Excerpts from Augustine's writings against the Donatists: For the Donatists met with the same fate as the accusers of the holy Daniel.
For as the lions were turned against them, so the laws by which they had proposed to
crush an innocent victim were turned against the Donatists;
THEIR WEAPONS turned against them.
Or did your harlot church, seeing that there were still nests of resistance, create a locust of fanatics, armed with the [spiritual] weapons of the donatists [readiness for martyrdom]?
11. But this, I say, I forbear to urge. Yet one point I must press:
If the true Church
is the one which actually suffers persecution, not the one which inflicts it, let them ask the apostle of what Church Sarah was a type, when she inflicted persecution on her hand-maid. For he declares that the free mother of us all, the heavenly Jerusalem, that is to say, the true Church of God, was prefigured in that woman
who cruelly entreated her hand-maid. 2492 But if we investigate the story further, we
shall find that the handmaid rather persecuted Sarah by her haughtiness, than Sarah the handmaid by her severity: for the handmaid was doing wrong to her mistress; the mistress only imposed on her a proper discipline in her haughtiness.
What a bloodthirsty fiend of hell. It was Esau who persecuted Jacob, not the other way around. The "persecution" of Hagar typifies the exclusion of the harlot church from the heavenly marriage and feast.
Gal 4:29 But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.
Again I ask,
if good and holy men never inflict persecution upon any one, but only suffer it, whose
words they think that those are in the psalm where we read, "I have pursued mine
enemies, and overtaken them; neither did I turn again till they were
consumed?"2493 If, therefore, we wish either to declare or to recognize the truth,
there is a persecution of unrighteousness, which the impious inflict upon the Church
of Christ; and there is a righteous persecution, which the Church of Christ inflicts
upon the impious. She therefore is blessed in suffering persecution for righteousness’
sake; but they are miserable, suffering persecution for unrighteousness. Moreover,
she persecutes in the spirit of love [????????], they in the spirit of wrath; she that she may
correct, they that they may overthrow: she that she may recall from error, they that
they may drive headlong into error. Finally, she persecutes her enemies and arrests
them, until they become weary in their vain opinions, so that they should make
advance in the truth; but they, returning evil for good, because we take measures for
their good, to secure their eternal salvation, endeavor even to strip us of our temporal
safety, being so in love with murder, that they commit it on their own persons, when
they cannot find victims in any others. For in proportion as the Christian charity of
the Church endeavors to deliver them from that destruction, so that none of them
should die, so their madness endeavors either to slay us, that they may feed the lust
of their own cruelty, or even to kill themselves, that they may not seem to have lost
the power of putting men to death.
although, at the same time, among the Donatists herds of abandoned men were
disturbing the peace of the innocent for one reason or another in the spirit of the
most reckless madness
among the Islamic herds of abandoned men there were radical islamists.
But as to the argument of those men who are unwilling that their impious deeds
should be checked by the enactment of righteous laws, when they say that the
apostles never sought such measures from the kings of the earth, they do not
consider the different character of that age, and that everything comes in its own
season. For what emperor had as yet believed in Christ, so as to serve Him in the
cause of piety by enacting laws against impiety, when as yet the declaration of the
prophet was only in the course of its fulfillment, "Why do the heathen rage, and the
people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and their rulers
take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His Anointed;" and there was as
yet no sign of that which is spoken a little later in the same psalm: "Be wise now,
therefore, O ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear,
and rejoice with trembling."2498 How then are kings to serve the Lord with fear,
except by preventing and chastising with religious severity all those acts which are
done in opposition to the commandments of the Lord? For a man serves God in one
way in that he is man, in another way in that he is also king. In that he is man, he
serves Him by living faithfully; but in that he is also king, he serves Him by enforcing
with suitable rigor such laws as ordain what is righteous, and punish what is the
reverse.
Augistine's Amilliennialism interprets all the prophecies of Christs future millennial rule of the world as the terrible tyranny of the catholic Church over kings and princes, whose conscience these spawns of hell use as steering wheels.
Seeing, then, that the kings of the earth were not yet serving the Lord in the time of
the apostles, but were still imagining vain things against the Lord and against His
Anointed, that all might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, it must be
granted that at that time acts of impiety could not possibly be prevented by the laws,
but were rather performed under their sanction. For the order of events was then so
rolling on, that even the Jews were killing those who preached Christ, thinking that
they did God service in so doing, just as Christ had foretold,2504 and the heathen
were raging against the Christians, and the patience of the martyrs was overcoming
them all. But so soon as the fulfillment began of what is written in a later psalm, "All
kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him,"2505 what
sober-minded man could say to the kings, "Let not any thought trouble you within
your kingdom as to who restrains or attacks the Church of your Lord; deem it not a
matter in which you should be concerned, which of your subjects may choose to be
religious or sacrilegious," seeing that you cannot say to them, "Deem it no concern of
yours which of your subjects may choose 641to be chaste, or which unchaste?"
Augustine here sets the tone of genocidal persecution for the next thousands of years. You can smell the same rhetoric regurgitated in the modern catholic propagandists.
But yet, before the good sons can say they have "a desire to depart, and to be with
Christ,"2513 many must first be recalled to their Lord by the stripes of temporal
scourging, like evil slaves, and in some degree like good-for-nothing fugitives.
. Augustine is an enemy of the truth. Render unto Caesar what's Caesars, not whats GODs. I don't suppose the successors of Peter have kept the commandment to have only two swords (!).
Where is what the Donatists were wont to cry: Man is at liberty to believe or not
believe? Towards whom did Christ use violence? Whom did He compel? Here they
have the Apostle Paul. Let them recognize in his case Christ first compelling, and
afterwards teaching; first striking, and afterwards consoling. For it is wonderful how
he who entered the service of the gospel in the first instance under the compulsion of
bodily punishment, afterwards labored more in the gospel than all they who were
called by word only;2516 and he who was compelled by the greater influ642ence of
fear to love, displayed that perfect love which casts out fear.
What a pervertor of truth. What a serpent. How is the average human being the apostle Paul? How can be God's miraculous, but gentle intervention compared to fines, brutal tortures in prisons, public beatings and ostracizing? People are drawn by the VOICE of God, through HIS word, not through the sword. How many pagans were hardened against the gospel through the heavy hand of the "christian" emperors?
Wherefore, if the power which the Church has received by divine appointment in its
due season, through the religious character and the faith of kings, be the instrument
by which those who are found in the highways and hedges—that is, in heresies and
schisms—are compelled to come in, then let them not find fault with being
compelled, but consider whether they be so compelled. The supper of the Lord is the
unity of the body of Christ, not only in the sacrament of the altar, but also in the
bond of peace. Of the Donatists themselves, indeed, we can say that they compel no
man to any good thing; for whomsoever they compel, they compel to nothing else
but evil.
"let them not find fault with being
compelled"
Acts 8:36
As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
He sought assistance, therefore, from the Christian emperor, not so much with any
desire of revenging himself, as with the view of defending the Church entrusted to his
charge. And if he had omitted to do this, he would have deserved not to be praised
for his forbearance, but to be blamed for negligence. For neither was the Apostle
Paul taking precautions on behalf of his own transitory life, but for the Church of
God when he caused the plot of those who had conspired to slay him to be made
known to the Roman captain, the effect of which was that he was conducted by an
escort of armed soldiers to the place where they proposed to send him, that he might
escape the ambush of his foes.2523 Nor did he for a moment hesitate to invoke the
protection of the Roman laws, proclaiming that he was a Roman citizen, who at that
time could not be scourged;2524 and again, that he might not be delivered to the
Jews who sought to kill him, he appealed to Cæsar,2525—a Roman emperor, indeed,
but not a Christian. And by this he showed sufficiently plainly what was afterwards
to be the duty of the ministers of Christ, when in the midst of the dangers of the
Church they found the emperors Christians. And hence therefore, it came about that
a religious and pious emperor, when such matters were brought to his knowledge,
thought it well, by the enactment of most pious laws, entirely to correct the error of
this great impiety, and to bring those who bore the standards of Christ against the
cause of Christ into the unity of the Catholic Church, even by terror and compulsion,
rather than merely to take away their power of doing violence, and to leave them the
freedom of going astray, and perishing in their error.
What a generous and pious emperor. Rather take away our life than leave us without salvation.
Accordingly, when the great masses of the people had been received by the true
mother with rejoicing into her bosom, there remained outside cruel crowds,
persevering with unhappy animosity in that madness.
People outside the mother - cruel crowds. Sounds a lil gnostic
But we were consoled for the suffering inflicted on us by these evils, by the fruit
which resulted from them. For wherever such deeds were committed by unbelievers,
there Christian unity has advanced with greater fervency and perfection, and the
Lord is praised with greater earnestness for having deigned to grant that His servants
might win their brethren by their sufferings, and might gather together into the peace of eternal salvation through His blood His sheep who were dispersed abroad in
deadly error.
We are in our times again witnessing the mercantile use of Rome for the death of her "saints". Not much more than a tool for evangelism and ecumenical glue, by pulling the heart strings of the profane and unlearned
The Lord is powerful and full of compassion, to whom we daily praythat He will give repentance to the rest as well, that they may recover them645selves out of the snare of the devil, by whom they are taken captive at his will,2526 though now they only seek materials for calumniating us, and returning to us evil for good;because they have not the knowledge to make them understand what feelings and
love we continue to have towards them (???????), and how we are anxious, in accordance with
the injunction of the Lord, given to His pastors by the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel,to bring again that which was driven away, and to seek that which was lost.2527
he is right. we have no gnosis about the MOTHER.
But if we consider what is said in the Book of Wisdom, "
Therefore the righteous
spoiled the ungodly;"2534 and also what is said in the Proverbs, "
The wealth of the
sinner is laid up for the just;"2535 then we shall see that the question is not, who are
in possession of the property of the heretics? but who are in
the society of the just
Society of the jesuists.
Of course anyone outside the Church is a "sinner" and "ungodly" hence the vatican is the largest owner of gold and works of art. Not to mention property, lands and hard cash, via its subsidiaries.
For there is nothing that justifieth save His body, which is the Church; and therefore,
if the body of Christ bears off the spoils of the unrighteous, and the riches of the
unrighteous are laid up in store as treasures for the body of Christ, the unrighteous
ought not therefore to remain outside, but rather to enter within, that so they may be justified.
True capitalism: church = fortuna = fortune. Augustine, like a swiss knife, offering both the carrot and the stuick , using every trick in the book to fish out lost heretics.
1 Timothy 6:5 Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.
Proverbs 16: 16 How much better is it to get wisdom than gold! and to get understanding rather to be chosen than silver!
We also see how Augustine's concept of grace is only the grace dispensed by the church via the sacraments, i.e. no salvation outside church.
Let them not exalt themselves against the solicitude of their mother, which she both
has entertained and does entertain with the object of gathering within her bosom
themselves, and all the mighty nations whom they are, or recently were, deceiving;
at them not be puffed up with pride, that she receives them in such wise; let them not
attribute to the evil of their own exaltation the good which she on her part does in
order to make peace.
The motivation behind labelling all heretics "schismatics", even the quite distinct baptists (under all their names) , is that it matches the gnostic narrative of the "evil offspring" of Sophia, i.e. the archons, who must repent and come back (like "sabaoth") , or be damned forever.
