Chapter 9.—14. "This, moreover," says he, "Agrippinus, a man of excellent memory, with the rest, bishops with him, who at that time governed the Church of the Lord in the province of Africa and Numidia, did establish and, after the investigation of a mutual Council had weighed it, confirm; whose sentence, being both religious and legitimate and salutary in accordance with the Catholic faith and Church, we also have followed."
1244
By this witness he gives sufficient
proof how much more ready he would have been to bear his
testimony, had any
Council been held to discuss this matter which either embraced the whole
Church, or at least represented our
brethren beyond the
sea.
1245
| 1245 Transmarinum vel universale Concilium.
|
But such a
Council had not yet been held, because the whole
world was bound together by the
powerful bond of
custom; and this was deemed sufficient to oppose to those who wished to introduce what was new, because they could not comprehend the
truth. Afterwards, however, while the
question became matter for discussion and investigation amongst many on either side, the new
practice was not only
invented, but even submitted to the
authority and
power of a plenary
Council,—after the martyrdom of Cyprian, it is true, but before we were
born.
1246
| 1246 The plenary Council, on whose authority Augustin relies in many places in this work, was either that of Arles, in 314 A.D., or of Nicæa, in 325 A.D., both of them being before his birth, in 354 A.D. He quotes the decision of the same council, contra Parmenianum, ii. 13, 30; de Hæresibus 69: Ep. xliii. 7, 19. Contra Parmenianum, iii. 4, 21: "They
condemned," he says, "some few in Africa, by whom they were in turn vanquished by the judgment of the whole world;" and he adds, that "the Catholics trusted ecclesiastical judges like these in preference to the defeated parties in the suit." Ib. 6, 30: He says that the Donatists, "having made a schism in the unity of the Church, were refuted, not by the authority of 310 African bishops, but by that of the whole world." And in the sixth chapter of the first book of the same treatise,
he says that the Donatists, after the decision at Arles, came again to Constantine, and there were defeated "by a final decision," i.e. at Milan, as is seen from Ep. xliii. 7, 20, in the year 316 A.D. Substance of note in Benedictine ed. reproduced in Migne.
|
But that this was indeed the
custom of the
Church, which afterwards was confirmed by a plenary
Council, in which the
truth was brought to
light, and many difficulties cleared away, is plain enough from the words of the
blessed Cyprian himself in that same letter to Jubaianus, which was quoted as being read in the
Council.
1247
| 1247 See above, ch. ii. 3.
|
For he says, "But some one asks, What then will be done in the case of those who, coming out of
heresy to the
Church, have already been admitted without
baptism?" where certainly he shows plainly enough what was usually done, though he would have wished it otherwise; and in the very fact of his quoting the
Council of Agrippinus, he clearly
proves that the
custom of the
Church was different. Nor indeed was it requisite that he should
seek to establish the
practice by this
Council, if it was already sanctioned by
custom; and in the
Council itself some of the speakers expressly declare, in giving their opinion, that they went against the
custom of the
Church in deciding what they thought was right. Wherefore let the Donatists consider this one point, which surely none can
fail to see, that if the
authority of Cyprian is to be followed, it is to be followed rather in maintaining
unity than in altering the
custom of the
Church; but if respect is paid to his
Council, it must at any rate yield place to the later Council of the universal Church, of which he rejoiced to be a member, often warning his associates that they should all follow his example in upholding the coherence of the whole body. For both later Councils are preferred among later generations to those of earlier date; and the whole is always, with good reason, looked upon as superior to the parts.
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