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In the
year of our Lord 394, Arcadius, the son of Theodosius, the forty-third from
Augustus, succeeding to the empire, with his brother Honorius, held it thirteen
years. In his time, Pelagius, [Pelagius, the founder of the heresy known as
Pelagianism, was probably born in 370 A.D., and is said to have been a
Briton. His great opponent, St. Augustine, speaks of him as a good and holy
man; later slanders are to be attributed to Jerome’s abusive language. The
cardinal point in his doctrine is his denial of original sin, involving a too great
reliance on the human will in achieving holiness, and a limitation of the
action of the grace of God] a Briton, spread far and near the infection of his
perfidious doctrine, denying the assistance of the Divine grace, being seconded
therein by his associate Julianus of Campania, who was impelled by
an uncontrolled desire to recover his bishopric, of which he had been deprived.
St . Augustine, and the other orthodox fathers, quoted many thousand
catholic authorities against them, but failed to amend their folly; nay, more,
their madness being rebuked was rather increased by contradiction than suffered
by them to be purified through adherence to the truth; which Prosper, the
rhetorician, has beautifully expressed thus in heroic" verse :—
"They
tell that one, erewhile consumed with gnawing spite, snake-like attacked
Augustine in his writings. Who urged the wretched viper to raise from the
ground his head, howsoever hidden in dens of darkness? Either the sea-girt
Britons reared him with the fruit of their soil, or fed on Campanian pastures
his heart swells with pride."
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