Saint Augustine, Page Five

He had himself been brought out of darkness into marvellous light," only by entering into the depths of his own soul, and finding, after many struggles, that there was no power but divine grace, as revealed in the life and death of the Son of God, which could bring rest to human weariness, or pardon and peace for human guilt. He had found human nature in his own case too weak and sinful to find any good for itself. In God alone he had found good. This deep sense of human sinfulness coloured all his theology, and gave to it at once its depth - its profound and sympathetic adaptation to all who feel the reality of sin - and that tinge of darkness and exaggeration which has as surely repelled others. When the expression " Augustinism " is used, it points especially to those opinions of the great teacher which were evoked in the Pelagian controversy, to which he devoted the most mature and powerful period of his life. His opponents in this controversy were Pelagius, from whom it derives its name, and Coelestius and Julianus, pupils of the former. Nothing is certainly known as to the home of Pelagius. Augustine calls him Brito, and so do Marius Mercator and Orosius. Jerome points to his Scottish descent, in such terms, however, as to leave it uncertain whether he was a native of Scotland or of Ireland. He was a man of blameless character, devoted to the reformation of society, full of that confidence in the natural impulses of humanity which often accompanies philanthropic enthusiasm. About the year 400 he came, no longer a young man, to Rome, where he lived for more than a decade, and soon made himself conspicuous by his activity and by his opinions. His pupil Coelestius, a lawyer of unknown origin, developed the views of his master with a more outspoken logic, and, while travelling with Pelagius in Africa, in the year 411, was at length arraigned before the bishop of Carthage for the following, amongst other heretical opinions: (1) that Adam's sin was purely personal, and affected none but himself; (2) that each man, consequently, is born with powers as incorrupt as those of Adam, and only falls into sin under the force of temptation and evil example; (3) that children who die in infancy, being untainted by sin, are saved without baptism. Views such as these were obviously in conflict with the whole course of Augustine's experience, as well as with his interpretation of the catholic doctrine of the Church. And when his attention was drawn to them by the trial and excommunication of Coelestius, he undertook their refutation, first of all in three books on the punishment and forgiveness of sins and the baptism of infants (De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum), addressed to his friend Marcellinus, in which he vindicated the necessity of baptism of infants because of original sin and the grace of God by which we are justified (Retract. ii. 23). This was in 412. In the same year he addressed a further treatise to the same Marcellinus on The Spirit and the Letter (De spiritu et littera). Three years later he composed the treatises on Nature and Grace (De natura et gratia) and the relation of the human to the divine righteousness (De perfectione iustitiae hominis). The controversy was continued during many years in no fewer than fifteen treatises. Upon no subject did Augustine bestow more of his intellectual strength, and in relation to no other have his views so deeply and permanently affected the course of Christian thought. Even those who most usually agree with his theological standpoint will hardly deny that, while he did much in these writings to vindicate divine truth and to expound the true relations of the divine and human, he also, here as elsewhere, was hurried into extreme expressions as to the absoluteness of divine grace and the extent of human corruption. Like his great disciple in a later age - Luther - Augustine was prone to emphasize the side of truth which he had most realized in his own experience, and, in contradistinction to the Pelagian exaltation of human nature, to depreciate its capabilities beyond measure.

Continued on page six.

This article is from the 1911 edition of an encyclopedia, which is out of copyright here in the U.S. See the encyclopedia main page for disclaimer and copyright information.