and justice. Here his doctrine of the Church ran athwart and clouded his view of the reach of grace; but we seem to see between the lines the promise of the brighter dawn of truth that was yet to come. The rest of the epistle is occupied with an exposition and commendation of these propositions, which ranks with the richest passages of the anti- Pelagian writings, and which breathes everywhere a yearning for his correspondent which we cannot help hoping proved salutary to his faith.
It is not without significance, that the error of Vitalis took a semi-Pelagian form. Pure' Pelagianism was by this time no longer a living issue. Augustin was himself, no doubt, not yet done with it. The second book of his treatise On Marriage and Concupiscence, which seems to have been taken to Italy by Alypius, in 421, received at once the attention of Julian, and was elaborately answered by him, during that same year, in eight books addressed to Florus. But Julian was now in Cilicia, and his book was slow in working its way westward. It was found at Rome by Alypius, apparently in 427 or 428, and he at once set about transcribing it for his friend's use. An opportunity arising to send it to Africa before it was finished, he forwarded to Augustin the five books that were ready, with an urgent request that they should receive liis immediate attention, and a promise to send the other three as soon as possible. Augustin gives an account of his progress in his reply to them in a letter written to Quodvultdeus, apparently in 428.' This deacon was urging Augustin to give the Church a succinct account of all heresies; I Epistle 224.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. Ixiii and Augustin excuses himself from immediately undertaking that task by the press of work on his hands. He was writing his Retractations, and had already finished two books of them, in which he had dealt with two hundred and thirty-two works. His letters and homilies remained, and he had given the necessary reading to many of the letters. Also, he tells his correspondent, he was engaged on a reply to the eight books of Julian's new work. Working night and day, he had already completed his response to the first three of Julian's books, and had begun on the fourtli wliile still expecting the arrival of the last three which Alypius had promised to send. If he had completed the answer to the five books of Julian which he already had in hand, before the other three reached him, he might begin the work which Quodvultdeus so earnesdy desired him to undertake. In due time, whatever may have been the trials and labours that needed first to be met, the desired treatise On Heresies was written (about 428), and the eighty-eighth chapter of it gives us a welcome compressed account of the Pelagian heresy, which may b'e accepted as the obverse of the account of catholic truth given in the letter to Vitalis.' But the composition of this work was not the only interruption which postponed the completion of the second elaborate work against Julian. It was in the providence of God that the life of this great leader in the battle for grace should be prolonged until he could deal with semi-Pelagianism also.
Information as to the rise of this new form of the heresy at Marseilles and elsewhere in Southern Gaul was conveyed to Augustin along with entreaties, that, as " faith's great patron," he would give his aid towards meeting it, by two laymen with whom he had already had correspondence, — Prosper and Hilary.^ They pointed out ^ the difference between the new party and thoroughgoing Pelagianism; but, at the same time, the essentially Pelagianizing character of its formative elements. Its representatives were ready, as a rule, to admit that all men were lost in Adam, and no one could recover himself by his own free will, but all needed God's grace for salvation. But they objected to the doctrines of prevenient and of irresistible grace; and asserted that man could initiate the process of salvation by turning first to God, that all men could resist God's grace, and no grace could be given which they could not reject, and especially they denied that the gifts ' The account given of Pelagianism is as follows: " They are in such degree enemies of the grace of God, by which we have been predestinated into the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ unto Himself (Eph. i. 5), and by which we are delivered from the power of darkness so as to believe in Him, and be translated into His kingdom (Col. i. 13) — wherefore He says, ' No man comes to Me, except it be given him of My Father' (John vi. 66) — and by which love is shed abroad in our hearts (Rom. v. 5), so that faith may work by love: that they believe that man is able, without it, to keep all the Divine commandments, — whereas, if this were true, it would clearly be an empty thing that the Lord said, ' Without Me ye can do nothing' (John xv. 5). When Pelagius was at length accused by the brethren, because he attributed nothing to the assistance of God's grace towards the keeping of His commandments, he yielded to their rebuke, so far as not to place this grace above free will, but with faithless cunning to subordinate it, saying that it was given to men for this purpose; viz., that they might be able more easily to fulfil by grace, what they were commanded to do by free will. P>y saying, ' that they might be able more easily,' he, of course, wished it to be believed that, although with more difficulty, nevertheless men were able without divine grace to perform the divine commands. But that grace of God, without which we can do nothing good, they say does not exist except in free will, which without any preceding merits our nature received from Him; and that He adds His aid only in that by His law and teaching we may learn what we ought to do, but not in that by the gilt of His Spirit we may do what we have learned ought to be done. Accordingly, they confess that knowledge by which ignorance is banished is divinely given to us, but deny that love by which we may live a pious life IS given; so that, forsooth, while knowledge, which, without love, puffeth up, is the gift of God, love itself, which edifieth so that knowledge nay not puff up, is not the gift of God (i Cor. viii. 11). They also destroy the prayers which the Church offers, whether for those that are mbelieving and resisting God's teaching, that they may be converted to God; or for the faithful, that faith may be increased in them, and liey may persevere in it. For they contend that men do not receive these things from Him, but have them from ourselves, saying, that t:c L;race of God, by which we are freed from impiety, is given according to our merits. Pelagius was compelled, no doubt, to condemn tl i^!iy his fear of being condemned by the episcopal judgment in Palestine; but he is found to teach it still in his later writings. They also ■idvanced so far as to say that the life of the righteous in this world is without sin, and the Church of Christ is perfected by them in this mortality, to the point of being entirely without spot or wrinkle (Eph. v. 27); as if it were not the Church of Christ, that, in the whole world, cries to God, ' Forgive us our debts.' They also deny that children, who are carnally born after Adam, contract the contagion of ancient death from their first birth. For they assert that they are born so without any bond of original sin, that there is absolutely nothing that ought to be remitted to them in the second birth, yet they are to be baptized; but for this reason, that, adopted in regeneration, they m.iy oc admitted to the kingdom of God, and thus be translated from good into better, — not that they may be washed by that renovation from any evil of the old bond. For although they be not baptized, they promise to them, outside the kingdom of God indeed, but nevertheless, a certain eternal and blessed life of their own. They also say that Adam himself, even had he not sinned, would have died in the body, and that this death would not have come as a desert to a fault, but as a condition of nature. Certain other things also are objected to them, but these are the chief, and also either all, or nearly all, the others may be understood to depend on these " 2 Compare Epistles 225, i, and 156. It is, of course, not certain that this is the same Hilary that wrote to Atigustin from Sicily, but it seems probable.
3 In Letters 225 and 226.
Ixiv INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
of grace came irrespective of merits, actual or foreseen. They said that what Augustin taught as to the calhng of God's elect according to His own purpose was tantamount to fatalism, was contrary to the teaching of the fathers and the true Church doctrine, and, even if true, should not be preached, because of its tendency to drive men into indifference or despair. Hence, Prosper especially desired Augustin to point out the dangerous nature of these views, and to show that prevenient and co-operating grace is not inconsistent with free will, that God's predestination is not founded on foresight of receptivity in its objects, and that the doctrines of grace may be preached without danger to souls.
Augustin's answer to these appeals was a work in two books, On the Predestination of the Saints, the second book of which is usually known under the separate title of The Gift of Perseverance.
The former book begins with a careful discrimination of the position of his new opponents: they have made a right beginning in that they believe in original sin, and acknowledge that none are saved from it save by Christ, and that God's grace leads men's wills, and without grace no one can suffice for good deeds. These things will furnish a good starting-point for their progress to an acceptance of predestination also (1-2). The first question that needs discussion in such circumstances is, whether God gives the very beginnings of faith (3 sq.); since they admit that wliat Augustin had previously urged sufficed to prove that faith was the gift of God so far as that the increase of faith was given by Him, but not so far but that the beginning of faith may be understood to be man's, to which, then, God adds all other gifts (compare 43). Augustin insists that this is no other than the Pelagian assertion of grace according to merit (3), is opposed to Scripture (4-5), and begets arrogant boasting in ourselves (6). He replies to the objection that he had himself once held this view, by confessing it, and explaining that he was converted from it by i Cor. iv. 7, as applied by Cyprian (7-8), and expounds that verse as containing in its narrow compass a sufficient answer to the present theories (9-1 1). He answers, further, the objection that the apostle distinguishes faith from works, and works alone are meant in such passages, by pointing to John vi. 28, and similar statements in Paul (12-16). Then he answers the objection that he himself had previously taught that God acted on foresight of faith, by showing that he was misunderstood (17-1S). He next shows that no objection lies against predestination that does not lie with equal force against grace (19-22), — since predestination is nothing but God's foreknowledge of and preparation for grace, and all questions of sovereignty and the like belong to grace. Did God not know to whom he was going to give faith (19)? or did he promise the results of faith, works, without promising the faith without which, as going before, the works were impossible? Would not this place God's fulfilment of his promise out of His power, and make it depend on man (20)? Why are men more willing to trust in their weakness than in God's strength? do they count God's promises more uncertain than their own performance (22)? He next proves the sovereignty of grace, and of predestination, which is but the preparation for grace, by the striking examples of infants, and, above all, of the human nature of Christ (23-31), and then speaks of the twofold calling, one external and one " according to purpose," — the latter of which is efficacious and sovereign (32-37). In closing, the semi-Pelagian position is carefully defined and refuted as opposed, alike with the grosser Pelagianism, to the Scriptures of both Testaments (38-42).
The purpose of the second book, which has come down to us under the separate title of On the Gift of Perseverance, is to show that that perseverance which endures to the end is as much of God as the beginning of faith, and that no man who has been " called according to God'^s purpose," and has received this gift, can fall from grace and be lost. The first half of the treatise is devoted to this theme (1-33). It begins by distinguishing between temporary perseverance, which endures for a time, and that which continues to the end (i), and affirms that the latter is certainly a gift of God's grace, and is, therefore, asked from God: which would otherwise be but a mocking petition (2-3). This, the Lord's Prayer itself might teach us, as under Cyprian's exposition it does teach us, — each petition being capable of being read as a INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. Ixv prayer for perseverance (4-9). Of course, moreover, it cannot be lost, otherwise it would not be "to the end." If man forsakes God, of course it is he that does it, and he is doubtless under continual temptation to do so; but if he abides with God, it is God who secures that, and God is equally able to keep one when drawn to Him, as He is to draw him to Him (10-15), He argues anew at this point, that grace is not according to merit, but always in mercy; and explains and illustrates the unsearchable ways of God in His sovereign but merciful dealing with men (16-25), and closes this part of the treatise by a defence of himself against adverse quotations from his early work on Free Will, which he has already corrected in his Retractations. The second half of the book discusses the objections that were being urged against the preaching of predestination (34-62), as if it opposed and enervated the preaching of the Gospel. He replies that Paul and the apostles, and Cyprian and the fathers, preached both together; that the same objections will lie against the preaching of God's foreknowledge and grace itself, and, indeed, against preaching any of the virtues, as, e.g., obedience, while declaring them God's gifts. He meets the objections in detail, and shows that such preaching is food to the soul, and must not be withheld from men; but explains that it must be given gently, wisely, and prayerfully. The whole treatise ends with an appeal to the prayers of the Church as testifying that all good is from God (63-65), and to the great example of unmerited grace and sovereign predestination in the choice of one human nature without preceding merit, to be united in one person with the Eternal Word, — an illustration of his theme of the gratuitous grace of God which he is never tired of adducing (66-67).
These books were written in 428-429, and after their completion the unfinished work against Julian was resumed. Alypius had sent the remaining three books, and Augustin slowly toiled on to the end of his reply to the sixth book. But he was to be interrupted once more, and this time by the most serious of all interruptions. 'On the 28th of August, 430, with the Vandals thundering at the gates of Hippo, full of good works and of faith, he turned his face away from the strifes — whether theological or secular — of earth, and entered into rest with the Lord whom he loved. The last work against Julian was already one of the most considerable in size of all his books; but it was never finished, and retains until to-day the significant title of The Unfinished Work. Augustin had hesitated to undertake this work, because he found Julian's arguments too silly either to deserve refutation, or to afford occasion for really edifying discourse. And certainly the result falls below Augustin's usual level, though this is not due, as is so often said, to failing powers and great age; for nothing that he wrote surpasses in mellow beauty and chastened strength the two books, On the Predestination of the Saints, which were written after four books of this work were completed. The plan of the work is to state Julian's arguments in his own words, and follow it with his remarks; thus giving it something of the form of a dialogue. It follows Julian's work, book by book. The first book states and answers certain calumnies which Julian had brought against Augustin and the catholic faith on the ground of their confession of original sin. Julian had argued, that, since God is just, He cannot impute another's sins to innocent infants; since sin is nothing but evil will, there can be no sin in infants who are not yet in the use of their will; and, since the freedom of will that is given to man consists in the capacity of both sinning and not sinning, free will is denied to those who attribute sin to nature. Augustin replies to these arguments, and answers certain objections that are made to his work On Marriage and Concupiscence, and then corrects Julian's false explanations of certain Scriptures from John viii., Rom. vi., vii., and 2 Timothy. The second book is a discussion of Rom. v. 12, which Julian had tried, like the other Pelagians, to explain by the " imitation " of Adam's bad example.
The third book examines the abuse by Julian of certain Old-Testament passages — in Deut. xxiv., 2 Kings xiv., Ezek. xviii. — in his effort to show that God does not impute the father's sins to the children; as well as his similar abuse of Heb. xi. The charge of Manicheism, which was so repetitiously brought by Julian against the catholics, is then examined and refuted. The fourth book treats of Julian's strictures on Augustin's On Marriage and Concupiscence ii. 4-1 1, and Ixvi INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
proves from i John ii. i6 that concupiscence is evil, and not the work of God, but of the Devil. He argues that the shame that accompanies it is due to its sinfulness, and that there was none of it in Christ; also, that infants are born obnoxious to the first sin, and proves the corruption of their origin from Wisd. x. lo, ii. The fifth book defends On Marriage and Concupiscence ii. 12 sq., and argues that a sound nature could not have shame on account of its members, and the need of regeneration for what is generated by means of shameful concupiscence. Then Julian's abuse of i Cor. xv., Rom, v.. Matt. vii. 1 7 and 2,Z^ with reference to On Marriage and Concupiscence ii. 14, 20, 26, is discussed; and then the origin of evil, and God's treatment of evil in the world. The sixth book traverses Julian's strictures on On Marriage and Concupiscence ii. 34 sq., and argues that human nature was changed for the worse by the sin of Adam, and thus was made not only sinful, but the source of sinners; and that the forces of free will by which man could at first do rightly if he wished, and refrain from sin if he chose, were lost by Adam's sin. He attacks Julian's definition of free will as " the capacity for sinning and not sinning " i^possibiliias peccandi et non peccandi); and proves that the evils of this life are the punishment of sin, — including, first of all, physical death. At the end, he treats of i Cor. xv. 22.
Although the great preacher of grace was taken away by death before the completion of this book, yet his work was not left incomplete. In the course of the next year (431) the QLcumenical Council of Ephesus condemned Pelagianism for the whole world; and an elaborate treatise against the pure Pelagianism of Julian was already in 430 an anachronism. Semi- Pelagianism was yet to run its course, and to work its way so into the heart of a corrupt church as not to be easily displaced; but Pelagianism was to die with the first generation of its advocates. As we look back now through the almost millennium and a half of years that has intervened since Augustin lived and wrote, it is to his Predestination of the Saints, — a completed, and well-completed, treatise, — and not to The Unfinished Work, that we look as the crown and completion of his labours for grace.
IV. The Theology of Grace.
The theology which Augustin opposed, in his anti-Pelagian writings, to the errors of Pelagianism, is, shortly, the theology of grace. Its roots were planted deeply in his own experience, and in the teachings of Scripture, especially of that apostle whom he delights to call "the great preacher of grace," and to follow whom, in his measure, was his greatest desire. The grace of God in Jesus Christ, conveyed to us by the Holy Spirit and evidenced by the love that He sheds abroad in our hearts, is the centre around which this whole side ' of His system revolves, and the germ out of which it grows. He was the more able to make it thus central because of the harmony of this view of salvation with the general principle of his whole theology, which was theocentric and revolved around his conception of God as the immanent and vital spirit in whom all things live and move and have their being.^ In like manner, God is the absolute good, and all good is either Himself or from Him; and only as God makes us good, are we able to do anything good.
The necessity of grace to man, Augustin argued from the condition of the race as partakers of Adam's sin. God created man upright, and endowed him with human faculties, including free ' This is a necessary limitation, for there is another side — a churchly side — of Augustin's theology, which was only laid alongside of, and artificially combined with, his theology of grace. This was the traditional eXcmcnX. in his teaching, but was far from the determining or formative element. As Thomasius truly points out {Dogineitg,'schichte, i. 495), both his experience and the Scriptures stood with him above tradition.
2 It is only one of the strange assertions in Professor Allen's Continuity of Christian Thought, that he makes " the Augustinian theology rest upon the transcendence of Deity as its controlling principle " (p. 3), which is identified with " a tacit assumption of deism" (p. 171), and explained to include a " localization of God as a physical essence in the infinite remoteness," " separated from the world by infinite reaches of space." As a matter of mere fact, Augustin's conception of God was that of an immanent Spiiit, and his tendency was consequently distinctly towards a pantheistic rather than a deistic view of His relation to His creatures. Nor is this true only " at a ceruin suge of his career" (p. 6), which is but Professor Allen's attempt to reconcile fact with his theory, but of his whole life and all his teaching. He, no doubt, did not so teach the Divine immanence as to make God the author of <iS\^ form as well as the matter of all acts of His creatures, or to render it impossible for His creatures to turn from Him; this would be to pass the limits that separate the conception of Christian immanence from pure pantheism, and to make God the author of sin, and all His creatures but manifestations of Himself.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. Ixvii will; ' and gave to him freely that grace by which he was able to retain his uprightness.^ Being thus put on probation,^ with divine aid to enable him to stand if he chose, Adam used his free choice for sinning, and involved his whole race in his fall.^ It was on account of this sin that he died physically and spiritually, and this double death passes over from him to us.-* That all his descendants by ordinary generation are partakers in Adam's guilt and condemnation, Augustin is sure from the teachings of Scripture; and this is the fact of original sin, from which no one generated from Adam is free, and from which no one is freed save as regenerated in Christ.5 But how we are made partakers of it, he is less certain: sometimes he speaks as if it came by some mysterious unity of the race, so that we were all personally present in the individual Adam, and thus the whole race was the one man that sinned; ^ sometimes he speaks more in the sense of modern realists, as if Adam's sin corrupted the nature, and the nature now corrupts those to whom it is communicated; 7 sometimes he speaks as if it were due to simple heredity; * sometimes, again, as if it depended on the presence of shameful concupiscence in the act of procreation, so that the propagation of guilt depends on the propagation of offspring by means of concupiscence.^ However transmitted, it is yet a fact that sin is propagated, and all mankind became sinners in Adam.
The result of this is that we have lost the divine image, though not in such a sense that no lineaments of it remain to us j '° and, the sinning soul making the flesh corruptible, our whole nature is corrupted, and we are unable to do anything of ourselves truly good." This includes, of course, an injury to our will. Augustin, writing for the popular eye, treats this subject in popular language. But it is clear that he distinguished, in his thinking, between will as a faculty and will in a broader sense. As a mere faculty, will is and always remains an indifferent thing,'^ — after the fall, as before it, continuing poised in indifferency, and ready, like a weathercock, to be turned whithersoever the breeze that blows from the heart ("will," in the broader sense) may direct.'^ It is not the faculty of willing, but the man who makes use of that faculty, that has suffered change from the fall. In paradise man stood in full ability: he had the posse non peccare, but not yet the non posse peccare; '■♦ that is, he was endowed with a capacity for either part, and possessed the grace of God by which he was able to stand if he would, but also the power of free will by which he might fall if he would. By his fall he has suffered a change, is corrupt, and under the power of Satan; his will (in the broader sense) is now injured, wounded, diseased, enslaved, — although the faculty of will (in the narrow sense) remains indifferent.'^ Augustin's criticism of Pelaglus' discrimination's of " capacity '■' {possibiiiias, posse), ^' w'xW^^ {voluntas, velle),2sA "act" {actio, esse), does not turn on the discrimination itself, but on the incongruity of placing the power, ability in the mere capacity or possibility, rather than in the living agent who " wills " and " acts." He himself adopts an essentially similar distribution, with only this correction; '^ and thus keeps the faculty of will indifferent, but places the power of using it in the active agent, man. According, then, to the character of this man, will the use of the free will be. If the man be holy he will make a holy use of it, and if he be corrupt he will make a sinful use of it: if he be essentially holy, he cannot (like God Himself) make a sinful use of his will; and if he be enslaved to sin, he cannot make a good use of it. The last is the present condition of men by nature. They have free will; '7 the faculty by which they act remains in indifferency, and they are allowed to use it just as they choose: but such as they cannot desire and therefore cannot choose anything but evil; '^ and therefore they, and therefore their choice, and therefore their willing, is always ' On Rebuke and Grace, 27, 28. ^ On Rebuke and Grace, 29, 31 sq. 3 On Rebuke and Grace, 28.
* On the City of God, xiii. 2, 12, 14; O71 the Trinity, iv. 13. 5 On the Merits and Remission of Sins, i. 15, and often.
6 Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iv. 7; On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, iii. 14, 15.
' On Marriage and Concupiscence, ii. 57; On the City of God, xiv. 1. * Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, iv. 7.
9 On Original Sin, 42. '° Retractations, ii. 24.
" Against Julian, iv. 3, 25, 26. Compare Thomasius' Dogmengeschichie, i. 501 and 507.
'^ On the Spirit and Letter, 58, '^ On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, ii. 30. '■< On Rebuke and Grace, 11.
'S On the Grace of Christ, 4 sq. ■& On the Predestination of the Saints, 10.
'^ Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, i. 5. Epistle 215, 4 and often. " Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, i. 7. Compare i. 5, 6.
Ixviii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.
evil and never good. They are thus the slaves of sin, which they obey; and while their free will avails for sinning, it does not avail for doing any good unless they be first freed by the grace of God. It is undeniable that this view is in consonance vnih modem psychology: let us once conceive of " the will " as simply the whole man in the attitude of willing, and it is immediately evident, that, however abstractly free the " will " is, it is conditioned and enslaved in all its action by the character of the willing agent: a bad man does not cease to be bad in the act of willing, and a good man remains good even in his acts of choice.