§ 149. POSITION or THE KOMAN CHUKCH. TO"©
1. Whosoever says, that Adam was created mortal, and would, even without sin, have died by natural necessity, let him be anathema.
2. Whoever rejects infant baptism, or denies original sin in children, so that the baptismal formula, " for the remission o^ sins," would have to be taken not in a strict, but in a loose sense, let him be anathema.
3. Whoever says, that in the kingdom of heaven, or elsewhere, there is a certain middle place, where children dying without baptism live happy (beate vivant), while yet without baptism they cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven, i. e., into eternal life, let him be anathema.'
The fourth canon condemns the doctrine that the justifying grace of God merely eflects the forgiveness of sins already committed ; and the remaining canons condemn other superficial views of the grace of God and the sinfulness of man.
At the same time the Africans succeeded in procuring from the emperor Honorius edicts against the Pelagians.
These things produced a change in the opinions of Zosimus, and about the middle of the year 418, he issued an encyclical letter to all the bishojDS of both East and West, pronouncmg the anathema upon Pelagius and Coelestius (who had meanwhile left Rome), and declaring his concurrence with the decisions of the council of Carthage in the doctrines of the corruption of human nature, of baptism, and of grace. Whoever refused to subscribe the encyclical, was to be deposed, banished from his church, and deprived of his property.^
Eighteen bishops of Italy refused to subscribe, and were
' It is significant, that the thud canon, which denies the salvation of unbaptized children, is of doubtful authenticity, and is wanting in Isidore and Dionysius. Hence the difference in the number of the canons against the Pelagians, as to whether there arc 8 or 9.
' Epistola tractoria, or tractatoria, of which only some fragments are extant. CJomp. Mansi, iv. 370. This letter was written after and not before the African council of 418 and the promulgation of the sacrum rescriptum of Honorius against the Pelagians, as Tillemont (xiii. 738) and the Benedictines (in the Preface to the lOtn volume of the Opera August. § 18) have proved, in opposition to Baroni*i8, Ncrin, and Garnier,
SCO rHIKD PEKIOD, A.D. 311-590,
deposed. Several of these afterwards recanted, and wer* restored.
The most distinguished one of tlieni, however, the bishop Julian, of Eclanum, a small place near Capua in Cam])auia. remained steadfast till his death, and in banishment vindicated his principles with great ability and zeal against Augustine, to whom he attributed all the misfortunes of his party, and who elaborately confuted him.' Julian was the most learned, the most acute, and the most systematic of the Pelagians, and the most formidable opponent of Augustine ; deserving respect for his talents, his uprightness of life, and his immovable fidelity to his convictions, but unquestionably censurable for excessive passion and overbearing pride.''
Julian, Coelestius, and other leaders of the exiled Pelagians, were hospitably received in Constantinople, in 429, by the patriarch Nestorius, who sympathized with their doctrine of the moral competency of the will, though not with their denial of original sin, and who interceded for them with the em])eror and with pope Celestine, but in vain. Theodosius, instructed by Marius Mercator in the merits of the case, commanded the heretics to leave the capital (•129). Nestorius, in a still extant letter to Coelestius," accords to him the highest titles of honor, and comforts him with the examples of John the Baptist and the persecuted apostles. Theodore of Mopsuestia (f 428), the author of the JSTestorian Christology, wrote in 419 a book against the Augustinian anthropolog}^, of which fragments only are left.*
^ 111 two large works: Contra Julianum, libri vi. (Opera, torn. x. f. 49'7-'?ll), and in the Opus impcrfcctum contra secuiidaiii Juliuni respousioneni, in six booka (torn. X. P. ii. f. 874-1386), before eompleliug which he died (a. d. 430).
* Gennadius, in his Liber de scriptoribus ccclesiasticis, calls Julian of Eclanum "vir acer ingenio, in divinis scriptuiis doctus, Giteca et Latina lingua scholasticus." By Augustine, however, in tlie Opus imperf. contra JuL 1. iv. 50 (Opera, x. P. li. fol. 116;;), he is called "in disputatione loquacissimus, in coiitcniione cahiriiniosissimus, in professione fallacissimus," because he maligned the Catholics, while giving himself out for a Catholic. He was married.
' In Maiius Mercator, in a Latin translation, ed. Gamier-Migne, p. 182.
* In Pliotius, Bibl. cod. 177, and in the Latin translation of Marius Mercator tiao in tlie works of Jerome, torn. ii. 807-814 (ed. Vail.). The book was written contra Iliramum, i. e., llicronymum, and was entitled: llphs tou% Kfyuyras (pvati