by the most respectable leaders of the sect. One strange sin, indeed, they are accused of encouraging, and of indulging with dreadful frequency-an uncontrollable inclination to suicide *. But suicide is the resource of the desperate; and it is unlikely that it found any favour among them, until oppression had persuaded them, that death was not the greatest among human evils.

In the fortunes of the Donatists do we not trace the usual history of persecution? In its commencement fearful and reluctant, and, as it were, conscious of its corrupt origin, it irritates without depressing; then it hesitates, and next suspends the attack; thereon its object rises up and takes strength and courage. The same process is then repeated, under circumstances slightly different-with the same result. Then follows the passionate and sanguinary assault which destroys the noblest among the recusants, while the most active and dangerous are preserved by hypocrisy or exile and thus the sect spreads secretly and widely; it secures a sympathy which it may not have merited by its excellence, and on the first occasion breaks out again with fresh force and fury. Then indeed, if recourse be had to argument, if greater right be on the stronger side, and if the secular sword be only employed to pursue the victory of reason, the cause of the sufferers becomes more feeble and less popular-but still, unless the pursuit be carried to absolute, individual extermination, the extinction even of the silliest heresy can only be effected by time-and time itself will complete its work, at least as much by calming passion as by correcting judgment.

Notice of St.
Augustin.

The above narrative has introduced us to the name of St. Augustin, who was the most celebrated amongst the ancient Christian fathers, and who deserves even now a more than usual attention, from the influence which his writings have unceasingly exerted in the Roman Catholic Church. But the notice which can here be bestowed upon him must necessarily be confined to very few points. He was born in Numidia, in the year 354, and his early youth was distinguished by his aversion from all study, and especially that of the Greek language. But an ardent passion for poetry at length opened the gate through which he entered into the fields of general literature. From profane, he directed his attention to religious subjects; and when we recollect that Tertullian, the greatest amongst his African predecessors, seceded from the Church in the maturity of his judg ment and learning, in order to embrace the visions of a raving fanatic, we are scarcely astonished to learn, that the youthful imagination of Augustin was seduced by the Manichæan opinions. He appears to have retained them for nine or ten years, during which time his rhetorical talents had raised him into notice; and it was not till the year 386, that he was persuaded (as it is said) by the sermons of St. Ambrose, and the writings of St. Paul, to return to the communion of the Church. His baptism (he was previously a catechumen only) speedily followed his conversion; his ordination took place soon afterwards, and the city of Hippo, in Africa, which owes most of its celebrity to its association with his name, was that in which he first ministered as Priest, and afterwards presided as Bishop. He died in 430, in the thirty-fifth year of his episcopate.

*Mosheim, cent. v., p. ii., ch. v. An authority for this fact is Augustin in his Epistle to Boniface, ch. iii. Quidam etiam se trucidandos armatis viatoribus ingerebant, percussuros eos se, nisi ab iis perimerentur, terribiliter comminantes. Nonnunquam et ab judicibus transeuntibus extorquebant violenter, ut a carnificibus vel ab officio ferirentur, Jam vero per abrupta præcipitią, per aquas et flammas occidere seipsos quotidianus illis ludus fuit.

The first recorded exploit in his ecclesiastical life was the destruction of an inveterate and consecrated abuse. We have mentioned the innocent origin of the Agape or feasts of charity, and the good purposes to which, in early times, they contributed. But as the influx of the Pagan converts grew more rapid, and as these naturally sought in the new religion for any resemblance to the popular ceremonies of the old, the solemnity in question insensibly changed its character under their influence, and degenerated into the licence and debauchery of a heathen festival. Augustin, while yet a presbyter, undertook the difficult office of persuading the people to abandon a favourite and hereditary practice, and by the simple exertion of his eloquence he succeeded. Services of reading and chaunting were substituted in its place; and while the churches of the heretics* resounded with the customary revelry, the voice of devotion alone proceeded from the assemblies of the Catholics. This change took place in the year 395; and from that moment the reputation of Augustin spread rapidly throughout the African Church, and thence, as his labours proceeded, was diffused with no less of splendour to the most distant part of Christendom.

Besides the faithful discharge of his episcopal and his private duties, the Bishop of Hippo engaged deeply in the controversies of the day; and his attacks are chiefly directed against the Manichæans, the Donatists, and the Pelagians. His familiarity with the errors of the first may have qualified him more effectually to confute them-but it is at the same time curious to observe the motives which he advances for his own adhesion to the Catholic Church. They are the following: the consent of the people; the authority which began in the faith of miracles, which was nourished by hope, augmented by charity, confirmed by antiquity; the succession in the Chair of St. Peter; and the name of Catholic so established, that if a stranger should ask where is the Catholic Church? no heretic would certainly dare to claim that title for his own Churcht. These arguments, and such as these, have been so commonly repeated in later ages, that, without at all entering (for such is not our province) into the question of their real value, we are contented to record their high antiquity, and the sanction which they received from the name of Augustin.

His exertions against the Donatists, which we have already noticed, have attached to the character of that father the stain of persecution. The maxim (says Mosheim) which justified the chastisement of religious errors by civil penalties was confirmed and established by the authority of Augustin, and thus transmitted to following ages. He cannot be vindicated from that charge§; he unquestionably maintained the general principle, that the Unity of the Church should be preserved by secular interference, and that its adversaries should be crushed by the material sword. But his natural humanity in some degree counteracted the barbarity of his

* Fleury, H. E., liv. xx., s. 11. This is the occasion on which it is recorded, that as long as his eloquence was honoured only by the acclamations of the listening multitudes Augustin was sensible of its imperfection, and despaired of success; and his hopes were only revived by the sight of their tears.

Fleury, liv. xx., s. 23. No heretic was so likely to have laid that claim as a Donatist-yet even a Donatist, while he maintained that the true Catholic spirit and purity was alone perpetuated and inherent in his own communion, would scarcely have affirmed, that that was bona fide the universal Church, which did not extend beyond the shores of Africa, and which had not the majority even there.

Cent. iv., p. ii., ch. iii.

Besides the epistle to Dulcitius, see his letter, or rather tract, to Boniface, de Correctione Donatistarum ;' and that to Vincentius (113, alias 48). The principle is avowed and defended in both-at least provided the animus be to correct, not to revenge!

ecclesiastical principles; and there is still extant an epistle addressed by him to Marcellinus (in 412), in which he earnestly entreated that magistrate to extend mercy to certain Donatists, who had been convicted of some sanguinary excesses against the Catholics; but the misfortune was, that, while his private philanthropy preserved the lives perhaps of a few individuals, the efficacy which he assisted in giving to the worst maxim of Church policy not only sharpened the shafts of injustice in his own time, but tempered them for long and fatal service in after ages. The Pelagians, the third class of his religious adversaries, will receive a separate notice in the following pages. Of the numerous works which he composed, unconnected with these controversies, that entitled De Civitate Dei has justly acquired the greatest celebrity. We may also mention his book on the Trinity among his most important productions. He devoted much diligence and judgment to the interpretation of Scripture; and his writings contain many excellent arguments for the truth of the religion, and of the evangelical history; but the mere barren enumeration of his works would convey neither amusement nor profit to the reader, and we have no space for abstracts sufficiently copious to make him familiar with the mind of the author.

Erasmus has drawn a parallel between Augustin and his great contemporary, the monk of Palestine, which is certainly too favourable to the latter. No one can deny (he says) that there is great importance in the country and education of men. Jerome was born at Stridona, which is so near to Italy, that the Italians claim him as a compatriot; he was educated at Rome under very learned masters. Augustin was born in Africa, a barbarous region, and singularly indifferent to literary pursuits, as he avows in his epistles. Jerome, a Christian, the child of Christians, imbibed with his very milk the philosophy of Christ: Augustin began to read St. Paul's epistles with no instructor when nearly thirty years of age. Jerome devoted his great talents for thirty years to the study of the Scriptures: Augustin was immediately hurried to the episcopal office, and compelled to teach to others what he had not yet learnt himself. We observe then, even supposing a parity of country, talents, masters, education, how much more learning was brought to the task by Jerome; for it is no trifling matter that he was skilled in the Greek and Hebrew languages; since in those days all theology, as well as all philosophy, was in possession of the Greeks. Augustin was ignorant of Greek*; at least the very trifling knowledge which he possessed of it was insufficient for the study of the commentaries of the Greek writers t.' The merit of more profound learning was unquestionably on the side of Jerome, but we cannot justly attribute to him any other superiority; in soundness of reasoning and in natural judgment he certainly yielded to the Bishop of Hippo, and in the only recorded point of difference between them he was very properly cor

* Dr. Lardner makes, we think, a very ineffectual attempt to prove that Augustin knew much more of that language than he even himself professed to have known-for a few happy translations of Greek words, and even sentences, he was probably obliged to the learning of a friend or secretary.

Erasmus ends his comparison by affirming,' that for his own part he learns more of Christian philosophy from one page of Origen than from ten of Augustin;' and others, perhaps, will add, from their own experience, and from one page of Augustin, than from

ten of Jerome.'

This dispute was on the verse (ch. ii., v. 11.) of St. Paul's epistle to the Galatians: When Peter came to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.' Jerome had published his opinion, that the apostles had this public difference on a previous understanding, and by a charitable artifice; and that St. Paul in fact saw the policy

rected by that prelate. In depth of moral feeling and energy of affecting eloquence the advantage is also due to Augustin; and the natural suavity of his disposition, which forms so strong a contrast with what might almost be designated the ferocity of Jerome, tended to soften the acrimony of religious difference, and to throw some sparks of charity into the controversies in which he found himself almost necessarily engaged.

Some particulars relating to his private life are recorded by historians, on the evidence of his own writings, and other respectable authority. His furniture and his dress were plain, without affectation either of fineness or of poverty. He wore, like other people, a linen garment underneath, and one of wool without; he wore shoes and stockings, and exhorted those, who thought better to obey the Gospel by walking with naked feet, to assume no merit from that practice. Let us observe charity, he said— I admire your courage-endure my weakness.' His table was frugal, and ordinarily served with vegetables; meat was seldom prepared, unless for guests or for the infirm, but there was always wine. Excepting his spoons, which were of silver, all the service was earthen, or of wood or marble, not by necessity, but from a love for poverty. On his table were written two verses, to forbid any scandal to be spoken of the absent-proving that it was without a cloth, according to the usage of antiquity. He never forgot the poor, and aided them from the same fund on which he subsisted with his clergy; that is, from the revenues of the Church or the oblations of the faithful. He paid great regard to hospitality, and held it as a maxim, that it was a much preferable error to entertain a rogue, than to refuse an honest man. His usual occupation was arbitration among Christians and persons of all religions, who submitted their differences to him. But he liked much better to decide between strangers than between his friends-for of the two strangers I may make one a friend; of the two friends I shall make one an enemy.' He applied himself little to the temporal interests of the Church, but busied himself much more in study, and in the meditation of spiritual concernst.

II. Priscillian, a Spanish Bishop of birth and fortune and eloquence, was accused by certain other Bishops of the heresy of the Manichæans; he was condemned by a Council held at Sara- The Prisgossa (in 380), and a rescript was then obtained for his cillianists. banishment from the Emperor Gratian; but he was speedily restored to his country and his dignity. Gratian was assassinated, and succeeded by Maximus, a tyrant worthy of the throne of Domitian; and before him ‡ Idacius and Ithakius, the two ecclesiastics most persevering in their zeal or malignity, again accused Priscillian. His followers were probably not very numerous, but they presented themselves to plead their cause and prove their innocence, before Damasus, Bishop of Rome,

and propriety of St. Peter's adhesion to the Jews, at the moment when he professed to condemn it. According to Augustin, this interpretation goes to overthrow the whole authority of Scripture; for if it is once allowed to admit there the existence of serviceable falsehoods, and to say that St. Paul in that passage spoke what he did not mean, and treated St. Peter as reprehensible when he did not think him so, there is no passage which may not be similarly eluded. The heretics who condemn marriage would assert that St. Paul only approved it through condescension to the imperfection of the first Christians—

and so of others.

• Compare, for instance, the manner of his opposition to the opinions of Jovinian with that of Jerome.

Fleury, liv. xxiv., chap. xxxviii. xxxix.

Sulpicius Severus mentions Magnus and Rufus as the two Bishops who were finally the successful agents in procuring the condemnation of Priscillian.

and the celebrated Ambrose, at Milan-from neither of them could they obtain a hearing*. Perhaps their unfortunate instructor was not more successful at the court of Maximus; at least it is certain that, in the year 384, he was put to death at Treves, with some of his associates, on no other pretext than his heretical opinionst.

It is now disputed what those opinions were; and it is probable that the same dispute existed in his own time; since no ancient writer has given us any clear account of them-and none of the works of Priscillian or any of his followers have reached us. It seems likely, however, that the Priscillianists made some approaches, perhaps very distant ones, to the wild errors of the Manichæans‡, respecting the two principles, the doctrine of æons, or emanations from the divine nature, and the creation of the world. It is possible that they disputed the reality of Christ's birth and incarnation -though they professed to receive the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament. They are stated to have disbelieved the resurrection of the body, and they had some errors concerning the nature and functions of the soul. They are blamed for not consuming the Eucharist at Church, and for some irregularity in the season of their fasts; and some of them were charged besides (strange charges to be brought by Catholic accusers!) with having deserted their social rank, in order to betake themselves to solitary devotion; and with holding opinions favourable to celibacy. For these offences, or such as these, Priscillian suffered death; and his fate has gained him the more celebrity, because it is usual to consider him as the first martyr to religious dissent. Not perhaps truly so- -for between the years 325 and 384 many an obscure victim of the Arian heresy must have perished for his opinions, in silence and ignominy-but Arius himself escaped the storm; and it cannot be disputed, that Priscillian was the first who stoned with his life for the dangerous distinction of founding a religious sect§. It is some consolation to be enabled to add, that the principle by which he suffered was not yet in favour with the Christian Church; the character of Ithakius, his most active enemy, is thus described by a contemporary historian (Sulpicius Severus), he was a man void of all principle; loquacious, impudent, expensive, a slave to gluttony-so senseless as to represent every holy person who delighted in religious studies, and practised mortification and abstinence, as an associate or a disciple of Priscillian. On the other hand, the persecuted heretic found a powerful protector in one of the most venerable prelates of that age, Martin of Tours, a man comparable to the apostles.' So long as Martin remained at the court of Maximus, his authority was sufficient to prevent the meditated injustice; he had even ventured to represent to that usurper, that it

*Their opinions may have been adopted by several both among the nobility and the people, and by a vast multitude of women (as is also asserted) in Spain; but they obtained no footing elsewhere. They are said to have been introduced into that country by one Marc, an Egyptian of Memphis, and a Manichæan.

+ We need not pause to notice some monstrous charges of immorality-such as we have seen so commonly affixed to an unpopular heresy.

It is a curious reflection, that at the same moment when Priscillian was suffering the pangs of death, for opinions resembling the Manichæan heresy, St. Augustin, the destined bulwark of the Catholic Church,—the man whose future writings were to become a storehouse of the true doctrine for so many countries and ages-was actually and deeply involved in the very intricacies of the heresy itself. He returned to reason-but Priscillian, who was nearer to it than himself, was hastily executed.

We should mention, perhaps, the distinction that Priscillian suffered death for the opinions themselves-directly and avowedly-not, as thousands before him had suffered, for contumacy in persisting in them-a distinction which has no real value, except as marking the greater shamelessness of persecution in at length casting off her mask,