Pelagius

“ Pelagius ought to listen to the teaching of so eminent a man, and should follow his faith, since he has commended his teaching and faith. Let him listen humbly; let him follow with fidelity; let him indulge no longer in obstinate presumption, lest he perish. Why does Pelagius choose to be sunk in that sea whence Peter was rescued by the Rock? ”

“ When we first hear of Pelagius, he is already advanced in years, living in Rome in the odour of sanctity, [8] and enjoying a well-deserved reputation for zeal in exhorting others to a good life, which grew especially warm against those who endeavoured to shelter themselves, when charged with their sins, behind the weakness of nature. ”

“ Pelagius, when afterward pressed with passages of Scripture, also admitted this supernatural grace; but he placed it solely in the external teaching of the law: though we affirm that God offers his word to men, yet we likewise affirm that he inwardly causes the understanding to believe. Subsequently Pelagius joined to this external grace that by which sins are pardoned: we acknowledge not only the grace by which sins are forgiven, but also that by which men are assisted to refrain from the commission of sin. ”

“ To these charges Pelagius replied: “Whether these are really the opinions of Cœlestius or not, is the concern of those who say that they are. For my own part, indeed, I never entertained such views; on the contrary, I anathematize every one who does entertain them.” ”

“ But there is no doubt that Pelagius repudiated the assertion of Coelestius, that “the divine grace and help is not granted to individual acts, but consists in free will, and in the giving of the law and instruction.” At the same time he affirmed that a man is able, if he likes, to live without sin and keep the commandments of God, inasmuch as God gives him this ability. The synod was satisfied with these statements, and pronounced Pelagius to be in agreement with Catholic teaching. ”

“ Considering, then, from the integrity of these servants of God, which was very well known to us, how impossible it was for them to use deceit in the matter, the conclusion seemed inevitable, that Pelagius must be supposed by us to have rather been the deceiver at his trial before the bishops; unless we should think it possible that something may have been published, even for so many years, in his name, although not actually composed by him; for our informants did not tell us that they had received the books from Pelagius himself, nor had they ever heard him admit his own authorship. ”

“ When, however, they did not receive the quotations which we made out of the Holy Scriptures, but continued their murmuring noise, Pelagius said: ‘This is what I also believe; let him be anathema, who declares that a man is able, without God’s help, to arrive at the perfection of all virtues.’ ”

“ Pelagians. The Africans had dispatched, the Year before, the Bishop Vindemialis to the Court of Honorius, with the Decrees of the Council held against Pelagius, of which I have spoken above. And those Decrees the Emperor not only approved, but enacted this Year 418. a severe Law against the Pelagians, dated from Ravenna, the 30th of April, and addressed to Palladius then Præfectus Prætorio. Honorius there declares, he had been informed, that Pelagius and Cælestius taught, in Opposition to the Authority of the Catholic Church, that God had created the first Man mortal ”

“ The clergy adopted the advice of Pelagius, but such of the Crusaders as saw with disgust a prelate at the head of warriors, refused to take up arms. The duke of Bavaria and the barons and knights would acknowledge no leader but the king of Jerusalem; the legate Pelagius was obliged to send deputies to John of Brienne, who, pressed by the pope himself, was at length prevailed upon, and consented, after an absence of several months, to come back and take the command of the army. ”

“ Pelagius and his heresy have a sad interest to us as he is said to have been born in Britain. He was a monk and preached at Rome with great applause in the early years of the fifth century. But in his extreme horror of Manichæism and Gnosticism he fell into the opposite extreme; and from the hatred of the doctrine of the inherent evilness of humanity he fell into the error of denying the necessity of grace.
Pelagius’s doctrines may be briefly stated thus. Adam’s sin injured only himself, so that there is no such thing as original sin. ”

“ About 409 Pelagius went with Celestius to Sicily, to escape Alaric's attack upon Rome, and soon after passed on to Africa, missing St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, in his own city, but meeting him in Carthage, where the bishop was then busy with the Donatist controversy. Thence Pelagius sailed to Palestine, where he met Jerome at Bethlehem; while Celestius, staying behind in Africa, and going beyond his leader in the boldness and definiteness of his heresy, was accused, tried, and condemned, on seven counts of false doctrine, by a synod at Carthage (412) . ”

“ Heros and Lazarus, surprised to hear that the Fathers of the Assembly had absolved Pelagius, and despairing of ever being able to get him condemned in the East, where his Cause was openly espoused by the Bishop of Jerusalem, resolved to apply to their Brethren in the West, especially to the Bishops of Africa, who they well knew could not be prejudiced in his Favour, since they had already condemned his favourite Disciple Cælestius. ”

“ With Pelagius, however, a fresh class of subjects was forced on men’s attention: in his peculiar system of doctrine he deals with what is subjective in man, and reviews the whole of his relation to God. His heresy turns mainly upon two points—the assumed incorruptness of human nature, and the denial of all supernatural influence upon the human will. ”

“ The second book in the first of these treatises adds some facts to the historical information contained in our preceding volume; Pelagius is shown to be at one, in the main, with Cœlestius, the bolder but less specious heretic. They were condemned everywhere—even at Rome by Pope Zosimus, who had at first shown some favour to them. ”

“ About the same time, in the East (that is to say, in Palestinian Syria) , Pelagius was summoned by certain catholic brethren [1] before a tribunal of bishops, and was heard on his trial by fourteen prelates, in the abscnce of his accusers, who were unable to be present on the day of the synod. On his condemning the very dogmas which were read from the indictment against him, as assailing the grace of Christ, they pronounced him to be a catholic. ”

“ Pelagius was a layman, and a monk. About 400 he went to Rome, and he remained there till the shadow of Alaric’s siege began to fall upon the city. In those eight years he lived an exemplary life. He urged upon others the necessity of so living, and the uselessness of religious observance combined with laxity of life. It is easy to see how this admirable line of teaching might be diverted, by the pressure of controversion, into a declaration that all men could, if they pleased, so live; that it was a matter of will, not of grace, a man’s turning to God and living as a believer should live. ”

“ This was the merit of Pelagius, to have attempted to rescue the dignity of human nature oppressed by the doctrine of sin; and we who realise how much our race owes to the peoples of antiquity may feel particular sympathy with him who dared to say that, before Jesus, sinless men had lived upon earth. [42] Of few men have the Celts of Ireland or Britain better reason to be proud than of the bold thinker who went forth to speak holy words for humanity against the inhuman side of the Christian faith. He was ranged against the authorities of Augustine and Jerome, but he was not fond of fighting ”

“ Pelagius and his Doctrine.―Pelagius (§ 47, 21) , a British monk of respectable learning and decided moral earnestness, living far away from the storms and strife of life, without any strong inward temptations, without any inclination to manifest sins and without deep experience of the Christian life, knowing and striving after no higher ideal than that of monkish asceticism, had developed a theory quite antagonistic to that of Augustine. ”

“ Subscription to its terms was enforced throughout Italy and Africa, and eighteen bishops were deprived for refusing their assent; chief among these was Julian, bishop of Eclanum in Apulia, the great defender of Pelagianism in the next generation.
The personal history of Pelagius, after his condemnation in 418, is very obscure. He is said to have died at the age of over seventy, in a small Syrian town. He is described by Jerome and Orosius as tall, stout, and elderly at the time of his visit to Palestine. ”

“ Pelagius, therefore, may boast to his heart’s content of the friendship of holy men, he may read their letters recounting his praises, he may produce whatever synodal acts he pleases to attest his own acquittal,—there still stands against him the fact, proved by the testimony of competent witnesses, that he has inserted in his books statements which are opposed to that grace of God whereby we are called and justified ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus he even asserts that their very prayers are necessary for the purpose of showing men what to desire and love. All these documents, however, I may omit further notice of at present; for Pelagius himself has lately forwarded to Rome both a letter and an exposition of his belief, addressing it to Pope Innocent, of blessed memory, of whose death he was ignorant. ”

“ But now if Pelagius thinks of God, if he is not ungrateful for His mercy in having brought him before this tribunal of the bishops, that thus he might be saved from the hardihood of afterwards defending these anathematized opinions, and be at once led to acknowledge them as deserving of abhorrence and rejection, he will be more thankful to us for our book, in which, by mentioning his name, we shall open the wound in order to cure it, than for one in which we were afraid to cause him pain, and, in fact, only produced irritation,—a result which causes us regret. ”

“ Pelagians. A denomination which arose in the fifth century, so called from Pelagius, a monk, who looked upon the doctrines which were commonly received, concerning the original corruption of human nature, and the necessity of divine grace [pg 131] to enlighten the understanding and purify the heart, as prejudicial to the progress of holiness and virtue, and tending to establish mankind in a presumptuous and fatal security. ”

“ With special reference to the last illustration, Flacius declared: "Strigel, accordingly, holds that we have the faculty to desire and receive the food, i.e., the benefits of God. Forsooth, you thereby attribute to corrupt man a very great power with respect to spiritual things. Now, then, deny that this opinion is Pelagian." (209.) "Your statements agree with those of Pelagius, yet I do not simply say that you are a Pelagian; for a good man may fall into an error which he does not see." Pelagius held that man, by his natural powers, is able to begin and complete his own conversion ”

“ To come nearer home after this long digression, which yet is not really a digression from the British point of view. The views of Pelagius had considerable success in Gaul, and gave a good deal of trouble there. In Britain their success was alarmingly great. The bishops and clergy were unable to make head against the wave of heresy. Whether there was anything, in the independence of the position claimed by Pelagius for man, which [Pg 88] specially appealed to the nature of the Britons and their Celtic congeners ”

“ Pelagius, the pope’s legate, who acted as the sovereign of Constantinople, had interdicted the worship of the Greeks, and sternly imposed the payment of tithes, the double procession of the Holy Ghost, and a blind obedience to the Roman pontiff. As the weaker party, they pleaded the duties of conscience, and implored the rights of toleration: “Our bodies,” they said, “are Cæsar’s, but our souls belong only to God.” The persecution was checked by the firmness of the emperor ”

“ This moderate and pacific language would well have become the mouth of an envoy of the pope; but Pelagius listened to the king of Jerusalem with the most evident impatience: he answered, that weakness and timidity screened themselves behind the veil of moderation and prudence; that Christ did not summon to his defence such wise and far-sighted soldiers, but warriors who sought for battle rather than for reasons, and who could see the glory of an [256] enterprise, and be blind to its dangers. ”