§ 151. THE PELAGIAN SYSTEM CONTINUED. 811
constitution, is grace, and comes therefore from God, as an original endowment of the nature of man. It is the coiidit.on of voKtion and action, though it does not necessarily produce them. Willing and acting belong exclusively to man himself.' The power of speech, of thought, of sight, is God's gift ; but whether we shall really think, speak, or see, and whether we shall think, speak, or see well or ill, depends upon ourselves."
Here the nature of man is mechanically sundered from hia will and act ; and the one is referred exclusively to God, the others to man. Moral ability does not exist over and above the will and its acts, but in them, and is increased by exercise; and thus its grow^th depends upon man himself. On the other hand, the divine help is indispensable even to the willing and doing of good ; for God works in us both to will and to do. The Pelagian system is founded unconsciously upon the deistic conception of the world as a clock, made and wound up by God, and then running of itself, and needing at most some subsequent repairs. God, in this system, is not the omnipresent and everywhere working Upholder and Governor of the world, in whom the creation lives and moves and has its being, but a more or less passive spectator of the operation of the universe.'' Jerome therefore faii'ly accuses the Pelagians
' Pelagius, Fro libero arbitrio, cited iu Augustine's De gratia Ohristi, c. 4 (§ 5, torn, X, fol. 232): '^ Posse ia natura, velle in arbitrio, esse in effeclu locamus. Primum iilud, id est posse^ ad Deum proprie pertinet, qui illud creatufte suae contulit, duo vero reliqua, hoc est velle et esse, ad tiominem referenda sunt, quia de arbitrii fonte descendunt. Ergo in voluntate et opere bono laus homiuis est: immo et hominis et Dei, qui ipsius voluntatis et operis possibilitatem dedit, quique ipsam possibilitatem gratiae suae adjuvat semper auxilio."
^ " Quod possumus videre oculis, nostrum non est : quod vero bene aut male videmus, hoc nostrum est. . . . Quod loqui possumus, Dei est : quod vero bene vel male loquimur, nostrum est." Quoted iu Augustine's De gratia Christi, c. 15 *nd 16 (fol. 237 and 238). Augustine cites against these examples Ps. cxix. 37 ' "Averte oculos meos, ne vidcant vanitatem."
'' Phii. ii. 13. Augustine appeals to this passage, De gratia Christi, c. 5 (f. 23? sq.) with great emphasis, as if Paul with prophetic eye had had in view the error of Pelagius.
* It is agiiinst this deistic view that the pregnant lines of Goethe are directed: "Was war' ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse, Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse ;
812 THIKD PERIOD, A.D. 311-590.
(without nainiug: tliein") of denying the absohite dependence of man on God, and cites against them the de(;]aration of Cln-ist, John v. 17, concerning the uninterrupted activity of God/
IV. The doctrine of the grace of God.
The sufficiency of the natural reason and will of man would seem to make snj)crnatural revelation and grace superfluous. But this Pclagius does not admit. Besides the natural grace, as we may call his concreated abil-ity, he assumes also a supernatural grace, which through revelation enlightens tlie understanding, and assists man to will and to do what is good.'' Tiiis grace confers the negative benefit of the forgiveness of past sins, or justification, which Pelagius understands in the Protestant sense o1 declaring righteous, and not (like Augustine) in the Catholic sense oi making righteous ; '
Ihm ziemt's, die Welt im Itmern zu bewegen, Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen, So dass, was in ihm lebt und webt und ist, Nie seine Kraft, nie seinen Geist vermisst."
" What were a God who only from without Upon his finger whirled the universe about? 'Tis his within itself to move the creature; Nature in him to warm, himself in nature ; So that what in him hves and moves and is, Shall ever feel some living breath of his."
* Epistola ad Ctesiphontem. Dr. Neander (Church History, vol. ii. p. 604 ff. Torrey's transl.) regards this difference of view concerning the relation of the Creator to the creature as the most original and fundamental difference between tlie Augustinian and Pelagian system, although it did not clearly come to view in the progress of the controversy.
" Pelagius, in Aug. De gratia Christi, c. 7 (^8, x. f. 233): "... Dens . . . gratiiE 8U£E auxilium subrainistiat, ut quod per liberura homines facere jubentur ai'bitrium, facilius possent implere per gi-atiam."
^ Pelag. Com. in Rom, iv. 6: "Ad hoc fides prima ad justitiam reputatur, ut de pneterito absolvatur et de prajsenti justificatur, et ad futura fidei opera praeparatur." Similarly Julian of Eclanura. Augustine, on the contrary, has the evangelical conception of faith and of grace, but not of justification, which he interprets subjectively as a progressive making righteous, like the Roman church. Comp. De gratia Christi, c. 47 (§ 52, x. f. 251): "... gratiam Dei ... in qua nos sua, non nostia justitise jugton facit, ut ea sit vera nostra justithi (juie nob's ab illo est." In another passage, however, he seems to express the Protestant view. De spir, it lit. o