St. Silvester, who succeeded St. Melchiades in the year 314, sent his legate to preside in his name; and in that and the following year, Felix and Cecilianus were again acquitted by the council[1].
3. Nothing, however, could satisfy the Donatists; they even, according to Fleury[2], extended themselves as far as Rome. Heresy now was added to schism. The second Donatus, called by them Donatus the Great, put himself at their head; and although tinctured with the Arian heresy, as St. Augustin says[3], intruded himself into the See of Carthage, as successor to Majorinus. He was the first who began to disseminate the errors of the Donatists in Africa[4]. Those consisted in the adoption of one false principle, which was the source of many others. This was, that the Church was composed of the just alone, and that all the wicked were excluded from it; founding this belief on that text of St. Paul, where he says that the Church of Christ is free from all stain: "Christ loved his Church, and delivered himself up for it, that he might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle" (Ephesians, v. 27). They also professed to find this doctrine in the twenty-seventh verse of the twenty-first chapter of the Apocalypse: "There shall not enter into it anything defiled." The adoption of this erroneous principle led them into many heretical consequences:—First, believing that the Church was composed of the good alone, they inferred that the Church of Rome was lost, because the Pope and bishops having admitted to their communion traitors, or those who delivered up the holy books into the hands of the Pagans, as they alleged Felix and Cecilianus to have done, and as the sour leaven corrupteth the entire mass, then the Church, being corrupted and stained by the admission of those, was lost,—it only remained pure in that part of Africa where the Donatists dwelt; and to such a pitch did their infatuation arrive, that they quoted Scripture for this also, interpreting the expression of the Canticles: "Shew me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou liest in the mid-day" (the south), as relating to Africa, which lies in the southern part of the world. Another heretical inference of theirs was, that the sacrament of baptism was null and void if administered out of their Church, because a Church that was lost had not the power of administering the sacrament, and on that account they re-baptized all proselytes.
4. These two heretical opinions fall to the ground at once, by proving the falsity of the first proposition, that the Church consists of the good alone. St. Augustin proves clearly that these texts of St. Paul and St. John refer to the triumphant, and not to the militant Church, for our Redeemer, speaking of the militant
