Plebeians

“ They separated themselves from the mass of the plebeians to form a single body with the surviving patricians. just as the old patricians had striven to keep plebeians out of high offices, so now the new nobles, patrician and plebeian alike, strove to keep “ new men, ” men who had not the jus imaginum, out of high office. ”

“ The traditional accounts of the early distribution of lands among the plebeians are even, if possible, more vague than those Property in land among plebeians. regarding the patricians. They had apparently become holders de facto of land in large numbers before the Servian reforms. But they can have attained that position only by gradual stages. While their earliest grants of land, probably from the kings, can only have been during pleasure, latterly, as they increased in number and importance, they were allowed to have permanent possession. ”

“ She wept bitterly, exclaiming, that some one had conveyed away her treasure; and the surprise occasioned by the intelligence, was not less, when it became known that his bed was also missing. Some said that he had fled: others, that he was murdered. Plebeus, however, continued his clamour at the gate. "Bring out your pilgrim; to-day I will present his head to the king." Now while all was bustle and enquiry in the palace, the fisherman made his way to the royal seat, and said, "Grieve not, my lord, for the loss of the pilgrim. Fishing last night in the sea, I observed him floating upon a bed. ”

“ Ladies, who deign not on our paths to set their tender feet, Who from their cars look down with scorn upon the wondering street, Who in Corinthian mirrors their own proud smiles behold, And breathe the Capuan odors, and shine with Spanish gold? Then leave the poor Plebeian his single tie to life— The sweet, sweet love of daughter, of sister, and of wife, The gentle speech, the balm for all that his vexed soul endures, The kiss, in which he half forgets even such a yoke as yours. ”

“ Pelagius was an ardent churchman, a strict ascetic, and a believer in sacramental grace. The earlier church had reflected but little on the questions raised by him. "Unde factum est ut de gratia Dei quid sentirent breviter ac transeuntes attingerent." Free will equipped with sacraments, the Christian religion a "New Law," predestination founded upon prescience, fairly represent the implicit pre-Augustinian view of the Christian life and its relation to the mystery of Divine election. ”

“ In others this good of their original creation is naked and unarmed. They shall be Judged and condemned because, though possessed of free will, by which they might come to the faith and merit the grace of God, they niake an ill use of their freedom; while Christians shall be rewarded because, by using their free will aright, they merit the grace of the Lord and keep His commandments ” (ibid chs. 33, 34) Pelagius allowed to grace everything but the initial determining inovement towards salvation. He ascribed to the unassisted human will power to accept and use the proffered salvation of Christ. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Pelagianism was the heresy of the monk Pelagius, who flourished in the fourth century. He contested the doctrine of original sin, as imputed to all mankind from the fall of Adam, and taught that the grace of God is accorded to us in proportion to our merits. ”

“ His answer, that the unbaptized infant is excluded, not from eternal life, but only from the kingdom of heaven, was a relic of Milleniarism with which the Eastern church had even less sympathy than the West. Pelagius allowed that man can do no good thing without the grace of God. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why do you not enact a law that no plebeian shall live in the neighbourhood of a patrician, or go along the same road, or take his place at the same banquet, or stand in the same Forum? For, as a matter of fact, what difference is there, if a patrician marries a plebeian woman or a plebeian marries a patrician? ”

“ After dinner I took him to church, into our gallery, with me, but slept the best part of the sermon, which was a most silly one. So he and I to walk to the ‘Change a while, talking from one pleasant discourse to another, and so home, and thither came my uncle Wight and aunt, and supped with us mighty merry. And Creed lay with us all night, and so to bed, very merry to think how Mr. Holliard (who came in this evening to see me) makes nothing, but proving as a most clear thing that Rome is Antichrist. ”

“ Up the long nave comes Pelagius, Justinian's pope, with Narses by his side, to swear by holy cross and sacred gospel that he has not slain Vigilius, Pope before him: and this Narses, smooth-faced, passionless, thoughtful, is the conqueror of the Goths, and having conquered them, he would not suffer that a hair of the remnant of them should be hurt, because he had given his word. ”

“ Thence to White Hall, and met with Creed, and I took him to the Harp and Balls, and there drank a cup of ale, he and I alone, and discoursed of matters; and I perceive by him that he makes no doubt but that all will turn to the old religion, for these people cannot hold things in their hands, nor prevent its coming to that; and by his discourse fits himself for it, and would have my Lord Sandwich do so, too, and me. ”

“ Well, then, only fulfil your promise of rescuing Peppino, and henceforward you shall receive not only devotion, but the most absolute obedience from myself and those under me that one human being can render to another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those whom we more especially oppose in this head of argument, are the Pelagians, and others; who, though in some things they seem to recede from them, yet cannot support their cause without giving into their scheme, when treating on the subjects of free-will, nature and grace: these all allow that there is a change made in conversion or effectual calling ”

“ A drowning man who calls for a rope when a rope is near stands a good chance of being rescued.
I need not detail the results of this famous controversy. Augustine, appealing to the consciousness of mankind as well as to the testimony of Paul, prevailed over Pelagius, who appealed to the pride of reason. In those dreadful times there were more men who felt the need of divine grace than there were philosophers who revelled in the speculations of the Greeks. The danger from the Pelagians was not from their organization as a sect, but their opinions as individual men. ”

“ This law against Conventicles is very severe; but Creed, whom I met here, do tell me that, it being moved that Papists’ meetings might be included, the House was divided upon it, and it was carried in the negative; which will give great disgust to the people, I doubt. Thence with Creed to Hercules Pillars by the Temple again, and there dined he and I all alone, and thence to the King’s house, and there did see “Love in a Maze,” wherein very good mirth of Lacy, the clown, and Wintersell, the country-knight, his master. ”

“ At that time also there came into my hands a certain book of Pelagius’, in which he defends, with all the argumentative skill he could muster, the nature of man, in opposition to the grace of God whereby the unrighteous is justified and we become Christians. ”

“ True, their neighbours, Greeks like Polybius, approved of it only with an ironical smile on their lips, as we may smile at the devoted formalism of extreme Catholic or Protestant, while we secretly—if we have some sympathy with strangely varying human nature—admire the confidence and regularity that we cannot ourselves claim. ”

“ It is not easy to determine how far the vices which ate so deeply into the life of the Church of the middle ages were due to the sharpness with which some of the severer features of the Augustinian theology were defined during the Pelagian controversy. ”

“ The Pelagians, ascribing all to man's will and nature, denied man to have any seed of sin conveyed to him from Adam. And the Semi-Pelagians, making grace as a gift following upon man's merit, or right improving of his nature, according to the known principle, Facienti quod in se est, Deus non denegat gratiam. ”

“ So by water to the Exchequer, and there up and down through all the offices to strike my tallys for L17,500, which methinks is so great a testimony of the goodness of God to me, that I, from a mean clerke there, should come to strike tallys myself for that sum, and in the authority that I do now, is a very stupendous mercy to me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A certain epistle found its way into our hands, which was ascribed to Pelagius himself, writing to a friend of his, a presbyter, who had kindly admonished him (as appears from the same epistle) not to allow any one to separate himself from the body of the Church on his account. ”

“ 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.’ ”

“ Pelagius [1] the heresiarch, before he was proclaimed a heretic wrote works of practical value for students: three books On belief in the Trinity, and one book of Selections from Holy Scriptures bearing on the Christian life. ”

“ Ah, one must look alive! The prefect does not shrink from any way of fighting us. Did he not spread through one of our most Catholic cantons the report that we were Voltairians, enemies to religion and devourers of priests? ”

“ The Law leads to the kingdom of heaven as well as the Gospel.
6. Even before the coming of the Lord there were men without sin.
(f) Pelagius. Confessio fidei. (MSL, 45:1716 f.) Hahn, § 209.
The confession of faith addressed to Innocent of Rome, but actually laid before Zosimus, in 417, consists of an admirably orthodox statement of the doctrine of the Trinity and of the incarnation, an expansion of the Nicene formula with reference to perversions of the faith by various heretics, and in conclusion a statement of Pelagius's own opinions regarding free will, grace, and sin. ”

“ There will always be men and women, the cleric has discovered, who will barter their souls for the sake of rosaries and scapulars and the Pope's indulgences. The two great enemies of religion, as the clerics know well, are the desire to live and the desire to know. ”

“ But old men tell, whose fathers heard it from the ancients, how once the lords of the three rivers of the plain rebelled against the law of the Worlds, and passed beyond their boundaries, and joined together and whelmed cities and slew men, saying: “We now play the game of the gods and slay men for our pleasure, and we be greater than the gods of Pegāna.” ”

“ One is, that the grace of God is not given according to our merits.... The second, that no one lives in this corruptible body in righteousness of any degree without sins of any kind. The third, that man is born obnoxious to the first man's sin....”373 To Pelagius' objection: “If all men sin, then the just must die in their sins,” the holy Doctor replies: “With all his acuteness he [Pelagius] overlooks the circumstance that even righteous persons pray with good reason: ‘Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’... ”

“ But his cry as he sank was heard of one of his comrades alone {1240}
Who trod that fountainward path, Polyphemus, Eilatus’ son,
To meet that giant hero when back he should fare to the feast.
By Pegae, following the cry, hath he rushed, like a wildwood beast
Unto whom from far away hath been wafted the bleating of sheep,
And with famine afire he pursueth; howbeit he may not leap
On the prey, for already the shepherds have penned them safe from the foe;
And in vehement rage must he moan and howl, till aweary he grow ”