Pompeius, in which he says, [19]"Although we have fully embraced all that is to be said concerning the baptizing of heretics, in the letters of which we have sent to you copies, most dear Brother, yet, because you desired to be informed what answer our Brother Stephen sent me to our letters, I send you a copy of his rescript, after reading which you will more and more mark his error, who attempts to assert the cause of heretics against Christians and against the Church of God. For amongst other either proud or impertinent or inconsistent remarks, which he has written rashly and improvidently, &c.... But what blindness of mind is it, what perverseness to refuse to recognise the unity of the faith coming from God the Father and the tradition of Jesus Christ our Lord and God.... But since no heresy at all, nor indeed any schism, can possess outside (the Body) the sanctification of saving baptism, why has the harsh obstinacy of our Brother Stephen burst forth to such a degree?" &c.... "Does he give honour to God, who, the friend of heretics and the enemy of Christians, deems the priests of God, maintaining the truth of Christ and the unity of the Church, worthy of excommunication?" St. Stephen had inflicted this on the African prelates, until they should give up their judgment on the point in question.... "Nor ought the custom, which has crept in _among certain persons_, to hinder truth from prevailing and conquering. For custom without truth is but old error."... "But it is hurried away by presumption and contumacy that a person rather defends his own perverseness and falsity than accedes to the right and truth of another. Which thing the blessed apostle Paul foreseeing, writes to Timothy and warns, that a Bishop must not be quarrelsome, nor contentious, but gentle and teachable. Now he is teachable, who is mild and gentle to learn patiently. For a Bishop ought not only to teach, but also to learn, because he teaches better who daily improves and profits by learning better." Even as we copy this language used concerning a Pope by a great Bishop and Martyr of the third century, who elsewhere writes, [20]"That our Lord built His Church upon Peter alone, and though He gave to all the apostles an equal power, yet in order to manifest unity He has by His own authority so placed the source of the same unity as to begin from one;" we feel the contrast to be almost overpowering with the tone in which the first Patriarch of the Latin Church, however good his cause might be, would now venture to address the Supreme Pontiff. Towards the conclusion of this letter he says, instead of admitting that the Pope's judgment terminated the matter--"This now the priests of God ought to do, preserving the Divine precepts, so that if in anything truth has been shaken and tottered, we may return to the fountain-head of the Lord, and to the evangelical and apostolical tradition, and that the rule of our acting may spring thence, whence its order and origin arose."