Adolf Harnack · 9 of 20

3. The Pelagian Controversy. The Doctrine of Grace and Sin. · Part 1

3. The Pelagian Controversy. The Doctrine of Grace and Sin.

Augustine’s doctrine of grace and sin was constructed independently of the Pelagian controversy. It was substantially complete when he entered the conflict; but he was by no means clear as to its application in separate questions in the year of his conversion. At the time of his fight with Manichæism (see the Tres libri de libero arbitrio) he had rather emphasised, following the tradition of the Church teachers, the independence of human freedom, and had spoken of original sin merely as inherited evil. It was his clerical office, a renewed study of Romans, and the criticism of his spiritual development, as instituted in the Confessions, that first led him to the Neoplatonic Christian conviction that all good, and therefore faith, came from God, and that man was only good and free in dependence on God. Thus he gained a point of view which he confessed at the close of his life he had not always possessed, and which he opposed to the earlier, erroneous conceptions that friends and enemies frequently reminded him of It can be said that his doctrine of grace, in so far as it was a doctrine of God, was complete as early as A.D. 387; but it was not, in its application to Bible history, or to the problem of conversion and sanctification (in the Church), before the beginning of the fifth century. It can also be shown that he was at all times slightly influenced by the popular Catholic view, and this all the more as he was not capable of drawing the whole consequences of his system, which, if he had done so, would have led to determinism.

This system did not evoke Pelagianism. Pelagius had taken offence, indeed, before the outbreak of the controversy, at Augustine’s famous sentence: “Grant what thou commandest, and command what thou dost desire,” and he had opposed it at Rome; but by that date his doctrine was substantially settled. The two great types of thought, involving the question whether virtue or grace, morality or religion, the original and inalienable constitution of man, or the power of Jesus Christ was supreme, did not evolve themselves in the controversy. They gained in clearness and precision during its course, but both arose, independently of each other, from the internal conditions of the Church. We can observe here, if anywhere, the “logic” of history. There has never, perhaps, been another crisis of equal importance in Church history in which the opponents have expressed the principles at issue so clearly and abstractly. The Arian dispute before the Nicene Council can alone be compared with it; but in this case the controversy moved in a narrow sphere of formulas already marked off by tradition. On the other hand, in spite of the exegetical and pseudo-historical materials that encumbered the problems in this instance also, there is a freshness about the Pelagian controversy and disputants that is wanting in the Greek contentions. The essentially literary character of the dispute, the absence of great central incidents, did not prejudice it any way; the main issue was all the freer of irrelevant matter. But it is its most memorable feature that the Western Church so speedily and definitely rejected Pelagianism, while the latter, in its formulas, still seemed to maintain that Church’s ancient teaching. In the crucial question, whether grace is to be reduced to nature, or the new life to grace, in the difficulty how the polar antitheses of “creaturely freedom and grace” are to be united, the Church placed itself resolutely on the side of religion. In doing so it was as far from seeking to recognise all the consequences that followed from this position as it had been a hundred years earlier at Nicæa; indeed it did not even examine them. But it never recalled—perhaps it was no longer possible to recall—the step taken as soon as rationalistic moralism clearly revealed its character.

Not only is the inner logic of events proved by the simultaneous and independent emergence of Augustinianism and Pelagianism, but the how strikes us by its consistency. On the one side we have a hot-blooded man who had wrestled, while striving for truth, to attain strength and salvation, to whom the sublimest thoughts of the Neoplatonists, the Psalms, and Paul had solved the problems of his inner life, and who had been over-powered by his experience of the living God. On the other, we have a monk and a eunuch, both without traces of any inner struggles, both enthusiasts for virtue, and possessed by the idea of summoning a morally listless Christendom to exert its will, and of leading it to rnonachist perfection; equally familiar with the Fathers, desirous of establishing relations with the East, and well versed in Antiochene exegesis; but, above all, following that Stoic and Aristotelian popular philosophy—theory of knowledge, psychology, ethics and dialectics—which numbered so many adherents among cultured Christians of the West. The third member of the league, Julian of Eclanum, the early widowed Bishop, was more active and aggressive than the reserved and prudent Pelagius, more circumspect than Cælestius, the agitator, and more cultured than either. Overbearing in manner, he had a talent for dialectics, and, more stubborn than earnest, was endowed with an insatiable delight in disputing, and a boyish eagerness to define conceptions and construct syllogisms. He was no monk, but a child of the world, and jovial by nature. He was, indeed, the first, and up to the sixteenth century, the unsurpassed, unabashed representative of a self-satisfied Christianity. Pelagius and Cælestius required the aid of Julian, if the moralistic mode of thought was not to be represented from one side alone—the religious view needed only one representative. Certainly no dramatist could have better invented types of these two contrasted conceptions of life than those furnished by Augustine on the one hand, and the two earnest monks, Pelagius and Clestius, and the daring, worldly bishop Julian on the other.

We have thus already indicated the origin of Pelagianism. It is the consistent outcome of the Christian rationalism that had long been wide spread in the West, especially among the more cultured, that had been nourished by the popular philosophy influenced by Stoicism and Aristotelianism, and had by means of Julian received a bias to (Stoic) naturalism. (We may not overlook the fact that it originally fell back upon monachism, still in its early stages in the West, and that the two phenomena at first sought a mutual support in each other.) Nature, free-will, virtue and law, these—strictly defined and made independent of the notion of God—were the catch-words of Pelagianism: self-acquired virtue is the supreme good which is followed by reward. Religion and morality lie in the sphere of the free spirit; they are won at any moment by man’s own effort. The extent to which this mode of thought was diffused is revealed, not only by the uncertain utterances of theologians, who in many of their expositions show that they know better, but above all by the Institutes of Lactantius. In what follows we have first to describe briefly the external course of the controversy, then to state the Pelagian line of thought, and finally to expound Augustine’s doctrine.

I. We first meet with Pelagius in Rome. In every century there have appeared preachers in Italy who have had the power of thrilling for the moment the vivacious and emotional Italians. Pelagius was one of the first (De pecc. orig. 24: “He lived for a very long time in Rome”). Roused to anger by an inert Christendom, that excused itself by pleading the frailty of the flesh and the impossibility of fulfilling the grievous commandments of God, he preached that God commanded nothing impossible, that man possessed the power of doing the good if only he willed, and that the weakness of the flesh was merely a pretext. “In dealing with ethics and the principles of a holy life, I first demonstrate the power to decide and act inherent in human nature, and show what it can achieve, lest the mind be careless and sluggish in pursuit of virtue in proportion to its want of belief in its power, and in its ignorance of its attributes think that it does not possess them.” In opposition to Jovinian, whose teaching can only have encouraged laxity, he proclaimed and urged on Christians the demands of monachism; for with nothing less was this preacher concerned. Of unquestioned orthodoxy, prominent also as exegete and theologian in the capital of Christendom, so barren in literary work, he was so energetic in his labour that news of his success penetrated to North Africa. He took to do with the practical alone. Apparently he avoided theological polemics; but when Augustine’s Confessions began to produce their narcotic effects, he opposed them. Yet positive teaching, the emphasising of the freedom of the will, always remained to him the chief thing. On the other hand, his disciple and friend Cælestius seems to have attacked original sin (tradux peccati) from the first. His converts proclaimed as their watchword that the forgiveness of sin was not the object of infant baptism. When Alaric stormed Rome, the two preachers retreated by Sicily to North Africa. They intended to visit Augustine; but Pelagius and he did not meet either in Hippo or Carthage. Probably the former left suddenly when he saw that he would not attain his ends in Africa, but would only cause theological strife. On the other hand, Cælestius remained, and became candidate for the post of Presbyter in Carthage. But as early as A.D. 412 (411) he was accused by Paulinus, Deacon in Milan (afterwards Ambrose’s biographer), at a Synod held in Carthage before Bishop Aurelius. The points of the complaint, reduced to writing, were as follows:—He taught “that Adam was made mortal and would have died whether he had or had not sinned—that Adam’s sin injured himself alone, and not the human race—infants at birth are in that state in which Adam was before his falsehood—that the whole human race neither dies on account of Adam’s death or falsehood, nor will rise again in virtue of Christ’s resurrection—the law admits men to the kingdom of heaven as well as the gospel—even before the advent of our Lord there were impeccable men, i.e., men without sin—that man can be without sin and can keep the divine commands easily if he will.” Cælestius declared at the conference that infants needed baptism and had to be baptised; that since he maintained this his orthodoxy was proved; that original sin (tradux peccati) was at any rate an open question, “because I have heard many members of the Catholic Church deny it, and also others assent to it.” He was, nevertheless, excommunicated. In the Libellus Brevissimus, which he wrote in his own defence, he admitted the necessity of baptism if children were to be saved; but he held that there was a kingdom of heaven distinct from eternal life. He would not hear of forgiveness of sin in connection with infant baptism. He was indisputably condemned because he undid the fixed connection between baptism and forgiveness, thus, as it were, setting up two baptisms, and offending against the Symbol. He now went to Ephesus, there became Presbyter, and afterwards betook himself to Constantinople.

Pelagius had gone to Palestine. He followed different tactics from his friend, who hoped to serve the cause by his maxim of “shocking deeply” (fortiter scandalizare). Pelagius desired peace; he wrote a flattering letter to Augustine, who sent him a friendly but reserved answer. He sought to attach himself to Jerome, and to give no public offence. He plainly felt hampered by Cælestius with his agitation for the sinlessness of children, and against original sin. He wished to work for something positive. How could anyone thrust a negative point to the front, and check the movement for reform by precipitancy and theological bitterness? He actually found good friends. But his friendly relations with John, Bishop of Jerusalem, could not please Jerome. Besides, reports of Pelagius’ questionable doctrines came from the East, where, in Palestine, there always were numerous natives of the West. Jerome, who at the time was on good terms with Augustine, broke with Pelagius, and wrote against him the Ep. ad Ctesiphontem (Ep. 133), and the Dialogi c. Pelag., writings which constitute a model of irrational polemics. He put in the foreground the question, “whether man can be without sin,” and at the same time did all he could to connect Pelagius with the “heretic” Origen and other false teachers. But still greater harm was done to Pelagius by the appearance, at this precise moment, of the work already known to us, in which Cælestius played so regardlessly the rôle of the enfant terrible of the party (see above).

Augustine’s disciple, the Spanish priest Orosius, who had come to Jerome in order to call his attention to the dangers of Pelagianism, ultimately succeeded in getting John of Jerusalem to cite Pelagius, and to receive a formal report on his case in presence of his presbyters (A.D. 415). But the inquiry ended with the triumph of the accused. Orosius referred to the authority of his celebrated teacher, and to that of Jerome and the Synod of Carthage, but without success, and when Pelagius was charged with teaching that man could be sinless and needed no divine help, the latter declared that he taught that it was not possible for man to become sinless without divine grace. With this John entirely agreed. Now since Orosius for his part would not maintain that man’s nature was created evil by God, the Orientals did not see what the dispute was all about. The conference, irregular and hampered by Orosius’ inability to speak Greek, was broken off: it was said that the quarrel might be decided in the West, or more precisely in Rome. Pelagius had repelled the first attack. But his opponents did not rest. They succeeded, in December, 415, in getting him brought before a Palestinian Synod, presided over by Eulogius of Cæsarea, at Diospolis, where, however, he was not confronted by his accusers. He was at once able to appeal to the favourable testimonies of many Bishops, who had warmly recognised his efforts to promote morality. He did not disown the propositions ascribed to him regarding nature and grace, but he succeeded in explaining them so satisfactorily, that his judges found him to be of blameless orthodoxy. The extravagant sentences taken from the letter to Livania he in part set right, and in part disowned, and when the Synod required him expressly to condemn them, he declared: “I anathematise them as foolish, not as heretical, seeing it is no case of dogma.” Hereupon the Synod decided: “Now since with his own voice Pelagius has anathematised the groundless nonsense, answering rightly that a man can be without sin with the divine help and grace, let him also reply to the other counts.” There were now laid before him the statements of Cælestius as to Adam, Adam’s sin, death, new-born children, the perdition of the rich, sinlessness of God’s children, the unessential character of divine assistance—in short, all those propositions which had either been already condemned at Carthage, or were afterwards advanced by Cælestius in a much worse form. Pelagius was in an awkward position. He hated all theological strife; he knew that Christian morality could only lose by it; he wished to leave the region of dogma alone. Cælestius had only said, indeed, what he himself had described as correct when among his intimate friends; but the former had spoken publicly and regardlessly, and—“the tone makes the music.” Thus Pelagius considered himself justified in disowning almost all those statements: “but the rest even according to their own testimony was not said by me, and for it I am not called upon to give satisfaction.” But he added: “I anathematise those who hold or have held these views.” With these words he pronounced judgment on himself; they were false. The Synod rehabilitated him completely: “Now since we have been satisfied by our examination in our presence of Pelagius the monk, and he assents to godly doctrines, while condemning those things contrary to the faith of the Church, we acknowledge him to belong to our ecclesiastical and Catholic Communion.”

No one can blame the Synod: Pelagius had, in fact, given expression to its own ideas; Augustinianism was neither known nor understood; and the “heresy of Cælestius” was condemned.

But Pelagius now found it necessary to defend himself to his own adherents. While on the one hand he was zealous in promoting in the West the effect of the impression produced by the decision in his favour, he wrote to a friendly priest, that his statement, “that a man can be without sin and keep the commands of God easily if he will,” had been recognised as orthodox. His work, De natura, made its appearance at the same time, and he further published four books, De libero arbitrio, which, while written with all caution, disclosed his standpoint more clearly than his earlier ones.

But North Africa did not acquiesce in what had taken place. The prestige of the West and orthodoxy were endangered. Synods were held in A.D. 416 at Carthage and Mileve, Augustine being also present at the latter. Both turned to Innocent of Rome, to whom Cælestius had appealed long before. Soon after the epistles of the two Synods (Aug. epp. 175, 176,) the Pope received a third from five African Bishops, of whom Augustine was one (Ep. 177). It was evidently feared that Pelagius might have influential friends in Rome. The letters referred to the condemnation, five years before, of Cælestius; they pointed out that the Biblical doctrine of grace and the doctrine of baptism were in danger, and demanded that, no matter how Pelagius might express himself, those should be excommunicated who taught that man could overcome sin and keep God’s commands by virtue of his own nature, or that baptism did not deliver children from a state of sin. It was necessary to defeat the enemies of God’s grace. It was not a question of expelling Pelagius and Cælestius, but of opposing a dangerous heresy.

The Pope had, perhaps, never yet received petitions from North African Synods which laid such stress on the importance of the Roman Chair. Innocent sought to forge the iron while it was hot. In his four replies (Aug. Epp. 181-184 = Innoc. Epp. 30-33) he first congratulated the Africans on having acted on the ancient rule, “that no matter might be finally decided, even in the most remote provinces, until the Roman Chair had been informed of it, in order that every just decision might be confirmed by its authority;” for truth issued from Rome, and thence was communicated in tiny streams to the other Churches. The Pope then praised their zeal against heretics, declared it impious to deny the necessity of divine grace, or to promise eternal life to children without baptism; he who thought otherwise was to be expelled from the Church, unless he performed due penance. “Therefore (Ep. 31, 6) we declare in virtue of our Apostolic authority that Pelagius and Cælestius are excluded from the communion of the Church until they deliver themselves from the snares of the devil;” if they did so, they were not to be refused readmission. Any adherents of Pelagius who might be in Rome would not venture to take his part after this condemnation; besides, the acquittal of the man in the East was not certain; nothing indubitably authentic had been laid before him, the Pope, and it appeared even from the proceedings, if they were genuine, that Pelagius had got off by evasions; if he felt himself to be innocent, he would have hastened to Rome that he might be acquitted by us; he would not summon him, however; those among whom he resided might try him once more; if he recanted, they could not condemn him; there lurked much that was blasphemous, but still more that was superfluous, in the book, De Natura; “what orthodox believer might not argue most copiously about the potentiality of nature, free-will, the whole grace of God and daily grace?” He who can read between the lines will readily observe that the Pope left more than one back-door open, and had no real interest in the controversy.

Pelagius now sent his remarkably well-composed confession of faith to Rome, along with an elaborate vindication of himself. The accusation that he refused baptism to children, or promised them admission to heaven without it, and that he taught that men could easily fulfil the divine commands, he declared to be a calumny invented by his enemies. As already at Diospolis, so now he guarded himself against the worst charges, though they were not indeed unwarranted, partly by mental reservations, and partly by modifications; but we cannot say that he was unfaithful to his main conception. He declared that all men had received the power to will aright from God, but that the divine aid (adjutorium) only operated in the case of Christians. It was blasphemous to maintain that God had given impossible commands to men. He took his stand between Augustine and Jovinian. This letter did not reach Innocent, he having died. It was thus received by his successor Zosimus. Cælestius, who had come to Rome and submitted a Libellus fidei that left nothing to be desired in point of submission to the Pope, vindicated himself to the latter. Cælestius, on the whole, seems now, when matters had become critical, to have sounded the retreat; he at least modified his statements, and took care not to come into conflict with the theory, deducible from the Church’s practice, that infant baptism did away with sin. After these similar declarations of the two friends, Zosimus did not see that the dogma or Church practice of baptism was endangered in any respect. At a Roman Synod (417), Cælestius, who was ready to condemn everything banned by the Pope, was rehabilitated; and Pelagius, for whom Orientals interceded, was likewise declared to have cleared himself. The complainants were described as worthless beings, and the Africans were blamed for deciding too hastily; they were called upon to prove their charges within two months. This result was communicated in two letters to the African Bishops. They were told that Pelagius had never been separated from the Church, and that if there had been great joy over the return of the lost son, how much greater should be the joy of believing that those about whom false reports had been circulated were neither dead nor lost (Ep. 4, 8)!

The Carthaginians were indignant, but not discouraged. A Synod (417) determined to adhere to the condemnation until it was ascertained that both heretics saw in grace not merely an enlightenment of the intellect, but the only power for good (righteousness), without which we can have absolutely no true religion in thought, speech, and action. This resolution was conveyed to Zosimus. Paulinus of Milan declared at the same time in a letter to the Pope that he would not come to Rome to prosecute Cælestius, for the case had been already decided. This energetic opposition made the Pope cautious. In his reply, he glorified Peter and his office in eloquent language, but changed his whole procedure, declaring now that the Africans were under a mistake if they believed that he had trusted Cælestius in everything, and had already come to a decision. The case had not yet been prejudiced, and was in the same position as before (March, 418). Immediately after the arrival of this letter in Africa, a great Council was held there—more than 200 Bishops being present—and Pelagianism was condemned, without consulting the Pope, in 8 (9) unequivocal Canons; indeed, such was the indignation felt against Zosimus—and on different grounds—that the Council, in its 17 Canon, threatened with excommunication any appeal to Rome. But it had first assured itself of the Emperor’s support, who had published on the 30th April, 418, an edict to the Prefect of the Prætorium, banishing the new heretics with their followers from Rome, permitting their prosecution, and threatening the guilty with stringent penalties.

Zosimus, whose action had been hitherto influenced by the strength of Pelagius’ party in Rome, now laid down his arms. In his Ep. tractatoria to all the Churches, he informed them of the excommunication of Cælestius and Pelagius, was now convinced that the doctrines of the absolute importance of justifying grace, and of original sin, belonged to the faith (de fide), and required all Bishops to signify their assent by their signatures. But eighteen Bishops refused; they appealed to a General Council, and recalled with reason the fact that the Pope had himself formerly considered a thorough conference to be necessary. In their name Julian of Eclanum wrote two bold letters to the Pope, while also rejecting the propositions once set up by Cælestius. From now onwards the stage was occupied by this “most confident young man,” for whom Augustine, a friend of his family, possessed so much natural sympathy, and whom, in spite of his rudeness, he always treated, as long as the case lasted, affectionately and gently. At the instigation of the new Pope, Boniface, Augustine refuted one of the letters sent to Rome and circulated in Italy, as well as another by Julian (addressed to Rufus of Thessalonica) in his work c. duas epp. Pelagianorum (420). Julian, who had resigned or been deposed from his bishopric, now took up his sharp and restless pen. No one else pressed Augustine so hard as he; he compelled him to work out the consequences of his line of thought; he displayed inexorably the contradictions in his works, and showed how untenable was the great man’s doctrine when it was fully developed; he pointed out the traces of a Manichæan type of thinking in Augustine, traces of which the latter tried in vain to get rid. He could indeed explain that he did not mean them, but could not show that they were not there. Julian’s charge that Augustine’s teaching desecrated marriage had made an impression on the powerful Comes Valerius in Rome. Augustine sought to weaken the force of the charge in his writing, De nuptiis et concupiscentia, Lib. I.; but Julian now wrote a work in four volumes against the treatise. Augustine based a reply on extracts from the latter (De nupt. et concup., 1. II.), and when he received the work itself, he substituted, for this preliminary answer, a new work: Libri sex c. Julianum hæresis Pelagianæ defensorem. Julian replied to the “Preliminary pamphlet” with a work in eight volumes (written already in Cilicia). Augustine was engaged with the answer to this work, Opus imperf. c. Julianum (l. sex), up to his death. Since he follows Julian almost sentence by sentence, we possess the most accurate information as to the latter’s positions. In his latest years, Augustine composed other four writings which are not aimed directly at the Pelagians, but discuss objections raised against his own doctrine by Catholics or Semi-Pelagians (De gratia et libero arbitrio; De correptione et gratia: to the monks of Hadrumetum; De prædestinatione sanctorum and De dono perseverantiæ: to Prosper and Hilary as against the Gallic monks). In these works the doctrine of predestinating grace is worked out in its strictest form.

The Pelagians nowhere came to form a sect or schismatical party. They were suppressed in the years after A.D. 418, without it being necessary to apply any special force. The Emperor once more published a sharp edict. Cælestius, who had hitherto escaped punishment, was still chiefly dealt with. He was forbidden to reside in Italy, and sentence of exile was pronounced on anyone who should harbour him. Pelagius is said to have been condemned by a Synod in Antioch. But this information, given by Marius, is uncertain. He disappears from history. Julian and other Pelagians took refuge with Theodore in Cilicia. There they were at first left in peace; for either the controversy was not understood, or the attitude to Augustinianism was hostile. The indefatigable Cælestius was able in A.D. 424 to demand once more an inquiry in Rome from Bishop Cælestine, but then betook himself, without having obtained his object, to Constantinople, where, since Julian and other friends were also assembled, the party now pitched their headquarters. The Patriarch Nestorius joined hands with them, a proceeding fatal to both sides; for Nestorius thereby incurred the displeasure of the Pope, and the Pelagians fell into the ranks of the enemies of the dominant party in the East (Cyril’s). Marius Mercator agitated successfully against them at the Court, and in the comedy at Ephesus Cyril obliged the Roman legates by getting the Council to condemn the doctrine of Cælestius, Rome having concurred in his condemnation of Nestorius. Thus Pelagianism had brought upon itself a kind of universal anathema, while in the East there were perhaps not even a dozen Christians who really disapproved of it, and the West, in turn, was by no means clear as to the consequences to which it would necessarily be led by the condemnation of the Pelagians.

II. As regards the history of dogma, the “system” of Pelagianism, i.e. of Julian of Eclanum, is tolerably indifferent; for it was only produced after the whole question was already decided, and its author was a theologian, who, by renouncing his ecclesiastical office, had himself thrown away much of his claim to be considered. From the standpoint of the history of dogma, the controversy closed simply with rejection of the doctrines, (1) that God’s grace (in Christ) was not absolutely necessary—before and after baptism—for the salvation of every man, and (2) that the baptism of infants was not in the fullest sense a baptism for remission of sins (in remissionem peccatorum). The contrary doctrines were the new “dogmas.” But, since those two doctrines and the main theses of Pelagianism involved a multitude of consequences, and since some of these consequences were even then apparent, while others afterwards occupied the Church up till and beyond the Reformation, it is advisable to point out the fundamental features of the Pelagian system, and the contrary teaching of Augustinianism. In doing so we have to remember that Pelagius would have nothing to do with a system. To him “De fide” (of the faith) meant simply the orthodox dogma and the ability of man to do the good. All else were open questions which might be answered in the affirmative or negative, among the rest original sin, which he denied. He laid sole stress on preaching practical Christianity, i.e., the monastic life, to a corrupt and worldly Christendom, and on depriving it of the pretext that it was impossible to fulfil the divine commands. Cælestius, at one with his teacher in this respect, attacked original sin more energetically, and fought by the aid of definitions and syllogisms theological doctrines which he held to be pernicious. But Julian was the first to develop their mode of thought systematically, and to elevate it into a Stoic Christian system. Yet he really added nothing essential to what occurs scattered through the writings of Pelagius and Cælestius. He only gave it all a naturalistic tendency, i.e., he did away with the monastic intention of the type of thought. But even in Pelagius, arguments occur which completely contradict the ascetic monastic conception. In his letter to Demetrius he shows that fasting, abstinence and prayer are not of such great importance; they should not be carried to excess, as is often done by beginners; moderation should be observed in all things, therefore even in good works. The main thing is to change one’s morals and to practise every kind of virtue. And thus no one is to think that the vow of chastity can let him dispense with the practice of spiritual virtues and the fight with anger, vanity, and pride, etc. It was the actual development of the character in goodness on which he laid stress. The monastic idea appears subordinate to this thought, which in some passages is expressed eloquently. The ancient call to wise moderation has not a naturalistic impress in Pelagius. In treating the thought of these three men as a whole we have to remember this distinction, as also the fact that Pelagius and Cælestius for the most part paid due heed to Church practice, and besides avoided almost entirely any appeal to the ancient philosophers. They were all actuated by a courageous confidence in man’s capacity for goodness, along with the need for clearness of thought on religious and moral questions.