OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 403 swarthy or olive hue which is derived from the neighbourhood of the torrid zone. After the first difficulties had in some measure been removed, which arose from the mutual ignorance of their respective language, the Moors, regai'dless of any future consequence, embraced the alliance of the enemies of Rome ; and a crowd of naked savages rushed from the woods and valleys of Mount Atlas, to satiate their revenge on the polished tyrants who had injuriously expelled them from the native sovereignty of the land. The pei*secution of the Donatists ^ was an event not less The Dona. favourable to the designs of Genseric. Seventeen years before he landed in Afi*ica, a public conference was held at Carthage, by the order of the magistrate. The Catholics were satisfied that, after the invincible reasons which they had alleged, the obstinacy of the schismatics must be inexcusable and voluntary ; and the emperor Honorius Avas persuaded to inflict the most rigorous penalties on a faction which had so long abused his patience and clemency. Three hundred bishops,-*^ with many thousands of the inferior clergy, were torn from their churches, stripped of their ecclesiastical possessions, banished to the islands, and proscribed by the laws, if they presumed to conceal them- selves in the provinces of Africa. Their numerous congregations, both in cities and in the country, were deprived of the rights of citizens, and of the exercise of religious worship. A regular scale of fines, from ten to two hundred pounds of silver, was [/.^^.loibs. of cm'iously ascertained, according to the distinctions of rank and fbs!"f gow : fortune, to punish the crime of assisting at a schismatic conven- *^*°^°°°] tide ; and, if the fine had been levied five times, without sub- duing the obstinacy of the offendei', his future punishment was referred to the discretion of the Imperial court. -^ By these severities, which obtained the warmest approbation of St. Augustin,-- great numbers of Donatists were reconciled to the 19 See Tillemont, M^moires Eccles. torn. xiii. p. 516-558 ; and the whole series of the persecution in the original monuments, published by Dupin at the end of Optatus, p. 323-515. 20 The Donatist bishops, at the conference of Carthage, amounted to 279 ; and they asserted that their whole number was not less than 400. The Catholics had 286 present, 120 absent, besides sixty-four vacant bishoprics. 21 The fifth title of the sixteenth book of the Theodosian Code exhibits a series of the Imperial laws against the Donatists, from the year 400 to the year 428. Of these the 54th law, promulgated by Honorius a.d. 514, is the most severe and effectual. 22 St. Augustin altered his opinion with regard to the proper treatment of here- tics. His pathetic declaration of pity and indulgence for the Manicheens has been inserted by Mr. Locke (vol. iii. p. 469) among the choice specimens of his common- place book. Another philosopher, the celebrated Bayle (tom. ii. p. 445-496), has refuted, with superfluous diligence and ingenuity, the arguments by which the bishop of Hippo justified, in his old age, the persecution of the Donatists.
