[65] Sermon 294.
[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] Epistle 157, 22.
[68] Epistle 156, among Augustin's Letters.
[69] Epistle, 157, 22.
[70] Epistles 177, 6; and 179, 2.
[71] Epistle 168. On the Proceedings of Pelagius, 48.
[72] On the Proceedings of Pelagius, 47; and Epistle 186, 1.
[73] Compare On Nature and Grace, 7; and Epistle 186, 1.
[74] Epistle 169, 13.
[75] On Nature and Grace, 1. Sallust's Jugurtha, prologue.
[76] For Augustin's press of work just now, see Epistle 169, 1 and 13.
[77] The argument occurs in Pelagius' Commentary on Paul, written before 410, and is already before Augustin in On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, etc., iii. 5.
[78] Epistle 166.
[79] An almost contemporary letter to Oceanus (Epistle 180, written in 416) adverts to the same subject and in the same spirit, showing how much it was in Augustin's thoughts. Compare Epistle 180, 2 and 5.
[80] Epistle 172.
[81] See On the Perfection of Man's Righteousness, 1.
[82] Migne's Edition of Augustin's Works, vol. v. pp. 1719-1723.
[83] Compare the words of Cicero quoted above, p. xiv.
[84] Compare the similar words in Epistle 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] Epistles 175 and 176 in Augustin's Letters.
[86] Epistle 177. The other bishops were Aurelius, Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius.
[87] Epistle 178.
[88] Epistle 179.
[89] See vol. i. of this series, p. 459, and the references there given. Compare Canon Robertson's vivid account of them in his History of the Christian Church, ii. 18, 145.
[90] Epistle 188.
[91] Compare On the Grace of Christ, 40. In the succeeding sections, some of its statements are examined.
[92] Epistles 181, 182, 183, among Augustin's Letters.
[93] Epistle 186, written conjointly with Alypius.
[94] The book given him by Timasius and James, to which On Nature and Grace is a reply.
[95] Compare also Innocent's letter (Epistle 181) to the Carthaginian Council, chap. 4, which also Neander, History of the Christian 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 Augustin 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.
[97] Sermon 131, preached at Carthage.
[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 Innocent's death.
[100] On Original Sin, 1.
[101] Do., 5.
[102] On the Grace of Christ, 55.
[103] On the Gift of Perseverance, 55.
[104] Compare, below, pp. lv-lviii. Neander, in the second volume (E.T.) of his History of the Christian Church, discusses the matter in a very fair spirit.
[105] English version, xcv., see verse 6.
[106] Sermon 26.
[107] Epistle 190.
[108] See Epistle 194, 1.
[109] See Epistle 191, 1.
[110] Epistle 191.
[111] Epistle 194.
[112] It appears to have been first reported to Augustin, by Marius Mercator, in a letter received at Carthage. See Epistle 193, 3.
[113] As, for example, in On the Merits and Remission of Sins, etc., i.
[114] Epistle 193.
[115] Compare On Dulcitius' Eight Questions, 3.
[116] That is, On the Merits and Remission of Sins, etc., ii. 30 sq.
[117] Epistle 196.
[118] On Marriage and Concupiscence, i. 2.
[119] Compare the Benedictine Preface to The Unfinished Work.
[120] Epistle 202, bis. Compare Epistle 190.
[121] Compare Epistle 195.
[122] Julian afterwards repudiated this letter, perhaps because of some falsifications it had suffered; it seems to have been certainly his.
[123] Compare Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iii. 24: and see above, p. xv.
[124] To wit: Cyprian's testimony on original sin (20-24), 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).
[125] Compare Epistle 207, written probably in the latter half of 421.
[126] That is, Chyrsostom.
[127] Compare On Rebuke and Grace, 44, and the footnote there.
[128] See vol. iii. of this series, pp. 227 sq.
[129] Now a portion of Tunis.
[130] Epistle 194.
[131] Epistle 214.
[132] Epistle 215, 2 sq.
[133] Epistle 216.
[134] On Rebuke and Grace, 1.
[135] Retractions, ii. 67. Compare On Rebuke and Grace, 5 sq.
[136] On the importance of this treatise for Augustin's doctrine of predestination, see Wiggers' Augustinianism and Pelagianism, E.T. p. 236, where a sketch of the history of this doctrine in Augustin's writings may be found.
[137] Epistle 217.
[138] Epistle 224.
[139] The account given of Pelagianism is as follows: "They are in such degree enemies of the grace of God, by which we have been predestined 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' (John vi. 66)--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' (John xv. 5). 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.' 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."
[140] Compare Epistles 225, 1, and 156. It is, of course, not certain that this is the same Hilary that wrote to Augustin from Sicily, but it seems probable.
[141] In Letters 225 and 226.
IV. The Theology of Grace.
The theology which Augustin 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 centre 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, Augustin 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, [146] 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. [147] It was on account of this sin that he died physically and spiritually, and this double death passes over from him to us. [148] That all his descendants by ordinary generation are partakers in Adam's guilt and condemnation, Augustin 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. [149] 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; [150] 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; [151] sometimes he speaks as if it were due to simple heredity; [152] 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. [153] 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; [154] and, the sinning soul making the flesh corruptible, our whole nature is corrupted, and we are unable to do anything of ourselves truly good. [155] This includes, of course, an injury to our will. Augustin, 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, [156] --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. [157] 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; [158] 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, enslaved,--although the faculty of will (in the narrow sense) remains indifferent. [159] Augustin's criticism of Pelagius' discrimination [160] 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; [161] 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; [162] 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; [163] 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.