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Updated: June 3, 2025
And forasmuch as the pest of the Pelagian heresy and the Arian faithlessness had in many places denied that country, he, by his preaching and working of miracles, recalled the people unto the way of truth. And many are the places therein which even to this day bear witness to his miracles and are imbued with his sanctity.
If we would understand the changes of human thought in the Middle Ages, if we would seek to know what is most vital in Church history, that celebrated Pelagian controversy claims our special attention.
And so they proceeded to the examination of that complaint against the bishops, who, on account of their, tyranny, superstition, and teaching of Popish, Arminian, and Pelagian errors, were all laid under the sentence of deposition; and many of them, for their personal profaneness, wickedness and debauchery proven against them, together with their contumacy, were also excommunicated with the greater excommunication, for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the LORD JESUS. They gave their approbation of the National Covenant; and Prelacy, with the five articles of Perth, were found and declared to be abjured by it, together with the civil places and power of kirkmen, their sitting on the bench as justices of the peace, sitting in council, and voting in parliament.
The decaie of christian religion and receiuing of the Pelagian heresie in Britaine by what meanes they were procured and by whom redressed: Constantine succeedeth Arthur in the kingdome, ciuill warre about succession to the crowne, the chalengers are pursued and slaine, Constantine is vnkindlie killed of his kinsman, a bitter and reprochfull inuectiue of Gyldas against the British rulers of his time, and namelie against Constantine, Conan that slue Constantine reigneth in Britaine, his vertues and vices, his two yeeres regiment, the seuere reprehensions of Gyldas uttered against Conan, discouering the course of his life, and a secret prophesie of his death.
Even Taine admits that this doctrine of grace is the foundation stone of Protestantism as it spread over Europe in the sixteenth century. In those places where Protestantism is dead, where rationalism or Pelagian speculations have taken its place, this fact may be denied; but the history of Northern Europe blazes with it, a fact which no historian of any honesty can deny.
My object is to speak of Church History, not of doctrine. But this Pelagian question is the most important fact in the history of the British Church; and unless these few words were said to bring out the extreme gravity of the matter in dispute, the episode would not appear to fill the important place it does in fact fill. With Pelagius himself we have but little to do.
No servant girl complained of the rough gallantry of the redcoats. Not an ounce of plate was taken from the shops of the goldsmiths. But a Pelagian sermon, or a window on which the Virgin and Child were painted, produced in the Puritan ranks an excitement which it required the utmost exertions of the officers to quell.
Alas, then! was I become a Pelagian? certainly I could no longer see that Adam's first sin affected me more than his second or third, or so much as the sins of my immediate parents. In this sense I could not wholly reject the possibility of transmitted corruption; but it had nothing to do with the theological doctrine of the "Federal Headship" of Adam.
But this good lady wants to see men chatting together upon the Pelagian heresy to hear, in the afternoon, the theological rumours of the day and to glean polemical tittle-tattle at a tea-table rout. All the disciples of this school uniformly fall into the same mistake.
The Trinitarian Controversy. Story of Arius. The Council of Nicea. The Progress of the Bishop of Rome to Supremacy. The Roman Church; its primitive subordinate Position. Causes of its increasing Wealth, Influence, and Corruptions. Stages of its Advancement through the Pelagian, Nestorian, and Eutychian Disputes. Rivalry of the Bishops of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Rome.
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