ceding year (311), on the death of Mensurius, Bishop of Carthage, the Archdeacon Cæcilian had been elected in the usual manner, by the Clergy and People, to the vacant office. Whether from haste or discourtesy, however, they had omitted to require the consent of the Bishops of Numidia to this election. In consequence of this omission, and on the pretence that Cæcilian had been consecrated to this office by Felix of Aptungis, a Bishop who was reported to have been guilty of Traditorism, or of surrendering to the officers of justice, during the Diocletian persecution, copies of the Holy Scriptures, to be destroyed or burned; a Council of Bishops, headed by Donatus, pronounced the election of Cæcilian to be void, and appointed his deacon, Majorinus, in his place. The people of Carthage refused to accept Majorinus. The contending parties became mutually exasperated against each other. Both appealed to Constantine, who had lately (313) proclaimed the triumph of Christianity by his edict of unlimited toleration. In that year, Majorinus died, and the schismatic Donatus was appointed, by his brethren, Bishop of Carthage.

The Edict of Milan had granted unlimited toleration to all the subjects of the Roman Empire; and no exception was consequently made in favour of any real or supposed heretics, whose opinions were not approved by the Churches. In the Edict of Milan, the Emperor commanded that the churches which had been taken from the Christians, should be restored to the Christians'. No historian has informed us of the precise causes for which this part of the decree was qualified; and, instead of the word Christians, as used generally, a decree was issued to Anulinus, which directed the restoration of the churches, not to Christians generally, but that the estates which had belonged to the Catholic Church of the Christians should be restored. This expression, "the Catholic Church," did not occur in the Edict of Milan. It is not impossible that the difference of expressions was inserted in the rescript of Anulinus, because of the demand of the Donatists, that the Decurions, or persons who had held the estates of the Christians during the persecution, and had not as yet completed their restoration, hesitated to return them to the Donatists, though they were willing to surrender them to those Christians whom they called and believed to be the Catholic Church; that is, to those Christians who had not broken the ancient communion with their Bishops, canonically appointed. The Donatists appealed to Constantine. They called themselves the Catholic Church. They requested to be judged by the Bishops of Gaul. Constantine, who desired, as a sovereign, to preserve the peace of the empire, complied with their petition; and commanded the chief Bishops of France, Cologne, Autun, and Arles, to consider the question. The Bishop of Rome, for many reasons, was the most influential Bishop of the West. Melchiades was commissioned to act with them. In his letter to Mel

* Euseb. Eccl. Hist. l. x. c. 5. . Καὶ τοῦτο δὲ πρὸς τοῖς λοιποῖς εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον τῶν Χριστιανῶν δογματίζομεν, ἵνα τοὺς τόπους αὐτῶν εἰς οὓς τὸ πρότερον συνέρχεσθαι ἔθος ἦν αὐτοῖς . . τοῖς αὐτοῖς Χριστιανοῖς ἄνευ ἀργυρίου καὶ ἄνευ τινὸς ἀπαιτήσεως τῆς τιμῆς ὑπερτεθείσης δίχα πάσης ἀμελείας καὶ ἀμφιβολίας αποκαταστήσωσι.—Tom. iii. p. 254. Euseb. 1. x. cap. v. tom. iii. p. 256.

chiades he again declared his veneration to the Catholic Church, his hatred of schism, and his anxiety for union among the Bishops'.

The synod at Rome consisted of three Gaulish and fifteen Italian prelates, at which Melchiades, the Bishop of Rome, presided'. Other Bishops were added. to the former, so that the whole tribunal consisted of nineteen. The two parties were heard, and the Donatists were condemned. They were dissatisfied. They appealed again to the Emperor. Constantine summoned another council to meet at Arles, anxiously inviting Chrostus, the Bishop of Syracuse, Sylvester, the Bishop of Rome, and others, to terminate the dispute. Sylvester excused himself from attending. The rest met eleven months after the former. Cæcilian was again declared the Bishop of Carthage. This was done after a judicial inquiry had been held in Africa, before the secular magistrates, into the charges against Felix, the consecrator of Cæcilian, and his acquittal of Traditorism. Still dissatisfied with the decision against them, the Donatists appealed to Constantine in person: and no objection was made either by Chrastus of Syracuse, Sylvester of Rome, Cæcilian of Carthage, nor any Bishop of the Catholic Church, to the power of the Emperor to establish or reverse the decision of an ecclesiastical court or council. Throughout the whole history, indeed, we find that the secular power alone was considered supreme. "In settling this controversy and restoring peace, the Bishop of Rome did nothing, and the Emperor everything. In the numerous transactions, the Bishop Melchiades appears only once, and then not as supreme head of the Church, but merely as the Emperor's commissioner, charged with the execution of his commands. No Papal ordinance, no appeal to the court of Rome, no dernier decision was here ever thought of. So the ecclesiastical law of Africa, in that age, had no article respecting the authority of the Pope. On the contrary, from the commencement till the final subjugation of the Donatists, we everywhere meet with the Emperor, imperial trials, imperial commissioners, imperial laws, imperial punishments, imperial executive officers, all in full operation"." stantine decided against the Donatists (Nov. 10, 316). The result is known. He had not violated the Edict of Milan, which allowed toleration. That was continued to the utmost against the Pagans who had persecuted them. The Donatists had themselves appealed to the Emperor. Every attention had been paid to their appeal; but they reproached the Emperor, and imputed to him unjust motives, undue influence, and corrupt decision. Their conduct, not their

9 Euseb. Η. Ε. x. 5. Ὁπότε μηδὲ τὴν ὑμετέραν ἐπιμέλειαν λανθάνει, τοσαύτην με αἰδῶ τῷ ἐνθέσμῳ καθολικῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ ἀπονέμειν, ὡς μηδὲν καθόλου σχίσμα ἢ διχοστασίαν ἔν τινι τόπῳ βούλεσθαί με ὑμᾶς καταλιπεῖν.—Tom. iii. p. 259.

1 An argument has been derived from this command of Constantine to Melchiades, in favour of the Papal supremacy, whereas the rescript of Constantine proves the very reverse. If he had been supreme, he would have decided the controversy of his own authority, and not from the decree of the Emperor. "Melchiades," says Du Pin, "non ex propria auctoritate, sed quia electus fuerat judex a Constantino, in hac causa, pronuntiavit."-De Antiqua Disciplina, quarto, Paris, 1691, Dissert. ii. p. 158.

2 October 2nd and 3rd, 313, in the Palace of the Lateran, in Fausta's apartments.

3

* Soames's Mosheim, vol. i. bk. ii. cent. iv. part ii. chap. v. note, p. 378, col. 2.

religious opinions, induced the Emperor to banish some, and to inflict capital punishment upon others. This severity increased the evil. What had been schism was becoming rebellion. Another plan was adopted. After five years of severity, Constantine, following the advice of the governors of Africa, granted the people full liberty to adhere to either party, without interference or reproof. But as neither the decisions of the Bishops of Gaul, Syracuse, Italy, or Africa, had prevailed, to induce them to live in peace; so neither did the renewal of the extensive toleration he had granted them, induce them to submit to the unanimous decision of every court to which they had appealed. Violent commotions and tumults agitated and distressed the whole province of Africa: and though it is not certain that the Circumcelliones, or Donatist murderers and fanatics, who took up arms and desolated Africa with fire and sword, were known before the time of Constans, the successor of Constantine; it is certain that all the efforts of Church and State, of Bishops, and of the Emperor, were alike unavailing : and the schism of the Donatists, one of the darkest spots in history, continued in spite of the unrefuted and unrefutable reasoning of Augustine, in spite of the punishments inflicted not on their opinions, but on their vices; with various fortunes, much crime, and mutual intolerable persecution, till it sunk into a state of insignificance in the sixth century.

The history of the schism of the Donatists; the folly of its commencement; their inconsistency in its progress, by rejecting the authority of the tribunals to which they had appealed; their exasperating resistance to the civil and ecclesiastical power, when no injustice was known, and when therefore no necessity existed for resistance; their infatuated murders, their mad aspirations after needless and unrequired martyrdom; their frantic suicides; their bitter hatred not merely of their opponents, but of all who were not of their communion; their absurd excommunications of all other Churches, Bishops, Priests, and People, who were not united with them; their unblushing declarations that they alone were the one true Catholic Church of Christ; their divisions among themselves; and their unrelenting bigotry, their savage cruelty, their fierce dogmatism, and their intolerable assumption, constitute altogether one of the darkest pages of ecclesiastical history.-The Papal writers have compared their Protestant opponents to the Donatists, and have pointed out many coincidences between them. I cannot enter into this controversy. I can but say, that the doctrine of toleration has been and is still abused by all parties, since the general cessation of persecution, in the mutual hatreds and contempt of which I have spoken.-The Church of Rome abuses its toleration, by refusing to repeal one line of the unauthorized law, which sanctions every principle of the ancient persecutions, and compels the jealousy of the Churches of Christ. It retains its demand to rule; instead of consenting to the restoration of the primitive equality of Episcopal Churches.-The

4 They were called circumcelliones (ragrants), or by contraction circeliones, from the (cellæ) cottages of the peasants around which they.hovered, having no fixed residence. They styled themselves agonistici (combatants), pretending that they were combating and vanquishing the devil. It cannot, however, be proved that the circumcelliones appeared on the stage before the time of Constans.-Soames's Mosheim, vol. i. bk. ii. cent. iv. part ii. chap. v. note 6, p. 379.

anti-Papal Episcopal Churches of England, America, and Scotland, abuse the general toleration by neglecting their bounden duty of ceaselessly appealing to Christians, to the world, and to Rome, to re-establish the ancient unity of the Catholic Church. The Presbyterians abuse the general toleration by continuing without cause their aversion to the ancient and primitive ordinance of Christ and of His Apostles; that there should be in His Churches teachers who ruled, teachers who did not rule, and assistants to both; that is, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. -Many of our sects and opinionists abuse their toleration by making the permission granted them by the public law, to depart from the communion of the Church, their only rule of faith. Toleration is not only then abused when Princes, Priests, or People, hate, torture, and murder each other. Toleration is abused, it is made a stumbling-block to the peaceful Christian, who desires to adhere to the Apostolic Church and Creed, when it is made the source of every indefensible schism, which destroys the repose-and of every fanciful and unscriptural heresy, which destroys the faith-of the purer and anti-Papal Churches. The private judgment of every human being is alike appealed to by the Protestant, Papal, or Infidel instructors of the inquiring. Private judgment is the foundation both to our faith, our conscience, and our actions; but that private judgment is abused-and the toleration, therefore, which freely and properly secures that exercise of the private judgment to all, is then also abused—when the Protestant, in the exercise of his private judgment, rejects the evidences of the Primitive Fathers, because their teaching has been mingled with errors. It is abused by the Papist, when in the exercise of the same private judgment, he refuses, with strange inconsistency, the exercise of the same private judgment to others. It is abused by the Deist, when he substitutes metaphysical theories for the evidence of the facts upon which the common faith, both of Protestant and Papist, is alike founded; and when he would reduce all belief to fancy, imagination, and folly; and throw suspicion, jealousy, hatred, and therefore scorn and insult, upon the Christian Prince, Priest, and People.-These are the abuses of toleration; and they bring us to the third parallel between the age of Constantine and the present day.

Thirdly. The next parallel between the age of Constantine and the present day, consists in the rise, progress, and success of a false and unscriptural philosophy, which threatens the very existence of Christianity.

The greatest curse that can afflict the soul of man, is to live and die without faith and hope in a divine Redeemer. The literal interpretation of the assertion that the Word which was made flesh, was not only human, but divine; that it was God, and with God, and possessed, therefore, eternity, and all other attributes of God, has been ever regarded as the sum and substance of the Christian Faith. Christianity may be defined-the Religion which teaches the worship of Christ; and a Christian may be defined to be His worshipper. A Mahometan believes Christ to be a prophet; and the most undeniable proof exists, that he who believed Christ to be more than a prophet, but less than divine, was not admissible into the Christian Communion. When Constantine, therefore, 'This is not the place to discuss this subject; but the works of Burton, Testimonies of the

became a Christian, he received the truth of the Deity of Christ, and became a worshipper of Christ. It was, however, in the Primitive Church as in the present day. All errors, and heresies, and schisms, and divisions among Christians, have proceeded but from one source. It is this-the intervention of human reason between the belief in the evidences of Scripture, and the belief in the conclusions of Scripture. The Christian and the Heretic both believe in the truth that God has given to the world the Revelation recorded in the Scripture. The Christian receives, therefore, without further inquiry, all that is revealed; and the Primitive Church and the whole Catholic Church, from the beginning till the days of Constantine, may be justly called the keeper, the witness, and the depository of those conclusions which all Christians thus received without any further inquiry than whether they were revealed. The Heretic, on the contrary, instead of thus receiving the revealed truth, interposes his reason between the general belief that the Revelation is true and the Church is justified in its conclusions; by making that reason the judge of the truth or falsehood, the probability or the improbability, of the doctrine revealed and taught. They then invent some theory of explanation and interpretation whereby to reconcile the truth to their reason; and because revealed truth, whether it relates to God, or man, or to the means by which God imparts His blessings to man, consists in each instance of many propositions which seem to clash with each other, and therefore appear to the reason of man to be contradictory to each other; therefore it has ever been, that definition is added to definition, subtlety to subtlety, and theory to theory, till the simple truth is forgotten, or buried either under a load of learned, perplexing, intricate controversies, or of dark, mysterious, metaphysical systems. Whether the Church of Christ be harassed and confounded with the system of Calvin, or the system of Pelagius, or with the definitions of Justification by the Council of Trent, or with the definitions of the Presence of Christ which led to the heresy of Transubstantiation -all, all proceed from the presumption of human reason, departing from the custom of the Primitive Church, which betrayed "no signs of intellectual curiosity in the tenor of its Catholic expositions; nor possessed the ambition "(while it implicitly believed) to account for the representations of the "truth given us in the sacred writings "." This was not the case in the days of

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anti-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of Christ, Oxford, 1836, Bulli Judicium Eccl. Cath., Waterland, Burgh, &c. &c. &c., ought to be familiar to every student.

The Life of Constantine, by Eusebius, furnishes many proofs of this assertion. The following may be selected :-He built at Jerusalem an oratory (olkov εvrtýpiov), in honour of the spot rendered sacred by our Lord's resurrection. (Vit. Const. iii. 25.) The same book (iii. 30) contains an epistle πρὸς Μακάριον περὶ τῆς τοῦ μαρτυρίου τοῦ Σωτῆρος οἰκοδομῆς, and the following chapter gives an interesting account of the splendour of the materials employed. He took much pains in endeavouring to convert his Gentile soldiers to Christianity (iv. 19), and drew up a short prayer for the use of the army (iv. 20); he strictly prohibited sacrifices to the heathen gods, gladiatorial games, and the impure rites of Paganism (iv. 25); and by the strictness of his own conduct, to place before his subjects a pattern of Christian morality and holiness.

7 I quote the very words of Mr. Newman, with the exception of the parentheses.-History