Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/843

 ably being a republication of canons passed at former minor councils. Anathemas were pronounced on the doctrine that infants derive no original sin from Adam which needs expiation in baptism, and that there is some middle place of happiness in the kingdom of heaven for infants who die unbaptized. A strong protest was made against the views that the grace of God by which we are justified through Jesus Christ avails only for the forgiveness of past sin and not for aid against the commission of sin, or that grace is only the revelation of the will of God and not an inspiring principle of righteousness, or that grace only enables us to do more easily what God commands. The two concluding canons point to a peculiar application of Pelagian doctrine, which was a curious anticipation of the teaching of some modern sectaries. They reject the idea that the petition in the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our sins," is inappropriate for Christian men and can only be regarded as a prayer for others, and that it can only be used as a fictitious expression of humility, not as a true confession of guilt.

Appeal was now made to the civil power. The emperors Honorius and Theodosius issued a decree banishing Pelagius and Coelestius from Rome, and pronouncing confiscation and banishment against all their followers. An imperial letter communicated this decree to the African bishops. Zosimus, whether in vacillation or in alarm at the strong force of dominant Catholic opinion now supported by the state, proceeded to investigate the subject afresh, and summoned Coelestius for fuller examination. Coelestius, seeing the inevitable result, withdrew from Rome. Zosimus thereupon issued a circular letter (epistola tractoria) confirming the decisions of the N. African church. He censured as contrary to the Catholic faith the tenets of Pelagius and Coelestius, particularly selecting for reprobation certain passages from Pelagius's Commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul, which since his former consideration of the case had been laid before him, and ordered all bishops acknowledging his authority to subscribe to the terms of his letter on pain of deprivation. This subscription was enforced through N. Africa under the protection of the imperial edict by Aurelius the bishop and president of the council at Carthage, and in Italy under the authority of the prefect. In Italy 18 bishops refused, and were immediately deprived. The ablest and most celebrated was Julian, bp. of Eclanum in Apulia, who entered into controversy with Augustine with much learning, critical power, and well-controlled temper. He complained, not without some justice, that the anti-Pelagian party sought to suppress their opponents by the strong hand of imperial authority rather than convince them by an appeal to reason. He charged the Roman bishop and clergy with a complete departure from their former convictions, and, complaining that subscription to the letter of Zosimus was being enforced on individual bishops in isolation and not at a deliberate synod, demanded further discussion in a fresh council, refusing to acknowledge the dogmatic authority of the N. African church. A letter commonly supposed to be written by him was circulated in Rome, the professed object of which was to shew the mischievous consequences of the dominant anti-Pelagian doctrine; and another letter, written in the name of the 18 deprived bishops of Italy to Rufus, bp. of Thessalonica, and remonstrating against their condemnation, was probably drawn up by Julian. The two letters reached Boniface, who at the end of the year succeeded Zosimus as bp. of Rome, and were communicated by him through Alypius to Augustine, who replied in his treatise contra Duas Epistolas Pelagianorum, addressed to Boniface, and subsequently pursued the argument against Julian, first in a treatise contra Julianum in six books, written in 421, and then in the closing years of his life in a work of which six books only were completed. Julian throughout his writings sought to cast a prejudice upon the Augustinian doctrine by raising forcible objections to its more unguarded assertions and exaggerations. He boldly challenged it as a revived form of Manicheism, implying that the early education of Augustine might still be moulding his doctrine. He objected that the Augustinian system denied the goodness of the original creation of God—represented marriage, although a divine institution, as necessarily evil—disparaged the righteousness of the O.T. saints—denied free will and its consequent moral responsibility—and nullified belief in the forgiveness of all sins at baptism. Augustine shewed that these were unfair deductions from his statements, maintaining that the original goodness of man's nature is not incompatible with the recognition of its corruption after Adam's fall, that the O.T. did not assert the sinlessness or freedom from temptation of the saints; that free will was so vitiated by the fall that it was powerless for righteousness without the prevenient and co-operating grace of God; and that even after the forgiveness conveyed in baptism there remained the sinful element of concupiscence. Augustine could confidently and successfully appeal to the popular consciousness of Christendom, as bearing witness to man's moral impotence and his need of redemption. The experience of the human heart was, after all, a better judge of such spiritual facts than the most subtle arguments of reason and conflicting interpretations of the meaning of N.T.

The tendency of Pelagianism to underrate the necessity of the divine redemption, and to disparage the dignity of the person of the Redeemer by denying His sinless humanity, is manifested in the case of Leporius, a monk and presbyter of S. Gaul who, coming into Africa, had been reclaimed from Pelagian views by Augustine. In recanting he acknowledged that he had taught that Jesus Christ as a mere man was liable to sin and temptation, but by His own efforts and exertions without divine aid had attained to perfect holiness. Jesus had not come into the world to redeem mankind from sin, but to set them an example of holy living (Cassian, de Incarn. i. 234; Gennad. de Script. Eccles. 59). Thus Leporius's peculiar anthropology coloured his theological conception of the God-Man. Annianus, a deacon of Celada, wrote at the same time in defence of Pelagian views, and,