2 De Principiis, lib. lit. cap. 5.
deliverance, this gradual descent and ascent of souls being figuratively represented by Jacob's ladder; that all punishments and rewards are exactly fitted to the degree of sin or merit, without possibility of failure; that all suffering even that in the lowest hell is benevolent and remedial, so that even the worst spirits, including Satan himself, shall after a time be restored to heaven; that this alternation of fall and restoration shall be continued so often as the cloy and satiety of heavenly bliss, or the preponderant power of temptation, pervert free will into sin.3 He declared that it was impossible to explain the phenomena and experience of human life, or to justify the ways of God, except by admitting that souls sinned in a pre existent state. He was ignorant of the modern doctrine of vicarious atonement, considered as placation or satisfaction, and regarded Christ's suffering not as a substitute for ours, but as having merely the same efficacy in kind as the death of any innocent person, only more eminent in degree. He represents the mission of Christ to be to show men that God can forgive and recall them from sin, banishment, and hell, and to furnish them, in various ways, helps and incitements to win salvation. The foregoing assertions, and other kindred points, are well established by Mosheim, in his exposition of the characteristic views of Origen.4
The famous controversy between Augustine and Pelagius shook Christendom for a century and a half, and has rolled its echoing results even to the theological shores of to day. Augustine was more Calvinistic in his doctrines than the Fathers before him, and even than most of those after him. In a few particulars perhaps a majority of the Fathers really agreed more nearly with Pelagius than with him. But his system prevailed, and was publicly adopted for all Christendom by the third general council at Ephesus in the year 431. Yet some of its principles, in their full force, were actually not accepted. For instance, his dogma of unconditional election that some were absolutely predestinated to eternal salvation, others to eternal damnation has never been taught by the Roman Catholic Church. When Gottschalk urged it in the ninth century, it was condemned as a heresy;5 and among the Protestants in the sixteenth century Calvin was obliged to fight for it against odds. Augustine's belief must therefore be taken as a representation of the general patristic belief only with caution and with qualifications. The distinctive views of Augustine as contrasted with those of Pelagius were as follow.6 Augustine held that, by Adam's fault, a burden of sin was entailed on all souls, dooming them, without exception, to an eternal banishment in the infernal world. Pelagius denied the doctrine of "original sin," and made each one responsible only for his own personal sins. Augustine taught that baptism was necessary to free its subject from the power which the devil had over the soul on account of original sin, and that all would infallibly be doomed to hell who were not baptized, except, first, the ancient saints, who foreknew the evangelic doctrines and believed, and, secondly, the martyrs, whose blood was their baptism. Pelagius claimed that Christian baptism was only necessary to secure an
3 Ibid. lib. ii. cap. 9, 10.
4 Commentaries on the Affairs of the Christians in the First Three Centuries: Third Century sects. 27-29.
5 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 183.
6 Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, trans. from the German by R. Emerson, ch. xix.; also pp. 62, 68, 75, 79.
entrance into heaven: infants and good men, if unbaptized; would enjoy a happy immortality in Paradise, but they never could enter the kingdom of heaven. Augustine affirmed that Adam's sin destroyed the freedom of the will in the whole human race. Pelagius asserted the freedom of the individual will. Augustine declared that a few were arbitrarily elected to salvation from eternity, and that Christ died only for them. Pelagius taught that salvation or reprobation depended on personal deserts, and that the Divine election was merely through prescience of merits. Augustine said that saving grace was supernatural, irresistible, unattainable by human effort. Pelagius said it might be won or resisted by conformity to certain conditions in each person's power. Augustine believed that bodily death was inflicted as a punishment for sin;7 Pelagius, that it was the result of a natural law. The extensive, various learning, massive, penetrating mind, and remorseless logical consistency, of Augustine, enabled him to gather up the loose, floating theological elements and notions of the time, and generalize them into a complete system, in striking harmony, indeed, with the general character and drift of patristic thought, but carried out more fully in its details and applied more unflinchingly in its principles than had been done before, and therefore in some of its dogmas outstripping the current convictions of his contemporaries. His dogma of election was too revolting and immoral ever to win universal assent; and few could have the heart to unite with him in stigmatizing the whole human race in their natural state as "one damned batch and mass of perdition!" (conspersio damnata, massa perditionis.) With these hints, we are ready to advance to the general patristic scheme of eschatology. The exceptional variations and heresies will be referred to afterwards.
First, in regard to the natural state of men under the law, from the time of Adam's sin to the time of Christ's suffering, their moral condition and destination, no one can deny that the Fathers commonly supposed that the dissolution of the body and the descent of the soul to the under world were a penalty brought on all men through the sin of the first man. Wherever the lengthening line of human generations wandered, the trail of the serpent, stamp of depravity, was on them, sealing them as Death's and marking them for the Hadean prison. This was the indiscriminate and the inevitable doom. There is no need of citing proofs of this statement, as it is well known that the writings of the Fathers are thronged both with indirect implications and with explicit avowals of it.
Secondly, they thought that Christ came from heaven to redeem men from their lost state and subterranean bondage and to guide them to heaven. Augustine, and perhaps some others, maintained that he came merely to effectuate the salvation of a foreordained few; but undoubtedly the common belief was that he came to redeem all who would conform to certain conditions which he proposed and made feasible. The important question here is, What did the Fathers suppose the essence of Christ's redemptive work to be? and how, in their estimation, did he achieve that work? Was it the renewal and sanctification of human character by the melting power of a proclamation of mercy and love from God, by the regenerating influences and motives of the truths and appeals spoken by his lips, illustrated