Pelagianism

“ Pelagius might have said with Wordsworth, Prelude, 534—“I had approached, like other youths, the shield Of human nature from the golden side; And would have fought, even unto the death, to attest The quality of the metal which I saw.”
Schaff, on the Pelagian controversy, in Bib. Sac., 5:205-243—The controversy “resolves itself into the question whether redemption and sanctification are the work of man or of God. Pelagianism in its whole mode of thinking starts from man and seeks to work itself upward gradually, by means of an imaginary good-will, to holiness and communion with God. ”

“ Such heresies are never antiquated, because they forever assume new forms. For instance, the insistence upon good works and "service" which is preached from many quarters, or the simple faith that any one who lives a good and useful life need have no "morbid" anxieties about salvation, is a form of Pelagianism. ”

“ Pelagius did not deny that justification and adoptive sonship, considered in their ideal relation to the “kingdom of Heaven,” as distinguished from “eternal life,”258 are not identical in adults with the grace of creation, but he denied their gratuity by asserting that the free will is able to merit all these graces by its own power.259
Whatever may have been the variations of Pelagianism, it is patent from the writings of St. ”

“ The Pelagians were the followers of Pelagius, a British monk who settled in Rome towards the year 400, and his heresy at least was founded upon rational grounds. He denied the doctrine of original sin, maintained that every human being was born in a state of innocency, and that his perseverance in virtue depended upon himself. He found numerous followers, and for twenty years the conflict raged between Pelagians and the Church, until Pope Zosimus declared against them and banished Pelagius from Rome. ”

“ THE PELAGIAN HERESY AGAIN REVIVING, GERMANUS, RETURNING INTO BRITAIN WITH SEVERUS, FIRST HEALED A LAME YOUTH, THEN HAVING CONDEMNED OR CONVERTED THE HERETICS, THEY RESTORED SPIRITUAL HEALTH TO THE PEOPLE OF GOD. [A.D. 447.] Not long after, advice was brought from the same island that certain persons were again attempting to set forth and spread abroad the Pelagian heresy. The holy Germanus was entreated by all the priests, that he would again defend the cause of God, which he had before asserted. ”

“ Ephorus, relying on Hesiodic tradition of an aboriginal Pelasgian type in Arcadia, elaborated a theory of the Pelasgians as a warrior people spreading (like “Aryans”) from a “Pelasgian home,” and annexing and colonizing all the parts of Greece where earlier writers had found allusions to them, from Dodona to Crete and the Troad, and even as far as Italy, where again their settlements had been recognized as early as the time of Hellanicus, in close connexion once more with “Tyrrhenians.” ”

“ We suppose always that the Pelasgians were Greeks, and spoke the Grecian language: an opinion in support of which we will on this occasion only adduce a few arguments. It must then be borne in mind, that all the races whose migrations took place at a late period, such as the Achæans, Ionians, Dorians, were not (the last in particular) sufficiently powerful or numerous to effect a complete change in the customs [pg 007] of a barbarous population;26 that many districts, Arcadia and Perrhæbia, for instance, remained entirely Pelasgic, without being inhabited by any nation not of Grecian origin ”

“ The process which we thus seem to see going forward in the Pelasgian countries, and which was probably further exemplified in the Greek migrations to the coast of Asia Minor, was grounded in the natural, if we mean by the natural the ordinary, course of things. In the last century, John Wesley said, that the religious and orderly habits of his followers would make them wealthy, and that then their wealth would destroy their religion. So in all likelihood it was the peaceful habits of the Pelasgians that made their settlements attractive to the spoiler. ”

“ Others turned their rustic implements into spears and battle-axes, and hastened to join the standard of Pelayo. Every day beheld numbers of patriot warriors arriving in the narrow valley, or rather glen, of Covadonga, clad in all the various garbs of ancient Spain,—for here were fugitives from every province, who had preferred liberty among the sterile rocks of the mountains to ease and slavery in the plains. In a little while Pelayo found himself at the head of a formidable force, hardened by toil and suffering, fired with old Spanish pride, and rendered desperate by despair. ”

“ HORMESINDA.
At the period of the Moors’ most complete dominion over Spain, Pelayo, the noble scion of her ancient kings, stood almost alone in the defence of his country. Undismayed by the misfortunes of his race and people, or by the oppressive rigours of the conquerors, he never tired of rousing his brethren to a sense of their shameful condition, and stirring them up to the desire of again restoring their religion and the throne of their native rulers. ”

“ Assuredly with better reason may posterity accuse them than they the Serpent or one another; and the displeasure of the Pelagians must needs be irreconcilable, who peremptorily maintaining they can fulfil the whole Law, will insatisfactorily condemn the non-observation of one. ”

“ Here Pelayo cheered them, doing his utmost to implant new courage in their fearful hearts. At length the day came when Spain could again assume a defiant attitude, and in the mountain valley of Caggas de Onis Pelayo raised the old Gothic standard and ordered the beating of the drums. Beyond the sound of the long roll went his messengers seeking warriors in valley and glen, and soon his little band had grown to a thousand stalwart men, filled with his spirit and breathing defiance to the Moslem conquerors. That was an eventful day for Spain, in which her crushed people again lifted their heads. ”

“ They understood that it was the Pelasgians’ intention to disarm them, and their wrath found vent in fierce invectives.
“Listen to the dogs!” they shouted. “Ere the battle has begun, they talk like conquerors. Do the bragging fools suppose they can blow the cliff over with their snail horns?”
But the herald did not allow himself to be interrupted.
19 “Cychreans!” he continued, “the Pelasgians whom ye have enslaved must be set free and, in compensation for your crime of murder, we demand that you deliver up to us Lyrcus, who has provoked war and pillaged peaceful dwellers in the land. ”

“ That all the Pelasgi—scattered throughout Greece, divided among themselves—frequently at war with each other, and certainly in no habits of peaceful communication—each tribe of different modes of life, and different degrees of civilization, should have concurred in giving no names to their gods, and then have equally concurred in receiving names from Egypt, is an assertion so preposterous, that it carries with it its own contradiction. ”

“ They were not a petty horde, but a vast race, doubtless divided, like every migratory people, into numerous tribes, differing in rank, in civilization 8, and in many peculiarities of character. The Pelasgi in one country might appear as herdsmen or as savages; in another, in the same age, they might appear collected into cities and cultivating the arts. The history of the East informs us with what astonishing rapidity a wandering tribe, once settled, grew into fame and power ”

“ The Peloponese was, as it were, a pier, standing out into the Mediterranean Sea, and from which northern ideas extended and spread southward to Africa, eastward over the Archipelago to Asia. The subtle attraction of an outlet must have acted{235} on the subconsciousness of other northern races, in that the Hellenes, far from feeling secure in their peninsula, were constantly exposed to the visits of strange barbaric visitors whenever “Wanderlust” moved the tribes of Central Europe. ”

“ Rather more than a thousand years before our era, the Pelasgian population of Greece and the neighbouring regions began to be overrun and conquered by tribes of the fair Northern race which came in successive invasions, the Thracians, the Hellenes, the Achaeans, the Ionians, and later the Dorians. ”

“ Those who hold it to have been Aryan have not only the testimony of Greek and Roman writers against them, but also the facts that there were Pelasgians in Italy whose stone constructions are standing to this day, and that the Etruscan language and culture had no Aryan affinities. The writer further points out that the walls of Pelasgic cities, whether in Italy, Greece, or Asia Minor, all resemble each other, and that the origin of Greek civilisation was also Pelasgian. ”

“ The Leleges, Dryopes, and most of the other hordes prevalent in Greece, with the Pelasgi, I consider, with Mr. Clinton, but as tribes belonging to the great Pelasgic family. One tribe would evidently become more civilized than the rest, in proportion to the social state of the lands through which it migrated—its reception of strangers from the more advanced East—or according as the circumstances of the soil in which it fixed its abode stimulated it to industry, or forced it to invention. ”

“ The perturbed restlessness and constant migration of tribes in Greece, recorded both by tradition and by history, would consequently tend at a very remote period to the institution and diffusion of slavery and the Pelasgi of one tribe would become the masters of the Pelasgi of another. There is, therefore, no necessity to look out of Greece for the establishment of servitude in that country by conquest and war. But the peaceful colonization of foreign settlers would (as we have seen) lead to it by slower and more gentle degrees. ”

“ According to their own account (which is confirmed by the Hellenes) , the Pelasgians, under the leadership of Melkarth-Ouso, came into Libya, but afterwards retreated to the east. Then came the great convulsion when the land was upheaved and the waters receded, and the earth subsided into its present configuration; then, too, the Sidonians, protected by their gods, began to assert their sovereignty on the sea, and sending forth ships to every region of the world, opened emporiums of commerce, discovered mines, founded cities, taught the art of writing, and disseminated knowledge of every kind. ”

“ Of the Pelasgian imagination it is difficult to speak in a definite manner: but it probably had not that masculine tone, and energetic movement, when alone, which marks the mind of Greece.
Far more expansive than their Pelasgian antecessors, [341] the Hellic tribes availed themselves of the great advantages which the country offers for extended navigation, which was so essential as a means both of communication, and of attracting the elements of civilization from abroad. They were apt pupils under apt instructors, the Phœnician mariners. ”

“ He proceeded upon the threefold assertion, (1) that the words common to the two tongues are presumably Pelasgian, (2) that they for the most part refer to tillage and the gentler ways of life, and (3) that we may hence conclude that the Pelasgians were a people given to peace and husbandry. And conversely, that the words which widely differ in the two tongues are not Pelasgian, and that the pursuits which they indicate must have been more peculiarly characteristic of some other race, that contributed to make up the composition of the Roman nation. ”

“ The most interesting, if only as the most mysterious, race of ancient days, the Pelasgi, that overspread, in early times of Greece, the total Mediterranean,—a race distinguished for beauty and for intellect, and sorrowful beyond all power of man to read the cause that could lie deep enough for so imperishable an impression,—they were pariahs. ”

“ Nor can we who have thrust ourselves upon them or accepted responsibility for their well-being understand our obligations unless we think of them as human beings, or without visualizing their problems by human examples. Nor can we escape these responsibilities or shirk them. Out of the stuff their lives are made of grow the larger problems, those of the relationship of the great civilizations that touch each other on the Pacific—Asia, Australasia, America.
Threnodies and elegies a-plenty have mourned the passing of the Polynesians of the South Seas. ”

“ Like many poets, he never disabused his mind of this comfortable form of anthropomorphism. He was a firm believer, too, in dreams. But his guiding motive, his sun by day and star by night, was a belief in the “mission” of the Pelasgian race now scattered about the shores of the Inland Sea—in Italy, Sicily, Greece, Dalmatia, Roumania, Asia Minor, Egypt—a belief as ardent and irresponsible as that which animates the Lost Tribe enthusiasts of England. He considered that the world hardly realized how much it owed to his countryfolk ”

“ To the south of this great mountain barrier the migrations between Europe and Asia could take place only by sea—a high-road open to those nations alone who were sufficiently advanced in civilisation to have acquired the art of building ships. Whether pirates, merchants, or warriors, they had raised themselves long ago above a state of primitive barbarism, and even their voyages of conquest added something to the stock of human knowledge. ”

“ Christ can add one single soul to them that shall be saved.
My object is to speak of Church History, not of doctrine. But this Pelagian question is the most important fact in the history of the British Church; and unless these few words were said to bring out the extreme gravity of the matter in dispute, the episode would not appear to fill the important place it does in fact fill.
With Pelagius himself we have but little to do. He spent his life far from his native shores; he propounded his views in Rome and Carthage and Palestine, not in London and York and Bangor. ”