should receive his text as translated by the Romish theologians.
But we have seen that this interpretation is false, and that he has attributed to the testimony of the Church of Rome a great authority in this sense only: that it had received the Apostolic tradition, and, thanks to the Believers who congregated there from all parts, that tradition had been preserved pure unto his times. Therefore, it was not because the Church of Rome was the
- ↑ Cypr. Ep. 59 ad Cornel.
