never belonged to the number of the elect.' Hence we cannot certainly know in this life who are of the elect, and we must call all to repentance and offer to all salvation, though the VocatioL of grace only proves effectual to some.

Augustine, as already remarked, deduced this doctrine from his view of sin. If all men are by nature utterly incompetent to good, if it is grace that works in us to will and to do good, if faith itself is an undeserved gift of grace: the ultimate ground of salvation can then be found only in the inscrutable counsel of God. He appealed to the wonderful leadings in the lives of individuals and of nations, some being called to the gospel and to baptism, while others die in darkness. Why precisely this or that one attains to faith and others do not, is, indeed, a mystery. We cannot, says he, in this life explain the leadings of Providence; if we only believe that God is righteous, we shall hereafter attain to perfect knowledge.

He could cite many Scripture texts, especially the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, for his doctrine. But other texts, which teach the universal vocation to salvation, and make man responsible for his reception or rejection of the gospel, he could only explain by forced interpretations. Thus, for instance, he understands in 1 Tim. ii. 4 by the all men, whom God will have to be saved, all manner of men, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, or he wrests the sense into: All who are saved, are saved only by the will of God.' When he finds no other way of meeting objections, he appeals to the inscrutable wisdom of God.

Augustine's doctrine of predestination was the immediate occasion of a theological controversy which lasted almost a hundred years, developed almost every argument for and against the doctrine, and called forth a system holding middle ground, to which we now turn.

1 De corrept. et gratia, c. 9 (§ 23, x. f. 768): “Ab illo [Deo] datur etiam perseverantia in bono usque in finem; neque enim datur nisi eis qui non peribunt: quoniam qui non perseverant peribunt." Ibid. c. 11 (§ 36, f. 770): "Qui autem cadunt et pereunt, in prædestinatorum numero non fuerunt."

Opus imperf. iv. 124; De corrept. et gratia, i. 28; De præd. sanct. 8; Enchir. c. 103; Epist. 217, c. 6. Comp. Wiggers, 1. c. pp. 865 and 463 ff.

$159. Semi-Pelagianism.

Comp. the Works at § 146.

SOURCES.

L. JOH. CASSIAN IS († 432): Collationes Patrum xxiv, especially the xlii. In the Opera omnia, cum commentariis D. Alardi Gazai (Gazet), Atrebati (Atrecht or Arras in France), 1628 and 1733; reprinted, with additions, in Migne's Patrologia, tom. xlix. and 1. (tom. i. pp. 478-1828), and also published several times separately. VINCENTIUS LIRINENSIS († 450), Faustus RheGIENSIS († 490–500), and other SemiPelagian writers, see Gallandi, Biblioth. tom. x., and Migne, Patrol. tom. 1. and liii.

II. AUGUSTINUS: De gratia et libero arbitrio; De correptione et gratia; De prædestinatione sanctorum; De dono perseverantiæ (all in the 10th vol. of the Benedict. ed.). PROSPER AQUITANUS (a disciple and admirer of Augustine, †460): Epistola ad Augustinum de reliquiis Pelagianæ hæreseos in Gallia (Aug. Ep. 225, and in Opera Aug. tom. x. 780), and De gratia et libero arbitrio (contra Collatorem). Hilarius: Ad Augustinum de eodem argumento (Ep. 226 among the Epp. Aug., and in tom. x. 783). Also the Augustinian writings of AVITUS of Vienne, CESARIUS of Arles, FULGENTIUS of Ruspe, and others. (Comp. Gallandi, Bibl. tom. xi.; Migne, Patrol. vol. li.)

The Acta of the Synod of ORANGE, a. d. 529, in Mansi, tom. viii. 711 899.

LITERATURE.

JAO. SIRMOND: Historia prædestinatiana. Par. 1648. JOHANN GEFFKEN: Historia Semipelagianismi antiquissima (more properly antiquissimi). Gott. 1826 (only goes to the year 434). G. FR. WIGGERS: Versuch einer pragmatischen Darstellung des Semipelagianismus in seinem Kampfe gegen den Augustinismus bis zur zweiten Synode zu Orange. Hamburg, 1833 (the second part of his already cited work upon Augustinianism and Pelagianism). A very thorough work, but unfortunately without index. Comp. also WALOH, SCHRÖCKH, and the appropriate portions of the later works upon the history of the church and of doctrines.

Semi-Pelagianism is a somewhat vague and indefinite attempt at reconciliation, hovering midway between the sharply marked systems of Pelagius and Augustine, taking off the edge of each, and inclining now to the one, now to the

other. The name was introduced during the scholastic age, but the system of doctrine, in all essential points, was formed in Southern France in the fifth century, during the latter years of Augustine's life and soon after his death. It procceded from the combined influence of the pre-Augustinian synergism and monastic legalism. Its leading idea is, that divine grace and the human will jointly accomplish the work of conversion and sanctification, and that ordinarily man must take the first step. It rejects the Pelagian doctrine of the moral soundness of man, but rejects also the Augustinian doctrine of the entire corruption and bondage of the natural man, and substitutes the idea of a diseased or crippled state of the voluntary power. It disowns the Pelagian conception of grace as a mere external auxiliary; but also, quite as decidedly, the Augustinian doctrines of the sovereignty, irresistibleness, and limitation of grace; and affirms the necessity and the internal operation of grace with and through human agency, a general atonement through Christ, and a predestination to salvation conditioned by the foreknowledge of faith. The union of the Pelagian and Augustinian elements thus attempted is not, however, an inward organic coalescence, but rather a mechanical and arbitrary combination, which really satisfies neither the one interest nor the other, but commonly leans to the Pelagian side.'

For this reason it admirably suited the legalistic and ascetic piety of the middle age, and indeed always remained within

1 Wiggers (ii. pp. 359-364) gives a comparative view of the three systems in parallel columns. Comp. also the criticism of Baur, Die christliche Kirche vom vierten bis zum sechsten Jahrhundert, p. 181 ff. The latter, with his wonted sharpness of criticism, judges very unfavorably of Semi-Pelagianism as a whole. "This halving and neutralizing," he says, p. 199 ff., "this attempt at equal distribution of the two complementary elements, not only setting them apart, but also balancing them with one another, so that sometimes the one, sometimes the other, is predomi nant, and thus within this whole sphere everything is casual and arbitrary, varying and indefinite according to the diversity of circumstances and individuals, this is char acteristic of Semi-Pelagianism throughout. If the two opposing theories cannot be inwardly reconciled, at least they must be combined in such a way as that a specific element must be taken from each; the Pelagian freedom and the Augustinian grace must be advanced to equal rank. But this method only gains an external juxtaposi tion of the two."

the pale of the Catholic church, and never produced a separate

sect.

We glance now at the main features of the origin and progress of this school.

The Pelagian system had been vanquished by Augustine, and rejected and condemned as heresy by the church. This result, however, did not in itself necessarily imply the complete approval of the Augustinian system. Many, even opponents of Pelagius, recoiled from a position so wide of the older fathers as Augustine's doctrines of the bondage of man and the absolute election of grace, and preferred a middle ground.

First the monks of the convent of Adrumetum in North Africa differed among themselves over the doctrine of predestination; some perverting it to carnal security, others plunging from it into anguish and desperation, and yet others feeling compelled to lay more stress than Augustine upon human freedom and responsibility. Augustine endeavored to allay the scruples of these monks by his two treatises, De gratia et libero arbitrio, and De correptione et gratia. The abbot Valentinus answered these in the name of the monks in a reverent and submissive tone.'

But simultaneously a more dangerous opposition to the doctrine of predestination arose in Southern Gaul, in the form of a regular theological school within the Catholic church. The members of this school were first called "remnants of the Pelagians," but commonly MASSILIANS, from Massilia (Marseilles), their chief centre, and afterwards SEMI-PELAGIANS. Augustine received an account of this from two learned and pious lay friends, Prosper, and Hilarius,' who begged that he himself would take the pen against it. This was the occasion of his two works, De prædestinatione sanctorum, and De dono

1 His answer is found in the Epistles of Augustine, Ep. 216, and in Opera, tom. L. f. 746 (ed. Bened.).

"Reliquiæ Pelagianorum." So Prosper calls them in his letter to Augustine, He saw in them disguised, and therefore only so much the more dangerous, Pela gians.

• Not to be confounded with Hilarius, bishop of Arles, in distinction from whom he is called Hilarius Prosperi. Hilary calls himself a layman (Aug. Ep. 226, j Comp. the Benedictines in tom x. f. 785; Wiggers, ii. 137).

perseverentia, with which he worthily closed his labors as ar author. He deals with these disputants more gently than with the Pelagians, and addresses them as brethren. After his death (430) the discussion was continued principally in Gaul; for then North Africa was disquieted by the victorious invasion of the Vandals, which for several decades shut it out from the circle of theological and ecclesiastical activity.

At the head of the Semi-Pelagian party stood JOHN CASSIAN, the founder and abbot of the monastery at Massilia, a man of thorough cultivation, rich experience, and unquestioned orthodoxy.' He was a grateful disciple of Chrysostom, who ordained him deacon, and apparently also presbyter. His Greek training and his predilection for monasticism were a favorable soil for his Semi-Pelagian theory. He labored awhile in Rome with Pelagius, and afterwards in Southern France, in the cause of monastic piety, which he efficiently promoted by exhortation and example. Monasticism sought in cloistered retreats a protection against the allurements of sin, the desolating incursions of the barbarians, and the wretchedness of an age of tumult and confusion. But the enthusiasm for the monastic life tended strongly to over-value external acts and ascetic discipline, and resisted the free evangelical bent of the Augustinian theology. Cassian wrote twelve books De cœnobiorum institutis, in which he first describes the outward life of the monks, and then their inward conflicts and victories over the eight capital vices: intemperance, unchastity, avarice, anger, sadness, dulness, ambition, and pride. More important are his fourteen Collationes Patrum, conversations which Cassian and his friend Germanus had had with the most expe

1 Wiggers treats thoroughly and at length of him, in the above cited monograph, vol. ii. pp. 7-136. He has been mistakenly supposed a Scythian. His name and his fluent Latinity indicate an occidental origin. Yet he was in part educated at Bethlehem and in Constantinople, and spent seven years among the anchorites in Egypt. He mentioned John Chrysostom even in the evening of his life with grateful veneration. (De incarn. vii. 30 sq.). "What I have written," he says, “John has taught me, and therefore account it not so much mine as his. For a brook rises from a spring, and what is ascribed to the pupil, must be reckoned wholly to the honor of the teacher." On the life and writings of Cassian compare also SCHÖNEMANN, Bibliotheca, vol. ii. (reprinted in Migne's ed. vol. i.). Best edition of his Opera by Petschenig, Vienna, 1888, 2 vols.