olence and murder; and
some Catholic priests, who had imprudently signalized their zeal, were
tortured by the fanatics with the most refined and wanton barbarity.
The spirit of the Circumcellions was not always exerted against their
defenceless enemies; they engaged, and sometimes defeated, the troops
of the province; and in the bloody action of Bagai, they attacked in
the open field, but with unsuccessful valor, an advanced guard of the
Imperial cavalry. The Donatists who were taken in arms, received, and
they soon deserved, the same treatment which might have been shown to
the wild beasts of the desert. The captives died, without a murmur,
either by the sword, the axe, or the fire; and the measures of
retaliation were multiplied in a rapid proportion, which aggravated the
horrors of rebellion, and excluded the hope of mutual forgiveness. In
the beginning of the present century, the example of the Circumcellions
has been renewed in the persecution, the boldness, the crimes, and the
enthusiasm of the Camisards; and if the fanatics of Languedoc surpassed
those of Numidia, by their military achievements, the Africans
maintained their fierce independence with more resolution and
perseverance. [159]

[Footnote 157: See Optatus Milevitanus, (particularly iii. 4,) with the
Donatis history, by M. Dupin, and the original pieces at the end of his
edition. The numerous circumstances which Augustin has mentioned, of the
fury of the Circumcellions against others, and against themselves,
have been laboriously collected by Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. vi. p.
147-165; and he has often, though without design, exposed injuries which
had provoked those fanatics.]

[Footnote 158: It is amusing enough to observe the language of opposite
parties, when they speak of the same men and things. Gratus, bishop of
Carthage, begins the acclamations of an orthodox synod, "Gratias Deo
omnipotenti et Christu Jesu... qui imperavit religiosissimo Constanti
Imperatori, ut votum gereret unitatis, et mitteret ministros sancti
operis famulos Dei Paulum et Macarium." Monument. Vet. ad Calcem Optati,
p. 313. "Ecce subito," (says the Donatist author of the Passion of
Marculus), "de Constantis regif tyrannica domo.. pollutum Macarianae
persecutionis murmur increpuit, et duabus bestiis ad Africam missis,
eodem scilicet Macario et Paulo, execrandum prorsus ac dirum
ecclesiae certamen indictum est; ut populus Christianus ad unionem cum
traditoribus faciendam, nu