Sketches of Church History Part 8

About a hundred years before this time, a man named Manes appeared in Persia (A.D. 270), and preached a religion which he pretended to have received from Heaven, but which was really made up by himself, from a mixture of Christian and heathen notions. It was something like the doctrines which had been before taught by the Gnostics,[30] and was as wild nonsense as can well be imagined. He taught that there were two G.o.ds--a good G.o.d of light, and a bad G.o.d of darkness. And he divided his followers into two cla.s.ses, the lower of which were called _hearers_, while the higher were called _elect_. These _elect_ were supposed to be very strict in their lives. They were not to eat flesh at all;--they might not even gather the fruits of the earth, or pluck a herb with their own hands. They were supported and were served by the hearers; and they took a very odd way of showing their grat.i.tude to these; for it is said that when one of the elect ate a piece of bread, he made this speech to it:--"It was not I who reaped or ground or baked thee; may they who did so be reaped and ground and baked in their turn!" And it was believed that the poor "hearers" would after death become corn, and have to go through the mill and the oven, until they should have suffered enough to clear away their offences and make them fit for the blessedness of the elect.

[30] Page 5.

The Manichaeans (as the followers of Manes were called) soon found their way into Africa, where they gained many converts; and, although laws were often made against their heresy by the emperors, it continued to spread secretly; for they used to hide their opinions, when there was any danger, so that persons who were really Manichaeans pretended to be Catholic Christians, and there was some of them even among the monks and clergy of the Church.

In the humour in which Augustine now was, this strange sect took his fancy; for the Manichaeans pretended to be wiser than any one else, and laughed at all submission to doctrines which had been settled by the Church. So Augustine at twenty became a Manichaean, and for nine years was one of the hearers,--for he never got to be one of the elect, or to know much about their secrets. But before he had been very long in the sect, he began to notice some things which shocked him in the behaviour of the elect, who professed the greatest strictness. In short, he could not but see that their strictness was all a pretence, and that they were really a very worthless set of men. And he found out, too, that, besides bad conduct, there was a great deal very bad and disgusting in the opinions of the Manichaeans, which he had not known of at first. After learning all this, he did not know what to turn to, and he seems for a time to have believed nothing at all,--which is a wretched state of mind indeed, and so he found it.

PART II.

Augustine now set up as a teacher at Carthage, the chief city of Africa; but among the students there he found a set of wild young men who called themselves _Eversors_--a name which meant that they turned everything topsy-turvy; and Augustine was so much troubled by the behaviour of these unruly lads, that he resolved to leave Carthage and go to Rome.

Monica, as we may easily suppose, had been much distressed by his wanderings, but she never ceased to pray that he might be brought round again. One day she went to a learned bishop, who was much in the habit of arguing with people who were in error, and begged that he would speak to her son; but the good man understood Augustine's case, and saw that to talk to him while he was in such a state of mind would only make him more self-wise than he was already. "Let him alone awhile," he said: "only pray G.o.d for him, and he will of himself find out by reading how wrong the Manichaeans are, and how impious their doctrine is." And then he told her that he had himself been brought up as a Manichaean, but that his studies had shown him the error of the sect, and he had left it.

Monica was not satisfied with this, and went on begging, even with tears, that the bishop would talk with her son. But he said to her, "Go thy ways, and may G.o.d bless thee; for it is not possible that the child of so many tears should perish." And Monica took his words as if they had been a voice from Heaven, and cherished the hope which they held out to her.

Monica was much against Augustine's plan of removing to Rome; but he slipped away and went on shipboard while she was praying in a chapel by the seaside, which was called after the name of St. Cyprian. Having got to Rome, he opened a school there, as he had done at Carthage; but he found that the Roman youth, although they were not so rough as those of Carthage, had another very awkward habit--namely, that, after having heard a number of his lectures, they disappeared without paying for them. While he was in distress on this account, the office of a public teacher at Milan was offered to him, and he was very glad to take it.

While at Rome, he had a bad illness; but he did not at that time wish or ask for baptism as he had done when sick in his childhood.

The great St. Ambrose was then Bishop of Milan. Augustine had heard so much of his fame, that he went often to hear him, out of curiosity to know whether the bishop were really as fine a preacher as he was said to be; but by degrees, as he listened, he felt a greater and greater interest. He found, from what Ambrose said, that the objections by which the Manichaeans had set him against the Gospel were all mistaken; and, when Monica joined him, after he had been some time at Milan, she had the delight of finding that he had given up the Manichaean sect, and was once more a catechumen of the Church.

Augustine had still to fight his way through many difficulties. He had learnt that the best and highest wisdom of the heathens could not satisfy his mind and heart; and he now turned again to St. Paul's epistles, and found that Scripture was something very different from what he had supposed it to be in the pride of his youth. He was filled with grief and shame on account of the vileness of his past life; and these feelings were made still stronger by the accounts which a friend gave him of the strict and self-denying ways of Antony and other monks.

One day, as he lay in the garden of his lodging, with his mind tossed to and fro by anxious thoughts, so that he even wept in his distress, he heard a voice, like that of a child, singing over and over "Take up and read! take up and read!" At first he fancied that the voice came from some child at play; but he could not think of any childish game in which such words were used. And then he remembered how St. Antony had been struck by the words of the Gospel which he heard in church;[31] and it seemed to him that the voice, wherever it might come from, was a call of the same kind to himself. So he eagerly seized the book of St. Paul's Epistles, which was lying by him, and, as he opened it, the first words on which his eyes fell were these,--"Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the l.u.s.ts thereof" (_Rom._ xiii.

13, 14). And, as he read, the words all at once sank deeply into his heart, and from that moment he felt himself another man. As soon as he could do so without being particularly noticed, he gave up his office of professor and went into the country, where he spent some months in the company of his mother and other friends; and at the following Easter (A.D. 387), he was baptized by St. Ambrose. The good Monica had now seen the desire of her heart fulfilled; and she soon after died in peace, as she was on her way back to Africa, in company with her son.

[31] Page 60.

Augustine, after her death, spent some time at Rome, where he wrote a book against the Manichaeans, and then, returning to his native place Thagaste, he gave himself up for three years to devotion and study. In those days, it was not uncommon that persons who were thought likely to be useful to the Church should be seized on and ordained, whether they liked it or not; and if they were expected to make very strong objections, their mouths were even stopped by force. Now Augustine's fame grew so great, that he was afraid lest something of this kind should be done to him; and he did not venture to let himself be seen in any town where the bishopric was vacant, lest he should be obliged to become bishop against his will. He thought, however, that he was safe in accepting an invitation to Hippo, because it was provided with a bishop named Valerius. But, as he was one day listening to the bishop's sermon, Valerius began to say that his church was in want of another presbyter; whereupon the people laid hold of Augustine, and presented him to the bishop, who ordained him without heeding his objections (A.D. 391). And four years later (A.D. 395), he was consecrated a bishop, to a.s.sist Valerius, who died soon after.

Augustine was bishop of Hippo for five-and-thirty years, and, although there were many other sees of greater importance in Africa, his uncommon talents, and his high character, made him the foremost man of the African church. He was a zealous and exemplary bishop, and he wrote a great number of valuable books of many kinds. But the most interesting of them all is one which may be read in English, and is of no great length--namely, the "Confessions," in which he gives an account of the wanderings through which he had been brought into the way of truth and peace, and humbly gives thanks to G.o.d, whose gracious providence had guarded and guided him.

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 quant.i.ty 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 Caecilian, 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 Caecilian 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 Caecilian had reproved for the superst.i.tious 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.

PART IV.

After the death of Constantius, Africa fell to the share of his youngest son, Constans, who sent some officers into the country with orders to make presents to the Donatists, in the hope of thus bringing them to join the Church. But Donatus flew out into a great fury when he heard of this--"What has the emperor to do with the Church?" he asked; and he forbade the members of his sect (which was what he meant by "the church") to touch any of the money that was offered to them.

By this time a stranger set of wild people called _Circ.u.mcellions_ had appeared among the Donatists. They got their name from two Latin words which mean _around the cottages_; because, instead of maintaining themselves by honest labour, they used to go about, like st.u.r.dy beggars, to the cottages of the country people, and demand whatever they wanted.

They were of the poorest cla.s.s, and very ignorant, but full of zeal for their religion. But, instead of being "pure and peaceable" (_St. James_ iii. 17), this religion was fierce and savage, and allowed them to go on, without any check, in drunkenness and all sorts of misconduct. Their women, whom they called "sacred virgins," were as bad as the men, or worse. Bands of both s.e.xes used to rove about the country, and keep the peaceable inhabitants in constant fear. As they went along, they sang or shouted "Praises be to G.o.d!" and this song, says St. Augustine, was heard with greater dread than the roaring of a lion. At first they thought that they must not use swords, on account of what our Lord had said to Peter (_St. Matt._ xxvi. 52); so they carried heavy clubs, which they called _Israels_; and with these they used to beat people, and often so severely as to kill them. But afterwards the Circ.u.mcellions got over their scruples, and armed themselves not only with swords, but with other weapons of steel, such as spears and hatchets. They attacked and plundered the churches of the Catholics, and the houses of the clergy; and they handled any clergyman whom they could get hold of very roughly.

Besides this, they were fond of interfering in all sorts of affairs.

People did not dare to ask for the payment of debts, or to reprove their slaves for misbehaviour, lest the Circ.u.mcellions should be called in upon them. And things got to such a pa.s.s, that the officers of the law were afraid to do their duty.

But the Circ.u.mcellions were as furious against themselves as against others. They used to court death in all manner of ways. Sometimes they stopped travellers on the roads, and desired to be killed, threatening to kill the travellers if they refused. And if they met a judge going on his rounds, they threatened him with death if he would not hand them over to his officers for execution. One judge whom they a.s.sailed in this way played them a pleasant trick. He seemed quite willing to humour them, and told his officers to bind them as if for execution; and when he had thus made them harmless and helpless, instead of ordering them to be put to death, he turned them loose, leaving them to get themselves unbound as they could. Many Circ.u.mcellions drowned themselves, rushed into fire, or threw themselves from rocks and were dashed to pieces; but they would not put an end to themselves by hanging, because that was the death of the _traditor_ (or traitor) Judas. The Donatists were not all so mad as these people, and some of their councils condemned the practice of self-murder. But it went on nevertheless, and those who made away with themselves, or got others to kill them in such ways as have been mentioned, were honoured as martyrs by the more violent part of the sect.

Constans made three attempts to win over the Donatists by presents, but they held out against all; and when the third attempt was made, in the year 347, by means of an officer named Macarius, the Circ.u.mcellions broke out into rebellion, and fought a battle with the emperor's troops.

In this battle the Donatists were defeated, and two of their bishops, who had been busy in stirring up the rebels, were among the slain.

Macarius then required the Donatists to join the Church, and threatened them with banishment if they should refuse, but they were still obstinate: and it would seem that they were treated hardly by the government, although the Catholic bishops tried to prevent it. Donatus himself and great numbers of his followers were sent into banishment; and for a time the sect appeared to have been put down.

PART V.

Thus they remained until the death of the emperor Constantius (A.D.

361), and Donatus had died in the mean time. Julian, on succeeding to the empire, gave leave to all whom Constantius had banished on account of religion to return to their homes.[37] But the Donatists were not the better for this, as they had not been banished by Constantius, but by Constans, before Constantius got possession of Africa: so they pet.i.tioned the emperor that they might be recalled from banishment; and in their pet.i.tion they spoke of Julian in a way which disagreed strangely with their general defiance of governments, and which was especially ill suited for one who had forsaken the Christian faith and was persecuting it at that very time. Julian granted their request, and forthwith they returned home in great triumph, and committed violent outrages against the Catholics. They took possession of a number of churches, and, professing to consider everything that had been used by the Catholics unclean, they washed the pavement, sc.r.a.ped the walls, burnt the communion-tables, melted the plate, and cast the holy sacrament to the dogs. They soon became strong throughout the whole north of Africa, and in one part of it, Numidia, they were stronger than the Catholics. After the death of Julian, laws were made against them from time to time, but do not seem to have been carried out. And although the Donatists quarrelled much among themselves, and split up into a number of parties, they were still very powerful in Augustine's day. In his own city of Hippo he found that they were more in number than the Catholics; and such was their bitter and pharisaical spirit that the bishop of the sect at Hippo would not let any of his people so much as bake for their Catholic neighbours.

[37] Page 56.

Augustine did all that he could to make something of the Donatists, but it was mostly in vain. He could not get their bishops or clergy to argue with him. They pretended to call themselves "the children of the martyrs," on account of the troubles which their forefathers had gone through in the reign of Constans: and they said that the children of the martyrs could not stoop to argue with sinners and traditors. Although they professed that their sect was made up of perfect saints, they took in all sorts of worthless converts for the sake of swelling their numbers; whereas Augustine would not let any Donatists join the Church without inquiring into their characters, and, if he found that they had done anything for which they had been condemned by their sect to do penance, he insisted that they should go through a penance before being admitted into the Church.

But, notwithstanding the difficulties which he found in dealing with them, he and others succeeded in drawing over a great number of Donatists to the Church. And this made the Circ.u.mcellions so furious that they fell on the Catholic clergy whenever they could find them, and tried to do them all possible mischief. They beat and mangled some of them cruelly; they put out the eyes of some by throwing a mixture of lime and vinegar into their faces; and, among other things, they laid a plan for waylaying Augustine himself, which, however, he escaped, through the providence of G.o.d. Many reports of these savage doings were carried to the emperor, Honorius, and some of the sufferers appeared at his court to tell their own tale; whereupon the old laws against the sect were revived, and severe new laws were also made. In these even death was threatened against Donatists who should molest the Catholics; but Augustine begged that this penalty might be withdrawn, because the Catholic clergy, who knew more about the sect than any one else, would not give information against it, if the punishment of the Donatists were to be so great. And he and his brethren requested that the emperor would appoint a meeting to be held between the parties, in order that they might talk over their differences, and, if possible, might come to some agreement.

The emperor consented to do so; and a meeting took place accordingly, at Carthage, in 411, in the presence of a commissioner named Marcellinus.

Two hundred and eighty-six Catholic bishops found their way to the city by degrees. But the Donatists, who were two hundred and seventy-nine in number, entered it in a body, thinking to make all the effect that they could by the show of a great procession. At the conference (or meeting), which lasted three days, the Donatists behaved with their usual pride and insolence. When Marcellinus begged them to sit down, they refused, because our Lord had stood before Pilate. On being again asked to seat themselves, they quoted a text from the Psalms, "I will not sit with the wicked" (_Ps._ xxvi. 5); meaning that the Catholics were the wicked, and that they themselves were too good to sit in such company. And when Augustine called them "brethren," they cried out in anger that they did not own any such brotherhood. They tried to throw difficulties in the way of arguing the question fairly; but on the third day their shifts would serve them no longer. Augustine then took the lead among the Catholics, and showed at great length both how wrongly the Donatists had behaved in the beginning of their separation from the Church, and how contrary to Scripture their principles were.

Marcellinus, who had been sent by the emperor to hear both parties, gave judgment in favour of the Catholics. Such of the Donatist bishops and clergy as would join the Church were allowed to keep possession of their places; but the others were to be banished. Augustine had at first been against the idea of trying to force people in matters of religion. But he saw that many were brought by these laws to join the Church, and after a time he came to think that such laws were good and useful; nay, he even tried to find a Scripture warrant for them in the text "Compel them to come in" (_St. Luke_ xiv. 23). And thus, unhappily, this great and good man, was led to lend his name to the grievous error of thinking that force, or even persecution, may be used rightly, and with good effect, in matters of religion. It was one of the mistakes to which people are liable when they form their opinions without having the opportunity of seeing how things work in the long run, and on a large scale. We must regret that Augustine seemed in any way to countenance such means; but even although he erred in some measure as to this, we may be sure that he would have abhorred the cruelties which have since been done under pretence of maintaining the true religion, and of bringing people to embrace it.

While some of the Donatists were thus brought over to the Church, others became more outrageous than ever. Many of them grew desperate, and made away with themselves. One of their bishops threatened that, if he were required by force to join the Catholics, he would shut himself up in a church with his people, and that they would then set the building on fire and perish in the flames. There were many among the Donatists who would have been mad enough to do a thing of this kind; but it would seem that the bishop was not put to the trial which he expected.