But the time was one of almost universal ecclesiastical and intellectual excitement; and so powerful a mental activity as his was naturally drawn forth in all directions. Following his writings against the Manichaeans came those against the Donatists. The controversy was one which strongly interested him, involving as it did the whole question of the constitution of the Church and the idea of catholic order, to which the circumstances of the age gave special prominence. The Donatist controversy sprang out of the Diocletian persecution in the beginning of the century. A party in the Church of Carthage, fired with fanatic zeal on behalf of those who had courted martyrdom by resistance to the imperial mandates, resented deeply the appointment of a bishop of moderate opinions, whose consecration had been performed, they alleged, by a traditor, viz. a bishop who had "delivered" the holy scriptures to the magistrates. They set up, in consequence, a bishop of their own, of the name of Majorinus, succeeded in 315 by Donatus. The party made great pretensions to purity of discipline, and rapidly rose in popular favour, notwithstanding a decision given against them both by the bishop of Rome and by the emperor Constantine. Augustine was strongly moved by the lawlessness of the party and launched forth a series of writings against them, the most important of which survive. Amongst these are "Seven Books on Baptism" (De baptismo contra Donatistas, c. A.D. 400) and a lengthy answer, in three books, to Petilian, bishop of Cirta, who was the most eminent theologian amongst the Donatist divines. At a later period, about 417, Augustine wrote a treatise concerning the correction of the Donatists (De correctione Donatistarum) " for the sake of those," he says in his Retractations, "who were not willing that the Donatists should be subjected to the correction of the imperial laws." In these writings, while vigorously maintaining the validity of the Church as it then stood in the Roman world, and the necessity for moderation in the exercise of church discipline, Augustine yet gave currency, in his zeal against the Donatists, to certain maxims as to the duty of the civil power to control schism, which were of evil omen, and have been productive of much disaster in the history of Christianity.
The third controversy in which Augustine engaged was the most important, and the most intimately associated with his distinctive greatness as a theologian. As may be supposed, owing to the conflicts through which he had passed, the bishop of Hippo was intensely interested in what may be called the anthropological aspect of the great Christian idea of redemption.
Continued on page five.
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