|
|
Introductory Essay on Augustin and the Pelagian Controversy.
By Professor B. B. Warfield, D.D.
From the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, edited by Philip Schaff
(T&T Clark, 1884)
I. The Origin and Nature of
Pelagianism
II. The External History of the
Pelagian Controversy
III. Augustin’s Part in the
Controversy
IV. The Theology of Grace
I. The Origin and Nature of Pelagianism.
It was inevitable that the energy of the
Church in intellectually realizing and defining its doctrines in relation to
one another, should first be directed towards the objective side of Christian
truth. The chief controversies of the first four centuries and the resulting
definitions of doctrine, concerned the nature of God and the person of
Christ; and it was not until these theological and Christological questions
were well upon their way to final settlement, that the Church could turn its
attention to the more subjective side of truth. Meanwhile she bore in her
bosom a full recognition, side by side, of the freedom of the will, the evil
consequences of the fall, and the necessity of divine grace for salvation.
Individual writers, or even the several sections of the Church, might exhibit
a tendency to throw emphasis on one or another of the elements that made up
this deposit of faith that was the common inheritance of all. The East, for
instance, laid especial stress on free will: and the West dwelt more
pointedly on the ruin of the human race and the absolute need of God’s grace
for salvation. But neither did the Eastern theologians forget the universal
sinfulness and need of redemption, or the necessity, for the realization of
that redemption, of God’s gracious influences; nor did those of the West deny
the self-determination or accountability of men. All the elements of the
composite doctrine of man were everywhere confessed; but they were variously
emphasized, according to the temper of the writers or the controversial
demands of the times. Such a state of affairs, however, was an invitation to
heresy, and a prophecy of controversy; just as the simultaneous confession of
the unity of God and the Deity of Christ, or of the Deity and the humanity of
Christ, inevitably carried in its train a series of heresies and
controversies, until the definitions of the doctrines of the Trinity and of
the person of Christ were complete. In like manner, it was inevitable that
sooner or later some one should arise who would so one-sidedly emphasize one
element or the other of the Church’s teaching as to salvation, as to throw
himself into heresy, and drive the Church, through controversy with him, into
a precise definition of the doctrines of free will and grace in their mutual
relations.
This new heresiarch came, at the opening
of the fifth century, in the person of the British monk, Pelagius. The
novelty of the doctrine which he taught is repeatedly asserted by Augustin,
and is evident to the historian; but it consisted not in the emphasis that he
laid on free will, but rather in the fact that, in emphasizing free will, he
denied the ruin of the race and the necessity of grace. This was not only new
in Christianity; it was even anti-Christian. Jerome, as well as Augustin, saw
this at the time, and speaks of Pelagianism as the “heresy of Pythagoras and
Zeno;” and modern writers of the various schools have more or less fully
recognized it. Thus Dean Milman thinks that “the greater part” of Pelagius’
letter to Demetrias “might have been written by an ancient academic;” Dr. De
Pressensé identifies the Pelagian idea of liberty with that of Paganism; and
Bishop Hefele openly declares that their fundamental doctrine, “that man is
virtuous entirely of his own merit, not of the gift of grace,” seems to him
“to be a rehabilitation of the general heathen view of the world,” and
compares with it Cicero’s words: “For gold, lands, and all the blessings of
life, we have to return thanks to the Gods; but no one ever returned thanks
to the Gods for virtues.” The struggle with Pelagianism was thus in reality a
struggle for the very foundations of Christianity; and even more dangerously
than in the previous theological and Christological controversies, here the
practical substance of Christianity was in jeopardy. The real question at
issue was whether there was any need for Christianity at all; whether by his
own power man might not attain eternal felicity; whether the function of
Christianity was to save, or only to render an eternity of happiness more
easily attainable by man.
Genetically speaking, Pelagianism was the
daughter of legalism; but when it itself conceived, it brought forth an
essential deism. It is not without significance that its originators were “a
certain sort of monks;” that is, laymen of ascetic life. From this point of
view the Divine law is looked upon as a collection of separate commandments,
moral perfection as a simple complex of separate virtues, and a distinct value
as a meritorious demand on Divine approbation is ascribed to each good work
or attainment in the exercises of piety. It was because this was essentially
his point of view that Pelagius could regard man’s powers as sufficient to
the attainment of sanctity,-nay, that he could even assert it to be possible
for a man to do more than was required of him. But this involved an
essentially deistic conception of man’s relations to his Maker. God had
endowed His creature with a capacity (possibilitas) or ability (posse)
for action, and it was for him to use it. Man was thus a machine, which, just
because it was well made, needed no Divine interference for its right
working; and the Creator, having once framed him, and endowed him with the posse,
henceforth leaves the velle and the esse to him.
At this point we have touched the central
and formative principle of Pelagianism. It lies in the assumption of the
plenary ability of man; his ability to do all that righteousness can
demand,-to work out not only his own salvation, but also his own perfection.
This is the core of the whole theory; and all the other postulates not only
depend upon it, but arise out of it. Both chronologically and logically this
is the root of the system.
When we first hear of Pelagius, he is already
advanced in years, living in Rome in the odour of sanctity, and enjoying a
well-deserved reputation for zeal in exhorting others to a good life, which
grew especially warm against those who endeavoured to shelter themselves,
when charged with their sins, behind the weakness of nature. He was outraged
by the universal excuses on such occasions,-”It is hard!” “it is difficult!”
“we are not able!” “we are men!”-”Oh, blind madness!” he cried: “we accuse
God of a twofold ignorance,-that He does not seem to know what He has made,
nor what He has commanded,-as if forgetting the human weakness of which He is
Himself the Author, He has imposed laws on man which He cannot endure.” He
himself tells us to that it was his custom, therefore, whenever he had to
speak on moral improvement and the conduct of a holy life, to begin by
pointing out the power and quality of human nature, and by showing what it
was capable of doing. For (he says) he esteemed it of small use to exhort men
to what they deemed impossible: hope must rather be our companion, and all
longing and effort die when we despair of attaining. So exceedingly ardent an
advocate was he of man’s unaided ability to do all that God commanded, that
when Augustin’s noble and entirely scriptural prayer-”Give what Thou
commandest, and command what Thou wilt”-was repeated in his hearing, he was
unable to endure it; and somewhat inconsistently contradicted it with such
violence as almost to become involved in a strife. The powers of man, he
held, were gifts of God; and it was, therefore, a reproach against Him as if
He had made man ill or evil, to believe that they were insufficient for the
keeping of His law. Nay, do what we will, we cannot rid ourselves of their
sufficiency: “whether we will, or whether we will not, we have the capacity
of not sinning.” “I say,” he says, “that man is able to be without sin, and
that he is able to keep the commandments of God;” and this sufficiently
direct statement of human ability is in reality the hinge of his whole
system.
There were three specially important
corollaries which flowed from this assertion of human ability, and Augustin
himself recognized these as the chief elements of the system. It would be
inexplicable on such an assumption, if no man had ever used his ability in keeping
God’s law; and Pelagius consistently asserted not only that all might be
sinless if they chose, but also that many saints, even before Christ, had
actually lived free from sin. Again, it follows from man’s inalienable
ability to be free from sin, that each man comes into the world without
entailment of sin or moral weakness from the past acts of men; and Pelagius
consistently denied the whole doctrine of original sin. And still again, it
follows from the same assumption of ability that man has no need of
supernatural assistance in his striving to obey righteousness; and Pelagius
consistently denied both the need and reality of divine grace in the sense of
an inward help (and especially of a prevenient help) to man’s weakness.
It was upon this last point that the
greatest stress was laid in the controversy, and Augustin was most of all
disturbed that thus God’s grace was denied and opposed. No doubt the
Pelagians spoke constantly of “grace,” but they meant by this the primal
endowment of man with free will, and the subsequent aid given him in order to
its proper use by the revelation of the law and the teaching of the gospel,
and, above all, by the forgiveness of past sins in Christ and by Christ’s
holy example. Anything further than this external help they utterly denied;
and they denied that this external help itself was absolutely necessary,
affirming that it only rendered it easier for man to do what otherwise he had
plenary ability for doing. Chronologically, this contention seems to have
preceded the assertion which must logically lie at its base, of the freedom
of man from any taint, corruption, or weakness due to sin. It was in order
that they might deny that man needed help, that they denied that Adam’s sin
had any further effect on his posterity than might arise from his bad
example. “Before the action of his own proper will,” said Pelagius plainly,
“that only is in man which God made.” “As we are procreated without virtue,”
he said, “so also without vice.” In a word, “Nothing that is good and evil,
on account of which we are either praiseworthy or blameworthy, is born with
us,-it is rather done by us; for we are born with capacity for either, but
provided with neither.” So his later follower, Julian, plainly asserts his
“faith that God creates men obnoxious to no sin, but full of natural
innocence, and with capacity for voluntary virtues.” So intrenched is free
will in nature, that, according to Julian, it is “just as complete after sins
as it was before sins;” and what this means may be gathered from Pelagius’
definition in the “Confession of Faith,” that he sent to Innocent: “We say
that man is always able both to sin and not to sin, so as that we may confess
that we have free will.” That sin in such circumstances was so common as to
be well-nigh universal, was accounted for by the bad example of Adam and the
power of habit, the latter being simply the result of imitation of the
former. “Nothing makes well-doing so hard,” writes Pelagius to Demetrias, “as
the long custom of sins which begins from childhood and gradually brings us
more and more under its power until it seems to have in some degree the force
of nature (vim naturae).” He is even ready to allow for the force of
habit in a broad way, on the world at large; and so divides all history into
progressive periods, marked by God’s (external) grace. At first the light of
nature was so strong that men by it alone could live in holiness. And it was
only when men’s manners became corrupt and tarnished nature began to be
insufficient for holy living, that by God’s grace the Law was given as an
addition to mere nature; and by it “the original lustre was restored to
nature after its blush had been impaired.” And so again, after the habit of
sinning once more prevailed among men, and “the law became unequal to the
task of curing it,” Christ was given, furnishing men with forgiveness of
sins, exhortations to imitation of the example and the holy example itself.
But though thus a progressive deterioration was confessed, and such a
deterioration as rendered desirable at least two supernatural interpositions
(in the giving of the law and the coming of Christ), yet no corruption of
nature, even by growing habit, is really allowed. It was only an
ever-increasing facility in imitating vice which arose from so long a
schooling in evil; and all that was needed to rescue men from it was a new
explanation of what was right (in the law), or, at the most, the
encouragement of forgiveness for what was already done, and a holy example
(in Christ) for imitation. Pelagius still asserted our continuous possession
of “a free will which is unimpaired for sinning and for not sinning;” and
Julian, that “our free will is just as full after sins as it was before
sins;” although Augustin does not fail to twit him with a charge of inconsistency.
The peculiar individualism of the Pelagian
view of the world comes out strongly in their failure to perceive the effect
of habit on nature itself. Just as they conceived of virtue as a complex of
virtuous acts, so they conceived of sin exclusively as an act, or series of
disconnected acts. They appear not to have risen above the essentially
heathen view which had no notion of holiness apart from a series of acts of
holiness, or of sin apart from a like series of sinful acts. Thus the will
was isolated from its acts, and the acts from each other, and all organic
connection or continuity of life was not only overlooked but denied. After
each act of the will, man stood exactly where he did before: indeed, this
conception scarcely allows for the existence of a “man”-only a willing
machine is left, at each click of the action of which the spring regains its
original position, and is equally ready as before to reperform its function.
In such a conception there was no place for character: freedom of will was
all. Thus it was not an unnatural mistake which they made, when they forgot
the man altogether, and attributed to the faculty of free will, under the
name of “possibilitas” or “posse,” the ability that belonged
rather to the man whose faculty it is, and who is properly responsible for
the use he makes of it. Here lies the essential error of their doctrine of
free will: they looked upon freedom in its form only, and not in its matter;
and, keeping man in perpetual and hopeless equilibrium between good and evil,
they permitted no growth of character and no advantage to himself to be
gained by man in his successive choices of good. It need not surprise us that
the type of thought which thus dissolved the organism of the man into a
congeries of disconnected voluntary acts, failed to comprehend the solidarity
of the race. To the Pelagian, Adam was a man, nothing more; and it was simply
unthinkable that any act of his that left his own subsequent acts
uncommitted, could entail sin and guilt upon other men. The same alembic that
dissolved the individual into a succession of voluntary acts, could not fail
to separate the race into a heap of unconnected units. If sin, as Julian
declared, is nothing but will, and the will itself remained intact after each
act, how could the individual act of an individual will condition the acts of
men as yet unborn? By “imitation” of his act alone could (under such a
conception) other men be affected. And this carried with it the corresponding
view of man’s relation to Christ. He could forgive us the sins we had
committed; He could teach us the true way; He could set us a holy example;
and He could exhort us to its imitation. But He could not touch us to enable
us to will the good, without destroying the absolute equilibrium of the will
between good and evil; and to destroy this was to destroy its freedom, which
was the crowning good of our divinely created nature. Surely the Pelagians
forgot that man was not made for will, but will for man.
In defending their theory, as we are told by
Augustin, there were five claims that they especially made for it. It allowed
them to praise as was their due, the creature that God had made, the marriage
that He had instituted, the law that He had given, the free will which was
His greatest endowment to man, and the saints who had followed His counsels.
By this they meant that they proclaimed the sinless perfection of human
nature in every man as he was brought into the world, and opposed this to the
doctrine of original sin; the purity and holiness of marriage and the sexual
appetites, and opposed this to the doctrine of the transmission of sin; the
ability of the law, as well as and apart from the gospel, to bring men into
eternal life, and opposed this to the necessity of inner grace; the integrity
of free will to choose the good, and opposed this to the necessity of divine
aid; and the perfection of the lives of the saints, and opposed this to the
doctrine of universal sinfulness. Other questions, concerning the origin of
souls, the necessity of baptism for infants, the original immortality of
Adam, lay more on the skirts of the controversy, and were rather consequences
of their teaching than parts of it. As it was an obvious fact that all men
died, they could not admit that Adam’s death was a consequence of sin lest
they should be forced to confess that his sin had injured all men; they
therefore asserted that physical death belonged to the very nature of man,
and that Adam would have died even had he not sinned. So, as it was
impossible to deny that the Church everywhere baptized infants, they could
not refuse them baptism without confessing themselves innovators in doctrine;
and therefore they contended that infants were not baptized for forgiveness
of sins, but in order to attain a higher state of salvation. Finally, they
conceived that if it was admitted that souls were directly created by God for
each birth, it could not be asserted that they came into the world soiled by
sin and under condemnation; and therefore they loudly championed this theory
of the origin of souls.
The teachings of the Pelagians, it will be
readily seen, easily welded themselves into a system, the essential and
formative elements of which were entirely new in the Christian Church; and
this startlingly new reading of man’s condition, powers, and dependence for
salvation, it was, that broke like a thunderbolt upon the Western Church at
the opening of the fifth century, and forced her to reconsider, from the
foundations, her whole teaching as to man and his salvation.
II. The External History of
the Pelagian Controversy.
Pelagius seems to have been already
somewhat softened by increasing age when he came to Rome about the opening of
the fifth century. He was also constitutionally averse to controversy; and
although in his zeal for Christian morals, and in his conviction that no man
would attempt to do what he was not persuaded he had natural power to
perform, he diligently propagated his doctrines privately, he was careful to
rouse no opposition, and was content to make what progress he could quietly
and without open discussion. His methods of work sufficiently appear in the
pages of his “Commentary on the Epistles of Saint Paul,” which was written
and published during these years, and which exhibits learning and a sober and
correct but somewhat shallow exegetical skill. In this work, he manages to
give expression to all the main elements of his system, but always introduces
them indirectly, not as the true exegesis, but by way of objections to the
ordinary teaching, which were in need of discussion. The most important fruit
of his residence in Rome was the conversion to his views of the Advocate
Coelestius, who brought the courage of youth and the argumentative training
of a lawyer to the propagation of the new teaching. It was through him that
it first broke out into public controversy, and received its first
ecclesiastical examination and rejection. Fleeing from Alaric’s second raid
on Rome, the two friends landed together in Africa (A.D. 411), whence
Pelagius soon afterwards departed for Palestine, leaving the bolder and more
contentious Coelestius behind at Carthage. Here Coelestius sought ordination
as a presbyter. But the Milanese deacon Paulinus stood forward in accusation
of him as a heretic, and the matter was brought before a synod under the
presidency of Bishop Aurelius.
Paulinus’ charge consisted of seven items,
which asserted that Coelestius taught the following heresies: that Adam was
made mortal, and would have died, whether he sinned or did not sin; that the
sin of Adam injured himself alone, not the human race; that new-born children
are in that state in which Adam was before his sin; that the whole human race
does not, on the one hand, die on account of the death or the fall of Adam,
nor, on the other, rise again on account of the resurrection of Christ; that
infants, even though not baptized, have eternal life; that the law leads to
the kingdom of heaven in the same way as the gospel; and that, even before
the Lord’s coming, there had been men without sin. Only two fragments of the
proceedings of the synod in investigating this charge have come down to us;
but it is easy to see that Coelestius was contumacious, and refused to reject
any of the propositions charged against him, except the one which had
reference to the salvation of infants that die unbaptized,-the sole one that
admitted of sound defence. As touching the transmission of sin, he would only
say that it was an open question in the Church, and that he had heard both
opinions from Church dignitaries; so that the subject needed investigation,
and should not be made the ground for a charge of heresy. The natural result
was, that, on refusing to condemn the propositions charged against him, he
was himself condemned and excommunicated by the synod. Soon afterwards he
sailed to Ephesus, where he obtained the ordination which he sought.
Meanwhile Pelagius was living quietly in
Palestine, whither in the summer of 415 a young Spanish presbyter, Paulus
Orosius by name, came with letters from Augustin to Jerome, and was invited,
near the end of July in that year, to a diocesan synod, presided over by John
of Jerusalem. There he was asked about Pelagius and Coelestius, and proceeded
to give an account of the condemnation of the latter at the synod of
Carthage, and of Augustin’s literary refutation of the former. Pelagius was
sent for, and the proceedings became an examination into his teachings. The
chief matter brought up was his assertion of the possibility of men living
sinlessly in this world; but the favour of the bishop towards him, the
intemperance of Orosius, and the difficulty of communication between the
parties arising from difference of language, combined so to clog proceedings
that nothing was done; and the whole matter, as Western in its origin, was
referred to the Bishop of Rome for examination and decision.
Soon afterwards two Gallic bishops,-Heros
of Arles, and Lazarus of Aix,-who were then in Palestine, lodged a formal
accusation against Pelagius with the metropolitan, Eulogius of Caesarea; and
he convened a synod of fourteen bishops which met at Lydda (Diospolis), in
December of the same year (415), for the trial of the case. Perhaps no
greater ecclesiastical farce was ever enacted than this synod exhibited. When
the time arrived, the accusers were prevented from being present by illness,
and Pelagius was confronted only by the written accusation. This was both
unskilfully drawn, and was written in Latin which the synod did not
understand. It was, therefore, not even consecutively read, and was only head
by head rendered into Greek by an interpreter. Pelagius began by reading
aloud several letters to himself from various men of reputation in the
Episcopate,-among them a friendly note from Augustin. Thoroughly acquainted
with both Latin and Greek, he was enabled skillfully to thread every
difficulty, and pass safely through the ordeal. Jerome called this a
“miserable synod,” and not unjustly: at the same time it is sufficient to
vindicate the honesty and earnestness of the bishops’ intentions, that even
in such circumstances, and despite the more undeveloped opinions of the East
on the questions involved, Pelagius escaped condemnation only by a course of
most ingenious disingenuousness, and only at the cost both of disowning
Coelestius and his teachings, of which he had been the real father, and of
leading the synod to believe that he was anathematizing the very doctrines
which he was himself proclaiming. There is really no possibility of doubting,
as any one will see who reads the proceedings of the synod, that Pelagius
obtained his acquittal here either by a “lying condemnation or a tricky
interpretation” of his own teachings; and Augustin is perfectly justified in
asserting that the “heresy was not acquitted, but the man who denied the
heresy,” and who would himself have been anathematized had he not
anathematized the heresy.
However obtained, the acquittal of
Pelagius was yet an accomplished fact. Neither he nor his friends delayed to
make the most widely extended use of their good fortune. Pelagius himself was
jubilant. Accounts of the synodal proceedings were sent to the West, not
altogether free from uncandid alterations; and Pelagius soon put forth a work
In Defence of Free-Will, in which he triumphed in his acquittal and
“explained his explanations” at the synod. Nor were the champions of the
opposite opinion idle. As soon as the news arrived in North Africa, and
before the authentic records of the synod had reached that region, the
condemnation of Pelagius and Coelestius was re-affirmed in two provincial synods,-one,
consisting of sixty-eight bishops, met at Carthage about midsummer of 416;
and the other, consisting of about sixty bishops, met soon afterwards at
Mileve (Mila). Thus Palestine and North Africa were arrayed against one
another, and it became of great importance to obtain the support of the
Patriarchal See of Rome. Both sides made the attempt, but fortune favored the
Africans. Each of the North-African synods sent a synodal letter to Innocent
I., then Bishop of Rome, engaging his assent to their action: to these, five
bishops, Aurelius of Carthage and Augustin among them, added a third
“familiar” letter of their own, in which they urged upon Innocent to examine
into Pelagius’ teaching, and provided him with the material on which he might
base a decision. The letters reached Innocent in time for him to take advice
of his clergy, and send favorable replies on Jan. 27, 417. In these he
expressed his agreement with the African decisions, asserted the necessity of
inward grace, rejected the Pelagian theory of infant baptism, and declared
Pelagius and Coelestius excommunicated until they should return to orthodoxy.
In about six weeks more he was dead: but Zosimus, his successor, was scarcely
installed in his place before Coelestius appeared at Rome in person to plead
his cause; while shortly afterwards letters arrived from Pelagius addressed
to Innocent, and by an artful statement of his belief and a recommendation
from Praylus, lately become bishop of Jerusalem in John’s stead, attempting
to enlist Rome in his favour. Zosimus, who appears to have been a Greek and
therefore inclined to make little of the merits of this Western controversy,
went over to Coelestius at once, upon his profession of willingness to
anathematize all doctrines which the pontifical see had condemned or should
condemn; and wrote a sharp and arrogant letter to Africa, proclaiming
Coelestius “catholic,” and requiring the Africans to appear within two months
at Rome to prosecute their charges, or else to abandon them. On the arrival
of Pelagius’ papers, this letter was followed by another (September, 417), in
which Zosimus, with the approbation of the clergy, declared both Pelagius and
Coelestius to be orthodox, and severely rebuked the Africans for their hasty
judgment. It is difficult to understand Zosimus’ action in this matter:
neither of the confessions presented by the accused teachers ought to have
deceived him, and if he was seizing the occasion to magnify the Roman see,
his mistake was dreadful. Late in 417, or early in 418, the African bishops
assembled at Carthage, in number more than two hundred, and replied to
Zosimus that they had decided that the sentence pronounced against Pelagius
and Coelestius should remain in force until they should unequivocally
acknowledge that “we are aided by the grace of God, through Christ, not only
to know, but to do what is right, in each single act, so that without grace
we are unable to have, think, speak, or do anything pertaining to piety.”
This firmness made Zosimus waver. He answered swellingly but timidly,
declaring that he had maturely examined the matter, but it had not been his
intention finally to acquit Coelestius; and now he had left all things in the
condition in which they were before, but he claimed the right of final
judgment to himself. Matters were hastening to a conclusion, however, that
would leave him no opportunity to escape from the mortification of an entire
change of front. This letter was written on the 21st of March, 418; it was
received in Africa on the 29th of April; and on the very next day an imperial
decree was issued from Ravenna ordering Pelagius and Coelestius to be
banished from Rome, with all who held their opinions; while on the next day,
May 1, a plenary council of about two hundred bishops met at Carthage, and in
nine canons condemned all the essential features of Pelagianism. Whether this
simultaneous action was the result of skillful arrangement, can only be
conjectured: its effect was in any case necessarily crushing. There could be
no appeal from the civil decision, and it played directly into the hands of
the African definition of the faith. The synod’s nine canons part naturally
into three triads. The first of these deals with the relation of mankind to
original sin, and anathematizes in turn those who assert that physical death
is a necessity of nature, and not a result of Adam’s sin; those who assert
that new-born children derive nothing of original sin from Adam to be
expiated by the laver of regeneration; and those who assert a distinction
between the kingdom of heaven and eternal life, for entrance into the former
of which alone baptism is necessary. The second triad deals with the nature
of grace, and anathematizes those who assert that grace brings only remission
of past sins, not aid in avoiding future ones; those who assert that grace
aids us not to sin, only by teaching us what is sinful, not by enabling us to
will and do what we know to be right; and those who assert that grace only
enables us to do more easily what we should without it still be able to do.
The third triad deals with the universal sinfulness of the race, and
anathematizes those who assert that the apostles’ (I John i. 8) confession of
sin is due only to their humility; those who say that “Forgive us our
trespasses” in the Lord’s Prayer, is pronounced by the saints, not for
themselves, but for the sinners in their company; and those who say that the
saints use these words of themselves only out of humility and not truly. Here
we see a careful traversing of the whole ground of the controversy, with a
conscious reference to the three chief contentions of the Pelagian teachers.
The appeal to the civil power, by
whomsoever made, was, of course, indefensible, although it accorded with the
opinions of the day, and was entirely approved by Augustin. But it was the
ruin of the Pelagian cause. Zosimus found himself forced either to go into
banishment with his wards, or to desert their cause. He appears never to have
had any personal convictions on the dogmatic points involved in the
controversy, and so, all the more readily, yielded to the necessity of the
moment. He cited Coelestius to appear before a council for a new examination;
but that heresiarch consulted prudence, and withdrew from the city. Zosimus,
possibly in the effort to appear a leader in the cause he had opposed, not
only condemned and excommunicated the men whom less than six months before he
had pronounced “orthodox” after a `mature consideration of the matters
involved,’ but, in obedience to the imperial decree, issued a stringent paper
which condemned Pelagius and the Pelagians, and affirmed the African
doctrines as to corruption of nature, true grace, and the necessity of
baptism. To this he required subscription from all bishops as a test of
orthodoxy. Eighteen Italian bishops refused their signature, with Julian of
Eclanum, henceforth to be the champion of the Pelagian party, at their head,
and were therefore deposed, although several of them afterwards recanted, and
were restored. In Julian, the heresy obtained an advocate, who, if aught
could have been done for its re-instatement, would surely have proved
successful. He was the boldest, the strongest, at once the most acute and the
most weighty, of all the disputants of his party. But the ecclesiastical
standing of this heresy was already determined. The policy of Zosimus’ test
act was imposed by imperial authority on North Africa in 419. The exiled
bishops were driven from Constantinople by Atticus in 424; and they are said
to have been condemned at a Cilician synod in 423, and at an Antiochian one
in 424. Thus the East itself was preparing for the final act in the drama.
The exiled bishops were with Nestorius at Constantinople in 429; and that
patriarch unsuccessfully interceded for them with Coelestine, then Bishop of
Rome. The conjunction was ominous. And at the ecumenical synod at Ephesus in
431, we again find the “Coelestians” side by side with Nestorius, sharers in
his condemnation.
But Pelagianism did not so die as not to
leave a legacy behind it. “Remainders of Pelagianism” soon showed themselves
in Southern Gaul, where a body of monastic leaders attempted to find a middle
ground on which they could stand, by allowing the Augustinian doctrine of
assisting grace, but retaining the Pelagian conception of our self-determination
to good. We first hear of them in 428, through letters from two laymen,
Prosper and Hilary, to Augustin, as men who accepted original sin and the
necessity of grace, but asserted that men began their turning to God, and God
helped their beginning. They taught that all men are sinners, and that they
derive their sin from Adam; that they can by no means save themselves, but
need God’s assisting grace; and that this grace is gratuitous in the sense
that men cannot really deserve it, and yet that it is not irresistible, nor
given always without the occasion of its gift having been determined by men’s
attitude towards God; so that, though not given on account of the merits of
men, it is given according to those merits, actual or foreseen. The leader of
this new movement was John Cassian, a pupil of Chrysostom (to whom he
attributed all that was good in his life and will), and the fountain-head of
Gallic monasticism; and its chief champion at a somewhat later day was
Faustus of Rhegium (Riez).
The Augustinian opposition was at first
led by the vigorous controversialist, Prosper of Aquitaine, and, in the next
century, by the wise, moderate, and good Caesarius of Arles, who brought the
contest to a conclusion in the victory of a softened Augustinianism. Already in
431 a letter was obtained from Pope Coelestine, designed to close the
controversy in favor of Augustinianism, and in 496 Pope Gelasius condemned
the writings of Faustus in the first index of forbidden books; while, near
the end of the first quarter of the sixth century, Pope Hormisdas was
appealed to for a renewed condemnation. The end was now in sight. The famous
second Synod of Orange met under the presidency of Caesarius at that ancient
town on the 3d of July, 529, and drew up a series of moderate articles which
received the ratification of Boniface II. in the following year. In these
articles there is affirmed an anxiously guarded Augustinianism, a somewhat
weakened Augustinianism, but yet a distinctive Augustinianism; and, so far as
a formal condemnation could reach, semi-Pelagianism was suppressed by them in
the whole Western Church. But councils and popes can only decree; and Cassian
and Vincent and Faustus, despite Caesarius and Boniface and Gregory, retained
an influence among their countrymen which never died away.
III. Augustin’s Part in the
Controversy.
Both by nature and by grace, Augustin was
formed to be the champion of truth in this controversy. Of a naturally
philosophical temperament, he saw into the springs of life with a vividness
of mental perception to which most men are strangers; and his own experiences
in his long life of resistance to, and then of yielding to, the drawings of
God’s grace, gave him a clear apprehension of the great evangelic principle
that God seeks men, not men God, such as no sophistry could cloud. However
much his philosophy or theology might undergo change in other particulars,
there was one conviction too deeply imprinted upon his heart ever to fade or
alter,-the conviction of the ineffableness of God’s grace. Grace,-man’s
absolute dependence on God as the source of all good,-this was the common,
nay, the formative element, in all stages of his doctrinal
development, which was marked only by the ever growing consistency with which
he built his theology around this central principle. Already in 397,-the year
after he became bishop,-we find him enunciating with admirable clearness all
the essential elements of his teaching, as he afterwards opposed them to
Pelagius. It was inevitable, therefore, that although he was rejoiced when he
heard, some years later, of the zealous labours of this pious monk in Rome
towards stemming the tide of luxury and sin, and esteemed him for his devout
life, and loved him for his Christian activity, he yet was deeply troubled
when subsequent rumours reached him that he was “disputing against the grace
of God.” He tells us over and over again, that this was a thing no pious
heart could endure; and we perceive that, from this moment, Augustin was only
biding his time, and awaiting a fitting opportunity to join issue with the
denier of the Holy of holies of his whole, I will not say theology merely,
but life. “Although I was grieved by this,” he says, “and it was told me by
men whom I believed, I yet desired to have something of such sort from his
own lips or in some book of his, so that, if I began to refute it, he would
not be able to deny it.” Thus he actually excuses himself for not entering
into the controversy earlier. When Pelagius came to Africa, then, it was
almost as if he had deliberately sought his fate. But circumstances secured a
lull before the storm. He visited Hippo; but Augustin was absent, although he
did not fail to inform himself on his return that Pelagius while there had
not been heard to say “anything at all of this kind.” The controversy against
the Donatists was now occupying all the energies of the African Church, and
Augustin himself was a ruling spirit in the great conference now holding at
Carthage with them. While there, he was so immersed in this business, that, although
he once or twice saw the face of Pelagius, he had no conversation with him;
and although his ears were wounded by a casual remark which he heard, to the
effect “that infants were not baptized for remission of sins, but for
consecration to Christ,” he allowed himself to pass over the matter, “because
there was no opportunity to contradict it, and those who said it were not
such men as could cause him solicitude for their influence.”
It appears from these facts, given us by
himself, that Augustin was not only ready for, but was looking for, the
coming controversy. It can scarcely have been a surprise to him when Paulinus
accused Coelestius (412); and, although he was not a member of the council
which condemned him, it was inevitable that he should at once take the
leading part in the consequent controversy. Coelestius and his friends did
not silently submit to the judgment that had been passed upon their teaching:
they could not openly propagate their heresy, but they were diligent in
spreading their plaints privately and by subterraneous whispers among the
people. This was met by the Catholics in public sermons and familiar
colloquies held everywhere. But this wise rule was observed,-to contend
against the erroneous teachings, but to keep silence as to the teachers, that
so (as Augustin explains ) “the men might rather be brought to see and
acknowledge their error through fear of ecclesiastical judgment than be
punished by the actual judgment.” Augustin was abundant in these oral
labours; and many of his sermons directed against Pelagian error have come
down to us, although it is often impossible to be sure as to their date. For
one of them (170) he took his text from Phil. iii. 6-16, “as touching the
righteousness which is by the law blameless; howbeit what things were gain to
me, those have I counted loss for Christ.” He begins by asking how the
apostle could count his blameless conversation according to the righteousness
which is from the law as dung and loss, and then proceeds to explain the
purpose for which the law was given, our state by nature and under law, and
the kind of blamelessness that the law could produce, ending by showing that
man can have no righteousness except from God, and no perfect righteousness
except in heaven. Three others (174, 175, 176) had as their text I Tim. i.
15, 16, and developed its teaching, that the universal sin of the world and
its helplessness in sin constituted the necessity of the incarnation; and
especially that the necessity of Christ’s grace for salvation was just as
great for infants as for adults. Much is very forcibly said in these sermons
which was afterwards incorporated in his treatises. “There was no reason,” he
insists, “for the coming of Christ the Lord except to save sinners. Take away
diseases, take away wounds, and there is no reason for medicine. If the great
Physician came from heaven, a great sick man was lying ill through the whole
world. That sick man is the human race” (175, 1). “He who says, `I am not a
sinner,’ or `I was not,’ is ungrateful to the Saviour. No one of men in that
mass of mortals which flows down from Adam, no one at all of men is not sick:
no one is healed without the grace of Christ. Why do you ask whether infants
are sick from Adam? For they, too, are brought to the church; and, if they
cannot run thither on their own feet, they run on the feet of others that
they may be healed. Mother Church accommodates others’ feet to them so that
they may come, others’ heart so that they may believe, others’ tongue so that
they may confess; and, since they are sick by another’s sin, so when they are
healed they are saved by another’s confession in their behalf. Let, then, no
one buzz strange doctrines to you. This the Church has always had, has
always held; this she has received from the faith of the elders; this she
will perseveringly guard until the end. Since the whole have no need of a
physician, but only the sick, what need, then, has the infant of Christ, if
he is not sick? If he is well, why does he seek the physician through those
who love him? If, when infants are brought, they are said to have no sin of
inheritance (peccatum propaginis) at all, and yet come to Christ, why
is it not said in the church to those that bring them, `take these innocents
hence; the physician is not needed by the well, but by the sick; Christ came
not to call the just, but sinners’? It never has been said, and it never will
be said. Let each one therefore, brethren, speak for him who cannot speak for
himself. It is much the custom to intrust the inheritance of orphans to the
bishops; how much more the grace of infants! The bishop protects the orphan
lest he should be oppressed by strangers, his parents being dead. Let him cry
out more for the infant who, he fears, will be slain by his parents. Who
comes to Christ has something in him to be healed; and he who has not, has no
reason for seeking the physician. Let parents choose one of two things: let
them either confess that there is sin to be healed in their infants, or let
them cease bringing them to the physician. This is nothing else than to wish
to bring a well person to the physician. Why do you bring him? To be
baptized. Whom? The infant. To whom do you bring him? To Christ. To Him, of
course, who came into the world? Certainly, he says. Why did He come into the
world? To save sinners. Then he whom you bring has in him that which needs
saving?” So again: “He who says that the age of infancy does not need Jesus’
salvation, says nothing else than that the Lord Christ is not Jesus to
faithful infants; i.e., to infants baptized in Christ. For what is Jesus?
Jesus means saviour. He is not Jesus to those whom He does not save,
who do not need to be saved. Now, if your hearts can bear that Christ is not Jesus
to any of the baptized, I do not know how you can be acknowledged to have
sound faith. They are infants, but they are made members of Him. They are
infants, but they receive His sacraments. They are infants, but they become
partakers of His table, so that they may have life.” The preveniency of grace
is explicitly asserted in these sermons. In one he says, “Zaccheus was seen,
and saw; but unless he had been seen, he would not have seen. For `whom He
predestinated, them also He called.’ In order that we may see, we are seen;
that we may love, we are loved. `My God, may His pity prevent me!’ “ And in
another, at more length: “His calling has preceded you, so that you may have
a good will. Cry out, `My God, let Thy mercy prevent me’ (Ps. lviii. 11.).
That you may be, that you may feel, that you may hear, that you may consent,
His mercy prevents you. It prevents you in all things; and do you too prevent
His judgment in something. In what, do you say? In what? In confessing that
you have all these things from God, whatever you have of good; and from
yourself whatever you have of evil” (176, 5). “We owe therefore to Him that
we are, that we are alive, that we understand: that we are men, that we live
well, that we understand aright, we owe to Him. Nothing is ours except the
sin that we have. For what have we that we did not receive?” (I Cor. ix. 7)
(176, 6).
It was not long, however, before the
controversy was driven out of the region of sermons into that of regular
treatises. The occasion for Augustin’s first appearance in a written document
bearing on the controversy, was given by certain questions which were sent to
him for answer by “the tribune and notary” Marcellinus, with whom he had
cemented his intimacy at Carthage, the previous year, when this notable
official was presiding, by the emperor’s orders, over the great conference of
the catholics and Donatists. The mere fact that Marcellinus, still at
Carthage, where Coelestius had been brought to trial, wrote to Augustin at
Hippo for written answers to important questions connected with the Pelagian
heresy, speaks volumes for the prominent position he had already assumed in
the controversy. The questions that were sent, concerned the connection of
death with sin, the transmission of sin, the possibility of a sinless life,
and especially infants’ need of baptism. Augustin was immersed in abundant
labours when they reached him: but he could not resist this appeal, and that
the less as the Pelagian controversy had already grown to a place of the
first importance in his eyes. The result was his treatise, On the Merits
and Remission of Sins and on the Baptism of Infants, consisting of two
books, and written in 412. The first book of this work is an argument for
original sin, drawn from the universal reign of death in the world (2-8),
from the teaching of Rom. v. 12-21 (9-20), and chiefly from the baptism of
infants (21-70). It opens by exploding the Pelagian contention that death is
of nature, and Adam would have died even had he not sinned, by showing that
the penalty threatened to Adam included physical death (Gen. iii. 19), and
that it is due to him that we all die (Rom. viii. 10, 11; I Cor. xv. 21)
(2-8). Then the Pelagian assertion that we are injured in Adam’s sin only by
its bad example, which we imitate, not by any propagation from it, is tested
by an exposition of Rom. v. 12 sq. (9-20). And then the main subject of the
book is reached, and the writer sharply presses the Pelagians with the
universal and primeval fact of the baptism of infants, as a proof of original
sin (21-70). He tracks out all their subterfuges,-showing the absurdity of
the assertions that infants are baptized for the remission of sins that they
have themselves committed since birth (22), or in order to obtain a higher
stage of salvation (23-28), or because of sin committed in some previous
state of existence (31-33). Then turning to the positive side, he shows at
length that the Scriptures teach that Christ came to save sinners, that
baptism is for the remission of sins, and that all that partake of it are
confessedly sinners (34 sq.); then he points out that John ii. 7, 8, on which
the Pelagians relied, cannot be held to distinguish between ordinary
salvation and a higher form, under the name of “the kingdom of God” (58 sq.);
and he closes by showing that the very manner in which baptism was
administered, with its exorcism and exsufflation, implied the infant to be a
sinner (63), and by suggesting that the peculiar helplessness of infancy, so
different not only from the earliest age of Adam, but also from that of many
young animals, may possibly be itself penal (64-69). The second book treats,
with similar fulness, the question of the perfection of human righteousness
in this life. After an exordium which speaks of the will and its limitations,
and of the need of God’s assisting grace (1-6), the writer raises four
questions. First, whether it may be said to be possible, by God’s grace, for
a man to attain a condition of entire sinlessness in this life (7). This he
answers in the affirmative. Secondly, he asks, whether any one has ever done
this, or may ever be expected to do it, and answers in the negative on the
testimony of Scripture (8-25). Thirdly, he asks why not, and replies briefly
because men are unwilling, explaining at length what he means by this
(26-33). Finally, he inquires whether any man has ever existed, exists now,
or will ever exist, entirely without sin,-this question differing from the
second inasmuch as that asked after the attainment in this life of a state in
which sinning should cease, while this seeks a man who has never been guilty
of sin, implying the absence of original as well as of actual sin. After
answering this in the negative (34), Augustin discusses anew the question of
original sin. Here after expounding from the positive side (35-38) the
condition of man in paradise, the nature of his probation, and of the fall
and its effects both on him and his posterity, and the kind of redemption
that has been provided in the incarnation, he proceeds to answer certain
cavils (39 sq.), such as, “Why should children of baptized people need baptism?”-”How
can a sin be remitted to the father and held against the child?”-”If physical
death comes from Adam, ought we not to be released from it on believing in
Christ?”-and concludes with an exhortation to hold fast to the exact truth,
turning neither to the right nor left,-neither saying that we have no sin,
nor surrendering ourselves to our sin (57 sq.).
After these books were completed, Augustin
came into possession of Pelagius’ Commentary on Paul’s Epistles, which
was written while he was living in Rome (before 410), and found it to contain
some arguments that he had not treated,-such arguments, he tells us, as he
had not imagined could be held by any one. Unwilling to re-open his finished
argument, he now began a long supplementary letter to Marcellinus, which he
intended to serve as a third and concluding book to his work. He was some
time in completing this letter. He had asked to have the former two books
returned to him; and it is a curious indication of his overworked state of
mind, that he forgot what he wanted with them: he visited Carthage while the
letter was in hand, and saw Marcellinus personally; and even after his return
to Hippo, it dragged along, amid many distractions, slowly towards
completion. Meanwhile, a long letter was written to Honoratus, in which a
section on the grace of the New Testament was incorporated. At length the
promised supplement was completed. It was professedly a criticism of
Pelagius’ Commentary, and therefore naturally mentioned his name; but
Augustin even goes out of his way to speak as highly of his opponent as he
can, -although it is apparent that his esteem is not very high for his
strength of mind, and is even less high for the moral quality that led to his
odd, oblique way of expressing his opinions. There is even a half sarcasm in
the way he speaks of Pelagius’ care and circumspection, which was certainly
justified by the event. The letter opens by stating and criticising in a very
acute and telling dialectic, the new arguments of Pelagius, which were such
as the following: “If Adam’s sin injured even those who do not sin, Christ’s
righteousness ought likewise to profit even those who do not believe” (2-4);
“No man can transmit what he has not; and hence, if baptism cleanses from
sin, the children of baptized parents ought to be free from sin;” “God remits
one’s own sins, and can scarcely, therefore, impute another’s to us; and if
the soul is created, it would certainly be unjust to impute Adam’s alien sin
to it” (5). The stress of the letter, however, is laid upon two
contentions,-1. That whatever else may be ambiguous in the Scriptures, they
are perfectly clear that no man can have eternal life except in Christ, who
came to call sinners to repentance (7); and 2. That original sin in infants
has always been, in the Church, one of the fixed facts, to be used as a basis
of argument, in order to reach the truth in other matters, and has never
itself been called in question before (10-14). At this point, the writer
returns to the second and third of the new arguments of Pelagius mentioned
above, and discusses them more fully (15-20), closing with a recapitulation
of the three great points that had been raised; viz., that both death and sin
are derived from Adam’s sin by all his posterity; that infants need salvation,
and hence baptism; and that no man ever attains in this life such a state of
holiness that he cannot truly pray, “Forgive us our trespasses.”
Augustin was now to learn that one service
often entails another. Marcellinus wrote to say that he was puzzled by what
had been said in the second book of this work, as to the possibility of man’s
attaining to sinlessness in this life, while yet it was asserted that no man
ever had attained, or ever would attain, it. How, he asked, can that be said
to be possible which is, and which will remain, unexampled? In reply,
Augustin wrote, during this same year (412), and sent to his noble friend,
another work, which he calls On the Spirit and the Letter, from the
prominence which he gives in it to the words of 2 Cor. iii. 6. He did not
content himself with a simple, direct answer to Marcellinus’ question, but
goes at length into a profound disquisition into the roots of the doctrine,
and thus gives us, not a mere explanation of a former contention, but a new
treatise on a new subject,-the absolute necessity of the grace of God for any
good living. He begins by explaining to Marcellinus that he has affirmed the
possibility while denying the actuality of a sinless life, on the ground that
all things are possible to God,-even the passage of a camel through the eye
of a needle, which nevertheless has never occurred (1, 2). For, in speaking
of man’s perfection, we are speaking really of a work of God,-and one which
is none the less His work because it is wrought through the instrumentality
of man, and in the use of his free will. The Scriptures, indeed, teach that
no man lives without sin, but this is only the proclamation of a matter of
fact; and although it is thus contrary to fact and Scripture to assert that
men may be found that live sinlessly, yet such an assertion would not be
fatal heresy. What is unbearable, is that men should assert it to be possible
for man, unaided by God, to attain this perfection. This is to speak against
the grace of God: it is to put in man’s power what is only possible to the
almighty grace of God (3, 4). No doubt, even these men do not, in so many
words, exclude the aid of grace in perfecting human life,-they affirm God’s
help; but they make it consist in His gift to man of a perfectly free will, and
in His addition to this of commandments and teachings which make known to him
what he is to seek and what to avoid, and so enable him to direct his free
will to what is good. What, however, does such a “grace” amount to? (5). Man
needs something more than to know the right way: he needs to love it, or he
will not walk in it; and all mere teaching, which can do nothing more than
bring us knowledge of what we ought to do, is but the letter that killeth.
What we need is some inward, Spirit-given aid to the keeping of what by the
law we know ought to be kept. Mere knowledge slays: while to lead a holy life
is the gift of God,-not only because He has given us will, nor only because
He has taught us the right way, but because by the Holy Spirit He sheds love
abroad in the hearts of all those whom He has predestinated, and will call
and justify and glorify (Rom. viii. 29, 30). To prove this, he states to be
the object of the present treatise; and after investigating the meaning of 2
Cor. iii. 6, and showing that “the letter” there means the law as a system of
precepts, which reveals sin rather than takes it away, points out the way
rather than gives strength to walk in it, and therefore slays the soul by
shutting it up under sin,-while “the Spirit” is God’s Holy Ghost who is shed
abroad in our hearts to give us strength to walk aright,-he undertakes to
prove this position from the teachings of the Epistle to the Romans at large.
This contention, it will be seen, cut at the very roots of Pelagianism: if
all mere teaching slays the soul, as Paul asserts, then all that what they
called “grace” could, when alone, do, was to destroy; and the upshot of
“helping” man by simply giving him free will, and pointing out the way to
him, would be the loss of the whole race. Not that the law is sin: Augustin
teaches that it is holy and good, and God’s instrument in salvation. Not that
free will is done away: it is by free will that men are led into holiness.
But the purpose of the law (he teaches) is to make men so feel their lost
estate as to seek the help by which alone they may be saved; and will is only
then liberated to do good when grace has made it free. “What the law of works
enjoins by menace, that the law of faith secures by faith. What the law of
works does is to say, `Do what I command thee;’ but by the law of faith we
say to God, `Give me what thou commandest.’ “(22). In the midst of this
argument, Augustin is led to discuss the differentiating characteristics of
the Old and New Testaments; and he expounds at length (33-42) the passage in
Jer. xxxi. 31-34, showing that, in the prophet’s view, the difference between
the two covenants is that in the Old, the law is an external thing written on
stones; while in the New, it is written internally on the heart, so that men
now wish to do what the law prescribes. This writing on the heart is nothing
else, he explains, than the shedding abroad by the Holy Spirit of love in our
hearts, so that we love God’s will, and therefore freely do it. Towards the
end of the treatise (50-61), he treats in an absorbingly interesting way of
the mutual relations of free will, faith, and grace, contending that all
co-exist without the voiding of any. It is by free will that we believe; but
it is only as grace moves us, that we are able to use our free will for
believing; and it is only after we are thus led by grace to believe, that we
obtain all other goods. In prosecuting this analysis, Augustin is led to
distinguish very sharply between the faculty and use of free will (58), as
well as between ability and volition (53). Faith is an act of the man
himself; but only as he is given the power from on high to will to believe,
will he believe (57, 60).
By this work, Augustin completed, in his treatment
of Pelagianism, the circle of that triad of doctrines which he himself looked
upon as most endangered by this heresy, - original sin, the imperfection of
human righteousness, the necessity of grace. In his mind, the last was the
kernel of the whole controversy; and this was a subject which he could never
approach without some heightened fervour. This accounts for the great
attractiveness of the present work,-through the whole fabric of which runs
the golden thread of the praise of God’s ineffable grace. In Canon Bright’s
opinion, it “perhaps, next to the `Confessions,’ tells us most of the
thoughts of that `rich, profound, and affectionate mind’ on the soul’s
relations to its God.”
After the publication of these treatises,
the controversy certainly did not lull; but it relapsed for nearly three
years again, into less public courses. Meanwhile, Augustin was busy, among
other most distracting cares (Ep. 145, 1), still defending the grace of God,
by letters and sermons. A fair illustration of his state of mind at this
time, may be obtained from his letter to Anastasius (145), which assuredly
must have been written soon after the treatise On the Spirit and the
Letter. Throughout this letter, there are adumbrations of the same train
of thought that filled this treatise; and there is one passage which may
almost be taken as a summary of it. Augustin is so weary of the vexatious
cares that filled his life, that he is ready to long for the everlasting
rest, and yet bewails the weakness which allowed the sweetness of external
things still to insinuate itself into his heart. Victory over, and
emancipation from, this, he asserts, “cannot, without God’s grace, be
achieved by the human will, which is by no means to be called free so long as
it is subject to enslaving lusts.” Then he proceeds: “The law, therefore, by
teaching and commanding what cannot be fulfilled without grace, demonstrates
to man his weakness, in order that the weakness, thus proved, may resort to
the Saviour, by whose healing the will may be able to do what it found
impossible in its weakness. So, then, the law brings us to faith, faith
obtains the Spirit in fuller measure, the Spirit sheds love abroad in us, and
love fulfils the law. For this reason the law is called a schoolmaster, under
whose threatening and severity `whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord
shall be delivered.’ But `how shall they call on Him in whom they have not
believed?’ Wherefore, that the letter without the Spirit may not kill, the
life-giving Spirit is given to those that believe and call upon Him; but the
love of God is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to
us, so that the words of the same apostle, `Love is the fulfilling of the
law,’ may be realized. Thus the law is good to him that uses it lawfully; and
he uses it lawfully, who, understanding wherefore it was given, betakes
himself, under the pressure of its threatening, to liberating grace. Whoever
ungratefully despises this grace by which the ungodly is justified, and
trusts in his own strength for fulfilling the law, being ignorant of God’s
righteousness, and going about to establish his own righteousness, is not
submitting himself to the righteousness of God; and therefore the law is made
to him not a help to pardon, but the bond of guilt; not because the law is
evil, but because `sin,’ as it is written, `works death to such persons by
that which is good.’ For by the commandment, he sins more grievously, who, by
the commandment, knows how evil are the sins which he commits.” Although Augustin
states clearly that this letter is written against those “who arrogate too
much to the human will, imagining that, the law being given, the will is, of
its own strength, sufficient to fulfil the law, though not assisted by any
grace imparted by the Holy Ghost, in addition to instruction in the law,”-he
refrains still from mentioning the names of the authors of this teaching,
evidently out of a lingering tenderness in his treatment of them. This will
help us to explain the courtesy of a note which he sent to Pelagius himself
at about this time, in reply to a letter he had received some time before
from him; of which Pelagius afterwards (at the Synod of Diospolis) made, to
say the least of it, an ungenerous use. This note, Augustin tells us, was
written with “tempered praises” (wherefrom we see his lessening respect for
the man), and so as to admonish Pelagius to think rightly concerning
grace,-so far as could be done without raising the dregs of the controversy
in a formal note. This he accomplished by praying from the Lord for him,
those good things by which he might be good forever, and might live eternally
with Him who is eternal; and by asking his prayers in return, that he, too,
might be made by the Lord such as he seemed to suppose he already was. How
Augustin could really intend these prayers to be understood as an admonition
to Pelagius to look to God for what he was seeking to work out for himself,
is fully illustrated by the closing words of this almost contemporary letter
to Anastasius: “Pray, therefore, for us,” he writes, “that we may be
righteous,-an attainment wholly beyond a man’s reach, unless he know
righteousness, and be willing to practise it, but one which is immediately
realized when he is perfectly willing; but this cannot be in him unless he is
healed by the grace of the Spirit, and aided to be able.” The point had
already been made in the controversy, that, by the Pelagian doctrine, so much
power was attributed to the human will, that no one ought to pray, “Lead us
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
If he was anxious to avoid personal
controversy with Pelagius himself in the hope that he might even yet be
reclaimed, Augustin was equally anxious to teach the truth on all possible
occasions. Pelagius had been intimate, when at Rome, with the pious Paulinus,
bishop of Nola; and it was understood that there was some tendency at Nola to
follow the new teachings. It was, perhaps, as late as 414, when Augustin made
reply in a long letter, to a request of Paulinus’ for an exposition of
certain difficult Scriptures, which had been sent him about 410. Among them
was Rom. xi. 28; and, in explaining it, Augustin did not withhold a tolerably
complete account of his doctrine of predestination, involving the essence of
his whole teaching as to grace: “For when he had said, `according to the
election they are beloved for their father’s sake,’ he added, `for the gifts
and calling of God are without repentance.’ You see that those are certainly
meant who belong to the number of the predestinated.... `Many indeed are
called, but few chosen;’ but those who are elect, these are called `according
to His purpose;’ and it is beyond doubt that in them God’s foreknowledge
cannot be deceived. These He foreknew and predestinated to be conformed to
the image of His Son, in order that He might be the first born among many
brethren. But `whom He predestinated, them He also called.’ This calling is
`according to His purpose,’ this calling is `without repentance,’ “etc.,
quoting Rom. v. 28-31. Then continuing, he says, “Those are not in this
vocation, who do not persevere unto the end in the faith that worketh by
love, although they walk in it a little while.... But the reason why some
belong to it, and some do not, can easily be hidden, but cannot be unjust. For
is there injustice with God? God forbid! For this belongs to those high
judgments which, so to say, terrified the wondering apostle to look upon.”
Among the most remarkable of the
controversial sermons that were preached about this time, especial mention is
due to two that were delivered at Carthage, midsummer of 413. The former of
these was preached on the festival of John the Baptist’s birth (June 24), and
naturally took the forerunner for its subject. The nativity of John
suggesting the nativity of Christ, the preacher spoke of the marvel of the
incarnation. He who was in the beginning, and was the Word of God, and was
Himself God, and who made all things, and in whom was life, even this one
“came to us. To whom? To the worthy? Nay, but to the unworthy! For Christ
died for the ungodly, and for the unworthy, though He was worthy. We indeed
were unworthy whom He pitied; but He was worthy who pitied us, to whom we
say, `For Thy pity’s sake, Lord, free us!’ Not for the sake of our preceding
merits, but `for Thy pity’s sake, Lord, free us;’ and `for Thy name’s sake be
propitious to our sins,’ not for our merit’s sake.... For the merit of sins
is, of course, not reward, but punishment.” He then dwelt upon the necessity
of the incarnation, and the necessity of a mediator between God and “the
whole mass of the human race alienated from Him by Adam.” Then quoting I Cor.
iv. 7, he asserts that it is not our varying merits, but God’s grace alone,
that makes us differ, and that we are all alike, great and small, old and
young, saved by one and the same Saviour. “What then, some one says,” he
continues, “even the infant needs a liberator? Certainly he needs one. And
the witness to it is the mother that faithfully runs to church with the child
to be baptized. The witness is Mother Church herself, who receives the child
for washing, and either for dismissing him [from this life] freed, or
nurturing him in piety.... Last of all, the tears of his own misery are
witness in the child himself.... Recognize the misery, extend the help. Let
all put on bowels of mercy. By as much as they cannot speak for themselves,
by so much more pityingly let us speak for the little ones,”-and then follows
a passage calling on the Church to take the grace of infants in their charge
as orphans committed to their care, which is in substance repeated from a
former sermon. The speaker proceeded to quote Matt. i. 21, and apply it. If
Jesus came to save from sins, and infants are brought to Him, it is to
confess that they, too, are sinners. Then, shall they be withheld from
baptism? “Certainly, if the child could speak for himself, he would repel the
voice of opposition, and cry out, `Give me Christ’s life! In Adam I died:
give me Christ’s life; in whose sight I am not clean, even if I am an infant
whose life has been but one day in the earth.’ ““No way can be found,” adds
the preacher, “of coming into the life of this world except by Adam; no way
can be found of escaping punishment in the next world except by Christ. Why
do you shut up the one door?” Even John the Baptist himself was born in sin;
and absolutely no one can be found who was born apart from sin, until you
find one who was born apart from Adam. “`By one man sin entered into the
world, and by sin, death; and so it passed through upon all men.’ If these
were my words, could this sentiment be expressed more expressly, more
clearly, more fully?”
Three days afterwards, on the invitation
of the Bishop of Carthage, Augustin preached a sermon professedly directed
against the Pelagians, which takes up the threads hinted at in the former
discourse, and develops a full polemic with reference to the baptism of
infants. He began, formally enough, with the determination of the question in
dispute. The Pelagians concede that infants should be baptized. The only
question is, for what are they baptized? We say that they would not otherwise
have salvation and eternal life; but they say it is not for salvation, not
for eternal life, but for the kingdom of God.... “The child, they say,
although not baptized, by the desert of his innocence, in that he has no sin
at all, either actual or original, either from him self or contracted from
Adam, necessarily has salvation and eternal life even if not baptized; but is
to be baptized for this reason,-that he may enter into the kingdom of God,
i.e., into the kingdom of heaven.” He then shows that there is no eternal
life outside the kingdom of heaven, no middle place between the right and
left hand of the judge at the last day, and that, therefore, to exclude one
from the kingdom of God is to consign him to the pains of eternal fire;
while, on the other side, no one ascends into heaven unless he has been made
a member of Christ, and this can only be by faith,-which, in an infant’s
case, is professed by another in his stead. He then treats, at length, some
of the puzzling questions with which the Pelagians were wont to try the
catholics; and then breaking off suddenly, he took a volume in his hands. “I
ask you,” he said, “to bear with me a little: I will read somewhat. It is St.
Cyprian whom I hold in my hand, the ancient bishop of this see. What he
thought of the baptism of infants,-nay, what he has shown that the Church
always thought,-learn in brief. For it is not enough for them to dispute and
argue, I know not what impious novelties: they even try to charge us with
asserting something novel. It is on this account that I read here St.
Cyprian, in order that you may perceive that the orthodox understanding and
catholic sense reside in the words which I have been just now speaking to
you. He was asked whether an infant ought to be baptized before he was eight
days old, seeing that by the ancient law no infant was allowed to be
circumcised unless he was eight days old. A question arose from this as to
the day of baptism,-for concerning the origin of sin there was no question;
and therefore from this thing of which there was no question, that question
that had arisen was settled.” And then he read to them the passage out of
Cyprian’s letter to Fidus, which declared that he, and all the council with
him, unanimously thought that infants should be baptized at the earliest
possible age, lest they should die in their inherited sin, and so pass into
eternal punishment. The sermon closed with a tender warning to the teachers
of these strange doctrines: he might call them heretics with truth, but he
will not; let the Church seek still their salvation, and not mourn them as
dead; let them be exhorted as friends, not striven with as enemies. “They
disparage us,” he says, “we will bear it; let them not disparage the rule [of
faith], let them not disparage the truth; let them not contradict the Church,
which labours every day for the remission of infants’ original sin. This
thing is settled. The errant disputer may be borne with in other questions
that have not been thoroughly canvassed, that are not yet settled by the full
authority of the Church,-their error should be borne with: it ought not to
extend so far, that they endeavour to shake even the very foundation of the
Church!” He hints that although the patience hitherto exhibited towards them
is “perhaps not blameworthy,” yet patience may cease to be a virtue, and
become culpable negligence: in the mean time, however, he begs that the
catholics should continue amicable, fraternal, placid, loving, long
suffering.
Augustin himself gives us a view of the
progress of the controversy at this time in a letter written in 414. The
Pelagians had everywhere scattered the seeds of their new error; and although
some, by his ministry and that of his brother workers, had, “by God’s mercy,”
been cured of their pest, yet they still existed in Africa, especially about
Carthage, and were everywhere propagating their opinions in subterraneous
whispers, for fear of the judgment of the Church. Wherever they were not
refuted, they were seducing others to their following; and they were so
spread abroad that he did not know where they would break out next.
Nevertheless, he was still unwilling to brand them as heretics, and was more
desirous of healing them as sick members of the Church than of cutting them
off finally as too diseased for cure. Jerome also tells us that the poison
was spreading in both the East and the West, and mentions particularly as
seats where it showed itself the islands of Rhodes and Sicily. Of Rhodes we
know nothing further; but from Sicily an appeal came to Augustin in 414 from
one Hilary, setting forth that there were certain Christians about Syracuse
who taught strange doctrines, and beseeching Augustin to help him in dealing
with them. The doctrines were enumerated as follows: “They say (1) that man
can be without sin, (2) and can easily keep the commandments of God if he
will; (3) that an unbaptized infant, if he is cut off by death, cannot justly
perish, since he is born without sin; (4) that a rich man that remains in his
riches cannot enter the kingdom of God, except he sell all that he has;... (5
) that we ought not to swear at all;” (6) and, apparently, that the Church is
to be in this world without spot or blemish. Augustin suspected that these
Sicilian disturbances were in some way the work of Coelestius, and therefore
in his answer informs his correspondent of what had been done at the Synod of
Carthage (412) against him. The long letter that he sent back follows the
inquiries in the order they were put by Hilary. To the first he replies, in
substance, as he had treated the same matter in the second book of the
treatise, On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, that it was opposed
to Scripture, but was less a heresy than the wholly unbearable opinion that
this state of sinlessness could be attained without God’s help. “But when
they say that free will suffices to man for fulfilling the precepts of the
Lord, even though unaided to good works by God’s grace and the gift of the
Holy Spirit, it is to be altogether anathematized and detested with all
execrations. For those who assert this are inwardly alien from God’s grace,
because being ignorant of God’s righteousness, like the Jews of whom the
apostle speaks, and wishing to establish their own, they are not subject to
God’s righteousness, since there is no fulfilment of the law except love; and
of course the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, not by ourselves, nor
by the force of our own will, but by the Holy Ghost who is given to us.” Dealing
next with the second point, he drifts into the matter he had more fully
developed in his work On the Spirit and the Letter. “Free will avails
for God’s works,” he says, “if it be divinely aided, and this comes by humble
seeking and doing; but when deserted by divine aid, no matter how excellent
may be its knowledge of the law, it will by no means possess solidity of
righteousness, but only the inflation of ungodly pride and deadly arrogance.
This is taught us by that same Lord’s Prayer; for it would be an empty thing
for us to ask God `Lead us not into temptation,’ if the matter was so placed
in our power that we would avail for fulfilling it without any aid from Him.
For this free will is free in proportion as it is sound, but it is sound in
proportion as it is subject to divine pity and grace. For it faithfully
prays, saying, `Direct my ways according to Thy word, and let no iniquity
reign over me.’ For how is that free over which iniquity reigns? But see who
it is that is invoked by it, in order that it may not reign over it. For it
says not, `Direct my ways according to free will because no iniquity shall
rule over me,’ but `Direct my ways according to Thy word, and let no
iniquity rule over me.’ It is a prayer, not a promise; it is a
confession, not a profession; it is a wish for full freedom, not a boast of
personal power. For it is not every one `who confides in his own power,’ but
`every one who calls on the name of God, that shall be saved.’ `But how shall
they call upon Him,’ he says, `in whom they have not believed?’ Accordingly,
then, they who rightly believe, believe in order to call on Him in whom they
have believed, and to avail for doing what they receive in the precepts of
the law; since what the law commands, faith prays for.” “God, therefore,
commands continence, and gives continence; He commands by the law, He gives
by grace; He commands by the letter, He gives by the spirit: for the law
without grace makes the transgression to abound, and the letter without the
spirit kills. He commands for this reason,-that we who have endeavoured to do
what He commands, and are worn out in our weakness under the law, may know
how to ask for the aid of grace; and if we have been able to do any good
work, that we may not be ungrateful to Him who aids us.” The answer to the
third point traverses the ground that was fully covered in the first book of
the treatise On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, beginning by
opposing the Pelagians to Paul in Rom. v. 12-19: “But when they say that an
infant, cut off by death, unbaptized, cannot perish since he is born without
sin,-it is not this that the apostle says; and I think that it is better to
believe the apostle than them.” The fourth and fifth questions were new in
this controversy; and it is not certain that they belong properly to it,
though the legalistic asceticism of the Pelagian leaders may well have given
rise to a demand on all Christians to sell what they had, and give to the
poor. This one of the points, Augustin treats at length, pointing out that many
of the saints of old were rich, and that the Lord and His apostles always so
speak that their counsels avail to the right use, not the destruction, of
wealth. Christians ought so to hold their wealth that they are not held by
it, and by no means prefer it to Christ. Equal good sense and mildness are
shown in his treatment of the question concerning oaths, which he points out
were used by the Lord and His apostles, but advises to be used as little as
possible lest by the custom of frequent oaths we learn to swear lightly. The
question as to the Church, he passes over as having been sufficiently treated
in the course of his previous remarks.
To the number of those who had been
rescued from Pelagianism by his efforts, Augustin was now to have the
pleasure of adding two others, in whom he seems to have taken much delight.
Timasius and James were two young men of honorable birth and liberal
education, who had, by the exhortation of Pelagius, been moved to give up the
hope that they had in this world, and enter upon the service of God in an
ascetic life. Naturally, they had turned to him for instruction, and had
received a book to which they had given their study. They met somewhere with
some of Augustin’s writings, however, and were deeply affected by what he said
as to grace, and now began to see that the teaching of Pelagius opposed the
grace of God by which man becomes a Christian. They gave their book,
therefore, to Augustin, saying that it was Pelagius’, and asking him for
Pelagius’ sake, and for the sake of the truth, to answer it. This was done,
and the resulting book, On Nature and Grace, sent to the young men,
who returned a letter of thanks in which they professed their conversion from
their error. In this book, too, which was written in 415, Augustin refrained
from mentioning Pelagius by name, feeling it better to spare the man while
not sparing his writings. But he tells us, that, on reading the book of
Pelagius to which it was an answer, it became clear to him beyond any doubt
that his teaching was distinctly anti-Christian; and when speaking of his own
book privately to a friend, he allows himself to call it “a considerable book
against the heresy of Pelagius, which he had been constrained to write
by some brethren whom he had persuaded to adopt his fatal error, denying the
grace of Christ.” Thus his attitude towards the persons of the new teachers
was becoming ever more and more strained, in despite of his full recognition
of the excellent motives that might lie behind their “zeal not according to
knowledge.” This treatise opens with a recognition of the zeal of Pelagius,
which, as it burns most ardently against those who, when reproved for sin,
take refuge in censuring their nature, Augustin compares with the heathen
view as expressed in Sallust’s saying, “the human race falsely complains of
its own nature,” and which he charges with not being according to knowledge,
and proposes to oppose by an equal zeal against all attempts to render the
cross of Christ of none effect. He then gives a brief but excellent summary
of the more important features of the catholic doctrine concerning nature and
grace (2-7). Opening the work of Pelagius, which had been placed in his
hands, he examines his doctrine of sin, its nature and effects. Pelagius, he
points out, draws a distinction, sound enough in itself, between what is
“possible” and what is “actual,” but applies it unsoundly to sin, when he
says that every man has the possibility of being without sin (8-9),
and therefore without condemnation. Not so, says Augustin; an infant who dies
unbaptized has no possibility of salvation open to him; and the man who has
lived and died in a land where it was impossible for him to hear the name of
Christ, has had no possibility open to him of becoming righteous by nature
and free will. If this be not so, Christ is dead in vain, since all men then
might have accomplished their salvation, even if Christ had never died (10).
Pelagius, moreover, he shows, exhibits a tendency to deny the sinful
character of all sins that are impossible to avoid, and so treats of sins of
ignorance as to show that he excuses them (13-19). When he argues that no
sin, because it is not a substance, can change nature, which is a substance,
Augustin replies that this destroys the Saviour’s work,-for how can He save
from sins if sins do not corrupt? And, again, if an act cannot injure a
substance, how can abstention from food, which is a mere act, kill the body?
In the same way sin is not a substance; but God is a substance,-yea, the
height of substance, and only true sustenance of the reasonable creature; and
the consequence of departure from Him is to the soul what refusal of food is
to the body (22). To Pelagius’ assertion that sin cannot be punished by more
sin, Augustin replies that the apostle thinks differently (Rom. i. 21-31).
Then putting his finger on the main point in controversy, he quotes the
Scriptures as declaring the present condition of man to be that of spiritual
death. “The truth then designates as dead those whom this man declares
to be unable to be damaged or corrupted by sin,-because, forsooth, he has
discovered sin to be no substance!” (25). It was by free will that man passed
into this state of death; but a dead man needs something else to revive
him,-he needs nothing less than a Vivifier. But of vivifying grace, Pelagius
knew nothing; and by knowing nothing of a Vivifier, he knows nothing of a
Saviour; but rather by making nature of itself able to be sinless, he
glorifies the Creator at the expense of the Saviour (39). Next is examined Pelagius’
contention that many saints are enumerated in the Scriptures as having lived
sinlessly in this world. While declining to discuss the question of fact as
to the Virgin Mary (42), Augustin opposes to the rest the declaration of John
in I John i. 8, as final, but still pauses to explain why the Scriptures do
not mention the sins of all, and to contend that all who ever were saved
under the Old Testament or the New, were saved by the sacrificial death of
Christ, and by faith in Him (40-50). Thus we are brought, as Augustin says,
to the core of the question, which concerns, not the fact of sinlessness in
any man, but man’s ability to be sinless. This ability Pelagius affirms of
all men, and Augustin denies of all “unless they are justified by the grace of
God through our Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (51). Thus, the whole
discussion is about grace, which Pelagius does not admit in any true sense,
but places only in the nature that God has made (52). We are next invited to
attend to another distinction of Pelagius’, in which he discriminates sharply
between the nature that God has made, the crown of which is free will, and
the use that man makes of this free will. The endowment of free will is a
“capacity;” it is, because given by God in our making, a necessity of nature,
and not in man’s power to have or not have. It is the right use of it only,
which man has in his power. This analysis, Pelagius illustrates at length, by
appealing to the difference between the possession and use of the various
bodily senses. The ability to see, for instance, he says, is a necessity of
our nature; we do not make it, we cannot help having it; it is ours only to
use it. Augustin criticises this presentation of the matter with great
sharpness (although he is not averse to the analysis itself),-showing the
inapplicability of the illustrations used,-for, he asks, is it not possible
for us to blind ourselves, and so no longer have the ability to see? and
would not many a man like to control the “use” of his “capacity” to hear when
a screechy saw is in the neighbourhood? (55); and as well the falsity of the
contention illustrated, since Pelagius has ignored the fall, and, even were
that not so, has so ignored the need of God’s aid for all good, in any state
of being, as to deny it (56). Moreover, it is altogether a fallacy, Augustin
argues, to contend that men have the “ability” to make every use we can
conceive of our faculties. We cannot wish for unhappiness; God cannot
deny Himself (57); and just so, in a corrupt nature, the mere possession of a
faculty of choice does not imply the ability to use that faculty for
not sinning. “Of a man, indeed, who has his legs strong and sound, it may be
said admissibly enough, `whether he will or not, he has the capacity of
walking;’ but if his legs be broken, however much he may wish, he has not the
`capacity.’ The nature of which our author speaks is corrupted” (57). What,
then, can he mean by saying that, whether we will or not, we have the
capacity of not sinning,-a statement so opposite to Paul’s in Rom. vii. 15?
Some space is next given to an attempted rebuttal by Pelagius of the
testimony of Gal. v. 17, on the ground that the “flesh” there does not refer
to the baptized (60-70); and then the passages are examined which Pelagius
had quoted against Augustin out of earlier writers,-Lactantius (71), Hilary
(72), Ambrose (75), John of Constantinople (76), Xystus,-a blunder of
Pelagius, who quoted from a Pythagorean philosopher, mistaking him for the
Roman bishop Sixtus (57), Jerome (78), and Augustin himself (80). All these
writers, Augustin shows, admitted the universal sinfulness of man,-and
especially he himself had confessed the necessity of grace in the immediate
context of the passage quoted by Pelagius. The treatise closes (82 sq.) with a
noble panegyric on that love which God sheds abroad in the heart, by the Holy
Ghost, and by which alone we can be made keepers of the law.
The treatise On Nature and Grace
was as yet unfinished, when the over-busy scriptorium at Hippo was invaded by
another young man seeking instruction. This time it was a zealous young
presbyter from the remotest part of Spain, “from the shore of the
ocean,”-Paulus Orosius by name, whose pious soul had been afflicted with
grievous wounds by the Priscillianist and Origenist heresies that had broken
out in his country, and who had come with eager haste to Augustin, on hearing
that he could get from him the instruction which he needed for confuting
them. Augustin seems to have given him his heart at once; and, feeling too little
informed as to the special heresies which he wished to be prepared to
controvert, persuaded him to go on to Palestine to be taught by Jerome, and
gave him introductions which described him as one “who is in the bond of
catholic peace a brother, in point of age a son, and in honour a
fellow-presbyter,-a man of quick understanding, ready speech, and burning
zeal.” His departure to Palestine gave Augustin an opportunity to consult
with Jerome on the one point that had been raised in the Pelagian controversy
on which he had not been able to see light. The Pelagians had early argued,
that, if souls are created anew for men at their birth, it would be unjust in
God to impute Adam’s sin to them. And Augustin found himself unable either to
prove that souls are transmitted (traduced, as the phrase is), or to
show that it would not involve God in injustice to make a soul only to make
it subject to a sin committed by another. Jerome had already put himself on
record as a believer in both original sin and the creation of souls at the
time of birth. Augustin feared the logical consequences of this assertion,
and yet was unable to refute it. He therefore seized this occasion to send a
long treatise on the origin of the soul to his friend, with the request that
he would consider the subject anew, and answer his doubts. In this treatise
he stated that he was fully persuaded that the soul had fallen into sin, but
by no fault of God or of nature, but of its own free will; and asked when
could the soul of an infant have contracted the guilt, which, unless the
grace of Christ should come to its rescue by baptism, would involve it in
condemnation, if God (as Jerome held, and as he was willing to hold with him,
if this difficulty could be cleared up) makes each soul for each individual
at the time of birth? He professed himself embarrassed on sucha supposition
by the penal sufferings of infants, the pains they endured in this life, and
much more the danger they are in of eternal damnation, into which they
actually go unless saved by baptism. God is good, just, omnipotent: how,
then, can we account for the fact that “in Adam all die,” if souls are
created afresh for each birth? “If new souls are made for men,” he affirms,
“individually at their birth, I do not see, on the one hand, that they could
have any sin while yet in infancy; nor do I believe, on the other hand, that
God condemns any soul which He sees to have no sin;” “and yet, whoever says
that those children who depart out of this life without partaking of the
sacrament of baptism, shall be made alive in Christ, certainly contradicts
the apostolic declaration,” and “he that is not made alive in Christ must
necessarily remain under the condemnation of which the apostle says that by
the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation.” “Wherefore,”
he adds to his correspondent, “if that opinion of yours does not contradict
this firmly grounded article of faith, let it be mine also; but if it does,
let it no longer be yours.” So far as obtaining light was concerned, Augustin
might have spared himself the pain of this composition: Jerome simply
answered that he had no leisure to reply to the questions submitted to him.
But Orosius’ mission to Palestine was big with consequences. Once there, he
became the accuser of Pelagius before John of Jerusalem, and the occasion, at
least, of the trials of Pelagius in Palestine during the summer and winter of
415 which issued so disastrously, and ushered in a new phase of the conflict.
Meanwhile, however, Augustin was ignorant
of what was going on in the East, and had his mind directed again to Sicily.
About a year had passed since he had sent thither his long letter to Hilary.
Now his conjecture that Coelestius was in some way at the bottom of the
Sicilian outbreak, received confirmation from a paper which certain catholic
brethren brought out of Sicily, and which was handed to Augustin by two
exiled Spanish bishops, Eutropius and Paul. This paper bore the title, Definitions
Ascribed to Coelestius, and presented internal evidence, in style and
thought, of being correctly so ascribed. It consisted of three parts, in the
first of which were collected a series of brief and compressed “definitions,”
or “ratiocinations” as Augustin calls them, in which the author tries to
place the catholics in a logical dilemma, and to force them to admit that man
can live in this world without sin. In the second part, he adduced certain
passages of Scripture in defence of his doctrine. In the third part, he
undertook to deal with the texts that had been quoted against his contention,
not, however, by examining into their meaning, or seeking to explain them in
the sense of his theory, but simply by matching them with others which he
thought made for him. Augustin at once (about the end of 415) wrote a
treatise in answer to this, which bears the title of On the Perfection of
Man’s Righteousness. The distribution of the matter in this work follows
that of the treatise to which it is an answer. First of all (1-16), the “ratiocinations”
are taken up one by one and briefly answered. As they all concern sin, and
have for their object to prove that man cannot be accounted a sinner unless
he is able, in his own power, wholly to avoid sin,-that is, to prove that a
plenary natural ability is the necessary basis of responsibility,-Augustin
argues per contra that man can entail a sinfulness on himself for
which and for the deeds of which he remains responsible, though he is no
longer able to avoid sin; thus admitting that for the race, plenary ability
must stand at the root of sinfulness. Next (17-22) he discusses the passages
which Coelestius had advanced in defence of his teachings, viz., (1) passages
in which God commands men to be without sin, which Augustin meets by saying
that the point is, whether these commands are to be fulfilled without
God’s aid, in the body of this death, while absent from the Lord (17-20);
and (2) passages in which God declares that His commandments are not
grievous, which Augustin meets by explaining that all God’s commandments are
fulfilled only by Love, which finds nothing grievous; and that this
love is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, without whom we have
only fear, to which the commandments are not only grievous, but impossible.
Lastly, Augustin patiently follows Coelestius through his odd “oppositions of
texts,” explaining carefully all that he had adduced, in an orthodox sense
(23-42). In closing, he takes up Coelestius’ statement, that “it is quite
possible for man not to sin even in word, if God so will,” pointing out how
he avoids saying “if God give him His help,” and then proceeds to distinguish
carefully between the differing assertions of sinlessness that may be made.
To say that any man ever lived, or will live, without needing forgiveness, is
to contradict Rom. v. 12, and must imply that he does not need a Saviour,
against Matt. ix. 12, 13. To say that after his sins have been forgiven, any
one has ever remained without sin, contradicts I John i. 8 and Matt. vi. 12.
Yet, if God’s help be allowed, this contention is not so wicked as the other;
and the great heresy is to deny the necessity of God’s constant grace, for
which we pray when we say, “Lead us not into temptation.”
Tidings were now (416) beginning to reach
Africa of what was doing in the East. There was diligently circulated
everywhere, and came into Augustin’s hands, an epistle of Pelagius’ own
“filled with vanity,” in which he boasted that fourteen bishops had approved
his assertion that “man can live without sin, and easily keep the
commandments if he wishes,” and had thus “shut the mouth of opposition in
confusion,” and “broken up the whole band of wicked conspirators against
him.” Soon afterwards a copy of an “apologetical paper,” in which Pelagius
used the authority of the Palestinian bishops against his adversaries, not
altogether without disingenuousness, was sent by him to Augustin through the
hands of a common acquaintance, Charus by name. It was not accompanied,
however, by any letter from Pelagius; and Augustin wisely refrained from
making public use of it. Towards midsummer Orosius came with more authentic
information, and bearing letters from Jerome and Heros and Lazarus. It was
apparently before his coming that a controversial sermon was preached, only a
fragment of which has come down to us. So far as we can learn from the extant
part, its subject seems to have been the relation of prayer to Pelagianism;
and what we have, opens with a striking anecdote: “When these two
petitions-`Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors,’ and `Lead us
not into temptation’-are objected to the Pelagians, what do you think they
reply? I was horrified, my brethren, when I heard it. I did not, indeed, hear
it with my own ears; but my holy brother and fellow-bishop Urbanus, who used
to be presbyter here, and now is bishop of Sicca,” when he was in Rome, and
was arguing with one who held these opinions, pressed him with the weight of
the Lord’s Prayer, and “what do you think he replied to him? `We ask God,’ he
said, `not to lead us into temptation, lest we should suffer something that
is not in our power,-lest I should be thrown from my horse; lest I should
break my leg; lest a robber should slay me, and the like. For these things,’
he said, `are not in my power; but for overcoming the temptations of my sins,
I both have ability if I wish to use it, and am not able to receive God’s
help.’ You see, brethren,” the good bishop adds, “how malignant this heresy
is: you see how it horrifies all of you. Have a care that you be not taken by
it.” He then presses the general doctrine of prayer as proving that all good
things come from God, whose aid is always necessary to us, and is always
attainable by prayer; and closes as follows: “Consider, then, these things,
my brethren, when any one comes to you and says to you, `What, then, are we
to do if we have nothing in our power, unless God gives all things? God will
not then crown us, but He will crown Himself.’ You already see that this
comes from that vein: it is a vein, but it has poison in it; it is stricken
by the serpent; it is not sound. For what Satan is doing to-day is seeking to
cast out from the Church by the poison of heretics, just as he once cast out
from Paradise by the poison of the serpent. Let no one tell you that this one
was acquitted by the bishops: there was an acquittal, but it was his
confession, so to speak, his amendment, that was acquitted. For what he said
before the bishops seemed catholic; but what he wrote in his books, the
bishops who pronounced the acquittal were ignorant of. And perchance he was
really convinced and amended. For we ought not to despair of the man who
perchance preferred to be united to the catholic faith, and fled to its grace
and aid. Perchance this was what happened. But, in any event, it was not the
heresy that was acquitted, but the man who denied the heresy.”
The coming of Orosius must have dispelled
any lingering hope that the meaning of the council’s finding was that
Pelagius had really recanted. Councils were immediately assembled at Carthage
and Mileve, and the documents which Orosius had brought were read before
them. We know nothing of their proceedings except what we can gather from the
letters which they sent to Innocent at Rome, seeking his aid in their
condemnation of the heresy now so nearly approved in Palestine. To these two
official letters, Augustin, in company with four other bishops, added a third
private letter, in which they took care that Innocent should be informed on
all the points necessary to his decision. This important letter begins almost
abruptly with a characterization of Pelagianism as inimical to the grace of
God, and has grace for its subject throughout. It accounts for the action of
the Palestinian synod, as growing out of a misunderstanding of Pelagius’
words, in which he seemed to acknowledge grace, which these catholic bishops
understood naturally to mean that grace of which they read in the Scriptures,
and which they were accustomed to preach to their people,-the grace by which
we are justified from iniquity, and saved from weakness; while he meant
nothing more than that by which we are given free will at our creation. “For
if these bishops had understood that he meant only that grace which we have
in common with the ungodly and with all, along with whom we are men, while he
denied that by which we are Christians and the sons of God, they not only
could not have patiently listened to him,-they could not even have borne him
before their eyes.” The letter then proceeds to point out the difference
between grace and natural gifts, and between grace and the law, and to trace
out Pelagius’ meaning when he speaks of grace, and when he contends that man
can be sinless without any really inward aid. It suggests that Pelagius be
sent for, and thoroughly examined by Innocent, or that he should be examined
by letter or in his writings; and that he be not cleared until he
unequivocally confessed the grace of God in the catholic sense, and
anathematized the false teachings in the books attributed to him. The book of
Pelagius which was answered in the treatise On Nature and Grace was
enclosed, with this letter, with the most important passages marked: and it
was suggested that more was involved in the matter than the fate of one
single man, Pelagius, who, perhaps, was already brought to a better mind; the
fate of multitudes already led astray, or yet to be deceived by these false
views, was in danger.
At about this same time (417), the
tireless bishop sent a short letter to a Hilary, who seems to be Hilary of
Norbonne, which is interesting from its undertaking to convey a
characterization of Pelagianism to one who was as yet ignorant of it. It thus
brings out what Augustin conceived to be its essential features. “An effort
has been made,” we read, “to raise a certain new heresy, inimical to the
grace of Christ, against the Church of Christ. It is not yet openly separated
from the Church. It is the heresy of men who dare to attribute so much power
to human weakness that they contend that this only belongs to God’s
grace,-that we are created with free will and the possibility of not sinning,
and that we receive God’s commandments which are to be fulfilled by us; but,
for keeping and fulfilling these commandments, we do not need any divine aid.
No doubt, the remission of sins is necessary for us; for we have no power to
right what we have done wrong in the past. But for avoiding and overcoming
sins in the future, for conquering all temptations with virtue, the human
will is sufficient by its natural capacity without any aid of God’s grace.
And neither do infants need the grace of the Saviour, so as to be liberated
by it through His baptism from perdition, seeing that they have contracted no
contagion of damnation from Adam.” He engages Hilary in the destruction of
this heresy, which ought to be “concordantly condemned and anathematized by
all who have hope in Christ,” as a “pestiferous impiety,” and excuses himself
for not undertaking its full refutation in a brief letter. A much more
important letter was sent off, at about the same time, to John of Jerusalem,
who had conducted the first Palestinian examination of Pelagius, and had
borne a prominent part in the synod at Diospolis. He sent with it a copy of
Pelagius’ book which he had examined in his treatise On Nature and Grace,
as well as a copy of that reply itself, and asked John to send him an
authentic copy of the proceedings at Diospolis. He took this occasion
seriously to warn his brother bishop against the wiles of Pelagius, and
begged him, if he loved Pelagius, to let men see that he did not so love him
as to be deceived by him. He pointed out that in the book sent with the
letter, Pelagius called nothing the grace of God except nature; and that he
affirmed, and even vehemently contended, that by free will alone, human
nature was able to suffice for itself for working righteousness and keeping
all God’s commandments; whence any one could see that he opposed the grace of
God of which the apostles spoke in Rom. vii. 24, 25, and contradicted, as
well, all the prayers and benedictions of the Church by which blessings were
sought for men from God’s grace. “If you love Pelagius, then,” he continued,
“let him, too, love you as himself,-nay, more than himself; and let him not
deceive you. For when you hear him confess the grace of God and the aid of
God, you think he means what you mean by it. But let him be openly asked
whether he desires that we should pray God that we sin not; whether he
proclaims the assisting grace of God, without which we would do much evil;
whether he believes that even children who have not yet been able to do good
or evil are nevertheless, on account of one man by whom sin entered into the
world, sinners in him, and in need of being delivered by the grace of
Christ.” If he openly denies such things, Augustin would be pleased to hear
of it.
Thus we see the great bishop sitting in
his library at Hippo, placing his hands on the two ends of the world. That
nothing may be lacking to the picture of his universal activity, we have
another letter from him, coming from about this same time, that exhibits his
care for the individuals who had placed themselves in some sort under his
tutelage. Among the refugees from Rome in the terrible times when Alaric was
a second time threatening the city, was a family of noble women,-Proba, Juliana,
and Demetrias, -grandmother, mother, and daughter,-who, finding an asylum in
Africa, gave themselves to God’s service, and sought the friendship and
counsel of Augustin. In 413 the granddaughter “took the veil” under
circumstances that thrilled the Christian world, and brought out letters of
congratulation and advice from Augustin and Jerome, and also from Pelagius.
This letter of Pelagius seems not to have fallen into Augustin’s way until
now (416): he was so disturbed by it that he wrote to Juliana a long letter
warning her against its evil counsels. It was so shrewdly phrased, that, at
first sight, Augustin was himself almost persuaded that it did somehow
acknowledge the grace of God; but when he compared it with others of
Pelagius’ writings, he saw that here, too, he was using ambiguous phrases in
a non-natural sense. The object of his letter (in which Alypius is conjoined,
as joint author) to Juliana is to warn her and her holy daughter against all
opinions that opposed the grace of God, and especially against the covert
teaching of the letter of Pelagius to Demetrias. “In this book,” he says,
“were it lawful for such an one to read it, a virgin of Christ would read
that her holiness and all her spiritual riches are to spring from no other
source than herself; and thus before she attains to the perfection of
blessedness, she would learn-which may God forbid!-to be ungrateful to God.”
Then, after quoting the words of Pelagius, in which he declares that “earthly
riches came from others, but your spiritual riches no one can have conferred
on you but yourself; for these, then, you are justly praised, for these you
are deservedly to be preferred to others,-for they can exist only from
yourself and in yourself,” he continues: “Far be it from any virgin to listen
to statements like these. Every virgin of Christ understands the innate
poverty of the human heart, and therefore declines to be adorned otherwise
than by the gifts of her spouse.... Let her not listen to him who says, `No
one can confer them on you but yourself, and they cannot exist except from
you and in you:’ but to him who says, `We have this treasure in earthen
vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.’ And
be not surprised that we speak of these things as yours, and not from you;
for we speak of daily bread as `ours,’ but yet add `give it to us,’ lest it
should be thought it was from ourselves.” Again, he warns her that grace is
not mere knowledge any more than mere nature; and that Pelagius, even when
using the word “grace,” means no inward or efficient aid, but mere nature or
knowledge or forgiveness of past sins; and beseeches her not to forget the
God of all grace from whom (Wisdom i. 20, 21) Demetrias had that very virgin
continence which was so justly her boast.
With the opening of 417, came the answers
from Innocent to the African letters. And although they were marred by much
boastful language concerning the dignity of his see, which could not but be
distasteful to the Africans, they admirably served their purpose in the
satisfactory manner in which they, on the one hand, asserted the necessity of
the “daily grace, and help of God,” for our good living, and, on the other,
determined that the Pelagians had denied this grace, and declared their
leaders Pelagius and Coelestius deprived of the communion of the Church until
they should “recover their senses from the wiles of the Devil by whom they
are held captive according to his will.” Augustin may be pardoned for
supposing that a condemnation pronounced by two provincial synods in Africa,
and heartily concurred in by the Roman bishop, who had already at Jerusalem
been recognized as in some sort the fit arbiter of this Western dispute,
should settle the matter. If Pelagius had been before jubilant, Augustin
found this a suitable time for his rejoicing.
About the same time with Innocent’s
letters, the official proceedings of the synod of Diospolis at last reached
Africa, and Augustin lost no time (early in 417) in publishing a full account
and examination of them, thus providing us with that inestimable boon, a full
contemporary history of the chief events connected with the controversy up to
this time. This treatise, which is addressed to Aurelius, bishop of Carthage,
opens with a brief explanation of Augustin’s delay heretofore, in discussing
Pelagius’ defence of himself in Palestine, as due to his not having received
the official copy of the Proceedings of the Council at Diospolis (1-2a).
Then Augustin proceeds at once to discuss at length the doings of the synod,
point by point, following the official record step by step (2b-45). He
treats at large here eleven items in the indictment, with Pelagius’ answers
and the synod’s decision, showing that in all of them Pelagius either
explained away his heresy, taking advantage of the ignorance of the judges of
his books, or else openly repudiated or anathematized it. When the twelfth
it |