In the conflict to which the publication of su'^h opin- ions gave rise, Augustine took, as might be expected, the foremost place. He strenuously maintained, and this was his great doctrine — the doctrine which he was peculiarlj' honored to develop — that there is a distinc- tion between nature and grace ; and that grace is always, and only, the efficient cause of all that is truly good in men; yea, even in holy angels, beings who have never sinned, all their goodness and holiness they owe to grace alone, sustaining and confirming grace, though not, as in man's case, renewing and sanctifying. He affirmed that it was impossible for any one to occupy that position of absolute indifference to good and evil which Pelagius declared was the essence of freedom; but that, on the contrary, as an intelligent, active moral agent, man must possess a positive character; that is, he must either be determined towanls that which is good or towards that which is evil. He affirmed that man must have some moral bent or bias of his mind; that he must be either inclined towards God or away from him, and this before, in actual outer life, there is any manifestation of such a bias.
According to the anthropology of the Western Church, the will of man was always regarded as in a state of determination or decision either towards good or evil. The Eastern anthropology, on the other hand, presented the will of man as intrinsically and essentiallj' in a state
PELAGIANISM
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PELAGIANISM
of equilibrium, a state of indecision, having a determi- nation neither to good nor to evil. According to the teaching of the former, freedom is self-determination, the acting from motives that are within ourselves — the not being compelled to act by a foreign power without us. All that is nceilcd to the freedom of the will is that it be self-moved; that is, be uncompclled in all the choice it makes. According to the teaching of the lat- ter, the Eastern or (ireek anthropology, the freedom of the will consists in its being in a state of indecision, in- difference— the " possibilitas utriusque partis ;" its hav- ing the power of choosing either of two contrasts — the power of choosing differently from what it actually does choose.
In speaking of the sinfulness of man there are two questions which must be carefully distinguished : 1. Tlie question of his depravity or sinfulness, or inherent ungodliness of character; and, 2. The question of his guilt (reatus), or liability to punishment. In the Re- formed Confession the two doctrines are kept distinct.* The guilt of Adam's first sin is regarded as an actual part of the guilt which rests upon all his posterity. Adam and his descendants are regarded as being so identified that the guilt which rested upon him rests upon them also. The inherent depravity of man's nat- ure is to be regarded as the penal consequence of this guilt. But in the tirpe of the Pelagian controversy, as conducted between Augustine and his opponents, the question was. Does man come into the world in a state of innate depravity? and not. Does he come into the world with a sentence of guilt resting upon him? Hence, while the development given by Augustine to the doctrine of grace, in certain directions, has been of permanent and essential service to the Church, there was in it this defect, that he did not fully apprehend the doctrine of man's inherited guilt. He did not deal with that question as apart from the doctrine of inher- ited corruption ; and hence also his views of the doc- trine of justification, as being deliverance from this guilt, were defective. He was in this way led, not into the question of the provision that was necessary for se- curing pardon and acceptance to man, but into the pro- vision necessary for his deliverance from corruption; or into the doctrine of a change of nature in conversion and regeneration.
If the will is only free when it is in a state of equi- librium— a state of indifference to either good or evil — having the same power in the one direction as in the other ; if no tendency pre-exists in the will, determining it either towards right or wrong, then sin is exclusively an act, and has no existence ajiart from that act.\ The act of sin does not change the nature of man, it only exposes him to punishment for the act itself. Taking up this position, Pelagius and his followers reasoned that man does not bring with him into the world anv proneness or tendency to sin— that he has not a sinful and depraved disposition. Sin is only something actual and personal, tliey affirmed, and cannot be of the char- acter of a taint spreading over the nature and defiling it. This was one of their cardinal principles: " Omne bonum ac malum quo vel laudabiles vel vituperabiles
* The Dutch liemonstrants, however, and as it seems to us justly ol)jected to the Calvhiistic Confessions that they (1(1 /;-/ keep tliese two questions sufficiently distinct llic ;iiiat, and with it the penalty, of Adam's sin was made to rest upon his posterity, "iind not liis depravity simply. 1 he confusion has ai i«Mi from not duly obseiv- ni^' that depravity is properly predicable only of the moral aflections, while guilt is the result of personal volitiou alone. Hence, although mnn's moral nature is wholly de pi-aved, his will is nevertheless free, so lone as his aflec- tions are not held to exercise a necessarilv dominant con- trol over his determinations. For it makes but little dif- ference as to liis freedom, whether constraint comes ab extra or ab intra, if in either ease it is equally absolute Depravity is inherited, guilt is not— Ei>.