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Updated: June 3, 2025
Simpson, professor of divinity in the college of Glasgow, when processed before the judicatories of this church, in the years 1715 and 1716, for several gross errors; such as, "That regard to our own happiness, in the enjoyment of God, ought to be our chief motive in serving him, and that our glorifying of God is subordinate to it: that Adam was not our federal head;" and other Arminian, Socinian and Pelagian heresies, all to be found in his answers to Mr.
There appears to have been among the Romanised British Christians little zeal and a good deal of controversy and dissent, and we hear a great deal more of the influence of the Pelagian heresy among them than of the influence of Christianity itself.
Pelagius and Coelestius enunciated the views on the nature of man, and the operation of the grace of God, which were combated with vehemence by two of the leading men of the West, Augustine and Jerome. From that day to this the controversy has never died out. When the first beginnings of the theory of transubstantiation were heard, this Pelagian controversy divided those who opposed the new idea.
But as the Pelagian controversy, which attempts to sound the abyss of grace and predestination, soon became the serious employment of the Latin clergy, the Providence which had decreed, or foreseen, or permitted, such a train of moral and natural evils, was rashly weighed in the imperfect and fallacious balance of reason.
Agricola was the name of the man who acted as the apostle of the Pelagians in the home regions, the son, we are told, of a bishop of Pelagian views. What our predecessors may have lacked in subtlety, they more than made up in practical common sense. If they could not grapple with the heresy themselves, they sent for those who could.
How many absurdities follow from these Pelagian opinions, which are taught with great authority in the schools! These Augustine, following Paul, refutes pith great emphasis, whose judgment we have recounted above in the article Of Justification. The human will has liberty in the choice of works and things which reason comprehends by itself.
In ancient times, and about two hundred years before the overthrow of Britain, the Welsh were instructed and confirmed in the faith by Faganus and Damianus, sent into the island at the request of king Lucius by pope Eleutherius, and from that period when Germanus of Auxerre, and Lupus of Troyes, came over on account of the corruption which had crept into the island by the invasion of the Saxons, but particularly with a view of expelling the Pelagian heresy, nothing heretical or contrary to the true faith was to be found amongst the natives.
On the whole, it was indeed his deliberate judgment that the Arian, Socinian, and Pelagian doctrines were highly dishonourable to God, and dangerous to the souls of men; and that it was the duty of private Christians to be greatly on their guard against those ministers by whom they are entertained, lest their minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
The incident is not much in itself; but something. Not that the Celtic Church of David and Patrick was Pelagian; it was not. In the matter of doctrine it is impossible to distinguish it from the Church on the continent. But Pelagianism may suggest that there were in Britain relics of an elder light. Did some echo of ancient wisdom, Druidic, survive in Britain from Pre-roman days?
Any one, it is pretended, that has but learning enough of this kind to know the definition of Arian, Pelagian, Erastian, Socinian, Sabellian, Eutychian, Nestorian, Monothelite, &c., not to mention Protestant, whose fate is yet uncertain, will be convinced of the truth of this observation.
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