PART III.

Augustine had a great many disputes with heretics and others who separated from the Church, or tried to corrupt its doctrine. But only two of his controversies need be mentioned here. One of these was with the Donatists, and the other was with the Pelagians.

The sect of the Donatists had arisen soon after the end of the last heathen persecution, and was now nearly a hundred years old. We have seen that St. Cyprian had a great deal of trouble with people who fancied that, if a man were put to death, or underwent any other considerable suffering, for the name of Christ, he deserved to be held in great honour, and his wishes were to be attended to by other Christians, whatever his character and motives might have been.[32] The same spirit which led to this mistake continued in Africa after St. Cyprian's time; and thus, when the persecution began there under Diocletian and Maximian[33] (A.D. 303), great numbers rushed into danger, in the hope of being put to death, and of so obtaining at once the blessedness and the glory of martyrdom. Many of these people were weary of their lives, or in some other respect were not of such characters that they could be reckoned as true Christian martyrs. The wise fathers of the Church always disapproved of such foolhardy doings, and would not allow people, who acted in a way so unlike our Lord and His apostle St. Paul, to be considered as martyrs; and Mensurius, who was the bishop of Carthage, stedfastly set his face against all such things.

[32] See page 27.

[33] See Chapter IX.

One of the ways by which the persecutors hoped to put down the Gospel, was to get hold of all the copies of the Scriptures, and to burn them; and they required the clergy to deliver them up. But most of the officers who had to execute the orders of the emperors did not know a Bible from any other book; and it is said that, when some of them came to Mensurius, and asked him to deliver up his books, he gave them a quantity of books written by heretics, which he had collected (perhaps with the intention of burning them himself), and that all the while he had put the Scriptures safely out of the way, until the tyranny of the heathens should be overpast. When the persecution was at an end, some of the party whom he had offended by setting himself against their wrong notions as to martyrdom, brought up this matter against the bishop. They said that his account of it was false; that the books which he had given up were not what he said, but that he had really given up the Scriptures; and that, even if his story were true, he had done wrong in using such deceit. They gave the name of _traditors_,[34] (or, as we should say, _traitors_,) to those who confessed that they had been frightened into giving up the Scriptures; and they were for showing no mercy to any traditor, however much he might repent of his weakness.

[34] This means persons who _give up_ or _betray_.

This severe party, then, tried to get up an opposition to Mensurius. They found, however, that they could make nothing of it. But when he died, and when Cæcilian, who had been his archdeacon and his righthand man, was chosen bishop in his stead, these people made a great outcry, and set up another bishop of their own against him. All sorts of people who had taken offence at Cæcilian or Mensurius thought this a fine opportunity for having their revenge; and thus a strong party was formed. It was greatly helped by the wealth of a lady named Lucilla, whom Cæcilian had reproved for the superstitious habit of kissing a bone, which she supposed to have belonged to some martyr, before communicating at the Lord's table. The first bishop of the party was one Majorinus, who had been a servant of some sort to Lucilla; and, when Majorinus was dead, they set up a second bishop, named Donatus, after whom they were called Donatists. This Donatus was a clever and a learned man, and lived very strictly; but he was exceedingly proud and ill-tempered, and used very violent language against all who differed from him; and his sect copied his pride and bitterness. Many of them, however, while they professed to be extremely strict, neglected the plainer and humbler duties of Christian life.

The Donatists said that every member of their sect must be a saint: whereas our Lord himself had declared that evil members would always be mixed with the good in His Church on earth, like tares growing in a field of wheat, or bad fishes mixed with good ones in a net; and that the separation of the good from the bad would not take place until the end of the world (_St. Matt._ xiii. 24-30, 36-43, 47-50). And they said that their own sect was the only true Church of Christ, although they had no congregations out of Africa, except one which was set up to please a rich lady in Spain, and another at Rome. Whenever they made a convert from the Church, they baptized him afresh, as if his former baptism were good for nothing. They pretended to work miracles, and to see visions; and they made a very great deal of Donatus himself, so as even to pay him honours which ought not to have been given to any child of man; for they sang hymns to him, and swore by his gray hairs.

Shortly after Constantine got possession of Africa by his victory over Maxentius, and declared liberty of religion to the Christians (A.D. 312-313),[35] the Donatists applied to him against the Catholics;[36] and it was curious that they should have been the first to call in the emperor as judge in such a matter, because they were afterwards very violent against the notion of an earthly sovereign's having any right to concern himself with the management of religious affairs. Constantine tried to settle the question by desiring some bishops to judge between the parties; and these bishops gave judgment in favour of the Catholics. The Donatists were dissatisfied, and asked for a new trial; whereupon Constantine gathered a council for the purpose at Arles, in France (A.D. 314). This was the greatest council that had at that time been seen: there were about two hundred bishops at it, and among them were some from Britain. Here again the decision was against the Donatists, and they thereupon begged the emperor himself to examine their case; which he did, and once more condemned them (A.D. 316). Some severe laws were then made against them; their churches were taken away; many of them were banished, and were deprived of all that they had; and they were even threatened with death, although none of them suffered it during Constantine's reign.

[35] Page 37.

[36] Page 44.

The emperor, after a while, saw that they were growing wilder and wilder, that punishment had no effect on them, except to make them more unmanageable, and that they were not to be treated as reasonable people. He then did away with the laws against them, and tried to keep them quiet by kindness; and in the last years of his reign his hands were so full of the Arian quarrels nearer home that he had little leisure to attend to the affairs of the Donatists.