it of the sect sometimes preyed on its own vitals:
and the bosom of their schismatical church was torn by intestine
divisions. A fourth part of the Donatist bishops followed the
independent standard of the Maximianists. The narrow and solitary path
which their first leaders had marked out, continued to deviate from the
great society of mankind. Even the imperceptible sect of the Rogatians
could affirm, without a blush, that when Christ should descend to judge
the earth, he would find his true religion preserved only in a few
nameless villages of the Caesarean Mauritania. [10]

[Footnote 8: The councils of Arles, of Nice, and of Trent, confirmed
the wise and moderate practice of the church of Rome. The Donatists,
however, had the advantage of maintaining the sentiment of Cyprian, and
of a considerable part of the primitive church. Vincentius Lirinesis (p.
532, ap. Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. vi. p. 138) has explained why the
Donatists are eternally burning with the Devil, while St. Cyprian reigns
in heaven with Jesus Christ.]

[Footnote 9: See the sixth book of Optatus Milevitanus, p. 91-100.]

[Footnote 10: Tillemont, Mem. Ecclesiastiques, tom. vi. part i. p. 253.
He laughs at their partial credulity. He revered Augustin, the great
doctor of the system of predestination.]

The schism of the Donatists was confined to Africa: the more diffusive
mischief of the Trinitarian controversy successively penetrated into
every part of the Christian world. The former was an accidental quarrel,
occasioned by the abuse of freedom; the latter was a high and mysterious
argument, derived from the abuse of philosophy. From the age of
Constantine to that of Clovis and Theodoric, the temporal interests both
of the Romans and Barbarians were deeply involved in the theological
disputes of Arianism. The historian may therefore be permitted
respectfully to withdraw the veil of the sanctuary; and to deduce the
progress of reason and faith, of error and passion from the school of
Plato, to the decline and fall of the empire.

The genius of Plato, informed by his own meditation, or by the
traditional knowledge of the priests of Egypt, [11] had ventured to
explore the mysterious nature of the Deity. When he had elevated his
mind to the sublime contemplation of the first self-existent, necessary
cause of the universe, the Athenian sage was incapable of conceiving
how the simple unity of his essence could admit the infinite variety
of distinct