least, who had any reputation for piety) approved of their proceedings.

In the meantime, the discord gathered strength daily, and seemed to portend the approaching horrors of a civil war; to prevent which, Constantine at last abrogated the laws that had been enacted against the Donatists, and allowed the people to adhere to whichever party they pleased.

After the death of Constantine the Great, his son Constans, to whom Africa was allotted in the division of the empire, sent Macarius and Paulus into that province with a view to heal this deplorable schism, and to engage the Donatists to conclude peace.

Their principal bishop opposed all methods of reconciliation, and his example was followed by other prelates of the partyThe Circumcelliones also continued to support the cause of the Donatists by the most unrelenting assassinations and cruel massacres; they were, however, stopped in their career by Macarius, who defeated them in the battle of Bagnia. After this, the power of the Donatists rapidly declined; a few submitted, but the greater part saved themselves by flight; numbers were sent into banishment, among whom was Donatus the Great; and many were punished with the utmost severity. During these troubles, which lasted nearly thirteen years, the Donatists were used with much cruelty and injustice, which of course excited loud complaints against their adversaries.

The emperor Julian, upon his accession to the throne in the year 362, permitted the exiled Donatists to return to their country, and restored them to their former liberty. This step so far renewed their vigour, that they brought over, in a short time, the majority of the African provincials to their interests.

Gratian published several edicts against them, and in the year 377 deprived them of their churches, and prohibited all their assemblies, public and private; but the fury of the Circumcelliones, who may be considered as the soldiers of the Donatists, and the apprehension of tumults, prevented the vigorous execution of these laws. This appears from the number of churches they had in Africa towards the conclusion of the century, which were served by no less than four hundred bishops.

Two things, however, tended to diminish the power of the sect, and made it decline apace about the end of this century: one was a division that arose among them, on account of a person

named Maximin, which greatly weakened their cause; but another circumstance which precipitated their decline was the zealous and fervent opposition of Augustine, first presbyter, and afterwards bishop of Hippo: he exposed their dangerous and seditious principles, as he considered them, in the strongest manner.

The great argument employed against them by the Catholic advocates, and especially by St. Augustine, was, that they could not be right because they were cut off from that common body of the Church Catholic which inherited the promises. "O senseless perversity of man!" he exclaims, "you suppose yourself to be praised for believing about Christ that which you do not see; and you do not suppose you will be condemned for denying respecting His Church that which you do see, although the Head is in heaven, and the body upon earth."

There were naturally some among the Donatists who excused themselves by shutting their eyes, as their opponents said, to their true position. Such was Tortunius, bishop of Tubursica, of whose personal character St. Augustine speaks highly, though he never suppresses his conviction that the state of schism in which the Donatists lived, was an impediment to their salvation, for which no personal piety could compensate.

But there were other Donatists who were too consistent to lay claim to any communion, virtual or otherwise, with the rest of the Church throughout the world, and who justified their isolation either by their right of succession to their own sees, by the great preponderance which they had in their own province, or by the purity of their doctrine and sacraments. The two first arguments seem to have been mainly relied upon. At the conference at Carthage, the Donatist bishops were careful to display their numbers, which, in the province of Numidia, were allowed to exceed those of the Catholics; they insisted that each bishop should show his right to his see, and prove the validity of his spiritual descent; and maintained that it must be settled by such considerations as these, which party had a right to the title of Catholic. At other times, and especially by the smaller parties which split off from the main body of Donatists, the purity of manners and doctrine was principally insisted upon; those were rightly to be called Catholics, "who observed all the Divine precepts, and all the sacraments;" "in them alone would the Son of Man find faith at his return."

The answer given to these arguments shows the importance which their opponents attached to the decision of the collective body, that is, of the numerical majority. "The title of Catholic,” St. Augustine said, "was not meant to express an opinion, but a fact; it merely indicated what was that body which was known to exist throughout the world; if to attribute it was to admit the powers of the body which was thus described, it was only because the predictions of Scripture had declared this condition to be essential to their exercise." The number of the Donatist bishops, and their right to their individual sees, was met again by the fact that they made but one province, and that no single province could claim to be that body of Christ which was spread throughout the world.

And finally, their assertion of the necessity of a pure communion was met by the reply, that in such matters there could be no certain judge except the Church Catholic. "The collective body," says St. Augustine, “judges with certainty, that those cannot be good men, wherever they may be, who separate themselves from the collective body." The same principle is apparent in the mode of argument which he employed against rebaptism. This had been a peculiarity of long standing in the African Church, having been introduced, as it would seem, early in the third century. It is one of the charges of Hippolytus against Callistus, that this practice was introduced among the members of his communion, while he was bishop of Rome; and then probably was held the council at Carthage, in which Agrippinus presided, at which rebaptism was first authorized. St. Augustine allows that St. Cyprian and the bishops of Africa supposed themselves to have authority from Holy Scripture for adopting the course they took.

The doctrine of the Donatists was that of the Catholic Church; nor were their lives less exemplary than those of other Christian Churches. Their offence, therefore, lay properly in the following points in declaring the Church of Africa, which adhered to Cæcilianus, fallen from the privileges of a true Church, and deprived of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, on account of the offences with which the new bishop, and Felix, who had consecrated him, were charged; in maintaining that the sanctity of their bishops gave their community alone a full right to be considered as the true Church Hence they pronounced the sacred rites and institutions

void of all virtue and efficacy among those Christians who were not precisely of their sentiments; and not only rebaptized those who came over to their party from other Churches, but ministers were deprived of their office, or ordained a second time.

The Donatists were almost entirely confined to the Churches in Africa

The arguments of St. Augustine appear to be weak in the extreme, and unworthy of his name. They simply assume that the majority is always right, and would equally condemn every secession from the most corrupt Church, provided always that the seceding party were the minority. Mr. Robert Wilberforce, the late archdeacon of York (who, since the article on the Anglo-Catholics was written, has joined the Church of Rome), has adduced these arguments, in fact, and instanced the case of the Donatists, in order to condemn the Reformation. The Donatists appear to have been the Waldenses of the early Church; like them they struggled for independence against the overpowering mastery of the dominant Church, and were oppressed and maligned in consequence. Like all oppressed minorities, they probably displayed a bitter and exclusive temper, but even their opponents acquit them of unsound doctrine or immoral conduct. (See LONG'S Hist. of the Donatists; MOSHEIM, vol. i.; WILBERFORCE on the Supremacy.)

ENGLAND, CHURCH OF.-The origin of the Church of Eng

land must be sought in the primitive ages of Christianity. The island had scarcely emerged from barbarism when the gospel was first planted in it. Justin Martyr, Irenæus, and Tertullian, writers of the first and second century, tell us that in their time. the gospel had penetrated wherever the Roman arms had reached. Tertullian, A.D. 198, asserts, possibly with some figurative license, that even those parts of Britain which were inaccessible to the Romans, had been subjugated to Christ. Eusebius, the historian of the Church, who flourished in the time of Constantine, attributes the conversion of Britain to some of the apostles. Clemens Romanus, St. Jerome, and Theodoret affirm that "St. Paul preached to the isles in the ocean and at the extremest west;" and by such expressions Britain was commonly understood. In the sixth and seventh centuries several writers concur in speaking

"We may

expressly of St. Paul's mission to the British islands. finally conclude," says Dr. Burgess, the late learned bishop of Salisbury, in one of his charges, "that the testimony respecting St. Paul's preaching in the utmost bounds of the west, that is, in Britain, is indisputable." Of the Church thus founded we have but few memorials. In the year 314 the signatures of three British bishops, those of York, London, and the colony of London, probably Colchester, are appended to the canons of the Council of Arles. In 347 British bishops were present at the Council of Sardica, and a few years afterwards at that of Ariminium. Archbishop Usher, in his treatise on the antiquity of the English Church, considers it probable that there were British deputies at the Council of Nice. The martyrdom of Alban, the proto-martyr of England, no doubt occurred at Verulam under the persecution of Diocletian; and we may yield a ready faith to the testimony of Gildas, where he describes the fierce storm of a bitter persecution as having swept, about this time, across the British Churches. On the accession of Constantine the Churches had rest from persecution; but Arianism rent them internally; and, according to the same authority, "the perfidious Arians, dark as a transmarine serpent, vomited their poison amongst us." Pelagianism followed; and Britain claims the questionable distinction of having given birth to the father of the heresy. Pelagius (which is said to be the Latinized form of the Welsh name Morgan) denied the doctrine of original sin, and the depraved condition of mankind in consequence of the fall of Adam. He was answered by St. Augustine; and the controversy agitated the universal Church. Pelagianism was condemned by the Council of Carthage in 412. It appears, for a time, to have gained much favour in the British Churches; but at length, under an edict of Valentinian, its teachers were exiled and peace restored. But the Roman power in Britain was hastening to an end, and with it the existence of civilized society, and almost the very being of the British Church. The savage tribes who overspread the island were idolaters. During more than a century the fierce contest was waged between the invaders and the ancient possessors of the soil; and when it closed, Christianity, except in Wales and the northern isles of Scotland, was totally extinct. Thus the ancient Church of Britain fell, for the race of British Christians had perished.