THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
that " not only the greatest but also the smallest good things can not be, except from him from whom are all good things, that is, from God;" and it might well seem to him to follow from this that faith, which is certainly a good thing, could proceed from the operation of God alone. This explains the idea that grace works like a law of nature, drawing the human will to God with a divine omnipotence. Of course this Neoplatonic coloring must not be exaggerated; it is more consistent with itself in his earlier writings than in the later, and he would never have arrived at his predestinarian teaching without the New Testament. With this knowledge, we are in a position to estimate the force of a difficulty which now confronted Augustine for the first time, but never afterward left him, and which has been present in the Roman Catholic teaching even down to the Councils of Trent and the Vatican. If faith depends upon an action of our own, solicited but not caused by vocation, it can only save a man when, per fidem gratiam accipiens, he becomes one who not merely believes in God but loves him also. But if faith has been already inspired by grace, and if, while the Scripture speaks of justification by faith, it is held (in accordance with the definition of grace) that justification follows upon the infusio caritatis, — then either the conception of the faith which is God-inspired must pass its fluctuating boundaries and approach nearer to that of caritas, or the conception of faith which is unconnected with caritas will render the fact of its inspiration unintelligible and justification by faith impossible. Augustine's anti-Pelagian writings set forth this doctrine of grace more clearly in some points, such as the terms " election," " predestination," " the gift of perseverance," and also more logically; but space forbids us to show this here, as the part taken in this controversy by Augustine is so fully detailed elsewhere (see Pelagius; Semipelagianism). An enumeration of his contributions to this subject must suffice.
They are as follows: De peccatorum meritis et
remissione (412); De spiritu et litera (412);
De natura et gratia contra Pelagium
3. Anti- (415); De perfectione justitim homi- Pelagian nis (about 415); De gestis Pelagii Writings. (417); De gratia Christi et de peccato originali (418) ; De nuptiis et concupiscentia (419 and 420); De anima et ejus origine (about 419), which does not bear directly on Pelagianism, but answers a Pelagianizing critic of Augustine's reserve on the question of traducianism and creationism; Contra duas epistulas Pelagiunorum ad Bonifatium, romana ecclesim episcopum (about 420); Contra Julianum (about 421); De gratia et libera arbitrio (426 or 427); De correptione et gratia (426 or 427); De prozdestinatione sanctorum (428 or 429); De dono perseverantia (428 or 429); and the opus imperfectum written in the last years of his life, Contra secundum Juliani responsionem.
In order to arrive at a decision as to what influence the Donatist controversy had upon Augustine's intellectual development, it is necessary to see how long and how intensely he was concerned
with it. We have seen that even before he was a bishop he was defending the catholic Church against the Donatists; and after his consecration he took part directly or indirectly in all the important discussions of the matter, some of which have been already mentioned, and defended the cause of the Church in letters and sermons as well as in his
more formal polemical writings. The
4. Activity first of these which belongs to the
Against period of his episcopate, Contra par-
Donatism. tern Donati, has been lost; about 400
he wrote the two cognate treatises Contra epistulam Parmeniani (the Donatist bishop of Carthage) and De baptismo contra Donatistas. He was considered by the schismatics as their chief antagonist, and was obliged to defend himself against a libelous attack on their part in a rejoinder now lost. From the years 401 and 402 we have the reply to the Donatist bishop of Cirta, Contra epistulam Petiliani, and also the Epistula ad catholicos de unitate ecclesim. The conflict was now reaching its most acute stage. After the Carthaginian synod of 403 had made preparations for a decisive debate with the Donatists, and the latter had declined to fall in with the plan, the bitterness on both sides increased. Another synod at Carthage the following year decided that the emperor should be asked for penal laws against the Donatists. Honorius granted the request; but the employment of force in matters of belief brought up a new point of discord between the two sides. When these laws were abrogated (409), the plan of a joint conference was tried once more in June, 411, under imperial authority, nearly 300 bishops being present from each side, with Augustine and Aurelius of Carthage as the chief representatives of the catholic cause. In the following year, the Donatists proving insubordinate, Honorius issued a new and severer edict against them, which proved the beginning of the end for the schism. For these years from 405 to 412 we have twenty-one extant letters of Augustine's bearing on the controversy, and there were eight formal treatises, but four of these are lost. Those which we still have are: Contra Cresconium grammaticum (about 406); De unico baptismo (about 410 or 411), in answer to a work of the same name by Petilian; the brief report of the conference (end of 411); and the Liber contra Donatistas post collationem (probably 412). After this date, though he occasionally touched on the question in letters and sermons, he produced practically no more literary polemics in regard to it; we know of one lost anti-Donatist treatise of about 416, and still possess one written for a special occasion Contra Gaudentium, Donatistarum episcopum, about 420; but these are all.
The earliest of the extant works against the Donatists present the same views of the Church and its sacraments which Augustine developed later. The principles which he represented in this conflict are merely those which, in a simpler form, had either appeared in the anti-Donatist polemics before his time or had been part of his own earlier belief. What he did was to formulate them with more dogmatic precision, and to permeate the ordinary controversial thesis with his own deep