1022 THIKD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
aud claimed biin as one of the most enlightened witnesses of th« truth aud most striking examples of the marvellous power of divine grace in the transformation of a sinner. It is worthy of mark, that his Pauline doctrines, which are most nearly akin to Protestantism, are the later and more mature parts of his system, and that just these found great acceptance with the laity. The Pelagian controversy, in which he developed his anthropology, marks the culmination of his theological and ecclesiastical career, and his latest writings were directed against the Pelagian Julian and the Semi-Pelagians in Gaul, who were brought to his notice by the two friendly laymen, Prosper and Hilary. These anti-Pelagian works have wrought mightily, it is most true, upon the Catholic church, and have held in check the Pelagianizing tendencies of the hierarchical and monastic system, but they have never passed into its blood and marrow. They waited for a favorable future, and nourished in silence an opposition to the prevailing system.
Even in the middle age the better sects, which attempted to simplify, purify, and spiritualize the reigning Christianity by return to the Holy Scriptures, and the reformers before the Reformation, such as Wiclif, Huss, Wessel, resorted most, after the apostle Paul, to the bishop of Hip])0 as the representative of the doctrine of free grace.
The Reformers were led by his writings into a deeper understanding of Paul, and so prei»ared for their great vocation. !N^o church teacher did so much to mould Luther and Calvin ; none furnished them so powerful weapons againet the dominant Pelagianism and formalism ; none is so often quoted by them with esteem and love.'
' LcTHKR pronouncod upon the church fathers (with whom, however, excepting Augustine, he was but sHghtly acquainted) very condemnatory judgments, even upon Basil, Chrysostorn, and Jerome (for Jerome lie had a downright antipathy, on account of his advocacy of fasts, virginity, and monkery) ; he was at times dissatiefied even with Augustine, because he after all did not tind in him his sola Jule, hia articulu.1 stands vcl cadciiti^ ccclcxice, and says of him : " Augustine often erred ; ht cannot be trusted. Though he was good and holy, yet he, as well as other fathers was wanting in the true faith." But this cursory utterance is overborne l)y numerous commendations ; and all such judgments of Luther must be Uikon cum ffraua talis. He calls Augustine the most pious, grave, and sincere of the fathers, the
§ 180. Augustine's delation t3 Catholicism, etc. 1023
All the Reformers in the outset, Melancthon and Zwingli among them, adopted his denial of free will and his doctrine of predestination, and sometimes even went beyond liim into the abyss of supralapsarianism, to cut out the last roots of human merit and boasting. In this point Augustine holds the same relation to the Catholic church, as Luther to the Lutheran ; that is, he is a heretic of unimpeachable authority, who is more admired than censured even in his extravagances ; yet his doctrine of predestination w^as indirectly condemned by the pope in Jansenism, as Luther's view was rejected as Calvinism by the Form of Concord.' For Jansenism was nothing
patron of divines, who taught a pure doctrine and submitted it in Christian humility to the Holy Scriptures, etc., and he thinks, if he had lived in the sixteenth century, he would have been a Protestant (si hoe seculo \iveret, nobiscum sentiret), while Jerome would have gone with Rome. Compare his singular but striking judgments on the fathers in Lutheri Colloquia, ed. H. E. Bindseil, 1863, torn. iii. 149, and many other places. Gangauf, a Roman Catholic (a pupil of the philosopher Giinther), concedes (1. c. p. 28, note 13) that Luther and Calvin built their doctrinal system mainly on Augustine, but, as he correctly thinks, with only partial right. Noukris- SON, likewise a Roman Catholic, derives Protestantism from a corrupted (!) Augustinianism, and very superficially makes Lutheranism and Calvinism essentially to consist in the denial of the freedom of the will, which was only one of the questions of the Reformation. " On ne saurait le meconnaitre, de I'Augustiniauisme corrompu, mais enfin de I'Augustinianisme procede le Protestantisme. Car, sans parler de Wiclef et de Huss, qui, nourris de saint Augustin, soutiennent, avec le realisme platonicien, la doctrine de la predestination ; Luther et Calvin ne font guere autre chose, dans leurs principaux ouvrages, que cultiver des semences d'Augustinianisme" (1. c. ii. p. 176). But the Reformation is far more, of course, than a repristination of an old controversy ; it is a new creation, and marks the epoch of modern Christianity which is different both from the mediaeval and from ancient or patristic Christianity.
' It is well known that Luther, as late as 1526, in his work, De servo arbitrio, against Erasmus, which he never retracted, proceeded upon the most rigorous notion of the divine omnipotence, wholly denied the freedom of the will, declared it a mere lie (merum mendacium), pronounced the calls of the Scriptures to repentance a divine irony, based eternal salvation and eternal perdition upon the secret will of God, and almost exceeded Calvin. See particulars in the books on doctrinehistory; the inaugural dissertation of Jul. Mijllkr: Lutheri de prasdestinatione et libero arbitrio doctrina, Gott. 1832; and a historical treatise on predestination by Carl Beck in the Studien und Kritiken for 1847. We add, as a curiosity, the opinion of Gibbon (ch. xxxiii.), who, however, had a very limited and superficial knowledge of Augustine: "The rigid system of Christianity which he framed or restored, has been entertained, with public applause, and secret reluctance, by the Latin church. The church of Rome has canonized Augustine, and reprobated Cal-