Manicheans,--those arrogant and shallow philosophers who made such high
pretension to superior wisdom; men who adored the divinity of mind, and
the inherent evil of matter; men who sought to emancipate the soul,
which in their view needed no regeneration from all the influences of
the body. That this soul, purified by asceticism, might be reunited to
the great spirit of the universe from which it had originally emanated,
was the hopeless aim and dream of these theosophists,--not the control
of passions and appetites, which God commands, but their eradication;
not the worship of a Creator who made the heaven and the earth, but a
vague worship of the creation itself. They little dreamed that it is not
the body (neither good nor evil in itself) which is sinful, but the
perverted mind and soul, the wicked imagination of the heart, out of
which proceeds that which defileth a man, and which can only be
controlled and purified by Divine assistance. Augustine showed that
purity was an inward virtue, not the crucifixion of the body; that its
passions and appetites are made to be subservient to reason and duty;
that the law of temperance is self-restraint; that the soul was not an
emanation or evolution from eternal light, but a distinct creation of
Almighty God, which He has the power to destroy, as well as the body
itself; that nothing in the universe can live without His pleasure; that
His intervention is a logical sequence of His moral government. But his
most withering denunciation of the Manicheans was directed against
their pride of reason, against their darkened understanding, which led
them not only to believe a lie, but to glory in it,--the utter
perverseness of the mind when in rebellion to divine authority, in view
of which it is almost vain to argue, since truth will neither be
admitted nor accepted.
There was another class of Christians who provoked the controversial
genius of Augustine, and these were the Donatists. These men were not
heretics, but bigots. They made the rite of baptism to depend on the
character of the officiating priest; and hence they insisted on
rebaptism, if the priest who had baptized proved unworthy. They seemed
to forget that no clergyman ever baptized from his own authority or
worthiness, but only in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the
Holy Ghost. Nobody knows who baptized Paul, and he felt under certain
circumstances even that he was sent not to baptize, but to preach the
gospel. Lay baptism has always been held valid. Hence, such reformers as
Calvin and Knox did not deem it necessary to rebaptize those who had
been converted from the Roman Catholic faith; and, if I do not mistake,
even Roman Catholics do not insist on rebaptizing Protestants. But the
Donatists so magnified, not the rite, but the form of it, that they lost
the spirit of it, and became seceders, and created a mournful division
in the Church,--a schism which gave rise to bitter animosities. The
churches of Africa were rent by their implacable feuds, and on so small
a matter,--even as the ranks of the reformers under Luther were so soon
divided by the Anabaptists. In proportion to the unimportance of the
shibboleth was tenacity to it,--a mark which has ever characterized
narrow and illiberal minds. It is not because a man accepts a shibboleth
that he is narrow and small, but because he fights for it. As a minute
critic would cast out from the fraternity of scholars him who cannot
tell the difference between _ac_ and _et_, so the Donatist would expel
from the true fold of Christ those who accepted baptism from an unworthy
priest. Augustine at first showed great moderation and patience and
gentleness in dealing with these narrow-minded and fierce sectarians,
who carried their animosity so far as to forbid bread to be baked for
the use of the Catholics in Carthage, when they had the ascendency; but
at last he became indignant, and implored the aid of secular
magistrates.
Augustine's controversy with the Donatists led to two remarkable
tracts,--one on the evil of suppressing heresy by the sword, and the
other on the unity of the Church.
In the first he showed a spirit of toleration beyond his age; and this
is more remarkable because his temper was naturally ardent and fiery.
But he protested in his writings, and before councils, against violence
in forcing religious convictions, and advocated a liberality worthy of
John Locke.
In the second tract he advocated a principle which had a prodigious
influence on the minds of his generation, and greatly contributed to
establish the polity of the Roman Catholic Church. He argued the
necessity of unity in government as well as unity in faith, like Cyprian
before him; and this has endeared him to the Roman Catholic Church, I
apprehend, even more than his glorious defence of the Pauline theology.
There are some who think that all governments arise out of the
circumstances and the necessities of the times, and that there are no
rules laid down in the Bible for any particular form or polity, since a
government which may be adapted to one age or people may not be fitted
for another;--even as a monarchy would not succeed in New England any
more than a democracy in China. But the most powerful sects among
Protestants, as well as among the Catholics themselves, insist on the
divine authority for their several forms of government, and all would
have insisted, at different periods, on producing conformity with their
notions. The high-church Episcopalian and the high-church Presbyterian
equally insist on the divine authority for their respective
institutions. The Catholics simply do the same, when they make Saint
Peter the rock on which the supremacy of their Church is based. In the
time of Augustine there was only one form of the visible Church,--there
were no Protestants; and he naturally wished, like any bishop, to
strengthen and establish its unity,--a government of bishops, of which
the bishop of Rome was the acknowledged head. But he did not
anticipate--and I believe he would not have indorsed--their future
encroachments and their ambitious schemes for enthralling the mind of
the world, to say nothing of personal aggrandizement and the usurpation
of temporal authority. And yet the central power they established on the
banks of the Tiber was, with all its corruptions, fitted to conserve the
interests of Christendom in rude ages of barbarism and ignorance; and
possibly Augustine, with his profound intuitions, and in view of the
approaching desolations of the Christian world, wished to give to the
clergy and to their head all the moral power and prestige possible, to
awe and control the barbaric chieftains, for in his day the Empire was
crumbling to pieces, and the old civilization was being trampled under
foot. If there was a man in the whole Empire capable of taking
comprehensive views of the necessities of society, that man was the
Bishop of Hippo; so that if we do not agree with his views of church
government, let us bear in mind the age in which he lived, and its
peculiar dangers and necessities. And let us also remember that his idea
of the unity of the Church has a spiritual as well as a temporal
meaning, and in that sublime and lofty sense can never be controverted
so long as _One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism_ remain the common creed of
Christians in all parts of the world. It was to preserve this unity that
he entered so zealously into all the great controversies of the age, and
fought heretics as well as schismatics.
The great work which pre-eminently called out his genius, and for which
he would seem to have been raised up, was to combat the Pelagian heresy,
and establish the doctrine of the necessity of Divine Grace,--even as it
was the mission of Athanasius to defend the doctrine of the Trinity, and
that of Luther to establish Justification by Faith. In all ages there
are certain heresies, or errors, which have spread so dangerously, and
been embraced so generally by the leading and fashionable classes, that
they seem to require some extraordinary genius to arise in order to
combat them successfully, and rescue the Church from the snares of a
false philosophy. Thus Bernard was raised up to refute the rationalism
and nominalism of Abélard, whose brilliant and subtile inquiries had a
tendency to extinguish faith in the world, and bring all mysteries to
the test of reason. The enthusiastic and inquiring young men who flocked
to his lectures from all parts of Europe carried back to their homes and
convents and schools insidious errors, all the more dangerous because
they were mixed with truths which were universally recognized. It
required such a man as Bernard to expose these sophistries and destroy
their power, not so much by dialectical weapons as by appealing to those
lofty truths, those profound convictions, those essential and immutable
principles which consciousness reveals and divine authority confirms. It
took a greater than Abélard to show the tendency of his speculations,
from the logical sequence of which even he himself would have fled, and
which he did reject when misfortunes had broken his heart, and disease
had brought him to face the realities of the future life. So God raised
up Pascal to expose the sophistries of the Jesuits and unravel that
subtle casuistry which was undermining the morality of the age, and
destroying the authority of Saint Augustine on some of the most vital
principles which entered into the creed of the Catholic Church. Thus
Jonathan Edwards, the ablest theologian which this country has seen,
controverted the fashionable Arminianism of his day. Thus some great
intellectual giant will certainly and in due time appear to demolish
with scathing irony the theories and speculations of some of the
progressive schools of our day, and present their absurdities and
boastings and pretensions in such a ridiculous light that no man with
any intellectual dignity will dare to belong to their fraternity, unless
he impiously accepts--sometimes with ribald mockeries--the logical
sequence of their doctrines.
Now it was not the Manicheans or Donatists who were the most dangerous
people in the time of Augustine,--nor were their doctrines likely to be
embraced by the Christian schools, especially in the West; but it was
the Pelagians who in high places were assailing the Pauline theology.
And they advocated principles which lay at the root of most of the
subsequent controversies of the Church. They were intellectual men,
generally good men, who could not be put down, and who would thrive
under any opposition. Augustine did not attack the character of these
men, but rendered a great service to the Church by pointing out, clearly
and luminously, the antichristian character of their theories, when
rigorously pushed out, by a remorseless logic, to their
necessary sequence.
Whatever value may be attached to that science which is based on
deductions drawn from the truths of revelation, certain it is that it
was theology which most interested Christians in the time of Augustine,
as in the time of Athanasius; and his controversy with the Pelagians
made then a mighty stir, and is at the root of half the theological
discussions from that age to ours. If we would understand the changes of
human thought in the Middle Ages, if we would seek to know what is most
vital in Church history, that celebrated Pelagian controversy claims our
special attention.
It was at a great crisis in the Church when a British monk of
extraordinary talents, persuasive eloquence, and great attainments,--a
man accustomed to the use of dialectical weapons and experienced by
extensive travels, ambitious, ardent, plausible, adroit,--appeared among
the churches and advanced a new philosophy. His name was Pelagius; and
he was accompanied by a man of still greater logical power than he
himself possessed, though not so eloquent or accomplished or pleasing in
manner, who was called Celestius,--two doctors of whom the schools were
justly proud, and who were admired and honored by enthusiastic young
men, as Abélard was in after-times.
Nothing disagreeable marked these apostles of the new philosophy, nor
could the malignant voice of theological hatred and envy bring upon
their lives either scandal or reproach. They had none of the infirmities
which so often have dimmed the lustre of great benefactors. They were
not dogmatic like Luther, nor severe like Calvin, nor intolerant like
Knox. Pelagius, especially, was a most interesting man, though more of a
philosopher than a Christian. Like Zeno, he exalted the human will; like
Aristotle, he subjected all truth to the test of logical formularies;
like Abélard, he would believe nothing which he could not explain or
comprehend. Self-confident, like Servetus, he disdained the Cross. The
central principle of his teachings was man's ability to practise any
virtue, independently of divine grace. He made perfection a thing easy
to be attained. There was no need, in his eyes, as his adversaries
maintained, of supernatural aid in the work of salvation. Hence a
Saviour was needless. By faith, he is represented to mean mere
intellectual convictions, to be reached through the reason alone. Prayer
was useful simply to stimulate a man's own will. He was further
represented as repudiating miracles as contrary to reason, of abhorring
divine sovereignty as fatal to the exercise of the will, of denying
special providences as opposing the operation of natural laws, as
rejecting native depravity and maintaining that the natural tendency of
society was to rise in both virtue and knowledge, and of course
rejecting the idea of a Devil tempting man to sin. "His doctrines," says
one of his biographers, "were pleasing to pride, by flattering its
pretension; to nature, by exaggerating its power; and to reason, by
extolling its capacity." He asserted that death was not the penalty of
Adam's transgression; he denied the consequences of his sin; and he
denied the spiritual resurrection of man by the death of Christ, thus
rejecting him as a divine Redeemer. Why should there be a divine
redemption if man could save himself? He blotted out Christ from the
book of life by representing him merely as a martyr suffering for the
declaration of truths which were not appreciated,--like Socrates at
Athens, or Savonarola at Florence. In support of all these doctrines,
so different from those of Paul, he appealed, not to the apostle's
authority, but to human reason, and sought the aid of Pagan philosophy,
rather than the Scriptures, to arrive at truth.
Thus was Pelagius represented by his opponents, who may have exaggerated
his heresies, and have pushed his doctrines to a logical sequence which
he would not accept but would even repel, in the same manner as the
Pelagians drew deductions from the teachings of Augustine which were
exceedingly unfair,--making God the author of sin, and election to
salvation to depend on the foreseen conduct of men in regard to an
obedience which they had no power to perform.
But whether Pelagius did or did not hold all the doctrines of which he
was accused, it is certain that the spirit of them was antagonistic to
the teachings of Paul, as understood by Augustine, who felt that the
very foundations of Christianity were assailed,--as Athanasius regarded
the doctrines of Arius. So he came to the rescue, not of the Catholic
Church, for Pelagius belonged to it as well as he, but to the rescue of
Christian theology. The doctrines of Pelagius were becoming fashionable
and prevalent in many parts of the Empire. Even the Pope at one time
favored them. They might spread until they should be embraced by the
whole Catholic world, for Augustine believed in the vitality of error as
well as in the vitality of truth,--of the natural and inevitable
tendency of society towards Paganism, without the especial and
restraining grace of God. He armed himself for the great conflict with
the infidelity of his day, not with David's sling, but Goliath's sword.
He used the same weapons as his antagonist, even the arms of reason and
knowledge, and constructed an argument which was overwhelming, if Paul's
Epistles were to be the accepted premises of his irresistible logic.
Great as was Pelagius, Augustine was a far greater man,--broader,
deeper, more learned, more logical, more eloquent, more intense. He was
raised up to demolish, with the very reason he professed to disdain, the
sophistries and dogmas of one of the most dangerous enemies which the
Church had ever known,--to leave to posterity his logic and his
conclusions when similar enemies of his faith should rise up in future
ages. He furnished a thesaurus not merely to Bernard and Thomas Aquinas,
but even to Calvin and Bossuet and Pascal. And it will be the marvellous
lucidity of the Bishop of Hippo which shall bring back to the true
faith, if it is ever brought back, that part of the Roman Catholic
Church which accepts the verdict of the Council of Trent, when that
famous council indorsed the opinions of Pelagius while upholding the
authority of Augustine as the greatest doctor of the Church.
To a man like Augustine, with his deep experiences,--a man rescued from
a seductive philosophy and a corrupt life, as he thought, by the
special grace of God and in answer to his mother's prayers,--the views
of Pelagius were both false and dangerous. He could find no words
sufficiently intense whereby to express his gratitude for his
deliverance from both sin and error. To him this Deliverer is so
personal, so loving, that he pours out his confession to Him as if He
were both friend and father. And he felt that all that is vital in
theology must radiate from the recognition of His sovereign power in the
renovation and salvation of the world. All his experiences and
observations of life confirmed the authority of Scripture,--that the
world, as a matter of fact, was sunk in a state of sin and misery, and
could be rescued only by that divine power which converted Paul. His
views of predestination, grace, and Providence all radiate from the
central principle of the majesty of God and the littleness of man. All
his ideas of the servitude of the will are confirmed by his personal
experience of the awful fetters which sin imposes, and the impossibility
of breaking away from them without direct aid from the God who ruleth
the world in love. And he had an infinitely greater and deeper
conviction of the reality of this divine love, which had rescued him,
than Pelagius had, who felt that his salvation was the result of his own
merits. The views of Augustine were infinitely more cheerful than those
of his adversary respecting salvation, since they gave more hope to the
miserable population of the Empire who could not claim the virtues of
Pelagius, and were impotent of themselves to break away from the bondage
which degraded them. There is nothing in the writings of Augustine,--not
in this controversy, or any other controversy,--to show that God
delights in the miseries or the penalty which are indissolubly connected
with sin; on the contrary, he blesses and adores the divine hand which
releases men from the constraints which sin imposes. This divine
interposition is wholly based on a divine and infinite love. It is the
helping hand of Omnipotence to the weak will of man,--the weak will even
of Paul, when he exclaimed, "The evil that I would not, that I do." It
is the unloosing, by His loving assistance, of the wings by which the
emancipated soul would rise to the lofty regions of peace and
contemplation.
I know very well that the doctrines which Augustine systematized from
Paul involve questions which we cannot answer; for why should not an
infinite and omnipotent God give to all men the saving grace that he
gave to Augustine? Why should not this loving and compassionate Father
break all the fetters of sin everywhere, and restore the primeval
Paradise in this wicked world where Satan seems to reign? Is He not more
powerful than devils? Alas! the prevalence of evil is more mysterious
than the origin of evil. But this is something,--and it is well for the
critic and opponent of the Augustinian theology to bear this in
mind,--that Augustine was an earnest seeker after truth, even when
enslaved by the fornications of Carthage; and his own free-will in
persistently seeking truth, through all the mazes of Manichean and
Grecian speculation, is as manifest as the divine grace which came to
his assistance. God Almighty does not break fetters until there is some
desire in men to have them broken. If men _will_ hug sins, they must not
complain of their bondage. Augustine recognized free-will, which so many
think he ignored, when his soul aspired to a higher life. When a
drunkard in his agonies cries out to God, then help is near. A drowning
man who calls for a rope when a rope is near stands a good chance of
being rescued.
I need not detail the results of this famous controversy. Augustine,
appealing to the consciousness of mankind as well as to the testimony of
Paul, prevailed over Pelagius, who appealed to the pride of reason. In
those dreadful times there were more men who felt the need of divine
grace than there were philosophers who revelled in the speculations of
the Greeks. The danger from the Pelagians was not from their
organization as a sect, but their opinions as individual men. Probably
there were all shades of opinion among them, from a modest and
thoughtful semi-Pelagianism to the rankest infidelity. There always have
been, and probably ever will be, sceptical and rationalistic people,
even in the bosom of the Church.
Now had it not been for Augustine,--a profound thinker, a man of
boundless influence and authority,--it is not unlikely that Pelagianism
would have taken so deep a root in the mind of Christendom, especially
in the hearts of princes and nobles, that it would have become the creed
of the Church. Even as it was, it was never fully eradicated in the
schools and in the courts and among worldly people of culture
and fashion.
But the fame of Augustine does not rest on his controversies with
heretics and schismatics alone. He wrote treatises on almost all
subjects of vital interest to the Church. His essay on the Trinity was
worthy of Athanasius, and has never been surpassed in lucidity and
power. His soliloquies on a blissful life, and the order of the
universe, and the immortality of the soul are pregnant with the richest
thought, equal to the best treatises of Cicero or Boethius. His
commentary on the Psalms is sparkling with tender effusions, in which
every thought is a sentiment and every sentiment is a blazing flame of
piety and love. Perhaps his greatest work was the amusement of his
leisure hours for thirteen years,--a philosophical treatise called "The
City of God," in which he raises and replies to all the great questions
of his day; a sort of Christian poem upon our origin and end, and a
final answer to Pagan theogonies,--a final sentence on all the gods of
antiquity. In that marvellous book he soars above his ordinary
excellence, and develops the designs of God in the history of States and
empires, furnishing for Bossuet the groundwork of his universal history.
Its great excellence, however, is its triumphant defence of Christianity
over all other religions,--the last of the great apologies which, while
settling the faith of the Christian world, demolished forever the last
stronghold of a defeated Paganism. As "ancient Egypt pronounced
judgments on her departed kings before proceeding to their burial, so
Augustine interrogates the gods of antiquity, shows their impotence to
sustain the people who worshipped them, triumphantly sings their
departed greatness, and seals with his powerful hand the sepulchre into
which they were consigned forever."