Scotus Academicus, Tomus secundus: De Deo Intelligente et Volente

I judge that no Theologian is unaware that Pelagius together with his followers most gravely departed from the truth of the present Question, inasmuch as he said that the crown of divine Predestination, namely eternal glory, is the offspring and fruit of free choice alone: whence as many heretics as struck against this stone were either his predecessors or his followers. That we may prove this by the facts, we set down the following little questions, in which there will appear 1. who were the standard-bearers of the Pelagian error, 2. who were its disseminators, 3. who were its followers.

ON THE FORERUNNERS AND STANDARD-BEARERS OF PELAGIANISM. — The primary standard-bearer of the Pelagian Heresy was the very rebel Angel Lucifer, who desired divine beatitude and presumed to obtain it by the proper powers of his own nature, as he himself indicates in these words of Isai. 14. I will ascend into Heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God... I will be like the Most High, desiring of course that, as God is blessed through his own nature, so he himself would be blessed through his own nature: which indeed St. Jerome elegantly explains, Epist. to Ctesiphon: You did not do this boldly, he says, (as you falsely think), but lovingly and eagerly, that you might send me a note of an old question, by which, before your letters, it deceived very many in the East, so that through feigned humility they might learn pride and say with the Devil, I will ascend into Heaven, etc.* Hence, just as the Devil was the parent of this error, he was also its propagator and disseminator; for he spread it among those proud men who, Deut. 32., presuming that they had attained by their own genius, powers and labor the things which they possessed, proclaimed with haughty mouth: Our hand is exalted, and not the Lord, has done all these things. Such also were those of whom David says Ps. 11. Our lips are our own; who is our Lord? Such, finally, were the ancient Gentile Philosophers, who, indulging free choice too much, taught that man suffices to himself for attaining happiness: whence St. Jerome affirms that the Pelagian heresy flowed from the source of the ancient Philosophers and especially of Pythagoras and of Zeno, the chief of the Stoics; for he adds in the passage cited: What other greater temerity can there be, than to claim for himself, I will not say the likeness, but the equality of God; and in a brief sentence to embrace the poisons of all heretics, which flowed from the source of the Philosophers and especially of Pythagoras and of Zeno, the chief of the Stoics. Later, however, about the fiftieth year before the birth of Christ, the Sadducees taught that it is in our power to be the authors to ourselves of happiness as much as of misfortune, as Josephus reports lib. 13. Antiquitatum Iudaicarum cap. 9.

But after the birth of Christ, Ecclesiastical History brings forth chiefly four forerunners and standard-bearers of the Pelagian error, of whom the first were certain Christians received from Gentilism and Judaism to the faith of Christ in the very arms of the Church: Jews indeed, who, that they might arrogate to themselves the first place above the other faithful converted from Gentilism, boasted that they had merited their election both by the natural propagation from the Patriarch Abraham, the Father of the faithful, and by the observance of the Mosaic law, which they attributed certainly not to the help of grace, but to the powers of free choice, as may be gathered from the Apostle in the Epistle to the Faithful residing at Rome; in which he labors especially to repress the haughtiness of the Faithful received both from the Jews and from the Gentiles: to the former indeed showing that their lot is to be attributed neither to race nor to the law, but to grace alone and to divine mercy; to the latter opening that, if they have been received into the turn and place of certain reprobate Jews, they nevertheless have no occasion of glory or boasting from that, inasmuch as this substitution and replacement is to be assigned not to their merits, but to grace alone. — He urges the first especially in cap. 3., where, when he had told the Jews that because of the promises made to them and the law prescribed by God they should not be proud, since all were liable to sin, from which they could be cleansed not through the law, but through grace: For by the works of the law, he says vers. 20. no flesh shall be justified before him; or as he adds vers. 21. Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Addressing the Jew in verse 27. he concludes: Where then is your glorying? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No: but by the law of faith. He urges the same more sharply in cap. 4., opening how Abraham was justified not through the law, nor through circumcision, but through the justice of faith; nor is he deemed only the Parent of the Jews, but also of all who follow the faith: That according to grace, he says vers. 16., the promise might be firm to all the seed; not to him only who is of the law, but also to him who is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, etc. When, however, in the following chapters he had opened how the Jews, on account of their constant and perpetual sins, had merited their reprobation rather than their election; he concludes cap. 11.: So then at this time also there is a remnant saved according to the election of grace. But if by grace, it is not now by works: otherwise grace is no more grace. — He likewise proves the second point in the same place, namely that the Gentiles, substituted and elected into the lot of the reprobate Jews, ought not to glory: For if, he says vers. 15. the loss of them is the reconciliation of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? and vers. 17.: And if some of the branches are broken, and you, whereas you were a wild olive tree, are engrafted in them, and are made partaker of the root and of the fatness of the olive tree, glory not against the branches, etc. By which it plainly appears that certain faithful, received both from Judaism and from Gentilism, labored under this erroneous opinion, so as to think that they had been selected by God in view of natural and moral goods, flowing not from grace but from free choice, in which they prepared an open way for the Pelagians.

— The Manichaeans hold the second place among the various errors concerning the cause of Predestination: for Manes, from whom the Manichaeans,

Two principles, says St. Augustine lib. de Haeresibus cap. 46., between themselves diverse and adverse, and likewise eternal and coeternal, that is, that they always were, he set up: and, following other ancient Heretics, he thought two natures and substances, namely of good and of evil, asserting according to his dogmas their fight and commixture with each other, the purgation of the good from the evil, and the eternal damnation, together with the evil, of the good which could not be purged, he fabulates many things.

But he especially thought that some souls are so defiled by the admixture of evil that they could not be purged from it by any power, and therefore that they were to be damned for eternity: but others, which were not infected with so tenacious a stain, but could easily be purged and freed from every concretion of evil through the very power of God and the substance of the Deity, which they took in through foods: For by these foods, he maintains, the substance of God is commingled, just as with the whole world, which they think is purged in their Elect by that kind of life by which the elect Manichaeans live... on which occasion, or rather by a certain necessity of execrable superstition, their Elect are compelled to take, as it were, an Eucharist sprinkled with human seed, so that even from that, as also from the other foods they receive, that divine substance may be purged... Hence they do not eat meats, as if from the dead or the slain the divine substance had fled, and so much and such a thing had remained thence, that it is no longer worthy to be purged in the belly of the Elect. Nor do they even take eggs, as if they too breathed when broken, nor is it fitting to feed on any dead bodies, and this alone lives from the flesh, what is received in the flour, lest it die; but neither do they use the nourishment of milk, although it is milked or sucked from the body of a living animal; not because they think that nothing of the divine substance is mingled there, but because the error itself is not consistent with itself: for neither do they drink wine, saying that it is the gall of the Princes of darkness, while they eat grapes; nor do they sip any must, even the freshest. They think that the souls of their hearers return into the Elect, or by a happier shortcut into the foods of their Elect, so that, being already purged from there, they may not return into any bodies. But they think the other souls return both into cattle and into all things which are fixed by roots and nourished in the earth: they also think that herbs and trees live, so that they believe the life which is in them both feels and grieves when they are hurt: nor can anyone pluck or gather anything from them without their torment, for which reason they hold it a crime even to clear a field of thorns. Whence, mad, they accuse agriculture (which is the most innocent of all arts) as guilty of many homicides: and they think that these things are forgiven their Hearers for this reason, because they furnish thence foods to their Elect, so that that divine substance, purged in their belly, may obtain pardon for those by whose offering it is given to be purged, etc. I have written these things a little at greater length, that it might appear into what trifles the genius of raving Heretics runs off, when once it has departed from Catholic truth. — The Priscillianists usurp the third place among these deviants. Whom Priscillian instituted in Spain; they follow especially the mixed dogmas of the Gnostics and Manichaeans, says St. Augustine ibidem cap. 70., although also from other Heresies the filth flowed together into them, as into a certain bilge, with horrible confusion.

But to conceal their contaminations and turpitudes, they have these words in their dogmas: Swear, forswear, be unwilling to betray the secret. These say that souls, of the same nature and substance as God, descend step by step through the seven Heavens and through certain principalities to exercise a certain spontaneous struggle of the inner man, and fall upon the malign Prince, by whom they will that the world was made, and to be sown by this prince through diverse bodies of flesh. They also maintain that men are bound to the fatal stars. So that, just as according to the various constellations of our birth some exist more vigorous and healthy, others infirm and languishing; so according to the same various constellations, they say that some are born destined and fit for glory; others, however, to be handed over to eternal punishments.

— Finally, among the standard-bearers of the Pelagian error, Origen holds the fourth place: For, says St. Augustine lib. 11. De Civit. cap. 23.

Some say that souls were indeed made by God; but that, withdrawing from the Creator, they sinned and, by diverse progresses according to the diversity of sins, merited from the Heavens down to the earths diverse bodies as it were chains. And that this is the world, and that this was the cause of making the world, not that good things might be created, but that evil things might be restrained.

Hence Origen is rightly blamed: for in these books which he called Περὶ ἀρχῶν, that is, on the principles, he thought this, wrote this, etc. Epiphanius attributes this same error to Origen in the Panarion, and Nazianzenus Orat. 31., and Theophilus of Alexandria, Epist. 1. Paschali against the Origenists. St. Jerome confirms all these things, Epist. to Ctesiphon, not far from the beginning, where, with his name suppressed, he thus carps at Pelagius:

Do you wish to know still another Prince of your error? Your doctrine is a little branch of Origen: for in that Psalm 15. where it is written (that we may be silent about the rest) moreover even unto night my reins have chastised me: he asserts that a holy man, of whose number, namely, you also are, when he has come to the summit of the virtues, does not even in the night suffer those things which are of men, nor is tickled by any thought of vices. Nor should you blush at the company of such men, refusing their names, with whose blasphemies you are joined, etc.

And certainly this error is read in Origen in the very book Περὶ ἀρχῶν, in several places; especially lib. 3. cap. 1., where he says near the end: Since therefore the nature of all rational creatures is one, from it God, according to the preceding causes of merits, as a potter from one mass created and formed, some indeed unto honor, others however unto contumely: and cap. 10. he says: That the providence of God governs the immortal Souls according to the merits and causes of each one: and explaining where those merits of souls began, he adds: As long as the human dispensation is not concluded within the life of this age. And below: From the preceding causes each vessel is prepared, either unto honor or unto contumely: and the same preceding causes he below calls more ancient, according to which these are prepared for glory.

Nor does it matter that in lib. 2. Periarchon c. 2. he openly teaches that a spirit was not created, nay, could not even be created without a body; which indeed, although it is erroneous, nevertheless indicates that he did not assert that souls were created long before bodies, nor therefore that they could merit or demerit before the animation of bodies: for, as Suarez rightly gathers lib. 1. De Praedestinatione cap. 1. n. 6., this was the opinion of Origen, that souls were first created in certain little bodies, and thence migrated into these human bodies, as into prisons, so that there they would either do penance for the offense admitted, or, prolonging their sins, be condemned for their demerits to eternal punishments.

But that the writings of Origen truly furnished the greatest patronage to the Pelagians is gathered clearly enough from the trick of Rufinus, whom St. Jerome in several places calls the forerunner of Pelagius; because Rufinus, returning from the East to Rome with Melania, that he might pave an easier way for Pelagianism, carried with him the book Periarchon of Origen, which he had made Latin, having cut off from it various errors, especially those which attacked the mystery of the Trinity, so that he who read a Catholic in the Trinity would not beware of a Heretic in the other things, says St. Jerome Apologia 1. against Rufinus. But lest it be an impediment to him that the name of Origen was ill heard among some, the same Rufinus published the Apologiam pro Origene written by Eusebius of Caesarea, and rendered into Latin by himself, under the name of the Martyr Pamphylius.

Rufinus himself devised several other tricks, to establish the same thing:

But that temerity of his, says St. Jerome, Epist. to Ctesiphon, or rather madness, who could explain in worthy speech, that he prefixed to the book of Sixtus the Pythagorean, a man without Christ and a Pagan, the changed name of Sixtus the martyr and Bishop of the Roman Church? In which, according to the dogma of the Pythagoreans, who make man equal to God and say that he is of his substance, many things are said concerning perfection; so that those who do not know the volume of the Philosopher may drink, under the name of the Martyr, from the golden cup of Babylon.

Finally, in the very volume no mention is made of the Prophets, none of the Patriarchs, none of the Apostles, none of Christ, so that he may contend for a Bishop and Martyr without the faith of Christ. Whence you too usurp very many testimonies against the Church; he had done this also in the name of the holy Martyr Pamphylius, that he might prefix to the book of the defense of Origen, of Eusebius of Caesarea (that he was an Arian there is no one who does not know) the name of the Martyr Pamphylius, so that, namely, he might pour those excellent four volumes of the Periarchon of Origen into Latin ears. And what is more to be wondered at, not even Rufinus himself blushed to boast at Rome that both St. Jerome and also Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, assented to the same errors of Origen, as St. Jerome himself testifies to Pammachius, Epist. 78., where he says: He boasted me and Pope Theophilus of error, and with the barking of the most impudent dogs, to lead astray the simple, he lied about our assent. Thence it happened, as Baronius reports for the year of Christ 397., that the Roman Church then fluctuated with immense danger, when the book Periarchon (that Treasury of Heresies) was carried about in the hands of the Clerics, was praised and copied by the imprudent, and was multiplied everywhere by a viperous warmth: so that unless the Roman Church had been consolidated on Peter by the firmest foundation of the promises of Christ, her fall could rightly have been feared.

But when the virus was already creeping far and wide on account of the simplicity of Pope Siricius, whom St. Jerome censures, because he could not be brought to believe that the poison of heresy was hidden in Christians so conspicuous in fame, from the probity of his soul not knowing how to think evil of others; and therefore he did not immediately, as was fitting, condemn to the fire that translation of the Periarchon of Origen, fraught with poison.

When he had shortly after ended his life, his successor Anastasius, since the heresies of Origen had already been condemned in the Alexandrian Synod, and that by many and manifest proofs, and especially by the writings of holy Jerome sent to Rome, together with the genuine translation of the Periarchon of Origen made by him, in which each one of the same errors was exposed to be inspected by all in the open light: he, I say, Pope Anastasius, by Apostolic authority, condemned the same heresies of Origen in the Year of Christ 400.

Thence letters are written by him throughout the Catholic world, that all might know what things were to be avoided concerning the errors of Origen.

Thence the Bishops, gathered in turn in their provinces, condemned the same errors: nay, that the sanction of the Emperors thereafter followed the judgment of the Bishops, holy Jerome signifies in Apologia prima, where he says, answering the complaints of Rufinus:

If anything is said against Origen and his followers, you think it is said against you: Therefore the Letters also of Theophilus and Epiphanius and of the other Bishops, which I lately translated at their very command, attack you, tear you to pieces. The writings of the Emperors also, which order the Origenists to be driven out of Alexandria and out of Egypt, were dictated at my suggestion: and that the Pontiff of the Roman city detests them with wonderful hatred was my counsel; that the whole world, after your translation, blazed with hatred of Origen, whom it previously used to read simpliciter, my pen accomplished. If I can do so much, I wonder why you do not fear me, etc.

These things having been premised concerning the forerunners of the Pelagian error, we must now proceed.

ON PELAGIUS. § I. Who he was and of what sort.

Pelagius was a Briton by nation, a Scot by native country, for he has the progeny of the Scottish race from the neighborhood of the Britons, says Hieron. in the preface of lib. 2. on Ierem. He was also a Monk by profession, once dear and venerable to Paulinus and Augustine for his feigned piety. That you loved him as a servant of God, we know: but now in what manner you love him we do not know. For we not only loved, but will also love him; yet we will love him in one way, we once loved him in another: then indeed because he seemed of right faith: now however as one who is said to think those things which are inimical and adverse to grace, says Augustine Epist. 105.

Finally he was corrupted in morals, and wholly given to pleasure and the belly, if we give credit to Isidore of Pelusium; who carps at him Epist. 314. thus:

A huge crowd of years has brought gray hairs upon you; and yet you have a rigid and inflexible mind, migrating from one Monastery to another, and scrutinizing and spying out the tables of all. Wherefore if the savor of meats and the seasoning of delicacies is your care, rather flatter those who bear magistracies, and track the kitchens of the cities; for Eremitic men do not have those resources, so that they can receive you as is pleasing to you.

But I do not think the cause of the wandering of Pelagius was only that of seeking out the cook-shops, but rather of pouring out the cup of poisoned heresy to the very inhabitants of the desert, so that the error, drunk and quaffed from men most renowned in piety, might be the more easily drunk down by others.

§ II. How and when he became known as a Heretic.

But this astute and slippery man, lest it be possible to detect what an impious man he was, since he had long feigned himself a true Catholic; at length he became known, first of all to certain Monks of Egypt, among whom he had long sojourned.

Thence this spark of error soon blazed up into a great conflagration, namely about the year, not indeed 415. as Bellarmine says in his Chronico, nor even about the year 413. as Prosper suspects in the Chronico: but more truly about the year 405., as may be gathered from the Epistle which St. Chrysostom, still an exile, wrote to Olympias, where toward the end, these things about Pelagius, the newly emerging Heresiarch:

I have been struck with great grief, he says, on account of Pelagius the Monk: think, therefore, how many and how great crowns they are worthy of, who have stood with a brave soul in the battle-line; when we see men living so piously and holily, and with such great endurance, snatched away and driven into fraud.

But it is certain that Chrysostom died in the year 407. as Socrates reports, lib. 6. cap. 19., and so before the year 413. Pelagius became known as a heresiarch.

Some nevertheless think that that Pelagius of whom Chrysostom speaks was not this heresiarch whose errors we describe: because, they say, this Epistle of Chrysostom was written in the year of Christ 401., when he was in exile, as is evident from its reading: but Pelagius still flourished in the fame of sanctity in the year 413., in which year St. Augustine wrote the books on the merits of sins, after in the previous year 412. Coelestius had merited excommunication at Carthage in the Episcopal Judgment, as he himself says lib. 2. Retractationum c. 33. so that thus, it is credible that Pelagius (after he had been detected in the East, lurking like a wolf under a sheep's skin) set out for Rome; and that there, stirred as it were by some star, he began to make known the errors drawn from the source of Origen through the discourses of Rufinus, and also of all those who favored Rufinus: and that first with his name silent and suppressed, lest namely the heresy should be accused before it had begun to take strength by going on and had been disseminated far and wide, as is gathered from St. Jerome, in the preface of lib. 4. on Ieremiam:

I was dictating the Commentaries, he says, at intervals, so that what was lacking to leisure might be supplied to industry, when suddenly the heresy of Pythagoras and Zeno, namely of impassibility and impeccancy, which was once strangled in Origen and recently in his disciples Grunnius (he means Rufinus) and Evagrius Ponticus and Jovinian, began to revive; and not only to hiss in the parts of the West, but also in those of the East, and in certain islands, especially Sicily and Rhodes, to stain very many, and to grow day by day, while they teach in secret and deny in public.

With these words, St. Jerome lays open the origin and success of Pelagianism. First, teaching how Pelagius, following Origen, asserted that man can arrive in this life at such a point of perfection as to be void of affections and free of every sin. Second, that he had in teaching this error as forerunner and teacher Rufinus, the follower of Evagrius and Jovinian: which the same Jerome again confirms at the beginning of the second book against Pelagius: Do you not blush, he says, to follow the exploded and condemned opinion of Jovinian? For it rests on these testimonies and your arguments: nay, you follow his inventions, disseminating in the East those things which were once condemned at Rome and long since in Africa.

Pelagius therefore began to disseminate his error about the year 405., by having written several Epistles and little Works sprinkled with his leaven: yet so cunningly and with so many and such great circumlocutions and subtleties of words, that he would deceive even the most sharp-sighted. For he feared to say openly in public what he secretly handed on to his Disciples, as Jerome says in the Epistle to Ctesiphon: and instructed in perverse subtleties of words, disputing under the image of the catholic faith, as it were breathing out a pestiferous virus, he sought to overturn the whole discipline of true dogma, says St. Augustine lib. De Natura et Gratia, cap. 10.

While these things were being done at Rome by Pelagius, it happened that she was taken and laid waste by Alaric, King of the Goths, about the year 410. And then, while very many of her inhabitants were fleeing this way and that, Pelagius also with Coelestius fled into Africa and put in at Hippo, St. Augustine, the Bishop of this city, being absent: and shortly after he withdrew from there to Carthage, where he was seen once and again in passing by Augustine, at that time most occupied with the care of the collation soon to be held with the Donatists, and not long after he hastened to Palestine, as that holy Doctor testifies all these things in lib. De Gestis Pelagii, cap. 22.

— But when Coelestius, the chief of his disciples, had stayed in Africa, and there, and especially at Carthage, taught more openly those things which Pelagius scattered only secretly and ambiguously among the Palestinians: and that he might press on with greater authority in propagating his errors, strove with clandestine cunning to be promoted to the grade of the Presbyterate; Paulinus, the Carthaginian Deacon, and certain other Ecclesiastical men, resisting his depraved attempts, brought him at Carthage to the Episcopal judgment; where, accused and condemned by the sentence of excommunication, he was expelled from the Carthaginian Church, so that he might carry back a sentence worthy of his perversity, says St. Augustine lib. De Gestis Pelagii, cap. 22.

But these things happened about the year 412. Coelestius, however, driven from Carthage, departed more convicted than corrected, as holy Augustine says Epist. 89. to Hilary; and thence he migrated into Sicily, and stayed at Rhodes, where he began to infect very many with his errors, so that here he stained the Westerners, while Pelagius was secretly undermining the Easterners with his perverse dogmas.

§ III. By whom the heresy of Pelagius was first assailed and, while it lay hidden, was brought out into the open.

Of all men, Saint Augustine seems to have been the first to assail the Pelagian heresy openly: for in the year 413, shortly after the condemnation of Coelestius, he wrote his first work against the Pelagians, namely the three books De peccatorum meritis et remissione to Marcellinus, as he himself affirms in lib. 2. of the Retractationum, cap. 33. And afterwards another work to the same man, De Spiritu et littera, as he says in the same place, cap. 37. For already about that same time Pelagius had published his heresy in writings, especially in that Letter which he wrote to Demetrias, in order to instruct her in the perfection of the Christian life; and in several other books, one of which was delivered to Saint Augustine by Timasius and Jacobus, noble young men, who had at first indeed been infected with the error by Pelagius, and afterwards, by the efforts of Saint Augustine, were brought back to the right faith, as he himself testifies in lib. De Gestis Pelagii, cap. 6.

— At that very same time St. Jerome was sharpening his pen against the same heretics in the East, at the request of Ctesiphon, to whom he sent a long Letter and the three books of the Dialogi adversus Pelagianos; which books some infer to have been written before the Synod of Diospolis from the fact that he makes no mention of it: indeed, he seems not yet even to have learned which heads of Pelagian doctrine had been condemned in Coelestius at Carthage; otherwise he would not have labored so much in searching out and exposing dogmas about which Pelagius had already been openly condemned in his own disciple.

Others, however, with Baronius, judge them to have been written in the year 415, after Jerome saw that Pelagius had deceived that Synod by evil arts, fraudulent answers, and abjurations. For then, in order to expose his cunning, he prudently devised to compose that dialogue, in which the Catholic, under the name of Atticus, would compel Critobulus — that is, Pelagius — by pointed interrogations to bring out whatever he had hidden, with both Pelagius' name and his own suppressed, as he himself indicates in the preface of book 4 on Ieremiam, where he says of Pelagius:

To this man, long keeping silence and devouring my grief in silence, I was compelled by the frequent expostulations of the brethren, and yet I have not so far burst forth as to set down the names of the authors, preferring that they be corrected rather than defamed: for I am an enemy not of men but of error.

And a little later:

To whom I shall speak in brief: either the things which you teach are good, or they are evil. If they are good, defend them freely: if they are evil, why do you secretly cut the throats of wretched men with error, and boast of an exposition of the right faith with which to deceive every one of the simple? If it is true, why is it hidden? If it is false, why is it written? etc.

And to Ctesiphon: This is the only heresy which publicly blushes to say what it does not fear to teach in secret.

By a goading of this kind Jerome at length achieved this, that he drew forth into the light and before the eyes of all, out of its thickets, the little serpent which had previously been gnawing at the Church in secret. For from that time Pelagius began to spread his heresy openly.

And indeed deliberately and prudently did Saint Jerome take care, says Baronius for the year 411, that the disease feeding on the vitals of the Church should appear on the skin outside, where it could be cured: but yet more deliberately, sending these writings to Ctesiphon beforehand, he thus prepared the antidote. For to show the plague is itself to cure, lest others be harmed by the same pestilence and contagion of the disease.

Whence Jerome adds:

It is the Church's victory for you to say openly what you think. For either you are going to answer the same things that we too say, and you will by no means be adversaries, but friends: or if you say things contrary to our doctrine, we shall conquer in this, that all will know what you think of the Church. To have betrayed your opinions is to have overcome.

The blasphemy is evident at first glance: what is blasphemous by its very profession has no need to be convicted.

Bringing these and other things into public view, Saint Jerome drew out the two-headed serpent lurking and hissing in the corner — the heresy, namely, of Pelagius and Coelestius gaping with open jaws at the Church — so that of this same Saint Jerome that saying of Job may deservedly be spoken: By the working of his hand the crooked serpent was drawn out of its cavern. Once it had come forth into the open, a serpent dreadful to behold in the deformity of its shape, presently each and every Apostolic man utterly destroyed it with the javelins of Apostolic Doctrine.

§ IV. What Pelagius wrote.

Various works indeed, as may be gathered both from the Ecclesiastical Writers and from Saints Augustine, Jerome, etc. For first he wrote the book De fide Trinitatis, as Gennadius of Marseilles affirms in the Catalogo Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum: Pelagius, he says, the heresiarch, before he was exposed as a heretic, wrote for the studious three books on the faith of the Trinity, which are necessary. Secondly, by the same man was written a book on the actual manner of life, marked out with the headings of chapters in the manner of Saint Cyprian the Martyr, as the same Gennadius says; that is, one in which, after the example of St. Cyprian, he gathered together from the Scriptures chapters of sentences. Thirdly, he published the 14 Expositionum libros in Epistolas S. Pauli, about which St. Augustine writes in lib. 3. of De peccatorum meritis et remissione, cap. 1., in this manner: After a very few days I read certain writings of Pelagius, which contained most brief expositions on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle: not without reason do some suspect these to be those books which are commonly wont to be appended to Jerome's Commentaries on several Epistles of Saint Paul.

No small support is given to this suspicion by the fact that this Author writes everywhere that no one is guilty of sin through Adam except insofar as he imitates his example; and that he affirms that free choice, without any grace of the Holy Spirit, can operate anything it pleases — things which certainly savor not obscurely of the Pelagian errors.

Fourthly, a Letter on Virginity to Demetrias was also written by the same Pelagius; concerning which Letter Saint Augustine has these things in Epist. 143. to Juliana:

In a certain Letter of his, he says, this same Pelagius, where he sets down his own name most openly and does not keep silent the name of the sacred Virgin, says that he wrote to her, and strives to prove by the testimony of that same work of his that he most openly confesses the grace of God, which he is said either to pass over in silence or to deny.

Now the reason for writing this Letter to Juliana, the mother of Demetrias herself, was for Augustine, namely, lest both the daughter and the mother, who hung upon the very mouth of Augustine, should be infected by the errors scattered in Pelagius' Letter.

But that Juliana herself was in truth far removed from every suspicion of heresy, with which she might have seemed to have been besprinkled from the letters of Pelagius which she had received, she herself testifies in Epist. to Augustine, in the same work, num. 149., in these words:

May your Priesthood know, she says, that I and my little house are far removed from persons of this kind, and that our whole family so follows the Catholic faith that it has never at any time deviated into any heresy, nor has it ever fallen: I do not say those sects which are scarcely expiated: but not even into those which seem to have small errors.

By which words she signifies that her house was wholly free of those heresies by which the nature and power of God are weakened, such as those of the Arians, Macedonians, and Manichaeans and others like them, in comparison with which she calls the errors of Pelagius small — errors which, however, Saint Augustine afterwards taught her to be very great; to her he also directed various treatises, especially De orando Deo and de bono viduitatis.

Pope Innocent also wrote to the same woman, who commends the holiness of that woman in this way:

That you are a singular member of the Church and the splendor of your Religion, and are most reverently venerated by us, is sufficiently manifest to all. For in the very summit of nobility you devote a far nobler devotion to the Church. And, more joyful in the knowledge of Christ, you obey his precepts and exult rather in faith than take pride in the flower of so great a lineage. It is of the highest virtue to have conquered the glory of the flesh, and it is of the great grace of Christ to have surpassed nobility by your morals, lady daughter, deservedly illustrious.

In which words Innocent, as it were, hid an arrow in his quiver with which to strike Pelagius and to call back from him the mind of Juliana, whom Pelagius himself had tried to infect by the aforesaid Letter to Demetrias, extolling her with praises and soothing her with flattery, that he might draw her over to his side.

For from that Letter of Pelagius, St. Jerome recites and derides these things in lib. 3. contra Pelagium, where, speaking of Juliana, he says:

Flattering the faith of a widow, do you not blush to say that Piety, which is nowhere found on earth, and Truth, which is a stranger everywhere, dwell above all in her? And a little later: Is this to teach or to kill? To raise from the earth, or to hurl from heaven? To attribute to a little woman that which the Angels dare not usurp? But if piety, truth, and justice are not found on earth except in one woman, where will your just men be, whom you boasted to be without sin on earth?

To refute this Letter of Pelagius, therefore, various Letters were written, both to Juliana and to Demetrias, not only by Saint Augustine, Pope Innocent, and Jerome, but also by St. Prosper, which begins in this way: Since you are of most splendid holiness, etc.

Finally, Pelagius wrote the book De Natura, about which St. Augustine writes in lib. 2. of the Retractat., cap. 21.:

Then a certain book of Pelagius came into my hands, in which he defends the nature of man against the grace of God, by which the impious is justified and by which we are Christians, with as much argumentation as he could. The book, therefore, with which I answered him, defending grace — not against nature, but through which nature is freed and governed — I entitled On Nature and Grace.

A book De libero arbitrio was likewise published by Pelagius, about which Saint Augustine treats in lib. De Gratia Christi at length, but especially in cap. 11. 18. etc.

— From all of which it is evident that Pelagius was thoroughly learned, although Orosius the Priest in the Apologia De arbitrii libertate, which he wrote against Pelagius, called him a man puffed up, but empty; just as he does not omit to reproach him for being mutilated and smooth-browed; likewise, that, nourished by baths and feasts, he carried broad shoulders, presenting a sturdy neck and a fatness in his brow.

It is also certain that, before publishing his heresy, he was celebrated among all for his feigned piety; for although Isidore of Pelusium censured his morals, as we said above, yet the judgment of others concerning Pelagius was outstanding: for St. Augustine himself attributes to him in lib. 2. of De Peccatorum meritis et remissione, cap. 16., a chaste life and praiseworthy morals; and he adds that he did not hesitate to do what the Lord commanded to him who sought the counsels of God for obtaining eternal life: for when he had answered that he had already fulfilled all the commandments, the Lord commanded that, if he wished to be perfect, he should sell all that he had and transfer his treasure to heaven.

Likewise in lib. 3., cap. 1.: Pelagius, he says, a man, as I hear, holy and a Christian of no small progress: and cap. 9.: Those who know him speak of him as a good man, and one to be praised: and in the same place: That man so eminently Christian: which is confirmed by Blessed Chrysostom, who, as we said above, laments his fall, as that of a pious man, holy, and one who suffered every grievous thing for Christ; if, however, he was that Pelagius of whom we speak: for some judge it not without reason that Saint Chrysostom spoke of another, as we noted in § 2.

§ V. How many and which were the errors of Pelagius and Coelestius.

Various indeed: for St. Augustine relates in lib. 1. of De Peccato originali that in the Synod of Carthage twelve errors were objected to Coelestius by the Fathers. First, that he had said that Adam was made mortal, who, whether he sinned or not, would have died. Second, that his sin harmed only himself and not the human race. Third, that infants recently born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression. Fourth, that not all the human race dies through the death or transgression of Adam, and that not all the human race rises through the Resurrection of Christ. Fifth, that infants, even if they are not baptized, can have eternal life. Sixth, that baptized rich people, unless they renounce all things, if they are seen to do any good, it is not reckoned to them, nor can they have the Kingdom of God. Seventh, that the grace of God and its help are not given for individual acts, but consist in free choice, or in the law and doctrine. Eighth, that the grace of God is given according to our merits. Ninth, that men cannot be called sons of God unless they have been made in every way without all sin. Tenth, that free choice does not exist if it needs the help of God; since each one has it in his own will to do something or not to do it. Eleventh, that our victory is not from the help of God, but from free choice. Twelfth, that pardon is not given to those who ask according to the grace and mercy of God, but according to the merits and labor of those who through penance have been made worthy of mercy.

— Moreover, just as Coelestius in Africa, after he began openly to spread his errors, was brought before the Episcopal judgment at Carthage: so Pelagius in Palestine, with Eros of Arles and Lazarus of Aix, bishops, accusing him, was indicted for heresy in the Council of Diospolis: where, as St. Augustine writes in lib. De Gestis Pelagii, these heads were objected to him; First, that no one can be without sin unless he has had the knowledge of the law: Second, that all are governed by their own will, as if God governs no one, and it were written in vain: Save thy people, O Lord, and bless thy inheritance, and rule them and exalt them for ever, says St. Augustine, cap. 3. of the cited book. Third, that on the day of judgment the impious and sinners are not to be spared, but are to be burned up in eternal fires, as if those were not to be excepted who have Christ as their foundation, although they build upon it wood, hay, and stubble, says St. Augustine, cap. 3. of the same book. Fourth, that evil does not come into the thought of the just, as if what is evil does not come into the thought of the just, nor do they on that account cease to be just; provided that consent is absent, as the same Doctor says, cap. 4. of the cited book. Fifth, that the Kingdom of Heaven was promised also in the Old Testament, namely as something to be obtained by the force of the Old Law alone, without the grace which belongs to the New Testament, and which had previously been communicated in view of Christ its author: Sixth, that a man can, if he wills, be without sin and keep all the commandments of God, and that for this he does not need grace, but natural powers suffice: Seventh, that Adam was made mortal, who, whether he sinned or did not sin, would die. Eighth, that the sin of Adam harmed only himself and not the human race. Ninth, that the Law leads to the Kingdom in the same way as the Gospel: Tenth, that before the coming of Christ there were no men without sin: Eleventh, that infants recently born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression: Twelfth, that not all the race of men dies through the death or transgression of Adam, nor does all the human race rise through the resurrection of Christ. Thirteenth, that infants, even if they are not baptized, have eternal life. Fourteenth, that baptized rich people, unless they have renounced all things, if they are seen to do any good, it is neither reckoned to them, nor can they possess the Kingdom of God.

These eight last dogmas St. Augustine says, cap. 8. of the cited book, were condemned by the Synod and denied and anathematized by Pelagius himself, since he had interpreted all the preceding ones with ambiguous words in a Catholic sense. Fifteenth, that the Church is here without spot and wrinkle, as if he wished it to be understood, with the Donatists, as consisting in the good alone, whom he asserted to have no sin. Sixteenth, that we do more than is commanded in the Law and in the Gospel, that is, as St. Augustine explains in cap. 10., that we have by nature such a possibility of free choice not to sin, that we do even more than is commanded. Seventeenth, that the grace of God and its help are not given for individual acts, but consist in free choice, or in the law and doctrine. Eighteenth, that the grace of God is given according to our merits — he who, if he gives it to sinners, seems to be unjust; and therefore that grace itself is placed in our will, and that if we do all things by grace, when we are overcome by sin, it is not we who are overcome, but the grace of God, which willed to help us in every way and could not; and if it is the grace of God when we overcome sins, then he himself is at fault when we are overcome by sin, because he either could not or would not keep us entirely safe. To these Pelagius answered by denying that these were his dogmas, and by anathematizing whoever holds thus. Nineteenth, that men cannot be called sons of God unless they have been made in every way without sin. Twentieth, that forgetfulness and ignorance are not subject to sin, because they do not come about according to will, but according to necessity. Twenty-first, that free choice does not exist if it needs the help of God: since each one has it in his own will either to do something or not to do it. Twenty-second, that our victory is not from the help of God, but from free choice. Twenty-third, that pardon is not given to the penitent according to the grace and mercy of God, but according to the merits and labor of those who through penance have been made worthy of mercy.

— Pelagius denied that all these were his, and said that he reprobated them according to the judgment of the holy Church, adding an anathema against all who contravene and contradict the doctrines of the holy Catholic Church. When all these things had been heard, the Synod absolved him and professed him to be of Catholic communion, with John, Bishop of Jerusalem, and thirteen others, who had come together with him to the Synod, showing him favor, attending only to what Pelagius' words sounded like, and not inquiring of him more subtly and inquisitively what evil meaning he concealed and wrapped up in his ambiguous answers.

All these things, I say, when they had been proposed to Pelagius by the fourteen bishops gathered in the Synod, from the little book given against him by Eros and Lazarus, the Gallic bishops, who were indeed absent, inasmuch as on account of the illness of one of them they had been unable to reach the Synod, as St. Augustine reports in De Gestis Pelagii, cap. 35, Pelagius himself anathematized them in these words:

According to their testimony these things were not said by me, for which I ought not to give satisfaction; but nevertheless, for the satisfaction of the holy Synod I anathematize those who hold or have at any time held them. He likewise adds: I say again that these things, even according to their testimony, are not mine, for which, as I said, I owe no satisfaction; but what I have confessed to be mine, I affirm that I speak truly; what I have said not to be mine, I reject according to the judgment of the holy Church, pronouncing anathema upon everyone who contravenes the doctrines of the holy and Catholic Church.

This St. Augustine reports ibidem, cap. 34, from the acts of the Synod itself. Thus the wily man deceived the Synod, which for that reason St. Jerome calls pitiable, Epistola 79, not because it erred in doctrine; for in truth the Fathers of Diospolis condemned all those aforementioned heresies; for when those articles had been read, they said: What does Pelagius the Monk, here present, say to these chapters which have been read? For this the holy Synod and the holy Catholic Church of God reprobates, as St. Augustine reports in the same place; but because they did not notice that Pelagius had only craftily abjured his doctrine, lest he himself be condemned; whence St. Augustine, De peccatorum meritis et remissione, lib. 2, cap. 9: Pelagius himself, he says, deceived the Palestinian judgment: for that reason he seems to have been cleared there. But the Roman Church, where you know him to be very well known, he could not deceive in any way, although he attempted both.

§ VI. By what art Pelagius deceived the Fathers of the Council of Diospolis.

By a varied and manifold one indeed, as St. Augustine himself recalls at length in that very book De Gestis Pelagii, where among other things he notes that Pelagius deceived the Fathers of the Council of Diospolis chiefly by three stratagems. First, by saying that many of the articles objected to him had been said not by himself but by others, especially by Coelestius his disciple, although in truth Pelagius himself had written and taught them. Second, in those things which he was convicted of having written, he astutely added certain words, so that, by feigning Catholic doctrine, he might preserve his own heretical one: thus, when reproached by the Fathers of the Council for attributing nothing to the grace of God for keeping His commandments (says Augustine, De Haeresibus, cap. 88), he yielded to their correction only to the extent that he did not set it against free choice, but with faithless cunning substituted a middle view, saying that grace is given to men for this end, that what is commanded to be done through free choice they may be able to fulfill more easily through grace: by saying "more easily," he wished it to be believed that men could, even if with more difficulty, still fulfill the divine commands without divine grace, etc. Third, he explained his writings by a cunning interpretation, as St. Augustine expressly indicates, cap. 1 of De Gestis Pelagii, where he also discloses other causes of the deception, namely that the Greek bishops, hearing Pelagius' words through an interpreter, did not take care to discuss them:

In these things, he says, which were recited from the little book which our holy brothers and fellow bishops the Gauls, Eros and Lazarus, gave — who on account of the grave illness (as we afterwards learned with more probability) of one of them could not be present — the objections were recited to Pelagius; the first is that in a certain book of his he writes that no one can be without sin except one who has had the knowledge of the law. When this had been recited, the Synod said: did you publish this, Pelagius? And he replied: I indeed said it, but not as they understand it; I did not say that one who has had the knowledge of the law cannot sin, but that he is helped by the knowledge of the law not to sin, as it is written, "He gave them the law as a help." Hearing this, the Synod said: the things said by Pelagius are not alien to the Church. St. Augustine adds: plainly the things he answered are not alien; but that which was proved from his book sounds otherwise.

But the Greek bishops, men hearing those words through an interpreter, did not take care to discuss them: attending only to this, what the one who was questioned said he had meant, not in what words the same opinion was said to be written in his book.

§ VII. In which Councils Pelagius was condemned.

St. Prosper affirms that the Pelagian heresy was first condemned at Rome; for thus he sang in his poems about the ungrateful:

The rising plague was first cut off By the See of Peter's Rome, which, made the head of the world by pastoral honor, holds by religion whatever it does not possess by arms.

By the custom, therefore, of the ancients it came about that a newly emerging heresy should first of all be examined by the first See and likewise condemned; not indeed in Pelagius, who still lay hidden under the Catholic cloak, under which he had long lurked at Rome; but, being detected and Rome having been captured, he had gone away into Palestine; yet it was condemned in Jovinian, the standard-bearer and forerunner of Pelagius, as St. Jerome testifies contra Pelagium, lib. 2, at the beginning, where, addressing Pelagius under the feigned name of Critobulus, he says:

Are you not ashamed to follow the exploded and condemned opinion of Jovinian? For he relies on these testimonies and on your arguments; indeed you follow his teachings, desiring to teach in the East what were long ago condemned at Rome and in Africa.

That Pelagius in truth followed the dogmas of Jovinian, the same Jerome discloses in the Epistle to Ctesiphon, where, having premised that the second proposition of Jovinian which was condemned was this, That those who have been baptized cannot be tempted by the Devil, he adds: The second question of Jovinian is the discipline of your talent. Whatever was answered to him, believe it was answered to you; nor can it happen that the outcome of those be different whose opinion is one.

— Facundus of Hermiane nonetheless testifies that the Pelagian heresy was first of all condemned by Innocent. Since his words contain several things worthy of knowledge, I shall write them out here.

They will find also, he says, that Pelagius the heresiarch, from whom the Pelagians are named — who in the judgment of the Palestinian bishops thought against the grace of Christ that covers sins, and explained away his depraved opinions by cunning — was absolved through that same ignorance. Finally they will find that the blessed Zosimus too, the bishop of the Apostolic See, contrary to the judgment of his predecessor the holy Innocent (who first condemned the Pelagian heresy), praised the faith of Pelagius himself and of his accomplice Coelestius, whom, convicted in the Church of Carthage and appealing to the Apostolic See, he had examined from the very acts, as true and Catholic. Moreover, they will find him also blaming the African bishops because they were believed by them to be heretics, when as yet they themselves (the African bishops disclosing their deceits much more plainly) thought the aforesaid Pelagius and Coelestius orthodox. And yet the Church does not believe that Athanasius, or Damasus, or those bishops and Zosimus were heretics because they thought well of heretics; but rather she judges and honors them as Catholics according to the merit of their faith, since the unperceived cunning of the wicked ought not to be imputed as a crime to the simple.

Again, Prosper, writing in the book contra Collatorem about the condemnation of the Pelagian heresy, signifies that Pelagius was judged by Innocent before he was judged by the Palestinian bishops: When, he says, Innocent of blessed memory struck the heads of the nefarious error with the Apostolic sword: when the Synod of the Palestinian bishops constrained Pelagius to pronounce sentence against himself and his own, etc. Where he also reports that Coelestius, demanding a hearing (as though the matter had not been examined), was ordered to be thrust beyond the borders of all Italy.

It is not, however, to be doubted that the Diospolitan judgment preceded the decree of Innocent and the condemnation of Pelagius and Coelestius: but if anything can be objected to what was said — that the first condemnation of that heresy proceeded from the Roman See — because five years earlier the Coelestian dogmas (which were the same as the Pelagian) were condemned at Carthage by the African bishops, and Coelestius himself was excommunicated, as we recalled above with St. Augustine — this first point presents itself: that Prosper and the others who write that the Pelagian heresy was first of all condemned by Innocent speak of the proper and primary heresy of Pelagius, which consisted in this, that he affirmed that grace is given from the merit of free choice: for of this Prosper speaks expressly — of Pelagius himself, I say, and of that dogma of his by which he asserted that each one merits by his own freedom to receive the promises of the one calling. But Coelestius was not excommunicated for this heresy, but for certain other things which had been spread abroad by him, accused and condemned by Paulinus, which are gathered from Augustine: chiefly that he said that the sin of Adam did not harm infants, nor were they therefore baptized in order to be freed from sin. Then, that (as Facundus reports) when Coelestius after his condemnation had appealed to the Apostolic See, he did not yet conduct himself as a condemned man, but judgment about him was still held as it were suspended.

— Secondly, they were condemned in the Council of Carthage, celebrated in the year of the Lord 412 under Innocent I, the acts of which Council have indeed perished, and from them only a fragment survives, recited by St. Augustine against Pelagius and Coelestius, lib. 2 of De Peccato originali, cap. 2, where he says:

Coelestius indeed appeared in this error more free-spoken to such a degree that not even in the episcopal judgment at Carthage would he condemn those who say that the sin of Adam harmed him alone and not the human race; and that the infants who are born are in that state in which Adam was before the transgression.

Then he reports and describes the acts of the judgment held at Carthage, in which Coelestius himself was condemned, and together with him the Pelagian heresy then springing up. But Coelestius, condemned by that judgment and seizing upon subterfuges, thought that Innocent the Roman Pontiff should be appealed to: but this only in appearance, lest he be bound by that judgment; since he knew that he would find Innocent equally opposed to him. Whence he did not at all pursue the appeal, but, Innocent being dead, he betook himself to Rome to his successor Zosimus, about to plead his cause before him, and to summon his accusers to the judgment of the Apostolic See, as though harassed by calumnies, in order to declare that he did not believe otherwise than what the Catholic Church held. Therefore, in order to deceive the Pontiff more easily, he composed with such art the little book written by him that it could not, even if Zosimus wished, be rejected by him, but he would be compelled to receive it; inasmuch as after setting forth what he thought about the faith, he appended at the end words of this sort: If perchance, as happens to men, any error of ignorance should creep in, let it be corrected by your judgment; as St. Augustine reports, lib. De Peccato originali, cap. 67. But the Pontiff Zosimus, in order to explore with the greatest exactness whether he assented to the Epistle of Innocent given against the errors of Pelagius to the whole Church — to which Coelestius professed that he himself consented, as St. Augustine testifies, lib. 2 of Contra Epistolas Pelagii, cap. 3.

Hence Zosimus, conceiving hope of restoring Coelestius to the Church and to the Catholic faith, began to deal more gently with him, and wrote to the African bishops that Coelestius' little book was Catholic, and that he himself thought with the whole Church.

In which things, however, St. Augustine demonstrates that Zosimus did not err, against Julian the Pelagian, lib. 2, cap. 3, approving the deed of Zosimus, who, desiring to win Coelestius, behaved kindly with him and admitted him to a hearing. Lest, however, he be deceived by him, with abundant caution he wrote to the African bishops that if they had anything against Coelestius they should send it to him at Rome. These Fathers, gathering at Carthage, took it ill that Zosimus had admitted to a hearing Coelestius, who had been excommunicated by them and condemned as a heretic: to whom, among other things, Zosimus answered: Although we had so much authority that no one could retract our sentence, we did nothing which we did not of our own accord report to your knowledge by our letters. And after much he concludes: Therefore let your Fraternity know that after those letters of yours which we received above we have changed nothing, but have left everything in the same state in which they were before, etc. By which he signifies that he had not absolved Coelestius, but wished to act in so great a matter with all deliberation, and not with a hasty step, namely that he might discuss the matter more exactly, lest Coelestius, the wily heresiarch, be able to deceive him: whence he expected a more evident knowledge of the sentence passed against him by those Fathers.

But those African Fathers not only gave letters to Pope Zosimus against Coelestius, but also among other things sent the little book written by Paulinus the Deacon of Carthage against Coelestius, in which were contained all the heads about which Coelestius was to be interrogated; by which it could appear more clearly whether he was altogether a heretic or a Catholic (as he professed).

But when Coelestius had refused to condemn the things which had been objected by Paulinus the Deacon, he was condemned at Rome by the Pontiff Zosimus and the sacred College of Clerics together with Pelagius, and by the same Zosimus letters were written to all the bishops of the Catholic Church about their condemnation; soon the rescript of the Emperor Honorius against the same heretics followed them, as St. Augustine reports, lib. 3 of Contra Iulianum, cap. 1, and likewise St. Prosper, contra Collatorem, cap. 10, where among other things he writes these words by way of irony:

The most holy See of the blessed Peter erred, which speaks to the whole world by the voice of Pope Zosimus thus: We nevertheless, by the instinct of God (for all good things are to be referred to their author, from whom they arise), have referred all things to the conscience of our brothers and fellow bishops: The African bishops erred, writing to the same Pope Zosimus and praising him for the salubrity of this judgment when they say: But that which you set down in your letters which you took care to be sent to all, saying, we nevertheless, etc.

That Pelagius and Coelestius were in truth condemned in that very Council of Carthage appears not only from what has been said, but is again confirmed from another following Synod of Carthage, assembled of seventy-seven bishops and celebrated four years after the first, namely in the year 416, in which Pelagius and Coelestius were again condemned, as is evident from the Epistle written by the Fathers to Innocent, in which these things are found concerning the articles of Pelagius:

These things therefore being read, they say, we perceive that Pelagius and Coelestius are the authors of a nefarious error to be altogether anathematized by all of us; whence it came about that we sought a recourse as to what, almost five years before, had been agitated here at the Church of Carthage concerning the name of Coelestius.

And a little later they add what was decreed:

Unless they anathematize these things, they say, most openly, it is fitting that they themselves be anathematized: so that if the correction of themselves cannot be obtained, at least the health of those who have been deceived by them, or can be deceived, may be procured, once the sentence which has been passed against them is made known.

Moreover, in the same year 416, sixty-one bishops gathered at Milevis in Numidia — for so many are counted in their Epistle to Pope Innocent — in order to condemn there the Pelagian heresy, which they knew had already been condemned in the Council of Carthage; for thus they address Innocent: We have sent these writings to your holiness concerning the Council of Numidia, imitating our fellow bishops of the Province of Carthage, whom we have found to have written to the Apostolic See, which you, blessed one, illuminate, about this cause.

Moreover, under the pontificate of Zosimus there were chiefly celebrated two African Councils, which St. Augustine mentions in the Epistle to Valentinus and the brethren in these words:

What was written to Pope Innocent, Bishop of the city of Rome, concerning the Council of the Province of Carthage and concerning the Council of Numidia: and somewhat more diligently by five bishops, and what he replied to those three: Likewise, what was written to Pope Zosimus concerning the African Council, and his rescript to all the bishops of the whole world, and what we briefly established in a later plenary Council of all Africa against that same error.

By which words St. Augustine, having mentioned the earlier Councils reported by us, moreover asserts that two Councils were celebrated in Africa against Pelagius; one indeed particular, the other truly universal, which, unless I am mistaken, was the Carthaginian — the third assembled in the cause of Pelagius by 214 bishops — as St. Prosper asserts against the Collator, c. 10., where he says: Did the two hundred fourteen priests therefore err, who in the Epistle which they brought forth with their constitutions addressed the blessed Zosimus, the bishop of the Apostolic See?

The seventh Council in which the heresy of the Pelagians was condemned was the Gallican, in which, with the holy bishops Germanus of Auxerre and Lupus of Troyes acting, the Pelagians then raging throughout all England were proscribed by a numerous assembly of Fathers, as Bede relates, lib. 1 of Historiae Anglicae, cap. 17, where, speaking of SS. Germanus and Lupus sent by the Pontiff Coelestinus into Britain, in order to drive the heretics out from there, he says:

A few years, indeed, before their coming, the Pelagian heresy, brought in through Agricola, the son of Severianus, a Pelagian bishop, had stained the faith of the Britons with a foul plague: but the Britons, since they neither wished in any way to receive the perverse dogma by blaspheming the grace of Christ, nor sufficed to refute the cunning of the nefarious persuasion with certainty of word; they find a wholesome counsel, that they should seek from the Gallican bishops the help of spiritual warfare. For which cause, a great Synod being gathered, it was sought in common who ought to be sent there to succor the faith, and by the judgment of all there were chosen the Apostolic priests Germanus of Auxerre and Lupus, Bishop of the city of Troyes.

Many other Councils condemned the error of Pelagius, but especially the general Council of Ephesus, in which, since the Pelagians refused to condemn Nestorius, it judged that they were to be condemned together with Nestorius himself, as is evident from Canons 1 and 4. Likewise, in the Synod of Arles anathema was pronounced against him who, among the other impieties of Pelagius, contended with condemned presumption that man is born without sin and can be saved by labor alone, and against him who believed that he can be freed without the grace of God. Similarly in the Council of Lyons, in which the decrees of the Synod of Arles are approved. Moreover in the Council of Sardinia, the second of Orange, as well as that of Valence and the others, which either expressly condemned the Pelagian doctrine or approved the sayings and writings of the holy Fathers against the Pelagians.

§ VIII. What followers and patrons he had.

Two chiefly; and first of all indeed Coelestius, whom St. Augustine, lib. 2 of contra duas Epistolas Pelagii, cap. 3, calls a man of the keenest talent. Of whom likewise Gennadius in the Catalogo virorum illustrium says:

Coelestius, before he ran to Pelagius — indeed while still a youth — wrote from the monastery to his parents three epistles in the manner of little books, necessary for everyone desiring God: for the moral diction in them afterward betrayed nothing of vice there; but it held everything to the incitement of virtue.

He wrote many things with which to defend and disseminate the errors of Pelagius. Among his other writings, indeed, St. Augustine, in lib. De perfectione iustitiae against Coelestius, places definitions, or rather reasonings and questions as if formed by others, so that in that way he might introduce the heresy into the Church through mines. In lib., moreover, De peccato originali, cap. 11, Augustine also mentions the Epistle, or little book, which Coelestius himself offered to Pope Zosimus, in which he expressly asserts that original sin binds none of the infants.

He likewise wrote several letters and pamphlets with which he would extol and defend Pelagius as his master, while assailing his adversaries. Whence St. Jerome, speaking of Pelagius in Epist. to Ctesiphon, says:

One of his disciples (namely Coelestius), already indeed a Master and the leader of the whole army, and running against the Apostle as a vessel of perdition through the thorn-bushes of solecisms, and — not as his followers boast — of syllogisms, thus philosophizes and disputes: If I do nothing without God's help, and by His working it is that I shall have done each of my deeds, then it is not I who labor, but God's help in me that will be crowned: and in vain did He give to free choice a power which I cannot fulfill unless He always aids me; for the will that needs another's help is destroyed: but God gave free choice; and otherwise I shall not be free, unless I do what I will. And on this account he says: either I once for all use the power which was given to me, so that free choice may be preserved, or if I need another's help, the freedom of choice is destroyed in me. You who say these things, how do you not exceed blasphemy? What poisons of the heretics do you not surpass, etc.

He discloses further on in what manner Coelestius attacked him: I have not yet written, and you threaten me with the thunderbolts of your writings, so that, terrified by this fear, I dare not open my lips: and you do not observe that we write for this very reason, that you may be compelled to answer, etc.

Secondly he had Julian, a Campanian bishop indeed, but of which city in Campania — whether Celanensis, or Celenensis, or Eclanensis — the dispute is still under judgment; concerning him the above-praised Gennadius says: Julian, Bishop of Capua, a man keen in intellect, learned in the Scriptures, a scholar in the Greek and Latin tongue. Before, therefore, he revealed the impiety of Pelagius in himself, he was illustrious among the Doctors of the Church: but afterwards, having seemed to defend the heresy of Pelagius, he wrote against Augustine, its impugner, four books, and again eight books. There is also a book of the altercation of both defending their own parts. He adds: Having distributed all his goods to the needy at the time of famine and distress, and enticing many of the nobles, especially of the Religious, under the appearance of compassion, he joined them to his heresy. Likewise Bede writes of him in the Canticles: Julian, as he was a most skilled rhetorician, so he was, after Pelagius, the fiercest impugner of the grace of God, as his writings, in which he raged even against Augustine, the most strenuous defender of grace, show more openly; for the sake of this duel he first composed a little book on love, under the pretext, as it were, of keeping it from the foulest pleasure; in reality, however, to confirm his own heresy. He adds: He says that holy and generous love is implanted in us from the very beginning of light, with nature reconciling, and that, supported by the strength of the mind alone, it persists in vigor even to the last old age, without any loss to itself. Hence in the same place he warns the reader to read most cautiously the little works of the Bishop of Cellanensis from Campania, which he composed on the same book of the Canticles, lest through the abundance of flattering eloquence he fall into the mire of harmful doctrine.

§ IX. Who were the principal assailants and conquerors of him?

Two especially, first of all St. Jerome, who was the first of all to bring the errors of Pelagius into the open and to assail them in a wonderful manner, as St. Prosper testifies in his poem De ingratis:

Then too Jerome, the guest of renowned Bethlehem, graceful alike in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin eloquence, an example of morals and a teacher of the world, cut the enemy to pieces with most excellent books, and made it known with what a whirlwind the rising darkness sought to obscure the true light.

By these he discloses the wonderful design of St. Jerome in writing. For when St. Jerome had seen that the crafty Pelagius had deceived the Palestinian Synod and obscured Catholic truth with the darkness of his errors cast over it, he devised that prudent invention, as we have already said, of writing three dialogues against Pelagius under assumed names, calling himself indeed Atticus, but Pelagius Critobulus; lest, that is, if he had expressed the proper names, he should stir up ill will against himself by rising up against a man whom the Synod of Diospolis had absolved, and accusing him of heresy; likewise he made no mention of the Synod of Diospolis in those dialogues, lest if he had approved what had been done by it, he should seem also to approve the absolution of Pelagius: but if he had condemned it, he himself would rather be condemned, who should accuse the Synod. In these dialogues, moreover, by the most exquisite questions he forces the poison lying hidden within to be brought into the open, and demonstrates to all what sort of man he was who, condemning errors, would have wished to appear in the Synod as altogether Catholic: whence among other things he says in the preface: But to those who say that I write this work inflamed with the torches of envy, I will briefly answer that I have never spared heretics, and that I have taken every care that the enemies of the Church should also become my enemies.

St. Augustine fostered and aided him with all the zeal and labor he could; he, as Possidius says, labored ten years against the Pelagian heresy with indefatigable zeal, together with Aurelius, who presided over the Council of Carthage; of whom St. Prosper:

For to what other end could the holy Council proceed, whose leader was Aurelius; and the genius was Augustine: whom the grace of Christ, watering with a more abundant horn, gave as a light to our age, a light indeed kindled from light: For his food, and life and rest is God: and all his pleasure is the one love of Christ: one is the honor of Christ to him. And while he attributes no goods to himself, God becomes to him all things, and wisdom reigns in his holy temple.

There is no need to enumerate, nor does it belong to this place to recount all those things which that most holy man and the most unconquered assailant of all heresies wrote against Pelagius, Coelestius and Julian; for these things appear clearly enough in the 7th volume of his Works.

Several others among the holy Fathers, namely Orosius, Hilary of Arles, Fulgentius, Prosper and the rest, assailed the Pelagians in word and writing: but since their chief business was with the Semipelagians, therefore of them below.

§ X. Whether Pelagius ever tempered his error, and at length admitted some internal and necessary help of grace.

That Pelagius indeed changed and tempered his opinion, at least in words sounding externally, is evident from many things. For first he asserted that the nature of man suffices for performing whatever works of virtue, for keeping all the commandments of God, and for living without any sin, and finally for attaining true and eternal happiness: whence Pelagius in Epist. to Demetrias, a most noble Virgin, cap. 2, speaks thus:

Whenever I have to speak of the formation of morals and the conduct of a holy life, I am accustomed first to show the power and quality of human nature, and to make clear what it can accomplish; and from that point already to stir the mind of the hearer to the kinds of virtues, etc. For the best incentives of the mind are when one is taught that something can be done.

St. Augustine reproves and assails this error of Pelagius in various places; for in lib. 3. contra Iulianum c. 3 he writes this: This nature, fallen into such great and so manifest miseries, has Christ as its necessary liberator, cleanser and redeemer: praising Julian, not Coelestius.

And in lib. 3. contra duas Epistolas Pelagianas cap. 14: We ought not, he says, so to praise the Creator that we are compelled — indeed rather convicted — to say that the Savior is superfluous. Let us honor human nature with worthy praises, and refer those praises to the glory of the Creator; but because He created us, so let us be grateful, that we are not, because He heals us, ungrateful.

But when Pelagius was badly spoken of among the Catholics because he denied divine grace, in order to avert ill will and to put a false show upon the Catholics, he began to understand free choice under the name of grace; for thus St. Augustine reports of him in De verbis Apostoli cap. 7: Pelagius says, I do not dispute against the grace of God. Whence do you prove it? By this very fact, he says, I do not dispute against the grace of God, because I defend free choice. Whence St. Augustine exclaims: See the cleverness, but it is glass! As if it shines with vanity, but is broken by truth.

He devised this trick especially at the Synod of Diospolis, in which, lest he be condemned by the Fathers, he admitted the necessity of helping grace; but craftily understanding by grace free choice and the Nature in which we were created, as St. Augustine complains together with the other African Fathers in Epist. to Pope Innocent and in Epist. 105 to Sixtus, in which he speaks thus:

Since these men are enemies and hostile to this grace: Pelagius nevertheless, in the Palestinian ecclesiastical judgment — for otherwise he would not have escaped from there unpunished — anathematized those who say that the grace of God is given according to merits. But when it is asked of these men what grace Pelagius thought to be given without any preceding merits, when he anathematized those who say that the grace of God is given according to merits, they answer that without any preceding merits that grace itself is the human nature in which we were created: for neither before we existed could we merit anything in order to exist.

St. Augustine adds: Let this be cast away from

the hearts of Christians, this deceit: for the Apostle does not at all commend that grace by which we were created that we might be men, but that by which we were justified that we might be just men: for this is the grace through Jesus Christ our Lord; for Christ did not die for nothing, that men might be created, but for the ungodly He died, that they might be justified.

They thus built up this their invention, as the same St. Augustine reports in serm. 11. De verbis Apostoli, where, playing the part of the one questioning and the one answering,

Explain to us then, he says, O Doctor, what grace you mean. When I say, he says, the free choice of man, see that I speak of that which is man's. What next? He is a man; who created him? God. Who gave him free choice? God. If therefore God created man and God gave man free choice, whatever man can do by free choice, to whose grace is it owed, except to His who founded him with free choice?

And this was said by them as if acutely. See nevertheless, brethren, how, preaching that general grace by which man was created, by which we are men — and indeed we are men also with the ungodly: but we are not Christians with the ungodly.

Secondly, when Pelagius observed that the minds of the pious were offended because he placed all grace in nature, and that he could not conveniently satisfy so many texts of the Scriptures in which grace is opposed to nature and is said to emanate from Christ and to be conferred by Him, he added to free choice the grace of doctrine and of the law, as St. Augustine indicates in lib. De Gratia Christi cap. 3.

He places the grace of God, he says, and the help by which we are aided not to sin, either in nature and free choice, or in the law and doctrine: so that evidently when God helps man to turn away from evil and do good, by revealing and showing what ought to be done, He is believed to help.

Hence Prosper, in De Ingratis, cap. 2: With you grace is nothing other than the Law, and than what the admonishing Prophet speaks, and than what the doctrine of the minister imparts.

They therefore asserted that all and only the external instruction flowing from the Evangelical law and doctrine is the grace of Christ, as St. Augustine affirms in the same place, capit. 10:

To doctrine, he says, belongs even that which wisdom reveals: to doctrine belongs it whenever all that is good is urged. And if between teaching and urging, or rather exhorting, something seems to differ, yet even this is included under the generality of doctrine, which is contained in whatever speeches or writings. For the sacred Scriptures both teach and exhort; and there can be in teaching and exhorting also the operation of man.

By which they attributed a twofold mode of doctrine; one from books, through reading; the other from speech, through the operation of another man. But when they were pressed by the Catholics that this grace of law and doctrine does not suffice for the salvation of men, as St. Augustine proves by many arguments in the cited place,

They devised a third kind of grace, namely the example and imitation of Christ the Lord, saying that just as the first Adam harmed us by his evil example, so Christ, the second Adam, profited us by his good example, as St. Augustine reports in the same place, cap. 2: They are accustomed, he says, to tell us that in this Christ provided the help for not sinning, because by living piously and justly He left an example: and c. 14.: Pelagius placed the grace of Christ not in the help of His power, but in the example of imitation. St. Augustine demonstrates in the same place that this is false by many arguments; whence in lib. 2. contra posteriorem responsionem Iuliani c. 15 he concludes: This is the hidden and horrible poison of your heresy, that you have left the grace of Christ to be in His example, not in His gift; saying that men are made just through His imitation, not through the ministration of the Holy Spirit.

But when they saw that this also, their opinion, like the preceding ones, was condemned, especially in the Council of Carthage, by canon 5, in these words:

Whoever shall say that the same grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord helps us to avoid sinning for this reason only, because through it the understanding of the commandments is revealed and opened to us, so that we may know what we ought to seek, what to avoid: but that it is not granted to us through it that we may also love, and be able, to do what we have known to be done, let him be anathema.

when, I say, they observed themselves to be so constrained,

Fourthly they devised another kind of grace, namely the grace of the remission of sins, by which God would forgive and pardon sins, as the same St. Augustine reports in lib. De Gestis in Synodo Palaestina c. 33.

They say, he says, that human nature, which was created with free choice, can suffice for us not to sin and to fulfill justice, and that this is the grace of God; because we were so created that we can do this by will, and what help of the law and of His commandments He gave, and that He forgives past sins to those converted to Him — in these alone the grace of God is to be reckoned, not in the help of our individual acts.

whence in lib. 2. contra posteriorem Iuliani responsionem he thus censures him:

You, in your manner, which descends from your error, do not acknowledge grace except in the remission of sins, so that from now on, by free choice, man himself may fashion himself just: but this is not what the Church says, which cries out as a whole what it learned from the good Master, lead us not into temptation, etc.

They understood this remission of sins to be only an external condonation of God: whence at that time they admitted no internal grace, which, since it had likewise been condemned in the Council of Carthage by canon 3, in these words:

Likewise it pleased that whoever shall say that the grace of God, in which we are justified through Jesus Christ our Lord, avails only for the remission of sins which have already been committed: and not also as a help that they may not be committed, let him be anathema.

Having at length considered and heard these things,

Fifth, Pelagius in some fashion began to confess the internal help of the divine power of the Holy Spirit operating in man; but he placed it only in the mere illumination of the intellect: he did not want grace to be given to the will, whether exciting it so that it might awaken, or actual so that it might help, or habitual so that it might sanctify, as St. Augustine reports in lib. 1. De Gratia Christi cap. 7. from Pelagius saying:

God helps us through His doctrine and revelation, while He opens the eyes of our heart, while He shows us future things lest we be occupied with present ones; while He lays bare the snares of the Devil, while He illuminates us with the manifold and ineffable gift of heavenly grace.

By these words Pelagius not only confessed the external preaching or reading of the word to be necessary, but freely required an interior assistance of the Holy Spirit through the illumination and persuasion of the word; so that a man, indeed, or an Angel, operating externally, teaches a man and illuminates his will: but the Holy Spirit has this special property, that He instructs the soul interiorly.

Nevertheless Pelagius did not on that account wish the will to be helped by that internal aid, and to receive strength by which it would will and be able to pursue the good, as St. August. affirms, haeresi 78.

They say, he says, that He helps only to this end through His law and doctrine, that we may learn what we ought to do and what we ought to hope; but that we are helped to this end through the gift of the Holy Spirit, that we may do what we have learned to be done: and thus they confess that knowledge is given to us from God, by which ignorance is driven away; but they deny that charity is given, by which one lives piously: namely, since knowledge, which without Charity puffs up, is a gift of God, Charity itself, which builds up so that knowledge does not puff up, is not a gift of God.

Likewise in Epist. 95., which together with the bishops Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius he wrote to Innocent, that he should not also absolve Pelagius, who had been absolved in the Palestinian Synod through fraud, and that he should not be deceived by him as the Fathers of Diospolis had been, he warns: Whether he says that grace is free choice, or that grace is the remission of sins, or that grace is the precept of the law: he says none of those things by which, through the supply of the Holy Spirit, it pertains to conquering concupiscences and temptations.

Thus Pelagius indeed affirmed that the Holy Spirit illuminates our intellect, and with that illumination posited, the will could pursue the good by its own powers and the strength of free choice: which was far removed from Catholic truth, as St. Augustine discloses in lib. De Gratia Christi, which book the holy Doctor wrote after the heresy of Pelagius had been condemned, first by Innocent I., then by Zosimus, as he himself testifies in lib. 2. Retract. cap. 50. — in that book, I say, De Gratia Christi, cap. 28., where he cites these words of Pelagius from his book in defense of free choice:

Since, however, we have in ourselves free choice so strong, so firm against sinning, which the Creator implanted generally in human nature, again, on account of His inestimable kindness, we are protected by His daily help: namely, by external or internal illumination, with which posited, the will could carry out the good by the powers of free choice.

Sixth, there are not lacking theologians who acknowledge that Pelagius, when he heard his heresy condemned by Innocent and Zosimus, from that time began to recognize and confess internal grace and supernatural help, through which the will receives sufficient strength to elicit any salutary acts whatsoever. And they confirm this from the fact that Pelagius distinguishes these three things, being able, willing, acting; and affirms that the being able of the will is divinely helped: St. August. reports his words in lib. De Gratia Christi, cap. 4.

We thus distinguish these three things, says Pelagius in lib. 3. in defense of free choice, and divide them, arranged as it were into a certain order. In the first place we set being able: second, willing: third, being. We place being able in nature, willing in choice, being in affection. That first thing, that is, being able, properly pertains to God; who conferred it upon His creature: but the two remaining, willing and being, are to be referred to man, because they descend from the fountain of choice: therefore in the will and the good work is the praise of man; indeed both of man and of God, who gave the possibility of that very will and work, and always helps that very possibility with the help of His grace.

By these words, although Pelagius seems to admit grace interiorly exciting and helping the will to the good work, nevertheless in reality he did not admit it, as St. August. affirms in the same place, cap. 5. For we ought to know, he says, that he does not believe either our will or our action to be helped by divine aid, but only the possibility of willing and acting, which alone of these three (namely possibility, will, and action) he affirms we have from God: as though this were weak, which God Himself could bring about in nature: but the other two, which He willed to be ours, are so firm and strong and sufficient to themselves, that they need none of His help, and therefore He does not help that we may will, He does not help that we may act: but only helps that we may be able to will and act. Whence he concludes in cap. 8.: Hence it therefore appears that he confesses that grace by which God shows and reveals what we ought to do; not that by which He gives and helps that we act.

It is confirmed from cap. 25. of the same book, where he says thus:

Let Pelagius cease to deceive both himself and others by disputing against the grace of God: let him cease to say that we can do, say, and think every good; that it belongs to Him who gave this being able, who helps this being able, but that what we either do well, or speak well, or think well is ours; let him cease, I say, to say these things; for God not only gave and helps our being able, but also works in us both willing and operating.

And further on:

How does Pelagius say that our being able to speak well is God's, that our speaking well is ours; when the Lord says: It is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you? For He does not say, you are not the ones who gave yourselves the ability to speak well, but He says, who speaks in you; not signifying the progress of possibility, but expressing the effect of cooperation; how does the proud Assertor of free choice say that our being able to think well is God's, but that our thinking well is ours? To him the humble Preacher of grace responds: not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God; for He does not say being able to think, but thinking.

Seventh, finally, some judge that Pelagius, compelled to admit some supernatural grace by which the will would pursue the good, admitted it only as not indeed necessary, but only useful, by which of course the will would perform the good work more easily, as St. August. indicates in the book De Gratia Christi, cap. 22. and 23., where, when he had reported the words of Pelagius writing in the Epistle to Demetrias: Supernatural help is granted to us, that we may merit divine grace and more easily resist the wicked spirit with the help of the Holy Spirit, St. Augustine adds:

He surely signifies what he thinks: for why did he insert this word, more easily? Was not the sense complete, that we resist the wicked spirit with the help of the Holy Spirit? But who does not understand how much harm he did with this addition? Wishing of course that it be believed that the powers of nature are so great, which by extolling he casts down, that even without the help of the Holy Spirit, although less easily, the wicked spirit is nevertheless in some way resisted.

And in lib. 2. contra duas Epistolas Pelagianorum cap. 2. he says:

Pelagius says that what is good is fulfilled more easily if grace helps: by this addition, that is, by adding more easily, he surely signifies that he thinks this, that even if the help of grace be lacking, the good can nevertheless be fulfilled, although with more difficulty, through free choice.

therefore not undeservedly Alvarez, in lib. 1. De auxiliis, Disp. 1. n. 1., gathers that Caelestius indeed admitted the necessity of sufficient help; but not of efficacious help for operating: that Julian indeed recognized the necessity of helping aid, but not of prevenient and exciting aid: but that Pelagius admitted only the utility of grace, not indeed its necessity.

Paragraph XI.

The principal causes which impelled Pelagius, a man otherwise learned and celebrated under the name of piety, into this foul error seem to be, first, that he saw the great slothfulness of Christians in doing good works, which he certainly hoped could be corrected if they thought something great of their own powers, lest they should pour back all their virtue in the good into the sole grace of God. Second, that he wished to avoid the error of the Manichaeans, who affirmed that nature was wholly corrupted and useless for any good whatsoever. Third, that he was moved by the sayings of certain holy Fathers, who, when they attacked the Manichaeans, brought forth many things in favor of free choice; not distinguishing what man could do by nature, what by grace; because no one had as yet stirred up a controversy on this matter; and since Pelagius himself did not attend to this, he began so to oppose the Manichaeans that, declining into the opposite direction, he fell into the contrary heresy. Fourth, finally, certain words of St. Augustine perhaps stirred his stomach to think this, as he himself relates in lib. 2. De bono Perseverantiae, cap. 20., saying: Certainly in my books of Confessions I said to our God, and often said: give what You command and command what You will — which words, when they had been recalled in his presence by a certain brother, my fellow bishop, Pelagius could not bear, and contradicting somewhat more excitedly, almost quarreled with him who had recalled them: since indeed he could not bear that anything be taken away from the liberty of choice so that it be attributed to the grace of God.

ON THE FOLLOWERS OF PELAGIUS.

After the error of Pelagius had been conquered and especially vanquished by St. Augustine, on the occasion of those things which the same St. Augustine had written about the necessity and efficacy of divine grace and about gratuitous election, two other errors no less intense arose. For certain grave men, well deserving of the sciences, so understanding the writings of the holy Doctor himself as if he attributed the whole business of our salvation to grace alone and to gratuitous election, and likewise poured back the whole cause of the perdition of some into divine reprobation and into the subtraction of grace, and not into human freedom deviating from the right path, were persuaded and asserted that the Elect do not freely work out their own salvation, nor do the Reprobate weave their own perdition for themselves; but that each one was led and drawn by a certain fatal necessity to his own end predestined by God; wherefore they were called the predestined, or Predestinarians, as Sigebert relates in his Chronicle around the year 415.

Between this error of the Predestinarians, however, and that of the Pelagians, which were extremely opposed, some learned and Catholic men dwelling in Gaul, and especially in the city of Massilia, wove another error, as it were by a middle and safer way; having indeed nothing in common with the doctrine of the Predestinarians, but differing from Pelagius, not only because they confessed original sin, but also because they acknowledged the necessity of interior grace for any good work whatsoever: and likewise from Julian; for he believed that man is helped in the good work, and likewise is prevented by divine grace for operating well; and he affirmed that man always begins well without the help of grace, and by that splendid effort merits divine grace; both of which they rejected. In this, however, they erred with Pelagius and Julian, that they said the beginning of salvation is from us, that is, that it consists in some natural desire, petition, effort, and labor, by which we obtain the helps of grace necessary for salvation. Whence they were called by St. Prosper, in the Epistola ad S. August., remnants of Pelagian depravity, as well as Massilian presbyters, and finally Semi-Pelagians: whose authors, men illustrious and excellent in all zeal for virtues, indeed even saints, to whom the defenders of Augustinian doctrine were second to none, St. Prosper himself expressly pronounces. But what their principal errors were, and who were the masters of the errors and the principal defenders and impugners of the sect, must be set forth.

Paragraph I.

In what things the Semi-Pelagians differed from Pelagius and Julian has already been said: for they conceded that we are prevented by grace for beginning and perfecting every good work, as St. Hilary affirms, Epistola ad S. Augustinum: They agree, he says, that no one can be sufficient to himself for either beginning or perfecting any work: which same thing St. Augustine teaches in lib. 1. De Praedestinatione, cap. 1.: They have even arrived, he says, at confessing that the wills of men are prevented by the grace of God, and at agreeing that no one can be sufficient to himself for either beginning or perfecting any good work: and in cap. 16. lib. De bono Perseverantiae: Moreover these men, on account of whom we do these things, are so far removed from the heretical perversity of the Pelagians, that although they are not yet willing to confess that those who are made obedient and persevering through the grace of God are predestined, they nevertheless now confess that it proceeds from the will of those to whom this grace is given.

Nevertheless they seem to have gone astray with Pelagius in five principal heads especially. For first, with him, they affirmed that in us there is a certain beginning of faith, or an affection of believing and a desire of conversion, by which we could merit faith itself, and likewise all the helps necessary for salvation from it. Concerning the beginning of faith indeed, St. Prosper lucidly discloses that this was their opinion in the Epist. ad S. Aug., where he says: They say that eternal life is appended to those who have believed God spontaneously and have received the help of grace by the merit of their credulity. Concerning the desire of conversion he affirms the same:

Since in those who have received the time of free will there are two things which work out human salvation, namely the grace of God and the obedience of man; they will that obedience be prior to grace, so that the beginning of salvation must be believed to stand from the one who is saved, not from the one who saves; and the will of man brings forth for itself the aid of divine grace, not that grace subjects the human will to itself.

Similarly St. Hilary, in the Epistola ad Augustinum, teaches that the Semi-Pelagians attributed both the beginning of faith and the desire of healing to nature, in these words:

They assert this to be agreeable to truth, and congruous to preaching, that when the opportunity of obtaining salvation is announced to those prostrated and never to rise by their own powers, by that merit by which they have willed and believed that they can be healed of their disease, they obtain both the increase of faith itself and the effect of entire health.

The same thing St. Augustine himself teaches in lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum; for when in cap. 1. he had said that the Massilians acknowledge and confess both the corruption of the human race in Adam and the necessity of grace for the good work, both to be begun and to be consummated, and so far to dissent from Pelagius in these things; he discloses the state of the question and controversy to be disputed with the Massilians themselves in cap. sequenti, saying:

But now I see that we must respond to those who say that the divine testimonies which we have adduced on this matter (namely concerning the faith by which we are Christians, which is a gift of God) avail to this end, that we know that we indeed have faith itself from ourselves, but its increase from God, as though faith were not given to us by Him, but is increased in us by that merit by which it began in us.

But in what way they built up this same error, St. Prosper discloses in the Ep. laudata, where according to the opinion of the Semi-Pelagians he says:

Man, meriting nothing beforehand, because the grace of the Creator constituted him even as existing with rational free choice, so that through the discernment of good and evil, both to the knowledge of God and to the obedience of His commandments, he can direct his own will, and arrive at that grace by which we are reborn in Christ, namely through the natural faculty by asking, seeking, knocking, and therefore let him receive, let the same enter, because having used the good of nature well, he merited to arrive at that saving grace by the aid of initial grace.

By these words he indicates that the Semi-Pelagians acknowledged a twofold grace, namely the natural one by which we were created by the benefit and gratuitous liberality of God, which they called the rational grace of the Creator, the natural faculty, the good of nature, initial grace; but the other, the supernatural or saving grace, by which we are reborn in Christ, so that they asserted that from initial grace through its good use one arrives at salvation; according to that promise of Christ the Lord: Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you.

The second error of the Semi-Pelagians was that they ascribed not only the beginning of faith, but also of all works of salvation, to free choice and the good human will, so that they judged that we all begin the good work first by desiring, asking, striving through the powers of free choice, and then are helped by the grace of God to perfect the good which we desire: for in reality they denied every true help of prevenient grace, whether for faith or for good works, not only efficacious but even sufficient. But if some of them sometimes confessed that we are prevented by the grace of God for good works, as will be established below concerning Faustus and Cassian, the principal patriarchs of the Semi-Pelagians, they understood that of the grace of the law and of doctrine and of external divine protection.

But that they asserted the beginning of any good work whatsoever to depend on free choice is gathered from St. Augustine in lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, cap. 2., where, speaking of the Semi-Pelagian opinion, he says:

We do not therefore depart from that opinion which Pelagius himself was compelled to condemn in the Palestinian episcopal judgment, as those same acts testify, namely that the grace of God is given according to our merits, if the fact that we have begun to believe does not pertain to the grace of God; but rather from that opinion that it is added to us for this reason, that we may believe more fully and more perfectly: and thus we give to God the first place in the beginning of our faith, so that its supplement may be repaid to us, together with whatever else we faithfully ask.

St. Prosper openly indicates the same thing against the Collatorem, that is, Cassian, the writer of the collations, or conferences, where he thus addresses him in cap. 5.:

Do you think that you sufficiently guard against the calumnies of the Pelagians, if what is to be thought concerning the whole body of the called you concede to us only in a portion? But neither with the heretics nor with the Catholics do you have full concord. They defend the beginnings of all just human works as belonging to free will; we always believe that the principles of good thoughts proceed from God. You have discovered some formless third thing, unfit for either party, by which you would neither win the agreement of your enemies nor remain in the understanding of our side. But how do you not notice that you fall into that condemned doctrine, that, whether you will or not, you are convicted of saying that the grace of God is given according to our merits, when you affirm that something of good work proceeds from men themselves, on account of which they obtain grace? etc.

St. Hilary teaches the same thing in his Epistola ad S. Augustinum, where, after he has asserted that the Semi-Pelagians think that there is in us some beginning of faith, he adds:

From this they think it follows that faith is to be exhibited by him to whose nature this has been granted by the will of the Creator, and they think that no nature is so depraved or extinguished that it should not, or could not, will to be healed, on account of which a man is either healed by his own strength, or, if he is unwilling, is punished with his own sickness. Nor do they deny grace, if such a will is said to precede which only seeks the physician, but does not yet itself avail anything: for they want those testimonies, such as that one, as God has dealt to every one the measure of faith, and similar ones, to have this force, that he who has begun to will is helped, not that the will is given to him that he may will, the others being cast off from this gift, equally guilty and able in like manner to be freed, if the will to believe, which is granted to those who are equally unworthy, were likewise granted to them as well.

The third error of the Semi-Pelagians was that, for preserving sanctifying grace, we need no other help than what had been implanted by nature and free choice, or had been acquired together with regenerating grace, as St. Prosper discloses in the poem De ingratis, where among other things:

That this freedom is common to instructed minds alike, that by persevering they can complete the blessed course, the end, and the sought effect, God granting it to talents, who never fails the honest.

The same thing is evident from the opinion of Cassian, Collat. 13. cap. 14., where, after he had said that the Devil was overcome by Job not by God's strength but by Job's, he adds: although it must be believed that the grace of God was not wholly wanting to him; and explaining what that grace was: all this, he says, God brought about, lest the most violent enemy, making his soul senseless and powerless, should weigh him down with an unequal understanding and an unjust burden of combat: and in collatione 7. cap. 14., explaining that saying of the Apostle, God is faithful, who will not permit you to be tempted above that which you are able, he says: He certainly does not hinder the Lord from permitting them to be tempted; but that they might not be tempted above what they were able to bear. For the former indicates the faculty of human choice; the latter shows the grace of the Lord moderating the struggles of temptations.

In this, however, the Massilians agreed with Pelagius; for that Pelagius thought that each one perseveres by his own powers, St. Jerome teaches us in lib. 11. Contra Pelagianos, and St. Augustine in lib. De perfectione iustitiae; likewise in heresy 88, where he says: That faith may increase and men may persevere in it, they contend that they do not receive it from him, but have it from themselves. These are also the words of Julian in lib. De Bono constantiae: For this is the constancy which chiefly asserts the power of choice for good, and the movement of its nature and of the human mind.

That the Semi-Pelagians taught the same thing or something similar, St. Prosper indicates not obscurely in his Epist. ad S. August., about the middle, where he says:

Now here they bring forward testimonies by which the exhortation of the divine Scriptures incites the wills of men to obedience, which wills either do what is commanded or neglect it from free choice, and they think it follows that, just as the transgressor is for that reason said not to have obeyed because he did not will, so also a believer should not be doubted to have been devout for this reason because he willed; and that each one has as much faculty for good as for evil, and moves his mind with equal impulse either toward vices or toward virtues, him whom the grace of God fosters when he seeks good, and whom a just condemnation receives when he pursues evil.

Hence their fourth error was that they asserted that good works, the beginning of which they attributed to the powers of free choice, are the motivating cause of Predestination; otherwise, they said, as St. Prosper reports in the same Letter, all industry is removed and virtues are taken away, and under this name of predestination a certain fatal necessity is introduced, or the Lord is said to be the Creator of diverse natures, if no one can be other than he was made. And a little before he had said that they assert that propitiation is proposed to all men without exception, so that whoever wills may be able to be saved.

St. Hilary affirms the same thing in his Epistola pariter ad S. Augustinum, where he says that they said that such a will remained in all men, by which each one can either despise or obey, and thus a ready account is given of the Elect or of the Rejected, in that to each one the merit of his own will is attached.

But when, says St. Prosper in the same place, the multitude of innumerable infants is objected to them — who, certainly, apart from original sin, under which all men are born alike in the condemnation of the first man, having as yet no wills, no proper actions, are separated not without the judgment of God, so that before the discernment of good and evil they are taken away from the use of this life, some through regeneration are taken up as heirs of the heavenly kingdom, others without baptism pass over as debtors of perpetual death — to answer this argument they wove a fifth error: namely that some infants obtained the grace of baptism because God foresaw that they would merit grace through free choice, if they reached adult age; but that others for this reason did not obtain baptism, because God had foreseen that they would not have such merit, if they had lived.

Or, as St. Prosper speaks in the same place: They say that those are lost and those are saved whom divine knowledge foresaw they would be in their later years, if they were kept to adult age. Nor do they consider that they subject the grace of God — which they will to be common, not previous to human merits — even to those wills which, according to their own fancy, they do not deny to have been prevented by it: but to such an extent do they subject the Election of God to whatever fictitious merits, that, because they feign past things which do not exist and future things which will not be future, by a new kind of absurdity among them, both things not to be done are foreseen, and foreseen things are not done.

Paragraph II.

Among them Cassian seems to have held the first place: formerly a disciple of St. John Chrysostom, and, after the latter's death, a Presbyter of the Church of Marseille, whom St. Prosper designates and attacks under the name of the Collator, from the collations written by the Fathers, in cap. 2., where he says: A certain man of priestly order (meaning Cassian), who excels in the practice of disputation among those with whom he lives, introduces a certain abbot discoursing on the grace of God and free choice, whose opinion he shows himself to have approved and embraced in all things: whence in cap. 3. he thus addresses Cassian as the inventor and chief defender of the Semi-Pelagian dogma:

But neither with the heretics nor with the Catholics do you have full concord. They defend the beginnings of all just human works as belonging to free will; we always believe that the principles of good thoughts proceed from God: you have discovered some formless third thing, unfit for either party, by which you would neither win the agreement of your enemies nor remain in the understanding of our side.

But what Cassian's erroneous opinion was, St. Prosper himself indicates clearly enough in the whole book against the Collatorem, where among other things he thus addresses him:

Catholic Doctor, why do you abandon your profession? Why, having left the serene light of truth, have you rolled down into the notorious darkness of falsehood? What do you marvel at in those who ask, seek, and knock, and why do you not ascribe it to that same grace which is desired? You see good efforts and pious pursuits, and do you doubt that they are God's goods? Did the work of grace lie hidden, as long as the faith implanted in thoughts was closed up in secrecy, so that where is the suppliant prayer, where the diligent inquiry, where does the frequent knocking appear? Why do you not understand, from the quality of the work, the help of the one who incites?

With these words St. Prosper openly indicates that Cassian asserted that the natural seeds of good works are found in us, and also the beginning of faith, which was that very opinion of the Semi-Pelagians. Since, however, his writings were filled with many excellent documents for pursuing virtue, therefore, that they might be held and read by the faithful with a secure foot, several grave and Catholic men certainly strove to purge his writings and to fit them to the Catholic truth: first of these was Eucherius, Presbyter of Lyon, of whom Gennadius says: But the same Eucherius, resolving certain little works of Cassian, polished in broad speech, into a narrow path of words, collected them into one volume: but I judge more truly that Eucherius did not so much purge Cassian's errors as write an Epitome of his books free from errors; for if Eucherius had already purged the whole Cassian, what need was there for this labor to be undertaken anew by Victor, who set about vindicating him from errors? as Cassiodorus indicates in these words in lib. Institutionum divinarum cap. 22.: Cassian's sayings, he says, Victor Martiritanus, an African Bishop, so purged with the Lord's help, and added what was lacking, that the palm of these matters is deservedly conferred on him: whom, among others, we believe should be sent to us quickly from the parts of Africa.

Moreover, it may be conjectured that Cassiodorus did not then have this purged Cassian when he himself later appears to have undertaken this labor, for thus Ado writes of him at the year 425: His works (he says of Cassian) are to be read by Catholics most cautiously, especially those on free choice and grace; but he also favored the heresy of the Encratites somewhat incautiously: Cassiodorus, Senator of Ravenna, wishing to purge his errors, could not do so fully in every part.

This also is easily gathered from that very book of Cassian which still exists today; for whatever St. Prosper attacks in Cassian as erroneous, that very thing is also found in that book; which book the most learned Ciacconius ordered to be brought to light at Rome, restored to its integrity and illustrated with notes, Vossius demonstrates and collects at length in lib. 4, first part, of the Historiae Pelagianae, where he expressly shows that whatever was asserted by the Massilians and impugned by the holy Fathers, that very thing is found in Cassian's writings.

FAUSTUS RHEGIENSIS.

Faustus, made Bishop from Abbot of the Monastery of Lerins at Rhegium in Gaul, says Gennadius, a man sufficiently intent on the divine Scriptures, taking occasion from the tradition of the Creed, composed a book on the Holy Spirit, in which he shows that, according to the faith of the Fathers, he is both consubstantial with and coeternal with the Father and the Son, and holds the fullness of the Trinity; he also published an excellent work on the grace of God by which we are saved, and on the choice of the human mind, in which work he teaches that the grace of God always invites and aids our will, and that whatever the freedom of choice itself acquires by the labor of pious reward is not one's own merit, but the gift of grace.

With these words Gennadius seems to signify that Faustus was free from the error of the Semi-Pelagians: nevertheless, his writings testify that he was a chief assertor of that same error, especially De gratia et libero arbitrio, where, refuting the Predestinarians, he seems to have fallen into the opposite error and openly to defend the Semi-Pelagian doctrine, as Ado, Bishop of the Church of Vienne, testifies in his Chronico in the year of the Lord 492, when he treats of Faustus in these words:

Faustus, made Bishop from Abbot of the Monastery of Lerins at Rhegium in Gaul, attempting to destroy the Pelagian dogma, falls into error: whence those who proclaim his sense in this part as catholic (as Gennadius, writing on illustrious men, does) err altogether; for Augustine and the rest of the Catholics in the Church of God teach free choice in such a way that its illumination, virtue, and salvation are from Christ and through Christ and with Christ: but this Faustus so attempts to teach free choice that its illumination, virtue, and salvation are not from Christ, but from nature.

Against him Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, writes with the clearest faith, refuting his error, and likewise John, an erudite man, a Presbyter of Antioch.

But on what occasion he published those books themselves, we gather from his Epistola ad Lucidum Presbyterum Lugdunensem: for when that Lucidus followed and defended the opinion of the Monks of Hadrumetum, attributing all things to grace in such a way that they took away the freedom of choice, and taught that by reason of predestination men are necessarily driven to the ends destined for them by God, whence they were called Predestinarians: to draw this Lucidus away from this opinion, Faustus sent him a Letter, in which he utterly overthrows the dogmas of the Predestinarians; to which Letter the Synod of Bishops gathered at Arles subscribed, as may be conjectured from Faustus himself; and also another Synod celebrated at Lyon, to which Lucidus himself subscribed, anathematizing his error, as is known from his Letter to this Synod.

Faustus moreover signifies that he wrote his book de gratia, ac libero arbitrio at the request of that same Council; for thus among other things he writes to Leontius:

That, for the pastoral solicitude of the blessed Pope Leo in condemning the error of Predestination, you, a Council of the highest Bishops, with all the churches of Gaul gathered together, have provided. But that you have entrusted to weak shoulders the labor and the care of ordering those things which you set forth most learnedly in public conference, you have, as I think, consulted too little for so great a business, too little for your holy estimation, and you have deemed me worthy by the judgment of Charity, not by the risk of election. You, therefore, who know that your own person also labors under the burden imposed on us, etc.

Namely, because he had conducted himself strenuously, as a man of elegant and acute genius, in refuting the errors of the Predestinarians, he seemed especially fit to commit the opinion of the Synod to writing. But, exceeding the limits of the mandate, he inserted into his little book things to which Claudianus Mammertus and the other most distinguished men who took part in that Synod would never have subscribed, says Vossius in lib. 1. cap. 8. And indeed truly; for although Faustus seemed to defend grace as necessary in all things, nevertheless he thought with the Semi-Pelagians, as John Maxentius notes in his response to the Epistolam Hormisdae, when he says of Faustus:

For, shrewdly weighing the sense of that same Pelagius and as it were reproaching him because he denied grace in the name of Christ; and also those who, according to the Apostle, confess that the grace of God is given to men with no preceding merits: he himself, as if most wise and most prudent, a new Apostle of a new perversity, strives to teach that the grace of God is given according to the merit of faith and of labor, so that thus the grace of God is already not grace.

Note, however, that notwithstanding these things, he was received into the list of the Saints; for although Cardinal Baronius wrote of him at the year 490:

Moreover, Faustus himself, when his deceits were detected, by which he attempted to tear up the Pelagian trenches into the fall of the simple, alienated from himself the minds of the Bishops, and departed inglorious: whom we wonder that some, imprudently indeed, write as holy: but we are much more astonished that the same man is reduced by others into the class of the Monks of the Order of St. Benedict, since, before that same Saint undertook the monastic life, Faustus, an old man, had already departed this life, having been created Bishop long before that same Benedict was born.

Yet, the matter being more maturely weighed, he wrote in the Appendix to Volume 6:

Indeed, in the earlier edition it was not unseemly to have affirmed these things from the writings of various authors adduced; but now, from things later known and adduced, we do not deem it unworthy that the judgment itself be called back again; the sentences of the Fathers concerning his writings, however, remain immovable. For that the Gallican Martyrology kept this same Faustus among the saints even up to our times — from which Molanus first expunged him; that also (as we have heard) the Church of Rhegium in Gaul, where he himself sat as Bishop, always venerated him as a Saint, celebrating his birthday on the seventeenth of January, and a Basilica anciently erected there in his memory, distinguished with the title of his name, has to this day been frequented by the faithful for his cult; and that for so many centuries, with the Christian world looking on and the Roman Church silent, with no one at all (as far as is known) contradicting, these things are understood to have been exhibited to this same Faustus. We are not forbidden to think that what is asserted of many holy men could have happened to this same Faustus, that, offending, he erred: since, however, that question was defined by the authority of the Apostolic See, and his opinion was condemned by the sentence of other Fathers, that he himself detested his error in contrary writings which could, like very many others, have perished: or that he himself died before the condemnation of his writings made by the Church (for the year of his death is uncertain), having in mind in these matters to follow what the Church would teach to be followed. That he was indeed of this mind, and that it was known to others, can easily be understood from this: that always, as the acts of the Councils of Arles and Lyon recited above indicate, he had communion with the most holy Orthodox Bishops of Gaul. Let Faustus therefore keep his full rights, nor let him suffer prejudice from our writings, nor let it be lawful, by the novelty of judgment, to overthrow antiquity.

Whence Andreas du Saussay in the Martyrologio Gallicano for 28 September adds: Today Faustus, Bishop of Rhegium, departed with a holy end, glorious in many titles of doctrine and pious conversation, whom the Rhegian Church itself, according to ancient custom, honors with the cult of sanctity; and to whom Cardinal Baronius, the matter however being more maturely weighed, confessed that the full rights of his sanctity remain.

VINCENTIUS LIRINENSIS.

Vincent of Lerins also seems to have adhered to and favored the Semi-Pelagians, and is reckoned by some as the writer of the Vincentian objections to which St. Prosper responded. Although the other things may be silent about this, this sufficiently proves it: that in the same way he did not hesitate, just as the other Semi-Pelagians did against the Catholics, to usurp for his own side the Letter of Pope Coelestinus by which the Catholics defended themselves against the Semi-Pelagians: for since Coelestinus in his Letter, which he sent to the Priests of the Gauls, arguing their connivance, because, abandoning the ancient faith by silence, they suffered profane vanities to arise, said: Rightly does the cause concern us if we foster error by silence: therefore let men of this kind be rebuked; let it not be free for them to have speech according to their will.

From these words St. Prosper and those who favored his cause concluded that silence was imposed on the adversaries of St. Augustine, namely the Semipelagians. The Semipelagians, however, together with Vincentius of Lérins, argued against the Catholics that by these words of Pope Coelestinus the later little works of St. Augustine, hostile to the Semipelagians, were proscribed. For thus Vincentius writes in the Opusculo contra profanas vocum novitates:

Perhaps someone here may still doubt who those are whom he forbids to have free speech in place of their own will: the Preachers of Antiquity, or the inventors of Novelty; let him himself say, and let him himself dissolve the doubt of the readers: "Let it cease," he says, "if the matter is so" — that is, if it is so that, as your Cities and Provinces indeed accuse before me, you consent to dangerous novelties through harmful dissimulation: "Let novelty cease," he says, "if the matter is so, to assail antiquity."

By pressing that word (if) so strongly, he indicates not obscurely that he regards the accusation of Prosper and Hilary as false. St. Prosper, on the contrary, in cap. 43 of lib. contra Collatorem, after he had cited from the Epistola of Pope Coelestinus this eulogy of Augustine:

"Augustine," he says, "a man of holy memory, for his life and for his merits, we have always held in our communion, nor did even a rumor of sinister suspicion ever bespatter him, whom we remember to have been once of such great knowledge that he was always held among the best teachers even by my predecessors."

All, therefore, had rightly thought well of him in common, since he was everywhere both loved and honored by all; he adds:

Against that trumpet of most brilliant praise, against that dignity of a most sacred testimony, does anyone dare to emit the murmur of a malicious interpretation, and to spread over a clear and most sincere sentence the cloud of oblique ambiguity — namely, that because in the Epistola of the Pope the title of the books on behalf of which the matter was undertaken is not expressed, hence it may appear that they were not approved, and that this praise of St. Augustine was bestowed for the merits of his earlier writings.

Then, having recalled the books which Augustine wrote against the Pelagians, he subjoins these words:

Let the calumniators acknowledge that they object in vain that no special or decreed testimony is forbidden to these books, since in all their volumes the norm is praised. For the Apostolic See approves, together with what it has previously known, what does not differ from what it has previously known, and it does not divide the judgment which it joins to praise. Let those, therefore, who refute these most recent books acquiesce in the earlier ones and consent to those things which were written earlier in favor of Christian grace; but they do not do so, etc.

From which it is clear how differently Vincentius and Prosper drew the Epistola of Coelestinus to their own sides. For Vincentius, or at least the Adversaries of Augustine, urged from that Epistola the point that novelty ought to yield to antiquity. Hence they concluded that if Augustine in his earlier writings agreed with antiquity, but not likewise in his later ones, the eulogies of Coelestinus pertained only to the earlier writings of Augustine. On the contrary, Prosper urged from the same Epistola the praise of Augustine, which, since it is pronounced by Coelestinus without distinction, he affirmed must be understood of the later writings no less than of the earlier ones, especially since the same things are taught in both sets of books.

But although Vincentius adhered to Cassianus, the writer of the Collationes, against whom St. Prosper fought, nevertheless St. Eucherius indicates that he was judged not to be a bad Catholic, in lib. De Eremi laude, where, treating of the most holy men of the Island of Lérins, he speaks thus:

This had Lupus of reverend name, who reported to us that wolf from the tribe of Benjamin. This had his brother Vincentius, conspicuous with the inner splendor of gems. This now possesses Caprasius, venerable in gravity, equal to the ancient Saints. This now has those holy Elders who, with their cells divided, brought the Egyptian Fathers to our Gauls.

GENNADIUS MASSILIENSIS.

Gennadius, Priest of Marseilles, who lived at the time of Pope Gelasius, about the year 490, is not without reason believed to have adhered to the Semipelagians, since in lib. De viris illustribus he praises Cassianus and Faustus and prefers their opinion on grace to the doctrine of Prosper, and celebrates St. Augustine so coldly that he even says that by his great loquacity he did not avoid sin and scarcely exempts him from heresy. Therefore Pope Gelasius rejects his works among the Apocryphal books, and Baronius, ad annum 433, num. 28.¹ affirms that Gennadius was of the same stamp as Cassianus. And ad annum 440, num. 25.² he says that he was one of the Gallican Priests, of whom St. Prosper and St. Hilary complained before Pope Coelestinus, that they opposed the doctrine of Augustine. He adds, however, that by the efforts of Gelasius he came to his senses and, having been taken up as Bishop of Marseilles, truly departed this life Orthodox and Catholic. And the eulogy of Pope Adrianus in the Epistola ad Carolum Magnum concerning this same Gennadius persuades us of this, which runs thus:

These testimonies of the Most Holy Pontiffs have been offered, namely of St. Gennadius, Bishop of Marseilles, on how the bodies and relics of the saints are to be venerated, cap. 40, where he says that the bodies of the Saints and especially the relics of the Blessed are to be honored most sincerely as members of Christ, and that the Basilicas called by their name, as places devoted to divine worship, are to be approached with purest affection and most faithful devotion. If anyone comes against this opinion, let him not be believed a Christian, but an Eunomian.

Paragraph III.

Indeed, various men most celebrated for piety and learning: but especially St. Augustine, who chiefly wrote against them the books De Praedestinatione Sanctorum and De Bono perseverantiae. St. Hilary of Arles and St. Prosper lent him a hand, the latter of whom attacked the Semipelagians best and most fiercely of all and dissolved all their arguments most subtly, as is clear from his writings.

They were likewise fought against by Coelestinus the Supreme Pontiff, and by Gelasius, who placed the books of Cassianus and Faustus among the Apocryphal books, because they denied prevenient grace. Nor was the judgment of Felix IV different.

The Semipelagian errors were likewise condemned in various Councils, but most especially in that of Orange, whose principal purpose seems to have been to condemn the doctrine of Faustus. For the first error of Faustus was that he denied the necessity of prevenient grace. But this is established in Canons 3. 1. 6. 11. 17 and 22. The second error concerned the efficacy of man with God, not from a power superadded to nature, but from natural power; this opinion is condemned in Can. 7. 16 and 22. The third error concerned the justification of the ancients through the law of nature or of Moses, which is disapproved in Can. 19 and 25, where especially it is denied that Abel, Noe and Abraham were saved through the Law of nature. The fourth concerned the origin of faith from the principles of nature; this error is rejected in Can. 6 and most especially 20.

ON THE HERESY OF THE PRAEDESTINATIANS.

As heresy is the fruitful parent of monsters, hence it is no wonder if that heresy which arose on the occasion of divine grace did not long stand still in the Pelagians alone, the most hostile enemies of that very grace. For in them, when it felt itself attacked and routed by the Catholic champions of truth, most especially by St. Augustine, immediately taking the contrary path it sprouted again in the Praedestinatians, who, disputing about divine grace and Predestination from the badly conceived writings of St. Augustine himself, asserted that the labor of good works did not profit those living piously, if they had been foreseen by God for damnation, nor did it harm the impious, even if they lived wickedly, if indeed they had been predestined by God to life. And so they judged that the whole business of our salvation was to be referred back solely to divine Election and Predestination. And hence they judged that free choice is depressed or extinguished by the necessity of grace, in whose presence the human will could not act well, and in whose absence it could not operate otherwise than badly.

Since the Calvinists had drunk in this heretical assertion, to be sure, with all their heart, lest they should appear the revivers and re-cookers of a heresy buried not long ago, they resolved to accuse the trustworthiness of all the historians who wrote that some heresy of the Praedestinatians had existed, and they contended that the Praedestinatians were none other than those more earnestly devoted to the doctrine of St. Augustine, and so to the Catholic opinion, who were harassed by the Semipelagians. This bold design, above all others, was undertaken by Iacobus Usserius, the standard-bearer of the Irish Calvinists, in the book which he entitled Gothescalci et de Praedestinatione controversiae ab eo motae historia, where he sharply contends that the Praedestinatians were none other than those who championed the opinion of St. Augustine against the Semipelagians. Hence he insults the Catholic writers, because they write that the opinion of the Praedestinatians was dug out of the stinking tombs of the ancient Heretics by the Calvinists of today. This same refuge was seized by the Artificer of the new opinion; for he writes in libr. 8 of De Haeresi Pelagiana, cap. ultimo, that there never was any Praedestinatian heresy:

"I think," he says, "that there never was in the nature of things a Praedestinatian Heresy, or Praedestinatian Heretics; but on the contrary that the Catholic doctrine which St. Augustine and Prosper taught was calumniously traduced by the Massilians under the name of that heresy. And so those Praedestinatian Heretics were none other than St. Augustine, St. Prosper, St. Hilary and all who followed their doctrine, whom the Semipelagians pointed out by that name and, with their names suppressed, placed among the Heretics; under which names credulous posterity turned away from certain persons as Praedestinatian Heretics. How far these things are from the truth will be clear in the following Paragraphs."

Paragraph I.

I affirm it, and I chiefly argue it, first of all, from St. Augustine, who in lib. 2 of the Retract., cap. penult., relates that the Monks of Hadrumetum dwelling in Africa, when his Epistola 105 to Sixtus had been read, were divided into two parties and opinions, one of which, under the leadership of Florus, believed that grace was so preached by St. Augustine himself that it took away free choice. The other, however, fought so for the defense of free choice that it declined into the heresy of the Pelagians. In order to remove this dissension from the midst, that holy Doctor wrote two Epistles to Valentinus, the superior of the Monastery of Hadrumetum, and to its Monks, which occupy n. 16 and 17 among the Epistles of the holy Doctor himself; he directed just as many books to them, one De Gratia et libero arbitrio, the other De Correctione et Gratia. In these he warns that both errors are to be avoided, and that, with the extremes set aside, the middle way which the Catholic Faith holds is to be followed. So that neither is free choice believed to have been extinguished by the sin of Adam, but weakened and debilitated; nor is it impeded or destroyed by grace, but helped and healed; and thus free choice is not denied to be in us, whether for good or for evil, nor yet is so much attributed to it that without the grace of God it suffices for doing good or avoiding evil. Therefore, he says, Epist. 47, the Apostle said to you, Romanorum 3:

Do not decline to the right hand, nor to the left, that is, do not so defend free choice as to attribute to it good works without the grace of God, nor so defend grace as, being as it were secure about it, to love evil works, as if the grace of God itself turned them away from us.

By these words he takes care that free choice is not so to be championed that the whole business of our salvation is referred back into it, according to the error of the Pelagians, nor is the necessity of divine grace so to be defended that, with good works neglected, God alone is judged the artificer of our salvation, according to the opinion of the Praedestinatians, who, to be sure, preached that good works did not profit the predestined, nor evil ones harm them.

This same truth is confirmed from St. Prosper in the Epist. ad S. Augustinum prefixed to the book De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, where he warns him that some in Africa (he undoubtedly means the Monks of Hadrumetum) had already been disturbed by those things which he had written about Predestination; just as many had begun to be disturbed in Gaul by those same writings of his on this matter. He likewise recounts what was objected against his doctrine of Predestination, chiefly by the Priests of Marseilles, and observes that they report from it:

This purpose of God's coercion, by which before the beginning of the world, or in the very creation of the human race, a separation of the chosen and the rejected is said to have been made, and according to it it pleased the Creator that some should be created vessels of honor and others vessels of dishonor, and to take away from the fallen the care of rising again and to bring upon the holy the necessity of time, because on both sides the labor would be superfluous, since neither could the rejected enter by any industry nor the elect fall away by any negligence — for in whatever way they conduct themselves, nothing other than what God has defined can happen, and under uncertain hope the course cannot be constant; since if Election holds something else for the predestined, the intention of one striving is vain. Therefore all industry is removed, virtues are taken away, and under this name of Predestination a certain fatal necessity is introduced.

From these things it is clear how true it is that some Assertors of a fatal Predestination existed from the badly conceived writings of St. Augustine. Hence the same St. Prosper, concluding the epistle, asks St. Augustine himself to explain how satisfaction can be given to the great difficulties raised about his doctrine, and to vindicate him from the suspicion of so sinister an opinion.

"Grant," he says, "O best Father, that you deign to open what is more obscure in these questions: how through that preoperating and cooperating grace free choice is not impeded; just as through this preaching of the purpose of God no one of those who are to be exhorted is impeded, nor do they have an occasion of negligence, if they despair of being predestined."

By these things it is established how far those wander from the mind of SSt. Augustine and Prosper and from the truth of the matter, who nevertheless strive to persuade that the doctrine of both is their own — the error which was refuted by Augustine, and which St. Prosper resented being attributed to him, and asked to have explained how he might refute that calumny.

Secondly, the same thing is proved from Gennadius of Marseilles in the appendix to the book of St. Augustine De haeresibus, where to the eighty-nine heresies enumerated by the holy Doctor himself he added four that arose afterwards, namely the Praedestinatian, Nestorian, Eutychian and Timothean, as is had in the codex of the Library of St. Victor, and Hincmarus testifies in lib. De Praedest., cap. 1:

"But," he says, "concerning 88 heresies the same wonderful Doctor Augustine composed a book, to which he last of all subjoined the heresy of the Pelagians. Thence Gennadius, a very learned Priest of Marseilles, places this Praedestinatian heresy as the ninetieth to the Pelagian sect. Then he sets the ninety-first, the Nestorian, and so the Eutychian, and after this the Timothean."

It is confirmed from the Epistola Hincmari ad Nicolaum summum Pontificem, in which, informing him about the errors of Gothescalcus, he says:

"If your wisdom wishes to know the catholic articles which he seems to teach against the faith of the Church, and which he drew from the old heresy of the Praedestinatians (which was first impugned in Africa and afterwards in Francia, at the same time at which the Nestorian heresy, under Pope Coelestinus, was convicted as much by the authority of the latter as by the care and vigilance of St. Prosper), I will set them out for you in order, not all the articles which he maintains, but only some of them, which are nevertheless of the greatest importance. He says, therefore, that which the ancient Praedestinatians also said: that just as God predestined some to eternal life, so also he predestined others to eternal death."

It is established, therefore, that some Praedestinatians existed, convicted and impugned by SSt. Augustine and Prosper.

Thirdly and finally, the same thing is evinced from the Councils in which the Praedestinatian heresy was condemned. For first, the second Synod of Orange had regard to this heresy in Can. 25, when it said:

This also we believe according to the Catholic faith: that, having received grace through baptism, all the baptized can and ought, with Christ helping and cooperating, to fulfill those things which pertain to salvation, if they are willing to labor faithfully. But that some are predestined to evil by divine power, we not only do not believe, but even if there are those who wish to believe so great an evil, we say anathema to them with all detestation.

But this heresy was expressly condemned in the Council of Arles in the year, as Baronius holds, 490, in which the Epistola of Faustus to Lucidus was approved and fortified with the subscription of the Bishops, by which Epistola the errors of the Praedestinatians are expressed and anathematized, errors which Lucidus himself had renewed and defended. For as Baronius relates, ad annum Christi 490, and from him Alvarez in De origine Pelagianae haeresis, c. 23:

After the death of St. Augustine, some came forth who, from his badly understood writings, introduced many errors, which they tried to defend in the name and authority of St. Augustine. But St. Prosper, acting for the defense of St. Augustine himself, validly refuted them. These were called (as Sigebertus noted, ad annum Domini 415) followers of the heresy of the Praedestinatians. When he had censured their errors, he thus continues the narrative: Now one Lucidus, a Priest of great name, was held by these errors, to whom Faustus wrote that epistle which we said was approved as truly Catholic by the Bishops of the Council of Arles and fortified with their subscription. In this epistle Faustus warns Lucidus that the Supreme Bishops were planning to suspend him from communion unless he detested his errors, and when he had prescribed the very words by which he must execrate the impious dogmas, he thus threatens: "But if you are unwilling to transmit that epistle subscribed, as I said, you will openly prove by that very silence that you still persist in error, and so you will already make it necessary for me to expose your person in public assemblies." But when Lucidus had received this epistle, immediately obeying the Fathers and recovering from his error, he directed to the Council this Epistle containing the confession of his faith, in which he abjures all the erroneous articles according to the form prescribed in the epistle of Faustus.

Note further the beginning of the letter of Lucidus, by which he addresses the bishops thus: Your correction is the public safety, and your judgment is medicine. Whence I also hold it the greatest remedy to excuse myself by accusing past errors and to wash them away with my saving confusion.

And therefore, in accordance with the aforesaid recent statutes of the Council, I condemn together with you that opinion which says that the labor of human obedience should not be joined to divine grace: which says that after the fall of the first man the choice of the will was wholly extinguished: which says that Christ our Lord and Savior did not undergo death for the salvation of all: which says that the foreknowledge of God violently compels a man to death, or that those who perish perish by the will of God, etc.

But where Baronius has related the entire letter of Lucidus, he warns thus:

Thus far the profession of Lucidus, according to those things which were defined in the Synod by the named bishops, the Fathers applying themselves to this, that they might explode the errors especially of those who, from the doctrine of Saint Augustine badly apprehended by them, or calumniously twisted into a depraved sense, had drawn depraved conclusions.

This heresy was likewise condemned in the Synod of Mainz, gathered from the bishops of Germany under the presidency of Rabanus, Archbishop of Mainz, in which Gottschalk was condemned for renewing the heresy of the Praedestinatians; and also in the Synod of Quierzy, in which Gottschalk was again condemned by Hincmar and other bishops, and thrust back into a monastery, where he was beaten with rods until he threw his book into a fire lit nearby, as we shall relate more fully below: but first the objections of the Innovators are to be resolved, who attack the existence of the Praedestinatian heresy.

Paragraph II.

They object 1. If there had been any Praedestinatian heresy, Saint Augustine would without doubt have numbered it among the heresies, and would have openly impugned it, or at least have made some mention of it: but no trace of that heresy is found in St. Augustine, although Sigebert asserts that it had its origin together with the Pelagian one around the year 415: it is therefore an argument that the heresy itself is fictitious and imaginary.

I deny the minor. For, as is clear from the preceding paragraph, Saint Augustine made mention of the principal error of the sect of the Praedestinatians in Letters 46 and 47 written to Valentinus and the monks of Hadrumetum, and in the books De gratia et libero arbitrio and Correctione et gratia, which he wrote to extinguish that same error at its very origin. Nor does it matter that he does not call that opinion about predestination either a heresy or Praedestinatian: for since the virus of this heretical opinion had not yet spread far, it had not yet obtained the appellation of the Praedestinatians; just as, by a like case, the Semi-Pelagian heresy, although it was most fiercely impugned by the saints Augustine, Prosper, and Hilary, is nevertheless not called the Semi-Pelagian heresy by them: but it received this name after the death of those holy Fathers, chiefly from the Scholastics.

They object 2. The first of all who wove and reviewed the dogmas of the Praedestinatians was Gennadius, priest of Marseille: but no faith is to be given to him, since, infected with the Semi-Pelagian heresy, he was supremely hostile to Augustine and Prosper, the most upright champions of grace; whence he taxes Augustine as sinning and erring by verbosity; Prosper, however, he attacks with taunts, because he impugned the salutary little works of Cassian (as he himself says), that is, the errors about grace. Moreover, in weaving the catalogue of heretics he indeed counts the Praedestinatians among the heretics, but makes no mention of the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians, as being his friends. For this reason Saint Isidore, Bishop of Seville, when he had seen that book of Gennadius and had thence described several heresies in exactly the same words, added the Pelagians passed over by Gennadius and passes over the Praedestinatians placed by him: therefore it is a sign that these heretics did not really exist.

I answer 1. denying the major, for it is false that Gennadius was the first of all to place the Praedestinatians in the roll of heretics. For before him St. Augustine and St. Prosper held them as heretics, as did also the ancient anonymous author of the book entitled Praedestinatus, in its preface, where he relates that Pope Celestine so execrated the book published by the Praedestinatians themselves under the feigned name of Augustine and offered to him, that he ordered it to be condemned to perpetual silence. The same author first expressly undertook the refutation of that heresy, which he also placed ninetieth in the Catalogue of heresies, under the distinguished name of the Praedestinators, as did also Prosper Tyro — not indeed that Aquitanian bishop, disciple of Augustine, but another of the same name and age, as is clear from the Chronico Pithoeano, published by the care of Pithou from a codex of the library of St. Victor of Paris.

I answer 2. It is false that the Pelagians were passed over by Gennadius for the sake of friendship and alliance: for first, Gennadius wrote no book about heresies expressly, but only added an appendix of heresies to the book of Saint Augustine, as we proved in the preceding §. by the testimony of Hincmar. Moreover, in the Parisian Victorine codex, after the end of the book of St. Augustine De haeresibus, that appendix of Gennadius is joined and is related in this manner:

Here ends the account of Saint Augustine, bishop, on heresies. These things, however, which follow are set down by the holy Gennadius of Marseille

by the priest. The ninetieth: the Praedestinatians are those who say that God, etc. The ninety-first: the Nestorians say of the Holy Virgin, etc. The ninety-second: the Eutychians say of the Lord Jesus, etc. The ninety-third: the Timotheans say that the Son of God, indeed a true man born of the Virgin Mary, etc. then afterwards it is added: here ends the book on heresies.

From which it is clear that Gennadius did not proceed further, but only appended these four heresies to the catalogue of St. Augustine. Secondly, they wrongly affirm that the Pelagians were passed over by Gennadius, since he did not pass over those enumerated by Augustine in the eighty-ninth place among the heretics, nor ought Gennadius, as favoring their errors, to have passed them over, since in the Catalogo Illustrium Ecclesiae Scriptorum he had openly named Pelagius a heresiarch. Thirdly and finally, it is false that the Praedestinatians were passed over by Isidore because he had found them expressed in Gennadius; for Gennadius wove not a catalogue of heretics but only an appendix, which Isidore could have read, as we have just said. Nor perhaps had he read that appendix of Gennadius, since where he speaks of the Nestorians and Eutychians, Isidore does not seem to have borrowed so much as one iota from Gennadius. Wherefore it should rather be asserted that the Praedestinatians were passed over by Isidore because he had not read that appendix of Gennadius.

They object 3. If any argument proves that the Praedestinatian heresy once existed, it is chiefly this, that (as we said above) it seems to have been condemned by the Fathers of the Council of Arles, and abjured by Lucidus, who had earlier defended it: but this argument is wholly light and futile. First, for no authority ought to be attributed among us to this Council, for it was nothing other than a gathering of Semi-Pelagians, or of bishops deceived by the Semi-Pelagians, namely by Faustus. It is confirmed, because the books of Faustus De libero arbitrio, teeming with errors, were approved by the bishops of that Council of Arles, which is an argument that either those bishops were contaminated with the Semi-Pelagian heresy, or that they were deluded by the arts and prestiges of Faustus, the craftiest of the Semi-Pelagians. Secondly, Faustus himself (who composed the decrees of that Council, by which the Praedestinatian heresy is said to be proscribed, in his letter to Lucidus) was not only the standard-bearer of the Semi-Pelagians, but also their fiercest champion: what faith, then, is to be given to a ringleader of heretics and adversary of Catholic truth? Thirdly, that letter of Faustus to Lucidus, by which the Praedestinatian heresy is condemned, teems with Semi-Pelagian doctrine. The letter of Lucidus, however, by which he is said to abjure the Praedestinatian heresy, openly savors of Pelagianism, and therefore faith is to be given to neither: therefore neither from these does the existence of the Praedestinatian heresy seem to be asserted.

I deny the minor. For it is certain that those bishops who were present at the Council of Arles, if you except Faustus alone, were most renowned for piety and doctrine; to prove which, it is pleasing to hear Baronius at the year 490. n. 25., where, when he had reviewed the names of those who had subscribed to the letter of Faustus to Lucidus, he adds:

We wished here to review the names of the bishops, because nearly all were bishops of great fame, mention of whom is made in Sidonius; for Auxianus, placed in the first place, and Pragmatius likewise, who is held in the fifth place, a saint as well, to whom the letters of Sidonius stand, was the bishop of Autun, and known in the Council of Epaon. Patiens, who follows in the sixth place, also numbered among the saints, was the bishop of Lyon. The memory likewise of Eufronius, who is counted seventh, flourishes in Sidonius, who names him a saint, as also of Megetius, written in the eighth place, to whom there exists a letter of the same Sidonius. Claudius, who follows in the ninth place, was the bishop of Besançon, likewise celebrated in memory among the saints, etc.

Behold whom the Innovators call Semi-Pelagians; whether faith is to be given to them rather than to so many most holy men, let the reader judge.

The Innovators reply. Those subscriptions of the bishops are supposititious and false: first, because Henry Canisius asserts that he found a most ancient manuscript codex of that letter of Faustus to Lucidus in the monastery of St. Gall, to which those subscriptions of the bishops were not annexed: then, because if anyone among the fathers of Arles ought to have subscribed to this letter, it was above all Leontius, Archbishop of Arles and president of the whole synod: but his name is not read among the other subscribers. Therefore those subscriptions do not seem legitimate.

I deny the antecedent. and to its proof I say that Canisius speaks of a single manuscript of St. Gall, and a most disordered one, since it does not have annexed to the letter of Faustus even the subscription of Faustus himself: but it inserts certain other things wholly foreign to the purpose, and finally, after about one hundred and twenty pages, it reports the subscription of Faustus conceived in these words: Likewise in another hand, I Faustus have re-read the copy of my letter and subscribed. Therefore no faith is to be given to that disordered codex.

I say 2. that although Leontius and certain other prelates are not read to have subscribed to the letter of Faustus, it is nonetheless certain for that reason that it was subscribed by those eleven who are named in the published editions of that letter. Nor can it be doubted that the letter of Faustus and the doctrine contained in it, and proposed to Lucidus, was approved by the Council: for that is manifestly clear from the words of that letter of Lucidus, by which he addresses the Fathers of the Council thus:

Your correction is the public safety, and your judgment is medicine. Whence I also hold it the greatest remedy to excuse myself by accusing past errors and to wash them away with my saving confusion. Therefore, in accordance with the aforesaid recent statutes of the Council, I condemn together with you that opinion which says that the labor of human obedience should not be joined to divine grace, etc.

Add. that in tome 2. Conciliorum Gallic. pag. 147. that Synod of Arles is furnished with this title: Concilium Arelatense a Leontio Arelatensi Episcopo ad condemnandum Praedestinationis errorem congregatum etc. It is therefore certain that this Council was convoked against the Praedestinatians, and that Leontius, together with the other bishops there assembled, condemned the errors of the Praedestinatians renewed and defended by Lucidus.

To the confirmation. I indeed confess that Faustus, in the dedicatory letter by which he dedicated and offered that little work of his on grace and free choice to Leontius, wrote these words: In which little work, indeed, after the subscription of the Council of Arles, new errors having been detected, the Synod of Lyon required that something be added.

But, as Baronius skillfully observes at the year of Christ 490. n. 10., that subscription of the Council of Arles of which Faustus speaks does not pertain to his little work De gratia et libero arbitrio, but only to the letter which he gave to the priest Lucidus in the name of the Council of Arles, that he might recall the man who had fallen into errors to the Catholic faith. And indeed from that very letter of Faustus to Leontius, whence these words are taken, it plainly appears that that little work De gratia et libero arbitrio was composed after the Synod of Arles, and therefore could not have been approved by its subscription: Behold, he says, the beginning of the letter:

That out of pastoral solicitude, blessed Pope Leontius, you held a council of the greatest bishops, the churches of all Gaul being gathered together, for condemning the error of predestination. But that you entrusted to weak shoulders the labor and care of setting in order those things which you most learnedly set forth in public collation, you consulted, as I think, too little for so great a business, too little for your holy estimation.

From which it is clear that Faustus composed his books De gratia et libero arbitrio after the Synod of Arles, at the request of Leontius, that he would expound more fully what had been sanctioned in it. But in order to procure some authority for his work (which he foresaw would be displeasing to Catholics, because it savored of Pelagianism and sowed the seeds of Semi-Pelagianism), he attached to his books the monuments of two councils, namely of Arles and Lyon. Moreover, he also wove into the letter to Leontius those ambiguous words, by which the unwary would be led to believe that his books had been approved by the Council of Arles.

Let it therefore be lawful, with Severinus Binius, to conclude that the little book most full of Pelagian errors, which he entitled De gratia et libero arbitrio and published to the whole world, and which Caesarius of Arles and Avitus, bishops of Vienne, and John, priest of Antioch, refuted by a contrary writing, and which finally Pope Gelasius rightly placed among the apocrypha — this little book, I say, the sacred assembly of bishops by no means approved.

To the second proof. I say that Faustus was indeed at that time the standard-bearer of the Semi-Pelagians; nevertheless, since, hiding an erroneous mind under an ovine and Catholic appearance, he had found the greatest trust among the Fathers of the Council of Arles, says the cited Baronius, n. 30., that he had led Lucidus, a man of great name, to penance, and had merited praise among the sacred synodal assemblies, at which most holy and most learned men were present.

For one could see, adds Baronius, n. 36., that the same Faustus appeared in the assemblies of the holy Fathers (namely of Arles and Lyon), like Saul among the prophets, himself also a prophet, thinking the same as them: but that afterwards, by private writings, with deceitful art he destroyed the whole doctrine concerning the justification of man, while wishing craftily to seem to fight against Pelagius, he was found out to have favored Pelagius. Nevertheless, while he wrote that letter to Lucidus, he seemed still to show a Catholic mind, since he inserted into the letter itself nothing that did not savor of Catholic doctrine.

To the third proof. I say that those letters both of Faustus to Lucidus and of Lucidus to the Fathers of the Council of Arles are truly called Catholic, not only by Cardinal Baronius and Didacus Alvarez, Bishop of Trani, but also by John Malderus, Louvain doctor and Bishop of Antwerp, as well as by John Brasichellana, Master of the Sacred Palace, in that censure of his which is now prefixed to the little work of Faustus, where he asserted that the letters of Faustus and Lucidus were confirmed by the judgment of two synods, and that they are sound and truly Catholic.

Add. that the things which the Innovators denounce in those letters savor of Semi-Pelagianism only in appearance, as Anthony Deschamps pursues at length, Lib. 2. in Iansenium disp. 7. cap. 1. n. 12. and following; for what they most of all carp at in the letter of Lucidus, who says: I condemn that opinion which says that from Adam until Christ none of the Gentiles was saved by the first grace of God, that is, by the law of nature, unto the coming of Christ, because they lost free choice in the first Parent.

They do this only by a most foul manner of calumniating; for to give credence to their accusation, after these words 'the law of nature' they insert a comma, to signify that Faustus and Lucidus understand by the first grace of God the law of nature taken precisely and separated from every grace of Christ the Savior, which is certainly the height of caviling; for the mind of Cardinal Baronius, Didacus Alvarez, Severinus Binius, and Margarinus de la Bigne was far otherwise, who, understanding that by the first grace of God was here designated the law of nature with that grace which flowed back upon it from the future coming of Christ, so that it might appear more clearly in one continuous context and without any distinction, joined these words: that by the law of nature they were saved unto the coming of Christ.

The same rash lust of calumniating (says Anthony Deschamps) drove them to call to judgment these words of Lucidus as well: I condemn that opinion which says that some are destined to death, others predestined to life. To which certainly all Catholics ought to subscribe, for here no other notion of foreknowledge or predestination is proscribed than that which is now defended by the Calvinians, and was defended by the same Lucidus before he abjured his errors; for thus a little before he had described it. Faustus: I condemn that opinion which says that the foreknowledge of God violently compels a man to death, or that those who perish perish by the will of God. Which condemnation is truly that of a Catholic man.

They object 4. All the things which Gennadius, Sigebertus, and Hincmar ascribe to the Praedestinatians are the very dogmas of Saint Augustine, which the Semi-Pelagians carped at and denounced as handed down by that holy Doctor and expressed in his books: therefore in reality no Praedestinatian heretics ever existed. They prove the antecedent, first, because Gennadius says that the Praedestinatians teach by their dogmas that God accepts the persons of men, and that God draws some, even unwilling, after many evil works, to salvation, but rejects others after good works. These are the very complaints of the Semi-Pelagians against the distribution and operation of grace, and the sound doctrine of predestination, which they invidiously traduced under this Praedestinatian name, namely that some, after many evil works, are sometimes called to salvation, others, however, after many good works, are sometimes rejected. Secondly, from the fact that among the dogmas ascribed to the Praedestinatians some are openly Catholic, as that God does not give perseverance to all the just, namely to those who are not predestined, and that those who are predestined to eternal life, even if they wallow in perfidy or in every kind of sin for a long time, indeed even to the end of life, will receive grace, and so the occasion by which they both believe in God and live piously and holily, which doctrine is altogether Catholic: Therefore, etc.

I answer. Indeed several dogmas were falsely attributed by the Semi-Pelagians to Saint Augustine, which were nevertheless far alien from his mind; as St. Prosper testifies in the preface of the responsionis ad capitula Gallorum, and in the book against the Collatorem, cap. 1., he says that the Massilians, by their objections against the doctrine of St. Augustine, draw to themselves many unlearned men, and disturb hearts that have not the spirit of discernment. Therefore that those dogmas which are attributed to the Praedestinatians are not the doctrine of Saint Augustine, St. Prosper teaches in the books of the Responsionum ad capitula Gallorum and to the obiectiones Vincentianas, as well as to the excerpta Genuensium.

To the second. I say that Gennadius rightly reckons among the dogmas ascribed to the Praedestinatians that they said that perseverance is not given to all the just; for he does not speak nor understand of perseverance in actu secundo, or in the state of being accomplished, in which sense it is most true; but of perseverance in actu primo, that is, of the potency of persevering, which the Praedestinatians wished to be given to the predestined alone; against which error the second Synod of Orange pronounced, Can. 25.: that it must be believed according to the Catholic faith that, grace having been received through baptism, all the baptized, with Christ helping and cooperating, can and ought, if they wish to labor faithfully, to fulfill those things which pertain to salvation, and consequently that they have the power of persevering.

That he again asserts that the Praedestinatians teach that those who are predestined to eternal life will receive grace, etc., he understands it according to the sense of the Praedestinatians, who wished that to happen from antecedent necessity, introduced through predestination and reprobation themselves: because, they said, God by his mere good pleasure selected some out of the mass of perdition, whom he decreed to save through necessitating means; and that they, by the force of such an election, are necessarily to be saved, nor can they die a most evil death, whatever evil they have previously committed: others, on the contrary, he left in the mass of perdition, and therefore deprived them of the grace necessary that they might die holily and piously, although through the whole preceding time of their life they had lived laudably: which opinion, indeed, all Catholics execrate as heretical. Therefore Gennadius attributes no Catholic dogma to the Praedestinatians.

In the same way is to be understood what Gennadius says, that the Praedestinatians by their dogmas make God an acceptor of persons, namely in this, that they thought God finally necessitates to conversion those whom he had determined to save, though unwilling and long resisting; and after whatever evil works, draws them to salvation: others, however, after long-continued good works, finally casts off, and that by the force of their predestination or reprobation alone, which opinion is wholly heretical: what, then, is there to be blamed in Gennadius in this matter?

Paragraph III.

The heresy of the Predestinarians, extinct long before, was roused from the underworld around the year eight hundred and fifty by Gottschalk, a Belgian by birth, as Aventinus holds in lib. 4 of the Annalium, or a Gaul, as it seemed to Trithemius in lib. 3 of the Vitae Rabani; who, when he had devoted himself to the religious life in the Monastery of Orbais near Soissons, so conducted himself in that place that he seemed by habit a Monk, but savage in mind, impatient of quiet, and delighting in the novelty of expressions, and singular among his own for harmful fickleness. At length, from all the perverse seeds which he had then come to know in these regions, he chose for himself certain chapters, so that he might be able to become known by the novelty of his expressions; and leaving the Monastery irregularly, having traversed very many regions, as the worst of sowers he sowed deadly seeds: as Hincmar reports in the Epist. ad Nicolaum Papam, who had heard the very same from the Abbot and the Monks with whom that Gottschalk had lived.

Rabanus, Archbishop of Mainz and President of the Council in which Gottschalk was condemned, testifies to this very thing.

Let it be known, he says, to your charity, that a certain wandering Monk named Gottschalk, who asserts that he was ordained a Priest in your Parish, came from Italy to us at Mainz, introducing a new superstitious and harmful doctrine concerning the Predestination of God and leading peoples into error; saying that the Predestination of God is in evil just as it is in good; and that there are certain persons in this world who, on account of the Predestination of God, by which He compels them to go to death, cannot be corrected from error and sin: as if God had made them from the beginning to be incorrigible, and liable to punishment, to go to destruction. Having therefore recently heard this opinion from him in the Synod held at Mainz, and finding him incorrigible, with our most pious King Louis assenting and commanding, we have decreed to send him, condemned together with his pernicious doctrine, to you; so that you may confine him in your Parish, from which he first departed irregularly, and not suffer him to teach error any longer and seduce the christian people, because already, as I have heard, he holds many seduced.

But so that the controversy moved concerning Gottschalk may be treated thoroughly and lucidly, it is pleasing, with Anthony Deschamps, to distribute it into three parts: The first will embrace the beginnings of that contention and will exhibit Gottschalk condemned in the Council of Mainz. The second will follow the controversy spreading more widely and will show that the same man was condemned again in the Synod of Quierzy and consigned to a narrow prison. The third will reconcile the canons of the Council of Valence, which seem to favor Gottschalk, and to oppose the Council of Quierzy.

GOTTSCHALK CONDEMNED IN THE COUNCIL OF MAINZ.

That Gottschalk was condemned in the Synod of Mainz is clear not only from the aforesaid testimony of Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz, but also from various Writers and Annals which have made mention of him, and which with the greatest agreement assign him no last place among the Predestinarian Heretics. Thus especially the Annals of Fulda and of St. Bertin, Flodoardus, lib. 3 of the Historiae Remens., Aventinus, lib. 4 of the Annalium: Trithemius, lib. 3 of the Vitae Rabani; concerning which matter, the writer of the Frankish annals published by Pithou, who lived in those same times, speaks thus:

About the Calends of October, he says: (King Louis) held a general assembly at Mainz, in which he received, heard, and dismissed the legates of his brothers and of the Normans and Slavs: he also reconciled with him the men of Bishop Rabanus who had conspired against their lord, having been publicly convicted. Also a certain Priest Gottschalk, thinking wrongly concerning the Predestination of God, and affirming that both the good are predestined by God to life and the wicked to perpetual death, inevitably, was reasonably convicted in the assembly, as it seemed to very many, and was sent to his own Bishop Hincmar, at Rheims, first however confirming by oath that he would not return again into the kingdom of Louis.

Hincmar also testifies, in the epistola ad Nicolaum Papam, where he speaks thus of Gottschalk:

Having traversed very many regions and, the worst of Sowers, sowing deadly seeds; at length, a Synod having been held in the city of Mainz and he presenting to Archbishop Rabanus the little book of his error, he was condemned by all the Bishops of Germany and, with synodal letters, sent back to the Metropolis of Rheims, over which, by the Lord's authority, I already presided.

But how great authority the censure of this Synod against Gottschalk ought to have, the eminent piety and erudition of the Archbishop of Mainz, the president of that Synod, testifies in the first place. For this is that great Rabanus Maurus, whom Saint Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, calls Catholic in faith and fully instructed in spiritual knowledge: Hermannus Contractus, an outstanding expounder of the divine books: John Trithemius, a man most learned in the divine letters, to whom neither Italy produced a like, nor Germany an equal: Sixtus of Siena, a man most complete in the knowledge of all disciplines, to whom Germany brought forth no peer in that age: Cardinal Baronius, a star of Germany shining in those times, the summit of the Theologians of that time and a Doctor not unequal to the great ones. What, therefore, will the Innovators be able to mutter against the decrees and sanctions of a man of so great a name? The Bishops who were present at this Synod testify the very same, and in so great a number that Hincmar writes to Nicholas the Supreme Pontiff that Gottschalk was condemned in this Synod by all the Bishops of Germany. But of what sort and how celebrated in great doctrine and piety those Pontiffs were, Trithemius teaches in the Chronicle of Hirsau for the year 848 in these words:

There were present there among others the most renowned men, the Bishops: Helti, Archbishop of Trier, Hildebold, Archbishop of Cologne, Altefrid, Bishop of Hildesheim, Haimo, Bishop of Halberstadt, Ludericus, Bishop of Bremen, etc.; and many other Bishops and Abbots and Monks, among whom several were most famous in life and doctrine.

But how much this first sentence passed upon Gottschalk ulcerated his mind is evident from this, that afterwards he did not cease to rage and rave against Rabanus, the President of the Synod: nor did he only tear him with the most atrocious injuries, but also those whom he experienced as opposing and resisting he called, from the name of Rabanus, Rabanite heretics, as Amolo, Archbishop of Lyons, testifies in the Epistle which he wrote to Gottschalk himself.

In the seventh place, he says, two wholly grave evils in your ways have displeased us very much; one, that you tear the Priests of God and the Rectors of the Churches with such injuries and insults and curses, and trample them with such contempt and contumacy, miserably deceived, assuredly, by the spirit of error and pride; so that you seem to have nothing at all of Christian patience, nothing of Christian reverence. For among other things, you do not fear to call heretics all who resist the faith with the insane zeal of your senses, and you presume to name them Rabanites after a good and learned man and a Catholic Bishop.

GOTTSCHALK CONDEMNED IN THE COUNCIL OF QUIERZY.

Such is the plague of pernicious and heretical doctrine, that it seems it must be purged by no fire, and by no thunderbolt sent from heaven. Which Gottschalk himself certainly demonstrates; for condemned by the Fathers of the Synod of Mainz, yet not corrected, he set out from Germany into Gaul, as Hincmar reports in the Epistle to Nicholas the Supreme Pontiff:

Gottschalk, he says, having been condemned by all the Bishops of Germany, was sent back with synodal letters to the Metropolis of Rheims, over which, by the Lord's authority, I already presided. But what happened thereafter, he immediately subjoins: Afterwards, he says, having been heard by the Bishops of Rheims, and of Gaul, Belgium and the other Provinces, and found a heretic, because he did not wish to come to his senses from his perversity; lest he should harm others, since he did not wish to profit himself, by the judgment of the Bishops of the aforesaid Provinces, in our Parish, (since Rothaldus, Bishop of Soissons, of whose Parish he was, did not know how to resist him, and, being a lover of novelty, he was feared by us, lest he should learn to think perversely, he who was unwilling to think and teach what is right:) and lest the same Gottschalk, living a common life with others, should make them partakers of his error, he was consigned to Monastic custody, etc.

Or as he speaks in lib. De Praedest., cap. 2. Thence in the synodal assembly in the Palace of Quierzy, Gottschalk is again heard by the Bishops and very many other Ecclesiastical and Religious men who took part in the same Synod. There were present, however, two Archbishops, Wenilo and Hincmar, the former of Sens, the latter of Rheims: and indeed quite many Bishops, Fulconius of Thérouanne; Teudericus of Cambrai, Rothaldus of Soissons, Ragenarius of Amiens, Imo of Noyon, Erpoinus of Senlis, Lupus of Châlons, Irminfridus of Beauvais, Pardulus of Laon, Teutbordus of Langres, and Gernobrius, Bishop in the Province of Tours. Also two Chorepiscopi, Rigboldus and Wiruus, the former of Rheims, the latter of Cambrai: finally other men notable in doctrine and piety were present; among whom Wenilo stood out, afterwards Archbishop of Rouen, Aeneas and Isaac, then Bishops of Paris and Langres, and Bavo himself of the Monastery of Orbais, and so Gottschalk's own Abbot.

Hincmar moreover subjoins in the same place:

In whose presence, just as in the city of Mainz, having been found a heretic and incorrigible, deprived of the Presbyteral honor, which through Rigboldus, Chorepiscopus of Rheims, when he was a Monk of the Parish of Soissons, without the knowledge of the Bishop of his own city, he had usurped rather than received; and, for his irrevocable contumacy, according to the laws and the Canons of Agde, and the Rule of Saint Benedict, beaten with rods as a wicked man, just as the Bishops of the Provinces of Germany had decreed; lest he should harm others, he who did not wish to profit himself, he was thrust back into a workhouse.

Hincmar nevertheless exerted every effort to bring Gottschalk back to better fruit by the way of Evangelical Charity before he summoned him to the tribunal: for Flodoardus reports, lib. 3, cap. 28, that Hincmar wrote to Gottschalk, the Monk who had fallen into heresy, concerning certain sayings of the Authors, which he did not understand or expound well, especially those of Prosper, whose meaning Hincmar explains through the sayings especially of Blessed Augustine, and proposes the other suitable witnesses, the Doctors of the Apostolic faith, whose doctrine he admonishes to be followed in all things; and he shows by manifest testimonies that God both foreknows good things and evil things: but He foreknows evil things only, the good things, however, He both foreknows and predestines: whence foreknowledge can be without predestination: but predestination cannot be without foreknowledge: and because He foreknew and predestined the good to the Kingdom; the wicked, however, He foreknew only, He did not predestine, nor did He compel them by His foreknowledge to perish. To which definition Gottschalk himself most pertinaciously refused to subscribe. But Gottschalk, condemned by the decree of the Synod of Quierzy and enclosed in the Monastery of Hautvillers, published a double profession of his faith, one shorter, the other more prolix, in which he shamefully dissembles his dogma concerning Predestination, for he teaches this one thing, that the reprobate are predestined to punishment: he does not, however, deny that they are also predestined to fault, as he had earlier taught; by which he wove his opinion craftily and fraudulently. For it is certain that he asserted that the reprobate are predestined by God not only to punishment, but also to fault; for Rabanus affirms this in the Epistle to Count Eberhard, with whom he complains that he suffers a certain know-it-all named Gottschalk to remain with him, who so expounds Predestination as if God by His predestination compels man to perish: and likewise Amolo, Archbishop of Lyons, in the Epistle to Gottschalk himself, where he writes thus:

In the fourth place, it displeases us very much, because you think and speak so harshly and undisciplinedly and shamelessly concerning divine Predestination in the damnation of the reprobate, that all those who are to be placed on the left in the day of judgment and to be damned with the Devil and his Angels to eternal fire for their evil merits, are so predestined by God to destruction, that absolutely none of them could ever have been, and none can be, saved. To think and to say this, what else is it than to blaspheme gravely and horribly against God? so did his predestination irrevocably impose on them this necessity, that they cannot at all operate anything which would profit for their salvation.

But so that it may appear more clearly what the pestiferous dogmas of Gottschalk himself were, it pleases to subjoin these under the following title.

WHAT WERE THE CHIEF ERRORS OF GOTTSCHALK.

Hincmar writes and recounts them all in the Epist. to Pope Nicholas, where he says of Gottschalk: But if your catholic wisdom wishes to know what things he seems to say against the Catholic faith, from the old heresy of the Predestinarians (which first arose in Africa, afterwards in the Gauls at the same time when the Nestorian heresy also arose, and in the time of Pope Celestine was overcome by his own authority and the insistence of Saint Prosper), we signify to you a few of the many, item by item, few in number but not in weight:

He says what the old Predestinarians also said: that just as God predestined some to eternal life, so He predestined some to death. He says what the old Predestinarians also said: that God does not will all men to be saved, but only those who are saved: all, however, are saved whom He Himself has willed to save: and by this, whoever are not saved are wholly not of His will that they be saved, since if not all are saved whom God wills to be saved, He did not do all things whatsoever He willed; and if He wills what He cannot, He is not omnipotent, but weak. He is, however, omnipotent who did whatsoever He willed, the Scripture saying: all things whatsoever the Lord willed He did in Heaven and in Earth, in the sea and in all the abysses, and again: in your will, Lord, all things are placed and there is none who can resist your will; if you have decreed to save us, immediately we shall be freed. He says what the old Predestinarians also said: that not for the redemption of the whole world, that is, not for the salvation and redemption of all, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was crucified and died, but only for those who are saved. He says, with a different tradition but an equal error, what the old Predestinarians also said, expounding the saying of the Apostle Peter, denying the Lord who bought them: He bought them, he says, by the Sacrament of Baptism, yet He did not undergo the cross for them, nor bear death, nor pour out blood: but that the reception of Baptism is called redemption, the Doctor of the gentiles openly acknowledges: do not grieve, he says, the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. But that redemption which is proper and special to all the Elect alone, which the Crucified imparted to them alone, their pious Redeemer, as from past, so certainly from present, the born and the unborn, the living and the dead, namely all the Elect alike, redeemed, delivered, and washed from sins. And the same Gottschalk writes the same elsewhere: far be it from me that I should wish even to dream, let alone once whisper, that the ancient serpent could seize him for perpetual perdition with himself, for redeeming whom so precious blood of His Son, our Lord, was poured out to God the Father. Amen. And the same, speaking to God: it is thus clear quite openly that no one perishes to you, whoever has been redeemed by the blood of your cross.

Although, however, these pestiferous dogmas seemed to all Catholics to be execrable, they nevertheless had some champions: for in the first place Lupus Servatus, a Priest of Mainz, seems to have written for Gottschalk the little book De tribus quaestionibus: nevertheless Gottschalk himself did not think him to be wholly of his party, for thus he writes of him to Ratramnus, Monk of Corbie:

Indeed I have striven to give a proper meaning to the three of these, Macaudus, Jonas, and Lupus, with mouth shining, earnestly asking that they strive to report true things, but no one has yet rendered anything to me except one, who, since he is clever and at once clever and moderate, thus weighing the three responses of his little book, so that, full distinction being removed, with neither part he accords.

Gottschalk therefore confesses that Lupus wrote in such a way that he inclines to each part and fully fits neither. And certainly while he treats the third question, which is about the blood of Christ, (says Anthony Deschamps), after he has shown that many testimonies of Sacred Scripture, by which Christ is said to have died for all, can be so explained that they are understood of the predestined alone, he adds also that those testimonies of Scripture concerning sufficient redemption can be accepted and extended to absolutely all men. — There also came forth several little books which seem to be written for Gottschalk: but of these only two treat at length of the divine will of saving all men, of which one is inscribed On the three Epistles, the other On retaining the truth of the faith. But who was the Author of those books is still a question under judgment; for some attribute them to Remigius, Archbishop of Lyons, others to Florus, Deacon of the same Church: which since it was uncertain, the usage prevailed that they were circulated under the name of the Church of Lyons: whence in Volume 4 of the Library of the Fathers these little books are inserted under this title, Ecclesia Lugdunensis contra Ioannem Scotum: but of these little books we shall make a fuller discourse below. — Prudentius likewise, Bishop of Troyes, was the fiercest defender of Gottschalk, as is clear from the Epistle which he wrote to Wenilo, Archbishop of Sens, in which he denies that he will consent to the ordination of Aeneas, Bishop of Paris, unless he first subscribe to four chapters, which he himself designates, and which are opposed to those of Quierzy. But who that Prudentius was, the annals of the Franks, or of St. Bertin, report for the year 461 in these words: Galindo, surnamed Prudentius, Bishop of the city of Troyes, a Spaniard by nation, eminently learned in letters, who some years before had resisted Gottschalk the Predestinarian: afterwards, moved by gall against certain Bishops resisting the heretic with him, the fiercest defender of that heresy itself; and thence, scribbling no few things diverse among themselves and adverse to the faith, he dies. — But that this man truly subscribed to the decrees of Quierzy, Hincmar testifies, lib. De Praedest., cap. 21.

We wonder, he says, that since in the aforesaid Synod of Quierzy Lord Prudentius subscribed to the chapters remembered above, and has the Canonical Sanctions and the decrees of the Pontiffs of the Apostolic see sufficiently known concerning synodal subscription and profession, he so inconsiderately and unaccustomedly, without probable consultation, against the institutions of the rules, sent a writing of this kind, for the consent of the ordination of his fellow Bishop, to the Archbishop and his fellow Bishops.

Nor does it matter that that Prudentius is numbered among the Saints, and his feast is celebrated at Troyes and in the Gallican Martyrology on the sixth of April, (which was published by the most learned man, Lord Andrea du Saussay), his virtue and sanctity are commended. For the same can be said of him which we said above of Faustus of Riez, namely, that near the end of his life, the heretical doctrine having at length been abjured, and, out of charity and mutual concord, minds having been composed, he thought with the other catholic Prelates, and illustrated his excellent virtues, seen by all, with integrity of faith.

But there were many opponents of the errors of Gottschalk; among whom I shall not commemorate John Eriugena, or Scotus, who, although he fought against Gottschalk with all art and might, was nevertheless stained with various errors, as will be clear below. But above the other opponents and condemners of Gottschalk, Hincmar shone forth, who, besides the Epistles and the Apology which he wrote for the Catholic faith against the error of Gottschalk to Pope Nicholas, also brought many other things forth into the light, and among the rest a Collection of the sentences of the Orthodox Fathers, for confuting the blasphemies of that Gottschalk, which he dedicated to the sons of his Church, teaching that the Deity of the divine Trinity ought not to be called Triple, since in the supreme Trinity there is unity. Likewise he vowed a most learned Poem to King Charles, in which is treated the grace and predestination of God, the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, the manner of seeing God, the origin of the soul, and the faith of the holy Trinity. And he inscribed this work Ferculum Salomonis. Moreover he collected and composed a very great volume De Praedestinatione Dei et libero arbitrio against certain Bishops his censors, and especially against the said Gottschalk and Ratramnus, Monk of Corbie. — Likewise he wrote another most beautiful book against the same Gottschalk and the other Predestinarians in the name of the King, and wrote to his Majesty in these words: To Lord King Charles, etc. These things Baronius reports for the year 848, n. 16, and Flodoardus, who surely was able to know this controversy preeminently; for he was a Canon of the Church of Rheims in the time of Artoldus, who, in the forty-eighth year after the death of Hincmar, was substituted in the Archbishopric of Rheims to Fulco, the successor of Seulfus, whose predecessor was Henry, who had succeeded Hincmar a little later.

WHAT THE SYNOD OF VALENCE DID CONCERNING THE DOCTRINE OF GOTTSCHALK.

While the questions moved by Gottschalk were being agitated with so great contention on both sides (says Anthony Deschamps), by the command of the Emperor Lothair the Prelates of three Provinces, Lyons, Vienne and Arles, convened at Valence, so that they might hear the case of the Bishop of that city, who had a very bad reputation on account of various crimes: but that matter having been discussed, they thought that something should be decreed by them concerning those controversies with which Gaul had now resounded for so many years; and since in that assembly there were some not a little hostile to Hincmar, they undertook the patronage of Gottschalk as far as was permitted, and attacked the decrees of the Synod of Quierzy, in the framing of which Hincmar had presided, as far as was lawful. Six Canons were sanctioned on this matter. The first universally prescribes that novelties of expressions are to be avoided with all diligence, and aims at John Scotus, or Eriugena, who had published against the genuine Predestination of Gottschalk a book teeming with errors and profane novelty of expressions. The second decrees that the foreknowledge of God imposed on no evil at all the necessity that it could not be otherwise: and so it condemns the opinion of Gottschalk, long since detested in the Synod of Mainz. The third asserts that Predestination is twofold, one of the Elect to life, the other of the Impious to death: and so in appearance it favors Gottschalk, and verbally differs from the first chapter of Quierzy, which had been conceived thus: we say only one Predestination of God, which pertains either to the gift of grace, or to the retribution of justice. The fourth treats of the redemption of the blood of Christ, nor does it in reality fight with the decree of Quierzy; it establishes, however, that all the regenerated are washed from sins, yet not all are saved: and it destroys that error of Gottschalk by which he asserted that only the predestined obtain grace in Baptism. — But the principal author of decrees of this sort was Ebbo, as can be known from the preface of that Council, in which, after the Archbishops, Ebbo alone among the Bishops is named with this eulogy: With the most venerable Ebbo, Bishop of Grenoble, laboring together with them as much as possible. This man, moreover, carried on hidden quarrels with Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims; because he was the nephew, through his sister, of that Ebbo who had conspired against Louis the Pious, and who, for that reason deprived of his office and driven from the Archbishopric of Rheims, had borne it most heavily that Hincmar was substituted into his own see. About to avenge this grief of his uncle, Ebbo of Grenoble maligned Hincmar and the chapters of Quierzy rather freely. And since he could do very much in the Synod of Valence, and composed its decrees, he inserted into them these words: Moreover the four chapters, which were received by the Council of our Brothers too little foreseen, on account of their uselessness, or even harmfulness and error contrary to truth: but also other chapters concluded most ineptly in nineteen syllogisms; and although it is boasted, resting on no secular literature, in which the device of the Devil rather than an argument of faith is detected, we wholly expel from the pious hearing of the faithful. By the first part the chapters of Quierzy are designated: by the second, however, the opinions of John Scotus, who, having undertaken to attack the heresy of Gottschalk, dashed into others by no means more tolerable and most worthy of the execration of all Catholics. It was unjust, however, that the decrees of Quierzy, which differ from the Valentines only in the assertion of a twofold predestination, and that verbally, should be joined with the most impure errors of a writer, and be punished with the same sentence: wherefore the very Prelates who had taken part in this Council of Valence, when they afterwards had convened at the Synod of Langres, so approved these same decrees of Valence, that they willed that that mark against the Council of Quierzy be removed, just as it was also removed in the Synod of Toul: which is an argument that it had been attached rather by the craft of Ebbo than by the judgment of the Council. — But when King Charles the Bald had received these decrees of the Synod of Valence from Remigius, Archbishop of Lyons, he handed them to Hincmar, so that he might either attack them or subscribe to them. Hincmar, however, long deferred the attack on those chapters, hoping perhaps that the Prelates of the Synod of Valence would change their opinion, or that a Synod would have to be convened by Remigius of Lyons, by which he judged that all things could be better composed: at length, three years later, the same chapters having been excerpted, to King Charles, he says

Flodoardus, lib. 3, cap. 15, composed a huge volume containing several books on the Predestination of God and free choice, against certain Bishops his censors, and especially against Gottschalk, and Ratramnus, Monk of Corbie. — But Hincmar censured many things in this Council of Valence. First, that in his absence and without his knowledge, nor having been warned beforehand, beyond the duty of fraternal charity, they had condemned with Synodal authority four chapters, which they knew to have been approved by himself and his fellow Bishops in the Synod of Quierzy. Besides, that while they join the chapters of John Eriugena together with Hincmar's chapters, they seem to make Hincmar guilty of those things which Eriugena had written; although he had not received any knowledge of them even by hearsay. Next, that they twist into another meaning the things which he had written; as can be seen in his Epistle in Flodoardus, at the cited place. But that in reality the Synod of Valence did not dissolve the decrees of Quierzy, but only interpreted those propositions of Gottschalk more benignly than the latter had done, is clear from its very decrees. For when Valence approves that God predestined some to eternal life, just as others to eternal death, it understood that He predestined them to eternal death consequently, namely on account of their foreseen sins: not, however, that by an antecedent and efficacious will He predestined them to eternal death, and so to sin, which is its cause. But the Synod of Quierzy with Hincmar, and before it the Synod of Mainz with Rabanus, condemned that proposition of Gottschalk in this second sense, which Hincmar testifies to have been the sense of the old Predestinarians, c. 15 lib. De Praedest.: The old Predestinarians, he says, confess the Predestination of the reprobate to destruction: whom, just as they say are predestined by God to destruction, so also to sin. The modern Predestinarians change the color of this, but they reek with the understanding of its odor and taste. For they say: God predestined the reprobate to destruction, not to sin: although they cannot reach destruction except through sin. Similarly, when the Synod of Valence approved what Gottschalk was saying, that God does not will to save all men, but only those who are saved: and that Christ did not die for all, etc., it understood him to speak of the efficacious and absolute will of saving: not, however, of the conditional one and after the manner of good pleasure: in which sense Hincmar and the Synod of Quierzy had not undeservedly understood him: and concerning the death of Christ and redemption, not only as to sufficiency, but also as to efficacious application, so that in reality it profited them for obtaining salvation. By which it is clear that both Synods fought only in appearance, and by a diverse understanding of Gottschalk's words, yet that in reality both condemned his perverse dogmas.