This epistle, from which selections are given, was written probably about 412 or 413. As it gives a statement of the teaching of Pelagius in his own words, it is of especial historical interest. Demetrias was a virgin, and probably under the spiritual direction of Pelagius, though little is known of her. Text in Bruckner, op. cit., n. 56.
Ch. 2. As often as I have to speak of the principles of virtue and a holy life, I am accustomed first of all to call attention [pg 459] to the capacity and character of human nature, and to show what it is able to accomplish; then from this to arouse the feelings of the hearer, that he may strive after different kinds of virtue, that he may permit himself to be roused to acts which perhaps he had regarded as impossible. For we are quite unable to travel the way of virtue if hope does not accompany us. For all attempts to accomplish anything cease if one is in doubt whether he will attain the goal. This order of exhortation I follow in other minor writings and in this case also. I believe it must be kept especially in mind where the good of nature needs to be set forth the more in detail as the life is to be more perfectly formed, that the spirit may not be more neglectful and slow in its striving after virtue, as it believes itself to have the less ability, and when it is ignorant of what is within it, think that it does not possess it.
Ch. 3. One must be careful to see to it that … one does not think that a man is not made good because he can do evil and is not compelled to an immutable necessity of doing good through the might of nature. For if you diligently consider it and turn your mind to the subtler understanding of the matter, the better and superior position of man will appear in that from which his inferior condition was inferred. But just in this freedom in either direction, in this liberty toward either side, is placed the glory of our rational nature. Therein, I say, consists the entire honor of our nature, therein its dignity; from this the very good merit praise, from this their reward. For there would be for those who always remain good no virtue if they had not been able to have chosen the evil. For since God wished to present to the rational creature the gift of voluntary goodness and the power of the free will, by planting in man the possibility of turning himself toward either side, He made His special gift the ability to be what he would be in order that he, being capable of good and evil, could do either and could turn his will to either of them.
Ch. 8. We defend the advantage of nature not in the sense [pg 460] that we say it cannot do evil, since we declare that it is capable of good and evil; we only protect it from reproach. It should not appear as if we were driven to evil by a disease of nature, we who do neither good nor bad without our will, and to whom there is always freedom to do one of two things, since always we are able to do both.… Nothing else makes it difficult for us to do good than long custom of sinning which has infected us since we were children, and has gradually corrupted us for many years, so that afterward it holds us bound to it and delivered over to it, so that it almost seems as if it had the same force as nature.
If before the Law, as we are told, and long before the appearance of the Redeemer, various persons can be named who lived just and holy lives, how much more after His appearance must we believe that we are able to do the same, we who have been taught through Christ's grace, and born again to be better men; and we who by His blood have been reconciled and purified, and by His example incited to more perfect righteousness, ought to be better than they who were before the Law, better than they who were under the law.
(e) Marius Mercator, Commonitorium super nomine Cælestii, ch. 1. (MSL, 48:67.) Cf. Kirch, nn. 737 ff.
The Council of Carthage and the opinions of Cælestius condemned at that council, 411.
Marius Mercator, a friend and supporter of Augustine, was one of the most determined opponents of Pelagianism, as also of Nestorianism. His dates are not well determined. In 418 he sent works to Augustine to be examined by the latter, and he seems to have lived until after the Council of Chalcedon, 451. The work from which the selection is taken was written, 429, in Greek, and translated and republished in Latin, 431 or 432. With the following should be compared Augustine's De Gratia Christi et Peccato Originali, II, 2f., and Ep. 175:6; 157:3, 22.
A certain Cælestius, a eunuch from his mother's womb, a disciple and auditor of Pelagius, left Rome about twenty years ago and came to Carthage, the metropolis of all Africa, and there he was accused of the following heads before Aurelius, [pg 461] bishop of that city, by a complaint from a certain Paulinus, a deacon of Bishop Ambrose of Milan, of sacred memory, as the record of the acts stands in which the same complaint is inserted (a copy of the acts of the council we have in our hands) that he not only taught this himself, but also sent in different directions throughout the provinces those who agreed with him to disseminate among the people these things, that is:
1. Adam was made mortal and would have died whether he had sinned or had not sinned.