Thus they remained until the death of the emperor Constantius (A.D. 361), and Donatus had died in the mean time. Julian, on succeeding to the empire, gave leave to all whom Constantius had banished on account of religion to return to their homes.[37] But the Donatists were not the better for this, as they had not been banished by Constantius, but by Constans, before Constantius got possession of Africa: so they petitioned the emperor that they might be recalled from banishment; and in their petition they spoke of Julian in a way which disagreed strangely with their general defiance of governments, and which was especially ill suited for one who had forsaken the Christian faith and was persecuting it at that very time. Julian granted their request, and forthwith they returned home in great triumph, and committed violent outrages against the Catholics. They took possession of a number of churches, and, professing to consider everything that had been used by the Catholics unclean, they washed the pavement, scraped the walls, burnt the communion-tables, melted the plate, and cast the holy sacrament to the dogs. They soon became strong throughout the whole north of Africa, and in one part of it, Numidia, they were stronger than the Catholics. After the death of Julian, laws were made against them from time to time, but do not seem to have been carried out. And although the Donatists quarrelled much among themselves, and split up into a number of parties, they were still very powerful in Augustine's day. In his own city of Hippo he found that they were more in number than the Catholics; and such was their bitter and pharisaical spirit that the bishop of the sect at Hippo would not let any of his people so much as bake for their Catholic neighbours.
Augustine did all that he could to make something of the Donatists, but it was mostly in vain. He could not get their bishops or clergy to argue with him. They pretended to call themselves "the children of the martyrs," on account of the troubles which their forefathers had gone through in the reign of Constans: and they said that the children of the martyrs could not stoop to argue with sinners and traditors. Although they professed that their sect was made up of perfect saints, they took in all sorts of worthless converts for the sake of swelling their numbers; whereas Augustine would not let any Donatists join the Church without inquiring into their characters, and, if he found that they had done anything for which they had been condemned by their sect to do penance, he insisted that they should go through a penance before being admitted into the Church.
But, notwithstanding the difficulties which he found in dealing with them, he and others succeeded in drawing over a great number of Donatists to the Church. And this made the Circumcellions so furious that they fell on the Catholic clergy whenever they could find them, and tried to do them all possible mischief. They beat and mangled some of them cruelly; they put out the eyes of some by throwing a mixture of lime and vinegar into their faces; and, among other things, they laid a plan for waylaying Augustine himself, which, however, he escaped, through the providence of God. Many reports of these savage doings were carried to the emperor, Honorius, and some of the sufferers appeared at his court to tell their own tale; whereupon the old laws against the sect were revived, and severe new laws were also made. In these even death was threatened against Donatists who should molest the Catholics; but Augustine begged that this penalty might be withdrawn, because the Catholic clergy, who knew more about the sect than any one else, would not give information against it, if the punishment of the Donatists were to be so great. And he and his brethren requested that the emperor would appoint a meeting to be held between the parties, in order that they might talk over their differences, and, if possible, might come to some agreement.
The emperor consented to do so; and a meeting took place accordingly, at Carthage, in 411, in the presence of a commissioner named Marcellinus. Two hundred and eighty-six Catholic bishops found their way to the city by degrees. But the Donatists, who were two hundred and seventy-nine in number, entered it in a body, thinking to make all the effect that they could by the show of a great procession. At the conference (or meeting), which lasted three days, the Donatists behaved with their usual pride and insolence. When Marcellinus begged them to sit down, they refused, because our Lord had stood before Pilate. On being again asked to seat themselves, they quoted a text from the Psalms, "I will not sit with the wicked" (Ps. xxvi. 5); meaning that the Catholics were the wicked, and that they themselves were too good to sit in such company. And when Augustine called them "brethren," they cried out in anger that they did not own any such brotherhood. They tried to throw difficulties in the way of arguing the question fairly; but on the third day their shifts would serve them no longer. Augustine then took the lead among the Catholics, and showed at great length both how wrongly the Donatists had behaved in the beginning of their separation from the Church, and how contrary to Scripture their principles were.
Marcellinus, who had been sent by the emperor to hear both parties, gave judgment in favour of the Catholics. Such of the Donatist bishops and clergy as would join the Church were allowed to keep possession of their places; but the others were to be banished. Augustine had at first been against the idea of trying to force people in matters of religion. But he saw that many were brought by these laws to join the Church, and after a time he came to think that such laws were good and useful; nay, he even tried to find a Scripture warrant for them in the text "Compel them to come in" (St. Luke xiv. 23). And thus, unhappily, this great and good man, was led to lend his name to the grievous error of thinking that force, or even persecution, may be used rightly, and with good effect, in matters of religion. It was one of the mistakes to which people are liable when they form their opinions without having the opportunity of seeing how things work in the long run, and on a large scale. We must regret that Augustine seemed in any way to countenance such means; but even although he erred in some measure as to this, we may be sure that he would have abhorred the cruelties which have since been done under pretence of maintaining the true religion, and of bringing people to embrace it.
While some of the Donatists were thus brought over to the Church, others became more outrageous than ever. Many of them grew desperate, and made away with themselves. One of their bishops threatened that, if he were required by force to join the Catholics, he would shut himself up in a church with his people, and that they would then set the building on fire and perish in the flames. There were many among the Donatists who would have been mad enough to do a thing of this kind; but it would seem that the bishop was not put to the trial which he expected.
The Donatists dwindled away from this time, and were little heard of after Augustine's days, although there were still some in Africa two hundred years later, as we learn from the letters of St. Gregory the Great.
Of all the disputes in which Augustine was engaged, that with the Pelagians was the most famous. The leader of these people, Pelagius, was a Briton. His name would mean, either in Latin or in Greek, a man of the sea; and it is said that his British name was Morgan—meaning the same as the Greek or Latin name. Pelagius was the first native of our own island who gained fame as a writer or as a divine; but his fame was not of a desirable kind, as it arose from the errors which he ran into. He was a man of learning, and of strict life; and at Rome, where he spent many years, he was much respected, until in his old age he began to set forth opinions which brought him into the repute of a heretic. At Rome he became acquainted with a man named Celestius, who is said by some to have been an Italian, while others suppose him an Irishman. It is not known whether Celestius learnt his opinions from Pelagius, or whether each of them had come to think in the same way before they knew one another. But, however this may be, they became great friends, and joined in teaching the same errors.