ries, he could easily regard every thing as susceptible of explanation.

We must here notice, also, the external opposition, which cooperated with the above-named tendency of mind, to unfold the theological system of Pelagius. He had not enough of a dogmatizing or systematizing spirit to be led, from his own internal impulse, to form an original and peculiar system; and he would never have done this, had he not been supplied with a motive from without, by the prevalence of a spirit which seemed to him injurious to morality. Nothing but the belief, that the moral interest predominant with him, was endangered by a particular doctrinal tendency, and his desire to establish and vindicate this interest, could have induced him to enter upon theological investigations and distinctions. It happened also now, that he came into contact with some of those men, who entertained the false notion of faith so prevalent at that time, regarding it as a mere speculative belief in certain dogmas which they had been taught, without any influence upon the heart. There were those who supposed, that if they possessed such a faith, and stood in external communion with the Church, they were sure of salvation, although they might be far from holiness of life. There were others, who thought they had done enough, if they merely refrained from the grosser outbreakings of the passions and desires, and who excused themselves for the rest by the corruption and weakness of human nature, now no longer able to obey the divine commandments in all their strictness.10 In

9 Though they might previously have to expiate their sins in the ignis purgatorius, they supposed that even this was an advantage which they enjoyed above all who were not Christians. See Bd. II. p. 213, of the author's Kirchengeschichte. Hence the zeal with which Pelagius endeavours to take away the support which such persons thought they derived from the text 1 Cor. 3: 13; comp. his Comm. on this text. "Non hic, ut quidam putant, in igne flammae arsura sunt opera; sed homines qui ita operati sunt, ut mereantur incendio deputari." He understands this text to relate to teachers alone; and then adds the following language, in which we discover the moral ardor for which he was distinguished: "Quod si ille nonnisi per ignem salvus erit, qui justus de proprio est, quia negligenter aedificavit discipulos, quid de illis fiet, qui et sermone non aedificant, et insuper scandalizant exemplo."

10 Ep. ad Demetriad. c. 3. "Qui vitam suam emendare nolunt, videntur emendare velle naturam." C. 19. "Dicimus: Durum est, arduum est, non possumus, homines sumus, fragili carne circumdati.”

opposition to the dead faith of such persons, Pelagius urged the claims of the moral law revealed in the conscience, and the still higher claims of that moral law revealed in the Gospel. With conscientious fidelity, he adopted into his Christian Ethics all the moral precepts which he could find in the discourses of Christ, interpreted, too, according to the very letter. And yet, his ethical code was no longer a properly Christian system of morals; since the latter gives a law of life, not merely coordinate with faith, but proceeding from it, and grounded in it. Pelagius, on the contrary, set up in opposition to a dead theology, which knew no other idea of faith, than that opposed by the apostle James, a preceptive, dead, ethical system, about which the same is true, which Paul has said respecting the law.

The conflict between these opposing tendencies was not indeed wholly new, but had existed long before,12 especially in the Oriental church; and in general, the true Pauline notion of faith, and consequently the true Pauline notion of the relation. between faith and the life, had been for a long time obscured.13 It was now the object of Pelagius to arouse men from their moral stupidity, and to excite them to the fulfilment of those commands which were held up before them. And he knew of no better way for attaining this object, than to point out the falsity of all excuses drawn from the natural weakness and corruption of human nature; to show what power for goodness lies in human nature itself, how all evil flows only from the free will of man, that he can never plead, for his justification, that he is borne along to evil by an irresistible power; but that it always depends equally upon himself to do either good or evil. To confirm his declarations, Pelagius appealed to what had been accomplished even by the heathen, in their efforts for moral improvement. How much more, he asked, ought now to be accomplished by human nature, redeemed, renewed, and furnished by Christianity with many new aids for goodness! But then, it was not

so much what man has become by grace, which he wished here to exhibit. His favourite theme, the one on which he spoke oftenest, and most impressively, was the moral powers with which human nature has been endued by the Creator. We

11 As in the prohibition of swearing. See Ep. ad Demetriad. c. 22. Ep. Hilar. ad August. 156.

12 See Bd. II. Abth. II. p. 742, of the original work.

13 See Bd. I. Abth. III. p. 1079, of the original work.

would not by any means affirm, that he was not in earnest in respect to the doctrine of grace, or that it was hypocrisy in him to profess to receive the doctrines current in the church on this subject; for he was doubtless conscientious in receiving into his faith every thing which he found in the Scriptures and in the established system of doctrine. But all this was foreign to those religious and moral ideas which had grown up within himself, and could not naturally become incorporated with his own system.

And now, besides the conflict in which he thus stood with a dead and unfruitful faith, he was on this side also urged to a further contest. He saw the doctrines of grace and predestination brought forward in such a form, as seemed to him absolutely to overthrow the doctrine of free-will, and so to furnish a new excuse to moral inactivity.

And

The representative of the second doctrinal tendency,14 who stood forth in conflict with Pelagius, was Augustine. he was distinguished from Pelagius in every respect,-by the history both of his internal and external life; by the course of his education and the development of his theological views; as well as by the whole peculiar character of his mind. Augustine had been able to attain to inward peace only after a long and violent contest with an ardent and vehement natural temperament, which, in the wild consciousness of strength, resisted every thing divine.15 Hurried hither and thither during many years of his life, between the ideal

14 [See a statement of the two diverging tendencies here alluded to in Note 1.-TRANS.

15 [Dem Göttlichen, literally the Divine,-language which, as applied to man, though it may appear objectionable to some, yet when it is explained according to the views of those by whom it is used, implies nothing inconsistent with the commonly received doctrine respecting human character. It will be seen in the sequel that Augustine considered the higher principles of reason and conscience, as being absolutely dependent upon God for their exercise, and as being the organ by which his influences are received, and the medium of a living communion between the soul of man and its Author. This view of the relation of the higher faculties of man to the Spirit of God, is very prominent in the religious systems of Neander, Tholuck, and others; and this seems to be the ground of their frequent use of the language here remarked upon.-TRANS.

11

standard which attracted the longing of his spirit, and the desires and passions which still held him captive to the lusts of the world; he experienced in himself what the contest of the flesh and spirit is. From his own internal experience, he learnt how to understand the fundamental ideas of christian anthropology, and especially of the Pauline doctrine of man; and indeed he occupied himself especially with the study of Paul's writings at the very time, when that great crisis in his character took place. As he found in his own life two great divisions, on the one hand, a nature powerless notwithstanding all its efforts, and striving in vain after holiness; and on the other, a nature subordinate to faith, and, by the power of redemption, triumphant over evil; he saw again the same great divisions in the historical developement of human nature in general. The contrast between that which proceeds from nature left to itself and estranged from God, and that which proceeds from the new and divine principle of life imparted to humanity through redemption and regeneration,-this contrast, which he had learned so well from his own experience, was thenceforth adopted by him, as the central point of his theology.

As now the opposition between good and evil in human nature arrested the attention of Augustine from the first, it could not but occur to him as the most difficult of all questions, Whence is evil in this nature, which feels itself attracted towards what is good, and is even conscious of it, as belonging to its original being? This question employed him, as soon as he began to think upon higher objects. It was by contemplating this question, that he was led to Manichaeism; and it was by prosecuting his inquiries farther that he was brought to abandon this system. To Pelagius, on the contrary, this question could not be a difficult one. Evil appeared to him to result naturally from the preponderance of sense over reason, and to be necessarily attendant upon that moral freedom, without which virtue could not exist. Pelagius always proceeded from the experience of the phenomenal,-Augustine, from the contemplation of of the ideal.16 The depth of feeling, of thought, of speculation,

16 [The sentiment here, when divested of its Platonic dress, is what one might express by saying, that Pelagius, in his speculations, considered things as they are; Augustine considered them as they should be ; i. e. the former was a realist,-the latter, an idealist. Pelagius seeing man, as a matter of fact, imperfect, erring, and sinning, and not considering what man was designed to be, would find nothing strange, or

which distinguished Augustine, was altogether wanting in Pelagius; and this was another cause of the entirely different direction which was taken by their contemplations on christian doctrine.

The system of Pelagius was formed of heterogeneous elements. It consisted partly of certain general moral notions, some of which he adopted from classical antiquity, and others from Christianity; which were all brought together, without any very distinct perception on his part of the peculiarities of the two kinds; partly of the results of a narrow intellectual philosophy, such as are easily derived from a superficial observation of the world by men of a less speculative spirit; and partly of the disjoined elements of theology, which he had borrowed both from the Bible and from the established ecclesiastical belief, and which did not always correspond exactly with the other materials of his system. The less there was of the speculative, systematic, and dogmatic element in Pelagius, the less was he likely to see clearly what consequences would result from carrying through consistently the principles on which he proceeded, and which he in fact carried no farther, than his practical need required. With Augustine, on the contrary, in consequence of his peculiar mental constitution, the effort after systematic unity and consistency was as predominant in his mode of thinking, as in his life. He could leave no difficulty unsolved; and he felt himself impelled to develope still more and more fully the results of every principle which he had once embraced, nor did he shrink from any consequences which it necessarily involved.

We must however notice different epochs or periods in the developement of Augustine's theological character, through which he passed before he attained to the last consistent scheme, resulting from those principles which he had learnt from his own experience, in the great crisis of his being.

The first period embraces the works which he wrote from the time of his baptism, until the first years of his exercising the office of presbyter, somewhere about the year 394. These works are, De moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae et Manichaeorum, De vera religione, and De libero arbitrio. At this period of his life the christian sense of the need of aid and redemption, which

hard to be accounted for, in sin. Augustine, considering what man was designed to be, and the ideal of excellence to be attained by him, would naturally see much in his present state of sin, seemingly inconsistent, and of difficult solution.-TR.