Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/96

78 of the validity of Donatist orders and sacraments was imposed upon Augustine by the settled judgment of the Catholic church, especially of the council of Arles, in 314 (Can. xiii., cf. viii., rejecting the Cyprianic view). But he clearly found it difficult to grasp habitually the distinction between the "Spiritus Sanctus," the agent in every "valid" sacrament (="gratia gratis data"), and the "Spiritus caritatis," which makes the sacrament a means of grace ("gratum faciens") to the Catholic recipient. His frequent denials that "the Holy Spirit" could be possessed outside the visible unity of the church relate really to the latter, though there are passages which seem to extend to the former. But on the whole his mind is clear. He distinguishes sharply between Office and Person;  between the sacramental act and its benefit to the soul. The former can exist outside the Catholic church, the latter only within it. In this respect Augustine is an uncompromising assertor of Cyprian's axiom, ''extra ecclesiam nulla salus. But it must be observed that he subordinates the institutional to the spiritual ''conception of the church. The Donatists are wrong, because they have broken the bond of caritas which unites the Catholic society. It is this, and not the mere fact, necessary though it be, of the episcopal succession, that unites Catholics with the Apostolic churches and through them by an "inconcussa series" with the Apostles themselves. (See below, § 16, b, c; also Gore, The Church and the Ministry, latter part of c, iii.; Hatch, Organisation, v.; Reuter, pp. 231‒283, an able and thorough discussion.)

§ 9. ''Augustine and the Heathen. Philosophy of History.—Augustine tells us (de Civ. Dei,'' XVIII. liii. 2) of an oracle current among the heathen, that the Christian religion would last 365 years, and then come to an end. He reckons that this time expired in the year 399. As a matter of fact, the year in question was marked by a widespread destruction of pagan temples throughout the Roman world (Vit. Bened. IV. xvi.). In this year apparently the counts Gaudentius and Jovius arrived in Africa to execute an imperial decree for the dismantling of the temples. At Carthage the splendid temple of Dea Coelestis, which had been closed, as it seems, since the law of 391 (Cod. Th. XVI. x. 10), and was already overgrown with weeds and bushes, was taken possession of by the Christians. But in 421 it was razed to the ground (Prosper, de Praed. III. xxxviii.). In some places images were hidden to preserve them from destruction. Heathen customs, as we gather from a sermon of Augustine (Serm. 62, 4), were still secretly observed even by some Christians. A council at Carthage in 401 petitioned the emperor to abolish public feasts and games which were, in spite of a previous imperial prohibition (Cod. Th. ib. 17), occasions of heathenish observances. The destruction of a statue of Hercules at Colonia Suffectana (? Sufetula) was the cause of a riot in which sixty Christians lost their lives (Ep. 50). In 407‒408 a sweeping law, confiscating temples and ordering the destruction of altars, images, etc., was issued (Cod. Th. ib. 19, cf. Vit. Bened. VI. iv. 2, v. 3). Its promulgation was attended by most

serious riots at Calama, where the church was repeatedly wrecked by the heathen (Ep. 90, 91, 103, 104). The murder of Stilicho (Sept. 408), and the rumours that the laws against the heathen and the Donatists passed during his life lapsed with his death, caused a further widespread outburst of heathen violence in Africa (cf. Cod. Th. App. Sirm. XIV.; Aug. Ep. 97). A stringent law, passed apparently at the instance of the provincial council at Carthage, of which Augustine was not a member, ordered rigorous penalties against all the offenders, and against conniving officials. Alarmed by the state of the empire, the ministers of Honorius appear to have relaxed for a time the rigour of the laws against paganism and heresy alike, but at the urgent request of the African bishops they were again strictly enforced. On the whole, Augustine's tone and attitude towards the pagans is dignified and conciliatory (Epp. 133, etc.), but he shares in the general responsibility for persecution which must be allotted to the churchmen of this degenerate age.

In 408 and 409 the Goths, under Alaric, had laid siege to Rome, and after long and fruitless negotiations, the city was taken and sacked on Aug. 24, 410. The sack of Rome, in its direct effects, was but an incident in the profound abasement of the empire in the miserable reign of Honorius. But the downfall of the "Eternal City" struck awe into the minds of men who failed to appreciate the material and moral exhaustion which the disaster merely symbolized. Augustine's friend Marcellinus, the imperial officer who had been in charge of the conference with the Donatists introduced him to a distinguished ("illustris") official, Volusianus, who was kept back from the Christian faith by difficulties relating to the Old Testament, the Incarnation, and the incompatibility of some principles of the Gospel with civil life and the public good (Epp. 135‒138, cf. 132). The last-named question naturally connected itself with the prevalent heathen explanation of the fall of Rome, as due to the desertion of the old gods and the progress of Christianity. Augustine, unable at the time to discuss this question except in passing (Ep. 1381, 9‒16, cf. 1363), presently began a more thorough consideration of it. This is his famous treatise de Civitate Dei, begun about the end of 412, and not completed until 426. The first two books are addressed to Marcellinus, who was put to death, Sept. 13, 413; with a third book, they were published before 415. In this year, about Lent, he wrote two more (Ep. 1691) In 416‒417, when he was advising Orosius to write his Historia adversus Paganos, Augustine had published ten books, and was at work on the eleventh. By 420 he had published fourteen; the eighteenth was finished "nearly thirty years" after the consulate of Theodorus (399), i.e. hardly earlier than 426. The work then was continued amid interruptions, and the plan widened out from a refutation of the heathen calumny (Retr. II. xliii.) to a comprehensive explanation of the course of human affairs—a religious philosophy of history.

The problem was one of terrible actuality. The ancient world and its civilization were in real truth breaking up, and the end of Rome 