Codex of the African Church: the canons of the African councils after 397 133–138

As long as his own bishop does not communicate with the one he has excommunicated, the other bishops are not to communicate with that same bishop, so that a bishop may be more careful not to say against anyone what he cannot prove by other evidence. Bishop Aurelius said: "According to the decrees of the whole council assembled and the sentence of my lowliness, it pleases us to make a conclusion of all matters: let the proceedings of the church receive all the headings set down and arranged in this day's treatment; but what has not yet been expressed we will write back on the following day through our brothers Bishop Faustinus and the presbyters Philip and Asellus to our venerable brother and fellow bishop Boniface." And they subscribed.

To our most beloved and honourable lord brother Celestine, Aurelius, Palatinus, Antonius, Totus, Servusdei, Terentius, Fortunatus, Martin, Januarius, Optatus, Celticius, Donatus, Theasius, Vincent, Fortunatianus, and the others who were present at the general African council of Carthage. We could wish that, as your holiness made known to us by the letter sent through our fellow presbyter Leo that you were glad at the arrival of Apiarius, so we too might send these writings with joy about his clearing. Then surely both our and your eagerness would be more assured, and that which had gone before, both about hearing and about what was heard, would not seem hasty or premature. When our holy brother and fellow bishop Faustinus came to us, we gathered a council and believed that he had been sent with him for this purpose: that, as through his effort he had earlier been restored to the presbyterate, so now he might be cleared, through his labour, of the great crimes charged by the people of Thabraca. But the course of our council's examination found his outrages so great and so monstrous that they overcame even the patronage rather than the judgment of the said Faustinus, and the effort of a defender rather than the justice of an arbiter. For first, how much he resisted the whole assembly, heaping various injuries on it, as if asserting the privileges of the Roman church, and wishing him to be received by us into communion whom your holiness, believing that he had appealed, which he could not prove, had restored to communion; which nevertheless was not at all lawful, as you will better learn from reading the proceedings. Yet after a most laborious trial lasting three days, when in great distress we were examining the various charges against him, God, the just judge, strong and patient, cut short with great dispatch both the delays of our fellow bishop Faustinus and the evasions of Apiarius himself, by which he was trying to hide his abominable vileness. For when his fouler and more putrid obstinacy, by which he wished to bury so great a filth of lusts under the shamelessness of denial, had been overcome, our God constraining his conscience and publishing even to men the hidden things which he was already condemning in his heart as in a wallow of crimes, the crafty denier suddenly burst out into a confession of all the outrages charged, and at last of his own accord convicted himself of all the incredible disgraces, and turned into groans even our hope, by which we both believed and wished that he could be cleared of such shameful stains; except that he softened this our sorrow by one consolation only, that he both freed us from the labour of a longer inquiry and provided some kind of remedy for his own wounds, although by an unwilling confession, his conscience resisting, lord brother. Having first paid, then, the duty of due greeting, we earnestly entreat that henceforth you do not too readily admit to your ears those coming from here, and that you will no longer receive into communion those excommunicated by us, because your venerableness will easily see that this too was defined by the Council of Nicaea. For if it seems that provision is made there concerning the lower clergy or the laity, how much more did it wish this to be observed concerning bishops, lest those suspended from communion in their own province should seem to be restored to communion by your holiness hastily, or prematurely, or improperly? Let your holiness also, as is worthy of you, repel the wicked refuges of presbyters and of the clergy below them, because by no definition of the fathers has this been taken away from the African church, and the decrees of Nicaea most plainly committed both the clergy of lower rank and the bishops themselves to their own metropolitans. For they most wisely and most justly provided that all matters should be ended in the places where they arose, and that the grace of the Holy Spirit would not be lacking to each province, by which equity may be both wisely seen and most firmly held by the priests of Christ; especially since it is granted to each one, if he is aggrieved by the judgment of those who heard the case, to appeal to the councils of his own province or even to a general council; unless perhaps there is anyone who believes that our God can inspire justice of examination in any one person, and deny it to innumerable priests gathered in council. Or how will a judgment overseas itself be valid, to which the necessary persons of the witnesses cannot be brought, whether because of their sex, or the infirmity of old age, or many other intervening hindrances? For that any should be sent as if from the side of your holiness, we find decreed by no synod of the fathers. For what you sent us some time ago through the same fellow bishop of ours, Faustinus, as if from the Council of Nicaea, we could not find anything of the kind in the more genuine copies of the councils which are received as Nicene, sent from the authentic text by holy Cyril, our fellow bishop of the church of Alexandria, and by the venerable Atticus, bishop of Constantinople, which we had also sent before this to Boniface of venerable memory, your predecessor, through the presbyter Innocent and the subdeacon Marcellus, by whom they had been sent to us by them. Do not send, do not grant your clerics as executors to whoever asks for them, lest we seem to bring the smoky pride of the world into the church of Christ, which offers the light of simplicity and the day of humility to those who desire to see God. For concerning our brother Faustinus, now that Apiarius has been removed from the church of Christ for his abominable wickedness, which is to be lamented, we are confident that, by the uprightness and moderation of your holiness, saving brotherly love, Africa will no longer have to endure him. And in another hand: May our Lord keep your holiness for a long age, praying for us, lord brother.