Having received letters from every quarter except from Asia Minor, stating that the traditional custom was the same as that of Rome, he then, instead of proceeding by persuasion, immediately conceived the idea of _compelling_ the dissentient Churches to comply with his wishes, by threatening to cut them off from communion if they declined. His threat had no effect, and he proceeded to put it into execution, nothing doubting that the Churches who had been with him hitherto would still stand by him. And this is the point at which we encounter something like the modern papal claims; for he declared the Churches of Asia Minor cut off, not only from _his_ communion, but from the common unity(94). Some might argue that he must have had some foundation for this claim; but till something of the kind can be shown, we have no need to suppose any ground but a strong desire of a rash and determined mind to carry the point he had undertaken. Be the ground what it may, _the Catholic Church negatived his claim_; those who agreed with him in the desire of bringing about unity of practice(95) would not unite with him in excommunicating their brethren, but rebuked him sharply(96); and Irenæus in particular represented to him the difference between his spirit and that of his predecessors. And so entirely abortive was his attempt, that, as we have seen, about sixty years after, Firmilian, in his letter to Cyprian(97), expressly asserted that the peace and unity of the Catholic Church had never been broken by differences about the observance of Easter or other religious rites: and _that_, in alluding to the conduct of Stephen, bishop of Rome, who had quarrelled with the African bishops because their custom differed from the Roman on the subject of rebaptizing those who had been baptized by heretics; which would necessarily have brought to mind any schism produced by Victor, a previous bishop of Rome, if any such had been produced. Here, then, we have the most satisfactory evidence that the Catholic Church, so near to the Apostles’ times, had decided against the power of the bishop of Rome to cut off whom he might think fit from the common unity; not that they knew nothing of such a claim, but that _it was practically made and decided against_.