of Poitiers, and Ambrose laying great stress on the corruption of human nature and the absolute necessity for an inward change of nature by Divine grace before man can live a life acceptable to God. On the other hand, in the East we have Clement, Chrysostom, and others laying great stress on the freedom of the human will and on its indispensable co-operation with Divine grace. In the fifth century divergence became apparent, and what was almost imperceptible at first had gradually developed into opposition, and a decisive controversy arose.

One of Origen's disciples was Pelagius, a British monk, held in great esteem in Rome both for learning and piety. He became much imbued with the spirit of the Greek theology, and carried the doctrine of his master to far greater lengths. In his peculiar system of doctrine he dealt with what is subjective in man, and reviewed the nature and character of his relation to God. He came to the conclusion, not as is usually stated, that man had suffered no injury by the fall of Adam (for he admitted that mankind were in a worse condition in consequence of the fall), but that the first sin was hurtful to the human race, not by propagation, but by example-non propagine sed exemplo—not because they who were propagated from him drew from him any vice or fault, but because all that have afterwards sinned have imitated him, the first sinner. He further held that there was no need of inward assistances in the then received Church view asserting an entire liberty in the Will. There was in his view "no original sin," and consequently no hereditary guilt. Adam, he thought, stood alone in his transgression and transmitted no evil taint to his posterity, or any tendency to evil. The evil example he admitted, but that was all.

Pelagius failed to realize the true character of the purpose of God in the creation of man. He regarded every human being as a moral agent complete in himself and separate from all others. Necessarily sin appeared to him as the free act of the individual, and in his opinion there could be no other connection between the sin of the one (Adam) and the sin of the many (his posterity) than that which exists between example on the one hand and voluntary imitation on the other. He was not able to apprehend the purpose of the Almighty revealed in Holy Scripture in the creation of a race such as mankind. Reasoning of the same kind might have been applied to the Angels, created or called into being at one time, but not to a family developed out of one. Isolation has been truly said to be the principle of Pelagius and his school, while the principle of his great opponent, Augustine, is organisation-a principle founded on true philosophy, tested by the experience and observation of mankind. Pelagius admitted the influence of habit on the human will, but limited its effect,

1 Hagenbach, Hist. of Doctrines, Vol. I., 300.

looking on acts as separate entities and not as if they generated habits, and indirectly formed the whole moral character. He regarded the power of choice as a mere natural faculty, of physical not moral operation. He looked upon freedom as the highest good, and as essential to man's accountability to God. He taught that man is a self-determining moral agent, with the power of good and evil within himself.

Pelagius's first writings were an epistle to Paulinus of Nola, and some other little works, in which his erroneous views of grace were so cautiously and guardedly expressed, that only in the light of his subsequently more express enunciations of views did their heterodox character become apparent. His chief follower and companion was Coelestius, probably an Irishman, a man much more open and daring in speech, and consequently more easily detected in heresy than Pelagius. He was summoned before a synod, held in Carthage in 412, by Aurelius, bishop of that city; and accused of holding and teaching the following opinions:1. Adam was created mortal, and must have died, even if he had not sinned. 2. Adam's sin injured himself only, and not mankind. 3. Infants are born in the state of Adam before he fell. 4. Mankind neither died in Adam nor rose again in Christ. 5. The law, no less than the Gospel, brings men to the kingdom of heaven. 6. There were sinless men before the coming of Christ. On his refusal to retract he was excommunicated.

In 413, Pelagius, in a letter to a virgin named Demetrias, a member of one of the most illustrious families of Rome, more openly declared his views on the subject of grace. He speaks, however, still ambiguously, as meaning by grace, either nature, or doctrine, or forgiveness of sins, or the example of Christ, but nowhere owns a positive influence of the Holy Spirit actually imparting the power of loving God. Augustine some years after wrote a refutation of this letter to Juliana, the mother of Demetrias.

About the year 415, two young men, Timasius and Jacobus, having been led by Augustine to renounce the errors concerning grace which they had imbibed from Pelagius, placed in Augustine's hands a book of their former master, in which he apparently denied the existence of all grace, and maintained that by that term were to be understood the natural endowments of the human mind, seasoned and directed by freewill, which endowment so seasoned and directed he acknowledged to be the free gift of God. This book Augustine replied to, sending such reply, together with Pelagius's book, to Innocent I. of Rome, and requesting him to mark the views of each, "and if he denies that there are his sentiments, I contend not, let him anathematize

The Epistle will be found in Jerome's works, and was published, with a Tract by Dr. Whitby, in 1775, by Semler, Hala Magaeburgicæ.

them, and in plain terms confess the doctrine of Christian grace.' "I have," says he, "sufficient witnesses-men who have a great regard for him (Pelagius)-who will attest that I had the book from them, and that it has not been falsified by me." Innocent, in reply, condemned the book altogether as containing horrible sentiments.

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In the latter part of 415, Pelagius was summoned before a synod of fourteen bishops of Palestine, at Lydda, then called Diospolis. His two accusers, Heros and Lazarus, Bishops of Gaul, were absent, one being sick at the time, and Pelagius so artfully explained his views as to obtain an honourable acquittal. In this synod he was defended by John, Bishop of Jerusalem, a an whom seemed to have only partially understood the point at issue. Augustine wrote to John on the subject a letter of expostulation, and endeavoured to undeceive him as to the real doctrine of Pelagius, and at a council held the next year at Carthage, 68 bishops wrote to Innocent of Rome their views on the controversy, urging that unless Pelagius expressly rejected the sentiments ascribed to him he should be excommunicated. The Epistle concisely sets forth the point at issue. In it the bishops say: They (the Pelagians) attempt by their praises of freewill, to leave no room for the grace of God, by which we are Christians, the Lord saying, "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." They assert that the grace of God consists in this-that He has so created the nature of man, that by his own will he can fulfil the law of God. The law itself, too, they reckon to belong to grace, because God has given it for a help to men. But the real grace of God, by which a man is caused to delight in the law after the inward man, they will not acknowledge, though they will not openly oppose. Yet what else do they in effect, while they teach that human nature is sufficient alone to enable men to obey the law, not attending to the scripture? It is not of him that willeth, or of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy; and we are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves.' We beseech you to observe the necessary consequence of such opinions, namely, that we have no need in their scheme to pray that we enter not into temptation; nor had our Lord occasion to say to Peter, 'I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.' He might have contented Himself with exhorting or commanding him to keep his faith; and instead of saying to His disciples Watch and pray,' it would have sufficed to say 'Watch.' When St. Paul prays that the Ephesians might be strengthened with might in the inner man by His Spirit, they, in consistency with their plan, might have said they might be strengthened with might by the ability of nature received in our creation. It follows, too, that infants need not be baptised at all, as being perfectly innocent and needing no

redemption." The bishops declare that anathemas might be pronounced against anyone who dare teach and aver that the natural strength of man is sufficient to avoid sin and to accomplish God's commandments, and who dare affirm that children need not be delivered from perdition by baptism or that they can have eternal life without that Sacrament.

Another synod of 60 Numidian bishops, assembled at Milevum, wrote also to Rome to the same effect. Augustine likewise wrote, in the names of Alypius, Bishop of Tagasta, Aurelius of Carthage, Evodius, and Possidius, to Innocent showing how the Eastern council at Lydda had been most probably imposed on by Pelagius. "Without doubt," writes Augustine, "the grace by which we are saved is not that with which we are created; for if those bishops who acquitted him (Pelagius) had understood that he called that grace which we have in common with the wicked, and that he denied that which we have as Christians and sons of God, he would have appeared intolerable. I blame not then his judges, who understood the word grace in its common acceptation. Pelagius alone is not now our object, who, perhaps is corrected (I wish it may be the case), but many souls are in danger of being beguiled. Let him be sent for to Rome, and asked what he means precisely by the term grace; or, let him explain himself by letter, and if he be found to speak in the same manner as the Church of Christ let us rejoice in him; for whether he calls grace freewill, or remission of sins, or the precept of his law, he explains. not that grace of the Holy Spirit which conquers lusts and temptations, and which He who has ascended into heaven has poured on us abundantly. He who prays 'lead us not into temptation' does not pray that he may be a man, that he may have freewill; nor for the remission of sins, the neglect of the former petition, nor that he may receive a command. Prayer itself, then, is a testimony of grace, and we shall rejoice that he is right or corrected; law and grace are to be distinguished-the law commands, grace bestows. If you will look into the book of Pelagius, given us by Timasius and Jacobus, and take the trouble to examine the places where we have marked it, you will find that to the objection made to him that he denied the grace of God, he says that this grace was the nature in which God created us. If he disown the book or those passages, we contend not; let him anathematize them and confess, in plain words, the grace which Christian doctrine teaches, which is not nature, but nature saved, not by external doctrine but by the supply of the spirit and secret mercy; for, though natural gifts may be called grace, yet that grace by which we are predestinated, called, justified, glorified is quite a different thing. It is of this the Apostle speaks when he says, if by grace then it is no more of works; and to him that worketh not, but believeth in Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for

righteousness; for if Christ had not died for our sins, Pelagius's possibility of nature, which he makes to be grace, would have been just the same."

Innocent though he did not entirely agree with Augustine would probably have condemned Pelagius had not death prevented him. Innocent's successor, Zosimus, whose doctrinal tendencies leant towards the Oriental Church, was at first friendly disposed to the Pelagian views, and in fact wrote two letters to the African bishops reproaching them for having too lightly considered the subject and given credit too readily to charges which could not be sustained. He testifies to the orthodoxy of Pelagius and his follower, Colestius. Zosimus seems to have failed to grasp the true doctrinal matter involved, and it was only after a strong protest from the African bishops, backed up by several edicts of the civil power obtained through the influence of the Bishop of Hippo, that he adopted the decisions of the Council of Carthage against the Pelagians, and issued a circular letter pronouncing sentence of condemnation on both Pelagius and Coelestius.

In the year 418, the Emperor Honorius passed the sentence of banishment from Rome on all the followers of Pelagius.1

The works of Augustine against Pelagius are undoubtedly among the finest of his writings. Augustine had in early life been a Manichean, and though he renounced the errors of this sect its spirit seems occasionally to crop up in his contentions with the Pelagians.2

His system of grace was gradually developed, its great force and beauty coming forth as the arguments of the heretics came

It is probable that Pelagius ultimately found his way to his native land. It is certain that his peculiar doctrine troubled this country for many years and called from Gaul Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, who came over with the express object of rooting out Pelagianism, which had been accepted by many, and amongst others by Agricola, son of a Pelagian bishop called Severinus. In Italy Pelagianism seems to have had many defenders, and as many as 18 bishops in that country refused to subscribe to the condemnation of Pelagius, and in consequence were deprived of their sees and exiled to the East. As late as the 14th century Bradwardine complained that the whole world was gone after Pelagius, but it must be remembered that his view of Pelagianism was somewhat more extensive in its range than historical truth would probably warrant.

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We wish to be as impartial as possible, and to present both sides of the controversy as accurately as we are able, and it seems but right, therefore, to state that the idea given above was strongly attacked by the late Dr. Cunningham. He considered that the general experience of mankind shows that this theory of Augustine favouring a leaning towards Manichæism is most improbable; for it is much more likely that a man who had deliberately and from full conviction renounced a system of error, pervaded throughout by one uniform and peculiar character, should, in place of retaining and cherishing any of its distinctive principles, be rather apt to run into the opposite extreme. Augustine," says he "assuredly did not run into the opposite extreme to Manichæism, else he would not have made such strenuous opposition to Pelagianism; but neither, in opposing Pelagianism, was he tempted to go to the opposite extreme to Manichæism, as he might probably-according to the tendencies which controversialists too often manifest-have been led to do, had he not previously sounded the depths and subtleties of Manichæism, and been led decidedly and deliberately to reject it." The statement as to the experience of mankind is undoubtedly true and the inference just; but we are dealing not with probability but with fact, and the reader must form his own judgment from the writings of the great father himself.