Now it was not the Manicheans or Donatists who were the most dangerous people in the time of Augustine,--nor were their doctrines likely to be embraced by the Christian schools, especially in the West; but it was the Pelagians who in high places were assailing the Pauline theology. And they advocated principles which lay at the root of most of the subsequent controversies of the Church. They were intellectual men, generally good men, who could not be put down, and who would thrive under any opposition. Augustine did not attack the character of these men, but rendered a great service to the Church by pointing out, clearly and luminously, the antichristian character of their theories, when rigorously pushed out, by a remorseless logic, to their necessary sequence.
Whatever value may be attached to that science which is based on deductions drawn from the truths of revelation, certain it is that it was theology which most interested Christians in the time of Augustine, as in the time of Athanasius; and his controversy with the Pelagians made then a mighty stir, and is at the root of half the theological discussions from that age to ours. If we would understand the changes of human thought in the Middle Ages, if we would seek to know what is most vital in Church history, that celebrated Pelagian controversy claims our special attention.
It was at a great crisis in the Church when a British monk of extraordinary talents, persuasive eloquence, and great attainments,--a man accustomed to the use of dialectical weapons and experienced by extensive travels, ambitious, ardent, plausible, adroit,--appeared among the churches and advanced a new philosophy. His name was Pelagius; and he was accompanied by a man of still greater logical power than he himself possessed, though not so eloquent or accomplished or pleasing in manner, who was called Celestius,--two doctors of whom the schools were justly proud, and who were admired and honored by enthusiastic young men, as Abélard was in after-times.
Nothing disagreeable marked these apostles of the new philosophy, nor could the malignant voice of theological hatred and envy bring upon their lives either scandal or reproach. They had none of the infirmities which so often have dimmed the lustre of great benefactors. They were not dogmatic like Luther, nor severe like Calvin, nor intolerant like Knox. Pelagius, especially, was a most interesting man, though more of a philosopher than a Christian. Like Zeno, he exalted the human will; like Aristotle, he subjected all truth to the test of logical formularies; like Abélard, he would believe nothing which he could not explain or comprehend. Self-confident, like Servetus, he disdained the Cross. The central principle of his teachings was man's ability to practise any virtue, independently of divine grace. He made perfection a thing easy to be attained. There was no need, in his eyes, as his adversaries maintained, of supernatural aid in the work of salvation. Hence a Saviour was needless. By faith, he is represented to mean mere intellectual convictions, to be reached through the reason alone. Prayer was useful simply to stimulate a man's own will. He was further represented as repudiating miracles as contrary to reason, of abhorring divine sovereignty as fatal to the exercise of the will, of denying special providences as opposing the operation of natural laws, as rejecting native depravity and maintaining that the natural tendency of society was to rise in both virtue and knowledge, and of course rejecting the idea of a Devil tempting man to sin. "His doctrines," says one of his biographers, "were pleasing to pride, by flattering its pretension; to nature, by exaggerating its power; and to reason, by extolling its capacity." He asserted that death was not the penalty of Adam's transgression; he denied the consequences of his sin; and he denied the spiritual resurrection of man by the death of Christ, thus rejecting him as a divine Redeemer. Why should there be a divine redemption if man could save himself? He blotted out Christ from the book of life by representing him merely as a martyr suffering for the declaration of truths which were not appreciated,--like Socrates at Athens, or Savonarola at Florence. In support of all these doctrines, so different from those of Paul, he appealed, not to the apostle's authority, but to human reason, and sought the aid of Pagan philosophy, rather than the Scriptures, to arrive at truth.
Thus was Pelagius represented by his opponents, who may have exaggerated his heresies, and have pushed his doctrines to a logical sequence which he would not accept but would even repel, in the same manner as the Pelagians drew deductions from the teachings of Augustine which were exceedingly unfair,--making God the author of sin, and election to salvation to depend on the foreseen conduct of men in regard to an obedience which they had no power to perform.
But whether Pelagius did or did not hold all the doctrines of which he was accused, it is certain that the spirit of them was antagonistic to the teachings of Paul, as understood by Augustine, who felt that the very foundations of Christianity were assailed,--as Athanasius regarded the doctrines of Arius. So he came to the rescue, not of the Catholic Church, for Pelagius belonged to it as well as he, but to the rescue of Christian theology. The doctrines of Pelagius were becoming fashionable and prevalent in many parts of the Empire. Even the Pope at one time favored them. They might spread until they should be embraced by the whole Catholic world, for Augustine believed in the vitality of error as well as in the vitality of truth,--of the natural and inevitable tendency of society towards Paganism, without the especial and restraining grace of God. He armed himself for the great conflict with the infidelity of his day, not with David's sling, but Goliath's sword. He used the same weapons as his antagonist, even the arms of reason and knowledge, and constructed an argument which was overwhelming, if Paul's Epistles were to be the accepted premises of his irresistible logic. Great as was Pelagius, Augustine was a far greater man,--broader, deeper, more learned, more logical, more eloquent, more intense. He was raised up to demolish, with the very reason he professed to disdain, the sophistries and dogmas of one of the most dangerous enemies which the Church had ever known,--to leave to posterity his logic and his conclusions when similar enemies of his faith should rise up in future ages. He furnished a thesaurus not merely to Bernard and Thomas Aquinas, but even to Calvin and Bossuet and Pascal. And it will be the marvellous lucidity of the Bishop of Hippo which shall bring back to the true faith, if it is ever brought back, that part of the Roman Catholic Church which accepts the verdict of the Council of Trent, when that famous council indorsed the opinions of Pelagius while upholding the authority of Augustine as the greatest doctor of the Church.
To a man like Augustine, with his deep experiences,--a man rescued from a seductive philosophy and a corrupt life, as he thought, by the special grace of God and in answer to his mother's prayers,--the views of Pelagius were both false and dangerous. He could find no words sufficiently intense whereby to express his gratitude for his deliverance from both sin and error. To him this Deliverer is so personal, so loving, that he pours out his confession to Him as if He were both friend and father. And he felt that all that is vital in theology must radiate from the recognition of His sovereign power in the renovation and salvation of the world. All his experiences and observations of life confirmed the authority of Scripture,--that the world, as a matter of fact, was sunk in a state of sin and misery, and could be rescued only by that divine power which converted Paul. His views of predestination, grace, and Providence all radiate from the central principle of the majesty of God and the littleness of man. All his ideas of the servitude of the will are confirmed by his personal experience of the awful fetters which sin imposes, and the impossibility of breaking away from them without direct aid from the God who ruleth the world in love. And he had an infinitely greater and deeper conviction of the reality of this divine love, which had rescued him, than Pelagius had, who felt that his salvation was the result of his own merits. The views of Augustine were infinitely more cheerful than those of his adversary respecting salvation, since they gave more hope to the miserable population of the Empire who could not claim the virtues of Pelagius, and were impotent of themselves to break away from the bondage which degraded them. There is nothing in the writings of Augustine,--not in this controversy, or any other controversy,--to show that God delights in the miseries or the penalty which are indissolubly connected with sin; on the contrary, he blesses and adores the divine hand which releases men from the constraints which sin imposes. This divine interposition is wholly based on a divine and infinite love. It is the helping hand of Omnipotence to the weak will of man,--the weak will even of Paul, when he exclaimed, "The evil that I would not, that I do." It is the unloosing, by His loving assistance, of the wings by which the emancipated soul would rise to the lofty regions of peace and contemplation.
I know very well that the doctrines which Augustine systematized from Paul involve questions which we cannot answer; for why should not an infinite and omnipotent God give to all men the saving grace that he gave to Augustine? Why should not this loving and compassionate Father break all the fetters of sin everywhere, and restore the primeval Paradise in this wicked world where Satan seems to reign? Is He not more powerful than devils? Alas! the prevalence of evil is more mysterious than the origin of evil. But this is something,--and it is well for the critic and opponent of the Augustinian theology to bear this in mind,--that Augustine was an earnest seeker after truth, even when enslaved by the fornications of Carthage; and his own free-will in persistently seeking truth, through all the mazes of Manichean and Grecian speculation, is as manifest as the divine grace which came to his assistance. God Almighty does not break fetters until there is some desire in men to have them broken. If men will hug sins, they must not complain of their bondage. Augustine recognized free-will, which so many think he ignored, when his soul aspired to a higher life. When a drunkard in his agonies cries out to God, then help is near. 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. Probably there were all shades of opinion among them, from a modest and thoughtful semi-Pelagianism to the rankest infidelity. There always have been, and probably ever will be, sceptical and rationalistic people, even in the bosom of the Church.
Now had it not been for Augustine,--a profound thinker, a man of boundless influence and authority,--it is not unlikely that Pelagianism would have taken so deep a root in the mind of Christendom, especially in the hearts of princes and nobles, that it would have become the creed of the Church. Even as it was, it was never fully eradicated in the schools and in the courts and among worldly people of culture and fashion.