all in the
emperor as judge in such a matter, because they were afterwards very
violent against the notion of an earthly sovereign's having any right to
concern himself with the management of religious affairs. Constantine
tried to settle the question by desiring some bishops to judge between
the parties; and these bishops gave judgment in favour of the Catholics.
The Donatists were dissatisfied, and asked for a new trial; whereupon
Constantine gathered a council for the purpose at Arles, in France (A.D.
314). This was the greatest council that had at that time been seen:
there were about two hundred bishops at it, and among them were some
from Britain. Here again the decision was against the Donatists, and
they thereupon begged the emperor himself to examine their case; which
he did, and once more condemned them (A.D. 316). Some severe laws were
then made against them; their churches were taken away; many of them
were banished, and were deprived of all that they had; and they were
even threatened with death, although none of them suffered it during
Constantine's reign.

[35] Page 37.

[36] Page 44.

The emperor, after a while, saw that they were growing wilder and
wilder, that punishment had no effect on them, except to make them more
unmanageable, and that they were not to be treated as reasonable people.
He then did away with the laws against them, and tried to keep them
quiet by kindness; and in the last years of his reign his hands were so
full of the Arian quarrels nearer home that he had little leisure to
attend to the affairs of the Donatists.

PART IV.

After the death of Constantius, Africa fell to the share of his youngest
son, Constans, who sent some officers into the country with orders to
make presents to the Donatists, in the hope of thus bringing them to
join the Church. But Donatus flew out into a great fury when he heard of
this--"What has the emperor to do with the Church?" he asked; and he
forbade the members of his sect (which was what he meant by "the
church") to touch any of the money that was offered to them.

By this time a stranger set of wild people called _Circumcellions_ had
appeared among the Donatists. They got their name from two Latin words
which mean _around the cottages_; because, instead of maintaining
themselves by honest labour, they used to go about, like sturdy beggars,
to the cottages of the country people, and demand whatever they wanted.
They were of the poorest class