stained with the mist of ignorance, applied the file of the law, in order that, by its frequent admonitions, nature might be cleansed again and return to its lustre. And there is no other difficulty of doing well but the long-continued habit of vice, which has contaminated us from youth up, and corrupted us for many years, and holds us afterwards so bound and subjugated to herself that she seems, in a measure, to have the force of nature.' Here Pelagius also mentions the bad education by which we are led to evil. But this habit of sinning, however, affects only adults, and that by their own fault. According to the Pelagian theory, man is born in the same state, in respect to his moral nature, in which Adam was created by God."* 5. Doctrine of Augustine. The great antagonist of Pelagius was Augustine. In respect to the fundamental doctrine of the Pelagian system,-on the origin of the soul, he seems never to have assumed a decided position. He, however, constantly leaned to the doctrine of its generative origin. Writing to Jerome, who very strongly assailed that view, the bishop of Hippo declares that, "neque orando, neque legendo, neque meditando, neque ratiocinando," neither by prayer, by reading, by meditation, nor by reasoning, was he able, upon the assumption of the immediate creation of souls, to obviate the difficulty concerning the propagation of sin.† In his first book, De Anima et ejus Origine, after a review of the arguments upon which reliance was placed to establish the immediate-creation theory, he exclaims, "Let no one, therefore, imagine that, if the doctrine of the propagation of souls be false, it is to be refuted by such arguments; or, if the position that they are breathed into the bodies immediately by God, be true, that it is to be maintained by such reasoning."‡ In reference to his correspondence with Jerome on this subject, Augustine says, "I wrote two books to Jerome, a presbyter of Bethlehem,-one of them concerning the origin of the soul of man. . . . In this I do not solve the question which I propose. He responded, commending (consultationem meam) my spirit of investigation, but declaring himself unable immediately to reply to my inquiries. So long as he was in the body I refrained from publishing this book, lest he might yet answer, and it would be better that it be published with his reply. But after his death I published it, so that he who reads it may be admonished either to abstain altogether from inquiry as to the mode in which souls are given to the offspring, or, on a subject certainly very obscure, to admit that solution of the question which is consistent with the most evident facts * An Historical Presentation of Augustinism and Pelagianism. By G. F. Wiggers, D.D. Translated by Rev. R. Emerson: Andover, 1840, p. 84. † Aug. Epist. xxviii. ad Hieron. Aug. De Anima et ejus Orig. lib. i. c. 19. which the catholic faith recognises, respecting original sin in infants; who, unless renewed in Christ, will assuredly perish.”* Perhaps the reason of his ambiguity on this subject had reference to the impeachments of the Pelagians, who continually asserted that he was still infected with the Manichean heresy of his youth and cited this doctrine as evidence. On this point he says, of his six books in reply to Julian, that "in the first two, by means of the testimonies of the saints, who, after the apostles, have defended the catholic faith, the impudence of Julian is repelled, who thought to object it against us as a Manichean dogma, because we assert original sin to be derived from Adam, which, by the washing of regeneration, is taken away, not only in adults, but in infants also. To what an extent some of Julian's own sentiments harmomonize with the Manicheans, I showed in the last part of my first book."t In respect to the apostasy and original sin, the following were the leading points of the doctrine which Augustine vindicated against the Pelagians: : 1. The whole human nature was created holy in the person of Adam. 2. It was so constituted, in its creation, that any act of sin would bind the nature which caused it in the bondage of depravity, as a natural necessity resulting from the sin. This necessary bondage he designates as the first element in the punishment of sin. 3. Adam was endowed with the generative faculty, by means of which his seed, who were one in him, should receive personal existence, and a several part in the common nature. 4. The transgression of Adam induced the subjection of the whole nature to the bondage of the depravity thus embraced; which, as it is not caused by any immediate divine interposition, but is the native and proper effect of the sin, is, therefore, not only a punishment of the sin, but an element of the criminality which thenceforth attaches to man's nature. 5. As each of the posterity of Adam receives existence, he with his birth acquires a part in the criminality of the first sin, and in the depravity so induced. 6. The sin and depravity thus arising involve Adam and all his posterity in the penalty of all earthly calamities, and eternal death; from which nothing but the redemption of Christ can save. 7. The bondage of sin is such that, as there is no escaping its curse but by the blood of Christ, so there is no freedom from its power but by the transforming Spirit of God. A few extracts will be sufficient to illustrate the views presented by Augustine on these points. In reply to the Pelagians, who urged that (aliena peccata) foreign sins could not be justly imputed to any, he says, Aug. Retractations, lib. ii. † Ibid. "Nor are those sins called foreign as though they belonged not at all to infants; since in Adam all then sinned, inasmuch as his nature was endowed with a power of producing those who as yet were (omnes ille unus) all one, to wit, he. But the sins are called foreign, because the posterity were not yet living their own lives; but whatever was to be in the future offspring, the life of the one man contained. 'But by no means is it to be admitted,' say they, (the Pelagians,) 'that God, who pardons men's own sins, should impute foreign sins.' He pardons; but by the Spirit of regeneration, not by the flesh of generation. They were, indeed, foreign, when they, who when propagated were to bear them, did not yet exist; but now, by carnal generation, they belong to those to whom they have not yet been forgiven through the spiritual regeneration."* Equally clear is the statement which we quote on page 496 of the present work. Again, he says; 66 "In respect to the origin of the seed, from which all were to spring, all were in that individual; and all these are he, none of whom as yet existed individually. According to this seminal origin, Levi is said to have been in the loins of his father Abraham.-When, in respect to his substance, he did not yet exist, still, as respects the relation of seed, it is not falsely nor idly said, that he was there."+ The whole human race (universum genus humanum) which by the woman was to become his offspring, was in the first man, when the pair received the divine sentence of condemnation. And what man was, not by creation, but by sin and punishment, that he begat, so far, at least, as pertains to the origin of sin and death." "I have said that sin injures no nature but its own; I therefore said it, because he who injures a good man does him in fact no injury, since it really increases his heavenly reward. . . . The Pelagians are ready to pervert this sentiment to the support of their dogma, and to say, that infants therefore cannot be injured by (aliena peccata) the sins of another, because I have asserted sins to injure no nature but their own: not observing that infants, as they pertain to the human nature, therefore contract original sin; because in the first man the human nature sinned, and, hence, it is true that human nature is injured by no sins but its own."? ... Great exception was taken by the Pelagians to that feature of the system of Augustine which represents the bondage of the nature of man to sin as being a punishment of the apostasy; and the outcry is still reechoed by the disciples of the Pelagian school. As is usual in such cases, these writers begin by misrepresenting the doctrine which they decry. Dr. Wiggers states it thus:-"The propagation of Adam's sin among his posterity, is a punishment of the same sin. The sin was the punishment Aug. de Pec. Mer. lib. iii. 7, 8. † Opus Imperfectum, lib. iv. 104. Retract. lib. i. cap. 10. of the sin. The corruption of human nature in the whole race, was the righteous punishment of the transgression of the first man, in whom all men already existed."* "The most signal moral punishment of Adam's transgression, was, therefore, the sin itself, or the moral corruption, that passed over to his posterity, by which Adam was also punished in his descendants. . . . But the moral punishment of Adam's sin was also a positive punishment of it. An entire moral ruin of man, did not follow from the nature of Adam's transgression, but God had annexed this to it as a punishment; and it was made a condition by the prohibition. God punished sin with sin. The sinfulness of the whole human race is penal." The zeal which this writer displays in charging this as the doctrine of Augustine, does not compensate for the lack of evidence in its support. What Augustine did teach on this point we shall presently see. That he did not hold the opinion thus attributed to him,-that the race are depraved, not by the natural effect of the sin, but by the positive interposition of God,-is sufficiently demonstrated by the very quotations with which Wiggers professes to prove his assertions.—“If Christ is the one in whom all are justified, because not the mere imitation of him makes them just, but grace regenerating by the Spirit; so is Adam therefore the one in whom all have sinned, because not the mere imitation of him makes them sinners, but the punishment generating by the flesh."‡ "We must distinguish three things:-sin, the punishment of sin, and that which in such manner is sin, that it is at the same time also the punishment of sin. Of the third kind is original sin, which is so sin that it is also the punishment.of sin; which is indeed in children just born, but begins to appear in them as they grow up and have the needful wisdom. Yet the source of this sin descends from the will of him that sinned. For it was Adam; and in him we all were. Adam perished; and in him we all perished." "By the first pair, so great a sin was committed, that by it human nature was changed for the worse, an obligation (obligatione, a bondage) of sin and a necessity of death being transmitted to posterity." Such are some of the passages of Augustine which Wiggers cites, to prove that he held the depravation of man's nature to have been, not a natural consequence of the apostasy, but a positive infliction from God! Nor have we been able to find any thing more plausible, to justify the charge here considered. Neander, with more candour, states Augustine's doctrines. "Man is already determined within himself by his disposition before he proceeds to act. Evil and good cannot spring from the same root. The good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, nor the evil tree good fruit. The root from which all good proceeds, is love to God; the root of all evil, is love to self. Wiggers' Augustinism and Pelagianism, p. 88. Aug. De Pec. Mer. lib. i. 15. De Civ. Dei, lib. xiv. 1. † Ibid. pp. 92, 93. 2 Opus Imperfectum, lib. i. 47. According as man is predominantly actuated by love to God, or love to himself, he brings to pass that which is good, or that which is evil. That [Pelagian] definition of free will, he maintains, cannot apply to God nor to holy beings. It in fact presupposes a corruption of the moral powers, and loses its applicability the more in proportion as man advances farther in moral development,-in proportion as he advances to true freedom. At the highest point of moral advancement, freedom and necessity meet together; the rational being acts with freedom, in determining himself according to the inward law of his nature. . . . Proceeding on the abovestated conception of freedom, Augustine must believe that he found in the actual appearance of human nature, an opposition to the freedom which was so apprehended; inasmuch as this true conception of freedom is in this case nowhere applicable. Man uniformly finds himself in a state contradicting this freedom,—in a condition of bondage to sin. Thus this determinate conception of freedom leads Augustine to the presupposition of a corruption of human nature, and of an original moral condition which preceded it. And cohering also with this is the thought that, when once this original freedom had been disturbed by the first freely chosen aberration from the law of the original nature, a state of bondage followed after the state of freedom. As human nature, evolving itself in conformity with its condition by nature, surrendering itself to the godlike, becomes continually more confirmed and established in true freedom; so, in surrendering itself to sin, it becomes continually more involved in the bondage of sin; to which Augustine frequently applies the words of Christ: 'He who commits sin is the servant of sin.' Evil is its own punishment, as goodness is its own reward.”* Such was the sense in which Augustine represented sin as the punishment of sin. As we have already seen, he denies that it can injure any nature but that of the sinner; and that the posterity of Adam are only injured by sin, as it was the sin of their nature as well as his. He held the depravity to be penally from God in the sense that the Creator, in making man, so constructed his nature, that the embrace of sin would constitute an enslaving of the nature to its power,—a slavery growing out of the very nature of sin in its relation to the soul; and in no sense caused by the interposition of God; but from which nothing but the power of God is adequate to relieve the soul. In reference to the broad line of distinction which runs between the powers of nature, the operation of second causes,-and the immediate agency of God, as bearing upon this whole subject, the ground taken by Augustine is clearly defined. "The whole of this ordinary course of nature has certain natural laws of its own, according to which, even the spirit of life, which is a created substance, has its specific appetites, * Neander's Church History, Torrey's translation, vol. ii. p. 602. |