3G1 THIRD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
perial tribune and notary, and a friend of Augustine, presided and was to pass the decisive judgment. This arrangement was obviously partial, and secured the triumph of the Catholics. The discussions related to two points : (1) Whether the Catholic bishops Caecilian and Felix of Aptunga were traditors ; (2) Whether the church lose her nature and attributes by fellowship with heinous sinners. The balance of skill ana argument was on the side of Augustine, though the Donatista brought much that was forcible against compulsion in religion, and against the confusion of the temjioral and the spiritual powers. The imperial commissioner, as might be expected, decided in favor of the Catholics, The separatists nevertheless persisted in their view, but their appeal to the emperor continued unsuccessfuL
More stringent civil laws were now enacted against them, banishing the Donatist clergy from their country, imposing fines on the laity, and confiscating the churches. In 415 they were even forbidden to hold religious assemblies, upon pain of death.
Augustine himself, who had previously consented only to spiritual measures against heretics, now advocated force, to bring them into the fellowship of the church, out of which there was no salvation. He appealed to the command in the parable of the supper, Luke, xiv. 23, to " compel them to come in ; " where, however, the " compel " {avd^Kaaov) is evidently but a vivid hyperbole for the holy zeal in the conversion of the heathen, which we find, for example, in the apostle Paul.'
New eruptions of fanaticism ensued. A bishop Gaudentius threatened, that if the attempt were made to deprive him of his church by force, he would burn himself with his congregation in it, and vindicated this intended suicide by tlie example of Rhazis, in the second book of Maccabees (ch. xiv.).
The conquest of Africa by the Arian Vandals in 428 dev astated the African chui'ch, and put an end to the controversy, as the French Revolution swept both Jesuitism and Jansenism away. Yet a remnan'; of the Donatists, as we learn from the
' On Augustine's view conip. § 27, toward the closo.
§ 71, INTEBNAI. HISTORY OF D0NATI5M. 305
letters of Gregory I., perpetuated itself into the seventh century, still proving in their ruins the power of a mistaken puritanic zeal and the responsibility and guilt of state-church persecution. In the seventh century the entire African church sank under the Saracenic conquest.
■'J 71. Internal History of the Donatist Schism. Dogma of
the Church.
The Donatist controversy was a conflict between separatism and Catholicism ; between ecclesiastical purism and ecclesiastical eclecticism ; between the idea of the church as an exclusive community of regenerate saints and the idea of the church as the general Christendom of state and people. It revolved around the doctrine of the essence of the Christian church, and, in particular, of the predicate of holiness. It resulted in the completion by Augustine of the catholic dogma of the church, which had been partly developed by Cyprian in Ms conflict with a similar schism.'
The Donatists, like Tertullian in his Montanistic writings, started from an ideal and spiritualistic conception of the church as a fellowship of saints, which in a sinful world could only be imperfectly realized. They laid chief stress on the predicate of the subjective holiness or personal worthiness of the several members, and made the catholicity of the church and the efficacy of the sacraments dependent upon that. The true church, therefore, is not so much a school of holiness, as -i society of those who are already holy ; or at least of those who appear so ; for that there are hypocrites not even the Donatists could deny, and as little could they in earnest claim infallibility in their own discernment of men. By the toleration of those who are openly sinful, the church loses her holiness, and ceases to be church. Unholy priests are incapable of administering sacraments ; for how can regeneration proceed from the unregenerate, holiness from the unholy ? No one can give what he does not himself possess. He who would receive faith
t Comp. vol. ii. § 53 (p. 173), § 58 (p. 194).
S66 Tnmi, period, a.d. 311-590.
from a faithless man, receives not faith but guilt.' It was on this ground, in fact, that they rejected the election of Csecilian ; that he had been ordained bishop by an unwortliy person. On this ground they refused to recognize the Catholic baptism as baptism at all. On this point they had some support in Cyprian, who likewise rejected the validity of heretical baptism, though not from the separatist, but from the catholic point of view, and who came into collision, upon this question, with Stephen of Eome.^
Hence, like the Montanists and Novatians, they insisted on rigorous church discipline, and demanded the excommunication of all unworthy members, especially of such as had denied their faith or given up the Holy Scriptures under persecution. They resisted, moreover, all interference of the civil power in church affairs ; though they themselves at first had solicited the help of Constantino. In the great imperial church, embracing the people in a mass, they saw a secularized Babylon, against which they set themselves off, in separatistic arrogance, as the only true and pure church. In support of their views, they appealed to the passages of the Old Testament, whicli speak of the external holiness of the people of God, and to the l>rocedure of Paul with respect to the fornicator at Corinth.
In opposition to this subjective and spiritualistic theory of the church, Augustine, as champion of the Catholics, developed the objective, realistic theory, which has since been repeatedly reasserted, though with various modifications, not only in the Roman church, but also in the Protestant, against Beparatistic and schismatic sects. He lays chief stress on the catholicity of the church, and derives the holiness of individual members and the validity of ecclesiastical functions from it. He finds the essence of the church, not in the personal character of the several Christians, but in the union of the whole; church with Clirist. Taking the historical point of view, he goes back to the friending of the church, which may be seen
' Au;?. Contra litcras Petil. 1. i. cap. 6 (torn. ix. p. 208) : " Qui fidem a pcrfido •umserit, non fidem percipit, Bed reatum ; omnia enim res origine et radice cont istit, et Bi caput non habet aliquid, nihil est."
' Comp. vol. li. § 74 (p. 262).