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Updated: May 31, 2025
It is at least as old as the age of Augustine. “The Pelagians think,” says he, “they know some great thing, when they say, ‘God would not command what he knew could not be done by man.’ Who does not know this? But he commands what we cannot do, whereby we know what we ought to ask of him. For it is faith which obtains by prayer what the law commands.
In this work he undertakes to shew that the Arminians have very different sentiments on grace from the Pelagians; that they join with the Greek and many Latin Fathers in their opinion about Predestination; that the Reformed did not always entertain such rigid sentiments, particularly Melancton, inferior to none in learning or piety; that since the rise of the disputes Arminius and Gomar had declared in writing, there was no difference between them in fundamentals; that after the dispute of those two Divines in presence of the States, it was determined that the two opinions might be tolerated; that since the death of Arminius twelve Ministers of the two parties having been heard, the States recommended to them mutual toleration and charity.
In Palestine, towards the latter half of the year 415, Orosius attacked the Pelagians by writing against them a treatise on Free Will, and presenting a memorial against them to the Council of Diospolis. It was at the request of St Augustine that Orosius wrote his History.
Pelagianism was condemned in the West, and nominally in the East where views intermediate between the Pelagians and Augustinians commonly prevailed. The most eminent scholar contemporary with Augustine was Jerome, who died in 420, the author of the Latin version of the Scriptures, called the Vulgate.
And the Pelagians, Lutherans, and others have been mistaken in saying that grace compromised free choice and killed the creative force of the will; since all determinations of the will come necessarily either from society which sustains it, or from nature which opens its career and points out its destiny.
It is less the shame of his sins he confesses, than the glory of God. After that, he never thought again of anything but Truth and the Church, and the enemies of Truth and the Church: the Manichees, the Arians, the Pelagians the Donatists, above all. He lets no error go by without refuting it, no libel without an answer. He is always on the breach.
Doctor Maclaine, the learned translator of Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, observes it to be a common opinion, that "the disciples of Arminius, and more especially Episcopius, had boldly transgressed the bounds, that had been wisely prescribed by their master, and had gone ever to the Pelagians, and even to the Socinians." "Such," continues Dr.
The Pelagians came to the disputation with many outward signs of pomp and wealth, richly dressed, and attended by a crowd of supporters. Why should the biographer thus indicate that the Pelagian heresy was specially rife among great and wealthy and popular people?
We cannot, of course, enter into the controversies through which the church elaborated the system of doctrines now generally received, nor describe those great men who gave such dignity to theological inquiries. Clement was raised up to combat the Gnostics, Athanasius to head off the alarming spread of Arianism, and Augustine to proclaim the efficacy of divine grace against the Pelagians.
To Article IV In the fourth article the condemnation of the Pelagians, who thought that man can merit eternal life by his own powers without the grace of God, is accepted as Catholic and in accordance with the ancient councils, for the Holy Scriptures expressly testify to this.
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