^ 27. KESTKICTION OF KELIGIOl S FKEEDOM. 146
or Lj pain. But because the former means are better, tlio
latter must not therefore be uci^lected Many must
often be brought back to their Lord, like wicked servants, by the rod of temporal suffering, before they attaui the highest grade of religious development. . . . The Lord hinselt" orders that the guests be first invited, then compelled; to Ids great suj)per." ' This father thinks that, if the state be denied the right to punish religious error, neither should she pnniyh any other crime, like murder or adultery, since Paul, in Gal. V. 19, attributes divisions and sects to the same source in the flesh." He charges his Donatist opponents with inconsistency in seeming to approve the emperors' prohibitions of idolatry, but condemning their persecution of Christian heretics. It is to the honor of Augustine's heart, indeed, that in actual cases he earnestly urged upon the magistrates clemency and humanity, and thus in practice remained true to his noble maxim : "IS^othing conquers but truth, the victory of truth is love." ' But his theory, as Is^eander justly observes, " contains the germ of the whole system of spiritual despotism, intolerance, and persecution, even to the court of the Inquisition."* The great authority of his name was often afterward made to justify cruelties from which he himself would have shrunk with horror. Soon after him, Leo the Great, the first representative of consistent, exclusive, universal papacy, advocated even the penalty of death for heresy.'
Henceforth none but the persecuted parties, from time to time, protested against religious persecution ; being made, by their sufferings, if not from principle, at least from policy and self-interest, the advocates of toleration. Thus the Donatist bishop Petilian, in Africa, against whom Augustine wrote, rebukes his Catholic opponents, as formerly his countryman
' Epist. 185, ad Booifacium, § 21, § 24.
= C. Gaudent. Donat. i. § 20. C. Epist. Parmen. i. § 16.
' " Non vincit nisi Veritas, victoria veritatis est caritas."
* Kirchengesch. iii. p. 427 ; Torrey's ed. ii. p. 217.
* Epist. XV. ad Turribium, where Leo mentions the execution of the Priscillianiata with evident approbation : " Etiam mundi principes ita hanc sacrilegam amentiam detestati sunt, ut auctorem ejus cum plerisque discipulis iegum publicarum enso prosternerent."
146 TITLED PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
TertuUian liad condemned the heathen persecutors of the Christians, for using outwai-d force in matters of conscience ; appealing to Christ and the apostles, who never persecuted, but rather suffered and died. "Think you," says he, "to serve God by killing us with your own hand ? Ye err, ye err, if ye, poor mortals, think this ; God has not hangmen tor priests. Christ teaches us to bear wrong, not to revenge it." The Donatist bishop Gaudentius says : " God appointed prophets and fishermen, not princes and soldiers, to spread the faith." Still we cannot forget, that the Donatists were the first who appealed to the imperial tribunal in an ecclesiastical matter, and did not, till after that tribunal had deci ded agains^, them, turn against the state-ch jrch system.
CHAPTER lY.
THE RISE AND PKOGKESS OF M0NASTICI8M.
SOUKCES.
1. Greek : Sookates : Hist. Eccles. lib. iv. cap. 23 sqq. Sozomen : IT. K
1. i. c. 12-14 ; iii. 14; vi. 28-34. Palladius (first a monk and disciple of the younger Macarius, then bishop of Helenopolis in Bithynia, ordained by Ohrysostom ; t 431) : Ilistoria Lausiaca (laropla npos Aavaov^ a court officer under Theodosios II., to whom the work was dedicated), composed about 421, with enthusiastic admiration, from personal acquaintance, of the most celebrated contemporaneous ascetics of Egypt. Theodoeet (t 457j : Historia religiosa, seu ascetica vivendi ratio ((piXu^ens la-roplu)^ biographies of thirty Oriental anchorets and monks, for the most part from personal observation. Nilxjs the elder (an anchoret on Mt. Sinai, f about 450) : De vita ascetica, De exercitatione monastica, Epistoke 355, and other writings.
2. Latin : Rufinus (t 410) : Histor. Eremitica, s. Vitne Patrum. SuLPiorce
Severus (about 400) : Dialogi III. (the first dialogue contains a lively and entertaining account of the Egyptian oonks, whom he visited ; the two others relate to Martin of Tours). Oassianus (t 432) : Institutiones coenobiales, and Collationes Patrum (spiritual conversations of eastern monks). Also the ascet'c writings of AxHANASirs (Vita Antonii), Basil, Gregort Nazianzen Ohrysostom, Niltjs, Isidore of Pelusium, among the Greek ; Ambrose, Augustine, Jeromb (his Lives of anchorets, and his letters), Oafsiodoeus, and Gregory the Great, among the Latin fathers.