GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH
THE ORIGIN OF
THE BAPTISTS
By
S. H. Ford
CHAPTER
XI
Century Six
Donatists
It is difficult to
ascertain the true sentiments and character of a people whose
writings were destroyed by those who feared them, and whose words can
only be caught as they are echoed, with bitterness and
misrepresentation, by their implacable foes.
It is, therefore,
no wonder if the motives, the faith, and the practices of the
Donatists have been misstated and caricatured by nearly all who have
written their history.
We have already seen that the Baptists
of every age and clime have received names borrowed from men who,
holding high positions in the dominant church, suddenly lifted their
voices against its corruptions, and were, consequently, driven from
its communion. It was so with Claude of Lorraine, Arnold of Brescia,
and Wickliffe of England. It is easy to understand how those
spiritual churches, which had never symbolized with the great
apostasy; how those "hidden ones." who, in obscurity,
battled and suffered for the truth, would hail, with enthusiastic
gratitude, the appearance of a prominent and bold reformer who, in
the midst of a corrupt church, would come forth, as a messenger from
God, to plead for the truth. At once those scattered and obscure
disciples of Christ would rally around the newly-arisen standard, on
which were emblazoned those principles which they cherished with
deathless love. They would soon, in the public mind and on the page
of partisan or superficial history, be identified and lost in the new
movement, and would receive the name which had been given to the new
party. It was thus in the case of the Donatists, as we shall fully
see.
In the early part of the fifth century there appeared all
over that part of Africa lying along the shores of the Mediterranean,
a class of determined men, who "maintained that the church
should cast out from its body those who were known, by open and
manifest sins, to be called unworthy members." The corruption's
of the so-called church were detailed by an eye-witness ( Salvian,
who belonged to the church party) in colors the most odious. Iniquity
and vice reveled unblushingly under the protection of church
sanctity. Forms, borrowed from Judaism and Paganism, were substituted
for the spiritual power and voluntary obedience of the gospel. All
were received as members who could repeat the Creed and the form of
renunciation; and infant baptism already found advocates. Against all
this, these Numidians, afterward called Donatists, entered their
solemn and powerful protest. Neander says:
"They adduced
the fifth chapter of Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians to prove
that none but those who gave evidence of conversion should be
received into or retained in the church. When the church did not act
in accordance with these rules, 'they affirmed' but tolerated such
unworthy members in her communion. She lost the predicates of purity
and holiness, which are the predicates of a true church."
(Neander, vol. ii, p. 206).
Augustine, bishop of Hippo, taking
the position of the Catholic Church, replied:
"That the
good and faithful Christians, certain of their won salvation, may
persevere to dwell in unity with the corrupt when it is beyond their
power to punish."
The Catholics appealed to those
passages and parables which speak of the separation of the good and
bad being reserved to the last day. The Donatists replied:
"that
these passages relate either to the mixing of the good and bad in
this world, or the the hypocrites who crept in unawares; that Christ
himself taught that the field is the world."
Their
antagonists answered, that "by the world Christ meant the
church."
The one plead for a line of demarcation between
the church and the world; and that giving baptism to any woe gave no
evidence of a spiritual change, obliterated all such distinctions.
The Catholics, on the other side, advocated hereditary church
membership without moral or spiritual qualifications, and for a
complete blending of the church and the world. The Catholic party
triumphed by imperial interference and merciless persecution. It
resulted in national church establishments, into which all are
received to membership infancy, and from which none are excluded
except for heresy.
The other principle, tat none but the
converted should be received or retained into the churches of Christ,
was derided, trampled in the dust, branded as infamous, and its
advocates treated as fanatics, apostates, rebels. But it was
sheltered amid the mountains of Armenia. It descended through the
night of centuries. It gleamed along the path of human progression
and civilization. It lit the torch of the Reformers, and blazed upon
downtrodden Europe. It finally burst forth in splendor or these
glorious States of ours, where thirty millions of freemen enjoy its
blessings.
But there was another great principle which
distinguished the Donatists. Men who plead for a spiritual church,
must necessarily oppose coercion toward the passive or the unwilling,
the young or the old, all human dictation and constraint in matters
of conscience. Petilian, one of the Donatist leaders, says:
Did
the apostles ever persecute any one? or did Christ ever deliver any
one over to the secular power? Christ commands us to flee
persecutors, (Matt. x:23). thou who callest thyself a disciple of
Christ oughtest not to imitate the deeds of the heathen. Think you
thus to serve God by destroying us with your hands? Ye err, ye err,
poor mortals, if ye believe this; for God has not executioners for is
priests. Christ persecutes no one, for e was for inviting not forcing
men to the faith. Our Lord Christ says: ' NO MAN CAN COME UNTO ME
UNLESS THE FATHER WHO SENT ME DRAW HIM.' But why do you not permit
every man to follow is own free-will, since God the Lord himself has
bestowed this free-will upon man? He has simply the way of
righteousness, that none might be lost through ignorance. Christ, in
dying for men, has given Christians the example to die, but not to
kill. Christ teaches us to suffer wrong, not to requite it. The
apostle tells us of what he had endured, not of what he had done to
others. But what have you to do with the princes of this world, in
whom the Christian cause has only found enemies?" (Augustin
Contra Petiliana, in Lardner's Gospel Testimony, also Neander).
Are
not these the principles for which Baptists have pleas and suffered
in every age of the gospel era? Are they not the principles for which
true Baptists (and they only) contend still? "God made man FREE,
after His own image. How am I to be deprived of that, by human
lordship, which God has bestowed on me? What sacrilege, that human
arrogance should take away what God as bestowed, and idly boast of
doing this in God's behalf! It is a great offense against God when He
is defended by men. What must he think of God who would defend him
with outward force. Is it that God is unable to punish offenses
against himself? Hear what the Lord says: ' My peace I leave with
you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto
you.' The peace of Christ invites the willing with wholesome
mildness. IT NEVER FORCES MEN AGAINST THEIR WILLS."
Here
were the glorious principles inscribed on the broad banners of those
called Donatists. A church made up of the willing, active, converted
believers, professing, obeying, and associating themselves together
in church compact of their own free-will; neither passively while
infants, nor by constraint when adults. Is it any wonder that those
who had withdrawn from the majorities and formed independent
churches, long before the Donatists arose, hailed these defenders of
the faith as true yoke-fellows, and that they, consequently, received
their name? Where would the advocates of such principles be classed
now? By what name would they be called? Among whom would they find
co-workers and sympathizers? In the rejection of the baptisms of all
other parties, says Hooker, the great defender of Episcopacy:
"Good
men were followed by the Donatists as they are now followed by the
Anabaptists, who rebaptized in infancy." (Lardner's Eccl.
Polity; also Fuller's Eccl. Hist., vol. ii, book v).
"The
Anabaptists of our day," says the English Church historian, "
are the Donatists new dipped."
The fact is thus
historically demonstrated, that those branded as heretics and
Anabaptists, scattered through Asia Minor, Armenia, Phrygia, and
portions of Italy and Gaul, after the subversion of Alexandria and
Carthage, and the whole of Numidia, by the Arabs, banished,
reproached, anathematized, pursued by clerical vengeance, and
condemned as criminals by Greek and Roman, the Donatists were watched
by the Shepherd of Israel, preserved by an unseen but almighty hand;
and continued, like the bush amid the fires of persecution,
unconsumed, undismayed, the true, independent, spiritual churches of
Jesus Christ, composed of baptized believers. They were Baptists.
With a firmness and fortitude which no disasters could shake and no
sufferings appall, they won their title to that celestial nobility,
that linked brotherhood, which, wit God's help, has kept the
altar-fires burning through the centuries of blood and gloom, through
every trial and through every storm.
"The Donatists,"
says Mosheim, "enjoyed the sweets of freedom and tranquillity,
as long as the Vandals reigned in Africa; but the scene was greatly
changed with respect to them, when the empire of these barbarians was
overturned in 534. They, however, still remained in a separate body,
and were bold enough to attempt the multiplication of their sect.
Gregory the Roman pointiff opposed these efforts with great spirit
and assiduity; and, as appears from his epistles, tried various
methods of depressing this faction." (Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., cen.
vi, ch.5).
Again have we found Baptists in Asia, and Africa
and Europe, far up the stream of time, amid the darkness of the sixth
century; and again we will inquire where these Donatist Baptists came
from?