Here is an excerpt from St. Cyprian of Carthage’s Letter to Cornelius of Rome. This offers yet another proof of Rome as the Chair or throne of Peter. Cyprian also refers to the Roman church as the “chief” Church! This is just another insight into the early Church. The letter was written in the middle of the third century A.D.! The Church was still decades from being legalized.
14. To these also it was not sufficient that they had
withdrawn from the Gospel, that they had taken away
from the lapsed the hope of satisfaction and
repentance, that they had taken away those involved in
frauds or stained with adulteries, or polluted with the
deadly contagion of sacrifices, lest they should entreat
God, or make confession of their crimes in the Church,
from all feeling and fruit of repentance; that they had set
up outside for themselves–outside the Church, and
opposed to the Church, a conventicle of their
abandoned faction, when there had flowed together a
band of creatures with evil consciences, and unwilling to
entreat and to satisfy God. After such things as these,
moreover, they still dare–a false bishop having been
appointed for them by, heretics–to set sail and to bear
letters from schismatic and
consider that these were the Romans whose faith was
praised in the preaching of the apostle, to whom
faithlessness could have no access. But what was the
reason of their coming and announcing the making of
the pseudo-bishop in opposition to the bishops? For
either they are pleased with what they have done, and
persist in their wickedness; or, if they are displeased
and retreat, they know whither they may return. For, as
it has been decreed by all of us –and is equally fair and
just–that the case of every one should be heard there
where the crime has been committed; and a portion of
the flock has been assigned to each individual pastor,
which he is to rule and govern, having to give account of
his doing to the Lord; it certainly behoves those over
whom we are placed not to run about nor to break up
the harmonious agreement of the bishops with their
crafty and deceitful rashness, but there to plead their
cause, where they may be able to have both accusers
and witnesses of their crime; unless perchance the
authority of the bishops constituted in Africa seems to a
few desperate and abandoned men to be too little, who
have already judged concerning them, and have lately
condemned, by the gravity of their judgment, their
conscience bound in many bonds of sins. Already their
case has been examined, already sentence concerning
them has been pronounced; nor is it fitting for the dignity
of priests to be blamed for the levity of a changeable
and inconstant mind, when the Lord teaches and says,
“Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay.”
