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THE DONATISTS

During the reign of Constantine the Empire was rocked by theological contest, his Christian subjects being divided by bitter animosity; the Arian division raged in the East, the Donatist in the West. He saw that this must be healed, for political reasons, if for no other. The Donatist agitation arose in North Africa, A.D. 311, in what are now known as the Barbary States; but it centered in Carthage, Numidia and the Mauritanias. Its field covered nearly seven degrees of north latitude, immense centers of commerce and influence, soils and climates; marking a stretch of land nearly 2,000 miles long by about 300 wide, reaching from Egypt to the Atlantic, and fringing the Atlas mountains, the Mediterranean and the desert. The Punic wars had raged there under Hannibal and Africanus, and the contestants inherited all that was brave and fiery in Phoenicia, Carthage and Utica. Still warm with this enterprising blood, such a people were not likely to surrender their Church independency, and take the yoke of the Councils of the Catholic Church without a struggle. Constantine’s hands were full. Besides, a deep sigh had long filled the Christian atmosphere for a return to Gospel simplicity, and the late persecution opened the way for its free expression. In this region the inner independency of the Churches had been more firmly maintained than in many other places, and the late encroachments upon it had aroused the Churches to a determined defense. Merivale says of the Donatists: ‘They represented the broad principle of the Montanists and the Novatians, that the true Church of Christ is the assembly of really pious persons only, and admits of no merely nominal membership.’ They dreaded any form of un-Christian membership which eats out the spiritual fellowship of a Gospel Church.

This is more strictly true of their later history, after they had entirely shaken off the Catholic notion that unity is of more consequence than purity, and so that a spiritual regeneration was the prime qualification for membership in the Churches of Christ. They had come to charge the Catholic with being a fallen Church, because it had become lax in its morals, tolerating open and notorious sin, and retarding visible unity as a higher attribute of Church-life than personal purity. Yet notwithstanding this, Parmenian, one of their greatest writers, preached baptismal regeneration as strongly as any of the men of his times.

Jerome, Augustine and others class the Donatists with the Novatians, as to general aim and purpose, and Augustine sneers at them as ‘spotless saints.’ Kartz represents them as holding that Church and State should stand apart, and Walsh asserts that Constantine had condemned them in his decrees, before they appealed to him for the trial of their case. [Hist. of Heresies, p. 332] But still the fact stands, that in their controversy with the Catholics they sought his decision. There has been much dispute about their views of infant baptism, and many affirm that they were anti-pedobaptists, notably amongst these Guy de Bros, who said: ‘That they demanded that baptized infants ought to be baptized again as adults.’ [Origin of Anab., p. 937] Although this controversy was not general at this time, yet as it was somewhat rife in Africa, it is quite likely that they took this position, as they took their rise there; and Augustine’s letters against them imply the same. They certainly rebaptized those who came to them from other communions, but Dr. Owen thinks only because the impurity of other Churches rendered their baptism null; while Long says that they refused to baptize infants. It is commonly conceded that Augustine wrote a separate work against them on infant baptism, which has not come down to us. If he did, the fair inference would be that they rejected that doctrine.

Still, as is usual with all true reformers, they were reluctant to break up old ties, and a petty, party strife must needs bring on a collision between them and their opponents. Mensurius, Bishop of Carthage, manfully opposed the mania which led thousands to court martyrdom in order to take the martyr’s crown; because he thought it savored more of suicide than of enforced sacrifice for Christ. But he died in 311, and Caecilianus, who was of the same opinion, was elected to fill his place, with which election a majority were dissatisfied. Others were displeased because he had been ordained by Felix, who was charged with giving up the Bible to be burnt, and a division took place in the Church. The retiring party first elected Majorinus their bishop, who soon died, and after him Donatus of Casae Nigrae (that is, of the Black Huts). This party increased greatly, and was read out of the Catholic body, Constantine taking sides against them. At this point they fell into the great and strange blunder of appealing to the Emperor to redress their grievances. Nothing could have been more stupid or inconsistent. They were struggling for a pure Church against the laxness of the Catholic party, the head of which party was himself unbaptized and a semi-heathen; asking him to make the Church at Carthage and elsewhere pure by the exercise of his political power! The proposition itself put the knife to the throat of their own principles, by tendering an alliance of the Church with the State, in disregard of its Gospel constitution. Nor can this folly be extenuated; they knew enough to seek a pure Church for Christ, and should have sought that blessing according to his known will. Nominally they held to the entire separation of the Church from the State, and that persecution for religious opinion was an oppression of a free conscience; yet, when they fell into disputes with their opponents they were the first to appeal to the civil authority to settle them.

Here, then, with all the goodness, zeal and manliness of the Donatists, they had the folly to invoke the secular power to settle a purely religious dispute between Christians. Yet it is but just to say that, so far as is known, this is an isolated act in their history, and not one of a number in the same line. Bitterly they repented of their folly. Their ‘appeal to Caesar’ was sent in a sealed package of papers, in a leather bag, inscribed: ‘Statement of the Catholic Church, presented by those in communion with Majorinus, in proof of the crimes of Caecilian.’ Their petition closed, with the words:

‘We address ourselves to you, most excellent Prince, because you are of a righteous parentage, and the son of a father who did not persecute us, as did his colleagues the other Emperors. Since, therefore, the regions of Gaul have not fallen into the sin of surrendering the Scriptures, and, since there are disputes between us and other prelates of Africa, we supplicate your Piety, that our cause may be submitted to judges chosen from Gaul.’ [Opatatus. Lib., i, cap. 22]

Under the old faith, as Pontifex Maximus, the Emperor was the judge in all religious affairs, and so his ‘Piety ‘ was now ready to oblige them, and he called a Council at Rome, October, A.D. 313, of over thirty bishops, who decided against the Donatists. They asked him for a second hearing, and he called the Council of Arles, 314, composed of more than two hundred bishops from Gaul, Brittany, Germany, Spain and Africa. In his letter to this body he says that they should not have called on him to judge in such difficulties, and charged them with ‘Acting like the heathen in calling upon him to settle their religious disputes.’ When writing of the same Council to Celsus, Vicar of Africa, he says that he felt strictly bound to fulfill ‘the duties of a prince, and extirpate all the errors which the rashness of man has introduced, and to establish union and concord amongst the faithful.’ But in his letter to the Prefect Ablavius he puts his duty in a stronger light, thus: ‘I do not believe that it is permitted us to tolerate these divisions and disputes, which may draw down the wrath of God, not only upon the Commonwealth, but also upon myself, whom his divine will has charged with the care and management of all things upon earth.’

The Council of Arles decided against the Donatists, when they suddenly awoke to their mistake in staining one of the cardinal truths in Church liberty; for the Emperor enforced the decision with the secular arm. Accounting the Donatists enemies of the State, he deprived them of their churches, confiscated their property, and banished their bishops or paetore, of whom Mosheim says that they had four hundred in North Africa, which number precludes the idea that they were either of the metropolitan or diocesan order. The Donatists defied his authority, but with ill consistency, and he sent an armed force to Africa to subdue them. This was the first Christian blood ever shed in a disgraceful contest amongst themselves; yet Constantine piously tells Celsus that he was laboring that ‘the true religion may be embraced by all the world.’ [Tillemont, paragraphs 16-25]

Afterward he undertook to settle THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY, which Jortin describes, as ‘the occasion of innumerable lies, slanders, forgeries, pretended miracles, banishments and murders,’ and ‘of many false and partial histories.’ In order to end this contest, Constantine assembled THE COUNCIL OF NICEA, a city of Bithynia, near Constantinople, May 20, A.D. 325. The number of bishops present is put down at from 250 to 320 ; and Dean Stanley says that each bishop was allowed two presbyters and three slaves as his retinue. The Emperor, who was fond of prodigality and display, brought them together and maintained them in state at his own expense. Great interest was excited, from the fact that he was the first Roman prince who had publicly consorted with the Christians, and so scholars, philosophers, and men of rank flocked in from all directions. Christianity had but just emerged from the blood and wreck of persecution, and such a body of veteran confessors had never met together before. They came from all parts of Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Phoenicia and Arabia, one coming from Persia, and one even from Gothia. They presented a stirring appearance when assembled in the imperial palace, most of them bearing some mark of suffering for Christ. They had been tortured, maimed, scarified, and some of them were blind. Hot irons had plowed furrows upon some of them, some had an arm cut off; one of the Asian bishops had lost the use of both his hands by burning, and another from Upper Egypt had his right eye dug out. As Christian warriors they needed but the entry of the Captain of their salvation, with the wounds of the spines, the spikes and the spear, to make their sacramental congress perfect. Then had they cast themselves at his feet to kiss the sacred prints, each in holy love exclaiming: ‘My Lord and my God!’ and he had breathed upon them his holier salaam: ‘Peace be unto you!’

Alas for them, with all their fortitude, the simplicity of the Upper Room, the ‘piece of broiled fish and the honey-comb,’ had given place to royal apparel, princely fare and ‘king’s houses; ‘but there was no Son of Man returning fresh from Edom. They sat waiting in solemn silence; but a new Head of the Church came in, and they rose to do him reverence. He was of majestic height and bearing, wrapped in royal purple, with a golden fillet on his head and without a thorn-scar on his temples. He had not redeemed the Church with his blood, he had not stained his raiment in the sacrificial wine-press. His flushed face and downcast eyes were reflected back in the gems of his vesture; the sword of nations and the shepherd’s crook lay at his side; but where was the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep? This is Caesar, and not ‘another King,’ one Jesus! When seated in the golden chair placed for him in their midst, he gave a sign, and each bishop, according to his rank, sat down in his presence. How are the mighty fallen! Their lawful sovereign and good friend was hailed as their Head, and they waited for his image and ‘superscription’ to attest their orthodoxy; for the first time the old Baptist Churches of the world are found crouching at a monarch’s feet! Farewell, soul-liberty, flee thee to the wilderness for a time!

This body sat until the 25th of July; and the Emperor presided over its Councils most of the time, aided now and then by Hosius. Constantine addressed it graciously, listened to and took part in its debates, led it to its decisions, and confirmed its decrees. He closed the sessions with a great banquet on his birthday, and loaded its members with imperial gifts. He even embraced Paphnutius, kissing the empty socket from which his eye had been torn, and exhorted all the bishops to prayers for himself, his family and the Empire; then he bade them farewell!

After the Council, Constantine became bitter toward the Arians, although he finally became an Arian himself. He banished Arius and ordered his works to be burnt, threatening with death all who kept them, and all who rejected the findings of the Council came under its anathema, the civil power enforcing uniformity where it could not be commanded by reason. The Emperor issued an edict against all dissenters, saying: ‘Know ye, Moravians, Valentinians, Marcionites, Paulians and Cataphrygians (that is, various Gnostic and Montanist sects), that your doctrine is but vain and false. O ye enemies of truth, authors and counselors of death, ye spread abroad lies, oppress the innocent, and hide from the faithful ‘the light of truth.’ Then he forbids their meetings in private or public, orders their places of worship pulled down, and their property confiscated to the ‘Catholic Church.’ Eusebius, of Caesarea, was delighted with this edict, and berated the heretics as ‘hypocrites, caterpillars and locusts.’ The Arians and others suffered frightfully, and the pagans stood astonished; for while they had various sects amongst themselves, they never persecuted each other to enforce uniformity. After A.D. 330 Rome and Constantinople became the highest sacerdotal seats, with boundaries answering to those of the Empire, and the will of the court hold the scales of orthodoxy and heterodoxy; all who differed with the dictates of the Emperor and his party were guilty of ‘heresy and schism.’

The condition of things at that moment is well set forth by Niebuhr in the following words: ‘The religion which he had in his head must have been a strange compound indeed. The man who had on his coins the inscription, "Sol invictus," who worshiped pagan deities, consulted the auspices (diviners), and indulged in a number of pagan superstitions, and interfered in the Council of Nice, must have been a repulsive phenomenon, and was certainly not a Christian. He was a superstitions man, and mixed up his Christian religion with all kinds of absurd superstitions and opinions; when, therefore, certain Oriental writers call him equal to an Apostle, they know not what they are saying; and to speak of him as a saint is a profanation of the word.’ [Hist. of Rome, Lec. lxxix] Thus that fantastic mixture of Judaism, heathenism and Christianity, then called the ‘Catholic Church,’ became one compact Roman system, held together by bonds within and pressure without, exalted into a tremendous mystery of rite and pomp--a very trampling tyranny. The Carpenter of Nazareth was to be no longer strong in his own weakness, but was to be made mighty by the paralysis inflicted through an imperial, half-pagan autocrat!

It is scarcely necessary here to state how soon every sort of superstition and heathen ceremony was mixed with this State Christianity. The bones of Stephen were found by a revelation from Gamaliel, Paul’s teacher, after they had rested for three centuries. Many made pilgrimages to his shrine at Jerusalem and were wonderfully healed, while others made wonderful sums of money out of the exhibition of these relics. The bodies of Luke and Andrew were discovered, and removed to a great temple which the Emperor had built in Constantinople. The remains of Joseph of Arimathea were recovered, and large portions of stone and earth removed from his tomb for miraculous uses. Most wonderful of all, Helena, Constantine’s mother, found the real cross of Christ, not that which her son saw in the sky, but that on which Jesus suffered; and although it had been buried for three centuries, the wood was as sound as the heart of oak! This proved an immense treasure. It not only wrought miracles, but although countless pieces were taken all over the world, it grew no less; at any rate that is what Tillemont says. It was a sad oversight that Constantine did not build a warship out of its wood for blowing heretics to atoms. Besides all this, it is estimated that by the end of the fourth century 27,000 monks and nuns were found in Egypt alone, most of whom were piously austere, ignorant and lazy.

These, and many other things are stated by numerous writers of the hierarchy, with pride and even with triumph, and we cannot but honor their frankness. So far from attempting to disguise these things by pious lying, it is their delight to make them known, with others just as disgraceful. Take, for example, Cardinal Baronius, who says with delicious openness: ‘It is allowable for the Church to transfer to pious uses those ceremonies which the pagans employed impiously to superstitious worship, after they have been purified by consecration; for the devil is the more mortified to see those things turned to the service of Jesus Christ, which were instituted for his own.’ Polidore Virgil says: ‘The Church has borrowed several customs from the religion of the Romans and other heathens; but that they have improved them and put them to a better use.’ Lib. iii, ch. 1] And Guillaume du Choul sums up the whole case in these words: ‘If we examine narrowly we shall discover that several institutions of our religion have been transferred from the Egyptian and other Gentile ceremonies. Such as the tunics and surplices, the crowns or tonsures, of our priests, bowing round the altar; the sacrificial pomp, church music, adorations, prayers, supplications, processions, litanies and several other things which our priests use in their mysteries; offering up to our only God, Jesus Christ, what the ignorance of the Gentiles, with their false religion and foolish presumption, offered to their false deities and to mortal men of their own deifying.’ [Mons. Drelingcourt, Visage de L’ Antiquite] Even Eusebius, in the life-time of Constantine, reports that: ‘ This Emperor, to make the Christian religion more plausible to the Gentiles, adopted into it the exterior ornaments which they used in their religion.’

These corruptions were lamented and resisted by brave and earnest men. but with slight success; partly because they themselves held some palpable error, and because they were assailed with calumny and resentment. Amongst these was AERIUS, a presbyter, A. D. 355, who maintained that the New Testament makes a presbyter a bishop, condemned prayers for the dead, rejected all fasts ordained by the Church and attempted to restore Apostolic discipline. He had many followers. ‘For some time his party, the Aerians,’ says Herzog, ‘assembled in the open fields, in forests and among the mountains; but, persecuted from all sides, it soon melted away.’ [Cyclo. Art. Aerius] The bitterness of the writers of those times shows that these bare-faced perversions were met by formidable resistance; but ingenuity circumvented these struggles, cursed and branded the men and crushed out their measures.

A remarkable case of this sort is found in the manner in which JEROME trampled upon Jovillian and Vigilantus. His injustice comes to the face of his own reports, through exaggerated noise and vulgar abuse. JOVINIAN was one of the best-known heretics in the last half of this period. Ho was thoroughly versed in the Scriptures, and wrote stoutly against voluntary martyrdom, fasting and monkery. He also contended that all baptized believers have morally the same calling, dignity, grace and blessedness. So great was his influence, that a Synod was held at Rome, A.D. 390, at which he was condemned, and a second followed at Milan, 395. He held the vital principle of regeneration by the Spirit of God, the perseverance of the saints, and denied the perpetual virginity of Mary. It is believed that he was scourged at Rome, and banished for holding conventicles. So far as we can judge from his writings quoted by Jerome, he held, in substance, the same views as those of Luther.

VIGILANTUS was born in Gaul, and ordained a presbyter A.D. 395. He went to Palestine, thinking that he would find things there, in the cradle of Christianity, much after the Apostolic order. Instead of this he was disgusted, as Luther was afterward at Rome, and returned. Then, he and Jerome fell into controversy. He attacked the worship of the martyrs and of relics as a lapse into paganism; making an attack, also, upon the claim of superior sanctity in clergymen, monasteries, celibacy and the vows of poverty. To these two we may add a most noble advocate of liberty of conscience in Lactantius. He was the tutor of Crispus, the son of Constantine, as well as the historian of the Diocletian persecution, and, according to Milman, the adviser of the Emperor in questions of legislation. From full conviction, he became a Christian in early life, and stoutly defended religious freedom. He says:

‘To defend religion by bloodshed, torture and crime, is not to defend, but to pollute and profane it. for nothing is so much a matter of free-will as religion, in which if the mind of the worshiper is disinclined, religion is at once taken away and ceases to exist. The right way to defend religion is by patient endurance unto death, through which the keeping of the faith is pleasing to God, and adds nothing to the truth.’ [Divine Inst., b. v, c. xx]

Besides these, we have Helvidius, who lived at Rome in the latter part of the century. He and Jovinian were the first who dared to attack the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity; and he also assailed nunnery and other evils. After Jerome had written bitterly against Vigilantus in his sixty-first letter, he attempted to answer Belvidins, under great excitement. He did them great injustice by that most cowardly thing which a man can do, namely: to misrepresent his opponent, and be cut off his appeal to an unbiased posterity. The pen of Jerome was rendered very offensive by his grinding tyranny and crabbed temper. No matter how wrong he was, he could not brook contradiction. In these cases, it were simply mild to call his composition venom; for no man can read his replies to the simple and inoffensive words which he quotes from Vigilantus without disgust. He pretends to call it ‘sacrilege,’ either to hear or repeat what his opponent pays. He then calls him a ‘Jew,’ a ‘Samaritan’ and a ‘madman, disgorging a filthy surfeit.’ He said that his tongue was only fit to be cut out--he had a ‘fetid month, fraught with a putrid stench, against the relics and ashes of the martyrs.’ He denounces him as a ‘dog,’ a ‘maniac;’ a ‘monster,’ an ‘ass,’ a ‘fool,’ a ‘glutton,’ a ‘servant of the devil,’ and a ‘useless vessel which shall be shivered by the iron rod of Apostolic authority,’ with a few other names quite as gentle and saintly. Jovinian received the same treatment from this delectable doctor. Tills reformer had said that there was no difference of merit between the married and the unmarried. This made Jerome’s pious indignation boil over, and he calls the statement a ‘savage howling of ferocious wolves, scaring the flock;’ with other characteristic sayings of a slightly acid sort. Possibly, an interpretation of this animus is given in the ‘Retractationes’ of Augustine when he laments the Jovinian heresy, which had so far prevailed at Rome, that several nuns, whose honor was spotless, had been led away into the error of matrimony.

One marked feature which relieves the tendencies of this age is THE VIGOR WITH WHICH THE SCRIPTURES WERE MULTIPLIED. Few had ever possessed complete copies of them, and these were now rare, the late Bible-burnings having made a famine of the word of God; it was, therefore, in great demand, and great efforts were made to meet that demand. Diligent search was made for copies that had escaped destruction, and transcripts of them were multiplied. Constantine instructed Ensebins to have fifty copies of the Sacred Writings beautifully engrossed on parchment ‘by artificial transcribers of books, most skilful in the art of accurate and fair writing, which (copies) must be very legible and easily portable, in order to their being used.’ He also dispatched letters to his civil officers in various provinces, to see that every thing necessary was provided for this work, and supplied two public carriages to convey them to him at Constantinople, at his expense. This order was immediately executed, and the fifty copies were sent to him ‘in volumes magnificently adorned.’ [Life of Constantine, lib. iv, cap xxxvi] He also established a library in the imperial city, into which he gathered nearly seven thousand volumes, chiefly of Christian books. This grew to a hundred thousand in the days of the younger Theodosius, most of which were destroyed by the Emperor Leo III. Tischendorf conjectures that the Sinaitic MS., which he discovered in the Monastery of St. Katharine, on Mount Sinai, A. D. 1854-59, might have formed ‘One of the fifty copies of the Bible which, in the year 331, the Emperor Constantine ordered to be executed for Constantinople.’ [Tauchnitz ed, p. xii]

The people had no power to resist the decisions of Councils, now enforced by the Emperor; and their free use of the Scriptures may have greatly pacified them to bear more patiently the many innovations which had crept into the Church. Possibly with this in view, the Council of Nicea ordained that ‘No Christian should be without the Scriptures,’--that of Antioch, A.D. 341, that those who stayed at public worship only to hear the Scriptures read, without partaking of the eucharist, should be excommunicated; and that of Laodicea, A.D. 343-381, ‘That the Gospels, with the other Scriptures, ought to be read on the Sabbath day.’ The monks of those days were diligent students of the Scriptures; for Chrysostom not only exhorts ‘the servant, the rustic and the widow,’ to read them, but he asks, ‘Are the Scriptures to be read only by monks?’ And the common people used them freely, even the women and children hanging the Gospels about their necks, a fact proving that something more is needful to a pure Christianity than free access to the Bible. A Bible possessed but neglected, or used and distorted, leads to the same result in substance; on the principle understood and adopted by Julian the Apostate; when he forbade Christian educators to teach Gentile learning: ‘Lest, being furnished with our armor, they make war upon us with our own weapons.’

This century was likewise very active in THE REVISION AND CIRCULATION OF THE SCRIPTURES IN SEVERAL LANGUAGES. Jerome, the crabbed monk of whom we have already spoken, devoted his life chiefly to the revision of the already existing Latin versions. known as the Ante-Hieironymian, that is; those made before his time, as the word denotes. This most learned of all the Latin fathers,A. D. 331-420, undertook his work at the request of Damasus, the Bishop of Rome. Much of the Old Testament he translated from the original Hebrew, but his revision of the New was based upon the old Latin version known as the Itala, compared with the Greek text. His work is now known as the Vulgate, or current Latin text of the Bible, and is declared by the Papal Constitution to be ‘authentic, and unquestioned, in all private discussion, reading, preaching and explanation.’ By ‘authentic,’ here, is meant authoritative, and Sixtus V threatened to excommunicate all who should vary from that text. Yet, the Vulgate as we have it today is not the unchanged text that Jerome left, for some of its renderings have been corrupted and made to fit into certain dogmas, as Fulke has shown in countless instances in his ‘Confrontation of the Rhemish Testament.’ Whether these were made by Pope Sixtus, or by Clement VIII, it is not easy to decide, as both of them changed Jerome’s version. Clement charged that the edition of Sixtus swarmed with errors, and made two thousand changes therefrom. But Jerome himself introduced, or at least sanctioned the system of Latinizing Greek words by introducing them into the Latin Bible; the obvious effect of which was to render his version obscure, or, as the historian, Fuller, says, his translation ‘needed to be translated over again.’ And of the Vulgate as rendered in the Rhemish New Testament, the same writer quaintly says: ‘They could no longer blindfold the laity from the Scriptures, resolved to fit them with false spectacles.’ [Pierce’s Vindication, p. 103]

But Jerome said of his own version, that he had ‘Corrected only those errors which seemed to change the sense, and had permitted the rest to remain;’ and that he had used for the purpose ‘Greek copies which did not much differ from the usual Latin reading.’ Amongst many Greek words which he transferred instead of translating them, was the family of words relating to baptism, making them cluster around the verb ‘baptise;’ so that, those who knew the Latin only, could not possibly tell what those words meant. This new-coined method of keeping back the meaning of God’s commands has debauched the consciences of translators, and perverted many versions from Jerome’s time to our own, by copying his pernicious example, and refusing to translate the exact sense of these words into the mother-tongues of those for whom their translations have been made. And what has rendered this practice the more blameworthy has been, the common pretense, either that these words were too holy to be translated, that their meaning was immaterial, that it was indefinite, or that they were incapable of translation, for want of proper equivalents in the tongues in which these versions were made. The soul of a translator who attempts to pull that sort of wool over the eyes of honest folk, would suffer no injury by a very literal rendering from the Greek, of Rev. 21:8, especially if he made it when alone on his knees before God. Possibly, Cartwright and Fulke had some such thought in mind when they said of the Rhemish Testament: ‘That, compared with the authentical Greek text, it is in many places, ridiculous, insincere, untrue; and, consequently, of no authority.’ This conduct of Jerome in forming the Vulgate, justly brought upon him the censure of Baillet, when he says: ‘It is agreed that Jerome may be the greatest saint of all translators, but that he is not the most exact. He hath taken liberties which the laws of translation will not admit, and his adversary, Rufinus, fails not to charge him with it.’ [Jug. Des Savans]

But this was not the character of all the versions made in the fourth century. For example, the ‘GOTHIC,’ by Ulphilas, is pronounced by scholars to be very faithful and accurate. This able and devout bishop of the Goths had induced his countrymen to become Christians, and they reposed boundless confidence in him, saying that whatever he did was well done. He was of Cappadocian ancestry, but was a native Goth; still, as his people had no written dialect, he found it necessary to construct a language for them, and first framed an alphabet of the Gothic language from the Greek, Latin and Runic characters, suited to his work. Into this he made a translation of the Old and New Testaments, excepting the Books of Kings and Chronicles; and tradition says, that these were omitted lest they should increase the fierce passions of his people for war. The relics which are left of his version are amongst the most valuable of antiquity, as it was made from the Greek text. These fragments cover the larger part of the New Testament, and he translates the verb taptigo by the word ‘daupjan,’ which means to dip. Tregelles thinks this to have been the vernacular Bible of a great part of Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries. Ulphilas lived A.D. 311-381, and after the ninth century his translation was lost until the sixteenth, when the Gospels were recovered; in the nineteenth, his Epistles of Paul were found. German scholars find the Gothic of this version superior to the German language, of which it is the parent, in richness and dignity of expression, as well as harmony and purity of tone.

The ETHIOPIC VERSION, mentioned by Chrysostom in his second homily on John’s Gospel, was made in the ancient and vernacular tongue of Abyssinia, but by whom is not known. It is commonly referred to Frumentius, who first preached Christianity in that country; but at the best this is only tradition. It is generally ascribed to this century, and is regarded as the oldest monument of Ethiopic literature. Dillman declares it to be ‘very faithful; being for the most part a verbal rendering of the Greek, and yet readable and fluent, and in the Old Testament often hitting the ideas and words of the Hebrew in a surprising manner.’ It also renders the word which defines the act of baptism by ‘tamaka,’ to dip.

A number of different creeds are found in this century, but they did not by any means push the Bible aside. BASIL is a fair example of his brethren in his love for scriptural truth who, when Valens, the Emperor, promised him promotion if he would embrace Arianism, replied: ‘That such fair promises were fit only to entice children, but that he was taught and nourished by the Holy Scriptures, and was ready rather to suffer a thousand deaths, than to suffer one syllable or iota of the Scriptures to be altered.’ Then the Emperor fell into a rage, and threatened him with death; to which Basil answered, that ‘If he put him to death, it was only to set him at liberty.’ The prince then sat down to write an edict for his banishment, but at last tore up the paper and cast it from him; the great divine was left to labor and die in peace.

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