TO The Right Reverend The Lord Bishop OF Exeter.
My Dear Lord,--I gladly avail myself of your permission to dedicate this volume to you. In the course of a professional life of nearly the third of a century, which has not been idly spent, I have never failed to find pleasure in theological pursuits. In the intervals of most pressing labour, these have often tended to refresh and comfort one's wearied spirit. If this confession of my own experience should have any weight with any one in our sacred calling to combine the hard work which we owe to others while ministering to their wants, with "that diligent attendance to reading" which we require for ourselves, to inform our minds and refresh our spirits, I shall have accomplished my only purpose in making it. Your Lordship, I am sure, will entirely approve of such a combination of employments in your clergy. I well remember your recommendation of theological study to us at the opening of Bishop Phillpott's Library at Truro; and how you counselled us the more earnestly to pursue it, from the danger there is, in these busy times, of merging the acquisition of sacred learning in the active labours of our holy vocation. That the divine blessing may crown the work which you are so diligently prosecuting in the several functions of your high office, is the earnest wish, my dear Lord, of your faithful servant,
Peter Holmes.
Mannamead, Plymouth, March 10, 1872.
Dedication of Volume II. Of the Edinburgh Edition.
------------------------
TO The Rev. C. T. Wilkinson, M.A.,
Vicar OF ST. Andrews With Pennycross, Plymouth.
My Dear Vicar,--I have great pleasure in associating your name with my own in this volume. We are officially connected in the sacred ministry of the Church, and I think I may, not unsuitably, extend our relations in this little effort to strengthen the defences of the great doctrine of Grace committed to our care and advocacy. Never was this portion of revealed truth more formidably assailed than at the present day. Rationalism, as its primary dogma, asserts the perfectibility of our nature, out of its own resources; and with a versatility and power of argument and illustration, which gathers help from every quarter in literature and philosophy, it opposes "the truth as it is in Jesus." This truth, which implies, as its cardinal points, the ruin of man's nature in the sin of the first Adam, and its recovery in the obedience of the second Adam, is vindicated with admirable method and convincing force in the Anti-Pelagian treatises of the great Doctor of the Western Church. Some of these treatises appear for the first time in our language in this volume; and you will, I am sure, admire the acuteness with which Saint Augustin tracks out and refutes the sophistries of the rationalists of his own day, as well as the profound knowledge and earnest charity with which he enforces and recommends the Catholic verity.
In identifying you thus far with myself in this undertaking, I not only gratify my own feelings of sincere friendship, but with a confidence which I believe I do not over-estimate, I assume, what I highly prize, your agreement with me in accepting and furthering the principles set forth in this volume.
With sincere sympathy for you in your important work at Plymouth, and best wishes for the divine blessing upon it, believe me, yours very faithfully,
Peter Holmes.
Mannamead, Plymouth, June 24, 1874.
Preface to Volume I. Of the Edinburgh Edition.
------------------------
Contents.--§ 1. The Latin Titles of the Treatises contained in this Volume; on the Preface of the Benedictine Edition. § 2. Notice of Pelagius and his Opinions. § 3. Of Coelestius and his Doctrine, in Seven Propositions. § 4. On Augustin as compared with other Doctors of the Church; his Estimate of Pelagius and Coelestius. § 5. The Different Fortunes of these Two Men at First. § 6. St. Jerome differs from St. Augustin as to the Origin of Pelagianism; East and West, their Doctrinal Characteristics--how Agreeing, how Varying. § 7. On the Conduct of Augustin and Pelagius; Partisanship of their Followers and Critics. § 8. Paramount Influence of St. Augustin in Ancient and Modern Times, and in Various Parts of Christendom. § 9. Reason of this Influence; Augustin true to Scripture and Human Experience; in Favourable Contrast to Pelagius as to the Scientific Depth and Accuracy of his Doctrine. § 10. Rationalism and Revelation; Pelagius' Views Isolated and Incoherent; Augustin an Excellent Guide in Scripture Knowledge. § 11. Popularity and Permanence of Pelagianism; Consentient with Man's Natural Feelings; Elevating Influence of Divine Grace, its Ultimate Triumph in Everlasting Glory. § 12. Original Text from which this Translation is made; Works useful in the Pelagian Controversy.
§ 1. The reader has in this volume, translated for the first time in English, five of the fifteen treatises of St. Augustin on the Pelagian heresy. They are here arranged in the same order (the chronological one) in which they are placed in the tenth volume of the Benedictine edition, and are therefore St. Augustin's earliest contributions to the great controversy. These are their Latin titles:
De peccatorum meritis et remissione, et de baptismo parvulorum ad Marcellinum; libri tres, scripti anno Christi 412.
De Spiritu et littera ad eumdem; liber unus, scriptus sub finem anni 412.
De natura et gratia contra Pelagium, ad Timasium et Jacobum; liber unus, scriptus anno Christi 415.
De perfectione justitiæ hominis; [Epistola seu] liber ad Eutropium et Paulum, scriptus circiter finem anni 415.
De gestis Pelagii ad Aurelium episcopum; liber unus, scriptus sub initium anni 417.
The Benedictine editors have enriched their edition with prefaces ("Admonitiones") and critical and explanatory notes, and, above all, with the appropriate extracts from St. Augustin's Retractations, [198] in which we have the author's own final revision and correction of his works. All these have been reproduced in a translated form in this volume; and they will, it is believed, afford the reader sufficient guidance for an intelligent apprehension of at least the special arguments of the several treatises. The Benedictine editors, however, prefixed to this detailed information an elaborate and lengthy preface, in which they reviewed the general history of the Pelagian discussions and their authors, with especial reference to the part which St. Augustin played throughout it. This historical introduction it was at first intended to present to the reader in English at the head of this volume. In consideration, however, of the length of the document, we have so far changed our purpose as to substitute a shorter statement of certain facts and features of the Pelagian controversy, which it is hoped may contribute to a better understanding of the general subject.
§ 2. The Pelagian heresy is so designated after Pelagius, a British monk. (Augustin calls him Brito, so do Prosper and Gennadius; by Orosius he is called Britannicus noster, and by Mercator described as gente Britannus. This wide epithet is somewhat restricted by Jerome, who says of him, Habet progeniem Scotiæ gentis de Britannorum vicinia; leaving it uncertain, however, whether he deemed Scotland his native country, or Ireland. His monastic character is often referred to both by Augustin and other writers, and Pope Zosimus describes him as Laicum virum ad bonam frugem longa erga Deum servitute nitentem. It is, after all, quite uncertain what part of "Britain" gave him birth; among other conjectures, he has been made a native of Wales, attached to a monastery at Bangor, and gifted with the Welsh name of Morgan, of which his usual designation of Pelagius is supposed to be simply the Greek version, Pelagios.) It was at the beginning of the fifth century that he became conspicuous. He then resided at Rome, known by many as an honourable and earnest man, seeking in a corrupt age to reform the morals of society. (In the present volume the reader will not fail to observe the eulogistic language which Augustin often uses of Pelagius; see On the Merits of Sin, iii. 1, 5, 6.) Sundry theological treatises are even attributed to him; among them one On the Trinity, of unquestionable orthodoxy, and showing great ability. Unfavourable reports, however, afterwards began to be circulated, charging him with opening, in fact, entirely new ground in the fields of heresy. During the previous centuries of Christian opinion the speculations of active thinkers had been occupied on Theology properly so called, or the doctrine of God as to His nature and personal attributes, including Christology, which treated of Christ's divine and human natures. This was objective divinity. With Pelagius, however, a fresh class of subjects was forced on men's attention: in his peculiar system of doctrine he deals with what is subjective in man, and reviews the whole of his relation to God. His heresy turns mainly upon two points--the assumed incorruptness of human nature, and the denial of all supernatural influence upon the human will.
§ 3. He had an early associate in Coelestius, a native of Campania, according to some, or as others say, of Ireland or of Scotland. This man, who is said to have been highly connected, began life as an advocate, but, influenced by the advice and example of Pelagius, soon became a monk. He excelled his master in boldness and energy; and thus early precipitated the new doctrine into a formal dogmatism, from which the caution and subtler management of Pelagius might have saved it. In the year A.D. 412 (Pelagius having just left him at Carthage to go to Palestine), Coelestius was accused before the bishop Aurelius of holding and teaching the following opinions:
1. Adam was created mortal, and must have died, even if he had not sinned; 2. Adam's sin injured himself only, and not mankind; 3. Infants are born in the state of Adam before he fell; 4. Mankind neither died in Adam, nor rose again in Christ; 5. The Law, no less than the Gospel, brings men to the kingdom of heaven; 6. There were sinless men before the coming of Christ. [199] What Coelestius thus boldly propounded, he had the courage to maintain. On his refusal to retract, he was excommunicated. He threatened, or perhaps actually though ineffectually made, an appeal to Rome, and afterwards quitted Carthage for Ephesus.
§ 4. Augustin, who had for some time been occupied in the Donatist controversy, had as yet taken no personal part in the proceedings against Coelestius. Soon, however, was his attention directed to the new opinions, and he wrote the first two treatises contained in this volume, in the year when Coelestius was excommunicated. At first he treated Pelagius, as has been said, with deference and forbearance, hoping by courtesy to recall him from danger. But as the heresy developed, Augustin's opposition was more directly and vigorously exhibited. The gospel was being fatally tampered with, in its essential facts of human sin and divine grace; so, in the fulness of his own absolute loyalty to the entire volume of evangelical truth, he concentrated his best efforts in opposition to the now formidable heresy. It is perhaps not too much to say, that St. Augustin, the greatest doctor of the Catholic Church, effected his greatness mainly by his labours against Pelagianism. Other Christian writers besides Augustin have achieved results of decisive influence on the Church and its deposit of the Christian faith. St. Athanasius, "alone against the world," has often been referred to as a splendid instance of what constancy, aided by God's grace and a profound knowledge of theology, could accomplish; St. Cyril of Alexandria, and St. Leo of Rome, might be also quoted as signal proofs of the efficacy of catholic truth in opposition to popular heresy: these men, under God, saved the Creed from the ravages of Arianism, and the subtler injuries of Nestorius and Eutyches. Then, again, in the curious learning of the primitive Irenæus; in the critical skill, and wide knowledge, and indomitable labours of Origen; in the catechetical teaching of the elder Cyril; in the chaste descriptive power of Basil; in the simplicity and self-denial of Ambrose; in the fervid eloquence of the "golden-mouthed" Chrysostom; in the great learning of Jerome; in the scholastic accuracy of Damascene; and in the varied sacred gifts of other Christian worthies, from the impetuous Tertullian and the gentle Cyprian, with all the Gregories of manifold endowments, down to the latest period of patristic wisdom, graced by our own Anselm and the unrivalled preacher Bernard,--in all these converging lines of diverse yet compatible accomplishments, the Church of Christ has found, from age to age, ample reinforcements against the attacks of heretical hostility. And in our great Bishop of Hippo one may trace, operating on various occasions in his various works, the manifold characteristics which we have just enumerated of his brother saints,--with this difference, that in no one of them are found combined the many traits which constitute his greatness. We have here to do only with his anti-Pelagian writings. Upon the whole, perhaps, these exhibit most of his wonderful resources of Christian character. In many respects, one is reminded by him of the great apostle, whom he reverenced, and whose profound doctrines he republished and vindicated. He has himself, in several of his works, especially in his Confessions, admitted us to a view of the sharp convulsions and bitter conflicts through which he passed, before his regeneration, into the Christian life, animated by the free and sovereign grace of God, and adorned with his unflagging energies in works of faith and love. From the depths of his own consciousness he instinctively felt the dangers of Pelagianism, and he put forth his strength, as God enabled him, to meet the evil; and the reader has in this volume samples in great variety of the earnestness of his conflict with the new heresy and its leaders. These leaders he has himself characterized: "Ille [nempe Coelestius] apertior, iste [scilicet Pelagius] occultior fuit; ille pertinacior, iste mendacior; vel certe ille liberior, hic astutior;" [200] and illustrations of the general correctness of this estimate will be forthcoming, especially in the fourth treatise of this volume, where Coelestius is dealt with, and in the fifth, which relates to the subterfuges and pretexts practised by Pelagius in his proceedings in Palestine.