can bishops, he wrote to John of Jerusalem, to have the very acts of the council of Diospolis. In the mean time St. Jerom, who had written against the Pelagians, and particularly against the bishop of Jerusalem, occasioned a disorder which happened at Bethlehem, in which a deacon was killed, and some monasteries were burnt. The bishop was accused of having excited this tumult; but they had not time to make him give. an account of it, for he died in that year. St. Jerom, who had offended the bishops of Palæstine by despising their assembly, thought it expedient to wheedle the African bishops, and make them his friends, though he was not altogether in their way of thinking, but held the opinions of the Semipelagians. Therefore he wrote to St. Augustin in these terms: "I am resolved to love you, to honour you, to reverence and admire you, and to defend your sayings as though they were my own."

'Pelagius was every where accused of denying altogether the assistance of grace. To justify himself he wrote a book on Free-will, in which he acknowledged six kinds of grace, one kind of which is thus represented by him; "I hold that grace consists not only in the law of God, but in the assistance of God. He assists us by his doctrine and revelation, by opening the eyes of the mind, by showing us things future, that the things present may not have dominion over

i Though, to do him justice, he was usually more given to biting than to fawning.

us, by discovering to us the snares of the devil, and by illuminating us with divers and ineffable gifts of his heavenly grace. Can you imagine," adds Pelagius, "that they who speak thus are deniers of grace? Do they not rather acknowledge at the same time both human liberty and divine grace?"

St. Augustin on this occasion accuses Pelagius not of having absolutely deined grace, but of having denied the necessity of it, and of having said, that God gave it only to enable free agents to pursue good with more facility. This grace, indeed, according to Pelagius, did not infallibly and of itself produce a will. to do right; it only made the performance of our dutymore easy to us.

Never was there a dispute more embarrassed than this; because each party, being pressed by some troublesome consequence, endeavoured to shun the difficulty, by using terms to which they gave a sense different from that which their adversaries ascribed to the same words. Thus the word grace did not signify the same thing with Pelagius, as with the bishop' of Hippo; and the latter gave the name of liberty to' that which is not usually so called. In short, many are of opinion that if we carefully examine the words, which have been most used in this controversy, and the ideas which have been annexed to them, we shall hardly find one of these ideas to be clear and distinct. Some words, according to them, will be found, which have absolutely no meaning at all: so that in some

* One of the school-men, whose name was Suicet, and who

parts of this dispute, the contenders might be compared to a Frenchman and an Arabian, each of them knowing only his mother-tongue, who should bawl in their turns as loud as they were able, and sometimes both at once, without understanding one another, and then boast that they had confuted their adversary!.

The year after the council of Diospolis, two councils were held in Afric concerning this affair, one at Carthage, the other at Milevum. Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, presided at the first, where sixty-seven bishops were assembled. They had not yet received in Afric the acts of Diospolis; but Eros and Lazarus had written them an account of these transactions, and. had sent their letter by Orosius, Upon this report it was resolved to anathematize the opinions of Pelagius, lest they should spread; and then to anathematize both him and his disciple Cælestius, if they would not. clearly condemn those errors. After this, they transmitted the acts of their council to pope Innocent, to engage him to condemn these opinions. The council of Milevum, consisting of sixty-one bishops, concurred with their brethren of Carthage, Besides the

passed for a very subtil disputant, when he was old, used to weep, because he did not understand what he had composed in the days of his youth. Hence arises a question, whether Suicet's intellects were improved or impaired by old age?

It is all one to go about to draw those men out of their mis takes, who have no settled notions, as to dispossess a vagrant of his habitation, who has no settled abode. Locke on Hum. Un derstanding.

synodal letters of these two councils, Innocent received private ones from some African bishops and from St. Augustin. The drift of all these letters was to induce the pope to condemn the doctrine ascribed to Pelagius, and to cite him also, to know whether he persisted in his errors; and therefore they insinuated that Pelagius had deceived the bishops of Palæstine, though they were afraid of affirming it positively, lest they should set the African and the Eastern churches at variance. Innocent, in the year following, sent an answer to the councils and to the private letters. He said that, in his opinion, Pelagius and Cælestius deserved to be excommunicated, and that the first could not have cleared himself at Diospolis, unless by ambiguous expressions and equivocations: but he added, that as he had not yet received any certain accounts from those parts, or knew how things had been transacted, he could not either approve or disapprove the conduct of the bishops of Palæstine. He also excused himself, as to the citing of Pelagius, on account of the distance of place. Innocent wrote these` ` answers in the beginning of the year, and died soon after.

'After his death, St. Augustin and Alypius wrote to St. Paulinus, bishop of Nola, exhorting him to oppose Pelagianism in Italy, if there was danger of its making any progress there.

"In the mean time Cælestius came and presented himself, of his own accord, to Zosimus, who succeeded

can bishops, he wrote to John of Jerusalem, to have the very acts of the council of Diospolis. In the mean time St. Jerom, who had written against the Pelagians, and particularly against the bishop of Jerusalem, occasioned a disorder which happened at Bethlehem, in which a deacon was killed, and some monasteries were burnt. The bishop was accused of having excited this tumult; but they had not time to make him give an account of it, for he died in that year. St. Jerom, who had offended the bishops of Palæstine by despising their assembly, thought it expedient to wheedle the African bishops, and make them his friends, though he was not altogether in their way of thinking, but held the opinions of the Semipelagians. Therefore he wrote to St. Augustin in these terms: "I am resolved to love you, to honour you, to reverence and. admire you, and to defend your sayings as though they

were my own."

'Pelagius was every where accused of denying altogether the assistance of grace. To justify himself he wrote a book on Free-will, in which he acknowledged six kinds of grace, one kind of which is thus represented by him; "I hold that grace consists not only in the law of God, but in the assistance of God. He assists us by his doctrine and revelation, by opening the eyes of the mind, by showing us things future, that the things present may not have dominion over

i Though, to do him justice, he was usually more given to biting than to fawning.