Church-history of the government of bishops and their councils abbreviated including the chief part…

§. 61. CVIII. Another Council at Carthage, (called the sixth, and by some the fifth) had the famous contention with three Popes, Zosimus, Boniface, and Caelestine, successively, against Appeals to Rome, and the Popes sending Legates into Africa to judge. The Popes alleged the Council of Nice for it. The African Bishops knew no such Canon: They take time for Trial, and send to Constantinople and Alexandria, to Atticus and Cyril, for their true Copies of the Councils: None of them have any such Canon: The Fathers write to the Pope to take better heed what he affirmeth for the time to come, and to forbear such pride and usurpation: alleging that by the Canons all strifes were to be ended by their neighbour Bishops and Councils.

§. 61. CVIII. Another Council at Carthage, (called the sixth, and by some the fifth) had the famous contention with three Popes, Zosimus, Boniface, and Caelestine, successively, against Appeals to Rome, and the Popes sending Legates into Africa to judge. The Popes alledged the Council of Nice for it. The African Bishops knew no such Canon: They take time for Tryal, and send to Constantinople and Alexandria, to Atticus and Cyril, for their true Copies of the Councils: None of them have any such Canon: The Fathers write to the Pope to take better heed what he affirmeth for the time to come, and to forbear such pride and usurpation: alledging that by the Canons all strifes were to be ended by their neighbour Bishops and Councils.

Here the Papists sweat about these answers and the event. Some say ⟨p. 83⟩(as Harding) that the Africans continued long, (some say almost 100 years) in Schism: And an Epistle under the name of Pope Boniface the second to Eulalius saith the same: Others wiser (as Binnius) see that to lose Augustine's authority and have him and all the African Bishops (the best of the World) against the Papal power, would be to heavy a burden for them: Therefore they say, that the Africans were no Schismatics, that the Canon not found was in the Council of Sardica; and that That went for the Council of Nice: That the Africans did not deny the Popes power of judging them, but only of sending Soldiers and doing it violently by force, and such other shifts, which the express words of the African Council and Letters plainly confute: If any dispute it, I appeal to the very words.