says, includes under the term all the gifts of God. *' Ipsi gratiae,
beiielicioruui quas nobis praestare non desinit, augmenta reputa-
" 1 nius. ^
8. As infants are destitute of moral character, baptism in their case cannot either symbolize or effect the remission of sin. It is, according to Pelagius, only a sign of their consecration to God. He believed that none but the baptized were at death admitted into the kingdom of heaven, in the Christian sense of that term, but held that unbaptized infants were nevertheless partakers of eternal life. By that term was meant what was afterwards called by the school- men, limbus infantum. This was described as that / e'o-os tottos KoAacreoJS Kat Trapahuaov, cts ov (cai to, d/JavmoTa j3p€(firj /xerar Oip.eva ^yv ju-ttKaptcos.^ Pelagius and his doctrines were condemned by a coun- cil at Carthage, A. d. 412. He was exonerated at the Synods of Jerusalem and Diospolis, in 415 ; but condemned a second time in a synod of sixty bishops at Carthage in 416. Zosimus, bishop of Rome, at first sided with the Pelagians and censured the action of the African bishops : but when their decision was confirmed by the general council of Carthage in 418, at which two hundred bishops were present, he joined in the condenmation and declared Pelagius and his friends excommunicated. In 431 the Eastern Church joined in this condemnation of the Pelagians, in the General Synod held at Ephesus.^
Arguments against the Pelagian Doctrine.
The objections to the Pelagian views of the nature of sin will of necessity come under consideration, when the Scriptural and Protestant doctrine comes to be presented. It is sufficient for the present to state, —
1. That the fundamental principle on which the whole system is founded contradicts the common consciousness of men. It is not true, as our own conscience teaches us, that our obligation is limited by our ability. Every man knows that he is bound to be better than he is, and better than he can make himself by any exertion of his will. We are bound to love God perfectly, but we know that such perfect love is beyond our power. We recognize the obligation to be free from all sin, and absolutely conformed to the
1 Opus Imperfectum contra JuUanum, i. 94; Works, vol. x. p. 1548, b.
'-! On the distinction between vita ceterna and regtmm ccelorum see Pelagius Apttd Augusti- num fie Peccniorum Meritis et Remissione, i. 58; Works, vol. x. p. 231- Cone. Carth. 418.
3 Wigger's Auguslinism and Pelaginnism. Guericke's Church History, §§ 91-93. Ritter'3 Geschichie der Christlichen Philosqphie, vol. ii. pp. 337-443; and all the church histoiiea and histories of doclrine.
166 PART II. Ch. vni. — sin.
jjerfect law of God. Yet no man is so infatuated or so blinded to iiis real character as really to believe that he eitiier is tlius perfect, or has the power to make himself so. It is the daily and hourly prayer or aspiration of every saint and of every sinner to be deliv- ered from the bondage of evil. The proud and malignant would gladly be humble and benevolent ; the covetous would rejoice to be liberal ; the infidel longs for faith, and the hardened sinner fur repentance. Sin is in its own nature a bui'den and a torment, and although loved and cherished, as the cups of the drunkard are cher- ished, yet, if emancipation could be effected by an act of the will, sin would cease to reign in any rational creature. Tliere is no truth, therefore, of which men ai-e more intimately convinced than that they are the slaves of sin ; that they cannot do the good they would ; and that they cannot alter their character at will. There is no principle, therefore, more at variance with the common con- sciousness of men than the fundamental principle of Pelagianisni that our ability limits our obligation, that we are not bound to be better tiian we can make ourselves by a volition.
2. It is no less revolting to the moral nature of man to assert, as Pelagianism teaches, that nothing is sinful but the deliberate transfrression of known law : that there is no moral character in feelings and emotions; that love and hatred, malice and benevolence, considered as affections of the mind, are alike indifferent ; that the command to love God is an absurdity, because love is not under the control of the will. All our moral judgments must be perverted before we can assent to a system involving such consequences.
3. In the third place, the Pelagian doctrine, which confounds freedom with ability, or which makes the liberty of a free agent to consist in the power to determine his character by a volition, is contrary to every man's consciousness. We feel, and cannot but acknowledge, that we are free when we are self-determined ; while at the same time we are conscious that the controlling states of the mind are not under the power of the will, or, in other words, are not under our own power. A theory which is founded on identifying things which are essentially different, as liberty and ability, must be false.
4. The Pelagian system leaves the universal sinfulness of men, a fact which cannot be denied, altogether unaccounted for. To refer it to the mere free agency of man is to say that a thing always is, simply because it may be.
5. This system fails to satisfy the deepest and most universal necessities of our nature. In making man independent of God by
§ 6.] AUGUSTINIAN DOCTi-iNE. 15 '
•assurnino; that God naniiot control free agents witliout destroying their liberty, it makes all prayer for the controlling grace of God over ourselves and others a mockery, and throws man back (.•uni])letely on his own resources to grapple with sin and the powers of darkness witliout hope of deliverance.
6. It makes redemption (in the sense of a deliverance from sin) unnecessary or impossible. It is unnecessary that there should be a redeemer for a race which has not fallen, and which has h\\\ ability to avoid all sin or to recover itself from its power. And it is impossible, if free agents are independent of the control of God.
7. It need hardly be said that a system which asserts, that Adam's sin injured only himself; that men are born into tiie world in the state in which Adam was created ; that men may, and often do, live without sin ; that we have no need of divine assistance in order to be holy; and that Christianity has no essential superiority over heathenism or natural religion, is altogether at variance with the word of God. The opposition indeed between Pelagianism and the gospel is so open and so radical that the former has never been regarded as a form of Christianity at all. It has, in other words, never been the faith of any organized Christian church. It is little more than a form of Rationalism.
§ 5. Augustinian Doctrine.
The Philosophical Elemeiit of Augustine'' 8 Doctrine.
There are two elements in Augustine's doctrine of sin : the one metaphysical or philosophical, the other moral or religious. The one a speculation of the understanding, the other derived from his religious experience and the teaching of the Holy Spirit. The one has passed away, leaving little more trace on the history of doctrine than other speculations, whether Aristotelian or Platonic. The other remains, and has given form to Christian doctrine from that day to this. This is not to be wondered at. Nothing is more uncertain and unsatisfactory than the speculations of the under- standing or philosophical theories. Whereas nothing is more certain and universal than the moral consciousness of men and the truths which it reveals. And as the Scriptures, being the work of God, do and must conform their teachings to what God teaches in the constitution of our nature, doctrines founded on the twofold teaching of the Spirit, in his word and in the hearts of his people, remain unchanged from generation to generation, while the speculations of philosophy or of philosophical theologians pass away as the leaves
1-8 PART n. Ch. vm. — sin.
of the forest. No man now concerns himself about the philosophy of Origen, or of the new Platonists, or of Augustine, while the language of David in the fifty-first Psalm is used to express the experience and convictions of all the people of God in all ages and in all parts of the world.