explains. He admitted that men could not save themselves ; but held that they were not spiritually dead ; they were sick ; and constantly needed tlie aid of the Great Physician. He taught that man soaietimes began the work of conversion ; sometimes God ; and sometimes, in a certain sense, God saves the unwilling.' Vincent evidentlv regarded the Augustinian doctrine of original sin as making God the author of evil ; for, he says, it assumes that God has created a nature, which acting according to its own laws and under the impulse of an enslaved will, can do nothing but sin.^ And he pronounces heretical those who teach that grace saves those who do not ask, seek, or knock, in evident allusion to the doctrine of Augustine that it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God who showeth mercy. Faustus admitted a moral corruption of nature as the consequence of the fall of Adam, which he called original sin (^originale delictum}. In his letter to Lucidus he anathematizes the doctrine of Pelagius that man is born "without sin."^ From this deteriorated, infirm state, no man can deliver himself. He needs the grace of God. But what that grace was is doubtful. From some passages of his writ- ings there would seem to be meant by it only, or principally, the moral influence of the truth as revealed by the Spirit in the Scrip- tures. He says God draws men to him, but " Quid est attrahere nisi prffidicare, nisi scripturarum consolationibus excitare, increpa- tionibus deterrere, desideranda proponere, intentare metuenda, ju- dicium comminari, praBmium polliceri ? " * Semi-Pelagians agreed, however, in rejecting the Pelagian doctrine that Adam's sin injured only himself; they admitted that the effects of that sin passed on all men, affecting both the soul and body. It rendered the body mortal, and liable to disease and suffering ; and the soul it weak- ened, so that it became prone to evil and incapable, without divine Assistance, of doing anything spiritually good. But as against Augustine they held, at least according to the statements of Prosper and Hilary, the advocates of Augustinianism in the south of France, (1.) Thai the beginning of salvation is with man. Man begins to seek God, and then God aids him. (2.) That this incipient turning of the soul towards God is something good, and in one sense meri- torious, (3.) That the soul, in virtue of its liberty of will or abihty for good, cooperates with the grace of God in regenei-ation as well as in uanctification. That these charges were well founded ma}' be inferred from the decisions of the councils of Orange and
1 Maijna Bib. Vet. Pat., Cologne, 1618, torn. v. oar. ii. o. 90 ft ^ Wiggers, ut supra, vol. ii. p. 214.
8 Sac. Bibl. Sane. Pat., 2d edit. Paris, 1589, torn. iv. pp. 875, 876 * De Lib. Arbit., i. xvii. ; Jbid. p. 906.
168 PART n. Ch. vm. — sin.
Valence, A. D. 529, in which the doctrines of Augustine were again sanctioned. As the decisions of those councils were ratified by the Pope they were, according to the papal theory, declared to be the faith of the Church. Among the points thus pronounced to be included in the true Scriptural doctrine, are, (!.} That the conse- quence of Adam's sin is not confined to the body, or to the lower faculties of the soul, but involves the loss of ability to spiritual food. (2.) The sin derived from Adam is spiritual death. (3.) Grace is granted not because men seek it, but the disposition to seek is a work of grace and the gift of God. (4.) The beginning of faith and the disposition to believe is not from the human will, but from the grace of God. (5.) Believing, willing, desiring, seeking, asking, knocking at the door of mercy, are all to be referred to the work of the Spirit and not to the good which belongs to the nature of fallen man. The two great points, therefore, in dispute between the Augustinians and Semi-Pelagians were decided in favour of the former. Those points were (1.) That original sin, or the corruption of nature derived from Adam, was not simply a weakening of our power for good, but was spiritual death ; really sin, incapacitating the soul for any spiritual good. And (2.) That in the work of conversion it is not man that begins, but the Spirit of God. ■ The sinner has no power to turn himself unto God, but is turned or renewed by divine grace before he can do anything spiritually good.^
The decisions of the councils of Orange and Valence in favour of Augustinianism, did not arrest the controversy. The Semi- Pelagian party still continued numerous and active, and so far gained the ascendency, that in the ninth century Gottschalk was condemned for teaching the doctrine of predestination in the sense of Augustine. Fi-om this period to the time of the Reformation and the decisions of the Council of Trent, great diversity of opinion prevailed in the Latin Church on all the questions relating to sin, grace, and predestination. It having come to be generally admitted that original righteousness was a supernatural gift, it was also gen- erally held that the effect of Adam's sin upon himself and upon his posterity was the loss of that righteousness. This was its only sub- jective effect. The soul, therefore, is left in the state in which it was originally created, and in M'hich it existed, some said a longer, others a shorter, period, or no perceptible period at all, before the receipt of the supei'natural endowment. It is in this state that men are born into the world since the apostasy of Adam.
1 Binius, Concilia, Cologne, 1618, t. ii. par. i. p. 658.