Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/367

 descendants are born without any natural corruption or original sin, they may by mere natural forces attain moral perfection and have no need for that purpose of any supernatural divine aid and force.' Against Pelagius and his followers first of all rose St. Augustine, who wrote very many works in refutal of them. There rose also many other pastors of the church, and both in the East and in the West there met in a short time more than twenty councils which unanimously condemned that heresy. The defenders of the truth unanimously maintained: (a) that man, who has fallen and is born in original sin, cannot in himself create any spiritual good without the aid of grace; (b) that by it are to be understood not merely the natural forces of man, the law of Moses, the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, external aids, but the supernatural power of God, which is inwardly communicated to man’s soul; (c) that this grace does not consist merely in the remission of former sins, but offers real assistance in keeping man from committing new ones; (d) it not only illuminates reason and imparts to it the knowledge of what is to be done and what avoided, but also gives it the strength to carry out what has been found good, and pours love into the heart; (e) it not only makes easier for us the execution of the divine commands, which we are supposed to perform by ourselves, though inconveniently so, but acts as an assistance, without which we are not able to execute the divine law and to do the good which coöperates in our salvation.

“At the present time the teaching of the Orthodox Church, as directed against the heresy of the Pelagians, may be seen in the three following rules of the Council at Carthage, which is accepted among the number of the nine local councils, and which met to refute Pelagius: ‘If any one says that divine grace, by which men are justified in Jesus Christ our Lord, is active only in the remission of sins already committed, but does not in addition to