§ 148. PELAGIAN CONTKOVER8Y IN PALESTINE. 795
three books against tlie Pelagians, written towards tlic end of the year 415, and soon after the acquittal of Pelagius by tlie synod of Jerusalem.' Yet in this treatise and elsewhere Jerome himself teaches the freedom of the will, and only a conditional predestination of divine foreknowledge, and thus, with all his personal bitterness against the Pelagians, stands on Semi-Pelagian ground, though Augustine eulogizes the dialogue.'
A young Spanish ecclesiastic, Paul Orosiiis, was at that time living with Jerome for the sake of more extended study, and had been sent to him by Augustine with letters relating to the Origenistic and Pelagian controversy.
At a diocesan synod, convoked by the bishop John of Jerusalem in June, 415,* this Orosius appeared against Pelagius, and gave information that a council at Carthage had condemned Coelestius, and that Augustine had written against his errors. Pelagius answered with evasion and disparagement: "What matters Augustine to me?" Orosius gave his opinion, that a man who presumed to speak contumeliously of the bishop to whom the whole Kortli African church owed her restoration (alluding apparently to the settlement of the Donatist controversies), deserved to be excluded from the communion of the whole church. John, who was a great admirer of the condemned Origen, and made little account of the authority of Augustine, declared : " I am Augustine," * and undertook the defence of the accused. He permitted Pelagius, although only a monk and layman, to take bis seat among the pi-esbyters.* Nor did he find fault with Pelagius' assertion,
' Dialogus c. Pelag. (Opera, torn. ii. 693-806).
^ Op. imperf. contra JuL iv. 88, where he says of it: Mira et ut talem fidem docebat, venustate composuit. The judgment is just as to the form, but too favorable as to the contents of this dialogue. Comp. Zockler, Hieronymus, p. 428.
' The Acta of the Conventus Hierosolyniitanus, according to a report of Orosiu? in his Apolo^a pro libertate arbitrii, cap. 3 and 4, are found in Mansi, iv. 301 sqq
*' Augustinus ego sum." To this Orosius replied not infelicitously : " Si Augus tini personam sumis, Augustini sententiam sequere." Mansi, iv. 308.
* Orosius was much scandalized by the fact that a bishop should order " laicum m consessu presbjtororum, reum haereseos manifestae in medio catbolicorum eedere.'
796 nilKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
tbat man can easily keep the eonimandments of Gcd, and peoome fiee from sin, after the latter had conceded, in a very indefinite manner, that for this the help of God is necessary. Pelagins had the advantage of understanding both languages, while John spoke only Greek, Orosius only Latin, and the interpreter often translated inaccurately. After much discussion it was resolved, that the matter should be laid before the Roman bishop. Innocent, since both parties in the controversy belonged to the Western church. Meanwhile these should refrain from all further attacks on each other.
A second Palestinian council resulted still more favorably to Pelagius. This consisted of fourteen bishops, and was held at Diospolis or Lydda, in December of the same year, under the presidency of Eulogius, bishop of Csesarea, to jndge of an accusation preferred by two banished bishops of Gaul, Ileroa and Lazarus, acting in concert with Jerome.' The charges were unskilfully drawn up, and Pelagius was able to avail himself of equivocations, and to condemn as folly, though not as heresy, the teachings of Coelestius, which were also his own. The synod, of which John of Jerusalem was a member, did not go below the surface of the question, nor in fact understand it, but acquitted the accused of all heresy. Jerome is justified in calling this a " miserable synod;" ' although Augustine is also warranted in saying : " It was not heresy, that was there acquitted, but the man who denied the heresy." '
Jerome's polemical zeal against the Pelagians cost him dear. In the beginning of the year 416, a mob of Pelagianiz ing monks, ecclesiastics, and vagabonds broke into his monas tery at Bethlehem, maltreated the inmates, set the building on fire, and com])elled the aged scholar to take to flight. Bishop John of Jerusalem let this pass unpunished. No wonder that
* The scattered accounts of the Concilium Diospolitanum are collected in Mansi, torn. iv. 311 sqq. Corap. Hefcle, ii. p. 95 ff.
• "Quldquid in ilia miscrahili synodo Diospolitana dixisse se dencgat, in hofl opere confitctur," he wrote, a. d. 419, in a letter to Augustine (Ep. im, ed. Vallara torn. i. 1067). Comp. Mansi, iv. 315.
■' Comp. Augustine, De gestis Pelagii, c. 1 sqq. (torn. x. fol. 192 eqq.). Popo Innocent I. (-102-417) wrote a consoling letter to Jerome, and a letter of reproof to John of Jenisalem for his inaction. Epp. 136 and 137 in Jerome's Epistlea.