This letter was written not long after the issue of Zosimus’ ” Tractoria,” demanding the signature of all to African orthodoxy; and Augustine sends Optatus ” copies of the recent letters which have been sent forth from the Roman see, whether specially to the African bishops or generally to all bishops,” on the Pelagian controversy, “lest perchance they had not yet reached ” his correspondent, who, it is very evi— dent, he was anxious should thoroughly realize ” that the authors, or certainly the most energetic and noted teachers,” of these new heresies, “had been condemned in the whole Christian world by the vigilance of episcopal councils aided by the Saviour who keeps His Church, as well as by two venerable overseers of the Apostolical see, Pope Innocent and Pope Zosimus, unless they should show repentance by being convinced and reformed.” To this zeal we owe it that the letter contains an extract from Zosimus’ ” Tractoria,” one of the two brief fragments of that document that have reached our day.

There was another ecclesiastic in Rome, besides Zosimus, who was strongly suspected of favoring the Pelagians - the presbyter Sixtus, who afterwards became Pope Sixtus III. But when Zosimus sent forth his condemnation of Pelagianism, Sixtus sent also a short letter to Africa addressed to Aurelius of Carthage, which, though brief, indicated a considerable vigor against the heresy which he was commonly believed to have before defended,108 and which claimed him as its own.109 Some months afterwards, he sent another similar, ~ut longer, letter to Augustine and Alypius, more fully expounding his rejection of ” the fatal dogma ” of Pelagius, and his acceptance of” that grace of God freely given by Him to small and great, to which Pelagius’ dogma was diametrically opposed.” Augustine was overjoyed with these developments. He quickly replied in a short letter 110 in which he expresses the delight 10s See “Epist.” 194. 1. 11o ” Epist.” 191.

109 See ” Epist.” 191. 1.

he has in learning from Sixtus’ own hand that he is not a defender of Pelagius, but a preacher of grace. And close upon the heels of this he sent another much longer letter,111 in which he discusses the subtler arguments of the Pelagians with an anxious care that seems to bear witness to his desire to confirm and support his correspondent in his new opinions. Both letters testify to Augustine’s approval of the persecuting measures which had been instituted by the Roman see in obedience to the emperor; and urge on Sixtus his duty not only to bring the open heretics to deserved punishment, but to track out those who spread their poison secretly, and even to remember those whom he had formerly heard announcing the error before it had been condemned, and who were now silent through fear, and to bring them either to open recantation of their former beliefs, or to punishment. It is pleasanter to recall our thoughts to the dialectic of these letters. The greater part of the second is given to a discussion of the gratuitousness of grace, which, just because grace, is given to no preceding merits. Many subtle objections to this doctrine were brought forward by the Pelagians. They said that “free will was taken away if we asserted that man did not have even a good will without the aid of God”; that we made “God an accepter of persons, if we believed that without any preceding merits He had mercy on whom He would, and whom He would He called, and whom He would He made religious ”; that H it was unjust, in one and the same case, to deliver one and punish another ”; that, if such a doctrine is preached, ” men who do not wish to live rightly and faithfully, will excuse themselves by saying that they have done nothing evil by living ill, since they have not received the grace by which they might live well”; that it is a puzzle “how sin can pass over to the children of the faithful, when it has been remitted to the parents in baptism ”; that “children respond truly by the mouth of their sponsers that they believe in remission of sins, but not because sins are remitted to them, but because they believe that sins are remitted in the church or in baptism to those in whom they are found, not to those in whom they do not exist,” and consequently they said that “they were unwilling that infants should be so baptized unto remission of sins as if this remission took place in them,” for (they contend) ” they have no sin; but they are to be baptized, although without sin, with the same rite of baptism through which remission of sins takes place in any that are sinners.” This last objection is especially interesting,112. because it furnishes us with the reply which the Pelagians made to the argument that Augustine so strongly pressed against them from the very act and ritual of baptism, as implying remission of sins.113 His rejoinder to it here is to point to the other parts of the same ritual, and to ask why, then, infants are exorcised and exsuffiated in baptism. “For, it cannot be doubted that this is done fictitiously, if the Devil does not rule over them; but if he rules over them, and they are therefore not falsely exorcised and exsuffiated, why does that prince of sinners rule over them except because of sin? ” On the fundamental matter of the gratuitousness of grace, this letter is very explicit. ” If we seek for the deserving of hardening, we shall find it… . But if we seek for the deserving of pity, we shall not find it; for there is none, lest grace be made a vanity if it is not given gratis, but rendered to merits. But, should we say that faith preceded and in it there is desert of grace, what desert did man have before faith that he should receive faith? For, what did he have that he did not receive? and if he received it, why does he glory as if he received it not? For as man would not have wisdom, understanding, prudence, fortitude, knowledge, piety, fear of God, unless he had received (according to the prophet) the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of prudence and fortitude, of knowledge and piety and the fear of God; as he would not have justice, love, continence, except the spirit was received of whom the apostle says, ’ For you did not receive the spirit of fear, but of virtue, and love, and continence: ’ so he would not have faith unless he received the spirit of faith of whom the same apostle says, ‘Having then the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore spoke,” we too believe and therefore speak.’ But that He is not received by desert, but by His mercy who has mercy on whom He will, is manifestly shown where he says of himself, ’ I have obtained mercy to be faithful.’ ” ” If we should say that the merit of prayer precedes, that the gift of grace may follow, … even prayer itself is found among the gifts of grace” (Rom. viii. 26). “It remains, then, that faith itself, whence all righteousness takes beginning; … it remains, I say, that even faith itself is not to be attributed to the human will which they extol, nor to any preceding merits, since from it begin whatever good things are merits: but it is to be confessed to be the gratuitous gift of God, since we consider it true grace, that is, without merits, inasmuch as we read in the same epistle, ‘God divides out the measure of faith to each’ (Rom. xii. 3). Now, good works are done by man, but faith is wrought in man, and without it these are not done by any man. For all that is not of faith is siri” (Rom. xiv. 23).

By the same messenger who carried this important letter to Sixtus, Augustine sent also a letter to Mercator,114 an African layman who was then apparently at Rome, but who was afterwards (in 429) to render service by instructing the Emperor Theodosius as to the nature and history of Pelagianism, and so preventing the appeal of the Pelagians to him from being granted. Now he appears as an inquirer: Augustine, while at Carthage, had received a letter from him in which he had consulted him on certain questions that the Pelagians had raised, but in such a manner as to indicate his opposition to them. Press of business had compelled the postponement of the reply until this later date. One of the questions that Mercator had put concerned the Pelagian account of infants sharing in the one baptism unto remission of sins, which we have seen Augustine answering when writing to Sixtus. In this letter he replies: “Let them, then, hear the Lord (Jno. iii. 36). Infants, therefore, who are made believers by others, by whom they are brought to baptism, are, of course, unbelievers by others, if they are in the hands of such as do not believe that they should be brought, inasmuch as they believe they are nothing profited; and accordingly, if they believe by believers, and have eternal life, they are unbelievers by unbelievers, and shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on them. For it is not said, ’ it comes on them,’ but ’ it abideth on them,’ because it was on them from the beginning, and will not be taken from them except by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord… . Therefore, when children are baptized, the confession is made that they are believers, and it is not to be doubted that those who are not believers are condemned: let them, then, dare to say now, if they can, that they contract no evil from their origin to be condemned by the just God, and have no contagion of sin.” The other matter on which Mercator sought light concerned the statement that universal death proved universal sin: 115 he reported that the Pelagians replied that not even death was universal - that Enoch, for instance, and Elijah, had not died. Augustine adds those who are to be found living at the second advent, who are not to die, but be ” changed”; and replies that Rom. v. 12 is perfectly explicit that there is no death in the world except that which comes from sin, and that God is a Saviour, and we cannot at all “deny that He is able to do that, now, in any that he wishes, without death, which we undoubtingly believe is to be done in so many after death.” He adds that the difficult question is not why Enoch and Elijah did not die, if death is the punishment of sin; but why, such being the case, the justified ever die; and he refers his correspondent to his book ” On the Baptism of Infants ” 116 for a resolution of this greater difficulty.

It was probably at the very end of 418 that Augustine wrote a letter of some length 111 to Asellicus, in reply to one which he had written on ” ~voiding the deception of Judaism,” to the primate of the Bizacene province, and which that ecclesiastic had sent to Augustine for answering. He discusses in this the law of the Old Testament. He opens by pointing out that the apostle forbids Christians to Judaize (Gal. ii. 14- 16), and explains that it is not merely the ceremonial law that we may not depend upon, “but also what is said in the law, ’ Thou shalt not covet ’ (which no one, of course, doubts is to be said. to Christians too), does not justify man, except by faith in Jesus Christ and the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” He then expounds the use of the law: “This, then, is the usefulness of the law: that it shows man to himself, so that he may know his weakness, and see how, by the prohibition, carnal concupiscence is rather increased than healed… . The use of the law is, thus, to convince man of his weakness, and force him to implore the medicine of grace that is in Christ.” “Since these things are so,” he adds, “those who rejoice that they are Israelites after the flesh, and glory in the law apart from the grace of Christ, these are those concerning whom the apostle said that ‘being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and wishing to establish their own, they are not subject to God’s righteousness; ’ since he calls ‘God’s righteousness ’ that which is from God to man; and ’ their own,’ what they think that the commandments suffice for them to do without the help and gift of Him who gave the law. But they are like those who, while they profess to be Christians, so oppose the grace of Christ, that they suppose that they fulfil the divine commands by human powers, … and, ‘wishing to establish their own,’ are ‘not subject to the righteousness of God,’ and so, not indeed in name, but yet in error, Judaize. This sort of men found heads for themselves in Pelagius and Ccelestius, the most acute asserters of this impiety, who by God’s recent judgment, through his diligent and faithful servants, have been deprived even of catholic communion, and, on account of an impenitent heart, persist still in their condemnation.”

At the beginning of 419, a considerable work was published by Augustine on one of the more remote corollaries which the Pelagians drew from his teachings. It had come to his ears, that they asserted that his doctrine condemned marriage: ” If only sinful offspring come from marriage,” they asked, “is not marriage itself made a sinful thing?” The book which Augustine composed in answer to this query, he dedicated to, and sent along with an explanatory letter to, the Comes Valerius, a trusted servant of the Emperor Honorius, and one of the most steady opponents at court of the Pelagian heresy. Augustine explains 118 why he has desired to address the book to him: first, because Valerius was a striking example of those continent husbands of which that age furnishes us with many instances, and, therefore, the discussion would have especial interest for him; secondly, because of his eminence as an opponent of Pelagianism; and, thirdly, because Augustine had learned that he had read a Pelagian document in which Augustine was charged with condemning marriage by defending original sin.119 The book in question is the first book of the treatise ” On Marriage and Concupiscence.” It is, naturally, tinged, or rather stained, with the prevalent ascetic notions of the day. Its doctrine is that marriage is good, and God is the maker of the offspring that comes from it, although now there can be no begetting and hence no birth without sin. Sin made concupiscence, and now concupiscence perpetuates sinners. The specific object of the work, as it states it itself, is ” to distinguish between the evil of carnal concupiscence, from which man, who is born therefrom, contracts original sin, and the good of marriage ” (i. 1). After a brief introduction, in which he explains why he writes, and why he addresses his book to Valerius (1-2), Augustine points out that conjugal chastity, like its higher sistergrace of continence, is God’s gift. Thus copulation, but only for the propagation of children, has divine allowance (3-5). Lust, or “shameful concupiscence,” however, he teaches, is not of the essence, but only an accident, of marriage. It did not exist in Eden, although true marriage existed there; but arose from, and therefore only after, sin (6-7). Its addition to marriage does not destroy the good of marriage: it only conditions the character of the offspring (8). Hence it is that the apostle allows marriage, but forbids the “disease of desire ” (1 Thess. iv. 3-5); and hence the Old Testament saints were even permitted more than one wife, because, by multiplying wives, it was not lust, but offspring, that was increased (9-10). Nevertheless, fecundity is not to be thought the only good of marriage: true marriage can exist without offspring, and even without cohabitation (11-13), and cohabitation is now, under the New Testament, no longer a duty as it was under the Old Testament (14-15), but the apostle praises continence above it. We must, then, distinguish between the goods of marriage, and seek the best (16-19). But thus it follows that it is not due to any inherent and necessary evil in marriage, but only to the presence, now, of concupiscence in all cohabitation, that children are born under sin, even the children of the regenerate, just as from the seed of olives only oleasters grow (20- 24). And yet again, concupiscence is not itself sin in the regenerate; it is remitted as guilt in baptism: but it is the daughter of sin, and it is the mother of sin, and in the unregenerate it is itself sin, as to yield to it is even to the regenerate (25- 39). Finally, as so often, the testimony of Ambrose is appealed to, and it is shown that he too teaches that all born from cohabitation are born guilty (40). In this book, Augustine certainly seems to teach that the bond of connection by which Adam’s sin is conveyed to his offspring is not mere descent, or heredity, or mere inclusion in him, in a realistic sense, as partakers of the same numerical nature, but concupiscence. Without concupiscence in the act of generation, the offspring would not be a partaker of Adam’s sin. This he had taught also previously, as, e.g., in the treatise “On Original Sin,” from which a few words may be profitably quoted as succinctly summing up the teaching of this book on the subject: “It is, then, manifest, that that must not be laid to the account of marriage, in the absence· of which even marriage would still have existed… . Such, however, is the present condition of mortal men, that the connubial intercourse and lust are at the same time in action… . Hence it follows that infants, although incapable of sinning, are yet not born without the contagion of sin, … not, indeed, because of what is lawful, but on account of that which is unseemly: for, from what is lawful, nature is born; from what is unseemly, sin” (42).

Towards the end of the same year (419), Augustine was led to take up again the vexed question of the origin of the soul - both in a new letter to Optatus,120 and by the zeal of the same monk, Renatus, who had formerly brought Optatus’ inquiries to his notice - in an elaborate treatise entitled “On the Soul and its Origin,” by way of reply to a rash adventure of a young man named Vincentius Victor, who blamed him for his uncertainty on such a subject, and attempted to determine all the puzzles of the question, though, as Augustine insists, on assumptions that were partly Pelagian and partly worse. Optatus had written in the hope that Augustine had heard by this time from Jerome, in reply to the treatise he had sent him on this subject. Augustine, in answering his letter, expresses his sorrow that he has not yet been worthy of an answer from Jerome, although five years had passed away since he wrote, but his continued hope that such an answer will in due time come. For himself, he confesses that he has not yet been able to see how the soul can contract sin from Adam and yet not itself be contracted from Adam; and he regrets that Optatus, although holding that God creates each soul for its birth, has not sent him the proofs on which he depends for that opinion, nor met its obvious difficulties. He rebukes Optatus for confounding the question of whether God makes the soul, with the entirely different one of how he makes it, whether ex propagine or sine propagine. No one doubts that God makes the soul, as no one doubts that He makes the body. But when we consider how he makes it, sobriety and vigilance become necessary lest we should unguardedly fall into the Pelagian heresy. Augustine defends his attitude of uncertainty, and enumerates the points as to which he has no doubt: viz., that the soul is spirit, not body; that it is rational or intellectual; that it is not of the nature of God, but is so far a mortal creature that it is capable of deterioration and of alienation from the life of God, and so far immortal that after this life it lives on in bliss or punishment for ever; that it was not incarnated because of, or according to, preceding deserts acquired in a previous existence, yet that it is under the curse of sin which it derives from Adam, and therefore in all cases alike needs redemption in Christ. The whole subject of the nature and origin of the soul, however, is most fully discussed in the four books which are gathered together under the common title of ” On the Soul and its Origin.” Vincentius Victor was a young layman who had recently been converted from the Rogatian heresy; on being shown by his friend Peter, a presbyter, a small work of Augustine’s on the origin of the soul, he expressed surprise that so great a man could profess ignorance on a matter so intimate to his very being, and, receiving encouragement, wrote a book for Peter in which he attacked and tried to solve all the difficulties of the subject. Peter received the work with transports of delighted admiration; but Renatus, happening that way, looked upon it with distrust, and, finding that Augustine was spoken of in it with scant courtesy, felt it his duty to send him a copy of it, which he did in the summer of 419. It was probably not until late in the following autumn that Augustine found time to take up the matter; but then he wrote to Renatus, to Peter, and two books to Victor himself, and it is these four books together which constitute the treatise that has come down to us. The first book is a letter to Renatus, and is introduced by an expression of thanks to him for sending Victor’s book, and of kindly feeling towards and appreciation for the high qualities of Victor himself (1-3). Then Victor’s errors are pointed out- as to the nature of the soul (4-9), including certain far-reaching corollaries that flow from these (10-15), as well as, as to the origin of the soul (16-30); and the letter closes with some remarks on the danger of arguing from the silence of Scripture (30), on the self-contradictions of Victor (34), and on the errors that must be avoided in any theory of the origin of the soul that hopes to be acceptable - to wit, that souls become sinful by an alien original sin, that unbaptized infants need no salvation, that souls sinned in a previous state, and that they are condemned for sins which they have not committed but would have committed had they lived longer. The second book is a letter to Peter, warning him of the responsibility that rests on him as Victor’s trusted friend and a clergyman, to correct Victor’s errors, and reproving him for the uninstructed delight he had taken in Victor’s crudities. It opens by asking Peter what was the occasion of the great joy which Victor’s book brought him? could it be that he learned from it, for the first time, the old and primary truths it contained? (2-3); or was it due to the new errors that it proclaimedseven of which he enumerates? (4-16). Then, after animadverting on the dilemma in which Victor stood, either of being forced to withdraw his violent assertion of creationism, or else of making God unjust in His dealings with new souls (18), he speaks of Victor’s unjustifiable dogmatism in the matter (19- 21), and closes with severely solemn words to Peter on his responsibility in the premises (22-23). In the third and fourth books, which are addressed to Victor, the polemic, of course, reaches its height. The third book is entirely taken up with pointing out to Victor, as a father to a son, the errors into which he has fallen, and which, in accordance with his professions of readiness for amendment, he ought to correct. Eleven are enumerated: 1. That the soul was made by God out of Himself (3-7) ; 2. That God will continuously create souls forever (8); 3. That the soul has desert of good before birth (9); 4. (contradictingly) That the soul has desert of evil before birth (10) ; 5. That the soul deserved to be sinful before any sin (11); 6. That unbaptized infants are saved (12); 7. That what God predestinates may not occur (13); 8. That Wisd. iv.11 is spoken of infants (14); 9. That some of the mansions with the Father are outside of God’s kingdom (15-17); 10. That the sacrifice of Christ’s blood may be offered for the unbaptized (18); 11. That the unbaptized may attain at the resurrection even to the kingdom of heaven (19). The book closes by reminding Victor of his professions of readiness to correct his errors, and warning him against the obstinacy that makes the heretic (20-23). The fourth book deals with the more personal elements of the controversy, and discusses the points in which Victor had expressed dissent from Augustine. It opens with a statement of the two grounds of complaint that Victor had urged against Augustine; viz., that he refused to express a confident opinion as to the origin of the soul, and that he affirmed that the soul was not corporeal, but spirit (1-2). These two complaints are then taken up at length (2- 16 and 17-37). To the first, Augustine replies that man’s knowledge is at best limited, and often most limited about the things nearest to him; we do not know the constitution of our bodies; and, above most others, this subject of the origin of the soul is one on which no one but God is a competent witness. Who remembers his birth? Who remembers what was before birth? But this is just one of the subjects on which God has not spoken unambiguously in the Scriptures. Would it not be better, then, for Victor to imitate Augustine’s cautious ignorance, than that Augustine should imitate Victor’s rash assertion of errors? That the soul is not corporeal, Augustine argues (18-35) from the Scriptures and from the phenomena of dreams; and then shows, in opposition to Victor’s trichotomy, that the Scriptures teach the identity of ” soul ” and ” spirit ” (36-37). The book closes with a renewed enumeration of Victor’s eleven errors (38), and a final admonition to his rashness (39). It is pleasant to know that Augustine found in this case, also, that righteousness is the fruit of the faithful wounds of a friend. Victor accepted the rebuke, and professed his better instruction at the hands of his modest but resistless antagonist.

The controversy now entered upon a new stage. Among the evicted bishops of Italy who refused to sign Zosimus’ ” Epistola Tractoria,” Julian of Eclanum was easily the first, and at this point he appears as the champion of Pelagianism. It was a sad fate that arrayed this beloved son of his old friend against Augustine, just when there seemed to be reason to hope that the controversy was at an end, and the victory won, and the plaudits of the world were greeting him as the saviour of the Church.121 But the now fast-aging bishop was to find, that, in this “very confident young man,” he had yet to meet the most persistent and most dangerous advocate of the new doctrines that had arisen. Julian had sent, at an earlier period, two letters to Zosimus, one of which has come down to us as a “Confession of Faith,” and the other of which attempted to approach Augustinian forms of speech as much as possible; the object of both being to gain standing ground in the Church for the Italian Pelagians. Now he appears as a Pelagian controversialist; and in opposition to the book ” On Marriage and Concupiscence,” which Augustine had sent Valerius, he published an extended work in four thick books addressed to Turbantius. Extracts from the first of these books were sent by some one to Valerius, and were placed by him in the hands of Alypius, who was then in Italy, for transmission to Augustine. Meanwhile, a letter had been sent to Rome by Julian,122 designed to strengthen the cause of Pelagianism there; and a similar one, in the names of the eighteen Pelagianizing Italian bishops, was addressed to Rufus, bishop of Thessalonica, and representative of the Roman see in that portion of the Eastern Empire which was regarded as ecclesiastically a part of the West, the design of which was to obtain the powerful support of this important magnate, perhaps, also, a refuge from persecution within his jurisdiction. These two letters came into the hands of the new Pope, Boniface, who gave them also to Alypius for transmission to Augustine. Thus provided, Alypius returned to Africa. The tactics of all these writings of Julian were essentially the same; he attempted not so much to defend Pelagianism, as to attack Augustinianism, and thus literally to carry the war into Africa. He insisted that the corruption of nature which Augustine taught was nothing else than Manichreism; that the sovereignty of grace, as taught by him, was only the attribution of “acceptance of persons,” and partiality, to God; and that his doctrine of predestination was mere fatalism. He accused the anti-Pelagians of denying the goodness of the nature that God had created, of the marriage that He had ordained, of the law that He had given, of the free will that He had implanted in man, as well as the perfection of His saints.123 He insisted that this teaching also did dishonor to baptism itself which it professed so to honor, inasmuch as it asserted the continuance of concupiscence after baptism - and thus taught that baptism does not take away sins, but only shaves them off as one shaves his beard, and leaves the roots whence the sins may grow anew, and need cutting down again. He complained bitterly of the way in which Pelagianism had been condemned - that bishops had been compelled to sign a definition of dogma, not in council assembled, but sitting at home; and he demanded a rehearing of the whole case before a lawful council, lest the doctrine of the Manichreans should be forced upon the acceptance of the world.

Augustine felt a strong desire to see the whole work of Julian against his book” On Marriage and Concupiscence” before he undertook a reply to the excerpts sent him by Valerius; but he did not feel justified in delaying obedience to that officer’s request, and so wrote at once two treatises, one an answer to these excerpts, for the benefit of Valerius, constituting the second book of his ” On Marriage and Concupiscence ”; and the other, a far more elaborate examination of the letters sent by Boniface, which bears the title, ” Against Two Letters of the Pelagians.” The purpose of the second book of ” On Marriage and Concupiscence,” Augustine himself states, in its introductory sentences, to be” to reply to the taunts of his adversaries with all the truthfulness and scriptural authority he could command.” He begins (2) by identifying the source of the extracts forwarded to him by Valerius, with Julian’s work against his first book, and then remarks upon the garbled form in which he is quoted in them (3-6), and passes on to state and refute Julian’s charge that the Catholics had turned Manichi:eans (7- 9). At this point, the refutation of Julian begins in good earnest, and the method that he proposes to use is stated; viz., to adduce the adverse statements, and refute them one by one (10). Beginning at the beginning, he quotes first the title of the paper sent him, which declares that it is directed against “those who condemn matrimony, and ascribe its fruit to the Devil ” (11), which certainly, says Augustine, does not describe him or the Catholics. The next twenty chapters (10-30), accordingly, following Julian’s order, labor to prove that marriage is good, and ordained by God, but that its good includes fecundity indeed, but not concupiscence, which arose from sin, and contracts sin. It is next argued, that the doctrine of original sin does not imply an evil origin for man (31-51); and in the course of this argument, the following propositions are especially defended: that God makes offspring for good and bad alike, just as He sends the rain and sunshine on just and unjust (31-34); that God makes everything to be found in marriage except its fiaw, concupiscence (35-40); that marriage is not the cause of original sin, but only the channel through which it is transmitted (41-47); and that to assert that evil cannot arise from what is good leaves us in the clutches of that very Manichi:eism which is so unjustly charged against the Catholics - for, if evil be not eternal, what else was there from which it could arise but something good? (48-51). In concluding, Augustine recapitulates, and argues especially, that shameful concupiscence is of sin, and the author of sin, and was not in paradise (52-54); that children are made by God, and only marred by the Devil (55); that Julian, in admitting that Christ died for infants, admits that they need salvation (56); that what the Devil makes in children is not a substance, but an injury to a substance (57-58); and that to suppose that concupiscence existed in any form in paradise introduces incongruities in our conception of life in that abode of primeval bliss (59-60).

The long and important treatise, “Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” consists of four books, the first of which replies to the letter sent to Rome, and the other three to that sent to Thessalonica. After a short introduction, in which he thanks Boniface for his kindness, and gives reasons why heretical writings should be answered (1-3), Augustine begins at once to rebut the calumnies which the letter before him brings against the Catholics (4-28). These are seven in number: 1. That the Catholics destroy free will; to which Augustine replies that none are ” forced into sin by the necessity of their flesh,” but all sin by free will, though no man can have a righteous will save by God’s grace, and that it is really the Pelagians that destroy free will by exaggerating it (4-8); 2. That Augustine declares that such marriage as now exists is not of God (9) ; 3. That sexual desire and intercourse are made a device of the Devil, which is sheer Manichreism (10—11); 4. That the Old Testament saints are said to have died in sin (12) ; 5. That Paul and the other apostles are asserted to have been polluted by lust all their days; Augustine’s answer to which includes a running commentary on Rom. vii. 7 sq., in which (correcting his older exegesis) he shows that Paul is giving here a transcript of his own experience as a typical Christian (13-24); 6. That Christ is said not to have been free from sin (25); 7. That baptism does not give complete remission of sins, but leaves roots from which they may again grow; to which Augustine replies that baptism does remit all sins, but leaves concupiscence, which, although not sin, is the source of sin (26-28). Next, the positive part of Julian’s letter is taken up, and his profession of faith against the Catholics examined (29-41). The seven affirmations that Julian makes here are designed as the obverse of the seven charges against the Catholics. He believed: 1. That free will is in all by nature, and could not perish by Adam’s sin (29); 2. That marriage, as now existent, was ordained by God (30); 3. That sexual impulse and virility are from God (31-35); 4. That men are God’s work, and no one is forced to do good or evil unwillingly, but is assisted by grace to good, and incited by the Devil to evil (36- 38); 5. That the saints of the Old Testament were perfected in righteousness here, and so passed into eternal life (39); 6. That the grace of Christ (ambiguously meant) is necessary for all, and all children - even those of baptized parents - are to be baptized (40) ; 7. And that baptism givf,S full cleansing from all sins; to which Augustine pointedly asks, “What does it do for infants, then? ” (41). The book concludes with an answer to Julian’s conclusion, in which he demands a general council, and charges the Catholics with Manichreism.

The second, third, and fourth books deal with the letter to Rufus in a somewhat similar way, the second and third books being occupied with the calumnies brought against the Catholics, and the fourth with the claims made by the Pelagians. The second begins by repelling the charge of Manichreism brought against the Catholics (1—4), to which the pointed remark is added, that the Pelagians cannot hope to escape condemnation because they are willing to condemn another heresy; and then defends (with less success) the Roman clergy against the charge of prevarication in their dealing with the Pelagians (&-8), in the course of which all that can be said in defense of Zosimus’ wavering policy is said well and strongly. Next the charges against Catholic teaching are taken up and answered (9-16), especially the two important accusations that they maintain fate under the name of grace (9-12), and that they make God an” accepter of persons” ( 13-16). Augustine’s replies to these charges are in every way admirable. The charge of ” fate ” rests solely on the Catholic denial that grace is given according to preceding merits; but the Pelagians do not escape the same charge when they acknowledge that the “fates” of baptized and unbaptized infants do differ. It is, in truth, not a question of “fate,” but of gratuitous bounty; and “it is not the Catholics that assert fate under the name of grace, but the Pelagians that choose to call divine grace by the name of ‘fate’” (12). As to “acceptance of persons,” we must define what we mean by that. God certainly does not accept one’s ” person ” above another’s; He does not give to one rather than to another because He sees something to please Him in one rather than an another: quite the opposite. He gives of His bounty to one while giving all their due to all, as in the parable (Mt. xx. 9 sq.). To ask why He does this, is to ask in vain: the apostle answers by not answering (Rom. ix.) ; and before the dumb infants, who are yet made to differ, all objection to God is dumb. From this point, the book becomes an examination of the Pelagian doctrine of prevenient merit (17- 23), concluding that God gives all by grace from the beginning to the end of every process of doing good. 1. He commands the good; 2. He gives the desire to do it; and, 3. He gives the power to do it: and all, of His gratuitous mercy. The third book continues the discussion of the calumnies of the Pelagians against the Catholics, and enumerates and answers six of them: viz., that the Catholics teach, 1. That the Old Testament law was given, not to justify the obedient, but to serve as cause of greater sin (2-3); 2. That baptism does not give entire remission of sins, but the baptized are partly God’s and partly the Devil’s (4-5); 3. That the Holy Ghost did not assist virtue in the Old Testament (6-13); 4. That the Bible saints were not holy, but only less wicked than others (14- 15); 5. That Christ was a sinner by necessity of His flesh (doubtless, Julian’s inference from the doctrine of race-sin) (16); 6. That men will begin to fulfill God’s commandments only after the resurrection (17-23). Augustine shows that at the basis of all these calumnies lies either misapprehension or misrepresentation; and, in concluding the book, enumerates the three chief points in the Pelagian heresy, with the five claims growing out of them, of which they most boasted, and then elucidates the mutual relations of the three parties, catholics, Pelagians, and Manicheans, with reference to these points, showing that the catholics stand asunder from both the others, and condemn both (24-26). This conclusion is really a preparation for the fourth book, which takes up these five Pelagian claims, and, after showing the catholic position on them all in brief (1-3), discusses them in turn (4-19): viz., the praise of the creature (4-8), the praise of marriage (9), the praise of the law (10-11), the praise of free will (12-16), and the praise of the saints (17-18). At the end, Augustine calls on the Pelagians to cease to oppose the Manichreans, only to fall into as bad heresy as theirs (19) ; and then, in reply to their accusation that the Catholics were proclaiming novel doctrine, he adduces the testimony of Cyprian and Ambrose, both of whom had received Pelagius’ praise, on each of the three main points of Pelagianism (20-32),124 and then closes with the declaration that the ” impious and foolish doctrine,” as they called it, of the Catholics, is immemorial truth (33), and with a denial of the right of the Pelagians to ask for a general council to condemn them (34). All heresies do not need an ecumenical synod for their condemnation; usually it is best to stamp them out locally, and not allow what may be confined to a corner to disturb the whole world.

These books were written late in 420, or early in 421, and Alypius appears to have conveyed them to Italy during the latter year. Before its close, Augustine, having obtained and read the whole of Julian’s attack on the first book of his work “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” wrote out a complete answer to it 125 - a task that he was all the more anxious to complete, on perceiving that the extracts sent by Valerius were not only all from the first book of Julian’s treatise, but were somewhat altered in the extracting. The resulting work, “Against Julian,” one of the longest that he wrote in the whole course of the Pelagian controversy, shows its author at his best: according to Cardinal Noris’s judgment, he appears in it “almost divine,” and Augustine himself clearly set great store by it. In the first book of this noble treatise, after professing his continued love for Julian, “whom he was unable not to love, whatever he [Julian] should say against him” (35), he undertakes to show that in affixing the opprobrious name of Manichreans on those who assert original sin, Julian is incriminating many of the most famous fathers, of both the Latin and Greek Churches.

In proof of this, he makes appropriate quotations from Irenreus, Cyprian, Reticius, Olympius, Hilary, Ambrose, Gregory Nazianzenus, Basil, John of Constantinople.126 Then he argues, that, so far from the Catholics falling into Manichrean heresy, Julian plays, himself, into the hands of the Manichreans in their strife against the Catholics, by many unguarded statements, such as, e.g., when he says that an evil thing cannot arise from what is good, that the work of the Devil cannot be suffered to be diffused by means of a work of God, that a root of evil cannot be placed within a gift of God, and the like. The second book advances to greater detail, and adduces the five great arguments which the Pelagians urged against the Catholics, in order to test them by the voice of antiquity. These arguments are stated as follows (2): “For you say, ‘That we, by asserting original sin, affirm that the Devil is the maker of infants, condemn marriage, deny that all sins are remitted in baptism, accuse God of the guilt of sin, and produce despair of perfection.’ You contend that all these are consequences, if we believe that infants are born bound by the sin of the first man, and are therefore under the Devil unless they are born again in Christ. For, ’ It is the Devil that creates,’ you say, ’ if they are created from that wound which the Devil inflicted on the human nature that was made at first.’ ‘And marriage is condemned,’ you say,’ if it is to be believed to have something about it whence it produces those worthy of condemnation.’ ‘And all sins are not remitted in baptism,’ you say, ‘if there remains any evil in baptized couples whence evil offspring are produced.” And how is God,’ you ask,’ not unjust, if He, while remitting their own sins to baptized persons, yet condemns their offspring, inasmuch as, although it is created by Him, it yet ignorantly and involuntarily contracts the sins of others from those very parents to whom they are remitted? ’ ’ Nor can men believe,’ you add, ‘that virtue- to which corruption is to be understood to be contrary- can be perfected, if they cannot believe that it can destroy the inbred vices, although, no doubt, these can scarcely be considered vices, since he does not sin, who is unable to be other than he was created.’ ” These arguments are then tested, one by one, by the authority of the earlier teachers who were appealed to in the first book, and shown to be condemned by them. The remaining four books follow Julian’s four books, argument by argument, refuting him in detail. In the third book it is urged that although God is good, and made man good, and instituted marriage which is, therefore, good, nevertheless concupiscence is evil, and in it the flesh lusts against the spirit. Although chaste spouses use this evil well, continent believers do better in not using it at all. It is pointed out, how far all this is from the madness of the Manichreans, who dream of matter as essentially evil and coeternal with God; and shown that evil concupiscence sprang from Adam’s disobedience and, being transmitted to us, can be removed only by Christ. It is shown, also, that Julian himself confesses lust to be evil, inasmuch as he speaks of remedies against it, wishes it to be bridled, and speaks of the continent waging a glorious warfare. The fourth book follows the second book of Julian’s work, and makes two chief contentions: that unbelievers have no true virtues, and that even the heathen recognize concupiscence as evil. It also argues that grace is not given according to merit, and yet is not to be confounded with fate; and explains the text that asserts that “God wishes all men to be saved,” in the sense that “all men “means ” all that are to be saved, since none are saved except by His will.” 121 The fifth book, in like manner, follows Julian’s third book, and treats of such subjects as these: that it is due to sin that any infants are lost; that shame arose in our first parents through sin; that sin can well be the punishment of preceding sin; that concupiscence is always evil, even in those who do not assent to it; that true marriage may exist without intercourse; that the “flesh ” of Christ differs from the ” sinful flesh ” of other men; and the like. In the sixth book, Julian’s fourth book is followed, and original sin is proved from the baptism of infants, the teaching of the apostles, and the rites of exorcism and exsuffiation incorporated in the form of baptism.

Then, by the help of the illustration drawn from the olive and the oleaster, it is explained how Christian parents can produce unregenerate offspring; and the originally voluntary character of sin is asserted, even though it now comes by inheritance.

After the completion of this important work, there succeeded a lull in the controversy, of some years duration; and the calm refutation of Pelagianism and exposition of Christian grace, which Augustine gave in his “Enchiridion,” 128 might well have seemed to him his closing word on this all-absorbing subject. But he had not yet given the world all he had in treasure for it, and we can rejoice in the chance that five or six years afterwards drew from him a renewed discussion of some of the more important aspects of the doctrine of grace. The circumstances which brought this about are sufficiently interesting in themselves, and open up to us an unwonted view into the monastic life of the times. There was an important monastery at Adrumetum, the metropolitan city of the province of Byzacium,129 from which a monk named Florus went out on a journey of charity to his native country of Uzalis about 426. On the journey he met with Augustine’s letter to Sixtus 180 in which the doctrines of gratuitous and prevenient grace were expounded. He was much delighted with it, and, procuring a copy, sent it back to his monastery for the edification of his brethren, while he himself went on to Carthage. At the monastery, the letter created great disturbance: without the knowledge of the abbot, Valentinus, it was read aloud to the monks, many of whom were unskilled in theological questions; and some five or more were greatly offended, and declared that free will was destroyed by it. A secret strife arose among the brethren, some taking extreme grounds on both sides. Of all this, Valentinus remained ignorant until the return of Florus, who was attacked as the author of all the trouble, and who felt it his duty to inform the abbot of the state of affairs. Valentinus applied first to the bishop, Evodius, for such instruction as would make Augustine’s letter clear to the most simple. Evodius replied, praising their zeal and deprecating their contentiousness, and explaining that Adam had full free will, but that it is now wounded and weak, and Christ’s mission was as a physician to cure and recuperate it. “Let them read,” is his prescription, “the words of God’s elders… . And when they do not understand, let them not quickly reprehend, but pray to understand.” This did not, however, cure the malcontents, and the holy presbyter Sabrinus was appealed to, and sent a book with clear interpretations. But neither was this satisfactory; and Valentinus, at last, reluctantly consented that Augustine himself should be consulted ..:_ fearing, he says, lest by making inquiries he should seem to waver about the truth. Two members of the community were consequently permitted to journey to Hippo, but they took with them no introduction and no commendation from their abbot. Augustine, nevertheless, received them without hesitation, as they bore themselves with too great simplicity to allow him to suspect them of deception. Now we get a glimpse of life in the great bishop’s monastic home. The monks told their story, and were listened to with courtesy and instructed with patience; and, as they were anxious to get home before Easter, they received a letter for Valentinus 131 in which Augustine briefly explains the nature of the misapprehension that had arisen, and points out that both grace and free will must be defended, and neither so exaggerated as to deny the other. The letter of Sixtus, he explains, was written against the Pelagians, who assert that grace is given according to merit, and briefly expounds the true doctrine of grace as necessarily gratuitous and therefore prevenient. When the monks were on the point of starting home, they were joined by a third companion from Adrumetum, and were led to prolong their visit. This gave him the opportunity he craved for their fuller instruction: he read with them and explained to them not only his letter to Sixtus, from which the strife had risen, but much of the chief literature of the Pelagian controversy,132 copies of which also were made for them to take home with them; and when they were ready to go, he sent by them another and longer letter to Valentinus, and placed in their hands a treatise composed for their especial use, which, moreover, he explained to them. This longer letter is essentially an exhortation “to turn aside neither to the right hand nor to the left” - neither to the left hand of the Pelagian error of upholding free will in such a manner as to deny grace, nor to the right hand of the equal error of so upholding grace as if we might yield ourselves to evil with impunity. Both grace and free will are to be proclaimed; and it is true both that grace is not given to merits, and that we are to be judged at the last day according to our works. The treatise which Augustine composed for a fuller exposition of these doctrines is the important work ” On Grace and Free Will.” After a brief introduction, explaining the occasion of his writing, and exhorting the monks to humility and teachableness before God’s revelations (1), Augustine begins by asserting and proving the two propositions that the Scriptures clearly teach that man has free will (2-5), and, as clearly, the necessity of grace for doing any good (6-9). He then examines the passages which the Pelagians claim as teaching that we must first turn to God, before He visits us with His grace ( 10-11), and then undertakes to show that grace is not given to merit (12 sq.), appealing especially to Paul’s teaching and example, and replying to the assertion that forgiveness is the only grace that is not given according to our merits (15-18), and to the query, “How can eternal life be both of grace and of reward? ” ( 19-21). The nature of grace, what it is, is next explained (22 sq.). It is not the law, which gives only knowledge of sin (22-24), nor nature, which would render Christ’s death needless (25), nor mere forgiveness of sins, as the Lord’s Prayer (which should be read with Cyprian’s comments on it) is enough to show (26). Nor will it do to say that it is given to the merit of a good will, thus distinguishing the good work which is of grace from the good will which precedes grace (27-30) ; for the Scriptures oppose this, and our prayers for others prove that we expect God to be the first mover, as indeed both Scripture and experience prove that He is. It is next shown that both free will and grace are concerned in the heart’s conversion (31-32), and that love is the spring of all good in man (33-40), which, however, we have only because God first loved us (38), and which is certainly greater than knowledge, although the Pelagians admit only the latter to be from God (40). God’s sovereign government of men’s wills is then proved from Scripture (41—43), and the wholly gratuitous character of grace is illustrated (44), while the only possible theodicy is found in the certainty that the Lord of all the earth will do right. For, though no one knows why He takes one and leaves another, we all know that He hardens judicially and saves graciously - that He hardens none who do not deserve hardening, but none that He saves deserve to be saved (45). The treatise closes with an exhortation to its prayerful and repeated study (46).

The one request that Augustine made, on sending this work to Valentinus, was that Florus, through whom the controversy had arisen, should be sent to him, that he might converse with him and learn whether he had been misunderstood, or himself had misunderstood Augustine. In due time Florus arrived at Hippo, bringing a letter 133 from Valentinus which addresses Augustine as ” Lord Pope ” (domine papa), thanks him for his ” sweet ” and “healing ” instruction, and introduces Florus as one whose true faith could be confided in. It is very clear, both from Valentinus’ letter and from the hints that Augustine gives, that his loving dealing with the monks had borne admirable fruit: ” none were cast down for the worse, some were built up for the better.” 134 But it was reported to him that some one at the monastery had objected to the doctrine he had taught them, that “no man ought, then, to be rebuked for not keeping God’s commandments; but only God should be besought that he might keep them.” 185 In other words, it was said that if all good was, in the last resort, from God’s grace, man ought not to be blamed for not doing what he could not do, but God ought to be besought to do for man what He alone could do: we ought, in a word, to apply to the source of power. This occasioned the composition of yet another treatise “On Rebuke and Grace,” 186 the object of which was to explain the relations of grace to human conduct, and especially to make it plain that the sovereignty of God’s grace does not supersede our duty to ourselves or our fellow-men. It begins by thanking Valentinus for his letter and for sending Florus (whom Augustine finds well instructed in the truth), thanking God for the good effect of the previous book, and recommending its continued study, and then by briefly expounding the Catholic faith concerning grace, free will, and the law (1-2). The general proposition that is defended is that the gratuitous sovereignty of God’s grace does not supersede human means for obtaining and continuing it (3 sq.) This is shown by the apostle’s example, who used all human means for the prosecution of his work, and yet confessed that it was “God that gave the increase” (3). Objections are then answered (4sq.) -especially the great one that “it is not my fault if I do not do what I have not received grace for doing ” (6); to which Augustine replies (7-10), that we deserve rebuke for our very unwillingness to be rebuked, that on the same reasoning the prescription of the law and the preaching of the gospel would be useless, that the apostle’s example opposes such a position, and that our consciousness witnesses that we deserve rebuke for not persevering in the right way. From this point an important discussion arises, in this interest, of the gift of perseverance (11-19), and of God’s election (20-24); the teaching being that no one is saved who does not persevere, and all that are predestinated or ” called according to the purpose ” (Augustine’s phrase for what we should call “effectual calling”) will persevere, and yet that we cooperate by our will in all good deeds, and deserve rebuke if we do not. Whether Adam received the gift of perseverance, and, in general, the difference between the grace given to him, (which was that grace by which he could stand) and that now given to God’s children (which is that grace by which we are actually made to stand), are next discussed (26-38), with the result of showing the superior greatness of the gifts of grace now to those given before the fall. The necessity of God’s mercy at all times, and our constant dependence on it, are next vigorously asserted (39-42) ; even in the day of judgment, if we are not judged “with mercy ” we cannot be saved (41). The treatise is brought to an end by a concluding application of the whole discussion to the special matter in hand, rebuke (43—49). Seeing that rebuke is one of God’s means of working out his gracious purposes, it cannot be inconsistent with the sovereignty of that grace; for, of course, God predestinates the means with the end (43). Nor can we know, in our ignorance, whether our rebuke is, in any particular case, to be the means of amendment or the ground of greater condemnation. How dare we, then, withhold it? Let it be, however, graduated to the fault, and let us always remember its purpose (46-48). Above all, let us not dare hold it back, lest we hold back from our brother the means of his recovery, and, as well, disobey the command of God (49). It was not long afterwards (about 427) when Augustine was called upon to attempt to reclaim a Carthaginian brother, Vitalis by name, who had been brought to trial on the charge of teaching that the beginning of faith was not the gift of God, but the act of man’s own free will (ex propria voluntatis). This was essentially the semi-Pelagian position which was subsequently to make so large a figure in history; and Augustine treats it now as necessarily implying the basal idea of Pelagianism. In the important letter which he sent to Vitalis,137 he first argues that his position is inconsistent with the prayers of the Church. He, Augustine, prays that Vitalis may come to the true faith; but does not this prayer ascribe the origination of right faith to God? The Church so prays for all men: the priest at the altar exhorts the people to pray God for unbelievers, that He may convert them to the faith; for catechumens, that He may breathe into them a desire for regeneration; for the faithful, that by His aid they may persevere in what they have begun: will Vitalis refuse to obey these exhortations, because, forsooth, faith is of free will and not of God’s gift? Nay, will a Carthaginian scholar array himself against Cyprian’s exposition of the Lord’s Prayer? for he certainly teaches that we are to ask of God what Vitalis says is to be had of ourselves. We may go farther: it is not Cyprian, but Paul, who says, “Let us pray to God that we do no evil” (2 Cor. xiii. 7); it is the Psalmist who says, “The steps of man are directed by God” (Ps. xxxvii. 23). “If we wish to defend free will, let us not strive against that by which it is made free. For he who strives against grace, by which the will is made free for refusing evil and doing good, wishes his will to remain captive. Tell us, I beg you, how the apostle can say, ‘We give thanks to the Father who made us fit to have our lot with the saints in light, who delivered us from the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love ’ (Col. i. 12, 13), if not He, but itself, frees our choice? It is, then, a false rendering of thanks to God, as if He does what He does not do; and he has erred who has said that ’ He makes us . fit, etc.’ … The grace of God, therefore, does not consist in the nature of free-will, and in law and teaching, as the Pelagian perversity dreams; but it is given for each single act by His will, concerning whom it is written,” - quoting Ps. lxviii. 9. About the middle of the letter, Augustine lays down twelve propositions against the Pelagians, which are important as communicating to us what he thought, at the end of the controversy, were the chief points in dispute. “Since, therefore … ,” he writes, “we are Catholic Christians: 1. We know that new-born children have not yet done anything in their own lives, good or evil, neither have they come into the miseries of this life according to the deserts of some previous life, which none of them can have had in their own persons; and yet, because they are born carnally after Adam, they contract the contagion of ancient death, by the first birth, and are not freed from the punishment of eternal death (which is contracted by a just condemnation, passing over from one to all), except they are by grace born again in Christ. 2. We know that the grace of God is given neither to children nor to adults according to our deserts. 3. We know that it is given to adults for each several act. 4. We know that it is not given to all men; and to those to whom it is given, it is not only not given according to the merits of works, but it is not even given to them according to the merits of their will; and this is especially apparent in children. 5. We know that to those to whom it is given, it is given by the gratuitous mercy of God. 6. We know that to those to whom it is not given, it is not given by the just judgment of God. 7. We know that we shall all stand before the tribunal of Christ, and each shall receive according to what he has done through the body, - not according to what he would have done, had he lived longer,-whether good or evil. 8. We know that even children are to receive according to what they have done through the body, whether good or evil. But according to what ’ they have done ’ not by their own act, but by the act of those by whose responses for them they are said both to renounce the Devil and to believe in God, wherefore they are counted among the number of the faithful, and have part in the statement of the Lord when He says, ’ Whosoever shall believe and be baptized, shall be saved.’ Therefore also, to those who do not receive this sacrament, belongs what follows, ’ But whosoever shall not have believed, shall be damned’ (Mk. xvi. 16). Whence these too, as I have said, if they die in that early age, are judged, of course, according to what they have done through the body, i.e., in the time in which they were in the body, when they believe or do not believe by the heart and mouth of their sponsors, when they are baptized or not baptized, when they eat or do not eat the flesh of Christ, when they drink or do not drink His blood, - according to those things, then, which they have done through the body, not according to those which, had they lived longer, they would have done. 9. We know that blessed are the dead that die in the Lord; and that what they would have done had they lived longer, is not imputed to them. 10. We know that those that believe, with their own heart, in the Lord, do so by their own free will and choice. 11. We know that we who already believe act with right faith towards those who do not wish to believe, when we pray to God that they may wish it. 12. We know that for those who have believed out of this number, we both ought and are rightly and truly accustomed to return thanks to God, as for his benefits.” Certainly such a body of propositions commends their author to us as Christian both in head and heart: they are admirable in every respect; and even in the matter of the salvation of infants, where he had not yet seen the light of truth, he expresses himself in a way as engaging in its hearty faith in God’s goodness as it is honorable in its loyalty to what he believed to be truth and justice. Here his doctrine of the Church ran athwart and clouded his view of the reach of grace; but we seem to see between the lines the promise of the brighter dawn of truth that was yet to come. The rest of the epistle is occupied with an exposition and commendation of these propositions, which ranks with the richest passages of the antiPelagian writings, and which breathes everywhere a yearning for his correspondent which we cannot help hoping proved salutary to his faith.

It is not without significance, that the error of Vitalis took a semi-Pelagian form. Pure Pelagianism was by this time no longer a living issue. Augustine was himself, no doubt, not yet done with it. The second book of his treatise ” On Marriage and Concupiscence,” which seems to have been taken to Italy by Alypius, in 421, received at once the attention of Julian, and was elaborately answered by him, during that same year, in eight books addressed to Florus. But Julian was now in Cilicia, and his book was slow in working its way westward. It was found at Rome by Alypius, apparently in 427 or 428, and he at once set about transcribing it for his friend’s use. An opportunity arising to send it to Africa before it was finished, he forwarded to Augustine the five books that were ready, with an urgent request that they should receive his immediate attention, and a promise to send the other three as soon as possible. Augustine gives an account of his progress in his reply to them in a letter written to Quodvultdeus, apparently in 428.138 This deacon was urging Augustine to give the Church a succinct account of all heresies; and Augustine excuses himself from immediately undertaking that task by the press of work on his hands. He was writing his” Retractations,” and had already :finished two books of them, in which he had dealt with two hundred and thirty-two works. His letters and homilies remained, and he had given the necessary reading to many of the letters. Also, he tells his correspondent, he was engaged on a reply to the eight books of Julian’s new work. Working night and day, he had already completed his response to the first three of Julian’s books, and had begun on the fourth while still expecting the arrival. of the last three which Alypius had promised to send. If he had completed the answer to the five books of Julian which he already had in hand, before the other three reached him, he might begin the work which Quodvultdeus so earnestly desired him to undertake. In due time, whatever may have been the trials and labors that needed first to be met, the desired treatise ” On Heresies ” was written (about 428), and the eighty-eighth chapter of it gives us a welcome compressed account of the Pelagian heresy, which may be accepted as the obverse of the account of catholic truth given in the letter (217) to Vitalis.189 But the composition of this work was not the only interruption which postponed the completion of the second elaborate work against Julian. It was in When Pelagius was at length accused by the brethren, because he attributed nothing to the assistance of God’s grace towards the keeping of His commandments, he yielded to their rebuke, so far as not to place this grace above free will, but with faithless cunning to subordinate it, saying that it was given to men for this purpose; viz., that they might be able more easily to fulfil by grace, what they were commanded to do by free will. By saying, ‘that they might be able more easily,’ he, of course, wished it to be believed that, although with more difficulty; nevertheless men were able without divine grace to perform the divine commands. But that grace of God, without which we can do nothing good, they say does not exist except in free will, which without any preceding merits our nature received from Him; and that He adds His aid only in that by His law and teaching we may learn what we ought to do, … but not in that by the gift of His Spirit we may do what we have learned ought to be done. Accordingly, they confess that knowledge by which ignorance is banished is divinely given to us, but deny that love by which we may live a pious life is given; so that, forsooth, while knowledge, which, without love, puffeth up, is the gift of God, love itself, which edifieth so that knowledge may not puff up, is not the gift of God (1 Cor. viii. 11). They also destroy the prayers which the Church offers, whether for those that are unbelieving and resisting God’s teaching, that they may be converted to God; or for the faithful, that faith may be increased in them, and they may persevere in it. For they contend that men do not receive these things from Him, but have them from ourselves, saying that the grace of God, by which we are freed from impiety, is given according to our merits. Pelagius was compelled, no doubt, to condemn this by his fear of being condemned by the episcopal judgment in Palestine; but he is found to teach it still in his later writings. They also advanced so far as to say that the life of the righteous in this world is without sin, and the Church of Christ is perfected by them in this mortality, to the point of being entirely without spot or wrinkle (Eph. v. 27) ; as if it were not the Church of Christ, that, in the whole world, cries to God, ‘Forgive us our debts.’ (Mt. vi. 12.) They also deny that children, who are carnally born after Adam, contract the contagion of ancient death from their first birth. For they assert that they are born so without any bond of original sin, that there is absolutely nothing that ought to be remitted to them in the second birth, yet they are to be baptized; but for this reason, that, adopted in regeneration, they may be admitted to the kingdom of God, and thus be translated from good into better, - not that they may be washed by that renovation from any evil of the old bond. For although they be not baptized, they promise to them, outside the kingdom of God indeed, but nevertheless, a certain eternal and blessed life of their own. They also say that Adam himself, even had he not sinned, would have died in the body, and that this death would not have come as a desert to a fault, but as a condition of nature. Certain other things also are objected to them, but these are the chief, and also either all, or nearly all, the others may be understood to depend on these.” (” On Heresies,” 88.)

the providence of God that the life of this great leader in the battle for grace should be prolonged until he could deal with semi-Pelagianism also. Information as to the rise of this new form of the heresy at Marseilles and elsewhere in Southern Gaul was conveyed to Augustine along with entreaties, that, as “faith’s great patron,” he would give his aid towards meeting it, by two laymen with whom he had already had correspondence - Prosper and Hilary.140 They pointed out 1 the 4.1 difference between the new party and thoroughgoing Pelagianism; but, at the same time, the essentially Pelagianizing character of its formative elements. Its representatives were ready, as a rule, to admit that all men were lost in Adam, and no one could recover himself by his own free will, but all needed God’s grace for salvation. But they objected to the doctrines of prevenient and of irresistible grace; and asserted that man could initiate the process of salvation by turning first to God, that all men could resist God’s grace, and no grace could be given which they could not reject, and especially they denied that the gifts of grace came irrespective of merits, actual or foreseen. They said that what Augustine taught as to the calling of God’s elect according to His own purpose was tantamount to fatalism, was contrary to the teaching of the fathers and the true Church doctrine, and, even if true, should not be preached, because of its tendency to drive men into indifference or despair. Hence, Prosper especially desired Augustine to point out the dangerous nature of these views, and to show that prevenient and cooperating grace is not inconsistent with free will, that God’s predestination is not founded on foresight of receptivity in its objects, and that the doctrines of grace may be preached without danger to souls.

Augustine’s answer to these appeals was a work in two books, ” On the Predestination of the Saints,” the second book of which is usually known under the separate title of “The Gift of Perseverance.” The former book begins with a careful discrimination of the position of his new opponents: they have made a right beginning in that they believe in original sin, and acknowledge that none are saved from it save by Christ, and that God’s grace leads men’s wills, and without grace no one can suffice for good deeds. These things will furnish a good starting-point for their progress to an acceptance of predestination also (1-2). The first question that needs discussion in such circumstances is, whether God gives the very beginnings of faith (3 sq.); since they admit that what Augustine had previously urged sufficed to prove that faith was the gift of God so far as that the increase of faith was given by Him, but not so far but that the beginning of faith may be understood to be man’s, to which, then, God adds all other gifts (compare 43). Augustine insists that this is no other than the Pelagian assertion of grace according to merit (3), is opposed to Scripture (4-5), and begets arrogant boasting in ourselves (6). He replies to the objection that he had himself once held this view, by confessing it, and explaining that he was converted from it by 1 Cor. iv. 7, as applied by Cyprian (7-8), and expounds that verse as containing in its narrow compass a sufficient answer to the present theories (9-11). He answers, further, the objection that the apostle distinguishes faith from works, and works alone are meant in such passages, by pointing to Jno. vi. 28, and similar statements in Paul (12-16). Then he answers the objection that he himself had previously taught that God acted on foresight of faith, by showing that he was misunderstood (17-18). He next shows that no objection lies against predestination that does not lie with equal force against grace (19-22) - since predestination is nothing but God’s foreknowledge of and preparation for grace, and all questions of sovereignty and the like belong to grace. Did God not know to whom he was going to give faith (19)? or did he promise the results of faith, works, without promising the faith without which, as going before, the works were impossible? Would not this place God’s fulfilment of his promise out of His power, and make it depend on man (20)? Why are men more willing to trust in their weakness than in God’s strength? do they count God’s promises more uncertain than their own performance (22)? He next proves the sovereignty of grace, and of predestination, which is but the preparation for grace, by the striking examples of infants, and, above all, of the human nature of Christ (23-31), and then speaks of the twofold calling, one external and one ” according to purpose ” - the latter of which is efficacious and sovereign (32-37). In closing, the semi-Pelagian position is carefully defined and refuted as opposed, alike with the grosser Pelagianism, to the Scriptures of both Testaments (38-42).

The purpose of the second book, which has come down to us under the separate title of ” On the Gift of Perseverance,” is to show that that perseverance which endures to the end is as much of God as the beginning of faith, and that no man who has been” called according to God’s purpose,” and has received this gift, can fall from grace and be lost. The first half of the treatise is devoted to this theme (1-33). It begins by distinguishing between temporary perseverance, which endures for a time, and that which continues to the end (1), and affirms that the latter is certainly a gift of God’s grace, and is, therefore, asked from God: which would otherwise be but a mocking petition (2-3). This, the Lord’s Prayer itself might teach us, as under Cyprian’s exposition it does teach us- each petition being capable of being read as a prayer for perseverance (4-9). Of course, moreover, it cannot be lost, otherwise it would not be ” to the end.” If man forsakes God, of course it is he that does it, and he is doubtless under continual temptation to do so; but if he abides with God, it is God who secures that, and God is equally able to keep one when drawn to Him, as He is to draw him to Him (10-15). He argues anew at this point, that grace is not according to merit, but always in mercy; and explains and illustrates the unsearchable ways of God in His sovereign but merciful dealing with men (16-25), and closes this part of the treatise by a defense of himself against adverse quotations from his early work” On Free Will,” which he has already corrected in his” Retractations.” The second half of the book discusses the objections that were being urged against the preaching of predestination (34-62), as if it opposed and enervated the preaching of the Gqspel. He replies that Paul and the apostles, and Cyprian and the fathers, preached both together; that the same objections will lie against the preaching of God’s foreknowledge and grace itself, and, indeed, against preaching any of the virtues, as, e.g., obedience, while declaring them God’s gifts. He meets the objections in detail, and shows that such preaching is food to the soul, and must not be withheld from men; but explains that it must be given gently, wisely, and prayerfully. The whole treatise ends with an appeal to the prayers of the Church as testifying that all good is from God (63-65), and to the great example of unmerited grace and sovereign predestination in the choice of one human nature without preceding merit, to be united in one person with the Eternal Word - an illustration of his theme of the gratuitous grace of God which he is never tired of adducing (66-67).

These books were written in 428---429, and after their completion the unfinished work against Julian was resumed. Alypius had sent the remaining three books, and Augustine slowly toiled on to the end of his reply to the sixth book. But he was to be interrupted once more, and this time by the most serious of all interruptions. On the 28th of August, 430, with the Vandals thundering at the gates of Hippo, full of good works and of faith, he turned his face away from the strifes - whether theological or secular - of earth, and entered into rest with the Lord whom he loved. The last work against Julian was already one of the most considerable in size of all his books; but it was never finished, and retains until today the significant title of ” The Unfinished Work.” Augustine had hesitated to undertake this work, because he found Julian’s arguments too silly either to deserve refutation, or to afford occasion for really edifying discourse. And certainly the result falls below Augustine’s usual level, though this is not due, as is so often said, to failing powers and great age; for nothing that he wrote surpasses in mellow beauty and chastened strength the two books, ” On the Predestination of the Saints,” which were written after four books of this work were completed. The plan of the work is to state Julian’s arguments in his own words, and follow it with his remarks; thus giving it something of the form of a dialogue. It follows Julian’s work, book by book. The first book states and answers certain calumnies which Julian had brought against Augustine and the Catholic faith on the ground of their confession of original sin. Julian had argued, that, since God is just, He cannot impute another’s sins to innocent infants; since sin is nothing but evil will, there can be no sin in infants who are not yet in the use of their will; and, since the freedom of will that is given to man consists in the capacity of both sinning and not sinning, free will is denied to those who attribute sin to nature. Augustine replies to these arguments, and answers certain objections that are made to his work ” On Marriage and Concupiscence,” and then corrects Julian’s false explanations of certain Scriptures from Jno. viii., Rom. vi., vii., and 2 Tim. The second book is a discussion of Rom. v. 12, which Julian had tried, like the other Pelagians, to explain by the ” imitation” of Adam’s bad example. The third book examines the abuse by Julian of certain Old Testament passages-in Deut. :xxiv., 2 Kings xiv., Ezek. xviii. -in his effort to show that God does not impute the father’s sins to the children; as well as his similar abuse of Heh. xi. The charge of Manich:::eism, which was so repetitiously brought by Julian against the Catholics, is then examined and refuted. The fourth book treats of Julian’s strictures on Augustine’s “On Marriage and Concupiscence” ii. 4-11, and proves from 1 Jno. ii. 16 that concupiscence is evil, and not the work of God, but of the Devil. He argues that the shame that accompanies it is due to its sinfulness, and that there was none of it in Christ; also, that infants are born obnoxious to the first sin, and proves the corruption of their origin from Wisd. x. 10, 11. The fifth book defends” On Marriage and Concupiscence ” ii. 12 sq., and argues that a sound nature could not have shame on account of its members, and the need of regeneration for what is generated by means of shameful concupiscence. Then Julian’s abuse of 1 Cor. xv., Rom. v., Mt.

vii. 17 and 33, with reference to ” On Marriage and Concupiscence ” ii. 14, 20, 26, is discussed; and then the origin of evil, and God’s treatment of evil in the world. The sixth book traverses Julian’s strictures on” On Marriage and Concupiscence” ii. 34 sq., and argues that human nature was changed for the worse by the sin of Adam, and thus was made not only sinful, but the source of sinners; and that the forces of free will by which man could at first do rightly if he wished, and refrain from sin if he chose, were lost by Adam’s sin. He attacks Julian’s definition of free will as “the capacity for sinning and not sinning ” (possibilitas peccandi et non peccandi) ; and proves that the evils of this life are the punishment of sin - including, first of all, physical death. At the end, he treats of 1 Car. xv. 22.

Although the great preacher of grace was taken away by death before the completion of this book, yet his work was not left incomplete. In the course of the next year (431) the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus condemned Pelagianism for the whole world; and an elaborate treatise against the pure Pelagianism of Julian was already in 430 an anachronism. SemiPelagianism was yet to run its course, and to work its way so into the heart of a corrupt church as not to be easily displaced; but Pelagianism was to die with the first generation of its advocates. As we look back now through the almost millennium and a half of years that has intervened since Augustine lived and wrote, it is to his ” Predestination of the Saints ” - a completed, and well-completed, treatise - and not to ” The Unfinished Work,” that we look as the crown and completion of his labors for grace.

IV. THE THEOLOGY OF GRACE The theology which Augustine opposed, in his anti-Pelagian writings, to the errors of Pelagianism, is, shortly, the theology of grace. Its roots were planted deeply in his own experience, and in the teachings of Scripture, especially of that apostle whom he delights to call “the great preacher of grace,” and to follow whom, in his measure, was his greatest desire.

The grace of God in Jesus Christ, conveyed to us by the Holy Spirit and evidenced by the love that He sheds abroad in our hearts, is the center around which this whole side 142 of His system revolves, and the germ out of which it grows. He was the more able to make it thus central because of the harmony of this view of salvation with the general principle of his whole theology, which was theocentric and revolved around his conception of God as the immanent and vital spirit in whom all things live and move and have their being.143 In like manner, God is the absolute good, and all good is either Himself or from Him; and only as God makes us good, are we able to do anything good.

The necessity of grace to man, Augustine argued from the condition of the race as partakers of Adam’s sin. God created man upright, and endowed him with human faculties, including free will; 144 and gave to him freely that grace by which he was able to retain his uprightness.145 Being thus put on probation, 142 This is a necessary limitation, for there is another side - a churchly side - of Augustine’s theology, which was only laid alongside of, and artificially combined with, his theology of grace. This was the traditional element in his teaching, but was far from the determining or formative element. As Thomasius truly points out (” Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte,” i. p. 495), both his experience and the Scriptures stood with him above tradition. 143 It is only one of the strange assertions in Professor Allen’s ” Continuity of Christian Thought,” that he states that ” the Augustinian theology rests upon the transcendence of Deity as its controlling principle” (p. 3), which is identified with a tacit assumption of deism (p. 171), and explained to include a localization of God “as a physical essence in the infinite remoteness,” “separated from the world by infinite reaches of space” (p. 1). As a matter of mere fact, Augustine’s conception of God was that of an immanent Spirit, and his tendency was consequently distinctly towards a pantheistic rather than a deistic view of His relation to His creatures. Nor is this true only “at a certain stage of his career” (p. 6), which is but Professor Allen’s attempt to reconcile fact with his theory, but of his whole life and all his teaching. He, no doubt, did not so teach the Divine immanence as to make God the author of the form as well as the matter of all acts of His creatures, or to render it impossible for His creatures to turn from Him; this would be to pass the limits that separate the conception of Christian immanence from pure pantheism, and to make God the author of sin, and all His creatures but manifestations of Himself. 144 “On Rebuke and Grace,” 27, 28.

145 “On Rebuke and Grace,” 29, 31 sq.

with divine aid to enable him to stand if he chose, Adam used his free choice for sinning, and involved his whole race in his fall.146 It was on account of this sin that he died physically and spiritually, and this double death passes over from him to us.a1 That all his descendants by ordinary generation are partakers in Adam’s guilt and condemnation, Augustine is sure from the teachings of Scripture; and this is the fact of original sin, from which no one generated from Adam is free, and from which no one is freed save as regenerated in Christ.148 But how we are made partakers of it, he is less certain: sometimes he speaks as if it came by some mysterious unity of the race, so that we were all personally present in the individual Adam, and thus the whole race was the one man that sinned; H 9 sometimes he speaks more in the sense of modern realists, as if Adam’s sin corrupted the nature, and the nature now corrupts those to whom it is communicated; 150 sometimes he speaks as if it were due to simple heredity; 151 sometimes, again, as if it depended on the presence of shameful concupiscence in the act of procreation, so that the propagation of guilt depends on the propagation of offspring by means of concupiscence.152 However transmitted, it is yet a fact that sin is propagated, and all mankind became sinners in Adam. The result of this is that we have lost the divine image, though not in such a sense that no lineaments of it remain to us; 133 and, the sinning soul making the flesh corruptible, our whole nature is corrupted, and we are unable to do anything of ourselves truly good.154 This includes, of course, an injury to our will. Augustine, writing for the popular eye, treats this subject in popular language. But it is clear that he distinguished, in his thinking, between will as a faculty and will in a broader sense. As a mere faculty, will is and always remains an indifferent thing 155 - after the fall, as before it, continuing poised in indifferency, and ready, like a weathercock, to be turned whithersoever the breeze that blows from the heart (” will,” in the broader sense) may direct.156 It is not the faculty of willing, but the man who makes use of that faculty, that has suffered change from the fall. In paradise man stood in full ability: he had the posse non peccare, but not yet the non posse peccare; 167 that is, he was endowed with a capacity for either part, and possessed the grace of God by which he was able to stand if he would, but also the power of free will by which he might fall if he would. By his fall he has suffered a change, is corrupt, and under the power of Satan; his will (in the broader sense) is now injured, wounded, diseased, enslavedalthough the faculty of will (in the narrow sense) remains indifferent.155 Augustine’s criticism of Pelagius’ discrimination 158 of ” capacity ” (possibilitas, posse), “will ” (voluntas, velle), and “act ” (actio, esse), does not turn on the discrimination itself, but on the incongruity of placing the power, ability in the mere capacity or possibility, rather than in the living agent who “wills” and “acts.” He himself adopts an essentially similar distribution, with only this correction ;109 and thus keeps the faculty of will indifferent, but places the power of using it in the active agent, man. According, then, to the character of this man, will the use of the free will be. If the man be holy he will make a holy use of it, and if he be corrupt he will make a sinful use of it: if he be essentially holy, he cannot (like God Himself) make a sinful use of his will; and if he be enslaved to sin, he cannot make a good use of it. The last is the present condition of men by nature. They have free will; 160 the faculty by which they act remains in indifferency, and they are allowed to use it just as they choose: but such as they cannot desire and therefore cannot choose anything but evil ;161 and therefore they, and therefore their choice, and therefore their willing, is always evil and never good. They are thus the slaves of sin, which they obey; and while their free will avails for sinning, it does not avail for doing any good unless they be first freed by the grace of God. It is undeniable that this view is in consonance with modern psychology: let us once conceive of ” the will ” as simply the whole man in the attitude of willing, and it is immediately evident, that, however abstractly free the ” will” is, it is conditioned and enslaved in all its action by the character of the willing agent: a bad man does not cease to be bad in the act of willing, and a good man remains good even in his acts of choice.

In its nature, grace is assistance, help from God; and all divine aid may be included under the term - as well what may be called natural, as what may. be called spiritual, aid.102 Spiritual grace includes, no doubt, all external help that God gives man for working out his salvation, such as the law, the preaching of the gospel, the example of Christ, by which we may learn the right way; it includes also forgiveness of sins, by which we are freed from the guilt already incurred; but above all it includes that help which God gives by His Holy Spirit, working within, not without, by which man is enabled to choose and to do what he sees, by the teachings of the law, or by the gospel, or by the natural conscience, to be right.163 Within this aid are included all those spiritual exercises which we call regeneration, justification, perseverance to the end - in a word, all the divine assistance by which, in being made Christians, we are made to differ from other men. Augustine is fond of representing this grace as in essence the writing of God’s law (or of God’s will) on our hearts, so that it appears hereafter as our own desire and wish; and even more prevalently as the shedding abroad of love in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, given to us in Christ Jesus; therefore, as a change of disposition, by which we come to love and freely choose, in cooperation with God’s aid, just the things which hitherto we have been unable to choose because in bondage to sin. Grace, thus, does not make void free will: 164 it acts through free will, and acts upon it only by liberating it from its bondage to sin, i.e., by liberating the agent that uses the free will, so that he is no longer enslaved by his fleshly lusts, and is enabled to make use of his free will in choosing the good; and thus it is only by grace that free will is enabled to act in good part. But just because grace changes the disposition, and so enables man, hitherto enslaved to sin, for the first time to desire and use his free will for good, it lies in the very nature of the case that it is prevenient.165 Also, as the very name imports, it is necessarily gratuitous; 166 since man is enslaved to sin until it is given, all the merits that he can have prior to it are bad merits, and deserve punishment, not gifts of favor. When, then, it is asked, on the ground of what, grace is given, it can only be answered, ” on the ground of God’s infinite mercy and undeserved favor.” 167 There is nothing in man to merit it, and it first gives merit of good to man. All men alike deserve death, and all that comes to them in the way of blessing is necessarily of God’s free and unmerited favor. This is equally true of all grace. It is preeminently clear of that grace which gives faith, the root of all other graces, which is given of God, not to merits of good will or incipient turning to Him, but of His sovereign good pleasure.108 But equally with faith, it is true of all other divine gifts: we may, indeed, speak of “merits of good” as succeeding faith; but as all these merits find their root in faith, they are but “grace on grace,” and men need God’s mercy always, throughout this life, and even on the judgment day itself, when, if they are judged without mercy, they must be condemned.169 If we ask, then, why God gives grace, we can only answer that it is of His unspeakable mercy; and if we ask why He gives it to one rather than to another, what can we answer but that it is of His will? The sovereignty of grace results from its very gratuitousness: 110 where none deserve it, it can be given only of the sovereign good pleasure of the great Giver - and this is necessarily inscrutable; but cannot be unjust. We can faintly perceive, indeed, some reasons why God may be supposed not to have chosen to give His saving grace to all, m or even to the most; 172 but we cannot understand why He has chosen to give it to just the individuals to whom He has given it, and to withhold it from just those from whom He has withheld it. Here we are driven to the apostle’s cry, “Oh the depth of the riches both of the mercy and the justice of God! “us The effects of grace are according to its nature. Taken as a whole, it is the re-creative principle sent forth from God for the recovery of man from his slavery to sin, and for his reformation in the divine image. Considered as to the time of its giving, it is either operating or cooperating grace, i.e., either the grace that first enables the will to choose the good, or the grace that cooperates with the already enabled will to do the good; and it is, therefore, also called either prevenient or subsequent grace.174 It is not to be conceived of as a series of disconnected divine gifts, but as a constant efflux from God; but we may look upon it in the various steps of its operation in men, as bringing forgiveness of sins, faith, which is the beginning of all good, love to God, progressive power of good working, and perseverance to the end.175 In any case, and in all its operations alike, just because it is power from on high and the living spring of a new and re-created life, it is irresistible and indefectible.116 Those on whom the Lord bestows the gift of faith working from within, not from without, of course, have faith, and cannot help believing. Those to whom perseverance to the end is given must persevere to the end. It is not to be objected to this, that many seem to begin well who do not persevere: this also is of God, who has in such cases given great blessings indeed, but not this blessing, of perseverance to the end. Whatever of good men have, that God has given; and what they have not, why, of course, God has not given it. Nor can it be objected, that this leaves all uncertain: it is only unknown to us, but this is not uncertainty; we cannot know that we are to have any gift which God sovereignly gives, of course, until it is given, and we therefore cannot know that we have perseverance unto the end until we actually persevere to the end; 177 but who would call what God does, and knows He is to do, uncertain, and what man is to do certain? Nor will it do to say that thus nothing is left for us to do: no doubt, all things are in God’s hands, and we should praise God that this is so, but we must cooperate with Him; and it is just because it is He that is working in us the willing and the doing, that it is worth our while to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. God has not determined the end without determining the appointed means.178 only on those whom God selects for its reception; we must, of course, believe that the eternal God has foreknown all this from the beginning. He would be something less than God, had He not foreknown that He intended to bestow this prevenient, gratuitous, and sovereign grace on some men, and had He not foreknown equally the precise individuals on whom He intended to bestow it. To foreknow is to prepare beforehand. And this is predestination.179 He argues that there can be no objection to predestination, in itself considered, in the mind of any man who believes in a God: what men object to is the gratuitous and sovereign grace to which no additional difficulty is added by the necessary assumption that it was foreknown and prepared for from eternity. That predestination does not proceed on the foreknowledge of good or of faith,180 follows from its being nothing more than the foresight and preparation of grace, which, in its very idea, is gratuitous and not according to any merits, sovereign and according only to God’s purpose, prevenient and in order to faith and good works. It is the sovereignty of grace, not its foresight or the preparation for it, which places men in God’s hands, and suspends salvation absolutely on his unmerited mercy. But just because God is God, of course, no one receives grace who has not been foreknown and afore-selected for the gift; and, as much of course, no one who has been foreknown and afore-selected for it, fails to receive it. Therefore the number of the predestinated is fixed, and fixed by God.181 Is this fate? Men may call God’s grace fate if they choose; but it is not fate, but undeserved love and tender mercy, without which none would be saved.182 Does it paralyze effort? Only to those who will not strive to obey God because obedience is His gift. Is it unjust? Far from it: shall not God do what He will with His own undeserved favor? It is nothing but gratuitous mercy, sovereignly distributed, and foreseen and provided for from all eternity by Him who has selected us in His Son.

When Augustine comes to speak of the means of grace, i.e., of the channels and circumstances of its conference to men, he approaches the meeting point of two very dissimilar streams of his theology - his doctrine of grace and his doctrine of the Church - and he is sadly deflected from the natural course of his theology by the alien influence. He does not, indeed, bind the conference of grace to the means in such a sense that the grace must be given at the exact time of the application of the means. He does not deny that ” God is able, even when no man rebukes, to correct whom He will, and to lead him on to the wholesome mortification of repentance by the most hidden and most mighty power of His medicine.” 183 Though the Gospel must be known in order that man may be saved 184 (for how shall they believe without a preacher?), yet the preacher is nothing, and the preachment is nothing, but God only that gives the increase.185 He even has something like a distant glimpse of what has since been called the distinction between the visible and invisible Church - speaking of men not yet born as among those who are “called according to God’s purpose,” and, therefore, of the saved who constitute the Church 186 - asserting that those who are so called, even before they believe, are ” already children of God, enrolled in the memorial of their Father with unchangeable surety,” 187 and, at the same time, allowing that there are many already in the visible Church who are not of it, and who can therefore depart from it. But he teaches that those who are thus lost out of the visible Church are lost because of some fatal flaw in their baptism, or on account of post-baptismal sins; and that those who are of the ” called according to the purpose” are predestinated not only to salvation, but to salvation by baptism. Grace is not tied to the means in the sense that it is not conferred save in the means; but it is tied to the means in the sense that it is not conferred without the means. Baptism, for instance, is absolutely necessary for salvation: no exception is allowed except such as save the principle- baptism of blood (martyrdom) ,188 and, somewhat grudgingly, baptism of intention. And baptism, when worthily received, is absolutely efficacious: ” if a man were to die immediately after baptism, he would have nothing at all left to hold him liable to punishment.” 189 In a word, while there are many baptized who will not be saved, there are none saved who have not been baptized; it is the grace of God that sa;es, but baptism is a channel of grace without which none receive it.100 The saddest corollary that flowed from this doctrine was that by which Augustine was forced to assert that all those who died unbaptized, including infants, are finally lost and depart into eternal punishment. He did not shrink from the inference, although he assigned the place of lightest punishment in hell to those who were guilty of no sin but original sin, but who had departed this life without having washed this away in the “laver of regeneration.” This is the dark side of his soteriology; but it should be remembered that it was not his theology of grace, but the universal and traditional belief in the necessity of baptism for remission of sins, which he inherited in common with all of his time, that forced it upon him. The theology of grace was destined in the hands of his successors, who have rejoiced to confess that they were taught by him, to remove this stumbling-block also from Christian teaching; and if not to Augustine, it is to Augustine’s theology that the Christian world owes its liberation from so terrible and incredible a tenet. Along with the doctrine of infant damnation, another stumbling-block also, not so much of Augustinian, but of Church theology, has gone. It was not because of his theology of grace, or of his doctrine of predestination, that Augustine taught that comparatively few of the human race are saved. It was, again, because he believed that baptism and incorporation into the visible Church were necessary for salvation. And it is only because of Augustine’s theology of grace, which places man in the hands of an all-merciful Saviour and not in the grasp of a human institution, that men can see that in the salvation of all who die in infancy, the invisible Church of God embraces the vast majority of the human race - saved not by the washing of water administered by the Church, but by the blood of Christ administered by God’s own hand outside of the ordinary channels of his grace. We are indeed born in sin, and those that die in infancy are, in Adam, children of wrath even as others; but God’s hand is not shortened by the limits of His Church on earth, that it cannot save. In Christ Jesus, all souls are the Lord’s, and only the soul that itself sinneth shall die (Ezek. xviii. 1-4); and the only judgment wherewith men shall be judged proceeds on the principle that as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law, and as many as have sinned under law shall be judged by the law (Rom. ii.12).

Thus, although Augustine’s theology had a very strong churchly element within it, it was, on the side that is presented in the controversy against Pelagianism, distinctly antiecclesiastical. Its central thought was the absolute dependence of the individual on the grace of God in Jesus Christ. It made everything that concerned salvation to be of God, and traced the source of all good to Him. “Without me ye can do nothing,” is the inscription on one side of it; on the other stands written, ” All things are yours.” Augustine held that he who builds on a human foundation builds on sand, and founded all his hope on the Rock itself. And there also he founded his teaching; as he distrusted man in the matter of salvation, so he distrusted him in the form of theology. No other of the fathers so conscientiously wrought out his theology from the revealed Word; no other of them so sternly excluded human additions. The subjects of which theology treats, he declares, are such as “we could by no means find out unless we believed them on the testimony of the inspired Scriptures.” 101 “Where Holy Scripture gives no certain testimony,” he says, ” human presumption must beware how it decides in favor of either side.” 192 ” We must first bend our necks to the authority of the Holy Scriptures,” he insists, ” in order that we may each arrive at understanding through faith.” 193 And this was not merely his theory, but his practice.194 No theology was ever, it may be more broadly asserted, more conscientiously wrought out from the Scriptures. Is it without error? No; but its errors are on the surface, not of the essence. It leads to God, and it came from God; and in the midst of the controversies of so many ages it has shown itself an edifice whose solid core is built out of material ” which cannot be shaken.” 195

Notes

1. 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 con£essed; 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 invita-

2. From ” A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,” First Series, v. pp. xiii.-lxxi. Used by permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner’s Sons.

3. “On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” iii. 6, 11, 12; ” Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” iv. 32; “The Unfinished Work Against Julian,” i. 2; “On Heresies,” 88; and often elsewhere. Jerome found roots for the theory in Origen and Rufinus (Lette:r 133. 3), but this is a different matter. Compare ” On Original Sin,” 25.

4. Preface to Book iv. of his work on Jeremiah.

5. “History of Latin Christianity,” 1899, i. p. 166, note 2• G “De Natura Deorum,” iii. 36.

6. “A History of the Councils of the Church,” (E. T.) ii. p. 446, note 8 •

7. Compare the excellent statement in Thomasius’ “Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte,” i. p. 483.

8. “On the Proceedings of Pelagius,” 46; ” On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” iii. 1; ” Epist.” 186, etc.

9. “On Nature and Grace,” 1.

10. Pelagius’ ” Epistle to Demetrias,” 16.

11. Ibid., 2.

12. ” On the Gift of Perseverance,” 53.

13. 18 “On Nature and Grace,” 57.

14. “On the Gift of Perseverance,” 4; “Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” iii. 24; iv. 2 &q.

15. 21 “On Original Sin,” 30. 22 ” On the Grace of Christ,” 43. 23 “The Unfinished Work,” i. 91; compare 69.

16. 24 Dr. Matheson finely says (Expositor, i. ix. 21, 1879), “There is the same difference between the Christian and the Pagan idea of Prayer as there is between the Christian and Pagan idea of sin. Paganism knows nothing of sin, it knows only of sins: it has no conception of the principle of evil; it comprehends only a collection of evil acts.” This is Pelagianism too. 25 Compare Schaff, “History of the Christian Church,” iii. 804; and Thomasius’ “Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte,” i. 487-488.

17. 26 “Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” iii. 25, and iv. at the beginning.

18. 27 This belongs to the earlier Pelagianism; Julian was ready to admit that death came from Adam, but not sin.

19. 2s ” On Original Sin,” 13. 29 Early in 412, or, less probably, according to the Ballerini and Hefele 411. 80 See ” On Original Sin,” 2, 3, 13; ” On the Proceedings of Pelagius,” 23. They are also given by Marius Mercator (Migne, “Patrologia Latina,” xlviii. 69, 70), and the fifth item (on the salvation of unbaptized infants) omittedthough apparently by an error.

20. 31 Preserved by Augustine,” On Original Sin,” 3, 4. 32 An account of this synod is given by Orosius himself in his ” Apology for the Freedom of the Will.”

21. 38 A full account and criticism of the proceedings are given by Augustine •in his” On the Proceedings of Pelagius.” 3 4 ” On Original Sin,” 13, at the end. 35 “On the Proceedings of Pelagius,” 59, 60, sq.

22. 86 Compare Canon Bright’s Introduction in his ” Select Anti-Pelagian Treatises of St. Augustine,” p. xii. s1 See above, pp. 293-294, and the passages in Augustine cited in note 16.

23. 88 Prosper’s phrase.

24. 89 Augustine gives their teaching carefully in his ” On the Predestination of the Saints,” 2.

25. °4 Compare his work written this year, “On Several Questions to Simplicianus.” For the development of Augustine’s theology, see the admirable statement in Neander’s “General History of the Christian Religion and Church,” E. T. ii. 625 sq.

26. 41 ” On the Proceedings of Pelagius,” 46. 42 “On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” iii. 12.

27. 43 “Epist.” 157. 22. 44 ” On the Proceedings of Pelagius,” 46.

28. 48 ” On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” iii. 1. 49 Do., i. 1. Compare “Epist.” 139. 60 On the prominence of infant baptism in the controversy, and why it was so, see “Sermon” 165. 7 sq. “What do you say? ‘Just this,’ he says, ‘that God creates every man immortal.’ Why, then, do infant children die? For if I say, ‘Why do adult men die?’ you would say to me, ‘They have sinned.’ Therefore I do not argue about the adults: I cite infancy as a witness against you,” and so on, eloquently developing the argument.

29. 62 ” Epist.” 139. 3. 53 “Epist.” 140.

30. “On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” iii. 1, 5.

31. 56 “Sermon” 163 treats the text similarly.

32. 66 See this prayer beautifully illustrated from Scripture in On the Merits and Remission of Sins, ii. 5. 51 See above, p. 293.

33. 58 As referred to above, note 36.

34. 59 “Epist.” 146. See “On the Proceedings of Pelagius,” 50, 51, 52.

35. e2 ” Sermon ” 293.

36. 63 “Sermon” 176. 2. 64 The inscription says, “V Calendas Julii,” i.e., June 27; but it also says, “In natalis martyris Guddentis,” whose day appears to have been July 18. Some of the martyrologies assign 28th of June to Gaudentius (which some copies read here), but possibly none to Guddene.

37. ” Sermon” 294.

38. 66 The passage is quoted at length in ” On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” iii. 10. Compare ” Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” iv. 23. 67 “Epist.” 157. 22.

39. 68 ” Epist.” 156. 69 “Epist.” 157. 22.

40. 70 “Epist.” 177.; and 179. 2. 71 ” Epist.” 168. ” On the Proceedings of Pelagius,” 48. 12 “On the Proceedings of Pelagius,” 47; and “Epist.” 186. 1. 78 Compare” On Nature and Grace,” 7; and” Epist.” 186. 1. 74 ” Epist.” 169. 13.

41. “On Nature and Grace,” 1. Sallust’s “Jugurthine War,” 1, ad init.

42. 79 An almost contemporary letter to Oceanus (” Epist.” 180, written in 416) adverts to the same subject and in the same spirit, showing how much it was in Augustine’s thoughts. Compare “Epist.” 180. 2, 5. 80 “Epist.” 172.

43. 81 See ” On the Perfection of Man’s Righteousness,” 1.

44. 82 Migne’s Edition of Augustine’s Works, vol. v. Coll. 1719-1723. 88 Compare the words of Cicero quoted above, p. 290.

45. 84 Compare the similar words in “Epist.” 177. 3, which was written, not only after what had occurred in Palestine was known, but also after the condemnatory decisions of the African synods. 85 “Epist.” 175 and 176. 86 “Epist.” 177. The other bishops were Aurelius, Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius.

46. s1 “Epist.” 178.

47. 8s “Epist.” 178.

48. 91 Compare” On the Grace of Christ,” 40. In the succeeding sections, some of its statements are examined.

49. 92 ” Epist.” 181, 182, 183, among Augustine’s letters.

50. 03 ” Epist.” 186, written conjointly with Alypius.

51. 94 The book given him by Timasius and James, to which “On Nature and Grace ” is a reply.

52. 96 Compare also lnnocent’s letter (” Epist.” 181) to the Carthaginian Council, chap. 4, which also Neander, “History of the Christian Religion and Church,” E.T. ii. 646, quotes in this connection, as showing that Innocent “perceived that this dispute was connected with a different way of regarding the relation of God’s providence to creation.” As if Augustine did not see this too! 96 The book addressed to Dardanus, in which the Pelagians are confuted, but not named, belongs about at this time. Compare “Retractations,” ii. 49.

53. 97 “Sermon ” 131, preached at Carthage.

54. 98 “On the Grace of Christ,” 2. 99 The so-called ” Confession of Faith ” sent to Innocent after the Synod of Diospolis, but which arrived after lnnocent’s death. 100 ” On Original Sin,” 1. 101 Do., 5.

55. 1°2 ” On the Grace of Christ,” 55.

56. 103 ” On the Gift of Perseverance,” 55.

57. 104 Compare, below, pp. 376-384. Neander, in the second volume (E. T.) of his ” History of the Christian Religion and Church,” p. 659, discusses the matter in a very fair spirit.

58. 105 English version, xcv.; see verse 6. 106 ” Sermon ” 26.

59. 101 “Epist.” 190.

60. 111 “Epist.” 194.

61. 112 It appears to have been first reported to Augustine, by Marius Mercator, in a letter received at Carthage. See ” Epist.” 193. 3. 113 As, for example, in ” On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” etc., i.

62. 114 ” Epist.” 193.

63. 115 Compare “On Dulcitius’ Eight Questions,” question 3. 116 That is, “On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” etc., ii. 49 sq. 111 “Epist.” 196.

64. 118 “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” i. 2. 119 Compare the Benedictine Preface to “The Unfinished Work.”

65. 120 ” Epist.” 202, bis. Compare ” Epist.” 190.

66. 121 Compare “Epist.” 195. 122 Julian afterwards repudiated this letter, perhaps because of some falsifications it had suffered; it seems to have been certainly his.

67. 123 Compare “Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” iii. 24; and see above, p. 293.

68. 124 To wit: Cyprian’s testimony on original sin (24), on gratuitous grace (25-26), on the imperfection of human righteousness (27-28), and Ambrose’s testimony on original sin (29), on gratuitous grace (30), and on the imperfection of human righteousness (31). 12 Compare “Epist.” 207, written probably in the latter half of 421.

69. 12s That is, Chrysostom.

70. 127 Compare ” On Rebuke and Grace,” 44.

71. 128 See “A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,” Series I. iii. pp. 237 sq. 1 29 Now a portion of Tunis. 180 ” Epist.” 194.

72. 181 “Epist.” 214.

73. 1s2 “Epist.” 215. 2 sq.

74. 183 ” Epist.” 216. 1u ” On Rebuke and Grace,” 1.

75. 185 “Retractations,” ii. 67. Compare “On Rebuke and Grace,” 5 sq. 186 On the importance of this treatise for Augustine’s doctrine of predestination, see Wiggers’ “Augustinianism and Pelagianism,” E.T. p. 236, where a sketch of the history of this doctrine in Augustine’s writings may be found.

76. 1a1 “Epist.” 217.

77. 138 ” Epist.” 224. 1 39 The account given of Pelagianism is as follows: “They are in such degree enemies of the grace of God, by which we have been predestinated into the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ unto Himself (Eph. i. 5), and by which we are delivered from the power of darkness so as to believe in Him, and be translated into His kingdom (Col. i. 13) -wherefore He says, ‘No man comes to Me, except it be given him of my Father ’ (Jno. vi. 65) - and by which love is shed abroad in our hearts (Rom. v. 5), so that faith may work by love: that they believe that man is able, without it, to keep all the Divine commandments, - whereas, if this were true, it would clearly be an empty thing that the Lord said, ‘Without Me ye can do nothing’ (Jno. xv. 5).

78. Compare “Epist.” 225. l, and 156. It is, of course, not certain that this is the same Hilary that wrote to Augustine from Sicily, but it seems probable. w1 In ” Epist.” 225 and 226.

79. 146 “On Rebuke and Grace,” 28. 147 “On the City of God,” xiii. 2, 12, 14; “On the Trinity,” iv. 13. 148 “On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” i. 15, and often. 149 “Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” iv. 7; “On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” iii. 14, 15. 150 ” On Marriage and Concupiscence,” ii. 57; ” On the City of God,” xiv. 1. 151 “Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” iv. 7. 1s2 ” On Original Sin,” 42. 1 5a “Retractationes,” ii. 24. 154 “Against Julian,” iv. 25, 26. Compare Thomasius’ “Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte,” i. pp. 501 and 507.

80. 155 “On the Spirit and Letter,” 58. 156 “On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” ii. 30. 157 Cf. ” On Rebuke and Grace,” 29-32. 158 “On the Grace of Christ,” 4 sq. 159 ” On the Predestination of the Saints,” 10.

81. 160 ” Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” i. 5. ” Epist.” 215. 4, and often. 161 “Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” i. 7. Compare i. 5, 6. 162 ” Sermon ” 26. 163 “On Nature and Grace,” 62. “On the Grace of Christ,” 13. “On Rebuke and Grace,” 2 sq.

82. 164 “On the Spirit and Letter,” 52; “On Grace and Free Will,” 1 8q. 165 ” On the Spirit and Letter,” 60, and often. 166 “On Nature and Grace,” 4, and often. 167 “On the Grace of Christ,” 27, and often. .1aa “On the Grace of Christ,” 34, and often.

83. 1eo ” On Rebuke and Grace,” 41. 11o “On Grace and Free Will,” 30, and often. 171 “On the Gift of Perseverance,” 16; “Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” ii. 15. 112 “Epist.” 190 (to Optatus) 12. 173 “On the Predestination of the Saints,” 17, 18. 174 “On Grace and Free Will,” 17; “On the Proceedings of Pelagius,” 34, and often.

84. Now, Augustine argues, since grace certainly is gratuitous, and given to ‘no preceding merits - prevenient and antecedent to all good - and, therefore, sovereign, and bestowed 175 Compare Thomasius’ “Die Christliche Dogmengeschichte,” i. p. 510. 176 “On Rebuke and Grace,” 40, 45; “On the Predestination of the Saints,” 13. 111 “On Rebuke and Grace,” 40. 178 “On the Gift of Perseverance,” 56.

85. 179 “On the Predestination of the Saints,” 36 sq. 180 “On the Gift of Perseverance,” 41 sq., 47. 1s1 “On Rebuke and Grace,” 39. Compare 14. 182 “On the Gift of Perseverance,” 29; “Against Two Letters of the Pelagians,” ii. 9 sq.

86. 188 ” On Rebuke and Grace,” 8. 184 “On the Predestination of the Saints,” 17, 18; if the Gospel is not preached at any given place, it is proof that God has no elect there. 185 ” On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” etc., i. 37. 186 “On Rebuke and Grace,” 23. 187 Do., 20.

87. 188 “On the Soul and its Origin,” i. 11; ii. 17. 189 ” On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” etc., ii. 46. 190 On Augustine’s teaching as to baptism, see the Rev. James Field Spalding’s “The Teaching and Influence of Augustine,” pp. 39 sq.

88. 191 “On the Soul and its Origin,” iv. 14. 192 “On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” etc., ii. 59. 193 ” On the Merits and Remission of Sins,” i. 29. 194 Compare “On the Spirit and the Letter,” 63. 195 On the subject of this whole section, compare Reuter’s “Augustinische Studien,” which has come to hand only after the whole was already in type, but which in all essential matters - such as the formative principle, the sources, and the main outlines of Augustine’s theology - is in substantial agreement with what is here said.