obliged to sell. It is particularly rich in Moslem theology, law, grammar, rhetoric and logic, with a fair proportion of mathematics, medicine, history and philosophical works. The Society in eight months have procured 700 volumes.

To the list in our last No. of Biblical, Theological and Classical works published in the United States, within the past two years, we add the following:

Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity delivered before the Lowell Institute, Boston, by Mark Hopkins, D. D. president of Williams College. Boston, T. R. Marvin, 8vo. pp. 383.

By the same author, Miscellaneous Essays and Discourses. Boston, T. R. Marvin, 1847, pp. 514, 8vo.

Sermons by the Rev. George W. Bethune, minister of the Third Reformed Dutch Church. Philadelphia, Mentz and Rovoudt, 1846, 8vo. pp. 301. Lectures on Christian Character, by Joshua Bates, D. D., late president of Middlebury College. Andover, Allen, Morrill & Wardwell, 1846, 8vo. pp. 468.

The Middle Kingdom. By S. Wells Williams, Esq. With numerous Illustrations and a Map. Two thick volumes, 2 vols. post 8vo. pp. 589, 614. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1847.

General History of the Christian Religion and Church; from the German of Dr. Augustus Neander. By Joseph Torrey, professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy in the University of Vermont. Boston, Crocker and Brewster, 1847, Vol. I. 8vo. pp. 740. 1848, Vol. II. pp. 768.

The following works are in preparation :

Horace, by Prof. J. L. Lincoln of Brown University.

Cicero De Senectute et De Amicitia, and his Select Orations, by Prof. Johnson of the New York University.

Cicero De Officiis, by Prof. Thacher of Yale College.

Sallust, by Noble Butler.

Caesar, by Rev. J. A. Spencer.

The Rev. John Codman, D. D., for many years one of the Visitors of the Theological Seminary, Andover, has bequeathed to it his valuable theological library, consisting of about 1250 volumes.

BIBLIOTHECA SACRA

AND

THEOLOGICAL REVIEW.

NO. XVIII.

MAY, 1848.

ARTICLE I.

THE PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY.—A HISTORICAL ESSAY.

By Prof. Philip Schaff, Mercersburg, Pa.

INTRODUCTION.

THE Pelagian controversy is concerned with the deepest interests of practical Christianity, the cardinal doctrines of sin and grace. The whole resolves itself at last into the question, whether redemption and sanctification are the work of man or the work of God. Before the time of Augustine, the doctrines of human freedom, of original sin and imputed guilt, and of the factors that enter into conversion, had not become the object of controversy in any proper sense. The church had other most weighty problems to solve; in particular she was called upon to maintain the divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the holy Trinity against all sorts of adversaries. These anthropological points accordingly remained still, as to doctrine, very indefinite. The Greek church in general leaned towards an anthropology, in which the freedom of man was made to take a very high place; while the Latin theologians, the African fathers, Tertullian and Cyprian in particular, laid more emphasis upon the corruption of the human nature, through the fall of Adam, and the necessity of divine grace. In the beginning of the fifth century, these different doctrinal conceptions were made to stand out, one over against the other in sharp and full contradiction. Pelagius became the immortal representative of a tendency, that has since continued to reveal itself under various forms VOL. V. No. 18.

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throughout the entire history of the Christian church, the fundamental anthropological heresy, which must always influence more or less all other parts of the Christian system.

Pelagianism, in its whole mode of thinking, starts from man, and seeks to work itself upwards gradually by means of an imaginary good will, to holiness and communion with God. Augustinism pursues the opposite way, deriving from God's unconditioned all-working grace, a new life and all power of doing good. The first is led from freedom over into a legal, self-righteous piety; the other rises from the slavery of sin to the glorious liberty of the children of God. For the first, revelation is of force, only as an outward help or the power of a high example; for the last, it is the inmost life, the very marrow and blood, of the new man. The first, consistently carried out, runs towards an Ebionitic view of Christ, and can see in him only a distinguished man, a virtuous sage, a prophet, but not properly a high-priest or king; the last here finds Him, in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and who is the principle of an entirely new spiritual creation. The first makes conversion a process of gradual moral purification on the ground of original nature; with the last, it is a total change, in which the old passes away and all becomes new. The first pleases itself with the dignity and energy of man; the last is lost wholly in the contemplation of the majesty and almighty grace of God. The first deals with the every-day understanding, reasons acutely and clearly, and is thus more popular; the other descends from the surface into the abyss of existence, brings forth the hidden treasures of knowledge from their mysterious depths, and is immeasurably more satisfactory in this way to mature thought. Pelagianism begins with self-exaltation and an undue estimate of its own powers, only to end at last in overwhelming self-delusion; Augustinism casts man first down into the dust of humiliation and self-despair, to raise him again on the wings of divine trust to the highest moral power; draws from him tears of penitential grief, in order that from his heart may stream forth afterwards the joyful praise of God's almighty grace.

Even if it should be supposed that Augustine, through the contradiction that stood in his way, and the inexorable consistency of his own dialectic mind, was carried into the opposite extreme, so as to venture on assertions which for the simple Christian consciousness are too harsh, and that seem to transcend the bounds of sober scriptural knowledge; there can be no doubt still, but that his position has the advantage decidedly of the other, in the way of greater depth, and richer experience, and fuller knowledge of the Scriptures, particularly the epistles of Paul.

1848.]

Life of Pelagius.

207 We will, in the first place, bring into view briefly the personal history and character of the two men, who took the lead in the controversy, and are still known as the standing representatives of the opposite modes of thinking which entered into it; for the purpose of apprehending both systems genetically. In the second place, we will relate the external history of the controversy itself. Lastly, we shall represent, in three sections, its inward form, or the points of difference which it actually involved.

I. PELAGIUS and Augustine.—Their Life and Character.

Of the outward life of Pelagius we know but little; this little however is characteristic. He was a monk from Britain, born about the middle of the fourth century. His original name is said to have been Morgan, which signifies, of the sea, or by the sea, corresponding with the sense of Pelagius in Greek. He gave himself much to the study of the Greek church writers. It is probable that the old British church sprang from the Oriental, and stood connected with it in some way. From the beginning, he showed much earnestness of life, and an active concern for his own improvement and that of others in his own way. He was regarded as an eminent Christian. Augustine, sharply as he opposed his system, if we except the well-founded charge of dishonesty, nowhere assails his personal character, but professes even to regard him with esteem and love. This speaks well for the nobleness of his spirit.

But this morality has no deep character, and was not the fruit of an active and rich living faith. It was natural virtue, baptized with the water, but not with the fire of Christianity; such a virtue as we often meet with still in monasticism, consisting in legal ascetic exercises, victory over sensual appetites, the avoidance of all gross outbreaks of sin, discipline of the will and self-mastery, full of self-righteousness, and perhaps also, unconsciously, of spiritual pride. This morality rests mainly in externals. It proceeds not from a real change of the inmost mind, from the force of that humble love, which stripped of all self-reliance casts itself unreservedly upon the mercy of God. Pelagius had no fiery sensuality to contend with probably, as Augustine had; he was not called to pass through such mighty conflicts and decisive crises. His life was quietly developed in its own direction, he was happily successful in repressing all tendencies to gross sin, and in securing a certain capacity of moral self-government; but this precisely served to increase his high opinion of the power of the will, his confidence in himself. He had the monkish imagination,

that man is able, in the pursuit of perfection, (an object within his reach even in this world,) to go beyond what the law requires at his hands; since he voluntarily assumed the vows of poverty, obedience, and celibacy. As a bishop once quoted that great word of Augustine: "My God, grant unto me what thou requirest, and require of me what thou wilt," Pelagius became excited; he thought the freedom of the will endangered; he was not able to rise to the conception, that the fountain from which the moral law comes, is that from which must flow also the power that is needed for its fulfilment. In short, the morality of Pelagius was dissevered from faith, which was in his view for the most part only such a dead belief as is contended against by James. It is characteristic of all Pelagian tendencies, of Rationalism for instance, that they undervalue doctrine and faith, and place the substance of Christianity in its moral precepts. The sermon on the mount, accordingly, and the epistle of James, are in their view of far more weight than the discourses of the Lord as given by John or the epistle to the Romans. It commences with that, which properly can be only a consequence. Pelagianism stands in close consanguinity with Rationalism, although Pelagius did not carry out his system to this point. Rationalism is simply the form in which Pelagianism becomes at last theoretically complete. The high opinion which the Pelagian holds of the natural will, is transferred with equal right by the Rationalist to the natural reason; and as the first feels able to dispense with the assistance of grace in the work of moral improvement, so the last holds itself equally competent to advance in the knowledge of divine things without the light of revelation. The divinity of Pelagianism, so far as its practical tendency may require it to have any, is rationalistic; the morality of Rationalism is out and out Pelagian.

St. Augustine's life is wholly different from that of Pelagius. On first view, the latter seems to have the advantage of greater purity and more undisturbed harmony, whilst the former is known to have passed through great errors and sins, before he found his Saviour. But only he who can fall very low, is capable of rising also very high. Augustine, after his conversion, stands out as a wonderful monument of God's redeeming mercy for all ages. He is not only the leading genius of the church of his time, but unquestionably one of the deepest and most influential theologians, if not indeed the very greatest, since the days of the apostles. Only such men as Anselm, Luther, Calvin can at all stand in comparison with him, and in one point he is certainly far superior to the Reformers; in this, namely, that both

1 1 Da, Deus, quod jubes, et jube quod vis.-Confess. X. 29.