CHAPTER XIV. Emeritus, a Donatist bishop, overcome
Yet after the conference which was held with the Donatists, there were not lacking those who declared that these bishops had not been permitted to speak fully and freely for their sect before the magistrate who heard the case, since the judge, who was of Catholic communion, favored his own Church. But is was only after they had failed and were defeated that they offered this excuse, since these heretics knew before the discussion was held that he was of the Catholic communion, and when they were summoned by him to the public debate for the purpose of discussion, they agreed to do it. Surely, if they had held him under suspicion, they could have refused to attend. Nevertheless the help of Almighty God revealed itself, for Augustine of venerable memory stopped a while later in the city of Caesarea in Mauretania to which letters from the Apostolic See constrained him to go with others of his fellow-bishops, evidently for the purpose of settling further difficulties of the Church. Thus it happened on this occasion that he met Emeritus, the Donatist bishop of that place, whom they regarded as the chief defender of their sect at the conference, and held a discussion with him publicly in the church, while the people of the different communions were present. He challenged them by the ecclesiastical records in order that whatever perchance, as they said, Emeritus might have been able to offer in the conference and had not been permitted to offer, he might now not hesitate to say with security and without the interference or violence of any magistrate, and should not refuse to defend his own communion with all confidence in his |73 own city and in the presence of all his fellow-townsmen. Notwithstanding this encouragement and the urgent entreaty of his parents and townsmen, he was not willing to do so, although they promised him that they would return to his communion even at the risk of their property and temporal welfare, if only he would overthrow the Catholic argument. But he was neither willing nor able to add anything more to these records except only to say: "Those records of what was done by the bishops at Carthage contain the proof of whether we were victors or vanquished." At another time, when urged by a reporter to answer, he spoke, and then when he was silent his position became evident to all through his embarrassment, while the growing strength of the Church of God was revealed. Whoever, therefore, wishes to learn more about the diligence and labor of Augustine, of most blessed memory, for the welfare of the Church of God, let him run through these records. He will find what sort of arguments he produced to provoke and persuade that learned, eloquent and illustrious man to state whatever he wished in defence of his sect; and he will learn that Emeritus was defeated.