§ 149, CONDEMNATION OF PELAGIANISM. 801
Of tlie subsequent life of Pelagius and Coelestius we have no account. The time and place of their death are entirely nnknown. Julian is said to have ended his life a schoolmaster in Sicily, a. d, 450, after having sacrificed all his property for the poor during a famine.
Pelagianism was thus, as early as about the year 430, externally vanquished. It never formed an ecclesiastical sect, but simply a theologica. school. It continued to have individual adherents in Italy till towards the middle of the fifth century, so that the Roman bishop, Leo the Great, found himself obliged to enjoin on the bishops by no means to receive any Pelagian to the communion of the church without an express recantation.
At the third ecumenical council in Ephesus, a. d. 431 (the year after Augustine's death), Pelagius (or more properly Coelestius) was put in the same category with Nestorius. And indeed there is a certain affinity between them : both favor an abstract separation of the divine and the human, the one in the person of Christ, the other in the work of conversion, forbiddijTg all organic unity of life. According to the epistle of the council to pope Celestine, the Western Acta against the Pelagians were read at Ephesus and approved, but we do not know in which session. We are also ignorant of the discussions attending this act. In the canons, Codlestius, it is true, is twice condemned together with Nestorius, but without statement of his teachings.'
The position of the Greek church upon tkis question is only negative; she has in name condemned Pelofianism, but has never received the positive doctrines of Augustine. She continued to teach synergistic or Semi-Pelagian views, without,
Koi ov yi'dfir] vTaieiv toi/s av^pdirous \6yoi irei/re, against those who say that mea gin by nature, and not by free will.
' Can. i. and Can. It, The latJ„er reads: "If clergymen fall ?Tay and either secretly or publicly hold with Nestorius or Ccelcsdus, the synod decrees that they also be deposed." Dr. Shedd (ii. 191) observes with justice : " The condemnation of Pelagianism which was finally passed by the council of Ephesus, seems to have been owing more to a supposed connection of the views of P.^lagius with those of Nestorius, than to a clear and conscientious conviction that hia system was contrary to Scripture and the Christian experience." 5]
002 TRIED I ERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
liowcrer, entering into a deeper investigation of tlie relation of human freedom to divine grace.'
§150. TJi^ Pelagian System: Primitive State an I Freedom of Mam. ; the Fall.
The peculiar anthropological doctrines, which Pelagiua clearly apprehended and put in actual practice, which Coelestius dialectically developed, and bishop Julian most acutely defended, stand in close logical connection with each other, although they were not propounded in systematic form. They commend themselves at first sight by their simplicity, clearness, and plausibility, and faithfully express the superficial, self-satisfied morality of the natural man. Tliey proceed from a merely empirical view of human nature, which, instead of going to the source of moral life, stops with its manifestations, and regards every person, and every act of tlie will, as standing by itself, in no organic connection with a great M'hole.
We ntay arrange the sevei-al docti-ines of this system according to the great stages of the moral history of mankind.
I. The Petmitive State of mankind, and tlie doctrine of Feeedom.
The doctrine of the primitive state of man holds a subordinate position in the system of Pelagius, but the doctrine of freedom is central ; because in his view the primitive state substantially coincides with the present, wliile freedom is the characteristic prerogative of man, as a moral being, in all stages of his development.
Adam, lie taught, was created by God sinless, and entirely competent to all good, with an immortal sj)irit and a mortal body. He was endowed with reason and free will. With his reason he was to have dominion over irrational creatures ; with his free will he was to serve God. Freedom is the supreme good, the honor and glory of man, the lonum, naturo', that cannot be lost. It is the sole basis of the ethical relation
' Comp. Miinscher, Dogmengeschichte, vol iv. 2?8, and Neander, Dogmenge Bchichtc, vol. i. p. 412.