Chapter 66.--The Harsh Measures of the Pelagians Against the Holy Monks and Nuns Who Belonged to Jerome's Charge.
Certain followers of Pelagius are said to have carried their support of his cause after these judicial proceedings to an incredible extent of perverseness and audacity. They are said [1783] to have most cruelly beaten and maltreated the servants and handmaidens of the Lord who lived under the care of the holy presbyter Jerome, slain his deacon, and burnt his monastic houses; whilst he himself, by God's mercy, narrowly escaped the violent attacks of these impious assailants in the shelter of a well-defended fortress. However, I think it better becomes me to say nothing of these matters, but to wait and see what measures our brethren the bishops may deem it their duty to adopt concerning such scandalous enormities; for nobody can suppose that it is possible for them to pass them over without notice. Impious doctrines put forth by persons of this character it is no doubt the duty of all catholics, however remote their residence, to oppose and refute, and so to hinder all injury from such opinions wheresoever they may happen to find their way; but impious actions it belongs to the discipline of the episcopal authority on the spot to control, and they must be left for punishment to the bishops of the very place or immediate neighbourhood, to be dealt with as pastoral diligence and godly severity may suggest. We, therefore, who live at so great a distance, are bound to hope that such a stop may there be put to proceedings of this kind, that there may be no necessity elsewhere of further invoking judicial remedies. But what rather befits our personal activity is so to set forth the truth, that the minds of all those who have been severely wounded by the report, so widely spread everywhere, may be healed by the mercy of God following our efforts. With this desire, I must now at last terminate this work, which, should it succeed, as I hope, in commending itself to your mind, will, I trust, with the Lord's blessing, become serviceable to its readers--recommended to them rather by your name than by my own, and through your care and diligence receiving a wider circulation.
[1783] He here refers to a letter (32) of Pope Innocent to John, Bishop of Jerusalem. It thus commences: "Plunder, slaughter, incendiary fire, every atrocity of the maddest kind have been deplored by the noble and holy virgins Eustochium and Paula, as having been perpetrated, at the devil's instigation, in several places of your diocese," etc. An epistle by the same writer (33) addressed to Jerome, begins with these words: "The apostle testifies that contention never did any good to the Church."
a treatise on the grace of christ, and on original sin.
Extract from Augustin's "Retractations,"
Book II. Chap. 50,
On the Following Treatise,
"De gratia christi, et de peccato originali."
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"After the conviction and condemnation [1784] of the Pelagian heresy with its authors by the bishops of the Church of Rome,--first Innocent, and then Zosimus,--with the co-operation of letters of African councils, I wrote two books against them: one On the Grace of Christ, and the other On Original Sin. The work began with the following words: How greatly we rejoice on account of your bodily, and, above all, because of your Spiritual welfare.'"
[1784] From this it follows that we must refer his books On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin to the year 418; for it was in this year that the Pelagian heresy was condemned by the pope Zosimus. Somewhat earlier there was held a general council of the bishops of Africa at Carthage, to take measures against the heresy,--the precise date of which council is May 1st of this year 418. Augustin, on account of this council, was detained at Carthage, and his stay in that city was longer than usual, as one may learn from the 94th canon of the council, or from the Codex Canonum of the Church of Africa, canon 127, as well as from his epistle (193, sec. 1) to Mercator. And it was in this interval of time, before he started for Mauritania Cæsariensis, that he wrote these two books for Albina, Pinianus, and Melania; accordingly, in his Retractations, he places them just previous to the time of his proceedings with Emeritus, which were concluded at Cæsarea on the 20th of September in this very year 418. Julianus, in his work addressed to Turbantius, calumniously attacked a passage in the book On the Grace of Christ; the passage is defended by Augustin in his work against Julianus, iv. 8. 47, where he mentions this first book, addressed to the holy Pinianus, as he calls him, and gives its title as "Concerning Grace, in opposition to Pelagius." [Albina, with her son-in-law Pinianus, and her daughter Melania, by whose questions Augustin was led to write this work, constituted an interesting family of ascetics, which had formerly lived in Africa, but at this time were in Palestine; Pinianus at the head of a monastery, and his wife an inmate of a convent.--W.]
A Treatise on the grace of christ, and on original sin,
by aurelius augustin, bishop of hippo;
In Two Books,
written against pelagius and coelestius in the year a.d. 418.
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