Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/89

Rh philosophical treatises ; lie tad combated the scepticism of the New Academy (Contra Academicos lib?*i tres, ); he had treated of the &quot; Blessed Life&quot; (De vita leata, ) and of the &quot; Immortality of the Soul&quot; (De Immortalitate Animae, ); he had defended the church against the Manichaeans, whose doctrines he had formerly professed. &quot; When I was at Rome,&quot; he says (Retract., i. 7), &quot; after my baptism, and could not hear in silence the vaunting of the Manichaeans over true Christians, to whom they are not to be compared, I wrote two books, one on The Morals of the Catholic Church, and the other on The Morals of the Mani- chceans.&quot; These tracts or pamphlets, for they are little more, were written in, about two years after his conversion. Later, in, and again in , he pursued the controversy with the Manichaeans, making an elaborate reply, in the latter year, to his old associate and friend Faustus. The reply was provoked by an attack made by Faustus on the Catholic faith, which the &quot; brethren &quot; invited Augustine to answer. This he did characteristically and energetically by giving in succession &quot; the opinions of Faustus, as if stated by himself,&quot; and his own in response. It was natural that the Manichsean heresy, which had so long enslaved his own mind, should have first exercised Augustine s great powers as a theological thinker and disputant. He was able from his own experience to give force to his arguments for the unity of creation and of spiritual life, and to strengthen the mind of the Christian church in its last struggle with that dualistic spirit which had animated and moulded in succession so many forms of thought at variance with Christianity. But the time was one of almost universal ecclesiastical and intellectual excitement ; and so powerful a mental activity as his was naturally drawn forth in all directions. Following his writings against the Manichaeans come those against the Donatists. This controversy was one which strongly interested him, involving as it did the whole question of the constitution of the church and the idea of catholic order, to which the circumstances of the ago gave special prominence. The Donatist schism sprang out of the Diocletian persecutions in the beginning of the century. A party in the Church of Carthage, fired with fanatical zeal on behalf of those who had distinguished themselves by resistance to the imperial mandates and courted martyrdom, resented deeply the appointment of a bishop of moderate opinions, whose consecration had been per formed, they alleged, by a traditor. They set up, in con sequence, a bishop of their own, of the name of Majorinus, succeeded in by Donatus. The party made great pre tensions to purity of discipline, and rapidly rose in popular favour, notwithstanding a decision given against them both by the bishop of Rome and by the Emperor Contantine, to whom they personally appealed. Augustine was strongly moved by the lawlessness of the party, and launched forth a series of writings against them, the most important of which survive, though some are lost. Amongst these are Seven Books on Baptism, and a lengthened answer, in three books, to Petilian, bishop of Cirta, who was the most eminent theologian amongst the Donatist divines. At a somewhat later period, about, he wrote a treatise concerning the correction of the Donatists (De Corredione Donatistarum), &quot;for the sake of those, &quot; he says in his Retractations, ii. c. 48, &quot; who were not willing that the Donatists should be subjected to the correction of the imperial laws.&quot; In these writings, while vigorously maintaining the validity of the Catholic Church as it then stood in the Roman world, and the necessity for moderation in the exercise of church discipline, Augustine yet gave currency, in his zeal against the Donatists, to certain maxims as to the duty of the civil power to control schism, which were of evil omen, and have been productive of much disaster in the history of Christianity. The third controversy in which Augustine engaged was the most important, and the most intimately associated with his distinctive greatness as a theologian. As may be supposed, from the conflicts through which he had passed, the bishop of was intensely interested in what may be called the anthropological aspects of the great Christian idea of redemption. He had himself been brought out of darkness into &quot; marvellous light,&quot; only by entering into the depths of his own soul, and finding, after many struggles, that there was no power but divine grace, as revealed in the life and death of the Son of God, which could bring rest to human weariness, or pardon and peace for human guilt. He had found human nature in his own case too weak and sinful to find any good for itself. In God alone he had found good. This deep sense of human sinfulness coloured all his theology, and gave to it at once its depth its profound and sympathetic adaptation to all who feel the reality of sin and that tinge of darkness and exaggera tion which as surely have repelled others. When the expres sion Augustinianism is used, it points especially to those opinions of the great teacher which were evoked in the Pelagian controversy, to which he devoted the most mature and powerful period of his life. His opponents in this controversy were Pelagius, from whom it derives its name, and Coelestius and Julianus, pupils of the former. Pelagius was a British monk. Augustine calls him Brito; and Jerome points to his Scottish descent, in such terms, however, as to leave it uncertain whether he was a native of Scotland or Ireland (hahet progeniem Scotice gentis de Britannorum vicinia). He was a man of blameless char acter, devoted to the reformation of society, full of enthu siasm, and that confidence in the natural impulses of humanity which often accompanies philanthropic enthu siasm. Travelling to Rome about the beginning of the 5th century, he took up his abode for a time there, and soon made himself conspicuous by his activity and opinions. His pupil Coalestius carried out the views of his master with a more outspoken logic, and was at length arraigned before the bishop of Carthage for the following, amongst other, heretical opinions : (1.) That Adam s sin was purely personal, and affected none but himself; (2.) That each man, consequently, is born with powers as incorrupt as those of Adam, and only falls into sin under the force of temptation and evil example ; (3.) That children who die in infancy, being untainted by sin, are saved without baptism. Views such as these were obviously in conflict with the whole course of Augustine s experience, as well as with his interpretation of the catholic doctrine of the church. And when his attention was drawn to them by the trial and excommunication of Coelestius, he undertook their refutation, first of all, in three books on Forgiveness of Sins and Baptism, addressed to his friend Marcellinus, in which he vindicated the necessity of the baptism of infants because of original sin and the grace of God by which we are justified (Retract., ii. c. 23). This was in. In the same year he addressed a further treatise to the same person, &quot; My beloved son Marcellinus,&quot; on The Spirit and the Letter. Three years later he composed two further treatises on Nature and Grace, and the relation of the Human to the Divine Rightemisness. The controversy was continued during many years in no fewer than fifteen treatises. Upon no subject did Augustine bestow more of his intellectual strength, and in relation to no other have his views so deeply and permanently affected the course of Christian thought. Even those who most usually agree with his theological stand-point will hardly deny that, while he did much in these writings to vindicate divine truth and to expound the true relations of the divine and human, 