at the earnest and repeated solicitations of the council, which was held at Carthage in the year 410; and Marcellinus the tribune was sent by Honorius into Africa, with full power to bring to a conclusion this tedious and unhappy contest. Marcellinus therefore held at Carthage, in the year 411, a solemn conference, in which he examined the cause with much attention, heard the contending parties during the space of three days, and at length pronounced sentence in favour of the catholics. The catholic bishops who were present at this conference, were 286 in number; and those of the donatists 279. The latter, upon their defeat, appealed to the emperor, but without effect. The glory of their defeat was due to Augustin, who bore the principal part in this controversy, and who indeed by his writings, counsels, and admonitions, governed almost the whole African church, and also the principal and most illustrious heads of that extensive province. II. By this conference, the party of the donatists was greatly weakened; nor could they ever get the better of this terrible shock, though the face of affairs changed afterward in a manner that was proper to revive their hopes. The greatest part of e See Franc. Balduin, Hist. Collationis Carthag. in Optat. Milev. Pinian. p. 357. It is proper to observe here, that this meeting, held by Marcellinus, is very improperly termed a conference (collatio.) For there was no dispute carried on at this meeting between the catholics and the donatists; nor did any of the parties endeavour to gain or defeat the other by superiority of argument. This conference then was properly a judicial trial, in which Marcellinus was, by the emperor, appointed judge, or arbiter, of this religious controversy, and accordingly pronounced sentence after a proper hearing of the cause. It appears therefore from this event, that the notion of a supreme spiritual judge of controversy, and ruler of the church, appointed by Christ, had not as yet entered into any one's head; since we see the African bishops them selves appealing to the emperor in the present religious question. CENT. V. PART 11. PART II. CENT. V. them, through the fear of punishment, submitted to the emperor's decree, and returned into the bosom of the church; while the severest penalties were inflicted upon those who remained obstinate, and persisted in their rebellion. Fines, banishment, confiscation of goods, were the ordinary punishments of the obstinate donatists; and even the pain of death was inflicted upon such as surpassed the rest in perverseness, and were the seditious ringleaders of that stubborn faction. Some avoided these penalties by flight, others by concealing themselves, and some were so desperate as to seek deliverance by self murder, to which the donatists had a shocking propensity. In the mean time, the circumcelliones used more violent methods of warding off the execution of the sentence that was pronounced against their sect; for they ran up and down through the province of Africa in the most outrageous manner, committing acts of cruelty every where, and defending themselves by force of arms. the arians. The donatists, indeed, recovered afterward their former liberty and tranquillity by the succour and protection they received from the Vandals, who invaded Africa, with Genseric at their head, in the year 427, and took this province out of the hands of the Romans. The wound however that this sect had received from the vigorous execution of the imperial laws, was so deep, that though they began to revive and multiply by the assistance of the Vandals, yet they could never arrive at their former strength and lustre. The state of IV. The arians, oppressed and persecuted by the imperial edicts, took refuge among those fierce and savage nations, who were gradually overturning the western empire, and found among the Goths, Suevi, Heruli, Vandals, and Burgundians, a fixed residence and a peaceful retreat. And as their security animated their courage, they treated the catholics with the same violence which the latter had PART II. employed against them and other heretics; and CENT. V. they persecuted and vexed in various ways such as professed their adherence to the nicene doctrines. The Vandals, who reigned in Africa, surpassed all the other savage nations in barbarity and injustice toward the catholics. The kings of this fierce people, particularly Genseric and Huneric his son, pulled down the churches of those christians who acknowledged the divinity of Christ, sent their bishops into exile, and maimed and tormented in various ways such as were nobly firm and inflexible in the profession of their faith. They however declared, that in using these severe and violent methods, they were authorized by the example of the emperors, who had enacted laws of the same rigorous nature against the donatists, the arians, and other sects who differed in opinion from the christians of Constantinople." We must not here omit mentioning the stupendous miracle, which is said to have been wrought during these persecutions in Africa, and by which the Supreme Being is supposed to have declared his displeasure against the arians, and his favour toward their adversaries. This miracle consisted in enabling those catholics, whose tongues had been cut out by the arian tyrant Huneric, to speak distinctly, and to proclaim aloud the divine majesty of the Saviour of the world. This remarkable fact can scarcely be denied, since it is supported by the testimony of the most credible and respectable witnesses; but whether it is to be attributed to See Victor Vitens. lib. iii. De persequutione Vandalica, which Theod. Ruinart published at Paris in the year 1694, in 8vo. with his History of the same persecution. * See the edict of Huneric, in the history of Victor, mentioned in the preceding note, lib. iv. cap. ii. p. 64. These witnesses, who had themselves ocular demonstration of the fact, were Victor of Utica, Æneas of Gaza, who examined the CENT. V. a supernatural and miraculous power, is a matter PART II. not so easily decided, and which admits of much dispute.i mouths of the persons in question, and found that their tongues were entirely rooted out, Procopius, Marcellinus the count, and the emperor Justinian. Upon the authority of such respectable testimonies, the learned Abbadie formed a laboured and dexterous defence of the miraclous nature of this extraordinary fact, in his work entitled, La Triomphe de la Providence, &c. vol. iii. p. 255, &c. where all the fire of his zeal, and all the subtilty of his logic, seem to have been exhausted. Dr. Berriman, in his Historical Account of the Trinitarian Controversy; as also in his sermons preached at lady Moyer's lectures, in the year 1725; and Dr. Chapman, in his Miscellaneous Tracts, have maintained the same hypothesis. To the former, an answer was published by an anonymous writer, under the following title, An Inquiry into the Miracle said to have been wrought in the fifth century, upon some orthodox christians, in favour of the Doctrine of the Trinity, &c. in a letter to a friend. We may venture to say, that this answer is utterly unsatisfactory. The author of it, after having laboured to invalidate the testimony alleged in favour of the fact, seems himself scarcely convinced by his own arguments; for he acknowledges at last the possibility of the event, but persists in denying the miracle, and supposes, that the cruel operation was so imperfectly performed upon these confessors, as to leave in some of them such a share of that organ, as was sufficient for the use of speech. Dr. Middleton, to whom some have attributed the forementioned Answer, maintains the same hypothesis, in his Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers, &c. supposing that the tongues of the persons in question were not entirely rooted out, which he corroborates by the following consideration, that two of the sufferers are said to have utterly lost the faculty of speaking. For though this be ascribed to a peculiar judgment of God punishing the immoralities of which they were afterward guilty, yet this appears to the doctor,to be a forced and improbable solution of the matter, who imagines he solves it better by supposing that they had not been deprived of their entire tongues. He goes yet further, and produces two cases from the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, which prove in his opinion," that this pretended miracle owed its whole credit to our ignorance of the powers of nature." The first is, that of a girl born without a tongue, who et talked as easily and distinctly, as if she had enjoyed the full benefit of that organ; and the second, that of a boy, who, at the age of eight or nine years, lost his tongue by a gangrene or ulcer, and yet retained the faculty of speaking. See Middleton's Free Inquiry, &c. p. 183, 184. v. A new sect, which was the source of most fatal CENT. V. and deplorable divisions in the christian church, This reasoning of the sceptical doctor of divinity appeared superficial and unsatisfactory to the judicious Mr. Dodwell, who, saying nothing about the case of the two trinitarians who remained dumb, after heir tongues were cut out, and whose dumbness is but indifferently accounted for by their immorality, since gifts have been often possessed without graces, confines himself to the consideration of the two parallel facts drawn from the Academical Memoirs already mentioned. To show that these facts prove little or nothing against the miracle in question, he justly observes, that though in one or two particular cases, a mouth may be so singularly formed as to utter articulate sounds, without the usual instrument of speech, some excrescence probably supplying the defect, yet it cannot be any thing less than miraculous, that this should happen to a considerable number of persons, whose tongues were cut out to prevent their preaching a discountenanced doctrine. To deny the miracle in question, we must maintain, that it is as easy to speak without a tongue as with it. See Mr. Dodwell's Free Answer to Dr. Middleton's Free Inquiry, &c. p. 96, 97, &c. Mr. Toll, who defended Middleton's hypothesis, has proposed an objection a priori, as it may be justly called, against the truth of this miracle. He observes, that the occasion on which it was wrought was not of sufficient consequence or necessity to require a divine interposition; for it was not wrought to convert infidels to Christianity, but to bring over the followers of Arius to the athanasian faith; it was wrought, in a word, for the explication of a doctrine, which both sides allowed to be founded in the New Testament. Now, as the holy scriptures are a revelation of the will of God," it seems," says Mr. Toll, " to cast a reflection on his wisdom, as if he did things by halves, to suppose it necessary for him to work miracles, in order to ascertain the sense of those scriptures. This," continues he, " would be multiplying miracles to an infinite degree; beside, it would destroy the universal truth of that proposition from which we cannot depart, namely, that the scriptures are sufficiently plain in all things necessary to salvation." See Mr. Toll's Defence of Dr. Middleton's Free Inquiry, against Mr. Dodwell's Free Answer, p. 81, 82. To this specious objection Mr. Dodwell replies, that on the doctrine in dispute between the arians and the orthodox, depend the true notion, as well as the importance and reality of our salvation; that the doctrines, duties, and motives of Christianity are exalted or debased, as we embrace the one or the other of those systems; that on the divinity of Christ, the meritoriousness of the propitiation offered by him PART II. The rise of nestorianism. |