Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
The priests are jealous of the deacons, and good cause they have. The county bishops are jealous of the metropolitan, and he is jealous of the North African bishops, and quite right he is. What business have they to set up for themselves, as if they were infallible? It's a schism, I say a complete schism. They are just as bad as their own Donatists.
Yet has he here set a limit, as he also has said above, if a case should occur of such severity as the Donatists experienced, of whom Augustine writes, who took such a resolution that, stung by their sufferings, they committed suicide, and threw themselves into the sea. It is not the will of God that we seek out, and even invite, calamity. Go thou on in faith and love.
He never ceased till Donatism was conquered and trampled underfoot. To establish peace and Catholic unity everywhere was the great labour of his episcopate. Who, then, were these terrible Donatists whom we have been continually striking against since the beginning of this history? It would soon be a century since they had been disturbing and desolating Africa.
They snarled against him everywhere at Hippo, and at Carthage too, where he had compromised himself by his excessive zeal; Catholics and Donatists alike gossiped. Megalius, a punctilious defender of discipline and the hierarchy, no doubt gathered up these malevolent rumours with pleasure. He used them as an excuse for making Augustin mark time, so to speak.
Augustine's controversy with the Donatists led to two remarkable tracts, one on the evil of suppressing heresy by the sword, and the other on the unity of the Church. In the first he showed a spirit of toleration beyond his age; and this is more remarkable because his temper was naturally ardent and fiery.
Though Constantine had not been able to quiet the Donatists by means of the Council of Arles, he might fairly hope that the authority of such a gathering as this would bear down all resistance. If he could only bring the bishops to some decision, the churches might be trusted to follow it. An imposing list of bishops answered Constantine's call. The signatures are 223, but they are not complete.
Hardly had I brought my course of reading to a close, when the Dublin Review of that same August was put into my hands, by friends who were more favourable to the cause of Rome than I was myself. There was an Article in it on the "Anglican Claim" by Bishop Wiseman. This was about the middle of September. It was on the Donatists, with an application to Anglicanism.
"The thought for the moment had been, The Church of Rome will be found right after all; and then it had vanished. My old convictions remained as before." But another blow came, and then another. An article by Dr. Wiseman on the Donatists greatly disturbed him. The words of St. Augustine about the Donatists, securus judicat orbis terrarum, rang continually in his ears, like words out of the sky.
'Fearful, truly, said Peter, 'is that same lust of power: but for him, I have never trusted him since he began to be indulgent to those Donatists. 'Too true. So does one sin beget another. 'And I consider that indulgence to sinners is the worst of all sins whatsoever. 'Not of all, surely, reverend sir? said Pambo humbly. But Peter, taking no notice of the interruption, went on to Arsenius
The ancient Latins were very attached to Saturn; there was not a village in Latium called Saturnian: on the contrary, the disciples of the God of truth taking their master's title, and calling themselves "anointed" like Him, declared, as soon as they could, an eternal war on all the peoples who were not anointed, and made war among themselves for fourteen hundred years, taking the names of Arians, Manicheans, Donatists, Hussites, Papists, Lutherans, Calvinists.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking