De gratia Redemptoris

Pelagianism is named from Pelagius, a monk, whether Irish¹ or British,² who came to Rome³ about the beginning of the fifth century. The Manichees taught that bodily substance was made by an evil principle, and that evils proceed from it by necessity, evils which man is therefore unable to avoid, and that consequently man is excused when he sins. Against such and similar tendencies to excuse the sins of men by the weakness of nature Pelagius pressed very hard the part of free will, both in avoiding evil and in doing good, to such an extent that he neglected the weakness of fallen nature and the necessity of divine help. By natural powers alone man can keep all the commandments. Divine grace he did indeed affirm in words, but he understood it as either nature itself and free will, or the law of God and doctrine; but grace which is not our nature or our free will is necessary not for simply being able, but for being able more easily. Whether in the course of time the Pelagians admitted an internal grace of illumination is disputed; but the grace of the will they always denied.

St Augustine on Pelagius: “He places the grace of God and the help by which we are aided not to sin either in nature and free will, or in the law and doctrine: namely, so that when God aids a man to decline from evil and to do good, he is believed to aid him by revealing and showing what ought to be done, not also by cooperating and inspiring love, so that he may do what he has come to know must be done.”⁴.

In the same book he cites the following from the third book of Pelagius, De libero arbitrio: “We distinguish these three things as follows, and divide them, each as it were set in order. In the first place we hold that to be able; in the second, to will; in the third, to be. We locate the ‘to be able’ in nature, the ‘to will’ in the will, the ‘to be’ in the effect. That first thing, namely to be able, belongs properly to God, who conferred it on his creature; but the two remaining, that is to will and to be, are to be referred to man, because they descend from the fountain of free will. Therefore in the will and the good work the praise is man’s: nay, both man’s and God’s, who gave the very possibility of the will and the work, and who always aids that possibility by the help of his grace. But that a man can will good and accomplish it is God’s alone. And so that one thing can be even if the other two are not; but those two cannot be without it. Thus it is in my power not to have a good will, nor action: but in no way can I not have the possibility of good: it is in me even if I am unwilling, nor does nature at any time admit its own idleness in this. Some examples will make this meaning clearer to us. That we can see with our eyes is not ours; but that we see well or ill, that is ours... And to comprehend all things generally, that we can do, say, think every good thing belongs to him who gave this power, who aids this power: but that we do, or speak, or think well is ours; because we can turn all these things also to evil. Hence — what must often be repeated on account of your calumny — when we say that a man can be without sin, and in the confession of the possibility received we praise God, who has bestowed on us this power, there is no occasion there for praising man, where the cause of God alone is treated: for it is not of willing, nor of being, but only of that which can be, that the discussion is held.”⁵.

What Pelagius sometimes proposed covertly, his disciple Caelestius⁶ taught clearly and openly, who also explicitly denied original sin, and hence held that infants are not baptized for the remission of sins in the proper sense.⁷.

Pelagius and Caelestius set out for North Africa in the year 410, and shortly afterwards Pelagius made for Palestine, while Caelestius remained in Africa and spread his doctrine. Caelestius was accused by the deacon Paulinus at the Synod of Carthage (411) on account of the following propositions: “that Adam was made mortal, who would have died whether he sinned or did not sin. That the sin of Adam harmed him alone, and not the human race. That infants who are born are in the state in which Adam was before the transgression. That not through the death of Adam does the whole human race die, since neither through the resurrection of Christ does the whole human race rise. That infants, even if they are not baptized, have eternal life... That a man can be without sin and easily keep God’s commandments: because even before the coming of Christ there were men without sin: and that the law sends to the kingdom of heaven just as the gospel does.”⁸.

In the year 415 Pelagius is accused of heresy by Orosius, who had come to Jerusalem at Augustine’s instigation and had there reported what had been done in Africa concerning Caelestius. The bishop John, however, judged that the matter should be referred to the Roman Pontiff. At about the same time two exiled Gallic bishops, Heros of Arles and Lazarus of Aix, accused Pelagius and Caelestius before Eulogius, metropolitan of Caesarea. Eulogius convoked a synod at Diospolis (Lydda), in which “Pelagius was pronounced catholic by 14 bishops of the province of Palestine.”⁹ Heros and Lazarus, bishops who had not themselves been present at the synod of Diospolis, communicated through Orosius to the African bishops what had been done at the synod. These at Carthage (416) confirmed the judgment previously passed on Caelestius and sent a letter on the whole question to the supreme Pontiff;¹⁰ shortly afterwards the synod held at Mileve did the same,¹¹ and besides them five bishops, among whom was Augustine.¹² Innocent in the month of January 417 replied in three letters,¹³ in which he entirely approves the judgment of the bishops. “Concerning this cause (namely of the Pelagians) two councils were sent to the apostolic see: thence also rescripts came. The cause is finished: would that the error might at some time be finished!”¹⁴.

Pelagius in the year 417 presented to Innocent I a “Libellus fidei,”¹⁵ which however his successor Zosimus received, and in the same year Caelestius came to Rome and promised Zosimus submission under his judgment. Hence Zosimus judged that the matter should be treated anew, and communicated this to the African bishops.¹⁶ In the month of May 418 a synod of more than 200 bishops was held at Carthage, in which 8 (9) canons were established, by which Pelagianism is condemned.¹⁷ The acts of this council were sent to Rome. Zosimus summoned Caelestius to judgment, but Caelestius fled from Rome, and thereafter both he and Pelagius were excommunicated by the supreme Pontiff. In the same year Zosimus sent the letter “which is called the tractoria, by which Caelestius and Pelagius were condemned, which also, sent to Constantinople and through the whole world, was strengthened by the subscriptions of the holy fathers.”¹⁸.

But 18 bishops of Italy refused their subscription, among whom was Julian of Eclanum, who from this point is the head of the Pelagians.¹⁹ When Augustine had learned that he had been defamed before the count Valerius on account of his doctrine on marriage, he sent him the first book “De nuptiis et concupiscentia,” in the year 419. Against this book Julian wrote four books Ad Turbantium (a bishop of his own faction).²⁰.

Pope Boniface I communicated to Augustine, to be refuted by him through Alypius, two letters which Julian had sent, one, as was said, to Rome to his followers, the other to Rufus bishop of Thessalonica; and Alypius at the same time brought extracts of Julian’s work Ad Turbantium. Hence Augustine wrote four books “Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum”²¹ and, against Julian’s work Ad Turbantium, a second book “De nuptiis et concupiscentia.” But after he had received Julian’s work entire, he composed six books “Contra Iulianum.”²² To the second book of Augustine’s “De nuptiis et concupiscentia” Julian replied in eight books Ad Florum (421-422). Augustine was occupied in refuting these books in the last years of his life, yet he could not finish his work, which is accordingly called the “Opus imperfectum contra Iulianum,” consisting of six books.²³.

In the year 428 Augustine thus describes the heresy of the Pelagians: “The heresy of the Pelagians is the most recent of all in our time, arisen from the monk Pelagius. Caelestius followed him as his master in such a way that their followers are even called Caelestians. These men are so much enemies of the grace of God, by which we were predestined unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself,²⁴ and by which we are snatched from the power of darkness, that we may believe in him and be transferred into his kingdom,²⁵ wherefore he says: No one comes to me unless it has been given him by my Father,²⁶ and by which charity is poured forth in our hearts,²⁷ that faith may work through love,²⁸ that they think a man can without it do all the divine commandments: whereas, if this were true, the Lord would seem to have said in vain: Without me you can do nothing.²⁹ Finally Pelagius, reproached by the brethren because he attributed nothing to the help of God’s grace for doing his commandments, yielded to their correction to this extent, that he did not place it before free will, but placed it under it with an unbelieving cunning, saying that it is given to men for this purpose, that what they are commanded to do by free will they may be able to fulfil more easily by grace. In saying ‘that they may be able more easily’ he wished it to be believed that men can do the divine commands even without divine grace, though with more difficulty. But that grace of God, without which we can do nothing good, they say is nothing other than free will, which our nature received from him with no preceding merits of its own, with him helping only through his law and doctrine, so that we may learn what we ought to do and what we ought to hope for, but not so that through the gift of his Spirit we may do what we have learned ought to be done. And thereby they confess that knowledge is given to us from on high, by which ignorance is driven out, but they deny that charity is given, by which one lives piously: so that, while knowledge, which without charity puffs up, is a gift of God, charity itself, which builds up so that knowledge may not puff up, should not be a gift of God.³⁰ They also destroy the prayers which the Church makes, whether for unbelievers and those who resist God’s doctrine, that they may be converted to God; or for the faithful, that faith may be increased in them and that they may persevere in it. For these things, they contend, men do not receive from him but have of themselves, saying that the grace of God by which we are freed from impiety is given according to our merits. This indeed Pelagius, fearing to be condemned in the episcopal judgment in Palestine, was compelled to condemn; but in his later writings he is found teaching this. They go so far as to say that the life of the just in this world has no sin at all, and that from these the Church of Christ is made perfect in this mortal life, so that it is altogether without spot or wrinkle;³¹ as though the Church of Christ were not that which cries to God throughout the whole world, ‘Forgive us our debts’;³² They also deny that little children, born carnally according to Adam, contract the contagion of the ancient death in their first birth. For they assert that they are born without any bond of original sin, so that there is nothing at all which they need to have remitted to them in a second birth: but they are baptized for this reason, that being adopted by regeneration they may be admitted into the kingdom of God, translated from good to better, not absolved by this renewal from any evil of the old obligation. For even if they are not baptized, they promise them a certain eternal and blessed life indeed outside the kingdom of God. They say also that Adam himself, even if he had not sinned, would have died in the body, and that he died not by the merit of guilt but by the condition of nature. Other things also are objected to them, but these are the chief, from which it is understood that those others either all or nearly all depend.”³³.

St Augustine had the principal part in confuting the Pelagians, and against them he had especially to insist on the necessity of grace. Timasius and James, “religious and honourable young men, servants of God ... who ... at the exhortation of Pelagius himself left the hope which they had in the world and now serve God in continence,”³⁴ after they had withdrawn from Pelagianism, gave Augustine a book of Pelagius.

Answering them he wrote (415) “De natura et gratia ad Timasium et Iacobum,”³⁵ in which he shows that nature was indeed created sound but is corrupted by sin; that without the grace of Christ no one can be saved, and that it is not rendered for merits but given gratis, “wherefore also it is called grace.”³⁶ In the same year he sent to the bishops Eutropius and Paul the letter or book “De perfectione iustitiae hominis,”³⁷ in which he answers “the definitions which are said to be of Caelestius”³⁸ and shows that a man cannot be without all sin and that all ought to pray that they enter not into temptation.

In the year 418 he replies in a longer letter³⁹ to the Roman presbyter Sixtus, who was attacking the Pelagians, in which he shows the absolute gratuitousness of grace, which in no way comes from our merits, and which is required both for faith and for prayer.

“What then is the merit of a man before grace, by which merit he receives grace, when our every good merit is made in us by grace alone; and when God crowns our merits, he crowns nothing else than his own gifts? For as from the beginning of faith we obtained mercy, not because we were faithful, but that we might be; so in the end, when there will be eternal life, he will crown us together, as it is written, in pity and mercy.⁴⁰ Not therefore in vain is it sung to God: And his mercy shall prevent me;⁴¹ and: His mercy shall follow me.⁴² Whence also eternal life itself, which indeed will be had in the end without end, and is therefore rendered for preceding merits; yet because those same merits for which it is rendered were not prepared by us through our own sufficiency, but were made in us through grace, it too is called grace, for no other reason than that it is given gratis; nor because it is not given for merits, but because the merits themselves for which it is given are also given. But where do we find that even eternal life is called grace, we have in the same magnificent defender of grace, the apostle Paul: The wages, he says, of sin is death; but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”⁴³.

This letter came after about ten years to the monks of the monastery of Hadrumetum, in Africa Byzacena, whence a dissension arose in the monastery “because certain among you so preach grace as to deny that free will belongs to man; and, what is more serious, they say that on the day of judgment God will not render to each one according to his works.⁴⁴ This too however they indicated, that the greater number of you do not think so, but confess that free will is aided by the grace of God, that we may know and do what is right; and that when the Lord comes to render to each one according to his works, he may find our good works, which God has prepared that we should walk in them.⁴⁵ Those who think this think rightly.”⁴⁶ Therefore Augustine sent a letter to Valentine, abbot of that monastery,⁴⁷ in which he explains how the doctrine of letter 194 is to be understood; namely that it was written “against the new heretics the Pelagians ... who say that the grace of God is given according to our merits, so that he who glories may glory not in the Lord but in himself, that is in man, not in the Lord,”⁴⁸ “Wherefore I in this letter which has come to you proved by the testimonies of the holy Scriptures, which you can inspect there, that our good works and pious prayers and right faith could in no way have been in us, unless we had received these from him of whom the apostle James says: Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights;⁴⁹ lest anyone should say that by the merits of his works, or the merits of his prayers, or the merits of his faith, the grace of God was delivered to him, and it be thought true what those heretics say, that the grace of God is given according to our merits; which is altogether most false: not because there is no merit, whether good of the pious or evil of the impious; otherwise how will God judge the world? but the mercy and grace of God converts a man, of which the Psalm says: My God, his mercy shall prevent me;⁵⁰ that the impious may be justified, that is, may be made just from impious, and may begin to have good merit, which the Lord will crown when the world is judged.”⁵¹ And after he had cited the words of St Peter,⁵² who says that in the letters of St Paul there are “certain things hard to understand,” he continues: “Take heed therefore to what so great an Apostle says so terribly; and where you feel that you do not understand, in the meantime believe the divine utterances, because both free will belongs to man, and the grace of God, without whose help free will can neither be converted to God nor make progress in God.”⁵³.

Shortly afterwards he sent to the same abbot the book “De gratia et libero arbitrio,”⁵⁴ in which he deals with the question which he himself calls “most difficult ... that is, concerning the will and grace.”⁵⁵.

But when difficulties still remained — namely, what purpose the precepts and reproofs serve in the case of those who do not keep God’s precepts, when all things depend on divine grace — he wrote the other book “De correptione et gratia,”⁵⁶ in which he again shows that the whole economy of salvation is plainly gratuitous and that neither the beginning of salvation nor the perseverance of the will is to be attributed to merits; yet that precepts and reproofs are good and useful, “yet that reproof may profit, it is done only through God.”⁵⁷.

About the same time he sent a letter to Vitalis of Carthage,⁵⁸ who denied that faith is a gift of God. If this were true, says Augustine, it would suffice to preach the gospel, and there would no longer be any need to pray that God convert men to the faith; but the Church not only does this, but also judges it altogether necessary.

In this letter he sets out twelve propositions against the Pelagians.⁵⁹ “Since therefore, with Christ’s favour, we are catholic Christians: 1° We know that those not yet born did nothing in their own life, good or evil, nor do they come into the miseries of this life according to the merits of some previous life, which none of them could have had as his own; but that nevertheless, born carnally according to Adam, they contract in their first birth the contagion of the ancient death, nor are they freed from the punishment of eternal death, which the just condemnation, passing from one into all, draws upon them, unless they are reborn in Christ by grace. — 2° We know that the grace of God is given neither to little children nor to adults according to our merits. — 3° We know that it is given to adults for individual acts. — 4° We know that it is not given to all men, and that to those to whom it is given it is given not only not according to the merits of works, but not even according to the merits of the will of those to whom it is given: which appears most of all in little children. — 5° We know that to those to whom it is given it is given by the gratuitous mercy of God. — 6° We know that to those to whom it is not given it is not given by the just judgment of God. — 7° We know that we shall all stand before the tribunal of Christ, that each one may bear according to what he did through the body, not according to what he would have done if he had lived longer, whether good or evil. — 8° We know that even little children will receive good or evil according to what they did through the body. But they did it not through themselves, but through those by whom, answering for them, they are said both to renounce the devil and to believe in God; whence they are also counted in the number of the faithful, belonging to the sentence of the Lord who says: He who has believed and been baptized shall be saved. Wherefore also for those who do not receive this sacrament there follows: But he who has not believed shall be condemned.⁶⁰ Whence also they themselves, as I said, if they die in that little age, are judged according to what they did through the body, that is, in the time in which they were in the body, when through the hearts and mouths of those who carried them they believed or did not believe, when they were baptized or not baptized, when they ate the flesh of Christ or did not eat it, when they also drank his blood or did not drink it; according to these things therefore which they did through the body, not according to those which they would have done if they had lived longer here, they are judged. — 9° We know that the dead who die in the Lord are blessed, nor does there pertain to them whatever they would have done if they had lived for a longer time. — 10° We know that those who believe in the Lord with their own heart do this by their own will and free choice. — 11° We know that on behalf of those who are unwilling to believe, we who already believe act with right faith, when we pray God that they may be willing. — 12° We know that on behalf of those among them who have believed, we ought rightly and truly to give thanks to God as for benefits, and are accustomed to do so.”⁶¹.

The question of predestination, of grace and of free will, however, provoked greater and longer discussions in Gaul. John Cassian⁶² abbot of St Victor’s at Marseilles, sets out a doctrine in which the necessity and the gratuitousness of grace are scarcely preserved sufficiently.

What his opinion was can be known first of all from Collation 13, “De protectione Dei.”⁶³ In ch. 3 he teaches “that the beginning not only of actions but even of good thoughts is from God, who inspires in us both the beginnings of a holy will and grants the strength and the opportunity of accomplishing what we rightly desire.”⁶⁴ Ch. 6: “And therefore, although it can be shown in many things, nay in all, that men always stand in need of the help of God, and that human frailty can of itself alone, that is, without the help of God, perfect nothing that pertains to salvation, in no way however is this shown more evidently than in the acquiring and keeping of chastity.”⁶⁵ Ch. 8: “There is present therefore inseparably with us always the divine protection, and so great is the Creator’s piety towards his creature that he not only accompanies it, but even precedes it with continual providence. This the Prophet, having experienced it, confesses most openly to the Lord, saying: My God, his mercy shall prevent me.⁶⁶ When he has looked upon any rise of good will in us, he immediately enlightens and strengthens it, and stirs it to salvation, giving increase to that which either he himself planted or saw to have emerged from our effort. For: Before they cry, he says, I will hear them; while they are yet speaking, I will hear.⁶⁷ And again: At the voice of thy cry, as soon as he shall hear, he will answer thee.⁶⁸ And not only does he in his kindness inspire holy desires, but he also prepares beforehand the occasions of life, and shows to those who go astray the opportunity of good effect and the direction of the saving way.”⁶⁹ And in ch. 9, after many texts cited from holy Scripture, he asks what these things mean, “unless that in all these things both the grace of God and the freedom of our will are declared, and that a man can sometimes be extended by his own impulses to the appetites of the virtues, but always needs to be helped. For neither does anyone, when he wills, enjoy health, or is freed from the disease of sickness according to the desire of his will. But what does it profit to have desired the grace of health, unless the Lord who grants the use of life itself also imparts the vigour of soundness? But that it may appear more evidently, the Apostle is witness that even through the good of nature, which has been bestowed by the benefit of the Creator, the beginnings of good wills sometimes come forth, which nevertheless, unless they are directed by the Lord, cannot come to the consummation of the virtues, saying: To will is present with me, but to accomplish I find not.”⁷⁰ Ch. 11: “And so these things are in a certain manner indistinguishably mingled and confused, so that what depends on what is tossed about among many in great question, namely, whether because we have offered the beginning of a good will God has mercy on us; or because God has mercy we obtain the beginning of a good will? For many, seeking these several points and asserting more than is just, have been involved in various and mutually contrary errors. For if we say that the beginning of a good will is ours, what was there in Paul the persecutor, what in Matthew the publican, of whom the one, intent on the blood and tortures of the innocent, the other on violence and public robberies, is drawn to salvation? But if we say that the beginnings of a good will are always inspired by the grace of God, what do we say of the faith of Zacchaeus, what of the piety of that thief on the cross, who, offering a kind of violence to the heavenly kingdom by their desire, anticipated the special warnings of vocation? But if we attribute the consummation of the virtues and the execution of God’s commandments to our own will, how do we pray: Confirm, O God, this which thou hast wrought in us?⁷¹ ... These two things, namely the grace of God and free will, indeed seem to each other mutually opposed, but both are in harmony, and that we ought to receive both alike we gather from the reason of piety, lest, withdrawing one of these from man, we should seem to have exceeded the rule of the ecclesiastical faith. For when God has seen us incline to will the good, he runs to meet us, directs and strengthens ... And again, if he has perceived that we are unwilling or have grown cold, he applies to our hearts saving exhortations, by which the good will may either be repaired or be formed in us.”⁷².

Nevertheless grace is always gratuitous, “while to certain slight and small efforts he grants so great a glory of immortality, so great gifts of perennial beatitude, with inestimable largesse.”⁷³.

Kindred doctrines were proposed by others also. Concerning these Prosper writes to Augustine: “Many therefore of the servants of Christ who dwell in the city of Marseilles think, in the writings of your Holiness which you composed against the Pelagian heretics, that whatever you disputed in them concerning the vocation of the elect according to the purpose of God is contrary to the opinion of the fathers and to the ecclesiastical sense.”⁷⁴ Difficulties grew after St Augustine published his book “De correptione et gratia.” Therefore two laymen, Tiro Prosper of Aquitaine and Hilary,⁷⁵ ask Augustine to be willing to give further instruction on these questions. For the most part the discussion is directly about predestination; the points that immediately concern the gratuitousness of grace Prosper sets out thus:

“Some of these indeed do not so far decline from the Pelagian paths that, when they are forced to confess that grace of Christ which precedes all human merits — lest, if it were given for merits, grace should be named in vain — they wish the following condition to belong to each man, in which the grace of the Creator establishes him when he has merited nothing beforehand, because he did not even exist, furnished with free will and reason, so that through the discernment of good and evil he can direct his will both to the knowledge of God and to the obedience of his commandments, and can come to that grace by which we are reborn in Christ through a natural faculty, namely by asking, seeking, knocking: so that he therefore receives, therefore finds, therefore enters, because, having used the good of nature well, he has merited to come to this saving grace by the help of initial grace. But the purpose of the calling grace they define altogether in this, that God has determined to take no one into his kingdom except through the sacrament of regeneration, and to this gift of salvation all men are called universally, whether through the natural law, or the written law, or the evangelical preaching: so that those who are willing may become sons of God, and those who are unwilling to be faithful may be inexcusable; because it is of God’s justice that those who have not believed should perish; and his goodness appears in this, if he drives no one away from life, but wills all men without distinction to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”⁷⁶.

Prosper therefore asks Augustine: “Wherefore, since in these remnants of Pelagian depravity a fibre of no mean virulence is nourished, if the beginning of salvation is wrongly placed in man; if the human will is impiously preferred to the divine will, so that a man is helped for this reason, because he willed, not for this reason, that being helped he may will; if man, evil from his origin, is wrongly believed to begin the reception of good not from the supreme good but from himself; if God is not pleased otherwise than from what he himself has given: grant us in this cause, most blessed pope, best of fathers, as much as with the Lord’s help you can, the diligence of your piety, that the things which in these questions are more obscure and more difficult to grasp you may deign to open by your most lucid expositions. And first, since very many do not think that the Christian faith is violated by this dissension, make plain how much danger there is in their persuasion. Then, how by this grace that works beforehand and cooperates free will is not hindered. Then, whether the foreknowledge of God so remains according to purpose that the very things which are purposed are to be taken as foreknown: or whether these things vary according to the kinds of causes and the species of persons; so that, because the vocations are different in those who are saved without doing anything, the purpose of God alone may seem to exist; but in those who are to do something good, the purpose can stand through foreknowledge: or whether uniformly, although foreknowledge cannot be divided from purpose by a temporal distinction, foreknowledge nevertheless rests upon purpose in a certain order; and as there is nothing in any business which the divine knowledge has not preceded, so there is nothing good which has not flowed into our participation from God as its author. Finally, how through this preaching of God’s purpose, by which those who have been foreordained to eternal life become faithful, no one of those who are to be exhorted is hindered, nor do they have an occasion of negligence, if they despair that they are predestined. That also, we beseech you, show us, patiently bearing our foolishness, how it is washed away, that, when the opinions of earlier writers on this matter are reviewed, the opinion and sentence of almost all is found to be the same, by which they received the purpose and predestination of God according to foreknowledge; so that for this reason God made some vessels of honour and others of dishonour, because he foreknew the end of each one, and under the help of grace itself foreknew in what will and action he would be.”⁷⁷.

Augustine replied in two books, one “De praedestinatione sanctorum,”⁷⁸ the other “De dono perseverantiae.”⁷⁹ In the former he shows that the very beginning of faith is a gift of God, not the increase of faith. “Whence in every good work, both in beginning and in perfecting, our sufficiency is from God: so no one is sufficient for himself either to begin or to perfect faith, but our sufficiency is from God: since faith, if it be not thought, is nothing; and we are not able to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.”⁸⁰ He confesses that he himself had formerly thought otherwise, but was convinced by the words of St Paul, 1 Cor 4, 7. “By which testimony I also was especially convinced, when I erred in like manner, thinking that the faith by which we believe in God was not a gift of God but was in us from ourselves, and that through it the gifts of God were obtained by us, by which we live temperately and justly and piously in this world. For I did not think that faith was preceded by the grace of God, so that through it there might be given to us what we should ask for profitably; but because we could not believe unless the proclamation of the truth preceded: that, however, when the Gospel had been preached to us, we should consent, I judged to be our own and to be in us from ourselves.”⁸¹.

In the other book he wishes to show “that perseverance is a gift of God, by which one perseveres in Christ even to the end.”⁸².

After the death of St Augustine (430) St Prosper continues to defend his doctrine. Pope Celestine, asked by him about the year 431, sent the letter “Apostolici verba praecepti”⁸³ to the bishops of Gaul, in which he protects the memory of Augustine. “We have always held in our communion Augustine, a man of holy memory, for his life and merits, nor did even a rumour of sinister suspicion ever touch him: whom we remember to have been once of such great knowledge that he was always reckoned by my predecessors also among the best masters. Rightly therefore have all thought well of him in common, as one who was everywhere an object of love and of honour to all.”⁸⁴.

Prosper himself, who had already before composed the poem Περὶ ἀχαρίστων, De ingratis, that is, on those who do not think rightly about grace, wrote against the Massilian adversaries of Augustine “Pro Augustino responsiones ad capitula obiectionum Gallorum calumniantium”;⁸⁵ against Vincent of Lérins “Pro Augustino responsiones ad capitula obiectionum vincentianarum”;⁸⁶ in the little work “Pro Augustino responsiones ad excerpta Genuensium”⁸⁷ he gave to two presbyters of Genoa an explanation of some passages from St Augustine’s “De praedestinatione sanctorum” and “De dono perseverantiae.” At length about the year 433/434 he wrote “De gratia Dei et libero arbitrio contra collatorem,” that is, against John Cassian.⁸⁸ At Rome about the year 450 arose the “Sententiarum ex operibus s. Augustini delibatarum liber,”⁸⁹ in which Prosper collected 392 brief citations from the works of St Augustine; from this collection several propositions of the council of Orange were later taken.

Moreover Prosper seems to have been the author of the collection⁹⁰ which arose in 435-442 and is known under the name “De gratia Dei indiculus” or “Praeteritorum sedis Apostolicae episcoporum auctoritates,” and which afterwards, about the year 500, was universally acknowledged as the genuine doctrine of the Apostolic See.⁹¹ Perhaps he is also the author of the work “De vocatione omnium gentium,” in which the doctrine of grace and free will is expounded.⁹².

In the second part of the fifth century the presbyter Lucidus taught a twofold predestination, the one to life, the other to death. After Adam’s sin free will was destroyed; hence in those who do good it is not free will but grace alone that works, and they receive it who are predestined to life, for whom alone Christ died; the rest are destined to death.

Faustus, bishop of Riez, sent a letter to Lucidus with six anathemas to be subscribed by him. “Briefly therefore I will say, as far as I can speak with one absent, what you ought to hold with the catholic Church. That is, that to the grace of the Lord you always join the operation of the baptized servant, and that you detest with the dogma of Pelagius him who asserts predestination with the labour of man excluded. Anathema therefore to him who among the other impieties of Pelagius has contended with damnable presumption that a man is born without sin and can be saved by his own labour alone, and who has believed that he can be freed without the grace of God. Likewise anathema to him who has asserted that a man solemnly baptized with a faithful confession and professing the catholic faith, and afterwards fallen away through the various delights and temptations of this world, has perished in Adam and in original sin. Likewise anathema to him who has said that a man is sunk into death through the foreknowledge of God. Likewise anathema to him who has said that he who perished did not receive that he might be saved, that is, concerning one baptized, or a pagan of that age who could have believed and was unwilling. Likewise anathema to him who has said that the vessel of contumely cannot rise up to become a vessel unto honour. Likewise anathema to him who has said that Christ did not die for all, nor wills all men to be saved.”⁹³ Lucidus subscribed, and moreover sent a letter to the bishops gathered in the council of Arles, in which he again condemned his errors and professed the opposite doctrine.⁹⁴.

The council wished that what had been done against predestinarianism should be explained more fully. Therefore Faustus wrote the work “De gratia Dei et humanae mentis libero arbitrio.”⁹⁵ The doctrine set out by him does not seem to be free from the tendencies of the “Massilians”; Faustus himself had been abbot of Lérins.⁹⁶.

When the work of Faustus, after his death (after 485, before 500), had come to Constantinople, a controversy arose concerning the orthodoxy of the doctrine set out. Therefore the Scythian monks, through the African bishop Possessor,⁹⁷ who was living in exile at Constantinople, asked the opinion of Pope Hormisdas, who replied to Possessor on 30 August 520. In the first part of his letter he sharply censures the Scythian monks, who are unwilling to condemn their christological errors;⁹⁸ then he says concerning Faustus: “Those indeed whom you have indicated by your letters to have consulted you about the sayings of a certain Faustus, a bishop of Gaul, let them have this answer: that neither is he received, nor can anyone whom the examination of the catholic faith does not receive in the authority of the fathers either beget ambiguity in ecclesiastical discipline or procure prejudice for religious persons. Fixed are the institutions which the fathers have established for the faithful to follow: whether interpretation, or preaching, or a word composed for the edification of the people, if it agrees with right faith and sound doctrine, it is admitted; if it disagrees, it is abolished. There is one foundation; if any building rises outside it, it is weak; whoever builds upon it, whether worthless things or precious, let him take heed. But he errs from the way who wanders from what the choice of the fathers has shown, nor yet is diligence disapproved which runs through many things, but the mind that declines from the truth. Often instruction is necessarily provided concerning those things by which the rivals themselves may be convinced. Nor can it be counted a fault to know what you should flee; and therefore it is not those who read incongruous things who come into blame, but those who follow them. But if it were not so, that doctor of the Gentiles would never have consented to announce to the faithful: Prove all things, hold fast that which is good.⁹⁹ ... Not without foresight did the venerable wisdom of the fathers define for faithful authority what were the catholic dogmas; fixing, with the Holy Spirit instructing, that certain books even of the ancients were to be received into authority: lest a reader, indulging his own opinion, should assert not what was fitting for ecclesiastical edification, but what his own pleasure had conceived. What need therefore was there for the calumniators to stretch questions beyond the established boundaries of the Church, and to stir up contests concerning the things which are held as said, as though they had not been said, when the Christian faith is bounded by the canonical books, the synodal precepts and the regular constitutions of the fathers with a stable and unshaken limit? Concerning free will however and the grace of God, what the Roman (that is, the catholic) Church follows and asserts, although it can be known in the various books of blessed Augustine, and especially those to Hilary and Prosper, yet in the ecclesiastical archives express chapters are contained, which if you lack and consider necessary, we shall send, although he who diligently considers the words of the apostle may clearly know what he ought to follow.”¹⁰⁰.

The Scythian monks had also sought the judgment of the African bishops who were living in exile in Sardinia on the same matter; through the deacon Peter they had sent them a libellus fidei, “De Incarnatione et gratia Domini nostri Iesu Christi ad Fulgentium et alios episcopos Africae.”¹⁰¹ The African bishops acknowledged the true doctrine, and Fulgentius in their name wrote “Ad Petrum diaconum et alios qui ex Oriente in causa fidei Romam missi sunt, de Incarnatione et gratia Domini nostri Iesu Christi.”¹⁰² The same Fulgentius wrote besides seven books against Faustus, which however have not come down to us; to his friend Monimus three books on predestination;¹⁰³ and three books “De veritate praedestinationis et gratiae Dei ad Ioannem et Vernerium.”¹⁰⁴.

In the year 502 Caesarius became bishop of Arles; although a disciple of the monastery of Lérins, he defended the doctrine of St Augustine. The synod of Valencia of 529 (527) seems to have been occupied with his doctrine of grace; he himself was not present at the synod, but had sent a libellus in which he defended the absolute necessity of prevenient grace.¹⁰⁵.

In the year 529, under Caesarius, the synod of Orange was held, in which 14 bishops took part. In this synod 8 canons, 17 propositions taken from Prosper’s “Sententiae,” and a conclusion in the form of a profession of faith are approved.¹⁰⁶ Caesarius sought the approval of the supreme Pontiff through Boniface, which the successor of Felix, Boniface II, gave in the letter “Per filium nostrum” on 25 Jan. 531.¹⁰⁷ The council teaches first of all the necessity of grace for every salutary work, especially for the very beginning of faith and for perseverance; predestination to evil is rejected. By this approval the question with the “Semipelagians” was decided.¹⁰⁸.