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Updated: May 31, 2025
"You approach that famous point of free will which is a mortal rock. You face the insinuations of the Pelagians and the semi-Pelagians." "But, my Reverend-" replied Aramis, a little amazed by the shower of arguments that poured upon his head. "How will you prove," continued the Jesuit, without allowing him time to speak, "that we ought to regret the world when we offer ourselves to God?
The rational opinions of the Pelagians were propagated from Britain to Rome, Africa, and Palestine, and silently expired in a superstitious age. But the East was distracted by the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies; which attempted to explain the mystery of the incarnation, and hastened the ruin of Christianity in her native land.
He did not think it worth while to defend himself against an anonymous author , because in his book of the Piety of the States of Holland he had spoken of Semi-pelagianism as a very grievous error. Afterwards he enquired in an express treatise, whether the Arminians were Pelagians, and fully cleared them of teaching that heresy.
Then came many counsels as to avoiding all entanglements with the erroneous views of Socinians, Erastians, and Pelagians In conclusion, a day was suggested on which it would be convenient for the presbytery of the Marrow kirk to meet in Edinburgh in order to put Ralph through his trials for license. Then it was that Ralph Peden felt a tingling sense of shame.
Zosimus declared the letter and creed of Pelagius to be thoroughly Catholic, and free from all ambiguity; and the Pelagians to be men of unimpeachable faith, who had been wrongly defamed. Augustine appears to imply that in his opinion Zosimus had allowed himself to be deceived by the specious and subtle admissions of the heretics. Zosimus did not rest satisfied with that.
Lastly they say that this opinion was condemned a thousand years before, in the time of Augustine. This also is quite false. For the Church of Christ always held that the remission of sins is obtained freely. Yea, the Pelagians were condemned, who contended that grace is given on account of our works.
Now it was not the Manicheans or Donatists who were the most dangerous people in the time of Augustine, nor were their doctrines likely to be embraced by the Christian schools, especially in the West; but it was the Pelagians who in high places were assailing the Pauline theology. And they advocated principles which lay at the root of most of the subsequent controversies of the Church.
In those dreadful times there were more men who felt the need of divine grace than there were philosophers who revelled in the speculations of the Greeks. The danger from the Pelagians was not from their organization as a sect, but their opinions as individual men. Probably there were all shades of opinion among them, from a modest and thoughtful semi-Pelagianism to the rankest infidelity.
He knew that the boastful philosophy by which some sought to bolster up Christianity was that against which the apostles had warned the faithful. He knew that the Church was attacked in her most vital points, even in doctrines, for "as a man thinketh, so is he." So he fearlessly entered the lists against the heretics, most of whom were enrolled among the Manicheans, Pelagians, and Arians.
His fame, however, rests not on any political or ecclesiastical labours, but on the results flowing from his original studies at Bayonne. He never forgot his devotion to St Augustine. He is said to have read the whole of his writings ten times, and the treatises against the Pelagians not less than thirty times.
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