The churches of Africa were rent by their implacable feuds, and on so small a matter,—­even as the ranks of the reformers under Luther were so soon divided by the Anabaptists.  In proportion to the unimportance of the shibboleth was tenacity to it,—­a mark which has ever characterized narrow and illiberal minds.  It is not because a man accepts a shibboleth that he is narrow and small, but because he fights for it.  As a minute critic would cast out from the fraternity of scholars him who cannot tell the difference between ac and et, so the Donatist would expel from the true fold of Christ those who accepted baptism from an unworthy priest.  Augustine at first showed great moderation and patience and gentleness in dealing with these narrow-minded and fierce sectarians, who carried their animosity so far as to forbid bread to be baked for the use of the Catholics in Carthage, when they had the ascendency; but at last he became indignant, and implored the aid of secular magistrates.

Augustine’s controversy with the Donatists led to two remarkable tracts,—­one on the evil of suppressing heresy by the sword, and the other on the unity of the Church.

In the first he showed a spirit of toleration beyond his age; and this is more remarkable because his temper was naturally ardent and fiery.  But he protested in his writings, and before councils, against violence in forcing religious convictions, and advocated a liberality worthy of John Locke.

In the second tract he advocated a principle which had a prodigious influence on the minds of his generation, and greatly contributed to establish the polity of the Roman Catholic Church.  He argued the necessity of unity in government as well as unity in faith, like Cyprian before him; and this has endeared him to the Roman Catholic Church, I apprehend, even more than his glorious defence of the Pauline theology.  There are some who think that all governments arise out of the circumstances and the necessities of the times, and that there are no rules laid down in the Bible for any particular form or polity, since a government which may be adapted to one age or people may not be fitted for another;—­even as a monarchy would not succeed in New England any more than a democracy in China.  But the most powerful sects among Protestants, as well as among the Catholics themselves, insist on the divine authority for their several forms of government, and all would have insisted, at different periods, on producing conformity with their notions.  The high-church Episcopalian and the high-church Presbyterian equally insist on the divine authority for their respective institutions.  The Catholics simply do the same, when they make Saint Peter the rock on which the supremacy of their Church is based.  In the time of Augustine there was only one form of the visible Church,—­there were no Protestants; and he naturally wished, like any bishop, to strengthen and establish its unity,—­a