[Sidenote: _The Acts of the Council of_ Sinuessa _fabulous_.]
If _Marcellinus_ acquired great Glory during the Persecution, as _Theodoret_ assures us; if his Apostasy was a mere Calumny, broached by the _Donatists_, as we read in St. _Austin_; the pretended Council of _Sinuessa_ must be given up, since it is supposed to have been assembled on occasion of _Marcellinus_’s Fall: but, abstracting from the Fall of _Marcellinus_, the Circumstances attending that Council are in themselves so absurd and incredible, that there needs no other Argument to convince a Man, who has any Understanding, and dares to use it, that no such Council ever was, or could be held. [Sidenote: _No such Council ever held._] For who can conceive it possible, that, during the most cruel Persecution the Church ever suffered, 300 Bishops should assemble, not in _Rome_, where they might more easily have met unobserved, but in a small Country Town, where a much less numerous Assembly must immediately have been observed and suspected? But, after the Death of _Fabianus_, says _Baronius_[497], the Clergy of _Rome_, and the Bishops, met to chuse him a Successor, notwithstanding the Persecution that raged then. He ought to have said _some Bishops_, as St. _Cyprian_ does[498], whom he quotes; but I shall say so for him, that his Argument may appear in its full Strength, and save me the Trouble of answering it; for it will then run thus: Some Bishops, perhaps 15 or 20, met unobserved in the great and populous City of _Rome_: _Ergo_, 300 might meet unobserved in a small Country Town; for such was _Sinuessa_.
[Sidenote: _The many Absurdities contained in the Acts of that Council._]