__________________________________________________________________ Title: History of Dogma - Volume V Creator(s): Harnack, Adolf (1851-1930) CCEL Subjects: All; Theology; History LC Call no: BT21.H33 V.5 LC Subjects: Doctrinal theology Doctrine and dogma __________________________________________________________________ HISTORY OF DOGMA BY DR. ADOLPH HARNACK VOLUME V __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ EDITORIAL NOTE. THE present volume is the first of three, which will reproduce in English the contents of Vol. III. of Harnack's great work in the German original, third Edition. The author's prefaces to the first and second Editions and to the third Edition are here translated. This volume deals with the epoch-making service of Augustine as a reformer of Christian piety and as a theological teacher, and with the influence he exercised down to the period of the Carlovingian Renaissance. The following volume will complete the history of the Development of Dogma by telling the story of Mediæval Theology. The concluding volume will treat of the Issues of Dogma in the period since the Reformation, and will contain a General Index for the whole work. A. B. BRUCE. PREFACE TO FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS. There does not yet exist a recognised method for presenting the History of Dogma of the Mediæval and more modern period. There is no agreement either as to the extent or treatment of our material, and the greatest confusion prevails as to the goal to be aimed at. The end and aim, the method and course adopted in the present Text-Book, were clearly indicated in the introduction to the first volume. I have seen no reason to make any change in carrying out the work. But however definite may be our conception of the task involved in our branch of study, the immense theological material presented by the Middle Ages, and the uncertainty as to what was Dogma at that time, make selection in many places an experiment. I may not hope that the experiment has always been successful. After a considerable pause, great activity has been shown in the study of our subject in the last two years. Benrath, Hauck, Bonwetsch, and Seeberg have published new editions of older Text-Books; Loofs has produced an excellent Guide to the History of Dogma; Kaftan has given a sketch of the study in his work on the Truth of the Christian Religion; Möller and Koffmane have devoted special attention to the sections dealing with it in their volumes on Ancient Church History. The study of these books, and many others which I have gratefully made use of, has shown me that my labours on this great subject have not remained isolated or been fruitless. The knowledge of this has outweighed many experiences which I pass over in silence. This concluding volume counts, to a greater extent than its predecessors, on the indulgence of my learned colleagues; for its author is not a "specialist," either in the history of the Mediæval Church or in the period of the Reformation. But the advantage possessed by him who comes to the Middle Ages and the Reformation with a thorough knowledge of ecclesiastical antiquity perhaps outweighs the defects of an account which does not everywhere rest on a complete induction. One man can really review all the sources for the history of the Ancient Church; but as regards the Middle Ages and the history of the Reformation, even one more familiar with them than the author of this Text-Book will prove his wisdom simply by the most judicious choice of the material which he studies independently. The exposition of Augustine, Anselm, Thomas, the Council of Trent, Socinianism, and Luther rests throughout on independent studies. This is also true of other parts; but sections will be found in which the study is not advanced, but only its present position is reproduced. I have spent a great deal of time on the preparation of a Table of Contents. I trust it will assist the use of the book. But for the book itself, I wish that it may contribute to break down the power that really dictates in the theological conflicts of the present, viz., ignorance. We cannot, indeed, think too humbly of the importance of theological science for Christian piety; but we cannot rate it too highly as regards the development of the Evangelical Church, our relation to the past, and the preparation of that better future in which, as once in the second century, the Christian faith will again be the comfort of the weak and the strength of the strong. Berlin, 24th Dec., 1889. PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. Since this volume first appeared, there may have been published about fifty monographs and more extensive treatises on the Western History of Dogma, most of which have referred to it. I have tried to make use of them for the new Edition, and I also proposed to make other additions and corrections on the original form of the book, without finding myself compelled to carry out changes in essential points. I have thankfully studied the investigations, published by Dilthey in the Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philosophie, Vols. V. to VII., on the reformed system of doctrine in its relation to Humanism and the "natural system." He has examined the reformed conceptions in connections in which they have hitherto been seldom or only superficially considered, and he has, therefore, essentially advanced a knowledge of them. Among the many objections to the plan of this work, and the critical standards observed in it, four are especially of importance. It has been said that in this account the development of Dogma is judged by the gospel, but that we do not learn clearly what the gospel is. It has further been maintained that the History of Dogma is depicted as a pathological process. Again, the plan of Book III., headed "The threefold outcome of Dogma," has been attacked. And, lastly, it has been declared that, although the account marks a scientific advance, it yet bears too subjective or churchly a stamp, and does not correspond to the strictest claims of historical objectivity. As to the first objection, I believe that I have given a fuller account of my conception of the gospel than has been yet done in any text-book of the History of Dogma. But I gladly give here a brief epitome of my view. The preaching of Jesus contains three great main sections. Firstly, the message of the approaching Kingdom of God or of the future salvation; secondly, the proclamation of the actual state of things and of thoughts, such as are given in Matthew VI. 25-34; VII. 7-11; IX. 2; X. 28-33, etc. (see Vol. I., p. 74 f.); thirdly, the new righteousness (the new law). The middle section connected with Matthew XI. 25-30, and therefore also combined with the primitive Christian testimony regarding Jesus as Lord and Saviour, I hold, from strictly historical and objective grounds, to be the true main section, the gospel in the gospel, and to it I subordinate the other portions. That Christ himself expressed it under cover of Eschatology I know as well (Vol. I., p. 58) as the antiquarians who have so keen an eye for the everlasting yesterday, As to the second objection I am at a loss. After the new religion had entered the Roman Empire, and had combined with it in the form of the universal Catholic Church, the History of Dogma shows an advance and a rise in all its main features down to the Reformation. I have described it in this sense from Origen to Athanasius, Augustine, Bernard, and Francis, to mystic Scholasticism and to Luther. It is to me a mystery how far the history should nevertheless have been depicted as a "process of disease." Of course superstitions accumulated, as in every history of religion, but within this incrustation the individual ever became stronger, the sense for the gospel more active, and the feeling for what was holy and moral more refined and pure. But as regards the development from the beginnings of the evangelic message in the Empire down to the rise of the Catholic Church, I have not permitted myself to speculate how splendid it would have been if everything had happened differently from what it did. On the other hand, I grant that I have not been able to join in praising the formation of that tradition and theology which has lowered immediate religion to one that is mediated, and has burdened faith with complicated theological and philosophical formulas. Just as little could it occur to me to extol the rise of that ecclesiastical rule that chiefly means obedience, when it speaks of faith. But in this there is no "pathology"; the formations that arose overcame Gnosticism. My critics have not convinced me that the conception followed by me in reference to the final offshoots of the History of Dogma is unhistorical. But I readily admit that the History of Dogma can also be treated as history of ecclesiastical theology, and that in this way the account can bring it down to the present time. Little is to be gained by disputing about such questions in an either-or fashion. If we regard Protestantism as a new principle which has superseded the absolute authority of Dogmas, then, in dealing with the History of Dogma, we must disregard Protestant forms of doctrine, however closely they may approximate to ancient Dogma. But if we look upon it as a particular reform of Western Catholicism, we shall have to admit its doctrinal formations into that history. Only, even in that case, we must not forget that the Evangelical Churches, tried by the notion of a church which prevailed for 1300 years, are no churches. From this the rest follows of itself. Finally, as regards the last objection, I may apply chiefly to my account a verdict recently passed by a younger fellow-worker:--"The History of Dogma of to-day is, when regarded as science, a half thing." Certainly it is in its beginnings, and it falls far short of perfection. It must become still more circumspect and reserved; but I should fear, lest it be so purified in the crucible of this youngest adept--who meantime, however, is still a member of the numerous company of those who only give advice--that nothing of consequence would remain, or only that hollow gospel, "religion is history," which he professes to have derived from the teaching of four great prophets, from whom he could have learnt better. We are all alike sensible of the labours and controversies which he would evade; but it is one of the surprises that are rare even in theology, that one of our number should be trying in all seriousness to divide the child between the contending mothers, and that by a method which would necessarily once more perpetuate the dispute that preceded the division. The ecclesiastics among Protestants, although they arrogate to themselves the monopoly of "Christian" theology on the title-pages of their books, will never give up the claim to history and science; they will, therefore, always feel it their duty to come to terms with the "other" theology. Nor will scientific theology ever forget that it is the conscience of the Evangelical Church, and as such has to impose demands on the Church which it serves in freedom. Berlin, 11th July, 1897. ADOLF HARNACK. CONTENTS. PART II. DEVELOPMENT OF ECCLESIASTICAL DOGMA. BOOK II. Expansion and Remodelling of Dogma into a Doctrine of Sin, Grace, and Means of Grace on the basis of the Church. Page CHAPTER I.--Historical Situation 3-13 Augustine the standard authority till the period of the Reformation 3 Augustine and Western Christianity 3 Augustine as Reformer of Christian Piety 4 Augustine as teacher of the Church 4 Augustine and Dogma 5 Dogma in the Middle Ages 6 The German and Roman Peoples and Dogma 6 Method of Mediæval History of Dogma 9 Division into Periods 12 CHAPTER II.--Western Christianity and Western Theologians before Augustine 14-60 Tertullian as Founder of Western Christianity 14 Elements of Tertullian's Christianity as elements of Western Christianity as a whole 14 Law (lex) 15 Juristic element 16 Syllogistic and Dialectical 17 Psychological 21 Biblical and Practical 22 Eschatology and Morality 23 Cyprian's importance 24 The Roman Church 25 Revolution under Constantine: Origen's theology and Monachism are imported into the West 27 Græcised Western Theology and the Old Latin type enter into Augustine 29 The importance to Augustine of the Greek scholars Ambrose (p. 29) and Victorinus Rhetor 33 The influence upon him of genuine Latins 37 Of Cyprian 38 The Donatist Controversy 38 Optatus 42 Ambrose as Latin 48 Results of Pre-Augustinian development 53 Doctrine of the Symbol 53 Death of Christ 54 Soteriology 55 The Church 59 Rome and Heathenism 59 CHAPTER III.--Historical Position of Augustine as Reformer of Christian Piety 61-94 General Characteristics 61 Augustine's new Christian self-criticism 66 Pre-Augustinian and Augustinian Piety 67 Sin and Grace the decisive factors in Augustine 69 The changed tone of Piety 72 Criticism of this Piety 75 Four elements constituting the Catholic stamp of Piety 77 a Authority of Church for Faith 78 b God and Means of Grace 83 g Faith, Forgiveness of Sins, and Merit 87 d Pessimistic view of Present State 91 Concluding remarks 93 CHAPTER IV.--Historical Position of Augustine as Teacher of the Church 95-240 The new Dogmatic Scheme 95 The connection with the Symbol 95 Discord between Symbol and Holy Scripture 98 Discord between Scripture and the principle of Salvation 99 Discord between Religion and Philosophy 100 Discord between Doctrine of Grace and Ecclesiasticism 101 Contradictions within these series of conceptions 101 Impossibility of an Augustinian system 102 Universal influence of Augustine 103 Method of presenting Augustinianism; Dogma and Augustine 104 1. Augustine's Doctrines of the First and Last Things l06-140 Augustine's Theology and Psychology ("Aristoteles Alter") were born of Piety 106 Dissolution of the ancient feeling 108 Psychological and Neo-Platonic view of the soul 111 The ethical views interwoven with this (God, world, soul, will, love) 113 Influence of Christian ecclesiasticism 124 [On reason, revelation, faith, and knowledge] 125 Authority of Christ and Christology 125 Final aims in the other and this world 134 Concluding observation 138 2. The Donatist Controversy. The Work: De civitate Dei. Doctrine of the Church and Means of Grace 140-168 Introduction 140 The Church as Doctrinal Authority 143 Unity of the Church 144 Its Holiness 146 Catholicity 149 Apostolicity and other attributes 149 Church and Kingdom of God 151 Word and Sacrament 155 The Sacraments 156 Lord's Supper 158 Baptism 159 Ordination 161 The Church as societas sacramentorum 163 As a heavenly communion 164 As primeval 164 As communio fidelium 165 As numerus electorum 166 Closing observations 167 3. The Pelagian Controversy. Doctrine of Grace and Sin 168-221 Augustine's Doctrine before the controversy 168 General characteristics of Augustinianism and Pelagianism, as of Pelagius, Cælestius, and Julian 168 Origin and nature of Pelagianism 172 § 1. The outward course of the dispute 173 Pelagius and Cælestius in Rome and Carthage 173 Events in Palestine 177 Events in North Africa and Rome 181 Condemnation in Rome; Julian of Eclanum 186 Final Stages 187 § 2. The Pelagian Doctrine 188 Agreement and differences between the leaders 189 The chief doctrines 191 The separate doctrines in their degree of conformity to tradition 196 § 3. The Augustinian doctrine 203 The doctrine of grace, predestination, redemption, and justification 204 Doctrine of sin, original sin, and the primitive state 210 Criticism of Augustinianism 217 4. Augustine's explanation of the Symbol (Enchiridion ad Laurentium). New system of religion 222-240 Exposition of Article I. 223 Article II. 225 Article III. 228 Criticism of this exposition; old and new system of religion 234 CHAPTER V.--History of Dogma in the West down to the beginning of the Middle Ages, A.D. 430-604 241-273 Historical position 242 1. Conflict between Semi-Pelagianism and Augustinianism 245-261 The monks of Hadrumetum and in South Gaul, Cassian 246 Prosper 249 De vocatione gentium 250 Liber Prædestinatus 251 Faustus of Rhegium 252 Decree de libris recipiendis 255 The Scythian monks, Fulgentius, Hormisdas 255 Cæsarius of Arles, Synods of Valencia and Orange 257 Results 260 2. Gregory the Great 262-273 General characteristics 262 Superstition, Christology, Intercessions 263 Doctrine of Sin and Grace 266 Merits, satisfactions, saints, relics, purgatory 267 Penance 269 Gregory's position between Augustine and the Middle Ages 270 CHAPTER VI.--History of Dogma in the period of the Carlovingian Renaissance 274-331 The importance of the Carlovingian epoch in the History of Dogma and of the Church 274 1 a. The Adoptian Controversy 278-292 Genesis of the problem 278 Spanish affairs and the dispute in Spain. Teaching of Elipandus, Felix and Beatus is Augustinian 281 Dispute before the Frankish and Roman tribunals 287 Alcuin's teaching. Influence of Greek conception 289 Connection with doctrine of the Lord's Supper 291 Result 292 1 b. Controversy about Predestination 292-302 The monk Gottschalk 293 Rabanus and Ratrainnus, his opponents 295 Controversy among Frankish and Lothringian Bishops. Objective untruthfulness of Gottschalk's opponents. Synod at Chiersey 299 Synod at Valencia 299 Synods at Savonieres and Toucy 300 The theory consonant to Church practice holds the field under Augustinian formulas 301 2. Dispute as to the filioque and about images 302-308 The filioque, the Franks and the Pope 302 Attitude of the Franks to images 305 The libri Carolini and the self-consciousness of the Frankish Church. Synod of Frankfurt 306 Later history of images 308 3. Development of theory and practice of the Mass (the Dogma of the Lord's Supper) and of Penance 308-331 The three causes of the development of theory of the Lord's Supper in the West 308 The controversy defartu virgins 310 The Augustinian conception promoted by Beda checked by Alcuin 311 Paschasius Radbertus 312 Rabanus and Ratramnus 318 Ideas of the Mass as part of the institution of expiation 322 Practice of Confession: a The notion of God at its root 323 b Development of institution of penance from Roman Church and German premises, Influence of Monachism 324 g Defective theory 326 d Growth of satisfactions and indulgences 327 __________________________________________________________________ Second Part. DEVELOPMENT OF ECCLESIASTICAL DOGMA. __________________________________________________________________ SECOND BOOK. Expansion and Remodelling of Dogma into a Doctrine of Sin, Grace and means of Grace on the basis of the Church. "Domini mors potentior erat quam vita .. . Lex Christianorum crux est sancta Christi." --Pseudo-Cyprian. "Die Ehrfurcht vor dem, was unter uns ist, ist ein Letztes wozu die Menschheit gelangen konnte and musste. Aber was gehörte dazu, die Erde nicht allein unter sich liegen zu lassen and sich auf einen höheren Geburtsort zu berufen, sondern auch Niedrigkeit and Armuth, Spott and Verachtung, Schmach and Elend, Leiden and Tod als göttlich anzuerkennen, ja selbst Sünde and Verbrechen nicht als Hindernisse, sondern als Fördernisse des Heiligen zu verehren!" --Goethe. __________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL SITUATION. [1] The history of piety and of dogmas in the West was so thoroughly dominated by Augustine from the beginning of the fifth century to the era of the Reformation, that we must take this whole time as forming one period. It is indeed possible to doubt whether it is not correct to include also the succeeding period, since Augustinianism continued to exert its influence in the sixteenth century. But we are compelled to prefer the views that the Reformation had all the significance of a new movement, and that the revolt from Augustine was marked even in post-tridentine Catholicism, as well as, completely, in Socinianism. [2] In this second Book of the second Section, therefore, we regard the history of dogma of the West from Augustine to the Reformation as one complete development, and then, in accordance with our definition of dogma and its history, [3] we add the "final stages of dogma" in their triple form--Tridentine Catholicism, Socinianism, and Protestantism. 2. In order rightly to appreciate the part played by Augustine, it is necessary first (Chap. II.) to describe the distinctive character of Western Christianity and Western theologians anterior to his appearance. It will then appear that while the West was prepared to favour Augustinianism, those very elements that especially characterised Western Christianity--the juristic and moralistic--resisted the Augustinian type of thought in matters of faith. This fact at once foreshadows the later history of Augustinianism in the Church. 3. Augustine comes before us, in the first place, as a reformer of Christian piety, altering much that belonged to vulgar Catholicism, and carrying out monotheism strictly and thoroughly. He gave the central place to the living relation of the soul to God; he took religion out of the sphere of cosmology and the cultus, and demonstrated and cherished it in the domain of the deepest life of the soul. On the other hand, we will have to show that while establishing the sovereignty of faith over all that is natural, he did not surmount the old Catholic foundation of the theological mode of thought; further, that he was not completely convinced of the supremacy of the religious over the moral, of the personal state of faith over ecclesiasticism; and finally, that in his religious tendencies, as generally, he remained burdened by the rubbish of ecclesiastical tradition. (Chap. III.) 4. Augustine falls next to be considered as a Church teacher. The union of three great circles of thought, which he reconstructed and connected absolutely, assured him, along with the incomparable impression made by his inexhaustible personality, of a lasting influence. In the first place, he built up a complete circle of conceptions, which is marked by the categories, "God, the soul, alienation from God, irresistible grace, hunger for God, unrest in the world and rest in God, and felicity," a circle in which we can easily demonstrate the co-operation of Neoplatonic and monastic Christian elements, but which is really so pure and simple that it can be taken as the fundamental form of monotheistic piety in general. Secondly, he gave expression to a group of ideas in which sin, grace through Christ, grace in general, faith, love, and hope form the main points; a Paulinism modified by popular Catholic elements. Thirdly, he constructed another group, in which the Catholic Church is regarded as authority, dispenser of grace, and administrator of the sacraments, and, further, as the means and aim of all God's ordinances. Here he always constructed, along with a wealth of ideas, a profusion of schemes--not formulas; he re-fashioned Dogmatics proper, and, speaking generally, gave the first impulse to a study which, as an introduction to Dogmatics, has obtained such an immense importance for theology and Science since the Scholastics. 5. On the other hand, Augustine always felt that he was, as regards Dogma, an Epigone, and he submitted himself absolutely to the tradition of the Church. He was wanting in the vigorous energy in Church work shown, e.g., by Athanasius, and in the impulse to force upon the Church in fixed formulas the truths that possessed his soul. Consequently the result of his life-work on behalf of the Church can be described thus. (1) He established more securely in the West the ancient ecclesiastical tradition as authority and law. (2) He deepened and, comparatively speaking, Christianised the old religious tendency. (3) In the thought and life of the Church he substituted a plan of salvation, along with an appropriate doctrine of the sacraments, for the old dogma [4] and the cultus, and instilled into heart and feeling the fundamental conception of his Christianity that divine grace was the beginning, middle, and end; but he himself sought to harmonise the conception with popular Catholicism, and he expressed this in formulas which, because they were not fixed and definite, admitted of still further concessions to traditional views. In a word, he failed to establish without admixture the new and higher religious style in which he constructed theology. Therefore the ancient Greek dogma which aimed at deification, as well as the old Roman conception of religion as a legal relationship, could maintain their ground side by side with it. Precisely in the best of his gifts to the Church, Augustine gave it impulses and problems, but not a solid capital. Along with this he transmitted to posterity a profusion of ideas, conceptions, and views which, unsatisfactorily harmonised by himself, produced great friction, living movements, and, finally, violent controversies. 6. As at the beginning of the history of the Latin Church Cyprian followed Tertullian, and stamped the character of ancient Latin Christianity, so Gregory the Great succeeded Augustine, and gave expression to the mediæval character of Latin Christianity, a form which, under Augustinian formulas, often differs in whole and in details from Augustine. Dogma remains almost throughout, in the Middle Ages, the complex of Trinitarian and Christological doctrines which was handed down with the Symbol. But, besides this, an immense series of theological conceptions, of church regulations and statutes, already possessed a quasi-dogmatic authority. Yet, in acute cases, he could alone be expelled as a heretic who could be convicted of disbelieving one of the twelve articles of the Symbol, or of sharing in the doctrines of heretics already rejected, i.e., of Pelagians, Donatists, etc. Thus it remained up to the time of the Reformation, although the doctrines of the Church--the Pope, and the sacraments, the ecclesiastical sacrament of penance, and the doctrine of transubstantiation--claimed almost dogmatic authority, though only by being artificially connected with the Symbol. 7. The consolidation of the ecclesiastical and dogmatic system into a legal order, in harmony with the genius of Western Christianity, was almost rendered perfect by the political history of the Church in the period of the tribal migrations. The Germans who entered the circle of the Church, and partly became fused with the Latins, partly, but under the leadership of Rome, remained independent, received Christianity in its ecclesiastical form, as something absolutely complete. Therefore, setting aside the Chauvinistic contention that the Germans were predisposed to Christianity, [5] no independent theological movement took place for centuries on purely German soil. No German Christianity existed in the Middle Ages in the sense that there was a Jewish, Greek, or Latin form. [6] Even if the Germans may have attempted to make themselves more thoroughly familiar with Latin Christianity, as e.g., the Slays did with the Greek--we may recall the old Saxon harmony of the Gospels, etc.-- [7] yet there was a complete absence of any independence in consciously appropriating it, up to the settlement of the Begging orders in Germany, properly speaking, indeed, up to the Reformation. Complaints of Papal oppressions, or of external ceremonies, cannot be introduced into this question. The complainers were themselves Roman Christians, and the never-failing sectaries paid homage, not to a "German" Christianity, but to a form of Church which was also imported. If up to the thirteenth century there existed in Germany no independent theology or science, still less was there any movement in the history of dogma. [8] But as soon as Germans, in Germany and England, took up an independent part in the inner movement of the Church, they prepared the way, supported indeed by Augustine, for the Reformation. The case was different on Roman territory. We need not, of course, look at Italy, for the land of the Popes steadily maintained its characteristic indifference to all theology as theology. Apocalyptic, socialistic, and revolutionary movements were not wanting; Hippocrates and Justinian were studied; but the ideals of thinkers seldom interested Italians, and they hardly ever troubled themselves about a dogma, if it was nothing more. Spain, also, very soon passed out of the intellectual movement, into which, besides, it had never thrown any energy. For eight centuries it was set the immense practical task of protecting Christendom from Islam: in this war it transformed the law of the Catholic religion into a military discipline. The Spanish history of dogma has been a blank since the days of Bishop Elipandus. Thus France alone remains. In so far as the Middle Ages, down to the thirteenth century, possessed any dogmatic history, it was to a very large extent Frankish or French. [9] Gaul had been the land of culture among Latin countries as early as the fourth and fifth centuries. 'Mid the storms of the tribal migrations, culture maintained its ground longest in Southern Gaul, and after a short epoch of barbarism, during which civilisation seemed to have died out everywhere on the Continent, and England appeared to have obtained the leadership, France under the Carlovingians--of course, France allied with Rome through Boniface--came again to the front. There it remained, but with its centre of gravity in the North, between the Seine and the Rhine. Paris was for centuries only second to Rome, as formerly Alexandria and Carthage had been. [10] The imperial crown passed to the Germans; the real ruler of the world sat at Rome; but the "studium"--in every sense of the term--belonged to the French. Strictly speaking, even in France, there was no history of dogma in the Middle Ages. If the Reformation had not taken place, we would have been as little aware of any mediæval history of dogma in the West as in the East; for the theological and ecclesiastical movements of the Middle Ages, which by no means professed to be new dogmatic efforts, only claim to be received into the history of dogma because they ended in the dogmas of Trent on the one hand, and in the symbols of the Reformed Churches and Socinian Rationalism on the other. The whole of the Middle Ages presents itself in the sphere of dogmatic history as a transition period, the period when the Church was fixing its relationship to Augustine, and the numerous impulses originated by him. This period lasted so long, (1) because centuries had to elapse before Augustine found disciples worthy of him, and men were in a position even to understand the chain of ecclesiastical and theological edicts handed down from antiquity; (2) because the Roman genius of the Western Church and the Augustinian spirit were in part ill-assorted, and it was therefore a huge task to harmonise them; and (3) because at the time when complete power had been gained for the independent study of Church doctrine and Augustine, a new authority, in many respects more congenial to the spirit of the Church, appeared on the scene, viz., Augustine's powerful rival, [11] Aristotle. The Roman genius, the superstition which, descending from the closing period of antiquity, was strengthened in barbarous times, Augustine, and Aristotle--these are the four powers which contended for their interpretation of the gospel in the history of dogma in the Middle Ages. 8. The Middle Ages experienced no dogmatic decisions like those of Nicaea or Chalcedon. After the condemnation of Pelagians and Semipelagians, Monothelites, and Adoptians, the dogmatic circle was closed. The actions in the Carlovingian age against images, and against Ratramnus and Gottschalk were really of slight importance, and in the fights with later heretics, so many of whom disturbed the mediæval Church, old weapons were used, new ones being in fact unnecessary. The task of the historian of dogma is here, therefore, very difficult. In order to know what he ought to describe, to be as just to ancient dogma in its continued influence as to the new quasi-dogmatic Christianity in whose midst men lived, he must fix his eyes on the beginning, Augustine, and the close, the sixteenth century. Nothing belongs to the history of dogma which does not serve to explain this final stage, and even then only on its dogmatic side, and this again may be portrayed only in so far as it prepared the way for the framing of new doctrines, or the official revision of the ancient dogmas. If my view is right, there are three lines to which we have to turn our attention. In the first place we must examine the history of piety, in so far as new tendencies were formed in it, based on, or existing side by side with Augustinianism; for the piety which was determined by other influences led also to the construction of other dogmatic formulas. But the history of piety in the Middle Ages is the history of monachism. [12] We may therefore conjecture that if monachism really passed through a history in the Middle Ages, and not merely endless repetitions, it cannot be indifferent for the history of dogma. As a matter of fact, it will be shown that Bernard and Francis were also doctrinal Fathers. We may here point at once to the fact that Augustine, at least apparently, reveals a hiatus in his theology as dominated by piety; he was able to say little concerning the work of Christ in connection with his system of doctrine, and his impassioned love of God was not clearly connected in theory with the impression made by Christ's death, or with Christ's "work." What a transformation, what an access of fervour, Augustinianism had to experience, when impassioned love to the Eternal and Holy One found its object in the Crucified, when it invested with heavenly glory, and referred to the sinful soul, all traits of the beaten, wounded, and dying One, when it began to reflect on the infinite "merits" of its Saviour, because the most profound of thoughts had dawned upon it, that the suffering of the innocent was salvation in history! Dogma could not remain unaffected by what it now found to contemplate and experience in the "crucified" Saviour of Bernard, the "poor" Saviour of Francis. [13] We may say briefly that, by the agency of the mediæval religious virtuosi and theologians, the close connection between God, the "work" of Christ, and salvation was ultimately restored in the Tridentine and ancient Lutheran dogma. The Greek Church had maintained and still maintains it; but Augustine had loosened it, because his great task was to show what God is, and what salvation the soul requires. In the second place, we have to take the doctrine of the Sacraments into consideration; for great as were the impulses given here also by Augustine, yet everything was incomplete which he transmitted to the Church. But the Church as an institution and training-school required the sacraments above all, and in its adherence to Augustine it was precisely his sacramental doctrine, and the conception connected therewith of gradual justification, of which it laid hold. We shall have to show how the Church developed this down to the sixteenth century, how it idealised itself in the sacraments, and fashioned them into being its peculiar agencies. In the third place, we have to pursue a line which is marked for us by the names of Augustine and Aristotle--fides and ratio, auctoritas and ratio intelligentia and ratio. To investigate this thoroughly would be to write the history of mediæval science in general. Here, therefore, we have only to examine it, in so far as there were developed in it the same manifold fashioning of theological thought, and those fundamental views which passed into the formulas, and at the same time into the contents of the doctrinal creations, of the sixteenth century, and which ultimately almost put an end to dogma in the original sense of the term. But we have also to include under the heading "Augustine and Aristotle" the opposition between the doctrine of the enslaved will and free grace and that of free will and merit. The latter shattered Augustinianism within Catholicism. We cannot trace any dogma regarding the Church in the Middle Ages until the end of the thirteenth century, but this is only because the Church was the foundation and the latent co-efficient of all spiritual and theological movement. [14] Our account has to make this significance of the Church explicit, and in doing so to examine the growth of papal power; for in the sixteenth century the claim of the Pope was in dispute. On this point the Western Church was split up. But further, Augustine had given a central place to the question of the personal position of the Christian, confusing it, however, by uncertain references to the Church and to the medicinal effect of the means of grace. And the mediæval movement, in proportion as the Church and the sacraments came to the front without any diminution of the longing for an independent faith, [15] was led to the question of personal assurance. On this point also--justification--the Western Church was rent asunder. [16] Thus an account of the history of dogma in the Middle Ages will only be complete if it can show how the questions as to the power of the Church (of the Pope, the importance of the Mass and sacraments) and justification came to the front, and how in these questions the old dogma, not indeed outwardly, but really, perished. In Tridentine Catholicism it now became completely, along with its new portions, a body of law; in Protestantism it was still retained only in as far as it showed itself, when compared with the Divine Word, to express the Gospel, to form a bond with the historical past, or to serve as the basis of personal assurance of salvation. There can be no doubt about the division into periods. After an introduction on Western Christianity and Theology before Augustine, Augustinianism falls to be described. Then we have to discuss the epochs of (1) the Semipelagian controversies and Gregory I.; (2) the Carlovingian Renaissance; (3) the period of Clugny and Bernard (the eleventh and twelfth centuries); and (4) the period of the mendicant orders, as also of the so-called Reformers before the Reformation, i.e., of revived Augustinianism (thirteenth and fifteenth centuries). The Middle Ages only reached their climax after the beginning of the thirteenth century and, having grown spiritually equal to the material received from the ancient Church, then developed all individual energies and conceptions. But then at once began the crises which led to the Renaissance and Humanism, to the Reformation, Socinianism and Tridentine Catholicism. It is, therefore, impossible to delimit two periods within the thirteenth to the fifteenth century; for Scholasticism and Mysticism, the development of the authoritative, Nominalist, dogmatics, and the attempts to form new doctrines, are all interwoven. Reformation and Counter-reformation have a common root. __________________________________________________________________ [1] Baur, Vorles. üb. die christl. D.-G., 2nd vol., 1866. Bach, Die Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters, 2 vols., 1873, 1875. Seeberg, Die Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters (Thomasius, Die christl. Dogmengesch, 2 Ed., 2 vol., Division I.) 1888. All begin in the period after Augustine, as also Schwane, D.-G. der mittleren, Zeit 1882. Loofs, Leitfaden der D.-G., 3 Ed., 1893. Seeberg, Lehrbuch d. D.-G., Division I., 1895. [2] The complete breach with Augustine is indeed marked neither by Luther nor Ignatius Loyola, but first by Leibnitz, Thomasius, and--the Probabilists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. [3] Vol. I., § 1. [4] The ancient dogma has thus formed building material in the West since Augustine. It has been deprived--at least in the most important respect--of its ancient purpose, and serves new ones. The stones hewn for a temple, and once constructed into a temple, now serve for the building of a cathedral. Or perhaps the figure is more appropriate that the old temple expanded into a cathedral, and wonderfully transformed, is yet perceptible in the cathedral. [5] Seeberg, (Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters, p. 3), has repeated it. [6] Even the influence, which some have very recently sought to demonstrate, of German character on the formation of a few mediæval theologumena is at least doubtful (against Cremer). Die Wurzeln des Anselm'schen Satisfactions-begriffs in the Theol. Stud. u. Kritik., 1880, p. 7 ff., 1893, p. 316 ff., and Seeberg, l.c. p. 123. Fuller details in I., ch. 7, Sect. 4. [7] It was to the advantage, here and there, of simple piety that it had not co-operated in the construction of the Church. [8] Nitzsch, Deutsche Gesch., II., p. 15: "(Up to the middle of the eleventh century) the task of administering property was more important to the German Church than the political and dogmatic debates of the neighbouring French hierarchy." See also Döllinger Akad. Vorträge, vol. II., Lecture 1, at beginning. [9] See the correct opinion of Jordanus of Osnabrück (about 1285) that the Romans had received the sacerdotium, the Germans the imperium, the French the studium (Lorenz, Geschichtsquellen, 2 ed., vol. II., p. 296). [10] See on the importance of North-Eastern France, Sohm in the Ztschr. d. Savigny-Stiftung. German Division I., p 3 ff., and Schrörs, Hinkmar, p. 3 f. On Rome and Paris see Reuter, Gesch. d. Aufkl. I., p. 181. [11] The derisive title of Augustine--"Aristoteles Poenorum"--was prophetic. He got this name from Julian of Eclanum, Aug. Op. imperf., III., 199. [12] See Ritschl, Gesch. des Pietismus, vol. I., p. 7 ff., and my Vortrag über das Monchthum, 3 ed. [13] Bernard prepared the way for transforming the Neoplatonic exercitium of the contemplation of the All and the Deity into methodical reflection on the sufferings of Christ. Gilbert says: "Dilectus meus, inquit sponsa, candidus et rubicundus. In hoc nobis et candet veritas et rubet caritas." [14] The opposition to a sacerdotal Church which existed at all times, and was already strong in the thirteenth century, left no lasting traces down to the fourteenth. In this century movements began on the soil of Catholicism which led to new forms of the conception of the Church and compelled it to fix definitively its own. [15] In the Middle Ages every advance in the development of the authority and power of the Church was accompanied by the growing impression that the Church was corrupt. This impression led to the suspicion that it had become Babylon, and to despair of its improvement. [16] On this most important point the schism went beyond Augustine; for in the Middle Ages, as regards the ground and assurance of faith, Augustine of the Confessions and doctrine of predestination was played off against Augustine the apologist of the Catholic Church. Luther, however, abandoned both alike, and followed a view which can be shown to exist in Augustine and in the Middle Ages at most in a hidden undercurrent. __________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER II. WESTERN CHRISTIANITY AND WESTERN THEOLOGIANS BEFORE AUGUSTINE. The distinctive character of Western Christianity has been frequently referred to in our earlier volumes. We may now, before taking up Augustine and the Church influenced by him, appropriately review and describe the Christianity into which he entered, and on which he conferred an extraordinarily prolonged existence and new vital energies by the peculiar form and training to which he subjected it. It was the Roman Church that transmitted Christianity to the Middle Ages. But it might almost be named the Augustinian-Gregorian [17] with as much justice as that of the Augsburg Confession is called the Lutheran. If, however, we ascend the history of the Latin Church to as near its origin as we can, we find ourselves confronted by a man in whom the character and the future of this Church were already announced, viz., Tertullian. Tertullian and Augustine are the Fathers of the Latin Church in so eminent a sense that, measured by them, the East possessed no Church Fathers at all. [18] The only one to rival them, Origen, exerted his influence in a more limited sphere. Eminently ecclesiastical as his activity was, his Christianity was not really ecclesiastical, but esoteric. His development and the import of his personal life were almost without significance for the mass; he continued to live in his books and among theologians. But with Tertullian and Augustine it was different. It is true that only a fraction of Tertullian's teaching was retained, that he was tolerated by posterity only in Cyprian's reduced version, and that Augustine became more and more a source of uneasiness to, and was secretly opposed by, his Church. Yet both passed into the history of the Western Catholic Church with their personality, with the characteristics of their Christian thought and feeling. The frictions and unresolved dissonances, in which they wore themselves out, were transmitted to the future as well as the concords they sounded, and the problems, which they could not master in their own inner experience, became the themes of world-historical spiritual conflicts. [19] We can exhibit the superiority of Western to Eastern Christianity at many points; we can even state a whole series of causes for this superiority; but one of the most outstanding is the fact that while the East was influenced by a commonplace succession of theologians and monks, the West was moulded by Tertullian and Augustine. Roman Christianity, still (c. 180) essentially Greek in form, but already with important features of its own, [20] had won the Great African to its service. [21] It had already transmitted to him Latin translations of Biblical books; but on this foundation Tertullian laboured, creating both thought and language, because he was able thoroughly to assimilate the new faith, and to express his whole individuality in it. [22] In doing so he adopted all the elements which tradition offered him. First, as a Christian Churchman, he took up the old enthusiastic and rigorous, as well as the new anti-heretical, faith. He sought to represent both, and in his sovereign law to verify the strict lex of the ancient disciplina, founded on eschatological hopes, and allied with unrestrained pneumatic dogmatics, and also the strict lex of the new rule of faith, which seemed ancient, because the heretics were undoubtedly innovators. He sought to be a disciple of the prophets and an obedient son of his Episcopal teachers. While he spent his strength in the fruitless attempt to unite them, [23] he left both forces as an inheritance to the Church of the West. If the history of that Church down to the sixteenth century exhibits a conflict between orthodox clerical and enthusiastic, between biblical and pneumatic elements, if monachism here was constantly in danger of running into apocalyptics and enthusiasm, and of forming an opposition to the Episcopal and world-Church, all that is foreshadowed in Tertullian. A further element, which here comes before us, is the juristic. We know that jurisprudence and legal thought held the chief place in mediæval philosophy, theology, and ethics. [24] Post-apostolic Greek Christians had, indeed, already put Christianity forward as the "law," and the Roman community may have cultivated this view with peculiar energy; [25] but in and by itself this term is capable of so many meanings as to be almost neutral. Yet through the agency of Tertullian, by his earlier profession a lawyer, all Christian forms received a legal impress. He not only transferred the technical terms of the jurists into the ecclesiastical language of the West, but he also contemplated, from a legal standpoint, all relations of the individual and the Church to the Deity, and vice versâ, all duties and rights, the moral imperative as well as the actions of God and Christ, nay, their mutual relationship. He who was so passionate and fanciful seemed never to be thoroughly satisfied until he had found the scheme of a legal relationship which he could proclaim as an inviolable authority; he never felt secure until he had demonstrated inner compulsions to be external demands, exuberant promises to be stipulated rewards. But with this the scheme of personal rights was applied almost universally. God appears as the mighty partner who watches jealously over his rights. Through Tertullian this tendency passed into the Western Church, which, being Roman, was disposed to favour it; there it operated in the most prejudicial way. If we grant that by it much that was valuable was preserved, and juristic thought did contribute to the understanding of some, not indeed the most precious, Pauline conceptions, yet, on the whole, religious reflection was led into a false channel, the ideas of satisfaction and merit becoming of the highest importance, and the separation of Western from primitive and Eastern Christianity was promoted. [26] Another element is closely connected with the legal, viz., the syllogistic and dialetical. Tertullian has been extolled as a speculative theologian; but this is wrong. Speculation was not his forte; we perceive this very plainly when we look at his relation to Irenaeus. Notice how much he has borrowed from this predecessor of his, and how carefully he has avoided, in doing so, his most profound speculations! Tertullian was a Sophist in the good and bad sense of the term. He was in his element in Aristotelian and Stoic dialectics; in his syllogisms he is a philosophising advocate. But in this also he was the pioneer of his Church, whose theologians have always reasoned more than they have philosophised. The manner in which he rings the changes on auctoritas and ratio, or combines them, and spins lines of thought out of them; the formal treatment of problems, meant to supply the place of one dealing with the matter, until it ultimately loses sight of aim and object, and falls a prey to the delusion that the certainty of the conclusion guarantees the certainty of the premises--this whole method only too well known from mediæval Scholasticism, had its originator in Tertullian. [27] In the classical period of eastern theology men did not stop at auctoritas and ratio; they sought to reach the inner convincing phases of authority, and understood by ratio the reason determined by the conception of the matter in question. In the West, auctoritas and ratio stood for a very long time side by side without their relations being fixed--see the mediæval theologians from Cassian--and the speculation introduced by Augustine was ultimately once more eliminated, as is proved by the triumph of Nominalism. Stoic, or "Aristotelian" rationalism, united with the recognition of empirical authority under cover of Augustinian religious formulas, remained the characteristic of Roman Catholic dogmatics and morality. [28] But the Western type of thought possessed, besides this, an element in which it was considerably superior to the Eastern, the psychological view. The importance due to Augustine in this respect has been better perceived in recent years, and we may look for better results as regards the share of Scholasticism in the development of modern psychology. [29] In Augustine himself Stoic rationalism was thrust strongly into the background by his supreme effort to establish the psychology of the moral and immoral, the pious and impious on the basis of actual observation. His greatness as a scientific theologian is found essentially in the psychological element. But that also is first indicated in Tertullian. As a moralist he indeed follows, so far as he is a philosopher, the dogmatism of the Stoa; but Stoic physics could lead into an empirical psychology. In this respect Tertullian's great writing, "De anima," is an extremely important achievement. It contains germs of insight and aspirations which developed afterwards; and another Western before Augustine, Arnobius, also did better work in grasping problems psychologically than the great theologians of the East. [30] This side of Western theology undoubtedly continued weak before Augustine, because the eclecticism and moralism to which Cicero had especially given currency held the upper hand through the reading of his works. [31] Finally, still another element falls to be mentioned which distinguishes the features of Western Christianity from the Eastern, but which it is hard to summarise in one word. Many have spoken of its more practical attitude. But in the East, Christianity received as practical a form as people there required. What is meant is connected with the absence of the speculative tendency in the West. To this is to be attributed the fact that the West did not fix its attention above all on deification, nor, in consequence, on asceticism, but kept real life more distinctly in view; it therefore obtained to a greater extent from the gospel what could rule and correct that life. Thus Western Christianity appears to us from the first more popular and biblical, as well as more ecclesiastical. It may be that this impression is chiefly due to our descent from the Christianity in question, and that we can never therefore convey it to a Greek [32] ; but it is undeniable that as the Latin idiom of the Church was from its origin more popular than the Greek, which always retained something hieratic about it, so the West succeeded to a greater extent in giving effect to the words of the gospel. For both of these facts we have to refer again to Tertullian. He had the gift, granted to few Christian writers, of writing attractively, both for theologians and laymen. His style, popular and fresh, must have been extremely effective. On the other hand, he was able, in writings like De patientia, De oratione, De pænitentia, or De idololatria, to express the gospel in a concrete and homely form; and even in many of his learned and polemical works, which are full of paradoxes, antitheses, rhetorical figures, frigid sentences, and wild exaggerations, we do not fail to find the clear and pertinent application of evangelical sayings, astonishing only by its simplicity, and reminding us, where the thought takes a higher flight, not infrequently of Augustine. [33] The Christianity and theology of Tertullian, whose elements we have here endeavoured to characterise, were above all headed by the primitive Christian hope and morality. In these was comprehended what he felt to be his inmost thought. Both phases recur in a large section of Latin literature of the third and of the first half of the fourth century. [34] There it is hardly possible to find any traces of Antignostic dogmatics; on the contrary, Apocalyptics were developed with extreme vividness, and morality, often Stoic in colouring, received a stringent form. [35] The whole of the abundant literary labours and dogmatic efforts of Hippolytus seem to have been lost on the West from the first and completely. But Tertullian also was deprived by his Montanism of the full influence which he might have exerted on the Church. [36] The results of his work passed to Cyprian, and, though much abbreviated and modified, were circulated by him. For the period from A.D. 260 down to Ambrose--indeed, properly speaking, to Augustine and Jerome--Cyprian became the Latin Church author par excellence. All known and unknown Latin writers of his time, and after him, had but a limited influence: he, as an edifying and standard author, dictated like a sovereign to the Western Church for the next 120 years. His authority ranked close after that of the Holy Scriptures, and it lasted up to the time of Augustine. [37] Cyprian had hardly one original theological thought; for even the work "De unitate ecclesiæ" rests on points of view which are partly derived from the earlier Catholic Fathers, and partly borrowed from the Roman Church, to which they were indigenous. In the extremely authoritative work, "De opere et eleemosynis" the Tertullian conceptions of merit and satisfaction are strictly developed, and are made to serve as the basis of penance, almost without reference to the grace of God in Christ. Cyprian's chief importance is perhaps due to the fact that, influenced by the consequences of the Decian storm he founded, in union with the Roman bishop Cornelius, what was afterwards called the sacrament of penance; in this, indeed, he was the slave rather than the master of circumstances; and in addition, he was yielding to Roman influences which had been working in this direction since Calixtus. He established the rule of the hierarchy in the Church in the spheres of the sacrament, sacrifice, and discipline; he set his seal on Episcopalianism; he planted firmly the conceptions of a legal relation between man and God, of works of penance as means of grace, and of the "satisfactory" expiations of Christ. He also created clerical language with its solemn dignity, cold-blooded anger, and misuse of Biblical words to interpret and criticise contemporary affairs--a metamorphosis of the Tertullian genius for language. Cyprian by no means inherited the interest taken by Tertullian in Antignostic theology. Like all great princes of the Church, he was a theologian only in so far as he was a catechist. He held all the more firmly by the symbol, and knew how to state in few words its undoubted meaning, and to turn it skilfully even against allied movements like that of Novatian. This had been learnt from Rome, where, since as early as the end of the second century, the "Apostles'" creed had been used with skill and tact against the motley opinions held about doctrine by Eastern immigrants. The Roman Bishops of the third century did not meddle with dogmatic disputes; the only two who tried it, and undoubtedly rendered great services to the Church, Hippolytus and Novatian, could not keep the sympathies of the clergy or the majority. In the West men did not live as Christians upon dogma, but they were obedient to the short law (lex) presented in the Symbol; [38] they impressed the East by the confidence with which, when necessary, they adopted a position in dogmatic questions, following in the doctrine of the Trinity and in Christology an original scheme formed by Tertullian and developed by Novatian; [39] while at the same time they worked at the consolidation of the constitution of the Church, the construction of a practical ecclesiastical moral code, as also the disciplining and training of the community through Divine Service and the rules of penance. [40] The canons of Elvira, which, for the rest, are not lax, but are even distinguished by their stringency, show how strictness and clemency were united, Christendom being marked off from the world, while at the same time a life in the world was rendered possible, and even the grossest sins were still indulged in. The result was a complete ecclesiastical constitution, with an almost military organisation. At its head stood the Roman Bishop, who, in spite of the abstract equality of all Bishops, occupied a unique position, not only as representative, but also as actual defender of the unity of the Church, which, nevertheless, was severely shaken, first by Novatianism, and afterwards by Donatism. When Constantine granted toleration and privileges to the Church, and enabled the provincial Churches to communicate with all freedom, Rome had already become a Latin city, and the Roman community was thoroughly Latinised; elsewhere also in the West the Greek element, once so powerful, had receded. Undoubtedly, Western Christians had no other idea than that they formed a single Church with the East; they were actually at one with the Eastern tendency represented by Athanasius in the fundamental conceptions of the doctrines of God, Christ, and eternal salvation. But their interests were often divided, and, in fact, there was little mutual understanding, particularly after Cappadocian orthodoxy triumphed in the East. From the middle of the third century the weakening of the central power had once more restored their independence to all the provinces, and had thus set free the principle of nationality; and this would have led to a complete reaction and wholesale particularism had not some energetic rulers, the migrations of the tribes, and the Church set up a barrier, which, indeed, ultimately proved too weak in the East. It was the great dogmatic controversies which compelled the provincial Churches to look beyond their own borders. But the sympathy of the West for the East--there never developed any vital interest in the opposite direction [41] --was no longer general or natural. It sprang, as a rule, from temporary necessities or ambitious purposes. Yet it became of incalculable importance for Western theology; for their relations with the East, into which the Western Church was brought by the Arian conflict, led Western Christians to observe more closely two great phenomena of the Eastern Church, the scientific theology (of Origen) and monachism. It may here be at once said that the contact and influence which thus arose did not in the end change the genius and tendency of the Western Church to its depths. In so far as a lasting change was introduced in the fifth century, it is not to be derived from this quarter. But for their suggestiveness, the capital and impulse which were received from the East cannot be highly enough appreciated We need only compare the writings of the Latin theologians who were not influenced by the Greeks, [42] with Hilary, Victorinus Rhetor, Ambrose, Jerome, Rufinus, and the others dependent on them, in order to perceive the enormous difference. The exegetical and speculative science of the Greeks was imported into the West, and, besides monachism and the ideal of a virginity devoted to God, as the practical application of that science. The West was not disposed to favour either of these, and since it is always hardest to carry through changes in the rules of practical life, the implanting of monachism cost embittered conflicts. [43] But the ideal of virginity, as denoting the love-bond with Christ, very soon established itself among the spiritual leaders of the West. (Even before this, Cyprian says, De hab. virg. 22: and you virgins have no husband, your lord and head is Christ in the similitude and place of a man.) [44] It then won through Ambrose the same significance for the West as it had obtained through Origen's expositions of the Song of Songs and Methodius in the East. Nay, it was in the West that the ideal was first, so to speak, individualised, and that it created a profusion of forms in which it was allied with or excited the impassioned love of Christ. [45] The theological science of the Greeks could not have domesticated itself, even if the time had been less unfavourable; just then its authority was tottering even in the East, after the Cappadocians seemed to have reconciled faith and knowledge for a brief period. Where one has once been accustomed to regard a complex of thoughts as an inviolable law, a legal order, it is no longer possible to awaken for it for a length of time the inner sympathy which clings to spheres in which the spiritual life finds a home; and if it does succeed in obtaining an assured position, its treatment assumes a different character; there is no freedom in dealing with it. As a matter of fact, the West was always less free in relation to dogma proper than the East in the classic period of Church theology. In the West men reflected about, and now and again against, dogma; but they really thought little in it. But how great, nevertheless, were the stores rescued to the West from the East [46] by Greek scholars, especially Hilary, Ambrose, and Jerome, at a time when the Greek sun had already ceased to warm the West! In the philosophical, historical, and theological elements transplanted by them, we have also one of Augustine's roots. He learned the science of exegetical speculation from Ambrose, the disciple of the Cappadocians, and it was only by its help that he was delivered from Manichæism. He made himself familiar with Neoplatonic philosophy, and in this sphere he was apparently assisted by the works of another Greek scholar, Victorinus Rhetor. He acquired an astonishing amount of knowledge of the Egyptian monks, and the impression thus received became of decisive importance for him. These influences must be weighed if we are to understand thoroughly the conditions under which such a phenomenon as that which Augustine offers us was possible. [47] But, on the other hand, Augustine continues the Western line represented by Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrosiaster, Optatus, Pacian, Prudentius, and also by Ambrose. Extremely characteristic is his relation to the Stoic Christian popular philosophy of Western teachers. We shall see that he retained a remnant of it. But his importance in the history of the Church, and of dogma, consisted essentially in the fact that he gave to the West, in place of Stoic Christian popular morality as that was comprised in Pelagianism, a religious and specifically Christian ethic, and that he impressed this so strongly on the Church that its formulas at least maintain their supremacy up to the present day in the whole of Western Christendom. In getting rid, however, of Stoic morals, he also thrust aside its curious complement, the realistic eschatology in which the ancient Latin Christians had given specific expression to their Christian faith. Ambrose was sovereign among Western Bishops, and at the same time the Greek trained exegete and theologian. In both qualities he acted on Augustine, who looked up to him as Luther did to Staupitz. [48] He comes first to be considered here in the latter respect. His education, his Episcopal chair in Milan, the Arian and Apollinarian conflict into which he had to enter, directed him to Greek theological literature. Philo, Hippolytus, Origen, and Basil were industriously read by him; he made extracts from them, and edited them in Latin. [49] He was united with Basil, not only by similiarity of situation, but above all by agreement in character and attitude. Basil was his real teacher in doctrine, and while the former was met with distrust in Alexandria and Rome, Ambrose highly honoured him, and fully recognised his orthodoxy. The importance of this attitude of the Milanese Bishop for the closing of the Arian controversy, and for the reconciliation of Roman and Alexandrian orthodoxy with that of the Cappadocians, has been described in an earlier volume. [50] It has indeed been recently shown, beyond dispute, that, in spite of his dependence on the Greeks, Ambrose preserved and further developed the Western system in his Christology. [51] Tertullian, Novatian--directly or indirectly--and Hilary influenced him. But on the other hand there is no mistake that he emphasised more strongly than Augustine the fundamental position of the Nicene decision, [52] and that he was confirmed in his doctrine of the Two Substances by the Cappadocians, who had been involuntarily led to something approaching it in their fight against Apollinaris. Further, he treats the Logos in Jesus Christ so much as the subject, the human substance so much as form and matter, that here again Greek influence--as in Hilary, who was similarly dependent on the Greeks--cannot be overlooked; for his own conception of the work of Christ conflicts with this stunted view of his human nature. But the most important influence of the East upon Ambrose does not lie in the special domain of dogmatics. It consists in the reception of the allegorical method of exegesis, and of many separate schemes and doctrines. It is true Ambrose had his own reservations in dealing with Plato and Origen; he did not adopt the consequences of Origen's theology; [53] he was much too hasty and superficial in the sphere of speculative reflection to appropriate from the Greeks more than fragments. But he, as well as the heavier but more thorough Hilary, raised the West above the "meagreness" of a pedantically literal, and, in its practical application, wholly planless exegesis; and they transmitted to their countrymen a profusion of ideas attached to the text of Holy Scripture. Rufinus and, in his first period, Jerome also completed the work. Manichæism would hardly have been overcome in the West unless it had been confronted by the theosophic exegesis, the "Biblical alchemy" of the Greeks, and the great theme of virginity was praised with new tongues after Western Christians heard of the union of the soul with its bridegroom, Christ, as taught by Origen in his commentary on the Song of Songs. [54] The unity, so far as at all attainable, of ecclesiastical feeling in East and West, was restored in the loftiest regions of theology about A.D. 390. But the fight against Origen, which soon broke out with embittered hatred, had, among other sad consequences, the immediate result that the West refused to learn anything further from the great theologian. The West never attained a strict system in the science of allegorical exegesis. The sacred histories of the Old Testament were also transformed into spiritual narratives for the West by Hilary, [55] Ambrose, Jerome, and Rufinus. [56] In this transformation Western Christians obtained a multitude of separate mystical Neoplatonic conceptions, though they failed to obtain any insight into the system as a whole. Another Western, the rhetorician Victorinus, that "aged man, most learned and skilled in the liberal sciences, who had read and weighed so many works of the philosophers; the instructor of so many noble Senators, who also, as a monument of his excellent discharge of his office, had deserved and obtained a statue in the Roman Forum," had initiated his fellow-countrymen into Neoplatonism by translations and original works. [57] That happened before he became a Christian. Having gone over to Christianity at an advanced age, and become a prolific ecclesiastical writer, he by no means abandoned Neoplatonism. If I am not mistaken, Augustine made him his model in the crucial period of his life, and although he understood enough Greek to read Neoplatonic writings, yet it was substantially by Victorinus that he was initiated into them. Above all, he here learned how to unite Neoplatonic speculation with the Christianity of the Church, and to oppose Manichæism from this as his starting-point. We do not require to describe in detail what the above combination and polemic meant to him. When Neoplatonism became a decisive element in Augustine's religious and philosophical mode of thought, it did so also for the whole of the West. The religious philosophy of the Greeks was incorporated in the spiritual assets of the West, along with its ascetic and monachist impulses. [58] But, unless all signs deceive, Augustine received from Victorinus the impulse which led him to assimilate Paul's type of religious thought; for it appears from the works of the aged rhetorician that he had appropriated Paul's characteristic ideas, and Augustine demonstrably devoted a patient study to the Pauline epistles from the moment when he became more thoroughly acquainted with Neoplatonism. Victorinus wrote very obscurely, and his works found but a slender circulation. But this is not the only case in history where the whole importance of an able writer was merged in the service he rendered to a greater successor. A great, epoch-making man is like a stream: the smaller brooks, which have had their origin perhaps further off in the country, lose themselves in it, having fed it, but without changing the course of its current. Not only Victorinus, [59] but ultimately also Ambrose himself, Optatus, Cyprian, and Tertullian were lost to view in Augustine; but they made him the proud stream in whose waters the banks are mirrored, on whose bosom the ships sail, and which fertilises and passes through a whole region of the world. For not only the work of those Greek Latins, but also the line of representatives of genuine Western theology and ecclesiasticism ended in Augustine. [60] Augustine studied, above all, very thoroughly, and made himself familiar with Cyprian's work. Cyprian was to him the "saintly," the Church Father, kat' exochen, and his view of heresy and the unity of the Church was dependent on Cyprian. But standing as a Bishop, unassailed, on the foundation which Cyprian had created, Augustine did not find it necessary to state Episcopalianism so uncompromisingly as the former, and being occupied with putting an end to a schism which was different from the Novatian, he learned to take a different view of the nature of schisms from the Bishop whom he venerated as a hero. [61] Cursory remarks show, besides, that Augustine had made himself familiar with the literature of the Novatian controversy, and had learned from it for his notion of the Church. Some works quoted by him we no longer possess--e.g., that of Reticius against the Novatians. [62] What has been preserved to us of this literature, [63] proves that the Western Church was continually impelled, by its opposition to the Novatians in the course of the fourth century, to reflect on the nature of the Church. [64] But even when he entered into the Donatist controversy, Augustine did so as a man of the second or indeed of the third generation, and he therefore enjoyed the great advantage of having at his disposal a fund of conceptions and ideas already collected. In this sphere Optatus had especially wrought before him. [65] This is not the place to describe the rise of Donatism; for the dispute did not originate in a dogmatic controversy. [66] It arose in the first place out of Cæcilian's action against the exaggerated veneration of martyrs, which disturbed the order and endangered the existence of the Church. Some of the clergy who did not desire a strong episcopal power seem to have made common cause with the discontented and refractory enthusiasts, to whom Cæcilian had been obnoxious even when Deacon. In any case, a point of principle did not immediately emerge in the controversy. But it was soon introduced, and indeed there is no doubt that Cyprian was played off against himself. [67] The Donatist party, which was at the same time, it appears, the African national party, found support both in Cyprian's conception that the Bishop was only a Bishop if he possessed a certain Christian and moral quality, and in his defence of heretical baptism. The opposition, also carrying out ideas taught by Cyprian, gave such prominence to the official character of the episcopate, and the objective efficacy of the sacrament, that the personal quality of the official or dispenser became indifferent. [68] It may be that those martyrs and relic-worshipping enthusiasts in Carthage were inclined from the first to the conception once held by Cyprian against Calixtus and his successors, and that they thus required a standard of active, personal holiness for bishops, which could no longer be sustained in the great Church and during the devastating storms of the last persecution. But this cannot be proved. On the other hand, it is indisputable that, after the Synod of Arles, the controversy had reached a point where it must be regarded as the last link in the chain of the great phenomena (Encratites Montanists, adherents of Hippolytus and Novatians) in which Christendom strove against the secularisation that was imposed upon it by the removal of the attribute of holiness, and with it of the truth of the Church, from persons to institutions--the office and mysteries; [69] this change being due to the fact that otherwise men would have had to despair of the Christian character of the Church as Catholic. The Donatists denied the validity of any ordination conferred by a traditor, and therefore also of sacraments administered by a bishop who had been consecrated by a traditor. As a last remnant of a much more earnest conception, a minimum of personal worthiness was required of the clergy alone, and received into the notion of the Church itself: it was no longer Christian if this minimum was wanting, if the clergy--nothing being now said of the laity--were not free from every idolatrous stain. Compared with the measure of agreement which prevailed between Catholics and Donatists, the separate thesis of the latter looks like a caprice, and certainly much obstinacy, personal discontent, and insubordination lurked behind it. But we may not overlook the question of principle any more here than in the case of Novatianism. The legend of the Sybilline Books is constantly repeating itself in the history of spiritual conflicts. The remnant saved from the flames stands at as high a price as the whole collection. And what a price the Church has paid in order to escape the exhortations of separatists! The Novatian crisis--after the Decian persecution--drew from it the sacrament of penance, and thereby gave the impulse in general to substitute a system of sacraments for the sacrament that blotted out sin. (The formal establishment of the new sacrament had, indeed, still to be waited for for a long time.) The Donatist crisis--after the Diocletian persecution--taught the Church to value ordination as imparting an inalienable title (character indelebilis) and to form a stringent view of the "objectivity" of the sacraments; or, to use a plainer expression, to regard the Church primarily as an institution whose holiness and truth were inalienable, however melancholy the state of its members. In this thought Catholicism was first complete. By it is explained its later history down to the present day, in so far as it is not a history of piety, but of the Church, the Hierarchy, sacramental magic, and implicit faith (fides implicita). But only in the West did the thought come to be deliberately and definitely expressed. It also made its way in the East, because it was inevitable; but it did so, as it were, unconsciously. This was no advantage; for the very fact that this conception of the Church was definitely thought out in the West, led over and over again to the quest for safeguards, or a form which could be reconciled with living faith, and the requirements of a holy life. Even Augustine, who stated it definitely and fully, aimed at reconciling the Christian conscience with it. But he was not the first to declare it; he rather received it from tradition. The first representative of the new conception known to us, and Augustine also knew him, was Optatus. The work of Optatus, "De schismate Donatistarum," was written in the interests of peace, and therefore in as friendly and conciliatory a tone as possible. This did not, indeed, prevent violent attacks in detail, and especially extremely insulting allegorical interpretations of texts from Scripture. But the author every now and then recalls the fact that his opponents are after all Christian brethren (IV., I., 2), who have disdainfully seceded from the Church, and only decline to recognise what is gladly offered them, Church fellowship. At the very beginning of his book, which, for the rest, is badly arranged, because it is a reply point by point to a writing by the Donatist, Parmenian, Optatus (I., 10 sq.)--differing from Cyprian--indicates the distinction in principle between heretics and schismatics, and he adheres firmly to the distinction--already drawn by Irenæus--to the end of his statement. [70] Heretics are "deserters from or falsifiers of the Symbol" (I., 10, 12; II., 8), and accordingly are not Christians; the Donatists are seditious Christians. Since the definition holds (I., 11) that "a simple and true understanding in the law (scil. the two testaments), the unique and most true sacrament, and unity of minds constitute the Catholic (scil. Church)," [71] the Donatists only want the last point to be genuinely Catholic Christians. The heretics have "various and false baptisms," no legitimate office of the keys, no true divine service; "but these things cannot be denied to you schismatics, [72] although you be not in the Catholic Church, because you have received along with us true and common sacraments" (I., 12). He says afterwards (III., 9): "You and we have a common ground in the Church (ecclesiastica una conversatio), and if the minds of men contend, the sacraments do not." Finally, we also can say: "We equally believe, and have been stamped with one seal, nor did we receive a different baptism from you; nor a different ordination. We read equally the Divine Testament; we pray to one God. Among you and us the prayer of our Lord is the same, but a rent having been made, with the parts hanging on this side and on that, it was necessary that it should be joined." And (III., 10) he remarks very spiritually, founding on a passage in Ezechiel: "You build not a protecting house, like the Catholic Church, but only a wall; the partition supports no corner-stone; it has a needless door, nor does it guard what is enclosed; it is swept by the rain, destroyed by tempests, and is unable to keep out the robber. It is a house wall, but not a home. And your part is a quasi ecclesia, but not Catholic." V., 1: "That is for both which is common to you and us: therefore it belongs also to you, because you proceed from us;" that is the famous principle which is still valid in the present day in the Catholic Church. "Finally, both you and we have one ecclesiastical language, common lessons, the same faith, the very sacraments of the faith, the same mysteries." Undoubtedly Optatus also held ultimately that those things possessed by the schismatics were in the end fruitless, because their offence was especially aggravated. They merely constituted a "quasi ecclesia." For the first mark of the one, true, and holy Church was not the holiness of the persons composing it; but exclusively the possession of the sacraments. II., 1: "It is the one Church whose sanctity is derived from the sacraments, and not estimated from the pride of persons. This cannot apply to all heretics and schismatics; it remains that it is (found) in one place." The second mark consists in territorial Catholicity according to the promise: "I will give the heathen for an inheritance, and the ends of the world for a possession." II., 1: "To whom, then, does the name of Catholic belong, since it is called Catholic because it is reasonable and diffused everywhere?" [73] Optatus did not succeed in clearly describing the first mark in its negative and exclusive meaning; we could indeed easily charge him with contradicting himself on this point. The second was all the more important in his eyes, [74] since the Donatists had only taken hold in Africa and, by means of a few emigrants, in Rome. In both signs he prepared the way for Augustine's doctrine of the Church and the sacraments, in which Optatus' thought was, of course, spiritualised. Optatus has himself shown, in the case of Baptism (V., 1-8), what he meant by the "sanctity of the sacraments." In Baptism there were three essentials: the acting Holy Trinity ("confertur a trinitate"), the believer ("fides credentis"), and the administrator. These three were not, however, equally important; the two first rather belonged alone to the dogmatic notion of Baptism ("for I see that two are necessary, and one as if necessary [quasi necessariam] [75] "), for the baptisers are not "lords" (domini), but "agents or ministers of baptism" (operarii vel ministri baptismi). (Ambrosiaster calls them advocates who plead, but have nothing to say at the end when sentence is passed.) They are only ministering and changing organs, and therefore contribute nothing to the notion and effect of Baptism; for "it is the part of God to cleanse by the sacrament." But if the sacrament is independent of him who, by chance, dispenses it, because the rite presupposes only the ever the same Trinity and the ever the same faith, [76] then it cannot be altered in its nature by the dispenser (V. 4: "the sacraments are holy in themselves, not through men: sacramenta per se esse sancta, non per homines"). That is the famous principle of the objectivity of the sacraments which became so fundamental for the development of the dogmatics of the Western Church, although it never could be carried out in all its purity in the Roman Church, because in that case it would have destroyed the prerogatives of the Clergy. It is to be noticed, however, that Optatus made the holiness of the sacraments to be effective only for the faith of the believer (fides credentis), and he is perfectly consistent in this respect, holding faith to be all important, to the complete exclusion of virtues. Here again he prepared the way for the future theology of the West by emphasising the sovereignty of faith. [77] It is all the more shocking to find that even Optatus uses the whole reflection to enable him to depreciate claims on the life of the members of the Church. We see clearly that the Catholic doctrine of the sacraments grew out of the desire to show that the Church was holy and therefore true, in spite of the irreligion of the Christians belonging to it. But in aiming at this, men lit, curiously, upon a trace of evangelical religion. Since it was impossible to point to active holiness, faith and its importance were called to mind. A great crisis, a perplexity, in which, seeing the actual condition of matters, the Catholic Church found itself involved with its doctrine of Baptism, virtue, and salvation, turned its attention to the promise of God and faith. Thus the most beneficent and momentous transformation experienced by Western Christianity before Luther was forced upon it by circumstances. But it would never have made its way if it had not been changed by the spiritual experiences of a Catholic Christian, Augustine, from an extorted theory [78] into a joyful and confident confession. Parmenian gave Optatus occasion to enumerate certain "endowments" (dotes) of the Church, i.e., the essential parts of its possession. Parmenian had numbered six, Optatus gives five: (1) cathedra (the [Episcopal] chair); (2) angelus; (3) spiritus; (4) fons; (5) sigillum (the symbol). The enumeration is so awkward that one can only regret that it is adapted to the formula of an opponent. But we learn, at least, in this way that Cyprian's ideal of the unity of the Episcopate, as represented in Peter's chair, had been received and fostered unsuspiciously in Africa. "Peter alone received the keys" (I., 10, 12). "You cannot deny your knowledge that on Peter, in the city of Rome, was first conferred the Episcopal chair, in which he sat, the head of all the Apostles, whence he was also called Cephas, in which one chair unity might be observed by all, lest the rest of the Apostles should severally defend one, each for himself, in order that he might now be a schismatic and sinner, who should appoint a second as against the one unique chair" (II., 2). The connection with Peter's chair was of decisive importance, not only for Optatus, but also for his opponent (II., 4), who had appealed to the fact that Donatists had also possessed a Bishop in Rome. Optatus, besides, discusses the second point, the angelus, who is the legitimate Bishop of the local community, the chair (cathedra) guaranteeing the oecumenical unity, and he emphasises the connection of the African Catholic Churches with the Oriental, and especially the seven-fold ecclesia of Asia (Rev. II., 3), almost as strongly as that with the Roman Church (II., 6; VI., 3). His disquisitions on spiritus, [79] fons, and sigillum, are devoid of any special interest (II., 7-9). On the other hand, it is important to notice that he expressly subordinates the consideration of the endowments (dotes) of the Church, to the verification of "its sacred members and internal organs" (sancta membra ac viscera ecclesia), about which Parmenian had said nothing. These consisted in the sacraments and the names of the Trinity "in which meet the faith and profession of believers" (cui concurrit fides credentium et professio). Thus he returns to his natural and significant line of thought. [80] If Ambrosiaster and Optatus prepared the way for Augustine's doctrines of the sacraments, faith, and the Church, [81] Ambrose did so for those of sin, grace, and faith. We have endeavoured above to estimate his importance to Augustine as a disciple of the Greeks; we have now to regard him as a Western. [82] But we have first of all to consider not the theologian, but the Bishop. It was the royal priest who first opened Augustine's eyes to the authority and majesty of the Church. Only a Roman Bishop--even if he did not sit in the Roman chair--could teach him this, and perhaps the great work, De civitate Dei, would never have been written had it not been for the way in which this majesty had been impressed on Augustine by Ambrose; for great historical conceptions arise either from the fascinating impression made by great personalities or from political energy; and Augustine never possessed the latter. It was, on the contrary, in Ambrose, the priestly Chancellor of the State, that the imperial power (imperium) of the Catholic Church dawned upon him, [83] and his experiences of the confusion and weakness of the civil power at the beginning of the fifth century completed the impression. Along with this Ambrose's sermons fall to be considered. [84] If, on one side, they were wholly dependent on Greek models, yet they show, on the other hand, in their practical tone, the spirit of the West. Augustine's demand that the preacher should "teach, sway, and move" (docere, flectere, movere) is as if drawn from those sermons. in spite of the asceticism and virginity which he also mainly preached, he constantly discussed all the concrete affairs of the time and the moral wants of the community. [85] Thus Ambrose represents the intimate union of the ascetic ideal with energetic insistence on positive morality, a union which the Western mediæval Church never lost, however much practical life was subordinated to the contemplative. Three different types of thought are interwoven in Ambrose's doctrine of sin and grace. First, he was dependent on the Greek conception that regarded evil as not-being, but at the same time as necessary. [86] Secondly, he shows that he was strongly influenced by the popular morality of Ciceronian Stoicism, [87] which was widespread among cultured Western Christians, and which had, by its combination with monastic morality, brought about, in Pelagianism, the crisis so decisive for the dogmatics of the West. Thirdly and finally, he carried very much further that view taken by Tertullian of the radical nature of evil and the guiltiness of sin which was made his fundamental principle by Augustine. Evil was radical, and yet its root was not found in the sensuous, but in "pride of mind" (superbia animi); it sprang from freedom, and was yet a power propagating itself in mankind. The Greeks had looked on the universal state of sinfulness as a more or less accidental product of circumstances; Ambrose regarded it as the decisive fact, made it the starting-point of his thought, and referred it more definitely than any previous teacher--Ambrosiaster excepted--to Adam's Fall. [88] Passages occur in his works which in this respect do not fall a whit behind the famous statements of Augustine. [89] But important as this phase was, in which thought was no longer directed primarily to sin's results, or to the single sinful act, but to the sinful state which no virtue could remove, yet it is just in this alone that we can perceive the advance made by Ambrose. As regards religion, none is to be found in his works; for his doctrine of the traducian character and tenacity of sin was in no way connected with the heightened consciousness of God and salvation. Ambrose did not submit evil to be decided upon in the light of religion. Therefore he merely groped his way round the guilty character of sin, without hitting upon it; he could once more emphasise the weakness of the flesh as an essential factor; and he could maintain the proposition that man was of himself capable of willing the good. For this reason, finally, his doctrine of sin is to us an irreconcilable mass of contradictions. But we must, nevertheless, estimate very highly the advance made by Ambrose in contemplating the radical sinful condition. It was undoubtedly important for Augustine. And to this is to be added that he was able to speak in a very vivid way of faith, conceiving it to be a living communion with God or Christ. The religious individualism which shines clearly in Augustine already does so faintly in Ambrose: "Let Christ enter thy soul, let Jesus dwell in your minds. . . . What advantage is it to me, conscious of such great sins, if the Lord do come, unless He comes into my soul, returns into my mind, unless Christ lives in me?" [90] And while in many passages he distinctly describes the merit gained by works, and love as means of redemption, yet in some of his reflections, on the other hand, he rises as strongly to the lofty thought that God alone rouses in us the disposition for what is good, and that we can only depend on the grace of God in Christ. [91] St. Paul's Epistles occupied the foreground in Ambrose's thought, [92] and from them he learned that faith as confidence in God is a power by itself, and does not simply fall into the realm of pious belief. However much he adds that is alien, however often he conceives faith to be an act of obedience to an external authority, he can speak of it in different terms from his predecessors. Faith is to him the fundamental fact of the Christian life, not merely as belief in authority ("faith goes before reason," fides prævenit rationem), [93] but as faith which lays hold of redemption through Christ, and justifies because it is the foundation of perfect works, and because grace and faith are alone valid before God. "And that benefits me because we are not justified from the works of the law. I have no reason, therefore, to glory in my works, I have nothing to boast of; and therefore I will glory in Christ. I will not boast because I am just, but because I am redeemed. I will glory, not because I am without sins, but because my sins have been remitted. I will not glory because I have done good service, or because anyone has benefited me, but because the blood of Christ was shed for me." [94] That is Augustinianism before Augustine, nay, it is more than Augustinianism. [95] In the dogmatic work of Western theologians of the fourth century, the genius of Western Christianity, which found its most vigorous expression in Cyprian's De opere et eleemosynis, fell away to some extent. But it only receded, remaining still the prevailing spirit. The more vital notion of God, the strong feeling of responsibility to God as judge, the consciousness of God as moral power, neither restricted nor dissolved by any speculation on nature--all that constituted the superiority of Western to Eastern Christianity is seen in its worst form under the deteriorating influence of the legal doctrine of retribution, and the pseudo-moral one of merit. [96] In view of this, the inrush of Neoplatonic mysticism was highly important; for it created a counterpoise to a conception which threatened to dissolve religion into a series of legal transactions. But the weightiest counterpoise consisted in the doctrine of faith and grace as proclaimed by Augustine. However, it will be shown that Augustine taught his new conception in such a form that it did not shatter the prevailing system, but could rather be admitted into it; perhaps the greatest triumph ever achieved in the history of religion by a morality of calculations over religion. The conception of religion as a legal relationship, which was concerned with the categories lex (law) delictum (fault) satisfactio, poena (punishment) meritum, præmium, etc., was not destroyed by Augustine. Grace was rather inserted in a legal and objective form into the relationship, yet in such a way that it remained possible for the individual to construe the whole relationship from the point of view of grace. We have attempted, in the above discussion, to exhibit the different lines existing in the West which meet in Augustine. Let us, in conclusion, emphasise further the following points. 1. Along with Holy Scripture, the Symbol, the Apostolic "law" (lex), was placed in the West on an unapproachable height. This law was framed in opposition to Marcionitism, Sabellianism, Arianism, and Apollinarianism, without essential variations, and without any process of reasoning, as a confession of faith in the unity of God in three persons, as also in the unity of Christ in two substances. The Western Church, therefore, apparently possessed a lofty certitude in dealing with Trinitarian and Christological problems. But with this certitude was contrasted the fact, of which we have many instances, that under cover of the official confession many more Christological heresies circulated, and were maintained in the West than in the Churches of the East, and that in particular the Christological formula, where it was not wholly unknown, was, for the laity and for many of the clergy, simply a noumenon. [97] This fact is further confirmed when we observe that Western theologians, as long as they were not directly involved in Eastern controversies, did not turn their attention to the principles contained in the above "law," but to quite different questions. Augustine was not the first to write "expositions of the Symbol," in which questions, wholly different from what his text would lead us to expect, were discussed. On the contrary, Western theologians from Cyprian show that they lived in a complex of ideas and questions which had little to do with the problems treated by Antignostics and Alexandrians, or with dogma. 2. In connection with the development of penance on the basis of works and merits (in the sense of satisfactions), and in harmony with the legal spirit characteristic of Western theological speculation, Christ's expiatory work came now to the front. It was not so much the Incarnation--that was the antecedent condition--as the death of Christ, which was regarded as the salient point (punctum saliens); [98] and it was already treated from all conceivable points of view as a sacrificial death, atonement, ransom, and vicarious consummation of the crucifixion. At the same time, Ambrose discussed its relationship (reconciliatio, redemptio, satisfactio, immolatio, meritum) to sin as guilt (reatus). In such circumstances the accent fell on the human nature of Christ; the offerer and offering was the mediator as man, who received his value through the divine nature, though quite as much so by his acceptance on the part of the Deity. Thus the West had a Christological system of its own, which, while the formula of the two natures formed its starting-point, was pursued in a new direction: the mediator was looked on as the man whose voluntary achievement possessed an infinite value in virtue of the special dispensation of God. [99] (Optat I., 10: "the world [was] reconciled to God by means of the flesh of Christ": mundus reconciliatus deo per carnem Christi.) From this we can understand how Augustine, in not a few of his arguments, opposed, if in a veiled fashion, the doctrine of the divine nature of Christ, discussing the merits of the historical Christ as if that nature did not exist, but everything was given to Christ of grace. [100] The same reason further explains why afterwards modified Adoptianism was constantly re-emerging in the West, [101] it being from the stand-point of the consistent Greek Christology the worst of heresies because it dislocated the whole structure of the latter, and threw its purpose into confusion. Finally, the same fact also explains why, in later times, Western Christians, particularly such as had acquired the mystical monachist observance of intercourse with Christ, the chaste bridegroom, substantially reduced the Christological conception to "Ecce homo." The vividness and thrilling power which this figure possessed for them, raising them above sorrow and suffering, cannot deceive us as to the fact that the Church Christology was no longer anything to them but a formula. But while the ancient Western form had become the basis of a view which left fancy and disposition to fix the significance of Christ's Person, that must not be described as a necessary deduction from it. That form--in which Christ was the object of the Father's grace, carried out what the Father entrusted him with, and by Him was exalted--rather corresponded to the clearest passages of the New Testament, and was the only protection against the superstitious conceptions of the Greeks which emptied the Gospel of all meaning. Of decisive value, however, are not the various mediæval attempts to appraise Christ's work, but rather the whole tendency to understand Christianity as the religion of atonement; for in this tendency is expressed characteristically the fear of God as judge, which, in the East, disappeared behind mystic speculations. [102] 3. An acute observer perceives that the soteriological question--How does man get rid, and remain rid, of his sins and attain eternal life?--had already, in the fourth century, actively engaged the earnest attention of thinkers in the Western Church, and, indeed, in such a way that, as distinguished from the East, the religious and moral sides of the problem are no longer found separate. But the question was not clearly put before the Pelagian conflict, since the controversies with Heraclius and Jovinian were not followed by a lasting movement. Opinions were still jumbled together in a motley fashion, sometimes in one and the same writer. If I see aright, five different conceptions can be distinguished for the period about 400 A.D. First we have the Manichæan which insinuated its way in the darkness, but was widely extended, even among the clergy; according to it evil was a real physical power, and was overcome in the individual by goodness, equally a physical force which was attached to natural potencies and Christ. [103] Secondly, we have the Neoplatonic and Alexandrian view which taught that evil was not-being, that which had not yet become, the necessary foil of the good, the shadow of the light, the transitoriness cleaving to the "many" in opposition to the "one." It held that redemption was the return to the one, the existent, to God; that it was identification with God in love; Christ was the strength and crutches for such a return; for "energies and crutches come from one hand." [104] Thirdly, there was the rationalistic Stoic conception; this held that virtue was the supreme good; sin was the separate evil act springing from free will; redemption was the concentration of the will and its energetic direction to the good. Here again the historical and Christological were really nothing but crutches. [105] All these three conceptions lay the greatest stress on asceticism. Fourthly, there was the sacramental view, which may be characterised partly as morally lax, partly as "evangelical"; we find it, e.g., in Heraclius [106] on the one hand, and in Jovinian [107] on the other. According to it he who was baptised possessing genuine faith obtained the guarantee of felicity; sin could not harm him; no impeachment of sin (reatus peccati) could touch him. It is proved that really lax and "evangelical" views met: a man could always rely as a Christian on the grace of God; sin did not separate him from God, if he stood firm in the faith. Nay, from the second century, really from Paul, there existed in the Gentile Church movements which deliberately defended reliance on faith alone (the "sola fide") and "the most assured salvation through grace granted in baptism" (salus per gratiam in baptismo donatam certissima.) [108] A fifth conception was closely related to, yet different from, the last. We can call it briefly the doctrine of grace and merit. We have pointed out strong traces of it in Victorinus, Optatus, and Ambrose. According to it, evil as the inherent sin of Adam was only to be eradicated by divine grace in Christ; this grace produced faith to which, however, redemption was only granted when it had advanced and become the habitual love from which those good works spring that establish merit in the sight of God. Evil is godlessness and the vice that springs from it; goodness is the energy of grace and the good works that flow from it. Here, accordingly, nature and grace, unbelief and faith, selfishness and love of God are the antitheses, and the work of the historical Christ stands in the centre. Nevertheless, this view did not exclude asceticism, but required it, since only that faith was genuine and justified men which evinced itself in sanctification, i.e., in world-renouncing love. Thus a middle path was here sought between Jovinian on the one side and Manichæan and Priscillian asceticism on the other. [109] These different conceptions met and were inextricably mingled. The future of Christianity was necessarily to be decided by the victory of one or other of them. 4. In the West, interest in the question of the relation of grace and means of grace to the Church was awakened by the Novatian, heretical baptism, and Donatist controversy. This interest was, however, still further strengthened by the fact that the Church detached itself more forcibly from the State than in the East. The fall of the West Roman Empire, opposition to the remains of a still powerful heathen party in Rome, and finally dislike to the new Arian German forms of government all contributed to this. One perhaps expects to find here by way of conclusion a characterisation of the different national Churches of the West; but little can be said from the standpoint of the history of dogma. The distinctive character of the North African Church was strongly marked. A darkness broods over the Churches of Spain, Gaul, and Britain, in which the only clear spot is the conflict of the priests with the monachism that was establishing itself. The conflict with Priscillianism in Spain, the attacks on Martin of Tours in Gaul, and, on the other hand, Vigilantius, come in here. It is not unimportant to notice that Southern Gaul was distinguished by its culture and taste for aesthetics and rhetoric about A.D. 360 (see Julian's testimony) and A.D. 400 (see Sulp. Severus, Chron. init.). Rome only became a Christian city in the fifth century, but even in the time of Liberius and Damasus the Roman Bishop was the foremost Roman. What was wrested by Damasus, that unsaintly but sagacious man, from the State and the East, was never again abandoned by his energetic successors; they also tried vigorous intervention in the affairs of the provincial Churches. Holding faithfully to its confession, the Roman Church was, not only from its position, but also by its nature, the connecting link between East and West, between the monachist leanings of the former, and the tendency to ecclesiastical politics and sacramentarianism of the latter. It also united South and North in the West. Rome, again, from the time of Liberius pursued and explained that religious policy towards paganism, "by which the Catholic Church gained the means not only of winning but of satisfying the masses of the people who were, and, in spite of the confession, remained heathen" (Usener, Relig. Unters., I., p. 293): "it rendered heathenism harmless by giving its blessing to it, i.e., to all that belonged to the pagan cultus." But that magnanimous way of opposing paganism, which has been rightly adduced, and which Usener (op. cit.) has begun to exhibit to us so learnedly and instructively, concealed within it the greatest dangers. In such circumstances it was of supreme value both for the contemporary and future fortunes of the Church that, just when the process of ethnicising was in full swing, Augustine, equally at home in North Africa, Rome, and Milan, appeared and reminded the Church what Christian faith was. __________________________________________________________________ [17] After Gregory I. [18] Möhler says very justly, from the Catholic standpoint (Patrologie, p. 737): "We are often surprised for a moment, and forget that in Tertullian we have before us a writer of the beginning of the third century, we feel so mush at home in reading the language, often very familiar to us, in which he discusses difficult questions concerning dogmatics, morals, or even the ritual of the Church." [19] Ultimately men were content, indeed, with preserving the inconsistencies, treating them as problems of the schools, and ceasing to attempt to solve them; for time makes even self-contradictions tolerable, and indeed to some extent hallows them. [20] See the 1 Ep. of Clement, also the tractate on The Players, and the testimonies of Ignatius, Dionysius of Corinth and others as to the old Roman Church. [21] De præscr. 36: "Si Italiæ adjaces habes Romam, unde nobis auctoritas quoque praesto est." [22] On Church Latin, see Koffmane's work, which contains much that is valuable, Gesch. des Kirchenlateins, 1879-1881. [23] See our expositions of this in Vol. II., p. 67 ff., 108 ff., 128 f., 311 f. [24] See v. Schulte, Gesch. der Quellen and Lit. d. kanonischen Rechts, Vol. I., pp. 92-103, Vol. II., p. 512 f. Also his Gedanken über Aufgabe and Reform d. jurist. Studiums, 1881: "The science of law was in practice the leading factor in Church and State from the twelfth century." That it is so still may, to save many words, be confirmed by a testimony of Döllinger's. In a memorable speech on Phillips he says, (Akad. Vorträge, Vol. II., p. 185 f.): "Frequent intercourse with the two closely-allied converts, Iarcke and Phillips, showed me how an ultramontane and papistical conception of the Christian religion was especially suggested and favoured by legal culture and mode of thought, which was dominated, even in the case of German specialists like Phillips, not by ancient German, but Roman legal ideas." [25] On the designation of Holy Scripture as "lex" in the West, see Zahn, Gesch. d. neutestamentlichen Kanous, I. 1, p. 95 f. [26] Consider, e.g., a sentence like this of Cyprian De unit. 15: "Justitia opus est, ut promereri quis possit deum judicem." [27] A series of legal schemes framed by Tertullian for his dogmatics and ethics have been given in Vol. II., 279 f., 294 f., Vol. IV. pp. 110, 121. In addition to his speculation on substantia, persona, and status, the categories offendere, satisfacere, promereri, acceptare, and rependere, etc., play the chief part in his system. Most closely connected with the legal contemplation of problems is the abstract reference to authority; for one does not obey a law because he finds it to be good and just, but because it is law. (Tertullian, indeed, knows very well, when defending himself against heathen insinuations, that the above dictum is not sufficient in the sphere of religion and morals, see e.g., Apolog. 4.) This attitude of Tertullian, led up to by his dialectical procedure and his alternations between auctoritas and ratio, produces in many passages the impression that we are listening to a mediæval Catholic. In regard to the alternation above described, the work De corona is especially characteristic; but so is Adv. Marc. I., 23 f. He writes, De pænit. 4: "Nos pro nostris angustiis unum inculcamus, bonum atque optimum esse quod deus præcipit. Audaciam existimo de bono divini præcepti disputare. Neque enim quia bonum est, idcirco auscultare debemus, sed quia deus præcepit. Ad exhibitionem obsequii prior est majestas divinæ potestatis, prior est auctoritas imperantis quam utilitas servientis." (Compare Scorp. 2, 3; De fuga, 4; De cor. 2.) But the same theologian writes, De pæn. 1: "Res dei ratio, quia deus nihil non ratione providit, nihil non ratione tractari intellegique voluit." The work De pænit. is in general peculiarly fitted to initiate us into Tertullian's style of thought. I shall in the sequel pick out the most important points, and furnish parallels from his other writings. Be it noticed first that the work emphasises the three parts, vera poenitentia (deflere, metus dei), confessio and satisfactio, and then adds the venia on the part of the effensus deus. In chap. II. we already meet with the expression "merita pænitentiæ." There we read: "ratio salutis certam formam tenet, ne bonis umquam factis cogitatisve quasi violenta aliqua manus injiciatur. Deus enim reprobationem bonorum ratam non habens, utpote suorum, quorum cum auctor et defensor sit necesse est, proinde et acceptator, si acceptator etiam remunerator bonum factum deum habet debitorem, sicuti et malum, quia judex omnis remunerator est causæ." (De orat. 7: "pænitentia demonstratur acceptabilis deo;" we have also "commendatior"). Chap. III.; "Admissus ad dominica præcepta ex ipsis statim eruditur, id peccato deputandum, a quo deus arceat." (The distinction between præcepta and consilia dominica is familiar in Tertullian; see Ad. uxor. II. 1; De coron. 4; Adv. Marc. II. 17. In Adv. Marc. I. 29, he says that we may not reject marriage altogether, because if we did there would be no meritorious sanctity. In Adv. Marc. I. 23, the distinction is drawn between "debita" and "indebita bonitas"). Chap. III.: as "Voluntas facti origo est;" a disquisition follows on velle, concupiscere, perficere. Chap. V.: "Ita qui per delictorum pænitentiam instituerat dominus satisfacere, diabolo per aliæ pænitentié pænitentiam satisfaciet, eritque tanto magis perosus deo, quanto æmulo ejus acceptus." (See De orat. 11; "fratri satisfacere," 18; "disciplinæ satisfacere," 23; "satisfacimus deo domino nostro"; De jejun. 3; De pud. 9, 13; De pat. 10, 13, etc., etc.: "peccator patri satisfacit," namely, through his penances; see De pud. 13: "hic jam carnis interitum in officium pænitentiæ interpretantur, quod videatur jejuniis et sordibus et incuria omni et dedita opera malæ tractationis carnem exterminando satis deo facere"). In ch. V. it is explained quite in the Catholic manner that timor is the fundamental form of the religious relation. Here, as in countless other passages, the "deus offenses" moves Tertullian's soul (see De pat. 5: "hinc deus irasci exorsus, unde offendere homo inductus.") Fear dominates the whole of penitence. (De pænit. 6: "metus est instrumentum pænitentiæ." In general "offendere deum" and "satisfacere deo" are the proper technical terms; see De pæn. 7: "offendisti, sed reconciliari adhuc potes; habes cui satisfacias et quidem volentem." Ch. X.: "intolerandum scilicet pudori, domino offenso satisfacere." Ch. XI.: "castigationem victus atque cultus offenso domino præstare." Along with satisfacere we have "deum iratum, indignatum mitigare, placare, reconciliare." Ch. VI: "omnes salutis inpromerendo deo petitores sumus." Compare with this "promereri deum" Scorp. 6: "quomodo multæ mansiones apud patrem, si non pro varietate meritorum . . . porro et si fidei propterea congruebat sublimitati et claritatis aliqua prolatio, tale quid esse opportuerat illud emolumenti, quod magno constaret labore, cruciatu, tormento, morte . . . eadem pretia quæ et merces." De orat. 2: "meritum fidei." 3: "nos angelorum, si meruimus, candidati"; 4: "merita cujusque." De pænit. 6: "catechumenus mereri cupit baptismum, timet adhuc delinquere, ne non mereretur accipere." De pat. 4: "artificium promerendi obsequium est, obsequii vero disciplina morigera subjectio est." De virg. vel., 13: "deus justus est ad remuneranda quæ soli sibi fiunt." De exhort. 1: "nemo indulgentia dei utendo promeretur, sed voluntati obsequendo;" 2: "deus quæ vult præcipit et accepto facit et æternitatis mercede dispungit." De pud. 10: "pænitentiam deo immolare . . . magis merebitur fructum pænitentiæ qui nondum ea usus est quam qui jam et abusus est." De jejun. 3: "ratio promerendi deum" [jejunium iratum deum homini reconciliat, ch. VII.]; 13: "ultro officium facere deo." How familiar and important in general is to Tertullian the thought of performing a service, a favour to God, or of furnishing him with a spectacle! He indeed describes as a heathen idea (Apolog. 11) the sentence: "conlatio divinitatis meritorum remunerandorum fuit ratio"; but he himself comes very near it; thus he says (De exhortat. 10): "per continentiam negotiaberis magnam substantiam sanctitatis, parsimonia carnis spiritum acquires." He sternly reproves, Scorp. 15, the saying of the "Lax": Christus non vicem passionis sitit; he himself says (De pat. 16): "rependamus Christi patientiam, quam pro nobis ipse dependit." De pænit. 6: "Quam porro ineptum, quam pænitentiam non adimplere, ei veniam delictorum sustinere? Hoc est pretium non exhibere, ad mercem manum emittere. Hoc enim pretio dominus veniam addicere instituit; hac pænitentiæ compensatione redimendam proponit impunitatem," (see Scorp. 6: "nulli compensatio invidiosa est, in qua aut gratiæ aut injuriæ communis est ratio"). In Ch. VI. Tertullian uses "imputare," and this word is not rarely found along with "reputare"; in Ch. VII. we have "indulgentia" (indulgere), and these terms are met somewhat frequently; so also "restituere" (ch. VII. 12: "restitutio peccatoris"). De pat. 8: "tantum relevat confessio delictorum, quantum dissimulatio exaggerat; confessio omni satisfactionis consilium est." Further, ch. IX.: "Hujus igitur pænitentiæ secundæ et unius quanto in arte negotium est, tanto operosior probatio (that sounds quite mediæval), ut non sola conscientia præferatur, sed aliquo etiam actu administretur. Is actus, qui magis Græco vocabulo exprimitur et frequentatur, exomologesis est, qua delictum domino nostro confitemur, non quidem ut ignaro, sed quatenus satisfactio confessione disponitur, confessione pænitentia nascitur, pænitentia deus mitigator. Concerning this exhomologesis, this tearful confession, he goes on: "commendat pænitentiam deo et temporali afflictatione æterna supplicia non dicam frustratur sed expungit." ("Commendare" as used above is common, see e.g., De virg. vel. 14, and De pat. 13: "patientia corporis [penances] precationes commendat, deprecationes affirmat; hæc aures Christi aperit, clementiam elicit."). The conception is also distinctly expressed by Tertullian that in the ceremony of penance the Church completely represents Christ himself, see ch. X.: "in uno et altero ecclesia est, ecclesia vero Christus. Ergo cum te ad fratrum genua protendis, Christum contrectas, Christum exoras." De pudic. 10, shows how he really bases pardon solely on the "cessatio delicti"; "etsi venia est pænitentiæ fructus, hanc quoque consistere non licet sine cessatione delicti. Ita cessatio delicti radix est veniæ ut venia sit pænitentiæ fructus." Further ch. II.: "omne delictum aut venia dispungit aut poena, venia ex castigatione, poena ex damnatione"; but "satisfactio" is implied in the "castigatio." In De pudic. 1 the notorious lax edict of Calixtus is called "liberalitas" (venia) i.e., "indulgence." Let us further recall some formulas which are pertinent here. Thus we have the often-used figure of the "militia Christi," and the regimental oath--sacramentum. So also the extremely characteristic alternation between "gratia" and "voluntas humana," most clearly given in De exhort. 2: "non est bonæ et solidæ fidei sic omnia ad voluntatem dei referre et ita adulari unum quemque dicendo nihil fieri sine nutu ejus, ut non intellegamus, esse aliquid in nobis ipsis. . . . Non debemus quod nostro expositum est arbitrio in domini referre voluntatem"; Ad uxor. 1, 8: "quædam enim sunt divinæ liberalitatis, quædam nostræ operationis." Then we have the remarkable attempt to distinguish two wills in God, one manifest and one hidden, and to identify these with præcepta and consilia, in order ultimately to establish the "hidden" or "higher" alone. De exhort. 2 f.: "cum solum sit in nobis velle, et in hoc probatur nostra erga deum mens, an ea velimus quæ cum voluntate ipsius faciunt, alte et impresse recogitandum esse dico dei voluntatem, quid etiam in occulto velit. Quæ enim in manifesto scimus omnes." Now follows an exposition on the two wills in God, the higher, hidden, and proper one, and the lower: "Deus ostendens quid magis velit, minorem voluntatem majore delevit. Quantoque notitiæ tuæ utrumque proposuit, tanto definiit, id te sectari debere quod declaravit se magis velle. Ergo si ideo declaravit, ut id secteris quod magis vult, sine dubio, nisi ita facis, contra voluntatem ejus sapis, sapiendo contra potiorem ejus voluntatem, magisque offendis quam promereris, quod vult quidem faciendo et quod mavult respuendo. Ex parte delinquis; ex parte, si non delinquis, non tamen promereris. Non porro et promereri nolle delinquere est? Secundum igitur matrimonium, si est ex illa dei voluntate quæ indulgentia vocatur, etc., etc." On the other hand, see the sharp distinction between sins of ignorance ("natural sins") and sins of "conscientia et voluntas, ubi et culpa sapit et gratia," De pud. 10. [28] Augustine has also employed both notions in countless places since the writings De Ordine (see II. 26: ad discendum necessarie dupliciter ducimur, auctoritate atque ratione) and De vera religione (45: animae medicina distribuitur in auctoritatem atque rationem). [29] See Kahl, Die Lehre vom Primat des Willens bei Augustin, Duns Scotus and Descartes 1886, as also the works of Siebeck; cf. his treatise "Die Anfänge der neueren Psychologie in der Scholastik" in the Ztschr. f. Philos. u. philosoph. Kritik. New series. 93 Vol., p. 161 ff., and Dilthey's Einl. in d. Geisteswiss. Vol. I. [30] See Franke, Die Psychologie and Erkenntnisslehre des Arnobius, 1878, in which the empiricism and criticism of this eclectic theologian are rightly emphasised. The perception that Arnobius was not original, but had taken his refutation of Platonism from Lucretius, and also that he remained, after becoming a Christian, the rhetorician that he had been before (see Röhricht Seelenlehre des Arnobius, Hamburg, 1893), cannot shake the fact that his psychology is influenced by the consciousness of redemption. [31] Compare especially Minucius Felix and Lactantius. [32] Conversely it is quite intelligible that he who has started with the ideals of classic antiquity, and has assimilated them, should derive more pleasure from men like Clemens Alex. Origen and Gregory of Nazianzus than from Tertullian and Augustine. But this sympathy is less due to the Christianity of the former scholars. We are no longer directly moved by the religious emotions of the older Greeks, while expressions of Tertullian and Augustine reach our heart. [33] Not only is the distinction between "natura" and "gratia" (e.g., De anima 21), or between "gratia" and "virtus" common in Tertullian, not only has he--in his later writings--laid great stress on the continued effect of Adam's sin and the transmission of death, but there also occur many detached thoughts and propositions which recall Augustine. (For the transmission of sin and death see De exhort. 2; Adv. Marc. I., 22; De pud. 6, 9; De jejun. 3, 4: "mors cum ipso genere traducto," "primordiale delictum expiare," cf. the expression "vitium originis"; further, also, the writing De pascha comput. 12, 21.)--De orat. 4: "summa est voluntatis dei salus eorum, quos adoptavit." De pat. 1: "Bonorum quorundam intolerabilis magnitudo est, ut ad capienda et præstanda ea sola gratia divinæ inspirationis operetur. Nam quod maxime bonum, id maxime penes deum, nec alius id, quam qui possidet, dispensat, ut cuique dignatur." De pænit. 2: "Bonorum unus est titulus salus hominis criminum pristinorum abolitione præmissa." De pat. 12: "Dilectio summum fidei sacramentum, Christiani nominis thesaurus." De orat. 4: In order to fulfil the will of God "opus est dei voluntate . . . Christus erat voluntas et potestas patris." 5; "quidquid nobis optamus, in illum auguramur, et illi deputamus, quod ab illo exspectamus." 9: "Deus solus docere potuit, quomodo se vellet orari." De pænit. 2: "Quod homini proficit, deo servit." 4: "Rape occasionem inopinatæ felicitatis, ut ille tu, nihil quondam penes deum nisi stilla situlæ et areæ pulvus et vasculum figuli, arbor exinde fias ills quæ penes aquas seritur, etc." 4: "Obsequii ratio in similitudine animorum constituta est." De orat. 7: "debitum in scripturis delicti figura est." De bapt. 5: exempto reatu eximitur et poena. De pud. 22: "Quis alienam mortem sua solvit nisi solus dei filius." Tertullian imputed the proposition "peccando promeremur" (De pud. 10) to his ecclesiastical opponents. The religious elements in his mode of thought seem to have been decided--apart from the New Testament books--by the reading of Seneca's writings. In these Stoic morality seems to have been deepened, and in part transcended, by a really religious feeling and reflection, so that it was possible to pass from them to Pauline Christianity. Seneca, however, influenced Western thinkers generally: see Minucius Felix, Novatian, and Jerome De inl. vir. 12. Even in Cyprian there occur traits that might be termed Augustinian: notice how he emphasises the immanence of Christ in believers, e.g., Ep. 10, 3, and cf. the remarkable statement Ep. 10, 4: "Christus in certamine agonis nostri et coronat pariter et coronatur." Add Ep. 58, 5: "Spiritus dei, qui cum a confitentibus non discedit neque dividitur, ipse in nobis loquitur et coronatur." See also the Roman epistle Ep. 8, 3. [34] Compare especially also the writings which are falsely headed with the name of Cyprian, and have begun to be examined in very recent years. [35] Compare the characteristics of the Christianity taught by Commodian, Arnobius, and Lactantius, vol. III. p. 77 ff. Novatian was accused of Stoicism by his opponents. Several of the writings headed by the name of Cyprian are very old and important for our knowledge of ancient Latin Christianity. I have verified that in the tractates De aleatoribus (Victor), Ad Novatianum (Sixtus), and De laude mart. (Novatian) (Texte and Unters, VI., 1; XIII., 1 and 4; see also the writings, to be attributed to Novatian, De spectac, and De bono pudic.); but let anyone read also "De duobus montibus" in order to gain an idea of the theological simplicity and archaic quality of these Latins. And yet the author of the above treatise succeeded in formulating the phrase (c. 9): "Lex Christianorum crux est sancta Christi filii dei vivi." Most instructive are the Instructiones of Commodian. The great influence of Hermas' Pastor, and the interest directed accordingly to the Church, are characteristic of this whole literature. Even unlearned authors continued to occupy themselves with the Church, see the Symbol of Carthage: "credo remissionem peccatorum per sanctam ecclesiam." [36] See my treatise on "Tertullian in der Litteratur der alten Kirche" in the Sitzungsber. d. K. Preuss. Akad. d. Wissensch, 1895, p. 545 ff. [37] See a short demonstration of this in my Texten und Unters, V 1, p. 2, and elaborated in my Altchristl. Litt.-Gesch., Part I., p. 688 ff. Pitra has furnished new material for the acquaintance also of the East with Cyprian in the Analecta Sacra. Cyprian's unparalleled authority in the West is attested especially by Lucifer, Prudentius, Optatus, Pacian, Jerome, Augustine, and Mommsen's catalogue of the Holy Scriptures. The see of Carthage was called in after times "Cathedra Cypriani," as that of Rome "Cathedra Petri." Optat. I., 10. [38] The perversions adopted in order to represent the Christians as being bound to the "lex" are shown, e.g., by the argument in the, we admit, late and spurious writing attributed to Cyprian De XII., abusivis sæculi, chap. 12: "Dum Christus finis est legis, qui sine lege sunt sine Christo sunt; igitur populus sine lege populus sine Christo est." As against this, verdicts such as that cursorily given by Tertullian (De spect. 2), that the natural man "deum non novit nisi naturali jure, non etiam familiari," remained without effect. [39] See on this Vol. II., p. 279 f., 312 f., and Vol. III. and IV. in various places; cf. Reuter, Augustin. Studien, pp. 153-230. Since the West never perceived clearly the close connection between the result of salvation (aphtharsia) and the Incarnation, there always existed there a rationalistic element as regards the person of Christ, which afterwards disclosed itself completely in Pelagianism. The West only completed its own theory as to Christ after it had transferred to His work conceptions obtained in the discipline of penance. But that took place very gradually. [40] Here again the Instructiones of Commodian are very instructive. [41] An exception of short duration is formed by the interest taken by the Antiochenes in the Western scheme of Christology during the Eutychian controversy: see the epistolary collection of Theodoret and his Eranistes, as also the works of Theodore of Mopsuestia. [42] E.g. Lucifer, so far as he does not simply imitate the Greeks. See on his "theology" Krüger's Monograph, 1886. [43] See Jovinian and Vigilantius, as also the conflicts of monachism in Spain and Gaul (cf. the works of Sulpicius Severus). [44] "Virginibus nec maritus dominus, dominus vester ac caput Christus est ad instar et vicem masculi." Before this he says of the Church (Cypr., de unit. 6): "sponsa Christi, unius cubiculi sanctitatem casto pudore custodit." Afterwards this far from beautiful thought was transferred to the individual soul, and thus erotic spiritualism was produced. [45] See details in Vol. III., p. 129 f. The conception of Methodius was quite current in Latin writers at the end of the fourth century, viz., that Christ must be born in every Christian, and that only so could redemption be appropriated. Thus Prudentius sings, "Virginitas et prompta fides Christum bibit alvo cordis et intactis condit paritura latebris." Ambrose, Expos. in ev. sec. Luc. I. II., c. 26: "Vides non dubitasse Mariam, sed credidisse et ideo fructum fidei consecutam. . . . Sed et vos beati, qui audistis et credidistis; quæcunque enim crediderit anima et concipit et generat dei verbum et opera ejus agnoscit. Sit in singulis Mariæ anima, ut magnificet dominum; sit in singulis spiritus Mariæ, ut exultet in deo. Si secundum carnem una mater est Christi, secundum fidem tamen omnium fructus est Christus. Omnis enim anima accipit dei verbum, si tamen immaculata et immunis a vitiis intemerato castimoniam pudore custodiat." [46] We must pass by the older importer of Greek exegesis, Victorinus of Pettau, since, in spite of all his dependence on Origen, the Latin spirit held the upper hand, and his activity seems to have been limited. [47] We may disregard Jerome; he had no importance for Augustine, or if he had any, it was only in confirming the latter in his conservative attitude. This, indeed, does not refer to Jerome's learning, which to Augustine was always something uncanny and even suspicious. Jerome's erudition, acquired from the Greeks, and increased with some genius for learned investigations, became a great storehouse of the mediæval Church; yet Jerome did not mould the popular dogmatics of the Church, but confirmed them, and as a rhetorician made them eloquent, while his ascetic writings implanted monachism, and held out to it ideals which were in part extremely questionable. At the first glance it is a paradoxical fact that Jerome is rightly regarded as the doctor ecclesiæ Romanæ katexochen, and that we can yet pass him over in a history of dogma. The explanation of the paradox is that after he threw off the influence of Origen, he was exclusively the speaker and advocate of vulgar Catholicism, and that he possessed a just instinct for the "ecclesiastical mean" in controversies which were only to reveal their whole significance after his time (see the Semipelagian question and his relation to Augustinianism.) If that is a compliment to him, it is none to his Church. After Augustine's time influences from the East were very scanty; yet we have to recall Junilius and Cassiodorus. [48] See Augustine's testimony as to Ambrose in the Ballerinis' ed. of the latter's works. Contra Jul. I. 4, 10: "Audi excellentem dei dispensatorem, quem veneror ut patrem; in Christo Jesu enim per evangelium me genuit et eo Christi ministro lavacrum regenerationis accepi. Beatum loquor Ambrosium cujus pro Catholica fide gratiam, constantiam, labores, pericula sive operibus sive sermonibus et ipse sum expertus et mecum non dubitat orbis prædicare Romanus." Op. imperf. c. Julian. I., 2: "Quem vero judicem poteris Ambrosio reperire meliorem? De quo magister tuus Pelagius ait, quod ejus fidem et purissimum in scripturis sensum ne inimicus quidem ausus est reprehendere." Pelagius' own words in De gratia Christi et lib. arb. 43 (47): "Beatus Ambrosius episcopus, in cujus præcipue libris Romana elucet fides, qui scriptorum inter Latinos flos quidam speciosus enituit, cujus fidem et purissimum in scripturis sensum ne inimicus quidem ausus est reprehendere" (see c. Jul. I., 30). The fame of Ambrose is also proclaimed by Rufinus, who defends him against Jerome, "who, as an envious Augur, censured Ambrose's plagiarisms from the Greeks, while he himself was much more culpable since he always posed as original." [49] See detailed references in Förster, Ambrosius, p. 99 ff. [50] See Vol. IV., p. 93. [51] See Reuter, August. Studien, pp. 207-227. [52] See Ambrose de fid. I. prol et al. loc. in Reuter, 1.c. p. 185; on Augustine's neutral position, id. p. 185 f. [53] Not a few passages might here he quoted from Ambrose's works. He rejects questionable principles held by Origen with tact and without judging him a heretic, always himself holding to the common Christian element. In a few important questions, the influence of Origen--Plato--is unmistakable; as in the doctrine of souls and the conception of hell. Greek influence appears to me to be strongest in the doctrine of the relative necessity and expediency of evil ("amplius nobis profuit culpa quam nocuit"). Therefore, I cannot see in this doctrine a bold theory of evil peculiar to Ambrose, like Deutsch (Des Ambrosius Lehre von der Sünde, etc., 1867, p. 8) and Förster (l.c. pp. 136, 142, 300). The teleological view from the standpoint of the fuller restoration is alone new perhaps. [54] Ambrose, De Isaac et anima. [55] On Hilary's exile in the East, epoch-making as it was for the history of theology, and his relation to Origen, see Reinken's IIilarius, p. 128, 270, 281 ff. Augustine held him in high honour. [56] In the interpretation of the New Testament, Ambrose kept more faithfully to the letter, following the Western tradition, and declining the gifts of the Greeks. He describes Origen (Ep. 75) as "Longe minor in novo quam in veteri testamento." But Western Christians were first made familiar with the Old Testament by the Greeks. [57] Aug. Confess. VIII., 2. See there also the story of his conversion. [58] If we disregard the fragments which reached the West through translations of Origen's works, and plagiarisms from the Cappadocians, Neoplatonism, and with it Greek speculation in general, were imparted to it in three successive forms:--(1) By Victorinus and Augustine, and by Marius Mercator in the fourth and fifth centuries; (2) by Boethius in the sixth; (3) by the importation of the works of the Pseudo-Areopagite in the ninth century. Cassiodorus praises Boethius (Var. epp. 1, 45) for having given the Latins by translations the works of Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Nicomachus, Euclid, Plato the theologian, Aristotle the logician, Archimedes, and other Greeks. It seems now to me proven (Usener, Anecdoton Holderi, 1877) that Boethius was a Christian, and that he also wrote the frequently-suspected writings De sancta trimitate, Utrum pater et filius et spiritus s. de divinitate substantialiter prædicentur, Quomodo substantiæ in eo quod sint bonæ sint, cum non sint substantialia bona, De fide Catholica and Contra Eutychen et Nestorium. But he has influenced posterity, not by his Christian writings, but by his treatise, wholly dependent on Aristotle, "De consolatione philosophiæ." which for that very reason could have been written by a heathen, and by his commentaries on Aristotle. He was really, along with Aristotle, the knowledge of whom was imperfect enough, the philosopher of the early Middle Ages. On the system of Boethius, see Nitzsch's monograph, 1860. Many of his ideas recall Seneca and Proclus; an examination of his relation to Victorious would be desirable. "In his system the foundation is formed by Platonism, modified by certain Aristotelian thoughts; besides this we have unmistakably a Stoic trait, due to the Roman and personal character of the philosopher and the reading of Roman thinkers. In this eclecticism Christianity occupies as good as no position. For that reason we must renounce the attempt to give a place to the system of Boethius among those which represent or aim at a harmonising or fusion of Christianity with Platonism (e.g., Synesius, Pseudo-Dionysius)"; compare Nitzsch, l.c. p. 84 f. The fact that this man, who, in view of death, consoled himself with the ideas of heathen philosophers, wrote treatises on the central dogma of the Church, affords us the best means of observing that the dogma of Christ presented a side on which it led to the forgetting of Christ himself. [59] It is to the credit of Ch. Gore that he has described, in his article "Victorinus" (Dict. of Christ. Biog. IV., pp. 1129-1138), the distinctive character of the theology of Victorinus and its importance for Augustine. He says rightly: "His theology is Neoplatonist in tone . . . he applied many principles of the Plotinian philosophy to the elucidation of the Christian mysteries. His importance in this respect has been entirely overlooked in the history of theology. He preceded the Pseudo-Dionysius. He anticipated a great deal that appears in Scotus Erigena." In fact, when we study the works of Victorinus (Migne T. VIII., pp. 999-1310), we are astonished to find in him a perfect Christian Neoplatonist, and an Augustine before Augustine. The writings "Ad Justinum Manichæum," and "De generatione verbi divini, and the great work against the Arians, read like compositions by Augustine, only the Neoplatonic element makes a much more natural appearance in him than in Augustine, who had to make an effort to grasp it. If we substitute the word "natura" for "deus" in the speculation of Victorinus, we have the complete system of Scotus Erigena. But even this exchange is unnecessary; for in Victorinus the terminology of the Church only rests like a thin covering on the Neoplatonic doctrine of identity. God in himself is "motus"--not mutatio: "moveri ipsum quo est esse"; but without the Son he is conceived as ho me o (speculation on the four-fold sense of the me einai as in the later mystics). The Son is ho on. It appears clearly in the speculation on the relation of Father and Son, that consequent--pantheistic--Neoplatonism is favourable to the doctrine of the Homoousia. Because the Deity is movere, the Father finds himself in a "semper generans generatio." So the Son proceeds from him, "re non tempore posterior." The Son is the "potentia actuosa"; while the Father begets him, "ipse se ipsum conterminavit." The Son is accordingly the eternal object of the divine will and the divine self-knowledge; he is the form and limitation of God, very essence of the Father; the Father in perceiving the Son perceives himself ("alteritas nata"). "In isto sine intellectu temporis, tempore . . . est alteritas nata, cito in identitatem revenit;" therefore the most perfect unity and absolute consubstantiality, although the Son is subordinate. Victorinus first designated the Spirit as the copula of the Deity (see Augustine); it is he who completes the perfect circle of the Deity; "omnes in alternis exsistentes et semper simul homoousioi divina affectione, secundum actionem (tantummodo) subsistentiam propriam habentes." This is elaborated in speculations which form the themes of Augustine's great work "De trinitate." The number three is in the end only apparent; "ante unum quod est in numero, plane simplex." "Ipse quod est esse, subsistit tripliciter." While anyone who is at all sharp-sighted sees clearly from this that the "Son" as "potentia actuosa" is the world-idea, that is perfectly evident in what follows. All things are potentially in God, actually in the Son; for "filius festinat in actionem." The world is distinguished from God, as the many from the one, i.e., the world is God unfolding himself and returning to unity sub specie æternitatis. That which is alien and God-resisting in the world is simply not-being, matter. This is all as given by Proclus, and therefore, while the word "cream" is indeed retained, is transformed, in fact, into an emanation. The distinction between deus ipse and quæ a deo is preserved; but, in reality, the world is looked at under the point of view of the Deity developing himself. Ad Justinum 4: "Aliter quidem quod ipse est, aliter quæ ab ipso. Quod ipse est unum est totumque est quidquid ipse est; quod vero ab ipso est, innumerum est. Et hæc sunt quibus refletur omne quod uno toto clauditur et ambitur. Verum quod varia sunt quæ ab ipso sunt, qui a se est et unum est, variis cum convenit dominare. Et ut omnipotens apparet, contrariorum etiam origo ipse debuit inveniri." But it is said of these "varia," that "insubstantiata sunt omnia onta in Jesu, hoc est, en to logo. He is the unity of nature, accordingly elementum, receptaculum, habitaculum, habitator, locus naturæ. He is the "unum totum" in which the universum presents itself as a unity. And now follows the process of emanation designated as "creation," in whose description are employed the Christian and Neoplatonic stages: deus, Jesus, spiritus, nous, anima (as world-soul) angeli et deinde corporalia omnia subministrata." Redemption through Christ, and the return ad deum of all essences, in so far as they are a deo, is Neoplatonically conceived, as also we have then the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls and their pre-temporal fall. The Incarnation is admitted, but spiritualised, inasmuch as side by side with the conception of the assumption of a human form, which occurs once, the other prevails that Christ appears as burdened with humanity in its totality; "universalis caro, universalis anima; in isto omnia universalia erant" (Adv. Arian. III., 3). "Quia corpus ille catholicum ad omnem hominem habuit, omne quod passus est catholicum fecit; id est ut omnis caro in ipso crucifixa sit" (Ad Philipp, pp. 1196-1221; Adv. Arian. III., 3). But the most interesting features, because the most important for Augustine are (1), that Victorinus gives strong expression to the doctrine of Predestination--only he feels compelled in opposition to Manichæism to maintain the freedom of the will; and (2), that, especially in his commentaries, he places the highest value on justification by faith alone in opposition to all moralism. Neoplatonism had won his assent, or had prepared him in some measure to assent, to both these doctrines; we know, indeed, from other sources, that heathen Neoplatonists felt attracted to John and Paul, but not to the Synoptics or James. Thus Victorinus writes: "non omnia restaurantur sed quæ in Christo sunt" (p. 1245), "quæ salvari possent" (p. 1274), "universos sed qui sequerentur" (p. 1221). In a mystical way Christ is believing humanity (the Church), and believing humanity is humanity in general. Everything undergoes a strictly necessary development; therefore Victorious was a predestinationist. The passages in which Victorinus expresses himself in a strictly Pauline, and, so to speak, Antipelagian sense, are collected by Gore, p. 1137; see Ad Gal. 3, 22; Ad Philipp, 3, 9; "non meam justitiam' tunc enim mea est vel nostra, cum moribus nostris justitiam dei mereri nos putamus perfectam per mores. At non, inquit, hanc habens justitiam, sed quam? Illam ex fide. Non illam quæ ex lege; væ in operibus est et carnali disciplina, sed hanc quæ ex deo procedit justitia ex fide;'" Ad Phil. 4, 9; Ad Ephes. 2, 5: "non nostri laboris est, quod sæpe moneo, ut nos salvemus; sed sola fides in Christum nobis salus est . . . nostrum pene jam nihil est nisi solum credere qui superavit omnia. Hoc est enim plena salvatio, Christum hæc vicisse. Fidem in Christo habere, plenam fidem, nullus labor est, nulla difficultas, animi tantum voluntas est . . . justitia non tantum valet quantum fides"; Ad Ephes. 1, 14; 3, 7; Ad Phil. 2, 13: "quia ipsum velle a deo nobis operatur, fit ut ex deo et operationem et voluntatem habeamus." Victorinus has been discussed most recently by Geiger (Programme von Metten, 1888, 1889), and Reinhold Schmid (Marius Victorinus Rhetor u. s. Bez. z. Augustin. Kiel, 1895)--compare also the dissertation by Koffmane, De Mario Victorino, philosopho Christiano, Breslau, 18So. Geiger has thoroughly expounded the complete Neoplatonic system of Victorious; Schmid seeks, after an excellent statement of his theological views, to show (p. 68 ff.), that he exerted no, or, at least, no decisive influence on Augustine. I cannot see that this proof has really been successful; yet I admit that Schmid has brought forward weighty arguments in support of his proposition. The name of Victorinus is not the important point for the history of dogma, but the indisputable fact that the combination of Neoplatonism and highly orthodox Christianity existed in the West, in Rome, before Augustine, under the badge of Paulinism. Since this combination was hardly of frequent occurrence in the fourth century, and since Augustine gives a prominent place to Victorinus in his Confessions, it will remain probable that he was influenced by him. The facts that he was less Neoplatonic than Victorine, and afterwards even opposed him, do not weigh against the above contention. But it is positively misleading to argue like Schmid (p. 68) against Augustine's Neoplatonism by appealing to the fact that from the moment of his rejection of Manichæism and semi-scepticism, he was a "decided Christian." [60] Little is yet known regarding the history of ecclesiastical penance in the East; but I believe I can maintain that in the West the shock was less violent in its effect, which all official Church discipline received through the rapid extension of Christianity after Constantine. Here confidence in the Church was greater, the union of "sancta ecclesia" and "remissio peccatorum" closer ("credo remissionem peccatorum per sanctam ecclesiam": Symbol. Carthag. ), and the sense of sin as guilt, which was to be atoned for by public confession and satisfactio, more acute. Whence this came, it is hard to say. In the East it would appear that greater stress was laid on the operations of the cultus as a collective institution, and on the other hand on private self-education through prayer and asceticism; while in the West the feeling was stronger that men occupied religious legal relationships, in which they were responsible to the Church, being able, however, to expect from the Church sacramental and intercessory aid in each individual case. The individual and the Church thus stood nearer each other in the West than in the East. Therefore, ecclesiastical penance asserted a much greater importance in the former than in the latter. We can study this significance in the works of the Africans on the one hand, and of Ambrose on the other. They have little else in common, but they agree in their view of penance (Ambrose, De pænitentia). The practice of penance now acquired an increasing influence in the West on all conditions of the ecclesiastical constitution and of theology, so that we can ultimately construct from this starting-point the whole of Western Catholicism in the Middle Ages and modern times, and can trace the subtle workings of the theory of penance to the most remote dogmas. But Augustine once more marks the decisive impetus in this development. With him began the process by which what had long existed in the Church was elevated into theory. He indeed created few formulas, and has not even once spoken of a sacrament of penance; but, on the one hand, he has clearly enough expressed the thing itself, and, on the other, where he has not yet drawn the theoretical consequences of the practice of penance, he has left such striking gaps (see his Christology) that they were filled up by unostentatious efforts, as if inevitably, in after times. [61] See Reuter, August. Studien, pp. 232 ff., 355. [62] Lib I. c. Julian. 3 Op. imperf. c. Jul I., 55; Jerome de vir. inl., 82. [63] Pseudo-Cyprian = Sixtus II. ad Novatianum, Ambrosiaster in the Quæst. ex Vet. et Novo Testam. [the inserted tractate against Novatian] Pacianus c. Novat. [64] From Pacian's Ep. I. ad Sempron. comes the famous sentence: "Christianus mihi nomen est, catholicus cognomen." In the tractate of Ambrosiaster against Novatian, the objectivity of the Divine Word and of baptism, and their independence in their operation of the moral character of the priest, are consistently argued. In some of the sentences we imagine that we are listening to Augustine. On the whole, there is not a little in Ambrosiaster's commentary and questions which must be described as leading up to Augustine, and is therewith genuinely Western. [65] Aug adv. Parmen. 1, 3: "Venerabilis memoriæ Milevitanus episcopus catholicæ communionis Optatus." Fulgentius ranks Optatus along with Ambrose and Augustine. [66] See Deutsch, Drei Actenstücke z. Gesch. des Donatismus, 1875, P. 40 f. Völter, Der Ursprung des Donatismus, 1882; Harnack, Theol. Lit-Zeit., 1884, No. 4; on the other side, Reuter l.c. 234 ff. whose contradiction, however, partly rests on a misunderstanding of my view. Seeck. Zitschr. für K.-Gesch. X. 4. Duschesne gives the best account, Le doissier du Donatisme, 1890. [67] See Vol. II., p. 114 ff. [68] Here these Africans abandoned the position, in the question of heretical baptisms, taken up by Cyprian; see the 8th Canon of Arles (A.D. 316): "De Afris quod propria lege sua utuntur, ut rebaptizent, placuit, ut si ad ecclesiam aliquis de hæresi venerit, interrogent eum symbolum; et si perviderint eum in patre et filio et spiritu sancto esse baptizatum, manus ei tantum imponatur ut accipiat spiritum sanctum. Quod si interrogatus non responderit hanc trinitatem, baptizetur." Can. 13: "De his, qui scripturas s. tradidisse dicuntur vel vasa dominica vel nomina patrum suorum, placuit nobis, ut quicumque eorum ex actis publicis fuerit detectus, non verbis nudis, ab ordine cleri amoveatur. Nam si iidem aliquos ordinasse fuerint deprehensi et hi quos ordinaverunt rationales (able? capable?) subsistunt, non illis obsit ordinatio" (that is the decisive principle; even ordination by a traditor was to be valid). [69] Crises, similar to that of the Donatists, also arose elsewhere--as in Rome and Alexandria--at the beginning of the fourth century; but our information regarding them is wholly unsatisfactory; see Lipsius, Chronologie der römischen Bischöfe, p. 250 ff., where the epitaphs by Damasus on Marcellus and Eusebius are copied, and rightly compared with the passage in the Liber praedest., c. 16 on Heracleon (who is really Heraclius). Heraclius appears already (A.D. 307-309) to have exaggerated the view of the "objectivity" and power of the sacraments to such an extent as to declare all sins by baptised persons to be "venial," and to hold a severe public penance to be unnecessary. Therefore it was said of him, "Christus in pace negavit" and "vetuit lapsos peccata dolere"; more precisely in Lib. prædest.: "Baptizatum hominem sive justum sive peccatorem loco sancti computari docebat nihilque obesse baptizatis peccata memorabat, dicens, sicut non in se recipit natura ignis gelu ita baptizatus non in se recipit peccatum. Sicut enim ignis resolvit aspectu suo nives quantæcunque juxta sint, sic semel baptizatus non recipit peccatorum reatum, etiam quantavis fuerint operibus ejus peccata permixta." In this we can truly study the continuity of Western Christianity! How often this thought has cropped up on into the nineteenth century, and that precisely among evangelicals! It marks positively the "concealed poison," which it is hard to distinguish from the wholesome medicine of evangelic comfort. But it is very noteworthy that this phase in the conception of the favoured position of the baptised can he first proved as existing in Rome. Developments always went furthest there, as the measures taken by Calixtus also show. Yet this one was rejected, after a schism had broken out in the community, and that is perfectly intelligible; for apart from the ruinous frivolity which had come in with the above view, what importance could the priestly class retain if every baptised person might, without further ceremony, and if he only willed it, feel and assert himself to be a member of the congregation even after the gravest sin? It is not very probable that Heraclius developed his ecclesiastical attitude on the basis of the Pauline theory of baptism and of the faith that lays hold of Christ. If we were to understand the matter so, he would have been a Luther before Luther. We have probably to suppose that he saw in baptism the magical bestowal of a stamp, as in the conception taken of certain heathen mysteries. In the Meletian schism in Egypt, the difference in principles as to the renewed reception of the lapsed, co-operated with opposition to the monarchial position of the Alexandrian Bishop. The dispute, which thus recalls the Donatist controversy, soon became one of Church politics, and personal. (Compare Meletius and the later Donatists; the limitation of the whole question to the Bishops is, however, peculiar to the Donatists.) See Walch, Ketzerhistorie, Vol. IV., and Möller in Herzog's R.-E. IX., p. 534 ff. [70] Parmenian denied this distinction. [71] "Catholicam (scil. ecclesiam) facit simplex et verus intellectus in lege (scil. duobus testamentis) singulare ac verissimum sacramentum et unitas animorum." [72] Cyprian would never have admitted that. He accused the Novatians (Ep. 68) of infringing the Symbol like other heretics, by depriving the "remissio peccatorum" of its full authority; and he commanded all who had not been baptised in the Catholic Church to be re-baptised. Cyprian had on his side the logical consequence of the Catholic dogma of the Church; but since this consequence was hurtful to the expansion of the Church, and the development of its power, it was rejected with a correct instinct in Rome (see Ambrosiaster), and afterwards in Africa. [73] Compare l.c.: "Ecclesiam tu, frater Parmeniane, apud vos solos esse dixisti; nisi forte quia vobis specialem sanctitatem de superbia vindicare contenditis, ut, ubi vultis, ibi sit ecclesia, et non sit, ubi non vultis. Ergo ut in particula Africæ, in angulo parvæ regionis, apud vos esse possit, apud nos in alia parte Africa non erit?" [74] In connection with the territorial catholicity of the Church, Optatus always treats the assertion of its unity. Here he is dependent on Cyprian; see besides the details in Book 2 those in Book 7: "Ex persona beatissimi Petri forma unitatis retinendæ vel faciendæ descripta recitatur;" ch. 3 "Malum est contra interdictum aliquid facere; sed pejus est, unitatem non habere, cum possis . . . " "Bono unitatis sepelienda esse peccata hinc intellegi datur, quod b. Paulus apostolus dicat, caritatem posse obstruere multitudinem peccatorum" (here, accordingly, is the identification of unitas and caritas). . . . "Hæc omnia Paulus viderat in apostolis ceteris, qui bono unitas per caritatem noluerunt a communione Petri recedere, ejus scil. qui negaverat Christum. Quod si major esset amor innocentiæ quam utilitas pacis unitatis, dicerent se non debere communicare Petro, qui negaverat magistrum." That is still a dangerous fundamental thought of Catholicism at the present day. [75] Notice that there already occur in Optatus terms compounded with "quasi" which were so significant in the later dogmatics of Catholicism. [76] Here stands the following sentence (V., 7): "Ne quis putaret, in solis apostolis aut episcopis spem suam esse ponendam, sic Paulus ait: Quid est enim Paulus vel quid Apollo? Utique ministri ejus, in quem credidistis. Est ergo in universis servientibus non dominium sed ministerium." [77] At this point there occur especially in V., 7, 8, very important expositions anticipating Augustine. "Ad gratiam dei pertinet qui credit, non ille, pro cujus voluntate, ut dicitis, sanctitas vestra succedit."--"Nomen trinitatis est, quod sanctificat, non opus (operantis)."--"Restat jam de credentis merito aliquid dicere, cujus est fides, quam filius dei et sanctitati suæ anteposuit et majestati; non enim potestis sanctiores esse, quam Christus est." Here follows the story of the Canaanitish woman, with the remarkable application: "Et ut ostenderet filius dei, se vacasse, fidem tantummodo operatam esse: vade, inquit, mulier in pace, fides tua te salvavit." So also faith is extolled as having been the sole agent in the stories of the Centurion of Capernaum and the Issue of Blood. "Nec mulier petiit, nec Christus promisit, sed fides tantum quantum præsumpsit, exegit." The same thoughts occur in Optatus' contemporary, Ambrosiaster. [78] This it was in the case of Ambrosiaster as well as in that of Optatus. [79] The Donatist had said (II., 7): "Nam in illa (catholica) ecclesia quis spiritus esse potest, nisi qui pariat filios gehennæ?" That is the genuine confession of separatists. [80] We may here select a few details from the work of Optatus as characteristic of Western Christianity before Augustine. He regularly gives the name of "lex" to both the Testaments; he judges all dogmatic statements by the symbolum apostolicum, in which he finds the doctrine of the Trinity, to him the chief confession, without therefore mentioning the Nicene Creed; he confesses "per carnem Christi deo reconciliatus est mundus" (I., 10); he declares (VI., 1): "quid est altare, nisi sedes et corporis et sanguinis Christi, cujus illic per certa momenta corpus et sanguis habitabat?" He speaks of the reatus peccati and meritum fidei; he has definitely stated the distinction between præcepta and consilia (VI., 4) in his explanation of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The innkeeper is Paul, the two pence are the two Testaments, the additional sum still perhaps necessary are the consilia. He describes the position of the soteriological dogma in his time by the following exposition (II., 20):--"Est Christiani hominis, quod bonum est velle et in eo quod bene voluerit, currere; sed homini non est datum perficere, ut post spatia, quæ debet homo implere, restet aliquid deo, ubi deficienti succurrat, quia ipse solus est perfectio et perfectus solus dei filius Christus, cæteri omnes semi-perfecti sumus." Here we perceive the great task that awaited Augustine. But even as regards Church politics Optatus betrays himself as an Epigone of the Constantinian era, and as a precursor of the Augustinian. See his thesis on the disloyalty of the Donatists to the State (III., 3): "Non respublica est in ecclesia, sed ecclesia in republica est, id est in imperio Romano." [81] In the West, before Augustine, the conception of gratia exhausted itself in that of the remissio peccatorum. We can see this in propositions like the following from Pacian, sermo de bapt. 3:--"Quid est gratia? peccati remissio, i.e., donum; gratia enim donum est." [82] In this respect Ambrose takes an isolated position; thus it is, e.g., characteristic that he does not seem to have read Cyprian's works. [83] I express myself thus intentionally; for Ambrose never, in words, thrust the actual, hierarchical Church into the foreground. [84] See proofs by Förster, l.c., p. 218 ff. [85] See at an earlier (late the Instructiones of Commodian. Ambrose was not such an advocate of Monachism as Jerome. [86] See above, p. 31. [87] See Ewald, Der Einfluss der stoisch-ciceronianischen Moral auf die Darstellung der Ethik bei Ambrosius, 1881. "De officiis," with all its apparent consistency, shows merely a considerable vacillation between virtue as the supreme good (in the Stoic sense) and eternal life--which latter term, for the rest, is not understood in its Christian meaning. The moralism of antiquity, as well as the eudaimonist trait of ancient moral philosophy dominate the book, in which ultimately the "true wise man" appears most clearly. In such circumstances the distinction drawn between præcepta and consilia, in itself so dangerous to evangelical morality, constitutes an advantage; for specifically Christian virtues appear in the form of the consilia. [88] Hilary also speaks of the vitium originis. [89] See Deutsch, Des Ambrosius Lehre von der Sünde and Sündentilgung, 1867. Förster,1.c., p. 146 ff. All human beings are sinners, even Mary. The "hæreditarium vinculum" of sin embraces all. "Fuit Adam, et in illo fuimus omnes; periit Adam, et in illo omnes perierunt." It is not only an inherited infirmity that is meant, but a guilt that continues active. "Quicunque natus est sub peccato, quem ipsa nosciæ conditionis hæreditas adstrinxit ad culpam." No doctrine of imputation, indeed, yet occurs in Ambrose; for as he conceived it, mankind in Adam was a unity, in which took place a peccatrix successio, a continuous evolution of Adam's sin. Accordingly no imputation was necessary. Ambrosiaster (on Rom. V., 12) has also expressed Ambrose's thought: "Manifestum itaque est, in Adam omnes peccasse quasi in massa; ipse enim per peccatum corruptus, quos genuit, omnes, nati sunt sub peccato. Ex eo igitur cuncti peccatores, quia ex eo ipso sumus omnes." In the West this thought was traditional after Tertullian. See Cyprian, Ep. 64, 5; De opere 1, and Commodian, Instruct. I., 35. [90] "Intret in animam tuam Christus, inhabitet in mentibus tuis Jesus. . . . Quid mihi prodest tantorum conscio peccatorum, si dominus veniat, nisi veniat in meam animam, redeat in meam mentem, nisi vivat in me Christus." In Ps. CXIX., exp. IV., 26: in Luc. enarr., X., 7; in Ps. XXXVI., exp. 63. The passages are collected by Förster (see esp. De poenit., II., 8). See also Vol. III., p. 130. For the rest, the author of the Quæstiones ex Vet. et. Nov. Testam. (Ambrosiaster) could also speak in tones whose pathetic individualism recalls Augustine; cf. e.g., the conclusion of the inserted tractate c. Novat.: "ego . . . te (scil. deum) quæsivi, te desideravi, tibi credidi; de homine nihil speravi . . . ego verbis antistitis fidem dedi, quæ a te data dicuntur, quæque te inspirant, te loquuntur, de te promittunt; huic de se nihil credidi nec gestis ejus, sed fidei quæ ex te est, me copulavi." [91] On Ps. CXIX., exp. XX., 14: "Nemo sibi arroget, nemo de meritis, nemo de potestate se jactet, sed omnes speremus per dominum Jesum misericordiam invenire--quæ enim spes alia peccatoribus?" [92] The interrogation mark in Reuter, August. Studien, p. 493, is due to exaggerated caution. The antithesis of nature and grace, which, wherever it occurs, has one of its roots in Paulinism, and was already familiar to Tertullian, is anew proclaimed in Ambrose; see De off. I., 7, 24; see also the address on the death of his brother. Ambrosiaster, too, makes use of the natura-gratia antithesis. [93] De Abrah., I., 3, 21. [94] De Jacob et vita beata I., 6, 21; other passages in Förster, pp. 160 ff., 303 ff. [95] A detailed account would here require to discuss many other Western writers, e.g., Prudentius (see monographs by Brockhaus, 1872, and Rosier, 1886), Pacian, Zeno, Paulinus of Nola, etc.; but what we have given may serve to define the directions in which Western Christianity moved. As regards Hilary, Förster has shown very recently (Stud. u. Krit., 1888, p. 645 ff.) that even he, in spite of his dependence on the Greeks, did not belie the practical ethical interest of the Westerns. [96] The East knew nothing of this excessive analysis; it took a man more as a whole, and judged him by the regular course taken by his will. [97] I have already discussed this briefly in Vol. III., p. 33 ff. Augustine (Confess. VII., 19) believed, up to the time of his conversion, that the doctrine of Christ held by the Catholic Church was almost identical with that of Photinus; his friend Alypius thought, on the contrary, that the Church denied Christ a human soul. We see from Hilary's work, De trinitate, how many Christological conceptions circulated in the Western communities, among them even "quod in eo ex virgine creando efficax Dei sapientia et virtus exstiterit, et in nativitate ejus divinæ prudentiæ et potestatis opus intellegatur, sitque in eo efficientia potius quam natura sapientiæ." Optatus (I., 8) had to blame Parmenian for calling the body of Christ sinful, and maintaining that it was purified by his baptism. Further, in spite of the doctrine of "two natures," and the acceptance of Greek speculations, the thought of Hippolytus (Philos. X., 33): ei gar ho theos theon se ethelese poiesai, edunato; echeis tou logou to paradeigma, runs like a concealed thread through the Christological utterances of the West. We shall see that even in Ambrose and Augustine there is to be found a hidden, but intentionally retained, remnant of the old Adoptian conception. (How this is to be regarded, see above under 2). We may here pass over the influence of Manichæan Christology on many secondary minds in the Western Churches. [98] Pseudo-Cyprian, De duplici martyrio, 16: "Domini mors potentior erat quam vita." [99] For fuller details, see Vol. III., p. 310 ff. Ritschl, Lehre v.d., Rechtfertigung u. Versöhnung, 2nd. ed., I., p, 38, III:, p. 362. Gesch. des Pietism. III., p. 426 ff. [100] See e.g., the remarkable expositions ad Laurentium, c. 36 sq. The divine nature is indeed regarded as resting in the background; but in Jesus Christ there comes to the front the "individual" man, who, without previous merit, was of grace received into the Deity. [101] See the evidence in Bach's Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters, Vol. II. [102] See Vol. III., p. 189. [103] See on the extension of Manichæism in the West, Vol. III., p. 334 ff. It was always more Christian and therefore more dangerous there. On its importance to Augustine, see under. [104] See the conceptions of Ambrose, Victorinus, and Augustine. [105] See the Western popular philosophies in the style of Cicero, but also Ambrose's De officiis. [106] See above, p. 40 f. [107] Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine and Siricius give us information regarding him. [108] I have demonstrated this in the Ztschr. f. Theol. u. Kirche I. (1891), pp. 82-178, and cannot repeat the proof here. From the I. Ep. of John onwards undercurrents can be traced in the Gentile Church which required to have the saying addressed to them: "Be not deceived, he who does righteousness is righteous." My main references are to the erroneous views opposed in the Catholic Epistles; the lax Christians mentioned by Tertullian; the edict on penance of Calixtus, with its noteworthy evangelical basis (see also Rolffs in the Texten u. Unters, Vol. XI., part 3); Heraclius in Rome; the counter-efforts of the lax against the monachism which was establishing itself in the West; Jovinian; and to the opponents assailed by Augustine in his very important writing, "De fide et operibus." This writing is, along with Jovinian's discussions, the most important source. There can be no doubt that in the majority of cases an unbridled and accommodating trust in the sacrament--accordingly a strained form of the popular Catholic feeling--was the leading idea, and that the reference to Gospel texts, which bore witness to the unlimited mercy of God, was only a drapery; that accordingly the "sola fide"--the catchword occurs--was not conceived evangelically, but really meant "solo sacramento"--i e., even if the life did not correspond to the Christian demand for holiness. But there were Christian teachers who had really grasped the evangelical thesis, and Jovinian is to be counted one of them, even if his opponents be right (and I am doubtful of this) in taking offence at his conduct; and even if it be certain that his doctrine, in the circumstances of the time, could and did promote laxity. His main positions were as follows:--1. The natural man is in the state of sin. Even the slightest sin separates from God and exposes to damnation. 2. The state of the Christian rests on baptism and faith; these produce regeneration. 3. Regeneration is the state in which Christ is in us, and we are in Christ; there are no degrees in it, for this personal relationship either does or does not exist. Where it does, there is righteousness. 4. It is a relation formed by love that is in question: Father and Son dwell in believers; but where there is such an indweller, the possessor can want for nothing. 5. Accordingly all blessings are bestowed with and in this relationship; nothing can be thought of as capable of being added. 6. Since all blessings issue from this relationship, there can be no special meritorious works; for at bottom there is only one good, and that we possess as the best beloved children of God, who now participate in the divine nature, and that good will be fully revealed in Heaven. 7. In him who occupies this relationship of faith and love there is nothing to be condemned; he can commit no sin which would separate him from God; the devil cannot make him fall, for he ever recovers himself as a child of God by faith and penitence. The relationship fixed in baptism through faith is something lasting and indissoluble. 8. But such an one must not only be baptised; he must have received baptism with perfect faith, and by faith evince baptismal grace. He must labour and wrestle earnestly--though not in monkish efforts, for they are valueless--not in order to deserve something further, but that he may not lose what he has received. To him, too, the truth applies that there are no small and great sins, but that the heart is either with God or the devil. 9. Those who are baptised in Christ, and cling to Him with confident faith, form the one, true Church. To her belong all the glorious promises: she is bride, sister, mother, and is never without her bridegroom. She lives in one faith, and is never violated or divided, but is a pure virgin. We may call Jovinian actually a "witness of antiquity to the truth," and a "Protestant of his time," though we must not mistake a point of difference: the indwelling of God and Christ in the baptised is more strongly emphasised than the power of faith. The Spaniard, Vigilantius, even surpassed Jovinian, both in range and intensity, in the energy with which he attacked the excrescences of monkery, relic-worship, virginity, etc.; but he does not belong to this section, for he was moved by the impression made upon him by the superstition and idolatry which he saw rising to supremacy in the Church. Jerome's writing against him is miserable, but is surpassed in meanness by the same author's books against Jovinian. [109] The puzzling phenomenon of Priscillianism has not been made much clearer by the discovery of Priscillian's homilies. I believe we may pass them over, since, important as were the points touched on in the Priscillian controversy (even the question as to the claims of the "Apocrypha" compared with the Bible), they neither evoked a dogmatic controversy, nor obtained a more general significance. The meritorious work by Paret, Priscillianus, ein Reformator des 4 Jahrh. (Würzburg, 1891) is not convincing in its leading thoughts (see on the other side Hilgenfeld in his Zeitschr. Vol. 35, 1892, pp. 1-85). __________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER III. THE HISTORICAL POSITION OF AUGUSTINE AS REFORMER OF CHRISTIAN PIETY. [110] "Virtues will so increase and be perfected as to conduct thee without any hesitation to the truly blessed life which only is eternal: where evils, which will not exist, are not discriminated from blessings by prudence, nor adversity is borne bravely, because there we shall find only what we love, not also what we tolerate, nor lust is bridled by temperance, where we shall not feel its incitements, nor the needy are aided justly, where we will have no need and nothing unworthy. There virtue will be one, and virtue and the reward of virtue will be that spoken of in sacred phrase by the man who loves it: "But to me to cling to God is a good thing." This virtue will be there the full and eternal wisdom, and it will also truly be the life that is blessed. Surely this is to attain to the eternal and supreme blessing, to which to cling for ever is the end of our goodness. Let this (virtue) be called prudence, because it will cling to the good too eagerly for it to be lost, and fortitude, because it will cling to the good too firmly for it to be torn away, and temperance, because it will cling to the good too chastely to be corrupted, and justice, because it will cling to the good too justly to be inferior in any merit. Although even in this life the only virtue is to love what ought to be loved. But what should we choose chiefly to love except that than which we find nothing better? This is God, and if we prefer anything or esteem anything equal to love to him we fail to love ourselves. For it is the better for us, the more we enter into him, than whom there is nothing better. But we move not by walking, but by loving. We may not go (to him) afoot, but with our character. But our character is wont to be judged, not from what anyone knows, but from what he loves. Nothing makes character good or bad but good or bad affections. Therefore, by our corruption, we have been far from the righteousness of God. Whence we are corrected by loving the right, that being just we may be able to cling to the right." [111] Augustine reveals his soul in these words; they therefore also mark his importance in the history of dogma. If, as we have attempted in the preceding chapter, we pursue and let converge the different lines along which Western Christianity developed in the fourth and fifth centuries, we can construct a system which approximates to "Augustinianism"; indeed we can even deduce the latter, as a necessary product, from the internal and external conditions in which the Church and theology then found themselves. But we cannot, for all that, match the man who was behind the system and lent it vigour and life. Similarly we can attempt--and it is a remunerative task--to make Augustine's Christian conception of the world intelligible from the course of his education, and to show how no stage in his career failed to influence him. His pagan father, and pious, Christian mother, Cicero's Hortensius, Manichæism, Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, with its mysticism and scepticism, the impression produced by Ambrose and monachism--all contributed their share. [112] But even from this stand-point we cannot finally do complete justice to the distinctive character of this man. That is his secret and his greatness, and perhaps all or any analysis itself is an injury: he knew his heart to be his worst possession, and the living God to be his highest good; he lived in the love of God, and he possessed a fascinating power of expressing his observations on the inner life. In doing this, he taught the world that the highest and sweetest enjoyment was to be sought in the feeling that springs from a soul that has triumphed over its pain, from the love of God as the fountain of good, and therefore from the certainty of grace. Theologians before him had taught that man must be changed in order to be blessed; he taught that man could be a new being if he let God find him, and if he found himself and God, from the midst of his distraction and dissipation. He destroyed the delusion of ancient popular psychology and morality; he gave the final blow to the intellectualism of antiquity; but he resuscitated it in the pious thought of the man who found true being and the supreme good in the living God. He was the first to separate nature and grace, two spheres which men had long attempted unsuccessfully to divide; but by this means he connected religion and morality, and gave a new meaning to the idea of the good. He was the first to mark off the scope and force of the heart and will, and to deduce from this what moralists and religious philosophers imagined they had understood, but never had understood; he set up a fixed goal for the aimless striving of asceticism: perfection in the love of God, suppression of selfish ambition, humility. He taught men to realise the horror of the depth of sin and guilt which he disclosed, at the same time with the blessed feeling of an ever-comforted misery, and a perennial grace. He first perfected Christian pessimism, whose upholders till then had really reserved for themselves an extremely optimistic view of human nature. But while showing that radical evil was the mainspring of all human action, he preached also the regeneration of the will, by which man adapted himself to the blessed life. He did not bridge for feeling and thought the gulf which Christian tradition disclosed between this world and the next; but he testified so thrillingly to the blessedness of the man who had found rest in God, that nothing was reserved for the future life but an indescribable "vision." But above all and in all, he exhibited to every soul its glory and its responsibility: God and the soul, the soul and its God. He took religion--a transfigured and moulded monachism, dominated by positive conceptions and trust in Christ--out of its congregational and ritualistic form, and set it in the hearts of individuals as a gift and a task. He preached the sincere humility which blossoms only on ruins--the ruins of self-righteousness; but he recognised in this very humility the charter of the soul, and even where he assigned an imperious power to the authority of the Church, he only did so in the end in order to give the individual soul an assurance which it could not attain by any exertion, or any individual act of pardon. Therefore, he became not only a pedagogue and teacher, but a Father of the Church. He was a tree, planted by the waters, whose leaves do not fade, and on whose branches the birds of the air dwell. His voice has pealed forth to the Church through the centuries, and he preached to Christendom the words "Blessed is the man whose strength Thou art; in whose heart are Thy ways." __________________________________________________________________ We do not require to prove that, for a man with such a personality, all that tradition offered him could only serve as material and means, that he only accepted it in order to work it into the shape that suited him. In this respect Augustine was akin to the great Alexandrians, and plenty of evidence can be adduced in support of this affinity, which was conditioned on both sides by the same loftiness of soul, as well as by dependence on Neoplatonic philosophy. But in spite of all they possessed in common, the distinction between them was extremely significant. It did not consist merely in the fact that while the former lived about A.D. 200, Augustine was a member of the Theodosian imperial Church, nor that he had passed through Manichæism, but it was due in a much greater degree to his having, in spite of his Neoplatonism, a different conception of the nature of the Christian religion, and also other ideas about the nature and authority of the Church. I. He thought of sin, when he reflected on God and Christ, and he thought of the living God, who has created and redeemed us, when he reflected on evil: the steadfastness with which he referred these factors to each other was the novel feature which distinguished him above all his predecessors. But not less novel was the energy with which he combined the categories God, Christ, the word of God, the sacraments, and the Catholic Church for practical piety, compressing what was fullest of life and freest, the possession of God, into, as it were, an objective property, which was transferred to an institution, the Church. As he accordingly begot the feeling that Christian piety was grief of soul comforted, so, on the other hand, he created that inter-weaving, characteristic of Western Catholicism, of the freest, most personal surrender to the divine, with constant submission to the Church as an institution in possession of the means of grace. According to this he is, in the first place, to be estimated, even for the history of dogma, not as a theologian, but as a reformer of Christian piety. The characteristic feature of the old Christian piety was its vacillation between hope and fear (Tertull., De uxor. II., 2: "Fear is the foundation of salvation, confidence is the barrier against fear": timor fundamentum salutis est, præsumptio impedimentum timoris). [113] It was known that Jesus accepted sinners; but in that case men were accepted through baptism. The action of God was, as it were, exhausted. [114] The whole Dogmatic (Trinity, Christology, etc.) had its practical culmination, and therewith its end, in the merely retrospective blessing received in baptism. What next? Men feared the judge, and hoped in an uncertain fashion for a still existent grace. The fear of the judge led to fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, and the uncertain hope groped after new means of grace. Men wavered between reliance on their own powers and hope in the inexhaustibility of Christ's grace. But did they not possess faith? They did, and prized it as a lofty possession; but they valued it as a condition, as an indispensable card of admission. In order actually to enter, there were other and wholly different conditions to be fulfilled. Piety, when it concerned itself with the task of the present, did not live in faith. The psychological form of piety was unrest, i.e., fear and hope. [115] Reliance was placed on free-will; but what was to be done if it led to one defeat after another? Repentance and amendment were required. No doubt was felt that repentance was sufficient wherever sins "against our neighbour" were in question, and where the injury could be made good. Repentance and compensation had the widest possible scope in relation to sin. Sin consisted in evil action; the good action united with repentance balanced it. One's neighbour could forgive the offence committed against him, and the sin no longer existed; the Church could forgive what affected its constitution, and guilt was effaced. But he who was baptised sinned also "against God." However widely the Church might extend the circle of sins in which she was the injured party, the judge, and the possessor of the right to pardon, there were sins against God, and there were transgressions which could not be made good. Who could cancel murder and adultery, or a misspent life on the part of the baptised? Perhaps even these sins were not in such evil case; perhaps God did not impute them to the baptised at all--though that would be an Epicurean error; perhaps the power of the Church did not break on the rock of accomplished facts; perhaps there were other means of grace besides baptism. But who could know this? The Church created a kind of sacrament of penance in the third and fourth centuries; but it did not say clearly what was to be expected of this sacrament. Did it reconcile with the Church or with God; did it do away with sin, guilt, or punishment; was it effective through the penances of the penitent, or through the power of grace? [116] Was it necessary? Was there in that case a sinful state, one that lasted, when the disposition had changed, when the will strove with all its powers after the good? Was there such a thing as guilt? Was not everything which man could do in accordance with his nature involved in the eternal alternation marked by good and evil actions, by knowledge, repentance, and striving? Knowledge and action decide. The man of to-day, who does the good, has no longer anything in common with the man of yesterday who did evil. But sins against God persisted in troubling them. Whence came fear, lasting fear? The Church threw its doors wider and wider; it forgave sin, all sin; but the earnest fled into the desert. There they tried to succeed by precisely the same means they had used in the world, and their mood remained the same--one of hope and fear. There was no consolation which was not confronted by a three-fold horror. That was the temper of the ancient Christians from the day when we can first observe them in the wide framework of the Roman Empire until the epoch with whose dawn we are here concerned. The "evangelical" ideas which are sometimes formed of the nature of their piety are not at all appropriate. The two most restless elements which can agitate a human breast, hope and fear, ruled over those Christians. These elements shattered the world and built the Church. Men, indeed, had a faith, and created a dogmatic for themselves; but these were insufficient to satisfy them regarding their daily life, or any life. They gave wings to hope, but they did not eradicate fear. They did not tell what the sins were with which the Christian daily fights, and what Christ had done for these sins. They left those questions to the individual conscience, and the answers given in ecclesiastical practice were not answers to soothe the heart. The only sure issue of the whole system of dogmatics was in the benefits of baptism. He who rose from the font had henceforth to go his way alone. If he reflected earnestly he could not doubt that all the Church could afterwards give him was a set of crutches. "Against Thee only have I sinned." "Thou, Lord, hast made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it finds rest in Thee." "Grant what Thou dost command, and command what Thou dost desire" (da quod jubes, et jube quod vis). [117] "The just by faith will live." "No one enjoys what he knows, unless he also loves it, nor does anyone abide in that which he perceives unless by love" (eo quod quisque novit, non fruitur, nisi et id diligit, neque quisquam in eo quod percipit permanet nisi dilectione). [118] These are the new tones sounded by Augustine, that is the mighty chord which he produced from Holy Scripture, from the most profound observations of human nature, and speculations concerning the first and last things. Everything in the mind that was without God was absolutely sinful; the only good thing left to it was that it existed. Sin was the sphere and form of the inner life of every natural man. It had been maintained in all theological systems from Paul to Origen, and later, that a great revolt lay at the root of the present state of the human race. But Augustine was the first to base all religious feeling and all theological thought on this revolt as still existent and damning in every natural man. The Apologists regarded the revolt as an uncertain datum; Origen looked upon it as a premundane fatality. To Augustine it was the most vital fact of the present, one which, at work from the beginning, determined the life of the individual and of the whole race. Further, all sin was sin against God; for the created spirit had only one lasting relationship, that to God. Sin was self-will, the proud striving of the heart (superbia); therefore it took the form of desire and unrest. In this unrest, lust, never quieted, and fear revealed themselves. Fear was evil; but in this unrest there was also revealed the inalienable goodness of the spirit that has come from the hand of God: "We wish to be happy, and wish not to be unhappy, but neither can we will." [119] We cannot but strive after blessings, after happiness. But there is only one good, one happiness, and one rest. "It is a good thing that I should cling to God." All is included in that. Only in God as its element does the soul live. "Oh! who will give me to repose in Thee? Oh! that Thou wouldest enter into my heart, and inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my only good! What art Thou to me? Of Thy mercy teach me to declare it. What am I to Thee that Thou demandest my love, and if I give it not, art angry with me, and threatenest me with grievous miseries? . . . For Thy mercies' sake tell me, O Lord my God, what Thou art to me. Say unto my soul: I am thy salvation.' Say it so, that I may hear. Behold, Lord, the ears of my heart are before Thee; open Thou them, and say to my soul: I am thy salvation. I will run after this voice, and take hold on Thee. Hide not Thy face from me; let me die seeing it-- only let me see it. Narrow is the tenement of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that it may be able to receive Thee. It is ruinous; repair Thou it. Within, it has these things that must offend Thine eyes; I confess and know; but who will cleanse it? or to whom shall I cry save Thee?" [120] The same God who created us has redeemed us through Jesus Christ. That simply means that he has restored us to communion with himself. This takes place through grace and love, and in turn through faith and love. Through grace which lays hold of us and makes the unwilling willing (ex nolentibus volentes), which gives us an incomprehensibly new nature by imparting a new birth; and through love, which strengthens the weak spirit, and inspires it with powers of goodness. Through faith which holds to the saying, "He who is just by faith will live," "which was written and confirmed by the all-powerful authority of apostolic teaching" (quod scriptum est et apostolicæ disciplinæ robustissima auctoritate firmatum); and through love, which humbly renounces all that is its own and longs for God and his law. Faith and love spring from God; for they are the means by which the living God enables us to appropriate him. The soul regards those possessions, in which it has obtained all that God requires of us, as an everlasting gift and a sacred mystery; for a heart equipped with faith and love fulfils the righteousness that is accepted by God. The peace of God is shed upon the soul which has the living God for its friend; it has risen from unrest to rest, from seeking to finding, from the false freedom to the free necessity, from fear to love; for perfect love casts out fear. It cannot for a moment forget that it is entangled in worldliness and sin, as long as it lives in this world; but it does not let its thoughts rest for a moment on sin, without remembering the living God who is its strength. The misery of sin overcome by faith, humility and love--that is Christian piety. In this temper the Christian was to live. He was constantly to feel the pain caused by sin, separation from God; but he was at the same time to console himself with the conviction that the grace of God had taken possession of him, that the Lord of heaven and earth had instilled His love into his heart, and that this love worked as mightily after as in baptism. [121] Thus Augustine dethroned the traditional feelings of the baptised, fear and hope, the elements of unrest, and substituted the elements of rest, faith, and love. For an uncertain and vacillating notion of sin he substituted the perception of its power and horror, for a still uncertain notion of grace he substituted the perception of its omnipotence. He did not abolish hope, he rather confirmed with all his power the old feeling that this life is not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed. But in realising and preaching the rest bestowed by faith and love, he transformed the stormy and fanatical power of hope into a gentle and sure conviction. [122] I have here reproduced Augustine's teaching, as we find it chiefly in his Confessions. This book has the advantage of giving us an account which is not influenced by any particular aims. Our exposition is by no means complete; we should require to add more than one caution, in order to be perfectly just. [123] Further, the description has intentionally only considered the fundamental lines, and given expression to but one direction in which the epoch-making importance of Augustine comes to the front. But there can be no doubt that it is the most decisive. If we Western Christians are shut up to the conviction that religion moves between the poles of sin and grace--nature and grace; if we subordinate morality to faith, in so far as we reject the thought of an independent morality, one indifferent to religion; if we believe that it is necessary to pay much greater heed to the essence of sin than to the forms in which it is manifested--fixing our attention on its roots, not on its degrees, or on sinful actions; if we are convinced that universal sinfulness is the presupposition of religion; if we expect nothing from our own powers; if we comprise all means of salvation in the thought of God's grace and of faith; if the preaching of faith and the love of God is substituted for that of fear, repentance, and hope; [124] if, finally, we distinguish between law and gospel, gifts and tasks appointed by God--then we feel with the emotions, think in the thoughts, and speak with the words of Augustine. [125] Who can deny that in this way religion disclosed deeper truths to feeling and thought, that the disease was recognised more surely, and the means of healing were demonstrated more reliably? Who can mistake the gain in laying bare the living heart, the need of the soul, the living God, the peace that exists in the disposition to trust and love? Even if he merely seeks to study these phenomena as a disinterested "historian of culture," who can escape the impression that we have here an advance, at least in psychological knowledge, that can never again be lost? In fact, history seems to teach that the gain can never perish within the Christian Church; nay, it attests more, it would appear, than this: it tells us that a limit has been reached, beyond which the pious mood cannot receive a further development. If we review all the men and women of the West since Augustine's time, whom, for the disposition that possessed them, history has designated as prominent Christians, we have always the same type; we find marked conviction of sin, complete renunciation of their own strength, and trust in grace, in the personal God who is apprehended as the Merciful One in the humility of Christ. The variations of this frame of mind are indeed numerous--we will speak of these later on; but the fundamental type is the same. And this frame of mind is taught in sermons and in instruction by truly pious Catholics and Evangelicals; to it youthful Christians are trained, and dogmatics are framed in harmony with it. It always produces so powerful an effect, even where it is only preached as the experience of others, that he who has once come in contact with it can never forget it; it accompanies him as a shadow by day and as a light in the dark; he who imagines that he has long shaken it off sees it rising up suddenly before him again. Since the days of Leibnitz, indeed, and the "Illumination," a powerful opponent has grown up, an enemy that seemed to have mastered it during a whole century, that reduced the Christian religion, when it gave any countenance to it at all, once more to energetic action, and furnished it with the foil of a cheerful optimism, a mode of thought which removed the living God afar off, and subordinated the religious to the moral. But this opponent succumbed in our century, at least, within the Churches, before the power of the old frame of mind. Whether this triumph of Augustine is guaranteed to last, none but a prophet could tell. It is only certain that the constellation of circumstances in the fray has been favourable to the victor. On the part of the Church no doubt prevails that the Augustinian feeling and type of thought are alone legitimate in Christianity, that they are alone Christian; for the conception of redemption (by God himself), in the sense of regeneration, dominates everything. But we cannot fail to be puzzled when we consider that it cannot by any means be directly deduced from the surest words of Jesus, and that the ancient and Greek Church was ignorant of it. Further, we cannot but be doubtful when we weigh its consequences; for their testimony is not all favourable. A quietistic, I might almost say a narcotic, element is contained in it, or is, at least, imperceptibly associated with it. There is something latent in it which seems to enervate the vital energies, to hinder the exertion of the will, and to substitute feelings for action. Is there no danger in substituting a general consciousness of sin for evident evil tendencies, heartless words and shameful deeds? [126] Is it safe to rely on the uniform operation of Grace, when we are called to be perfect and holy like God? Are all the energies of the Will actually set free, where the soul lives constantly in the mood shown in the "Confessions"? Are fear and hope really phases, necessarily to be superseded by faith and love? Perhaps it is correct to answer all these questions in accordance with the type of thought here considered; but even then a doubt remains. Is it advisable--apart from the variety in men's temperaments--to present this ideal as the aim at all stages of spiritual development? Here, at least, the answer cannot be doubtful. That which is the last stage reached by the advanced Christian who has passed through a rich experience is a refinement to him who is in process of development. But a refined piety or morality is always pernicious; for it no longer starts at the point of duty and conscience. It deceives regarding our need and its satisfaction. And since it is strong enough to fascinate, and can also be comprehended as a doctrine by an intelligence that is far from advanced, in order, once comprehended, never to pass away again, so it can become dangerous to morality, and therefore also to piety. For, after all, in both these spheres, that only has any value which heightens the power to be and do good; everything else is a poisonous fog. Perhaps, if we consider the matter fairly, no feeling or mood, and no theory of the factors in the religious process, are alone legitimate. As man requires sleep and wakefulness, so also he must, if he is to preserve his moral and religious life in health, alternate between the sense of his freedom and power and that of his bondage and helplessness, between the sense of full moral responsibility and the conviction that he is a favoured child of God. Or is there a way of so grasping Augustine's type of feeling and thought, that it may fashion faith into the strongest lever of moral energy and action? Are not the difficulties that rise against his type of piety due perhaps just to his not having developed it forcibly and absolutely enough? This question will obtain its answer later on. Here we have to point out that the dissemination of the religious views, peculiar to Augustine, was not in every respect beneficial. They constituted his greatness; they conducted him to the wonderful path he trod; they led him to conceive redemption no longer as a solitary intervention, by means of baptism, in the course of human life, but as the element in which the soul lived--baptismal grace being therefore a continuously operative force. "Personal characteristics" lie beyond the sphere of errors and truths; they may be erroneous, looked at from without, true from within. They may for that very reason be even hurtful as influences, for "when they introduce disproportionately what is foreign, the question arises, how these adventitious peculiarities harmonise with those that are native to the soul, and whether by the very act of mingling they do not produce a sickly condition." [127] Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that Augustine submitted the traditional religious feeling to as thorough-going a revision as is conceivable, and even he who is not in a position to praise it unreservedly will not seek to minimise its benefits. [128] II. No one was further than Augustine from intending to correct the tradition of the Church. If he has done this so emphatically, he was himself merely actuated by the feeling that he was thus assimilating more and more thoroughly the faith of the Church. Having forced his way through scepticism to the truth of the Catholic Church, he regarded the latter as the rock on which his faith was founded. We should misunderstand him were we to blink this fact. He rather sets us reflecting how it was possible for the most vital piety to have a double ground of conviction, inner experience, and external, nay, extremely external, attestation. We can make a still stronger assertion. Augustine first transformed the authority of the Church into a factor in religion; he first expressed pious contemplation, the view of God and self, in such a way that the religious man always found the authority of the Church side by side with sin and grace. [129] Paul and post-apostolic teachers, especially Tertullian, had, indeed, already introduced the Church into the religious relationship itself; [130] but they were not thinking of its authority. When we fix our attention on Augustine's distinctive type of Christian piety as the foundation of his significance for Church and dogmatic history, we must not only consider the decisive tendency of his doctrine of sin and grace, but we must also review his reception and characteristic revision of traditional elements. For from these his piety, i.e., his sense of God, and sin and grace, obtained the form which is familiar to us as specifically Catholic. In addition to (l) the above-mentioned element of the authority of the Church, there are, if my view is correct, other three; (2) the confusion of personal relationship to God with a sacramental communication of grace; (3) uncertainty as to the nature of faith and the forgiveness of sins; (4) uncertainty as to the significance of the present life. Even in the way he felt and wrote about these things he created new states of feeling; but they appear merely to be modifications of the old; or, rather, he first enabled the old moods fully to understand themselves, in other words, enriched them from the dead material which they brought with them. This exerted in turn a very strong influence on the fundamental feeling--the sense of sin and grace, and first gave it the form which enabled it to take possession of souls, without creating a revolution, or producing a violent breach with tradition. In the sequel we only discuss the fundamental features of these four elements. [131] 1. Augustine introduced the authority of the Church as a religious factor for two reasons. Like the thought of redemption, the significance of the Church seems, on a superficial examination, to have received so sovereign and fixed an impress in the conception formed by the ancient Catholic and Greek Fathers, that any further accentuation of it is impossible. But, if we look more closely, redemption was presented as a solitary intervention, and the significance of the Church was exhausted in the fact that, while it was the presupposition of Christian life and the guarantee of Christian truth, it did not enter into the separate acts in which the religious and moral life ran its spiritual course. Here also Rothe's saying is true that Christians tacitly "laid their plans to meet the chance that in the end everything might require to be done by men alone." These "plans" were based since the days of the Apologists on the optimistic conception of the inalienable goodness of human nature, and the demonstrability (clearness and intelligibility) of the Christian religion. The course of a spontaneously moral life was ultimately modified, neither by the doctrine of redemption nor by that of the Church. In both these respects Augustine's experience had led to wholly different conclusions. His conflict with himself had convinced him of the badness of human nature, and Manichæism had left him in complete doubt as to the foundations and truth of the Christian faith. [132] His confidence in the rationality of Christian truth had been shaken to the very depths, and it was never restored. In other words, as an individual thinker he never gained the subjective certitude that Christian truth and as such everything contained in the two Testaments had to be regarded, was clear, consistent, and demonstrable. [133] When he threw himself into the arms of the Catholic Church, he was perfectly conscious that he needed its authority, not to sink in scepticism or nihilism. [134] For example, nothing but the authority of the Church could remove the stumbling-blocks in the Old Testament. The thousand doubts excited by theology, and especially Christology, could only be allayed by the Church. As regards the former case, allegorical interpretation, of course, helped to get one over the difficulties; but it (as contrasted with the literal which solves everything) did not justify itself; the Church alone gave the right to apply it. The Church guaranteed the truth of the faith, where the individual could not perceive it; that is the new thought whose open declaration proves the thinker's scepticism, as well as the man's love of truth. He would not impose upon himself; he would not become the sophist of his faith. Openly he proclaimed it: I believe in many articles only on the Church's authority; nay, I believe in the Gospel itself merely on the same ground. [135] Thereby the Church had gained an enormous importance, an importance which it was henceforth to retain in Western Catholicism; upon it, an entity above all incomprehensible--for what and where is the Church?--a great part of the responsibility was rolled, which had hitherto to be borne by the individual. Thus henceforth the Church had its part in every act of faith. By this, however, a vast revolution was brought about in the relation to the "faith which is believed" (fides quæ creditur). Acts of faith were, at the same time, acts of obedience. The difficulties were recognised which the Alexandrians overcame by distinguishing between exoteric and esoteric religion, but this distinction was itself rejected. In its place was now openly proclaimed what had long--especially in the West (see ch. I., Scripture and Dogma as Law)--been secretly the expedient of thousands: partial renunciation of independent faith, and the substitution for it of obedience. It is obvious that thus a great body of dogmas, or of the contents of Scripture, was placed beyond the reach of the believing subject, that a wholly different relation to them was introduced, that, in a word, the doctrines of Scripture and the Church obtained a new meaning. Augustine was the father of the conception of implicit faith (fides implicita), by associating with the individual believer the Church, with which he believes and which believes for him, in as far as it takes the place for him in many points of a psychological element of faith, namely, inner conviction. In openly proclaiming this conception, which, as has been said, already lurked in darkness, Augustine, on the one hand, disburdened individual faith, and directed it more energetically to those spheres in which it could rest without difficulties, but, on the other hand, introduced all the evil consequences which spring from faith in authority. [136] However, this championship of faith in authority had an additional root, in the case of Augustine, besides scepticism. Tradition and grace are connected by secret ties. A genius, who was never a sceptic, and who was therefore never possessed by a mania for authority, has confessed: "The dew in which I bathe and find health is tradition, is grace." Augustine was also led, both as a psychologist and a Christian of living faith, to tradition and therewith to the Church. In breaking with moralism, he broke too with the individualism and atomism of the ancient school. The "mass of perdition" (massa perditionis) was always confronted for him by grace (gratia) as a force working in history. I will not here yet go into his notion of the Church; it is certain that he possessed a lively sense that all great benefits, even communion with God himself, were attached to historical tradition, and it is manifest that religious individualism, as developed by him, was paralleled by and compatible with a conception, according to which the individual was supported by other persons, and by forces in the direction of goodness which he received through a visible medium. Augustine concentrated this correct historical conception in the idea of the Church. It was to him the organism and--for the individual--the womb of grace; it was further the communion of righteousness and love; and he felt this significance of the Church in his most personal piety much more acutely than any one before him. But the sceptic who needs the authority of the Church, and the Christian of quick feeling and sure observation, who perceives and prizes the value of Church communion, do not part company. There has never yet existed in the world a strong religious faith, which has not appealed, at some decisive point or other, to an external authority. It is only in the colourless expositions of religious philosophers, or the polemical systems of Protestant theologians, that a faith is constructed which derives its certitude exclusively from its own inner impulses. These undoubtedly constitute the force by which it exists and is preserved. But are not conditions necessary, under which this force becomes operative? Jesus Christ appealed to the authority of the Old Testament, ancient Christians to the evidence of prophecy, Augustine to the Church, and Luther himself to the written Word of God. Only academic speculation thinks that it can eliminate external authority; life and history show that no faith is capable of convincing men or propagating itself, which does not include obedience to an external authority, or fails to be convinced of its absolute power. The only point is to determine the rightful authority, and to discover the just relationship between external and internal authority. Were it otherwise, we should not be weak, helpless beings. We cannot think too highly of the nobility of human talents; but they are not lofty enough to enable men so to appropriate the sum of all the ideal elements which compose the inner life, that these simply grow with the growth of the soul, or become its product. Above all, the thought of God, the thought of the love of God, can never receive an irrefragable certainty, without being supported by an external authority. It is not a false view of religion that the restless quest of the soul only ceases when there has dawned upon it an authority whose validity is independent of the degree of strength with which its justification is felt within the breast. [137] All this Augustine perceived and expressed. Therefore "the traditional, exclusively authoritative doctrine" of the Church was transformed by him into a conception, according to which the Church is a religious factor. By this, however, the distinctive character of piety itself received a new definition. [138] 2. The perception that religion is the possession of the living God, a personal relationship between the soul and God, is conspicuous in Augustine's Confessions, but also in other writings by him. That nothing but God himself could give the soul rest and peace is the fundamental note of the Confessions: "Say unto my soul: I am thy salvation." His great place in the history of piety is bound up with this perception, as we find it attached to Rom. VIII., 31-39. He is to be compared, in this also, to the great Alexandrians, especially Clement. But as Augustine did not merely reach this conclusion by means of a laborious speculation, so it assumed a much more forcible and purer form in his life and works than in theirs. [139] But the sure application of what is simplest in dogma is ever the hardest thing. Augustine found himself confronted by a tradition which taught that men enjoyed intercourse with God through laws and communications of grace; nay, the prevailing tradition was constantly in danger of reducing the latter to the former. In opposition to this, a great advance was at once made by insisting on the distinction between law and gospel, commands and grace. We now perceive that Augustine substantially limited himself to this in his polemical dogmatic writings. That is, he was not in a position to translate into his dogmatic theory the vital perception that God himself, as he appeared in Christ, was the possession of the soul. He substantially left standing the old scheme that God came to man's assistance, like a benevolent judge with acts of pardon, or like a physician with medicines. In other words, he gave the force of absolute conviction to what had been uncertain, viz., that God operates continuously by a mysterious and omnipotent impartation of grace, i.e., by powers of grace. [140] Thus grace (gratia per Christum) preserved even with him an objective character, and in his controversy with Donatists and Pelagians he completely developed this view of grace in connection with his doctrines of the Church and sacraments. He understood how to harmonise this, in his own feeling and self-criticism, with the conviction that the question involved was the possession of the living God. But as teacher of piety he did not succeed in doing so; indeed, we can say that, just because he laid all emphasis on grace through Christ, while conceiving it to consist in portions or instalments of grace, he was the means of establishing, along with the perception of its importance as beginning, middle, and end, the delusion that grace had an objective character. His age could understand, though with a great effort, his exposition of grace, as something imparted by the sacraments or the Church. It could bring that down to its own level. The magical element which adhered to this conception, the external solidity which the notion of grace received. in the sacrament, the apparent clearness of the view, the possibility of instituting theological computations with sin and grace--all these phases in the Augustinian doctrine of grace were greedily seized. Thus, in making grace the foundation and centre of all Christian theological reflection, it was due to his way of thinking that the living God and the personality of Christ lost ground in the consciousness of the Church he influenced. The believer had to do with the inheritance left by Christ, with what he had gained, with his merit, but not with Christ himself. The love of God was instilled into the soul in portions; but Augustine did not perceive that dogmatic was imperfect, nay, formed a hindrance to religion, as long as the supreme place was withheld from the principle: "Our heart is restless, until it rests in Thee." The violent agitation which he had himself experienced, the crisis in which the sole question was whether he should or should not find God to be his God, he has extremely imperfectly expressed in the dogmatic theory of his later period. He poured the new wine into old bottles, and was thus partly to blame for the rise of that Catholic doctrine of grace, which is perhaps the most dreadful part of Catholic dogmatics; for "the corruption of the best is the worst" (corruptio optimi pessima). When a Roman Catholic dogmatist very recently called the doctrine of grace "thorny ground," this description alone must have sufficed to show every common-sense Christian that the whole treatment of this main article had stumbled on a false path since the days of Augustine. Could there be a sadder admission than this, that reflection on what God grants the soul in Christ leads us among nothing but thorns? And could we conceive a greater contrast than that which exists between the sayings of Jesus and the Catholic doctrine of grace? But Protestantism, in its actual form, need not boast of having surmounted this pernicious Catholic doctrine. As it rests on the Augustinian doctrine of grace in the good sense of the term, and is distinguished thereby as Western Christianity from Eastern, it also bears the greatest part of the burden of this doctrine, and is therefore subject to the same dangers as Catholicism. It runs the risk of concealing the personal Christ by grace and the sacraments, of hedging in the living God through grace itself, and of setting up calculations about grace which make an account out of what is freest and holiest, and either dull the soul or leave it in unrest. But as Augustine knew, for his part, by what his soul lived, and was able to testify to it in words that lived, and, indeed, in some of his discussions also doctrinally, he exerted a powerful influence in this respect, too, on posterity. He became the father not only of the Catholic doctrine of grace, but also of that mysticism which was naturalised in the Catholic Church, down to the Council of Trent, indeed, till the Jansenist controversy. In more than a hundred passages of his works, above all by his Christian personality, he incited men to gain a life with God, within which they apprehended the personal God in grace. We may here also recall his doctrine of predestination. One of its roots indisputably grew out of the thought of the supremacy of personal relationship to God. It was understood, too in this way, wherever it was the means in after-times of obviating the pernicious consequences of the Church doctrine of grace and sacraments. But there can undoubtedly be no mistake, that wherever Augustine threw into the background his questionable doctrine of grace, he at once also incurred the danger of neutralising Christ's general significance. According to him, Christ's work referred to, and exhausted itself in the forgiveness of sins. But, as we shall see in what immediately follows, forgiveness did not bestow all that the Christian requires for salvation. Therefore the doctrine of grace was relatively independent of the historical Christ. This danger of conceiving positive grace without reference to Christ, or of connecting it with him only in the form of esthetic observations, continued to exert an influence. Luther, who started from Augustinianism, first overcame it, in as far as, in his relation to God, he only thought of God at all as he knew him in Christ. Augustine was prevented from doing so by his religious philosophy, and also his Biblicism, both of which had established independent claims upon him. Thus it happened that he influenced the piety of Western Christians by a doctrine of grace which met their lower inclinations, as well as by a promulgation of the immediateness of the religious relationship which failed to do justice to Christ's significance as mirror of God's fatherly heart and as the eternal mediator. In the latter as the former case, he set his seal on and gave vitality to elements which existed in the traditional doctrine only as dead material or stunted germs. 3. Augustine shared with the whole of contemporary Christendom the thought, held to be all-important, that a time would come when at the judgment-seat of Christ "every one would receive in accordance with his actions"; and none will impugn the Christian character of this thought. But he went a step further, and also accepted the conception of merits current in the Church from the days of Tertullian and Cyprian. He did not get beyond the idea that in the final decision merits could alone be considered. He reconciled this principle, however, with his doctrine of grace, by teaching that God crowned his gifts (munera) in crowning our merits (merita). [141] This seemed to correspond to both considerations, and the certainty with which this conception established itself in the Church appeared to guarantee that the correct view had now been reached. But, first, the question arises whether the ambiguity of the reconciliation did not contribute to its being received; secondly, it cannot fail to surprise us that there is not a word about faith in the principle. We are once more at a point where Augustine, in reforming the prevailing piety, paid it a very considerable tribute. He certainly expressed the importance and power of faith in a striking and novel fashion. He who disregards the formulas, but looks to the spirit, will everywhere find in Augustine's works a stream of Pauline faith. None before him but his teachers Victorinus and Ambrose, in some of their expositions, had used similar language. Numerous passages can be cited in which Augustine extolled faith as the element in which the soul lives, as beginning, middle, and end of piety. But in the sphere of dogmatic reflection Augustine spoke of faith with extreme uncertainty, and, indeed, as a rule, not differently from his predecessors. Different points meet here. Firstly, it was simply the power of tradition which prevented him from perceiving more in faith than the act of initiation. Secondly, Scriptural texts led him to the assumption that something else than faith, namely, habitual goodness (righteousness), must finally fall to be considered at the divine tribunal. Thirdly and lastly, he limited the significance of the forgiveness of sins. The last point is in his case the most paradoxical, but here the most important. He for whom the supreme thing was the certainty of possessing a God, and who called to his whole period: "You have not yet considered of how great weight sin is" (nondum considerasti, quanti ponderis sit peccatum), never realised the strict relation that exists between faith and forgiveness, nor could explain clearly that the assurance of forgiveness is life and salvation. At this point the moral element suddenly entered with sovereign power into religious reflection. It is as if Augustine had here sought to escape the quietistic consequences of his doctrine (see above), and, in his inability to deduce positive virtue from faith in forgiveness of sin, turned from faith to works. Or was he prevented by the remnants of religious philosophy and cosmology that still clung to his theory of religion from perceiving absolutely that religion is bound up in faith in forgiveness of sins? [142] Or, again, is this perception itself erroneous and untenable, one that paralyses the power of moral exertion? We do not intend to examine these questions here. The fact is that Augustine conceived faith to be a preliminary stage, because he regarded forgiveness of sins as preliminary. If we look closely, we find that in his dogmatic theory sin was not guilt, but loss and infirmity. The very man who strove for, and found, a lasting relationship with God, was not capable of reproducing and stating his experience correctly in the shape of doctrine. He came back to the customary moralistic view, in so far as in his doctrine of grace he thought not of enmity to God, but the disease of sin, not of divine sonship, but of the restoration of a state in which man was rendered capable of becoming good, i.e., sinless. Therefore faith was merely something preliminary, and it is this that makes it so difficult to define Augustine's conception of the forgiveness of sins. It appears to have been really identical with the external and magical idea of his predecessors, with the exception that he had a firmer grasp of the forgiveness being an act of God, on which the baptised might constantly rely. But his reflection rarely took the form of regarding assurance of forgiveness as something whereby the soul receives energy and wings. He substantially never got beyond the impression that something was actually swept away by it, though that was indeed the gravest of facts, sin. The impossibility of carrying out this conception will always, however, leave a latent doubt. In spite of his new feeling, Augustine, for this reason, moved entirely in the lines of the old scheme when he sought to supplement and to build upon forgiveness of sin, and looked about him for a positive force which was required to take its place alongside of the negative effect. This he found in love. It was not in faith, but only in love, that he could recognise the force that really changed a man's nature, that set him in a new relationship. But then, in spite of the empirical objections that confronted him, he did not doubt that love could be infused like a medicine. Certain that God alone effects everything, he transferred to love the conception applicable to faith (trust)--that it ceases to be itself where it is felt to be other than an assimilative organ (organon leptikon)--as if love could also be as simply regarded as a gift of God through Christ (munus dei per Christum). The result of these reflections is that Augustine held that the relation of the pious soul to God was most appropriately described as a gradually advancing process of sanctification. To this he believed he could reduce all legitimate considerations, the fundamental importance of faith, the conception of (sacramental) grace as beginning, middle, and end, the need of positive forces capable of changing man's state, the view that only the just could be saved, and that no one was righteous whose works were not perfect, i.e., the necessity of merits, etc. He believed that he had found a means of adjusting the claims of religion and morality, of grace and merits, of the doctrine of faith and eschatology. Omnipotent love became for him the principle that connected and supported everything. Faith, love, and merit were successive steps in the way to final salvation, and he has impressed this view on the Catholic Church of after times, and on its piety up to the present day. It is the ancient scheme of the process of sanctification leading to final salvation, but so transformed that grace acts upon all its stages. Excellent and--for many stages of development--appropriate as this conception appears, yet it cannot be mistaken that in it Augustine lagged behind his own experience, and that against his will he subordinated the religious sphere to moral goodness; for this subordination was by no means precluded by the equation "our merits, God's gifts" (nostra merita, dei munera). Where merits play a part there is a failure to understand that there is a relationship to God which is maintained mid weakness and sin, as well as in misery and death. [143] Of this even Augustine had a presentiment, and he therefore also imparted to the Church, to which he transmitted his doctrine of faith, love, and merit, germs of a conception which could not but be fatal to that doctrine. They are not only included in his doctrine of predestination, but at least as much so in every passage of his writings, where he gives voice to the confession, "To me to cling to God is a good thing." In this avowal the religious possession and moral goodness coincide, and are referred to God, their source. But even apart from this, his idea of love: "in this life also virtue is nothing but loving what ought to be loved; good affections make a good character," [144] was so excellent and forcible that all criticism looks like impudent coxcombry. Nevertheless, we must criticise it from the standpoint of the gospel. We have already remarked above that Augustine's doctrine of infused love is indifferent to the work of the historical Christ. Therefore he had a two-fold Christology: on the one hand, Christ is God, a member of the Trinity (unus ex trinitate); on the other hand, the chosen man, who was as much under grace as we are. All that leads us back ultimately to the fact that he under-estimated the significance of the forgiveness of sins and of the publican's faith: that his piety was not yet simple enough. [145] 4. Finally, it is to be pointed out that Augustine in his reformation of Christian piety did not disturb its character as a preparation for the next world. He could have changed nothing here without wounding the Christian religion itself; for the view of some Protestants, that Christianity can be transformed into a religion of this world, is an illusion. Augustine lived as much in the future world as Justin and Irenæus. His eschatological reflections are inexhaustible, and if, as will be shown afterwards, he set aside a few of the older ideas, yet that affords no standard of the whole trend of his piety. He only intensified the pessimistic view of this life, this mortal life and living death (vita mortalis, mors vitalis), by his doctrine of sin. "What flood of eloquence would ever suffice to portray the tribulations of this life, to describe this wretchedness, which is, as it were, a kind of hell in our present existence? Verily, the new-born infant comes to our mortal light, not laughing but weeping, and by its tears prophesies in some fashion, even without knowing it, to what great evils it has come forth. . . . A heavy yoke burdens all the children of Adam from the day of birth to that of burial, when they return to the common mother of all. . . . And the sorest thing of all is that we cannot but know how, just by the grievous sin committed in Paradise, this life has become a punishment to us." [146] Just as he has retained the pessimistic view of our present life, he has also described blessedness as the state of the perfect knowledge of God. He has done so in one of his earliest writings, De vita beata, and he substantially adhered to it. But the very perception, that misery was not a mere fatality, but was incurred by guilt, and the confidence that grace could make man free and happy even upon this earth, exerted a certain counterpoise. He undoubtedly does not call the present life of the Christian "joy of felicity," "but comfort of misery," and declares that to be an extremely false felicity which is devised by men who seek here another happiness than that entertained by hope. [147] But in not a few passages he yet speaks of the joy in God which creates blessedness even here. He seldom obeyed this feeling. For that very reason he found this life in itself objectless, and there are only a few indications, especially in the work, De civitate dei, in which he tried to show that a kingdom of Christ may be built up even in this world, and that the just, who live by faith, constitute it, and have a present task to perform (see also De trinit. I., 16 and 21). Speaking generally, he propagated the feeling shown in ancient Christian eschatology in every respect, and prepared the ground for monachism. If he seems to have instigated the development of the Catholic Church in its tendency to masterful rule over this world, yet external circumstances, and the interpretation they produced of his work "De civitate dei," contributed much more to the result than any intentional impulses given by him. [148] Where, however, there has developed in Catholicism in after times a strong sense of the blessedness which the Christian can receive even in this state, it has always assumed a mystical and ecstatic character. This is a clear proof that in any case this life was disregarded; for the mystical feeling of blessedness, even as Augustine knew it, really exists, by means of an excess, already in the future state. __________________________________________________________________ In the preceding pages the attempt has been made to show how the piety was constituted in which Augustine lived, and which he transmitted to posterity. It is extraordinary difficult to understand it aright; for experience and tradition are interwoven in it in the most wonderful way. Yet we cannot understand him as teacher of the Church, until we have formed our estimate of him as reformer of piety; for, besides Scripture and tradition, his theories have their strongest roots in the piety that animated him. They are in part nothing but states of feeling interpreted theoretically. But in these states of feeling there gathered round the grand experience of conversion from bondage to freedom in God all the manifold religious experiences and moral reflections of the ancient world. The Psalms and Paul, Plato and the Neoplatonists, the Moralists, Tertullian and Ambrose, we find all again in Augustine, and, side by side with the new psychological view constructed by him as disciple of the Neoplatonists, we come once more upon all the childish reflections and absolute theories which these men had pursued. __________________________________________________________________ [110] Of the immense literature about Augustine, the following works may be mentioned (with special regard to the Pelagian controversy): The critical investigations of the Benedictines in their editions of Aug.'s Opp., and the controversies over his doctrine of grace in the 16th to the 18th century; the works of Petavius, Noris (Hist. Pelag.), Tillemont, Gamier, Mansi, Hefele; Bindemaun, Der hl. Aug. 3 vols., 1844-69; Böhringer, Aur. Aug., 2 ed., 1877-78; Reuter, August. Studien, 1887 (the best of later works); A. Dorner, Aug., sein theol. System and seine relig.-philos. Anschauung, 1873; Loofs, "Augustinus in the 3 Ed. of the R.-Encykl. v. Hauck, Vol. II., pp. 257-285 (an excellent study, with an especially good discussion of the period to 395). Comprehensive expositions in Ritter, Baur, Nitzsch, Thomasius, Schwane, Huber (Philos. der KVV.), Jul. Müller (L. v. d. Sünde), Dorner (Entwicklgesch. d. L. v. d. Person Christi), Prantl (Gesch. d. Logik), Siebeck (Gesch. d. Psychologie), Zeller; see esp. Eucken, Die Lebenanschauungen der grossen Denker (1890) p. 258 ff.--Naville, S' Aug., Etude sur le devéloppement de sa pensée jusqu à 1'époque de son ordination (Geneva 1872). Bornemanu, Aug.'s Bekenntnisse, 1888; Harnack, Aug.'s Confessionen, 1888; Boissier, La conversion de S. Aug. in the Rev. de deux mondes, 1888 Jan.; Wörter, Die Geistesentw. d. h. Aug. bis zu seiner Taufe, 1892; Overbeck, Aug. u. Hieronymus in the Histor. Ztschr. N. F., Vol. VI.; Feuerlein, Ueb. d. Stellung Aug.'s in the Kirchen und Culturgesch. Histor. Ztschr., XXII., p. 270 ff. (see Reuter, l.c. p. 479 ff.); Ritschl, Ueber die Methode der ältesten D.-G. in the Jahrbb. f. deutsche Theol., 1871 (idem, Rechtfert. and Versöhn. Vol. I., Gesch. d. Pietismus Vol. I.); Kattenbusch, Studien z. Symbolik in the Stud. u. Krit. 1878; Reinkens, Geschichtsphilos. d. hl. Aug., 1866; Seyrich, Geschichts philosophie Aug.'s, 1891; Gangauf, Metaphys. Psychologie d. hl. Aug., 1852; Bestmann, Qua ratione Aug. notiones philosophiæ græca, etc., 1877; Loesche, De Aug. Platonizante 1880; Ferraz, Psychologie de S. Aug., 1862; Nourissou, La philosophic de S. Aug., 2 Ed., 1866; Storz, Die Philosophie des hl. Aug., 1882; Scipio, Des Aurel. Aug. Metaphysik, etc., 1886; Melzer, Die august. Lehre vom Causalitätsverhältniss Gottes zur Welt, 1892 Melzer, Augustini et Cartesii placita de mentis humanæ sui cognitione, 1860; Siebeck, Die Anfänge der neueren Psychologie in the Ztschr. f. Philos., 1888, p. 161 ff.; Kahl, Der Primat des Willens bei Aug., 1886; Schütz, August. non esse ontologum, 1867; Heinzelmann, Aug.'s Ansichten vom Wesen der menschlichen Seele, 1894; van Endert, Gottesbeweis in d. patrist. Zeit, 1869; Clauren, Aug. s. script. interpret., 1822; Gangauf, Des hl. Aug. Lehre von Gott dem Dreieinigen, 1865; Nitzsch, Aug.'s Lehre v. Wunder, 1865. Walch, De pelagianismo ante Pelagium, 1783; idem. hist. doctrinæ de peccato orig., 1783; Horn, Comm. de sentent. patrum . . . de pecc. originali, 180:; Dunker, Pecc. orig. et act., 1836; Krabinger, Der angebliche Pelagianismus d. voraugust. VV. Tüb Quartalschr., 1853; Kuhn, Der vorgebl. Pelagianismus d. voraugust. VV., in same journal; Walch, Ketzerhistorie, Vols. IV. and V.; Wiggers, Pragmat. Darstell. des Augustinismus u. Pelagianismus, 2 Vols., 1831-33 (the continuation on Semipelagianism in the Zeitschr. f. d. histor. Theol., 1854 ff.); Rottmanner, Der Augustinismus, 1892; Jacobi, Die Lehre des Pelagius, 1842; Leutzen, de Pelagianorum doctrinæ principiis, 1833; Jul. Muller, Der Pelagianismus in the deutsche Zeitschr f. christl. Wissensch., 1854, Nr. 40 f.; Wörter, Der Pelagianismus, 1866; Klasen, Die innere Entw. des Pelagianism., 1882; Geffcken, Histor. semipelag., 1826; Wiggers, de Joanne Cass., 1824-25; Wörter, Prosper v. Aquitanien über Gnade and Freiheit, 1867; Landerer, Das Verhältniss v. Gnade u. Freiheit in the Jahrbb. f. deutsche Theol., Vol. II., 1857; Luthardt, Die L. v. freien Willen u. s. Verh. z. Gnade, 1863; Kihn, Theodor. v. Mopsueste, 1880; Ritschl, Expos. doctr. S. Aug. de creat., peccato, gratia, 1843; Zeller, Die Lehre des Paulus u. Augustinus v. d. Sünde u. Gnade in ihrem Verhältniss z. protest. Kirchenlehre (Theol. Jahrbb., 1854, p. 295 ff.); Ehlers, Aug. de origine mali doctrina, 1857; Nirschl, Ursp. u. Wesen des Bösen nach Aug., 1854; Hamma, Die L. des hl. Aug. über die Concupiscenz in the Tüb. Quartalschr., 1873; Voigt, Comment. de theoria August., Pelag., Semipelag. et Synergist., 1829; Kühner, Aug.'s Anschauung v. d. Erlösungsbedeutung Christi, 1890; Dieckhoff, Aug.'s L. v. d. Gnade in the Mecklenb. Theol. Ztschr. I., 1860; Weber, Aug. de justificatione doctr.; Ernst, Die Werke der Ungläubigen nach Aug., 1871; Beck, Prädest.--Lehre in the Stud. u. Krit., 1847, II.; Koch, Autorität Aug.'s in der Lehre v. der Gnade u. Prædest., in the Tüb. Quartalschr., 1891, p. 95 ff.; H. Schmidt, Origenes u. Aug. als Apologeten, in the Jahrbb. f. deutsche Theologie, Vol. VIII.; Bigg, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria, 1886.--On Aug.'s doctrine of Baptism see Reuter, Kliefoth (Liturg. Abhandl.), and Höfling. Wilden, Die L. d. hl. Aug. v. Opfer d. Eucharistie, 1864; Ginzel L. d. hl. Aug. v. d. Kirche, in the Tüb. Theol. Quartalschr., 1849; Köstlin, Die kathol Auffass. v. d. Kirche, etc., in the deutschen Zeitschrift f. christl. Wissensch., 1856, Nr. 14; H. Schmidt, Aug.'s L. v. d. Kirche, in the Jahrbb. f. deutsche Theol., 1861 (id. Die Kirche, 1884); Seeberg, Begriff d. christl. Kirche, Pt. I., 1885; Roux, Diss. de. Aug. adversario Donatistarum, 1838; Ribbeck, Donatus and Augustinus, 1858. [111] August. Ep. 155 c. 12. 13. "Virtutes ita crescent et perficientur, ut te ad vitam vere beatam, quæ nonnisi æterna est, sine ulla dubitatione perducant: ubi jam nec prudenter discernantur a bonis mala, quæ non erunt, nec fortiter tolerentur adversa, quia non ibi erit nisi quod amemus, non etiam quod toleremus, nec temperanter libido frenetur, ubi nulla ejus incitamenta sentiemus, nec juste subveniatur ope indigentibus, ubi inopem atque indignum non habebimus. Una ibi virtus erit, et idipsum erit virtus præmiumque virtutis, quod dicit in sanctis eloquiis homo qui hoc amat: Mihi autem adhærere deo bonum est. Hæc ibi erit plena et sempiterna sapientia eademque veraciter vita jam beata. Perventio quippe est ad æternum ac summum bonum, cui adhærere est finis nostri boni. Dicatur hæc et prudentia quia prospectissime adhærebit bono quod non amittatur, et fortitudo, quia fermissime adhærebit bono unde non avellatur, et temperantia, quia castissime adhærebit bono, ubi non corrumpatur, et justitia, quia rectissime adhærebit bono, cui merito subjiciatur. Quamquam et in hac vita virtus non est nisi diligere quod diligendum est. Quid autem eligamus quod præcipue diligamus, nisi quo nihil melius invenimus? Hoc deus est, cui si diligendo aliquid vel præponimus vel æquamus, nos ipsos diligere nescimus. Tanto enim nobis melius est, quanto magis in illum imus, quo nihil melius est. Imus autem non ambulando, sed amando. Ad eum non pedibus ire licet, sed moribus. Mores autem nostri, non ex eo quod quisque novit, sed ex eo quod diligit, dijudicari solent. Nec faciunt bonos vel malos mores, nisi boni vel mali amores. Pravitate ergo nostra a rectitudine dei longe fuimus. Unde rectum amando corrigimur, ut recto recti adhærere possimus." [112] Compare my lecture "Augustin's Confessionen," 1888. See also Essay by G. Boissier in the Rev. de deux mond., 1 Jan., 1888. [113] In what follows the fundamental tendency is alone characterised. It is not to be denied that in some cases evangelical features were more marked. [114] After the exposition given in Vols. I.-IV., and the indications in Chap. II. of this vol., I need not adduce further evidence that for the ancient Church the grace of God in Christ was exhausted in the gifts received in baptism. All other grace, which was hoped for, was beset with uncertainty. [115] Read the striking avowals of II. Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas, Tertullian, the confessions of monks, and of the great theologians of the fourth century who were prevented by circumstances from becoming monks. [116] Rothe says very truly, Kirchengesch., II., p. 33: "Men secretly distrusted inevitably the presupposed purely supernatural and accordingly magical operation of God's grace, and they therefore arranged their plans on the eventuality that in the end everything might still require to be done by man alone." [117] De pecc. mer. et remiss., II., 5; De spiritu et lit., 22; see Confessions, X, 40, and De dono persever., 53. The substance is given already in Soliloq., I., 5: "Jube quæso atque impera quidquid vis, sed sana et aperi aures meas." Enchir., 117, "Fides impetrat quod lex imperat." [118] De fide et symb., 19. [119] De Trinit., XIII., 4: "Felices esse volumus et infelices esse nolumus, sed nec velle possumus." De civit. dei, XI., 26: "Tam porro nemo est qui esse se nolit, quam nemo est qui non esse beatus velit. Quo modo enim potest beatus esse, si nihil sit?" [120] Confess., I., 5: Quis mihi dabit acquiescere in te? Quis mihi dabit ut venias in cor meum et inebries illud, ut obliviscar mala mea et unum bonum amplectar te? Quid mihi es? Miserere, ut loquar. Quid tibi sum ipse, ut amari te jubeas a me, et nisi faciam irascaris mihi et mineris ingentes miserias? . . . Dic mihi per miserationes tuas, domine deus meus, quid sis mihi. Dic animæ meæ: Salus tua ego sum. Sic dic, ut audiam. Ecce aures cordis mei ante te, domine; aperi eas, et dic animæ meæ: Salus tua ego sum. Curram post vocem hanc et apprehendam te. Noli abscondere a me faciem tuam; moriar ne moriar, ut eam videam. Angusta est domus animæ meæ quo venias ad eam; dilatetur abs te. Ruinosa est; refice eam. Habet quæ offendant oculos tuos; fateor et scio; sed quis mundabit eam? aut cui alteri præter te clamabo? [121] Enchir., 64: "Excepto baptismatis munere ipsa etiam vita cetera, quantalibet præpolleat foecunditate justitiæ, sine peccatorum remissione non agitur." [122] We will afterwards discuss how far Augustine failed to surmount this uncertainty and unrest, owing to the reception of popular Catholic elements into his piety. [123] The most important caution--that Augustine fitted his new form of feeling and reflection into the old--will be discussed later on; it has been only mildly suggested in the above exposition. [124] I need hardly guard against the misapprehension that I represent faith as not having been of fundamental importance to the Pre-Augustinian and Greek Church. The question here is as to the feeling and disposition of the Christian. The Pre-Augustinian Christian regarded faith as the self-evident presupposition of the righteousness which he had to gain by his own efforts. [125] It need not be objected that this is the doctrine of Scripture. In the first place, Scripture has no homogeneous doctrine; secondly, even Paul's range of thought, to which Augustine's here most closely approximates, does not perfectly coincide with it. But we must undoubtedly recognise that the Augustinian reformation was quite essentially a Pauline reaction against the prevailing piety. Augustine, to some extent, appears as a second Marcion, see Vol. I., p. 136, Reuter, August. Studien, p. 492 "We can perhaps say that Paulinism, which the growing Catholic Church only half-learned to understand, which Marcion attempted to open up in an eccentric one-sidedness that the Church, in its opposition to him, had all but rejected, was exploited by our Church Father for the second time, in such a way, that much hitherto belonging to popular Catholicism was remodelled." This is followed by a parallel between Augustine and Marcion. The triad "Faith, Love, and Hope," is Pauline, and occurs in almost all Church Fathers; but Augustine first made it fruitful again (perhaps he learned here from Jovinian). [126] I say nothing of the arrogant habit of those who, because they agree with the Augustinian doctrine, not only openly credit themselves with possessing "positive" Christianity, but also denounce their opponents as "half-believers." For this nonsense Augustine is not responsible, and it only made its appearance in the nineteenth century. It is only in our days that evangelical Christendom has permitted itself to be terrorised by people who bear the deeper "knowledge of sin" as a motto, and with this shield guard themselves against the counsel to be just and modest. [127] Compare Goethe in his wonderful reflections on Sterne, Werke (Hempel's Ed.), Vol. XXIX., p. 749 f. [128] Augustine's Exposition of the Church I neither count one of his greater achievements, nor can I hold it to be the central idea which determines what is essential to him. [129] Reuter says excellently (l.c., p. 494): "Many phases of the hitherto traditional and authoritative doctrine were transformed by him into really religious factors; he effected a revolution in the religious consciousness in those circles in and upon which he worked, yet without seeking to endanger its Catholicity." Cf., also p. 102 (71-98): "Much, but very far from all, that belonged to popular Catholicism was revised by Augustine." [130] See De bapt., 6: "Cum antem sub tribus et testatio fidei et sponsio salutis pignerentur, necessario adicitur ecclesiæ mentio, quoniam ubi tres, id est pater et filius et spiritus sanctus, ibi ecclesia, quæ trium corpus est." De oral., 2: "Pater . . . filius . . . ne mater quidam ecclesia præteritur. Si quidem in filio et patre mater recognoscitur, de qua constat et patris et filii nomen." De monog., 7: "Vivit enim unicus pater noster et mater ecclesia." All this is based on the Symbol. [131] We don't need now to say for the first time that Augustine was as closely as possible united to the past of the Church in all else (Scripture, doctrinal confession, etc.). Besides this, he shared with his contemporaries in the conception of the Church's science in its relation to faith, and had on many points as naïve ideas as they of the limits and scope of knowledge. If he possessed the faculty of psychological observation in a much higher degree than his predecessors, he retained the absolute type of thought, and, with all the sceptical reserve which he practised in single questions, he further developed that conglomerate of cosmology, ethics, mythology, and rationalism, which was then called science. So also he was implicated in all the prejudices of contemporary exegesis. It is to be added, finally, that, although less credulous than his contemporaries, he was, like Origen, involved in the prejudices, the mania for miracles, and the superstition of the age. His works, sober in comparison with many other elaborations of the epoch, are yet full of miracles. A slave learns to read in answer to prayer, in three days, and without human help; and we have divine judgments, miracle-working relics, etc. He certainly made the absurd indispensable to the Church. Since Augustine's time there are wholly absurd Church doctrines, whose abandonment would not be without danger, because they have excited, or at least have supported, like the vine-pole, the virtues of conscientiousness, strictness in self-examination, and tenderness of soul (see, e.g., his doctrine of original sin). But like all absurdities, they have also excited blind fanaticism and fearful despair. [132] See Reuter, l.c. p. 490 f. [133] The few tendencies to this conception, which are also found in his works, are always combined with that neutralising of the historical displayed by the Apologists. We cannot here discuss more fully this undercurrent in his writings. But it is important to show clearly the main current, namely, that scholars were by no means confident of the rationality of the Catholic faith. The attacks made by heathens and Manichæans had shaken them. Some speak, partly with self-satisfaction, partly with pain, of "modern" doubts of the faith of the Church. But these doubts are so far from modern that the creation of the Augustinian and mediæval authority of the Church is their work. That ecclesiasticism is so powerful, nay, has become a dogmatic quantity, is due to the defective morality of Christians in the second and third centuries, and to their defective faith in the fourth and fifth. The distinction between Justin and Augustine is in this respect much greater than that between Augustine and a Christian of the sixteenth or nineteenth centuries. [134] See the middle Books of the Confessions, e.g., VI., 11: "Scripturæ sanctæ, quas ecclesiæ catholicæ commendat auctoritas." VI., 7: "Libris tuis, quos tanta in omnibus fere gentibus auctoritate fundasti. . . . Non audiendos esse, si qui forte mihi dicerent; unde scis illos libros unius veri et veracissimi dei spiritu esse humano generi ministratos? idipsum enim maxime credendum erat." VI., 8: "Ideoque cum essemus infirmi ad inveniendam liquida ratione veritatem, et ob hoc nobis opus esset auctoritate sanctarum litterarum, jam credere coeperam nullo modo te fuisse tributurum tam excellentem scripturæ per omnes jam terras auctoritatem, nisi et per ipsam tibi credi et per ipsam te quæri voluisses. Jam enim absurditatem quæ me in illis litteris solebat offendere, cum multa ex eis probabiliter exposita audissem, ad sacramentorum altitudinem referebam." See also the treatise De utilit. credendi, and, in general, the writings against Manichæism. [135] Contra Ep. Manichæi, 5: "Ego vero evangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicae (ecclesiæ) commoveret auctoritas." Innumerable parallels exist, especially in the writings against Manichæism, but also elsewhere. [136] Reuter, who by no means over-values the importance of the idea of the Church in Augustine, declares (p. 499): "By Augustine the idea of the Church was rendered the central power in the religious state of mind and ecclesiastical activity of the West in a fashion unknown to the East." "Central power" is almost saying too much (see Theol. Lit.-Zeit., 1887, No. 15). [137] This argument has been very badly received by some critics, but I find nothing to change in it. Perhaps it will help to its being understood if I add that the spiritual man is directly conscious of the Divine Spirit as his Lord--who constrains him to obedience, even where he himself does not perceive the inner authority--but the non-spiritual require some sort of intervening authority, whether consisting in persons, or a book, or Church. But in both cases we are dealing with a controlling power, whose authority rises above one's own individuality and knowledge. I hope that in disclosing this state of the case I am safe from being (wrongly) understood to draw a fixed line between the spiritual and non-spiritual. Throughout it is only a question of the proportion in which the apocalyptic and mediated elements appear and are connected in personal religion. Even the spiritual man who holds direct communion with God has, as history shows, extremely seldom, perhaps never entirely, freed himself from all intermediate authority; on the contrary, he has clung to it firmly, in spite of his intercourse with the Deity. This is not the place to explain this phenomenon; but personal religion is not shown to be valueless by its being proved that its authorities are not sound (against Baumann, Die Grundfrage der Religion, 1895, p. 22 f.). The important point is what the pious man has derived from his authorities. [138] It is only to a superficial observer that Eastern Christians seem to cling more strongly to the Church than Western. In the East the historical course of events welded ecclesiasticism and nationality into one, and the internal development made the cultus of the Church the chief matter. But what other rule does the Church play in personal piety than being the scene of Christian life, the teacher of doctrine, and the administrator of the mysteries? All these are, in fact, presupposed conditions; in the West, on the contrary, the Church has thrust itself into all relations and points of contact of the pious soul to God and Christ, as far as the Augustinian tradition is accepted. [139] Let anyone read attentively the Confessions B. VII. and VIII., as also the writings and epistles composed immediately after his conversion, and he will find that Augustine's Neoplatonism had undoubtedly a share in giving him this perception. But he was brought to it in a much higher degree by his inner experience, and the reading of Paul and the Psalms. The Psalmists' piety was revived in him (see esp. Confess., IX., 8-12). His style even was modelled on theirs. In Clement of Alex. and Origen, Neoplatonic speculation, on the contrary, prevailed. Even in the most glorious of their expositions, in which the power of feeling is clearly conspicuous, we cannot forget the speculative path by which they thought they had attained to the possession of God. [140] The final ground of this view with Augustine consists naturally in the fact that he never wholly got rid of the old Catholic scheme that the ultimate concern of Christianity was to transform human nature physically and morally for eternal life. He took a great step forward; but he was not able to give clear expression to the Pauline thought that the whole question turned on forgiveness of sins and sonship to God, or to frame all dogmatics in harmony with it. [141] See e.g., Confess. IX. 34: "Quisquis tibi enumerat vera merita sua, quid tibi enumerat nisi munera tua." Ep. 194, n. 19: "cum deus coronat merita nostra, nihil aliud coronat quam munera sua." De gratia et lib. arb., 15: "Dona sua coronat deus non merita tua . . . si ergo dei dona sunt bona merita tua, non deus coronat merita tua tamquam merita tua sed tamquam dona sua." De gestis Pelag., 35: "Redditur quidem meritis tuis corona sua, sed dei dona sunt merita tua." De trinit., XIII., 14: "Et ea quæ dicuntur merita nostra, dona sunt eius," etc. XV. 21: "Quid animam faciet beatam, nisi meritum suum et præmium domini sui? Sed et meritum ejus gratia est illius, cujus, præmium erit beatitudo ejus." De prædest. sanct., 10. For this very reason the fundamental principle holds good, that grace is not granted secundum merita nostra. [142] In his 177th letter, e.g. (Ad Innocent., c. 4), he expressly declares that it is an error to say that gratia is liberum arbitrium or remissio peccatorum. [143] But, besides, the final and supreme question as to assurance of salvation is not less misunderstood. [144] Et in hac vita virtus non est nisi diligere quod diligendum est; faciunt boni amores bonos mores. [145] It has seemed necessary to concede to Augustine's conception of sanctification that it had the merit of correcting the quietistic phase that clung dangerously to his doctrine of grace. But, on a closer inspection, we find that love did not certainly mean to him the exemplification of morality in serving our neighbour, but sentiments, or such works of love, as owed their value to reflex action at least as strongly as to philanthropy. Here again, in very many expositions, he did not advance beyond the old Catholic Christians, or Cyprian and Ambrose; man attends best to his own interests by means of caritas, and pleases God in divesting himself of what is worldly. [146] See also the thrilling description, De civitat, XIX., 4. [147] In his Soliloquies, one of his earliest writings, he awards felicity to the soul that perceives God here below. But in his Retractations, I., 4, he says expressly, "Nec illud mihi placet, quod in ista vita deo intellecto jam beatam esse animam (in Soliloquiis) dixi, nisi forte spe." In general, Augustine at a later date disavowed many arguments in his works written immediately after his conversion; nay, even in his Confessions, in which he is disposed to describe his conversion as instantaneous, he has admitted in one important sentence how imperfect his Christian thought was at that time: IX. 7, "Ibi (in Cassiciacum) quid egerim in litteris, jam quidem servientibus tibi, sed adhue superbiæ scholam tanquam in pausatione anhelantibus, testantur libri disputati cum præsentibus (libr. c. Academ.--de beata vita--de ordine) et cum ipso me solo (Soliloquia) coram te; quæ autem cum absente Nebridio, testantur epistolæ"). But our judgment must here be divided. What was written earlier was undoubtedly in many respects less complete, less churchly, more Neoplatonic; but on the other hand it was more direct, more personal and determined to a smaller degree by regard for the Catholicism of the Church. Yet he was already determined to have nothing to do with a felicity of inquiry and seeking; but only saw it in its possession (Adv. Acad. lib., I.). [148] On Augustine's pessimistic and eschatological tendency, his view of the secular and clerical life, as also the efforts to surmount the popular Catholic conception, see Reuter, l.c., Studie VI. We return briefly to these subjects further on. __________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER IV. THE HISTORICAL POSITION OF AUGUSTINE AS TEACHER OF THE CHURCH. __________________________________________________________________ The ancient Church before Augustine only possessed a single great dogmatic scheme, the Christological. Augustine also knew it and made use of it; but in inserting it into a greater and more living group, he deprived it of its original meaning and object. It has been said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from heaven; we may maintain of Augustine that he did the same for dogmatics, by separating it from speculations about the finite and infinite, God the Logos and the creature, mortal and immortal, and connecting it with questions as to moral good, freedom, sin, and blessedness. Goodness became for him the point on which turned the consideration of blessings; moral goodness (virtue) and the possession of salvation were not merely to occupy corresponding positions, but to coincide (ipsa virtus et præmium virtutis). If we may use a figure, we can say that Augustine formed into one the two centres of popular Catholic theology, the renewing power of redemption and the free effort to attain virtue; of the ellipse he made a circle--God, whose grace delivers the will and endows it with power to do what is good. In this is comprehended his significance in the history of the Christian religion. He did not, however, vindicate the new portion consistently, but built the old into it. Indeed, in the new cathedral erected by him, the old building formed, as it were, the holy of holies, which is seldom entered. When we seek to determine what has been accomplished by an ancient Church theologian as teacher of the Church, we must examine his expositions of the Symbol. We possess several by Augustine. It is extremely instructive to compare the earliest (De fide et symbolo, A.D. 393) with one of the latest (De fide, spe et caritate, A.D. 421, or later). In the former Augustine is still substantially a theologian of the ancient Church. The questions discussed by him are the same as were then dealt with, in both halves of the Church, in the Symbol, and are suggested by its language. Even the manner in which he discusses them is but slightly distinguished from the customary one. Finally, the polemic is the one that was usual: Arians, Manichæans, Apollinarians, Pneumatomachoi occupy the foreground; the last named especially are very thoroughly refuted. On the other hand, Augustine's characteristics declare themselves even in this early exposition. [149] Thus we have, above all, his love of truth and frankness in the sections on the Holy Spirit, and his sceptical reserve and obedient submission to Church tradition. Further, in the Christology we find his characteristic scheme "Christ invested in man" (Christus indutus in homine), as well as the strong emphasis laid on the humility of Christ contrasted with pride (superbia). Compare, besides, sentences like the following. Chapter V I.--"Since he is only-begotten he has no brothers; but since he is first-begotten, he has deigned to name all those his brothers who after and through his headship are born again into the grace of God through the adoption of sons." Or (Chapter XI.): "Our Lord's humility was lowly in his being born for us; to this it was added that he deigned to die for mortals." Or (Chapter XIX.): "The writers of the Divine Scriptures declare that the Holy Spirit is God's gift in order that we may believe that God does not bestow a gift inferior to himself." Or (ibid.): "No one enjoys that which he knows, unless he also loves it . . . nor does anyone abide in that which he apprehends unless by love." [150] But if Augustine had died before the Donatist and Pelagian controversies, he would not have been the dogmatist who changed the whole scheme of doctrine; for it was these controversies that first compelled him to reflect on and review what he had long held, to vindicate it with all his power, and to introduce it also into the instruction of the Church. But since it had never entered his mind that the ancient doctrinal tradition, as attached to the Symbol, could be insufficient, [151] since it had still less occurred to him to declare the Symbol itself to be inadequate, it was a matter of course to him that he should make everything which he had to present as religious doctrine hinge on that Confession. In this way arose the characteristic scheme of doctrine, which continued to influence the West in the Middle Ages; nay, on which the Reformed version is based--a combination of ancient Catholic theology and system with the new fundamental thought of the doctrine of grace, forced into the framework of the Symbol. It is evident that by this means a mixture of styles arose which was not conducive to the transparency and intelligibility of doctrine. But we have not only to complain of want of clearness, but also of a complexity of material which, in a still higher degree than was the case in the ancient Catholic Church, necessarily frustrated the demand for a closely reasoned and homogeneous version of religious doctrine. We are perhaps justified in maintaining that the Church never possessed in ancient times another teacher so anxious as Augustine to think out theological problems, and to secure unity for the system of doctrine. But the circumstances in which he was placed led to him above all others necessarily confusing that system of doctrine, and involving it in new inconsistencies. [152] The following points fall to be considered. 1. As a Western theologian, he felt that he was bound by the Symbol; but no Western theologian before him had lived so much in Scripture, or taken so much from it as he. The old variance between Symbol and Scripture, [153] which at that time indeed was not yet consciously felt, was accordingly intensified by him. The uncertainty as to the relation of Scripture and Symbol was increased by him in spite of the extraordinary services he had rendered in making the Church familiar with the former. [154] The Biblicism of later times, which afterwards took up an aggressive attitude to the Church in the West, is to be traced back to Augustine; and the resolute deletion of Scriptural thoughts by an appeal to the authority of the Church's doctrine may equally refer to him. [155] If we are asked for the historical justification of pre-reformers and reformers in the West, in taking their stand exclusively on Scripture, we must name Augustine; if we are asked by what right such theologians have been silenced, we may refer similarly to Augustine; but we can in this case undoubtedly go back to the authority of Tertullian (De præscr. hær.). 2. On the one hand, Augustine was convinced that everything in Scripture was valuable for faith, and that any thought was at once justified, ecclesiastically and theologically, by being proved to be Biblical--see his doctrine of predestination and other tenets, of which he was certain simply because they were found in the Bible. By this principle any unity of doctrine was nullified. [156] But, on the other hand, Augustine knew very well that religion was a practical matter, that in it faith, hope, and love, or love alone, were all-important, and that only what promoted the latter had any value. Indeed he advanced a considerable step further, and approximated to the Alexandrian theologians: he ultimately regarded Scripture merely as a means, which was dispensed with when love had reached its highest point, and he even approached the conception that the very facts of Christ's earthly revelation were stages beyond which the believer passed, whose heart was possessed wholly by love. [157] This latter point--which is connected with his individualistic theology, but slightly influenced by the historical Christ--will be discussed below. It is enough here to formulate sharply the inconsistency of making Scripture, on the one hand, a source, and, on the other, a means. [158] --a means indeed which is finally dispensed with like a crutch. [159] The mystics and fanatics of the West have given their adhesion to the last principle, advancing the inner light and inner revelation against the written. Now Augustine, in his excellent preface to his work "De doctrina Christiana," has undoubtedly, as with a flash of prophetic illumination, rejected all fanatical inspiration, which either fancied it had no need at all of Scripture, or, appealing to the Spirit, declared philological and historical interpretation to be useless. But yet he opened the door to fanaticism with his statement that there was a stage at which men had got beyond Scripture. Above all, however, he created the fatal situation, in which the system of doctrine and theology of the Western Church are still found at the present day, by the vagueness which he failed to dispel as to the importance of the letter of Scripture. The Church knows, on the one hand, that in the Bible, so far as meant for faith, the "matter" is alone of importance. But, on the other hand, it cannot rid itself of the prejudice that every single text contains a Divine and absolute direction, a "revelation." Protestant Churches have in this respect not gone one step beyond Augustine; Luther himself, if we compare his "prefaces" to the New Testament, e.g., with his position in the controversy about the Lord's Supper, was involved in the same inconsistency as burdened Augustine's doctrinal structure. 3. Augustine brought the practical element to the front more than any previous Church Father. Religion was only given to produce faith, love, and hope, and blessedness itself was bound up in these virtues bestowed by God, or in love. But the act of reform, which found expression in the subordination of all materials to the above intention, was not carried out by him unalloyed. In retaining the old Catholic scheme, knowledge and eternal life (aphtharsia) remained the supreme thoughts; in pursuing Neoplatonic mysticism, he did not cast off the acosmic view that regarded all phenomena as transient, and all that was transient as figurative, retaining finally only the majesty of the concealed Deity; in despising the present life, he necessarily also depreciated faith and all that belonged to the present. Thus, his theology was not decided, even in its final aims, by one thought, and he was therefore unable really to carry out his doctrine of grace and sin in a pure form. As the intellectualism of antiquity, of course in a sublimated form, was not wholly superseded by him, his profoundest religious utterances were accompanied by, or entwined with, philosophical considerations. Often one and the same principle has a double root, a Neoplatonic and a Christian (Pauline), and accordingly a double meaning, a cosmological and a religious. Philosophy, saving faith, and Church tradition, disputed the leading place in his system of faith, and since Biblicism was added to these three elements, the unity of his type of thought was everywhere disturbed. 4. But apart from the intention, the execution contains not only inconsistencies in detail, but opposite views. In his conflict with Manichæism and Donatism, Augustine sketched a doctrine of freedom, the Church, and the means of grace, which has little in common with his experience of sin and grace, and simply conflicts with the theological development of that experience--the doctrine of predestinating grace. We can positively sketch two Augustinian theologies, one ecclesiastical, the other a doctrine of grace, and state the whole system in either. 5. But even in his ecclesiastical system and his doctrine of grace, conflicting lines of thought meet; for in the former a hierarchical and sacramental fundamental element conflicts with a liberal, universalist view inherited from the Apologists; and in the doctrine of grace two different conceptions are manifestly combined, namely, the thought of grace through (per, propter) Christ, and that of grace emanating, independently of Christ, from the essential nature of God as the supreme good and supreme being (summum bonum, summum esse). The latter inconsistency was of greatest importance for Augustine's own theology, and for the attitude of Western theology after him. The West, confessedly, never thoroughly appropriated the uncompromising Eastern scheme of Christology as a statement of saving faith. But by Augustine the relation of the doctrine of the two natures (or the Incarnation) to that of salvation was still further loosened. It will be shown that he really prepared the way much more strongly for the Franciscan feeling towards Christ than for Anselm's satisfaction theory, and that, in general, as a Christologian--in the strict sense of the term--he bequeathed more gaps than positive material to posterity. But in addition to this antithesis of a grace through Christ and without Christ, we have, finally, in Augustine's doctrine of sin a strong Manichæan and Gnostic element; for Augustine never wholly surmounted Manichæism. From our exposition up to this point--and only the most important facts have been mentioned--it follows that we cannot speak of Augustine having a system, nor did he compose any work which can be compared to Origen's peri archon. Since he did not, like the latter, boldly proclaim the right of an esoteric Christianity, but rather as Christian and churchman constantly delayed taking this liberating step, [160] everything with him stands on one level, and therefore is involved in conflict. [161] But it is "not what one knows and says that decides, but what one loves"; he loved God, and his Church, and he was true. This attitude is conspicuous in all his writings, whether it is the Neoplatonist, the earlier Manichæan, the Pauline Christian, the Catholic Bishop, or the Biblicist, that speaks, and it lends to all his expositions a unity, which, though it cannot be demonstrated in the doctrines, can be plainly felt. Therefore, also, the different movements that started or learned from him, were always conscious of the complete man, and drew strength from him. He would not have been the teacher of the future if he had not stood before it as a Christian personality who lent force and weight to every word, no matter in what direction it led. As preacher of faith, love, and the dispensation of grace, he has dominated Catholic piety up to the present day. By his fundamental sentiment: "Mihi adhærere deo bonum est," as also by his distinction between law and gospel, letter and spirit, and his preaching that God creates faith and a good will in us, he called forth the evangelical Reformation. [162] By his doctrine of the authority and means of grace of the Church, he carried forward the construction of Roman Catholicism; nay, he first created the hierarchical and sacramental institution. By his Biblicism he prepared the way for the so-called pre-reformation movements, and the criticism of all extra-Biblical ecclesiastical traditions. By the force of his speculation, the acuteness of his intellect, the subtlety of his observation and experience, he incited, nay, partly created, scholasticism in all its branches, including the Nominalistic, and therefore also the modern theory of knowledge and psychology. By his Neoplatonism and enthusiasm for predestination he evoked the mysticism as well as the anti-clerical opposition of the Middle Ages. [163] By the form of his ideal of the Church and of felicity, he strengthened the popular Catholic, the monachist, state of feeling, domesticating it, moreover, in the Church, and thereby rousing and capacitating it to overcome and dominate the world as contrasted with the Church. Finally, by his unique power of portraying himself, of expressing the wealth of his genius, and giving every word an individual impress, by his gift of individualising and self-observation, he contributed to the rise of the Renaissance and the modern spirit. These are not capricious combinations, but historical facts: [164] the connecting lines that lead back to him, can everywhere be clearly demonstrated. But where, then, in the history of the West is there a man to be compared to him? Without taking much to do with affairs--Augustine was Bishop of a second-rate city, and possessed neither liking nor talent for the rôle of an ecclesiastical leader or practical reformer--by the force of his ideas he influenced men, and made his life permeate the centuries that followed. __________________________________________________________________ It has been attempted to depict Augustine's significance as Church teacher, by dividing absolutely the various directions in which his thought moved, and by giving separate accounts of the Neoplatonist, the Paulinist, the earlier Manichæan, and the Catholic Bishop. [165] But it is to be feared that violence is done him by such an analysis. It is safer and more appropriate, within the limits of a history of dogma, to keep to the external unity which he has himself given to his conceptions. In that case his Enchiridion ad Laurentium, his matured exposition of the Symbol, presents itself as our best guide. This writing we mean to bring forward at the close of the present chapter, after preliminary questions have been discussed which were of supreme importance to Augustine, and the controversies have been reviewed in which his genius was matured. We shall, in this way, obtain the clearest view of what Augustine achieved for the Church of his time, and of the revolution he evoked. It is a very attractive task to centralise Augustinian theology, but it is safer to rest content with the modest result of becoming acquainted with it, in so far as it exerted its influence on the Church. One difficulty meets us at the very outset which can not be removed, and went on increasing in after times. What portion of Augustine's countless expositions constituted dogma in his own eyes, or became dogma at a later period? While he extended dogma to an extraordinary extent, he at the same time sometimes relaxed, sometimes--as regards ancient tradition--specifically stiffened, the notion to be held of it. The question as to the extent of dogmas was neither answered, nor ever put precisely, in the West, after the Donatist and Pelagian controversies. In other words, no necessity was felt for setting up similarly express positive statements in addition to the express refutations of Pelagians, Donatists, etc. But the necessity was not felt, because Churchmen possessed neither self-confidence nor courage to take ecclesiastical action on a grand scale. They always felt they were Epigones of a past time which had created the professedly adequate tradition. This feeling, which was still further accentuated in the Middle Ages, was gradually overcome by the Popes, though solely by them. Apart from a few exceptions, it was not till the Council of Trent that dogmas were again formed. Till then the only dogmas were the doctrines contained in the Symbols. Next these stood the catalogues of heretics, from which dogmas could be indirectly deduced. This state of matters induces us to present the doctrine of Augustine as fully as possible, consistently with the design of a text-book. Many things must here be brought forward from his works which bore no fruit in his own time, but had a powerful influence on the course of doctrinal development in the following centuries, and came to light in the dogmas of Trent. [166] In what follows we shall proceed (1) to describe Augustine's fundamental view, his doctrines of the first and last things; [167] for they were fixed when he became a Catholic Christian; (2) and (3) we then describe his controversies with Donatists and Pelagians, in which his conception of faith was deepened and unfolded; and (4) we expound his system of doctrine by the help of the Enchiridion ad Laurentium. __________________________________________________________________ [149] The foundation of Augustine's religious characteristics can be best studied in the writings that are read least, namely in the tractates and letters written immediately after his conversion, and forming an extremely necessary supplement to his Confessions (see above, p. 92, note 2). In these writings he is not yet at all interested in Church dogmatics, but is wholly absorbed in the task of making clear to himself, while settling with Neoplatonism, the new stage of religious philosophical reflection and inner experience, in which he finally found rest (see De vita beata, Adv. Academ., Soliloquia, De ordine, and the Epistles to Nebridius). The state of feeling expressed by him in these work, never left him; but it was only in a later period that he gave it its dogmatic sub-structure. In consequence of this, as is proved even by the Confessions and also the Retractations, he himself lost the power of rightly estimating those writings and the inner state in which he had found himself in the first years after his conversion. But he never lost the underlying tone of those first fruits of his authorship: "Rest in the possession of God," as distinguished from the unrest and unhappiness of a seeking and inquiry that never reach their aim, or the essentially Neoplatonic version of the loftiest problems (see e.g., De ordine II., 11 ff., "mala in ordinem redacta faciunt decorem universi"; the same view of evil is still given in De civit., XI., 18). Those writings cannot be more fully discussed in a history of dogma. [150] "Secundum id, quod unigenitus est, non habet fratres; secundum id autem quod primogenitus est, fratres vocare dignatus est omnes qui post ejus et per ejus primatum in dei gratiam renascuntur per adoptionem filiorum." "Parva erat pro nobis domini nostri humilitas in nascendo; accessit etiam ut mori pro mortalibus dignaretur." "Divinarum scripturarum tractatores spiritum sanctum donum dei esse prædicant, ut deum credamus non se ipso inferius donum dare." "Eo quod quisque novit non fruitur, nisi et id diligat . . . neque quisquam in eo quod percipit permanet nisi dilectione." [151] He undoubtedly noticed, and with his love of truth frankly said, that the Church writers gave throughout an insufficient statement of the grace of God; but he contented himself with the plea that the Church had always duly emphasised grace in its prayers and institutions. See prædest. sanct., 27: "Quid opus est, ut eorum scrutemur opuscula, qui prius quam ista hæresis (Pelagianorum) oriretur, non habuerunt necessitatem in hac difficili ad solvendum quæstione versari? quod procul dubio facerent, si respondere talibus cogerentur. Unde factum est, ut de gratia dei quid sentirent, breviter quibusdam scriptorum suorum locis et transeunter adtingerent, immorarentur vero in eis, quæ adversus inimicos ecclesiæ disputabant, et in exhortationibus ad quasque virtutes, quibus deo vivo et vero pro adipiscenda vita æterna et vera felicitate servitur. Frequentationibus autem orationum simpliciter apparebat dei gratia quid valeret; non enim poscerentur de deo quæ præcipit fieri, nisi ab illo donaretur ut fierent." He himself had indeed learned from experience in his struggle with the Manichæans, that the defence of truth has to be regulated by the nature of the attack. When he was twitted by his opponents with what he had formerly written about freewill against the Manichæans, he appealed to the claims of advancing knowledge, as well as to the duty of offering resistance both to right and left. He thus saw in the earlier Church teachers the defenders of the truth of the Church against fatalism, Gnosticisim, and Manichæism, and from this standpoint explained their attitude. [152] It is self-evident that for this reason dogma, i.e., the old Catholic doctrine of the Trinity and Christology, necessarily became less impressive. Reuter's objection (l.c. p. 495) rests on an incomprehensible misunderstanding. [153] See on this and on what follows, Vol. III., pp. 203 ff., 207 ff. [154] The attempts to define their relationship, e.g., in Book I. of the treatise De doctrina Christiana, are wholly vague, and indeed scarcely comprehensible. The "substance" of Scripture is to form the propositions of the Rule of Faith; but yet every sentence of Scripture is an article of faith. [155] After his conversion Augustine was firmly of opinion that nothing stood in Scripture that contradicted the doctrine of the Church; he was not so certain that the interpretation of Scripture must follow the authority of tradition. Yet what a profusion of "dangerous" ideas would have been evolved from the Bible by his rich and acute genius if once he had freed his intellect from the fetters of obedience! The perception that no less than everything would have been doubtful, that a thousand contradictions would have taken the place of a unanimous doctrine, certainly helped in determining him not to shake the bars of his prison. He felt he would never be able to escape, but would be buried by the ruins of the collapsing edifice. Hence the principle declared in De nat. et grat. 22, that we must first submit to what stands in Scripture, and only then ask "quomodo id fieri potuerit." What a difference from Origen! [156] See Vol. II., 331, n. 3. [157] De doctr. Christ. I., 34: an extremely noteworthy exposition, which, so far as I know, has very few clear parallels in Augustine's works, but forms the background of his development. [158] See the details in "De doctr. Christiana" copied in Vol. III., p. 203, n. 2, of this work. [159] De doctr. Christ., 35-40, especially c. 39, "Therefore a man who depends on faith, hope, and love, and holds by them invincibly, only needs Scripture to instruct others." Scripture even only offers patchwork; but a man may rise to such perfection even in this life as no longer to require the patchwork. [160] Tendencies in this direction are found everywhere; but they were never more than tendencies. [161] It is one of Reuter's chief merits that he has proved the impossibility of constructing a system from Augustine's thought, and of removing the inconsistencies that occur in it. [162] See the testimonies to Augustine of the Reformers and their confessional writings; yet the difference that still existed was not unknown to them. [163] Even the Anti-Gregorian party in the Middle Ages frequently appealed to Augustine. It was possible to find in him welcome statements as to the meaning of the Empire, the possibility of correcting Councils, and, generally, anti-hierarchical passages. [164] Compare Reuter, Studie VII. [165] It is unmistakable that there are three planes in Augustine's theological thoughts, Neoplatonic mysticism (without means of grace, without the Church, nay, in a sense, even without Christ), Christological soteriology, and the plane of the authority and sacraments of the Church. Besides these, rationalistic and Manichæan elements have to be taken into account. [166] Reuter also recognises (p. 495 f., note) that Augustine held the contents of the Symbol alone to be dogma. But we have here to remember that the most elaborate doctrine of the Trinity and Christology were evolved from the Symbol, and that its words "sancta ecclesia" and "remissio peccatorum" contained theories from which equally far-reaching dogmas could be formed, or heretics be convicted. Even Cyprian refuted the Novatians from the Symbol, and Augustine used it against the Pelagians. A peculiar difficulty in the way of discussing Augustine in the history of dogma consists further in the fact that he created countless theological schemes, but no dogmatic formulas. He was too copious, too earnest, and too sincere to publish catch-words. [167] Augustine was the first dogmatist to feel the need of considering for himself the questions, which we are now accustomed to treat in the "prolegomena to dogmatics." The Alexandrians undoubtedly attempted this also; but in their case formal and material, original and derived, were too much intertwined. Nor did they advance to the last problems of psychology and the theory of perception. Enchir., 4: "Quid primum, quid ultimum, teneatur, quæ totius definitionis summa sit, quod certum propriumque fidei catholicæ fundamentum." (Questions by Laurentius.) __________________________________________________________________ 1. Augustine's Doctrines of the First and Last Things. [168] It has been said of Fiesole that he prayed his pictures on to the walls. It can be maintained of Augustine that his most profound thoughts regarding the first and the last things arose out of prayers; for all these matters were contained for him in God. If the same can be said of innumerable mystics down to the private communities of Madame de Guyon and Tersteegen, it is true of them because they were Augustine's disciples. But more than anyone else he possessed the faculty of combining speculation about God with a contemplation of mind and soul which was not content with a few traditional categories, but analysed the states of feeling and the contents of consciousness. Every advance in this analysis became for him at the same time an advance in the knowledge of God, and vice versâ; concentration of his whole being in prayer led him to the most abstract observation, and this, in turn, changed to prayer. No philosopher before or after him has verified in so conspicuous a fashion the profound saying that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Godliness was the very atmosphere of his thought and life. "Piety is the wisdom of man" (Hominis sapientia pietas est, Enchir., 2; De civ. dei XIV., 28). Thus Augustine was the psychological, because he was the theological, genius of the Patristic period. [169] Not unversed in the domains of objective secular knowledge, he yet discarded them more resolutely than his Neoplatonic teachers, to whom he owed much, but whom he far surpassed. "The contents of the inner life lay clearly before Augustine's eyes as a realm of distinctive objects of perception, outside and independent of sense experience, and he was convinced by his own rich insight that in this sphere quite as genuine knowledge and information, based on inner experience, were to be gained, as by external observation in surrounding nature." Augustine brought to an end the development of ancient philosophy by completing the process which led from the naïve objective to the subjective objective. [170] He found what had been long sought for: the making of the inner life the starting-point of reflection on the world. [171] And he did not give himself up to empty dreams, but investigated with a truly "physiological psychology" all conditions of the inner life, from its elementary processes up to the most sublime moods; he became, because he was the counterpart of Aristotle, the true Aristotle of a new science, [172] which seems indeed to have forgotten that as a theory of perception, and as inner observation, it originated in the monotheistic faith and life of prayer. He disposed of all that we call the ancient classical temper, the classical conception of life and the world. With the last remains of its cheerfulness and naïve objectivity, he buried for a long time the old truth itself, and showed the way to a new truth of things. But this was born in him amid pains, and it has kept its feature of painfulness. Mohammed, the barbarian, smote into ruins, in the name of Allah, who had mastered him, the Hellenistic world which he did not know. Augustine, the disciple of the Hellenes, completed in the West the long prepared dissolution of this world, in the name of God, whom he had perceived to be the only reality; [173] but he built up a new world in his own heart and mind. [174] However, nothing really perished entirely, because everything was accomplished by a protracted transformation, and, besides, the old Hellenistic world continued in part to exist on the North-East coast of the Mediterranean. It was possible to travel back along the line which had been traced by a millennium down to Augustine, and the positive capital, which Neoplatonism and Augustine had received from the past and had changed into negative values, could also be re-established with a positive force. But something had undoubtedly been lost; we find it surviving in almost none but those who were ignorant of theology and philosophy; we do not find it among thinkers; and that is frank joy in the phenomenal world, in its obvious meaning, and in calm and energetic work. [175] If it were possible to unite in science and in the disposition, the piety, spirituality, and introspection of Augustine, with the openness to the world, the restful and energetic activity, and unclouded cheerfulness of antiquity, we should have reached the highest level! We are told that such a combination is a phantom, that it is an absurd idea. But do we not honour the great minds, who have been granted us since Luther, simply because they have endeavoured to realise the "fancy picture"? Did not Goethe declare this to be his ideal, and endeavour to present it in his own life, in his closing epoch? Is it not in the same ideal that the meaning of evangelical and reforming Christianity is contained, if it is really different from Catholicism? "I desire to know God and the soul. Nothing more? Nothing at all." [176] In these words Augustine has briefly formulated the aim of his spiritual life. That was the truth [177] for which "the marrow of his soul sighed." All truth was contained for him in the perception of God. After a brief period of sore doubting, he was firm as a rock in the conviction that there was a God, and that he was the supreme good (summum bonum); [178] [179] but who he was, and how he was to be found, were to him the great questions. He was first snatched from the night of uncertainty by Neoplatonism: the Manichæan notion of God had proved itself to be false, since its God was not absolute and omnipotent. Neoplatonism had shown him a way by which to escape the flux of phenomena, and the mysterious and harassing play of the transient, to reach the fixed resting-point he sought, and to discover this in the absolute and spiritual God (Confess. VI I., 26: "incorporea veritas"). Augustine traversed this ascending path from the corporeal world through ever higher and more permanent spheres, and he also experienced the ecstatic mood in the "excess" of feeling. [180] But at the same time he turned more energetically to those observations for which the Neoplatonists had only been able to give him hints--to his spiritual experience, and psychological analysis. He was saved from scepticism by perceiving that even if the whole of external experience was subject to doubt, the facts of the inner life remained and demanded an explanation leading to certainty. There is no evil, but we are afraid, and this fear is certainly an evil. [181] There is no visible object of faith, but we see faith in us. [182] Thus--in his theory of perception--God and the soul entered into the closest union, and this union confirmed him in his belief in their metaphysical connection. Henceforth the investigation of the life of the soul was to him a theological necessity. No examination seemed to him to be indifferent; he sought to obtain divine knowledge from every quarter. The command to "know thyself" (Gnothi seauton) became for him the way to God. We cannot here discuss the wealth of psychological discoveries made by him. [183] But he only entered his proper element when he was inquiring into the practical side of spiritual life. The popular conception, beyond which even philosophers had not advanced far, was that man was a rational being who was hampered by sensuousness, but possessed a free will capable at every moment of choosing the good--a very external, dualistic view. Augustine observed the actual man. He found that the typical characteristic of the life of the soul consisted in the effort to obtain pleasure [184] (cupido, amor); from this type no one could depart. It was identical with the striving to get possessions, enjoyment. As the attempt to attain the pleasant it was desire (libido), cupiditas, and was perfected in joy; as resistance to the unpleasant, it was anger (ira), fear (timor), and was completed in sadness (tristitia). All impulses were only evolutions of this typical characteristic; sometimes they partook more of the form of passive impression, sometimes they were more of an active nature, and they were quite as true of the spiritual as of the sensuous life. [185] According to Augustine, the will is most closely connected with this life of impulse, so that impulses can indeed be conceived as contents of the will, yet it is to be distinguished from them. For the will is not bound to the nexus of nature; it is a force existing above sensuous nature. [186] It is free, in so far as it possesses formally the capacity of following or resisting the various inclinations; but concretely it is never free; that never free choice (liberum arbitrium), but is always conditioned by the chain of existing inclinations, which form its motives and determine it. The theoretical freedom of choice therefore only becomes actual freedom when desire (cupiditas, amor) of good has become the ruling motive of the will; in other words, it is only true of a good will that it is free: freedom of will and moral goodness coincide. But it follows just from this that the will truly free possesses its liberty not in caprice, but in being bound to the motive which impels to goodness ("beata necessitas boni"). This bondage is freedom, because it delivers the will from the rule of the impulses (to lower forms of good), and realises the destiny and design of man to possess himself of true being and life. In bondage to goodness the higher appetite (appetitus), the genuine impulse of self-preservation, realises itself, while by satisfaction "in dissipation" it brings man "bit by bit to ruin." It does not follow, however, from Augustine's assertion of the incapacity for good of the individual spontaneous will, that the evil will, because it is not free, is also irresponsible; for since the will is credited with the power of yielding to the love of good (amor boni), it is guilty of the neglect (the defect). From this point Augustine, combining the results of Neoplatonic cosmological speculation with the above analysis, now built up his metaphysic, or more correctly, his theology. But since in the epoch in which he pursued these observations, he turned to the asceticism of Catholic monachism, and also studied profoundly the Psalms (and the Pauline epistles), the simple grandeur of his living notion of God exerted a tremendous influence on his speculations, and condensed the different, and in part artificially obtained, elements of his doctrine of God, [187] again and again into the supremely simple confession: "The Lord of heaven and earth is love; He is my salvation; of whom should I be afraid?" By the Neoplatonic speculation of the ascent [of the soul] Augustine reached the supreme unchangeable, permanent Being, [188] the incorporeal truth, spiritual substance, incommutable and true eternity of truth, the light incommutable [189] (incorporea veritas, spiritalis substantia, incommutabilis et vera veritatis æternitas, the lux incommutabilis). Starting with this, everything which was not God, including his own soul, was examined by Augustine from two points of view. On the one hand, it appeared as the absolutely transient, therefore as non-existent; for no true being exists, where there is also not-being; therefore God exists alone (God the only substance). On the other hand, as far as it possessed a relative existence, it seemed good, very good, as an evolution of the divine being (the many as the embodiment, emanating, and ever-returning, of the one). Augustine never tires of realising the beauty (pulchrum) and fitness (aptum) of creation, of regarding the universe as an ordered work of art, in which the gradations are as admirable as the contrasts. The individual and evil are lost to view in the notion of beauty; nay, God himself is the eternal, the old and new, the only, beauty. Even hell, the damnation of sinners, is, as an act in the ordination of evils (ordinatio malorum), an indispensable part of the work of art. [190] But, indeed, the whole work of art is after all--nothing; a likeness, but ah! only a likeness of the infinite fulness of the one which alone exists. How deeply in earnest Augustine was with this acosmic Pantheism, which threatened to degenerate into cosmic Monism, how he never wholly abandoned it, is shown even by the expression "pulchritudo" (beauty) for God, [191] by his doctrine of predestination, which has one of its roots here, and, finally, by the aesthetic optimism of his view of the world which comes out here and there even in his latest writings, [192] and by his uncertainty as to the notion of creation. [193] But the very fact that, as a rule, Augustine was governed by a wholly different temper is a guarantee that the element here obtained was only a grounding to which he applied new colours. He would not have been the reformer of Christian piety if he had only celebrated, albeit in the most seductive tones, [194] that Neoplatonic notion of God, which, indeed, ultimately rested on a pious natural sentiment. The new elements resulted first from the psychological analysis briefly indicated above. He found in man, as the fundamental form of existence, the desire to reach happiness, goods, being, and he could harmonise this desire excellently with his Neoplatonic doctrine. He farther found the desire to obtain an ever higher happiness, and ever loftier forms of good, an inexhaustible and noble longing, and this discovery also agreed with the doctrine. Unrest, hunger and thirst for God, horror and disgust at the enjoyment of lower kinds of good, were not to be stifled; for the soul, so far as it exists, comes certainly from God, and belongs to Him (ex deo and ad deum). But now he discovered a dreadful fact: the will, as a matter of fact, would not what it would, or at least seemed to will. No, it was no seeming; it was the most dreadful of paradoxes; we will to come to God, and we cannot, i.e., we will not. [195] Augustine felt this state along with the whole weight of responsibility; that responsibility was never lessened for him by the view that the will in not seeking God was seeking nothing, that it therefore by self-will was properly "annulling itself until it no longer existed." Nor was it mitigated for him by the correlative consideration, that the individual will, ruled by its desire, was not free. Rather, from the dread sense of responsibility, God appeared as the good, and the self-seeking life of impulse, which determined the will and gave its motive, constituted evil. The "summum bonum" now first obtained its deeper meaning--it was no longer merely the permanent resting point for disturbed thinkers, or the exhilarating enjoyment of life for jaded mortals: it now meant that which ought to be, [196] that which should be the fundamental motive ruling the will, should give the will its liberty, and therewith for the first time its power over the sphere of the natural, freeing the inexhaustible longing of man for the good from the dire necessity of sinning (misera necessitas peccandi), and accordingly first making that innate longing effectual. In a word, it now meant the good. And thus the notion of the good itself was divested of all accretions from the intellect, and all eudaimonist husks and wrappings. In this contemplation that overpowered him, the sole object was the good will, the moral imperative vitalised, to renounce selfish pleasure. But at the same time he acquired the experience which he himself could not analyse, which no thinker will undertake to analyse, that this good laid hold of him as love, and snatched him from the misery of the monstrous inconsistency of existence. [197] Thereby the notion of God received a wholly new content: the good which could do that was omnipotent. In the one act of liberation was given the identity of omnipotent being and the good, the summum on (supreme being) was holiness working on the will in the form of omnipotent love. This was what Augustine felt and described. A stream of divine conceptions was now set loose, partly given in the old language, but with a meaning felt for the first time, wonderfully combined with the statement of the philosophical knowledge of God, but regulating and transforming it. The Supreme Being (summum esse) is the Supreme Good; He is a person; the ontological defect of creaturely being becomes the moral defect of godlessness of will; evil is here as there negative; [198] but in the former case it is the negation of substance (privatio substantiæ), in the latter that of good (privatio boni), meaning the defect arising from freedom. The good indeed still remains the divine being as fulness of life; but for man it is summed up in the "common morality" which issues from the divine being and divine love. That is, he cannot appropriate it save in the will, which gladly forsakes its old nature, and loves that which dwells above all that is sensuous and selfish. Nothing is good except a good will: this principle was most closely combined by Augustine with the other: nothing is good but God; and love became for him the middle term. For the last and highest point reached in his knowledge was his combination of the thought that "all substance was from God" (omnis substantia a deo) with the other that "all good was" from God (omne bonum a deo). The conception of God as universal and sole worker, shaded into the other that God, just because he is God and source of all being, is also the only author and source of good in the form of self-imparting love. [199] It belongs just as essentially to God to be grace (gratia) imparting itself in love, as to be the uncaused cause of causes (causa causatrix non causata). If we express this anthropologically: goodness does not make man independent of God--that was the old conception--but in goodness the constant natural dependence of all his creatures on God finds expression as a willed dependence securing the existence of the creaturely spirit. The latter only exists in yielding himself, only lives in dying, is only free when he suffers himself to be entirely ruled by God, is only good if his will is God's will. These are the grand paradoxes with which he contrasted the "monstrous" paradoxes discussed above. But meanwhile there is no mistake that the metaphysical background everywhere shows in the ethical view; it is seen, first, in the ascetic trait which clings to the notion of the good in spite of its simple form (joy in God); secondly, in uncertainty as to the notion of love, into which an intellectual element still enters; thirdly, in the conception of grace (gratia), which appears not infrequently as the almost natural mode of the divine existence. The instruction how to hold communion with God displays still more clearly the interweaving of metaphysical and ethical views, that wonderful oscillation, hesitancy, and wavering between the intellectual and that which lives and is experienced in the depths of the soul. [200] On the one hand, it is required to enjoy God; nay, he is the only "thing" (res) which may be enjoyed, all else may only be used. But to enjoy means "to cling to anything by love for its own sake" (alicui rei amore inhærere propter se ipsam"). [201] God is steadfastly to be enjoyed--the Neoplatonists are reproached with not reaching this. [202] This enjoying is inseparably connected with the thought of God's "beauty," and in turn with the sense that he is all in all and indescribable. [203] But, on the other hand, Augustine thrust aside the thought that God was a substance (res) in the interest of a living communion with him. God was a person, and in the phrase "to cleave by love" ("amore inhærere") the emphasis falls in that case on the love (amor) which rests on faith (fides), and includes hope (spes). "God to be worshipped with faith, hope, and love ("Fide, spe, caritate colendum deum"). [204] Augustine was so strongly possessed by the feeling, never, indeed, clearly formulated, that God is a person whom we must trust and love, that this conviction was even a latent standard in his Trinitarian speculations. [205] Faith, hope, and love had, in that case, however, nothing further to do with "freedom" in the proper sense of the word. They were God's gifts, and constituted a spiritual relation to Him, from which sprang good resolves (bonum velle) and righteousness (justitia). But, indeed, whenever Augustine looked from this life to eternal life, the possession of faith, love, and hope assumed a temporary aspect. "But when the mind has been imbued with the commencement of faith which works by love, it aspires by a good life to reach the manifestation in which holy and perfect hearts perceive the ineffable beauty whose complete vision is the highest felicity. This is surely what thou requirest, what is to be esteemed the first and the last thing,' to begin with faith, to be perfected in sight" (Enchir. 5; see De doctr., II. 34 sq.). [206] Certain as it is that the Neoplatonic tendency comes out in this, it is as certain that we have more than a mere "remnant of mystical natural religion"; for the feeling that "presses upward and forward" from the faith in what is not seen, to the seeing of what is believed, is not only the innate germ of religion, but its enduring stimulus. [207] The idea of the world sketched from contemplation of the inner life and the sense of responsibility, which was combined with that of metaphysical cosmological speculation, led finally to a wholly different state of feeling from the latter. The optimism founded on aesthetics vanished before the "monstrum" of humanity which, infirm of will, [208] willed not and did not what at bottom it desired, and fell into the abyss of perdition. They are only a few who suffer themselves to be saved by grace. The mass is a massa perditionis, which death allures. "Woe is thee, thou torrent of human custom! Who shall stop thy course? How long will it be before thou art dried up? and whom wilt thou, O offspring of Eve, roll into the huge and hideous ocean, which even they scarcely overpass who have climbed the tree [the Church]?" [209] The misery of the earth is unspeakable; whatever moves and cherishes an independent life upon it is its own punishment; for he who decreed sins (the ordinator peccatorum) has ordained that every sin judges itself, that every unregulated spirit is its own punishment. [210] But from the beginning the historical Christian tradition penetrated with its influence the sequence of thoughts (on nature and grace), which the pious thinker had derived from his speculations on nature and his spiritual experience. Brought up from boyhood as a Catholic Christian, he has himself confessed that nothing ever satisfied him which did not bear the name of Christ. [211] The description of the years when he wandered in doubt is traversed as with a scarlet cord by the bond that united him with Christ. Without many words, indeed with a modest reserve, he recalls in the Confessions the relation to Christ that had never died out in him, until in VII. 24 f., he can emphasise it strongly. We cannot doubt that even those expositions of his which are apparently indifferent to the Church traditions of Christianity--on the living personal God, the distinction between God and the world, on God as Creator, on grace as the omnipotent principle--were already influenced by that tradition. And we must remember that his intense study of Paul and the Psalms began whenever, having broken with Manichæism, he had been convinced by Neoplatonism that God was a spiritual substance (spiritalis substantia). Even the expositions in the earliest writings which are apparently purely philosophical, were already dominated by the Christian conviction that God, the world, and the Ego were to be distinguished, and that room was to be made for the distinction in mystical speculation. Further, all attempts to break through the iron scheme of God's unchangeableness (in his active presence in the world) are to be explained from the impression made by Christian history upon Augustine. However, we cannot here take in hand to show how Christ and the Church gradually obtained a fixed fundamental position in his mode of thought. His reply to Laurentius in the Enchiridion, that "Christ is the sure and peculiar foundation of the Catholic faith," (certum propriumque fidei catholicæ fundamentum Christus est), would have been made in the same terms many years before, and, indeed, though his conceptions of Christ were then still uncertain, as early as about A.D. 387. [212] Christ, the way, strength, and authority, explained for him the significance of Christ. It is very noteworthy that in the Confessions VII., 24 sq., and other passages where he brings the Christian religion into the question as to the first and last things, he does not produce general theories about revelation, but at once gives the central place to Christ and the Church. [213] The two decisive principles on which he laid stress were that the Catholic Church alone introduces us into communion with Christ, and that it is only through communion with Christ that we participate in God's grace. That is, he is only certain of the speculative conception of the idea of the good, and its real activity as love when it is proclaimed authoritatively by the Church and supported by the conception of Christ. By the conception formed of Christ. Here a new element entered. Augustine supported, times without number, the old Western scheme of the twofold nature (utraque natura), the word and man one person (verbum et homo una persona)--(we may leave unnoticed the rare, inaccurate expressions "permixtio," "mixtura," e.g. Ep. 137, I11, 12), the form of God and form of a slave, and he contributed much to fortify this scheme in the West with its sharply defined division between what was done by the human, and what by the divine. But the unusual energy with which he rejected Apollinarianism--from his earliest to his latest writings--is enough to show that his deepest interest centred in the human soul of Jesus. The passages are extremely rare in which he adopts the same interpretation as Cyril of the confession: "the Word became flesh," and the doctrine of the deification of all human nature by the Incarnation is not represented, or, at any rate, only extremely doubtfully represented, by him. (Passages referring to it are not wholly awanting, but they arc extremely rare.) He rather explains the incarnation of the Word from another point of view, and accordingly, though he has points of contact with Origen, he describes it quite differently from the Greeks. Starting from the speculative consideration, to him a certainty, that it is always the whole Trinity that acts, and that its operation is absolutely invariable, the Incarnation was also a work of the whole Trinity. The Trinity produced the manifestation held to signify the Son (De trin. in many places). The Word (verbum) was not really more closely related than the whole Trinity to the Son. But since the Trinity could not act upon Jesus except as it always did, the uniqueness and power of the Person of Jesus Christ were to be derived from the receptiveness with which the man Jesus met the operatio divina; in other words, Augustine started from the human nature (soul) in his construction of the God-man. The human nature received the Word into its spirit; the human soul, because it acted as intermediary (medians), was also the centre of the God-man. Accordingly, the Word did not become flesh, if that be taken to mean that a transformation of any sort took place, but the divina operatio trinitatis could so work upon the human spirit of Jesus, that the Word was permanently attached to him, and was united with him to form one person. [214] This receptiveness of Jesus was, as in all other cases, caused by the election of grace; it was a gift of God (munus dei), an incomprehensible act of divine grace; nay, it was the same divine grace that forgives us our sins which led the man Jesus to form one person with the Word and made him sinless. The Incarnation thus appeared simply to be parallel to the grace which makes us willing who were unwilling, and is independent of every historical fact. [215] But it was not so meant. While, indeed, it is here again evident, that the conception of the divine grace in Christ was, at bottom, subordinate to predestinating grace, and that the latter was independent of the former, [216] yet Augustine by no means confined himself to dealing with the ultimate grounds of his conceptions. Rather the Incarnation benefited us; the salvation bestowed was dependent on it for us "who are his members" (qui sumus membra ejus). [217] But how far? Where Augustine speaks as a Churchman, he thinks of the sacraments, the powers of faith, forgiveness and love, which were the inheritance left the Church by the God-man (see under). But where he expresses the living Christian piety which actuated him, he had three wholly distinct conceptions by which he realised that Christ, the God-man, was the rock of his faith. [218] The Incarnation was the great proof of God's love towards us; [219] the humility of God and Christ attested in it breaks down our pride and teaches us that "all goodness is made perfect in humility" (omne bonum in humilitate perficitur); the truth which was eternal is made comprehensible to us in Christ: lying in the dust we can apprehend God who redeems us by revealing himself in our lowliness. Throughout all this we are met by the living impression of Christ's person, [220] and it is humility, which Paul also regarded as so important, that stands out as its clearest and most weighty attributes. [221] The type of humility exhibited in majesty--this it was that overpowered Augustine: pride was sin, and humility was the sphere and force of goodness. From this he learned and implanted in the Church the new disposition of reverence for humility. The new bias which he thus gave to Christology continued to exert its influence in the Middle Ages, and displayed itself in rays of varying brilliancy and strength; although, as a consequence of the Adoptian controversy, Greek Christology once more entered in force, from the ninth century, and hindered piety from expressing its knowledge clearly in dogma. We now understand also why Augustine attached such value to the human element (homo) in Christ. This was not merely due to a consequence of his theology (see above), but it was in a much higher degree the pious view of Christ that demanded this conception. He could not realise Christ's humility with certainty in the Incarnation; for the latter sprang from the universal working of God, predestinating grace, and Jesus' receptiveness; but humility was the constant "habit" of the divino-human personality. Thus the true nature of Jesus Christ was really known: "strength is made perfect in weakness" (robur in infirmitate perficitur). That lowliness, suffering, shame, misery, and death are means of sanctification; nay, that selfless and therefore ever suffering love is the only means of sanctification ("I sanctify myself for them"); that what is great and good always appears in a lowly state, and by the power of the contrast triumphs over pride; that humility alone has an eye wherewith to see the divine; that every feeling in the good is accompanied by the sense of being pardoned--that was the very core of Augustine's Christology. He, for his part, did not drag it into the region of æsthetics, or direct the imagination to busy itself with separate visions of lowliness. No, with him it still existed wholly on the clear height of ethical thought, of modest reverence for the purport of Christ's whole life, whose splendour had been realised in humility. "Reverence for that which is beneath us is a final stage which mankind could and had to reach. But what was involved not only in despising the earth and claiming a higher birthplace, but in recognising lowliness and poverty, ridicule and contempt, shame and misery, suffering and death as divine, nay, in revering sin and transgression not as hindrances, but as furtherances of sanctification." Augustine could have written these words; for no idea was more strongly marked in his view of Christ than that he had ennobled what we shrank from--shame, pain, sorrow, death--and had stripped of value what we desired--success, honour, enjoyment. "By abstinence he rendered contemptible all that we aimed at, and because of which we lived badly. By his suffering he disarmed what we fled from. No single sin can be committed if we do not desire what he despised, or shirk what he endured." But Augustine did not succeed in reducing this conception of the person of Christ to dogmatic formulas. Can we confine the sun's ray in a bucket? He held by the old formulas as forming an element of tradition and as expressing the uniqueness of Christ; but to him the true foundation of the Church was Christ, because he knew that the impression made by his character had broken down his own pride, and had given him the power to find God in lowliness and to apprehend him in humility. Thus the living Christ had become to him the truth [222] and the way to blessedness, and he who was preached by the Church his authority. [223] But what is the beatific fatherland, the blessed life, to which Christ is the way and the strength? We have already discussed it (p. 91 f.), and we need only here mention a few additional points. The blessed life is eternal peace, the constant contemplation of God in the other world. [224] Knowledge remains man's goal; even the notion of the enjoyment of God (fruitio dei), or that other of heavenly peace, does not certainly divert us from it. [225] Knowledge, is, however, contrasted with action, and the future state is wholly different from the present. From this it follows that Augustine retained the popular Catholic feeling that directed men in this life wholly to hope, asceticism, and the contemplation [of God] in worship, for though that can never be attained in this world which the future will bring, yet life here must be regulated by the state which will be enjoyed afterwards. Hence Augustine championed monachism and opposed Jovinian so decidedly; hence he regarded the world in the same light as the ancient Catholic Fathers; hence he valued as highly as they did the distinction between precepts and counsels; hence he never looked even on the highest blessings (munera dei) which we can here enjoy as containing the reality, but only a pledge and similitude; for set in the sphere of the transitory they were themselves transitory; hence, finally, he did not think of the earthly Church when seeking to realise the first and last things, for God alone, constantly seen and enjoyed, was the supreme blessing; and even the divine kingdom, so far as it was earthly, was transitory. But even here much that was new emerged in the form of undercurrents, and the old was modified in many respects, a few details being almost set aside. It is therefore easy to point to numerous dissonances in Augustine's idea of the goal; but he who does not criticise like an irresponsible critic or impartial logician will admit that he knows no more than Augustine, and that he also cannot do better than alternate between different points of view. Let us pick out the following points in detail. 1. Augustine put an end to the doubt whether virtue was not perhaps the supreme good; he reduced virtues to dependance on God--to grace; see Ep. 155, 12 sq. [226] He, indeed, re-admitted the thought at a new and higher stage--merits called forth by grace, righteousness made perfect by love. But the mood at any rate is changed. 2. Augustine did not follow the lead of the Greek Church: he did not cultivate systematic mysticism with a view to the future state, or regard and treat the cultus as a means by which to anticipate deification. He set aside the elements of physical magic in religious doctrine, and by this means spiritualised the ideas of the other world. The ascetic life of the churchman was to be spiritual and moral. Statements, indeed, are not wholly wanting in his works to the effect that eternal life can be experienced in ecstatic visions in this world; but he is thinking then especially of Biblical characters (Paul), and in the course of his Christian development he thrust the whole conception more and more into the background. 3. Augustine's profound knowledge of the will, and his perception of the extent to which the latter swayed even knowledge, led to his discovery of the principle, that goodness and blessing, accordingly also final salvation, coincided in the dependance of the will on God. By this means he broke through intellectualism, and a superlative blessing was shown to exist even in this world. "It is a good thing for me to cleave to God." This "cleaving" is produced by the Holy Spirit, and he thereby imparts love and blessedness to the heart. [227] In presence of the realisation of this blessedness, the antithesis of time and eternity, life and death, disappears. [228] 4. Starting from this, he arrived at a series of views which necessarily exerted a powerful influence on the popular frame of mind. (a) Of the three virtues, graces, by which man clings to God--faith, love, and hope--love continues to exist in eternity. Accordingly, love, unchanging and grateful, connects this world with the next. (b) Thereby, however, the quietism of knowledge is also modified. Seeing is to be nothing but loving; an element of adjustment of all discords in feeling and will is introduced into the notion of blessedness, and although "rational contemplation" (contemplatio rationalis) is always ranked above "rational action" (actio rationalis), a high value is always attached to practical and active love. [229] (c) A higher meaning was now given, not indeed to the earthly world, but to the earthly Church and its peculiar privileges (within it) in this world. The idea of the city of God on earth, formulated long before by others, was yet, as we shall see in the next section, first raised by Augustine into the sphere of religious thought. In front of the Holy of Holies, the first and last things, he beheld, as it were, a sanctuary, the Church on earth, with the blessings granted it by God. He saw that it was a self-rewarding task, nay, a sacred duty, to cherish this sanctuary, to establish it in the world, to rank it higher than worldly ties, and to devote to it all earthly goods, in order again to receive them from it as legitimate possessions. He thus, following, indeed, the impulses given by the Western tradition, also created, if we may use so bold a phrase, a religion of the second order. But this second-order religion, was not, as in the case of the Greeks, the formless creation of a superstitious cultus. It was on the contrary a doctrine which dealt with the Church in its relation to the world as an active and moral power transforming and governing society, as an organism, in which Christ was actively present, of the sacraments, of goodness and righteousness. Ecclesiasticism and theology were meant to be thoroughly united, the former serving the latter, the one like Martha, the other like Mary. [230] They ministered to the same object, and righteousness made perfect by love was the element in which both lived. [231] (d) While the ascetic life remained the ideal for the individual, Augustine modified the popular tendency also in monachism by never forgetting, with all his appreciation of external works (poverty, virginity, etc.), that faith, hope, and charity were alone of decisive importance, and that therefore the worth of the man who possessed these virtues might no longer be determined by his outward performances. He knew, besides, better than anyone else, that external works might be accomplished with a godless heart--not only by heretical monks, where this was self-evident, but also by Catholics, Ep., 78, 79, and, uniting ascetics as closely as possible to the Church, he urged them to engage in active work. Here, again, we see that he broke through the barren system which made blessedness consist in contemplatio rationalis and that alone. This is, in brief, Augustine's doctrine of the first and last things, together with indications that point to that sphere which belongs though not directly yet indirectly to those things, viz., the equipment and tasks of the Church in our present state. "Doctrine" of the first and last things is really an incorrect expression; for, and this is the supreme thing to be said in closing the subject, it was not to him a matter of "doctrine," but of the faithful reproduction of his experiences. The most thorough-going modification by Augustine of traditional dogmatic Christianity consisted in his perception "that Christianity is ultimately different from everything called doctrine'" (Reuter, p. 494). The law is doctrine; the gospel is power. The law produces enlightenment; the gospel peace. This Augustine clearly perceived, and thereby set religion in the sphere of a vital, spiritual experience, while he disassociated it from knowledge and inference. He once more, indeed, placed his newly-discovered truth on the plane of the old; for he was a Catholic Christian; but the connection with the past which belongs to every effective reformer need not prevent us from exhibiting his originality. Anyone who seeks to give effect to the "whole" Augustine and the "whole" Luther is suspected of seeking to evade the "true" Augustine and the "true" Luther; for what man's peculiarity and strength are fully expressed in the breadth of all he has said and done? One or two glorious passages from Augustine should show, in conclusion, that he divested the Christian religion of what is called "doctrine" or "dogma." "I possess nothing but will; I know nothing but that what is fleeting and transitory ought to be despised, and what is certain and eternal ought to be sought for. . . . If those who flee to thee find thee by faith, grant faith; if by virtue, grant virtue; if by knowledge, grant knowledge. Increase in me faith, hope, love." "But we say that man's will is divinely aided to do what is righteous, so that, besides his creation with free-will, and besides the doctrine by which he is taught how he should live, man receives the Holy Spirit in order that there may be created in his mind, even now when he still walks by faith, and not by appearance, the delight in and love of that supreme and unchangeable good which is God; in order that this pledge, as it were, having been given him of the free gift, a man may fervently long to cling to his Creator, and be inflamed with desire to enter into the participation of that true light, that he may receive good from him from whom he has his being. For if the way of truth be hidden, free-will is of no use except for sinning, and when that which ought to be done, or striven for, begins to reveal itself, nothing is done, or undertaken, and the good life is not lived, unless it delights and is loved. But that it may be loved, the love of God is diffused in our hearts, not by free choice emanating from ourselves, but by the Holy Spirit given unto us." "What the law of works commands by threatening, the law of faith effects by believing. This is the wisdom which is called piety, by which the father of lights is worshipped, by whom every excellence is given, and every gift made perfect. . . . By the law of works God says: Do what I command; by the law of faith we say to God: Grant what thou commandest. . . . We have not received the spirit of this world, says the most constant preacher of grace, but the spirit which is from God, that we may know what things have been granted us by God. But what is the spirit of this world but the spirit of pride? . . . Nor are they deceived by any other spirit, who, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, are not subject to God's righteousness. Whence it seems to me that he is a son of faith who knows from whom he hopes to receive what he does not yet possess, rather than he who attributes to himself what he has. We conclude that a man is not justified by the letter, but by the spirit, not by the merits of his deeds, but by free grace." [232] __________________________________________________________________ [168] Augustine taught that it was only possible to obtain a firm grasp of the highest questions by earnest and unwearied independent labour. Herein above all did his greatness consist. [169] Compare with what follows, Siebeck, in the Ztschr. f. Philos. and philos. Kritik, 1888, p. 170 ff. [170] See the Appendix on Neoplatonism, Vol. I., p. 336 ff. [171] The method of the Neoplatonists was still very uncertain, and this is connected, among other things, with their polytheism. It is easy to show that Augustine went so much further in psychology because he was a monotheist. So far as I know we are still, unfortunately, without any investigation of the importance of monotheism for psychology. [172] See the excellent parallel between them in Siebeck, l.c. p. 188 f.: "Among the important personalities of Antiquity two could hardly be found with characters so different as Aristotle and Augustine. In the former we have the Greek, restful and clear, and yet moved by energetic warmth of thought, who gives its purest scientific expression to the Hellenic ideal of the life of the cultured, contentment with the even and constant advance of the life of the thinker, examining the depths and wants of the soul, only in so far as they appear on the surface, in the external nature and garb of the affections, and discussing this whole domain, not properly in order to know the heart, but only for rhetorical purposes. The internal world of the soul is here described and criticised only in so far as it evinces itself in reciprocal action with the external, and in the form it assumes as determined by the co-operation of the latter. For the comprehensive and final problem with Aristotle is the scientific construction and form of the external world in nature and social life. Augustine's tendency and frame of mind are quite the opposite. The external owes all its importance and value in his eyes to the form it assumes as reflected in the internal. Everything is dominated not by problems of nature and the State and secular ethics, but by those of the deepest wants of mind and heart, of love and faith, hope and conscience. The proper objects and the moving forces of his speculation are not found in the relation of inward to outward, but of inner to innermost, to the sense and vision of God in the heart. Even the powers of the intellect are looked at from a new point of view, owing to the influence exerted on them by the heart and will, and they lose, in consequence, their claim to sole supremacy in scientific thought. The cool analysis made by Aristotle of the external world, which also dissected and discriminated between the states of the soul, as if they were objects that existed externally, disappears in Augustine before the immediate experience and feeling of states and processes of the emotional life; but the fact that he presents them to us with the warmest personal interest in them, entirely prevents us from feeling the absence of the Aristotelian talent of acuteness in analytical dissection. While Aristotle avoids all personal and individual colouring in his views, and labours everywhere to let the matter in hand speak for itself, Augustine, even when bringing forward investigations of the most general purport, always speaks as if only of himself, the individual, to whom his personal feelings and sensations are the main thing. He is a priori certain that they must have a farther reaching meaning, since feeling and wishing are found to be similar potencies in every human heart. Questions of ethics, which Aristotle handles from the standpoint of the relation of man to man, appear in Augustine in the light of the relations between his own heart and that of this known and felt God. With the former the supreme decision is given by clear perception of the external by reason; with the latter, by the irresistible force of the internal, the conviction of feeling, which in his case--as is given in such perfection to few--is fused with the penetrating light of the intellect. . . . Aristotle knows the wants of the inner life only so far as they are capable of developing the life, supported by energetic effort and philosophic equanimity, in and with society. He seems to hold that clear thinking and restfully energetic activity prevent all suffering and misfortune to society or the individual. The deeper sources of dispeace, of pain of soul, of unfulfilled wants of the heart, remain dark in his investigation. Augustine's significance begins just where the problem is to trace the unrest of the believing or seeking soul to its roots, and to make sure of the inner facts in which the heart can reach its rest. Even the old problems which he reviews and examines in their whole extent and meaning from the standpoint of his rich scientific culture, now appear in a new light. Therefore he can grasp, and, at the same time, deepen everything which has come to him from Hellenism. For Aristotle, everything that the intellect can see and analyse in the inner and outer world constitutes a problem; for Augustine, that holds the chief place which the life of feeling and desire forces on him as a new fact added to his previous knowledge. In the one case it is the calm, theoretical mind; in the other, the conscience excited by the unrest caused by love of God and consciousness of sin, from which the questions spring. But along with this, scientific interest also turned to a wholly novel side of actual life. No wonder that the all-sufficiency of the dissecting and abstracting intellect had its despotism limited. The intellect was now no longer to create problems, but to receive them from the depths of the world of feeling, in order then to see what could be made of them. Nor was it to continue to feel supremacy over the will, but rather the influence to which it was subject from it. The main subject of its reflections was to consist, henceforth, not in the external world, nor in the internal discussed by means of analogy with, and the method of, the external, but in the kernel of personality, conscience in connection with emotion and will. Only from this point might it return, in order to learn to understand them anew, to previous views of the inner and outer life. Aristotle, the Greek, was only interested in the life of the soul, in so far as it turned outward and helped to fathom the world theoretically and practically; Augustine, the first modern man (the expression occurs also in Sell, Aus der Gesch. des Christenthums, 1888, p. 43; I had already used it years ago), only took it into consideration, in so far as reflection upon it enabled him to conceive the inner character of personal life as something really independent of the outer world." Aristotle and Augustine are the two rivals who contended in the science and tendency of the following centuries. Both, as a rule, were indeed degraded, Aristotle to empty distinctions and categories, and a hide-bound dogmatism, Augustine to a mysticism floating in all conceivable media, having lost the guidance of a sure observation of the inner nature. Even in the Pelagians Augustine energetically opposed Aristotelian rationalism, and his controversy with them was repeated over and over again in after ages. In the history of religion it was a fight between a really irreligious, theologically, labelled morality and religion; for even in its classical form, Aristotelianism is a morality without religion. [173] All Christian Hellenistic thinkers before Augustine were still refined polytheists, or, more correctly, the polytheistic element was not wholly eradicated in their case, seeing that they preserved a part of nature-religion. This is most evident among Origen's successors. [174] Weh! Weh! Du hast sie zerstört, Die schöne Welt, Mit mächtiger Faust; Sie stürzt, sie zerfällt! Ein Halbgott hat sie zerschlagen! Wir tragen Die Trümmer ins Nichts hinüber Und klagen Ueber die verlorene Schöne. Prächtiger baue sie wieder, In deinem Busen baue sie auf! [175] Compare even the state of feeling of Petrarch and the other Humanists. [176] Soliloq., I. 7. Deum et animam scire cupio. Nihilne plus? Nihil omnino. In the knowledge of God was also included that of the Cosmus, see Scipio, Metaphysik, p. 14 ff. [177] Playing with husks and shells disgusted Augustine; he longed for facts, for the knowledge of actual forces. [178] Augustine became a Manichæan because he did not get past the idea that the Catholic doctrine held God to be the originator of sin. [179] Confess., VII. 16: "Audivi (verba Ego sum qui sum) sicut auditur in corde, et non erat prorsus unde dubitarem; faciliusque dubitarem vivere me, quam non esse veritatem (VI., 5). [180] Suggestions in Confess., VII. 13-16, 23. Here is described the intellectual "exercise" of the observation of the mutabilia leading to the incommutabile. "Et pervenit cogitatio ad id quod est, in ictu trepidantis aspectus. Tunc vero invisibilia tua, per ea quæ facta sunt, intellecta conspexi (this now becomes his dominant saying); sed aciem figere non valui: et repercussa infirmitate redditus solitis, non mecum ferebam nisi amantem memoriam et quasi olfacta desiderantem (quite as in Plotinus) quæ comedere nondum possem," VIII. 1. But again in his famous dialogue (IX. 23-25), with his mother in Ostia, a regular Neoplatonic "exercise" is really described which ends with ecstasy (attigimus veritatem modice toto ictu cordis"). We afterwards meet extremely seldom with anything of the same kind in Augustine; on the other hand, the anti-Manichæan writings still show many echoes ("se rapere in deum," "rapi in deum," "volitare," "amplexus dei"). Reuter says rightly (p. 472) that these are unusual expressions, only occurring exceptionally. But he must have forgotten the passages in the Confessions when he adds that no instructions are given as to the method to be followed. [181] Confess., VII. 7: "Ubi ergo malum et unde et qua huc irrepsit? Quæ radix ejus et quo semen ejus? An omnino non est? Cur ergo timemus et cavemus quod non est? Aut si inaniter timemus, certe vel timor ipse malum est . . . et tanto gravius malum, quanto non est quod timeamus. Idcirco aut est malum quod timemus, aut hoc malum est quia timemus." [182] De trinit., XIII. 3: "Cum propterea credere jubeamur, quia id quod credere jubemur, videre non possumus, ipsam tamen fidem, quando inest in nobis, videmus in nobis." [183] As regards memory, association of ideas, synthetic activity of spontaneous thought, ideality of the categories, a priori functions, "determinant" numbers, synthesis of reproduction in the imagination, etc. Of course all this is only touched on by him; we have, as it were, merely flashes of it in his works; see Siebeck, 1.c. p. 179. He has applied his observations on self-consciousness in his speculation on the Trinity. [184] He meant by this the legitimate striving after self-assertion, after Being, which he attributed to all organic, nay, even to inorganic, things; see De civ. dei, XI., 28. [185] This is the most important advance in perception. [186] See Siebeck l.c. p. 181 f.; Hamma in the Tüb. Theol. Quartalschr., vol. 55, pp. 427 ff. 458; Kahl, Primat des Willens, p. 1 f. Augustine's psychology of the will is undoubtedly rooted in indeterminism; but in his concrete observations he becomes a determinist. [187] They have all besides a practical object, i.e., they correspond to a definite form of the pious contemplation of the divine, and a definite relation to it (a definite self-criticism). For details of the theology, see Dorner, Augustin, pp. 5-112. [188] In Confess. VII. 16, he could now put the triumphant question: "Numquid nihil est veritas, quoniam neque per finita, neque per infinita locorum spatia diffusa est." [189] Not common light; "non hoc illa erat; sed aliud, aliud valde ab istis omnibus. Nec ita erat supra mentem meam sicut oleum super aquam, nec sicut coelum super terram, sed superior, quia ipsa fecit me, et ego inferior, quia factus sum ab ea. Qui novit veritatem novit eam, et qui novit eam, novit æternitatem. Caritas novit eam. O æterna veritas, et vera caritas, et cara æternitas! tu es deus meus; tibi suspiro die ac nocte." (Confess. VII. I6.) Further the magnificently reproduced reflection, IX. 23-25, De Trin. IV. 1. By being, Augustine did not understand a vacuous existence, but being full of life, and he never doubted that being was better than not-being. De civit. dei, XI. 26: "Et sumus et nos esse novimus et id esse ac nosse diligimus." The triad, "esse, scire, amare" was to him the supreme thing; he never thought of the possibility of glorifying not-being after the fashion of Buddhism or Schopenhauer. [190] We cannot here discuss Augustine's cosmology more fully (see the works by Gangauf and Scipio). His reflections on life and the gradation of organic and inorganic ("ordo, species, modus") were highly important to later philosophy and theology, and especially continued to exert an influence in mediæval mysticism. So also the view that evil and good are necessary elements in the artistic composition of the world continued to make its presence actively felt in the same quarter. Yet--as in Augustine--the idea of the privative significance of evil always preponderated. [191] This expression is frequent in all his writings. Even utterances like ";vita vitæ meæ," etc., have at first an acosmic meaning, but, of course, were given a deeper sense by Augustine. [192] Augustine never lost his optimistic joy in life in the sense of the true life, as is proved in his work, De civit. dei; but in contrasting the moods caused by contemplation of the world--æsthetic joy in the Cosmus, and sorrow over the world perverted by sin--the latter prevailed. Existence never became to Augustine a torment in itself, but that existence did which condemned itself to not-being, bringing about its own ruin. [193] Where Augustine put the question of creation in the form, "How is the unity of being related to plurality of manifestation?" the notion of creation is really always eliminated. But he never entirely gave up this way of putting the question; for, at bottom, things possess their independence only in their manifestation, while, in so far as they exist, they form the ground of knowledge for the existence of God. But besides this, Augustine still asserted vigorously the creatio ex nihilo ("omnes naturæ ex deo, non de deo," De nat. bon. c. Manich., I.). See note 4, p. 120. [194] He discovered these, and inspired hundreds of mystics after him. We have no right to deny that this contemplative view of being, not-being, and the harmony of being evolving itself in the phenomenal, is also a sphere of piety. [195] We have the most profound description of this state in Confess. VIII, 17-26; Augustine calls it a "monstrum" (monstrous phenomenon). He solves the problem disclosed, in so far as it is capable of solution, not by an appeal to the enslaved will, accordingly not by the "non possumus," but as an indeterminist by the reflection, "non ex toto volumus, non ergo ex toto [nobis] imperamus." (21), "I was afraid that Thou mightest soon hear me, and heal me of the sickness of lust, whose satisfaction I wished more than its eradication. . . . And I was deluded, therefore I put off following Thee alone from day to day, because I had not yet seen any certain aim for my striving. And now the day was at hand, and the voice of my conscience exhorted me: Didst thou not say thou wouldst not cast the vain burden from thee, only because the truth was still uncertain? Behold now thou art certain of the truth, but (thou wilt not).' . . . The way to union with God, and the attainment of the goal, coincide with the will to reach this goal, though, indeed, only with the determined and pure will. . . . And thus during this inner fever and irresoluteness I was wont to make many movements with my body, which can only be performed when the will makes definite resolves, and become impossible if the corresponding limbs are wanting, or are fettered, worn out, asleep, or hindered in any way. If, e.g., I tore a hair out, beat my brow, or embraced my knee with folded hands, I did it because I willed it. But I might have willed and not done it, if the power of motion in my limbs had forsaken me. So many things, then, I did in a sphere, where to will was not the same as to be able. And yet I did not that which both I longed incomparably more to do, and which I could do whenever I really earnestly willed it; because, as soon as I had willed it, I had really already made it mine in willing. For in these things the ability was one with the will, and really to resolve was to do. And yet, in my case, it was not done; and more readily did my body obey the weakest willing of my soul, in moving its limbs at its nod, than the soul obeyed itself where it was called upon to realise its great desire by a simple effort of the will. How is such a prodigy possible, and what is its reason? The soul commands the body, and it obeys instantly; the soul commands itself, and is resisted. The soul commands the hand to be moved, and it is done so promptly that command and performance can scarcely be distinguished; and yet the soul is spirit, but the hand is a member of the body. The soul commands the soul itself to an act of will; it is its own command, yet it does not carry it out. How is such a prodigy possible, and what is its reason? The soul commands an act of will, I say; its command consists simply in willing; and yet that command is not carried out. Sed non ex toto vult; non ergo ex toto imperat. Nam in tantum imperat, in quantum vult, et in tantum non fit quod imperat, in quantum non vult. Quoniam voluntas imperat ut sit voluntas, nec alia sed ipsa. Non itaque plena imperat ideo non est quod imperat. Nam si plena esset, nec imperaret ut esset, quia jam esset. Non igitur monstrum partim velle, partim nolle, sed ægritudo animi est, quia non totus assurgit, veritate sublevatus, consuetudine prægravatus. Et ideo sunt duæ voluntates, quia una earum tota non est, et hoc adest alteri quod deest alteri." [196] "What ought to be? How cannot the inner nature exhibit itself by reflection, but can by action?" (Scipio, Metaphysik des Aug., p. 7.) Augustine was the first to put this question clearly. "Antiquity conceived the whole of life, we might say, in a naïve fashion from the standpoint of science: the spiritual appeared as natural, and virtue as a natural force. [197] Augustine indeed could further explain why the form, in which the good takes possession of and delivers the soul, must consist in the infusion of love. So long as the soul along with its will is confronted by duty (an ought), and commands itself to obey, it has not completely appropriated the good; "nam si plena esset, nec imperaret ut esset, quia jam esset" (Confess. VIII. 21). Accordingly, the fact that it admits the duty, does not yet create an effective will ex toto. It must accordingly so love what it ought, that it no longer needs command itself; nay, duty (the ought) must be its only love; only then is it plena in voluntate bona. The "abyssus corruptionis nostræ" is only exhausted when by love we "totum illud, quod volebamus nolumus et totum illud, quod deus vult, volumus (Confess. IX. 1). [198] Confess. VII. 18: "Malum si substantia esset, bonum esset. Aut enim esset incorruptibilis substantia, magnum utique bonum; aut substantia corruptibilis esset, quæ nisi bona esset, corrumpi non posset." But since evil thus always exists in a good substance (more accurately: springs from the had will of the good substance), it is absolutely inexplicable; see e.g., De civitat. dei, XII. 7: "Nemo igitur quærat efficientem causam malæ voluntatis; non enim est efficiens sed deficiens (that is, the aspiration after nothing, after the annulling of life, constitutes the content of the bad will), quia nec illa effectio sed defectio. Deficere namque ab eo, quod summe est, ad id, quod minus est, hoc est incipere habere voluntatem malam. Causas porro defectionum istarum, cum efficientes non sint, ut dixi, sed deficientes, velle invenire tale est, ac si quisquam velit videre tenebras vel audire silentium, quod tamen utrumque nobis notum est, neque illud nisi per oculos, neque hoc nisi per aures, non sane in specie, sed in speciei privatione. Nemo ergo ex me scire quærat, quod me nescire scio, nisi forte, ut nescire discat, quod scire non posse sciendum est. Ea quippe quæ non in specie, sed in ejus privatione sciuntur, si dici aut intellegi potest quodammodo nesciendo sciuntur, ut sciendo nesciantur." [199] Augustine says of love (De civ. XI. 28), that we not only love its objects, but itself. "Amor amatur, et hinc probamus, quod in hominibus, qui rectius amantur, ipse magis amatur." This observation led him to see God everywhere in love. As God is in all being, so is he also in love; nay, his existence in being is ultimately identical with his existence in love. Therefore love is beginning, middle, and end. It is the final object of theological thought, and the fundamental form of true spiritual life. "Caritas inchoata inchoata justitia est; caritas provecta provecta justitia est; caritas magna magna justitia est; caritas perfecta perfecta justitia est" (De nat. et grat. 84). But since in life in general voluntas = caritas (De trin. XV. 38): "quid est aliud caritas quam voluntas?", we here find once more the profound connection between ethics and psychology. [200] Augustine's ability to unite the Neoplatonic ontological speculation with the results of his examination of the practical spiritual life was due inter alia especially to his complete abstinence, in the former case, from accepting ritualistic elements, or from introducing into his speculation matter taken from the Cultus and the religion of the second order. If at first the stage of spiritual development which he occupied (when outside the Church), of itself protected him from admitting these deleterious elements, yet it was a conspicuous and hitherto unappreciated side of his greatness that he always kept clear of ritualistic mysticism. Thereby he rendered an invaluable service not only to his disciples in mysticism, but to the whole Western Church. [201] De doctr. christ., I., 3 sq. [202] See Confess., VII. 24: "et qæerebam viam comparandi roboris quod esset idoneum ad fruendum te, etc.," 26: "certus quidem in istis eram, nimis taken infirmus ad fruendum te." [203] Augustine has often repeated the old Platonic assertion of the impossibility of defining the nature of God, and that not always with a feeling of dissatisfaction, but as an expression of romantic satisfaction ("ineffabilis simplex natura"; "facilius dicimus quid non sit, quam quod sit"). He contributed much, besides, to the relative elucidation of negative definitions and of properties and accidents, and created scholastic terminology; see especially De trinit., XV. He is the father of Western theological dialectic: but also the inventor of the dialectic of the pious consciousness. From the anti-Manichæan controversy sprang the desire to conceive all God's separate attributes as identical, i.e., the interest in the indivisibility of God--God is essence, not substance; for the latter cannot be thought of without accidents; see De trinit., VII., 10; and this interest went so far as to hold that even habere and esse coincided in God (De civ., X1. 10: "ideo simplex dicitur quoniam quod habet hoc est"). In order to guard God from corruptibilitas, compositeness of any sort was denied. But, at this point, Augustine had, nevertheless, to make a distinction in God, in order to discriminate the divine world-plan from him, and not to fall completely into Pantheism. (The latter is stamped on many passages in the work De trinit., see e.g., IV., 3, "Quia unum verbum dei est, per quod facta sunt omnia, quod est incommutabilis veritas, ibi principaliter atque incommutabiliter sunt omnia simul, et omnia vita sunt et omnia unum sunt.") But since he always harked to the conviction that being, and wisdom, and goodness, are identical in God, he did not reach what he aimed at. This difficulty increased still further for him, where he combined speculation as to the nature of God with that regarding the Trinity. (Dorner, p. 22 ff.) It is seen most clearly in the doctrine of the divine world-plan. It always threatens to submerge the world in the Son as a unity, and to take away its difference (it is wrong, however--at least for the period after c., A.D. 400--to say conversely that the intelligible world is for Augustine identical with the Son, or is the Son). The vacillation is continued in the doctrine of creation. But Dorner (p. 40 f.) is wrong when he says: "Augustine had no conception as yet that the notion of causality, clearly conceived, is sufficient to establish the distinction between God and the world." Augustine had undoubtedly no such conception, but this time it is not he, but Dorner, who shows his simplicity. The notion of causality, "clearly conceived," can never establish a distinction, but only a transformation. If he had meant to give expression to the former, he required to introduce more into the cause than the effect; that is, it was necessary to furnish the cause with properties and powers which did not pass into the causatum (effect). But this already means that the scheme of cause and effect is inadequate to establish the difference. Augustine, certainly, had no clear conception of such a thing; but he felt that mere causality was useless. He adopted the expedient of calling in "nihil" (nothing) to his aid, the negation: God works in nothing. This "nothing" was the cause of the world not being a transformation or evolution of God, but of its appearing as an inferior or irridescent product, which, because it is a divina operatio, exists (yet not independently of God), and which, so far as independent, does not exist, since its independence resides in the nihil. The sentence "mundus de nihilo a deo factus"--the root principle of Augustinian cosmology--is ultimately to be taken dualistically; but the dualism is concealed by the second element consisting in negation, and therefore only revealing itself in the privative form (of mutability, transitoriness). But in the end the purely negative character of the second element cannot be absolutely retained (Augustine never, certainly, identified it with matter); it purported to be absolute impotence, but combined with the divine activity it became the resisting factor, and we know how it does resist in sin. Accordingly, the question most fatal to Augustine would have been: Who created this nothing? As a matter of fact this question breaks down the whole construction. Absurd as it sounds, it is justified. Augustine cannot explain negation with its determinative power existing side by side with the divina operatio; for it is no explanation to say that it did not exist at all, since it merely had negative effects. Yet theory, sometimes acosmic, sometimes dualistic, in form, is everywhere corrected in Augustine, whether by the expression of a wise nescience, or by faith in God as Father. The criticism here used has been attacked by Loofs (R.-Encykl. 3, Vol. II., p. 271). We have to admit that it goes more deeply into the reason of his views than Augustine's words require. But I do not believe that the statement given by Loofs is adequate: "God so created his creatures from nothing that some are less fair, less good than others, and, therefore, have less being (esse)." Could Augustine have actually contented himself with these facts without asking whence this "less"? [204] Enchirid. 3. [205] See Vol. IV., p. 129 ff. I do not enter further into the doctrine of the Trinity, but remark that the term "tres personæ" was very fatal to Augustine, and that all his original efforts in dealing with the Trinity lead away from cosmical and hypercosmical plurality to conceptions that make it express inner, spiritual self-movement in the one God. [206] Cum autem initio fidei quæ per dilectionem operatur imbuta mens fuerit, tendit bene vivendo etiam ad speciem pervenire, ubi est sanctis et perfectis cordibus nota ineffabilis pulchritudo, cujus plena visio est summa felicitas. Hoc est nimirum quod requiris, "quid primum, quid ultimum teneatur," inchoari fide, perfici specie. [207] We may here touch briefly on the question several times recently discussed, as to the supremacy of the will in Augustine. Kahl has maintained it. But Siebeck (1.c. 183 f.) has with reason rejected it; (see also my notice of Kahl's book in the ThLZ., 1886, No. 25); and Kahl has himself to admit "that at the last stage of knowledge Neoplatonic intellectualism, which explains volition away in view of thought, has frequently traversed the logical consequences of Augustine's standpoint." But it is just the last stage that decides. On the other hand, Kahl is quite right in appreciating so highly the importance of the will in Augustine. The kernel of our nature exists indisputably according to Augustine in our will; therefore, in order that the veritas, the scire deum et animam may be able to obtain supremacy, and become, as it were, the unique function of man, the will must be won on its behalf. This takes place through God's grace, which leads the soul to will and love spiritual truth, i.e., God. Only now is it rendered possible for the intellect to assume supremacy. Accordingly the freeing of the will is ultimately the substitution of the supremacy of the intellect for that of the will. (Compare, e.g., the passage Confess. IX. 24: "regio ubertatis indeficientis, ubi pascis Israel in æternum veritatis pabulo, et ubi vita sapientia est"; but for this life it holds true that "sapientia hominis pietas.") Yet in so far as the supremacy of the intellect could not maintain itself without the amor essendi et sciendi, the will remains the co-efficient of the intellect even in the highest sphere. That is, briefly, Augustine's view of the relation of the will and intellect. It explains why the return to Augustine in the Middle Ages brought about the complete subordination of the intellect to the will; for Augustine himself so presented the case that no inner state and no activity of thought existed apart front the will. But if that were so, Augustine's opinion, that the vision (visio) of God was the supreme goal, could not but in the end pass away. It was necessary to demonstrate a goal which corresponded to the assured fact that man was will (see Duns Scotus). [208] See De civit. dei, XIV. 3 sq.; it is not the body (sensuousness) that is the ultimate cause of sin. [209] Confess. I. 25: Væ tibi flumen moris humani? quis resistet tibi? quamdiu non siccaberis? quosque volves Evæ, filius in mare magnum et formidolosum, quod vix transeunt qui lignum [ecclesiam] conscenderint? [210] There is a wonderful contrast in Augustine between the profound pessimistic view of the world, and the conception, strictly held in theory, that everything takes place under the uniform and unchangeable activity of God. What a difference between the statement of the problem and the result! And in order to remove this difference the metaphysician refers us to the--nothing. The course of the world is so confidently regarded as caused in whole and in detail by God, nay, is, as it were, taken up into the unchangeableness of God himself, that even miracles are only conceived to be events contrary to nature as known to us (Genes. ad lit. VI. 13; cf. De civ. X. 12; XXI. 1-8; nothing happens against nature; the world is itself the greatest, nay, the sole miracle; see Nitzsch, Aug's Lehre v. Wunder, 1865; Dorner, p. 71 f.), and yet everything shapes itself into a vast tragedy. In this nothing there still indeed lurks in Augustine a part of Manichæism; but in his vital view of the world it is not the "nothing" which plays a part, but the sin of wicked pleasure--self-will. [211] Confess. III. 8; V. 25; etc. [212] See the avowals in Confess. VII. 25. [213] Naturally, general investigations are not wanting of the nature of revelation as a whole, its relation to ratio, its stages (punishment of sin, law, prophecy), etc., but they have no secure connection with his dogmatics; they are dependant on the occasions that called them forth, and they are not clearly thought out. In any case, however, so many elements are found in them which connect them with Greek speculations, and in turn others which exerted a powerful influence at a later date (see Abelard), that one or two references are necessary (cf. Schmidt, Origenes and Aug. als Apolegeten in the Jahrbb. f. deutsche Theol. VIII.; Böhringer, p. 204 ff.; Reuter, p. 90 f., 350 ff., 400). Augustine occupies himself here, as always, with a problem whose factors ultimately do not admit of being reconciled. On the one hand, he never gave up the lofty appreciation of reason (ratio), of independent knowledge, in which being and life are embraced. Originally (in his first period, after A.D. 385), although he had already seen the importance of auctoritas, he set up as the goal of the ratio the overcoming of auctoritas, which required to precede it only for a time (De ord. II., 26, 27). "Ratio was to him the organ in which God reveals himself to man, and in which man perceives God." In after times this thought was never given up; but it was limited by the distinction between subjective and objective reason, by the increasing perception of the extent of the influence exerted on human mason by the will, by the assumption that one consequence of original sin was ignorance, and, finally, by the view that while knowledge, due to faith, would always be uncertain here below, the soul longed after the real, i.e., the absolute and absolutely sure, knowledge. The latter alone superseded ratio as the organ by which God is known, as guide to the vita beata; the other limitations were limitations pure and simple. And the constancy with which, in spite of these, Augustine at all times valued ratio is proved by those striking expositions, which occur in his earliest and latest writings, of Christianity as the disclosure of the one true religion which had always existed. The whole work De civitate dei is, indeed, built upon this thought--the civitas dei not being first created by the appearance of Christ--which, indeed, has two other roots besides Rationalism, namely, the conception of the absolute immutability of God, and the intention to defend Christianity and its God against Neoplatonic and pagan attacks. (The first two roots, as can be easily shown, are reducible ultimately to one single conception. The apologetic idea is of quite a different kind. Christianity is held to be as old as the world, in order that the reproach of its late arrival may fall to the ground. Here the wholly incongruous idea is introduced that Christians before Christ had believed on his future appearance. Reuter has shown excellently (p. 90 ff.) how even the particularist doctrine of pre-destination has its share in the universalist and humanist conception; he also deserves the greatest gratitude for collecting the numerous passages in which that conception is elaborated.) Even before the appearance of Christ the civitas dei existed; to it belonged pagans and Jews. Christianity is as old as the world. It is the natural religion which has existed from the beginning under various forms and names. Through Christ it received the name of the Christian religion; "res ipsa quæ nunc Christiana religio nuncupatur, erat apud antiquos, nec defuit ab initio generis humani, quousque ipse Christus venit in carne, unde vera religio, quæ jam erat, coepit appellari Christiana" (Retract. I., 12, 3); see especially Ep. 102 and De civit. XVIII., 47, where the incongruous thought is inserted that the unus mediator was revealed to the heathens who belonged to the heavenly Jerusalem in the earliest time. The latter idea is by no means inserted everywhere; there was rather up to the end of his life, in spite and because of his doctrine of particular predestinating grace, an undercurrent in Augustine's thought: co-ordinating God and free knowledge, he recognised behind the system of the Church a free science, and in accordance therewith conceived also God and the world to be the abiding objects of knowledge. With this idea, however, as in the case of Origen, Christ at once disappears. The ultimate reason of this consists in the fact that Augustine, with all his progress in knowledge, never advanced to history. The great psychologist was still blind to the nature of historical development, to what personality achieved in history, and what history had accomplished fur mankind. He had only two methods of observation at his disposal--either the mythological contemplation of history, or a rationalistic neutralising. The man who felt so clearly and testified so convincingly that freedom lay in the change of will when it received a strength binding us to the good, was yet incapable as a thinker of drawing clearly the consequences of this experience. But those should not blame him who cannot free themselves from the illusion that an absolute knowledge of some sort must be possible to man; for the effort to obtain such a knowledge is the ultimate cause of the inability to understand history as history. He who is only happy with absolute knowledge is either blind to history, or it becomes a Medusa's head to him. Yet rationalism is only the undercurrent, though here and there it does force its way to the surface. More surely and more constantly Augustine appeased with revelation his hunger for the absolute, which he was unable to distinguish from aiming at force and strength (God and goodness). His feelings were the same as Faust's: "We long for revelation." Now, it is very characteristic that in dealing with the notion of revelation, Augustine has expounded nothing more clearly than the thought that revelation is absolutely authoritative. We can leave out of account his other views on its necessity, nature, etc. The decisive fact for him is that revelation does not merely recommend itself by its intrinsic worth. Accordingly, the external attestation is the main point. Augustine discussed this (especially in his work De civit.) much more carefully and comprehensively than earlier Apologists, in order to establish the right to demand simple submission to the contents of revelation. Auctoritas and fides were inseparably connected; indeed, they occupied an almost exclusive relation to each other (see De util. cred., 25 sq.). We indeed find him explaining in his writings of all periods that authority is milk-food, and that, on the other hand, the demand in matters of religion for faith resting on authority is not exceptional, but that all the affairs of life of a deeper nature rest on such a faith. But these are simply sops to Cerberus. Man needs authority to discipline his mind, and to support a certainty not to be obtained elsewhere. Augustine was especially convinced of this as against heretics (Manichæans). Heathens he could refute to a certain extent from reason, heretics he could not. But even apart from this, since the power which hinds the will to God presented itself to him as the rock-fast conviction of the unseen, even the "strong" could not dispense with faith in authority. The gradual progress from faith to knowledge, which was well-known to him ("Every one who knows also believes, although not every one who believes knows,") was still a progress constantly accompanied by faith. The saying, "fides præcedit rationem," of which he has given so many variations (see e.g., Ep. 120, 2 sq.: "fides præcedit rationem," or paradoxically: "rationabiliter visum est, ut fides præcedat rationem,") did not signify a suspension of faith at the higher stages. Or, rather, and here the Sic et Non holds good, Augustine was never clear about the relation of faith and knowledge; he handed over this problem to the future. On the one hand he trusted ratio; but, on the other hand, he did not, relying only on God, and:is Genius ruling in experience. Faith's authority was given for him in Scripture and the Church. But here, again, he only maintained and transmitted the disposition to obey, while his theoretical expositions are beset by sheer contradictions and ambiguities; for he has neither worked out the sufficiency, infallibility, and independence of Scripture, nor demonstrated the infallibility of the Church, nor defined the relation of Scripture and the Church. Sometimes Scripture is a court of appeal which owes its authority to the Church, sometimes the Church doctrine and all consuetudo are to be measured by Scripture (Scripture is the only source of doctrina Christiana), sometimes Church and Scripture are held to constitute one whole; in one place the Church seems to find in the Council its infallible mouthpiece, in the other, the perfectibility of Councils themselves is maintained. "The idea of the Church's infallibility belongs to Augustine's popular Catholic presuppositions which grew out of his Catholic faith. It was never directly or expressly expounded by him, or dogmatically discussed. Therefore he cannot have felt the necessity of adjusting an exhaustive or precise doctrine regarding the legitimate form of the supreme representation of the Church by supposition infallible. This uncertainty and vagueness perhaps" (rather, indisputably) "spring from the vacillations of his thought regarding authority and reason, faith and knowledge" (see Reuter, pp. 345-358; Böhringer, pp. 217-256; Dorner, pp. 233-244; further, above pp. 77-83, and Vol. III., p. 203 ff.). [214] The figure often used by Augustine that the Word was united with the man Jesus as our souls are with our bodies is absolutely unsuitable. Augustine borrowed it from antiquity without realising that it really conflicted with his own conception. [215] Enchir., 36: "Hic omnino granditer et evidenter dei gratia commendatur. Quid enim natura humana in homine Christi meruit ut in unitatem personæ unici filii dei singulariter esset assumpta! Quæ bona voluntas, cujus boni propositi studium, quæ bona opera præcesserunt, quibus mereretur iste homo una fieri persona cum deo? Numquid antea fuit homo, et hoc ei singulare beneficium præstitum est, cum singulariter promereretur deum? Nempe ex quo homo esse coepit, non aliud coepit esse homo quam dei filius: et hoc unicus, et propter deum verbum, quod illo suscepto caro factum est, utique deus. . . . Unde naturæ humanæ tanta gloria, nullis præcedentibus meritis sine dubitatione gratuita, nisi quia magna hic et sola dei gratia fideliter et sobrie considerantibus evidenter ostenditur, ut intellegant homines per eandem gratiam se justifcari a peccatis, per quam factum est ut homo Christus nullum habere posset peccatum." 40: "Natus Christus insinuat nobis gratiam dei, qua homo nullis præcedentibus meritis in ipso exordio naturæ suæ quo esse coepit, verbo deo copularetur in tantam personæ unitatem, ut idem ipse esset filius dei qui filius hominis, etc." De dono persev., 67. Op. imperf., I., 138: "Qua gratia homo Jesus ab initio factus est bonus, eadem gratia homines qui sunt membra ejus ex malis fiunt boni." De prædest. 30: "Est etiam præclarissimum lumen prædestinationis et gratiæ ipse salvator, ipse mediator dei et hominum homo Christus Jesus, qui ut hoc esset, quibus tandem suis vel operum vel fidei præcedentibus meritis natura humana quæ in illo est comparavit? . . . Singulariter nostra natura in Jesu nullis suis præcedentibus meritis accepit admiranda (scil. the union with deity). Respondeat hic homo deo, si audet, et dicat: Cur non et ego? Et si audierit: O homo, tu quis es qui respondeas deo, etc." De corrept. et grat. 30: "Deus naturam nostram id est animam rationalem carnemque hominis Christi suscepit, susceptione singulariter mirabili vel mirabiliter singulari, ut nullis justitiæ suæ præcedentibus meritis filius dei sic esset ab initio quo esse homo coepisset, ut ipse et verbum, quod sine initio est, una persona esset." De pecc. mer. II. 27. Augustine says in Confess. VII. 25: "Ego autem aliquanto posterius didicisse me fateor, in eo quod verbum caro factum est, quomodo catholica veritas a Photini falsitate dirimatur." Our account given above will have shown, however, that he never entirely learnt this. His Christology, at all times, retained a strong trace of affinity with that of Paul of Samosata and Photinus (only all merit was excluded on the part of the man Jesus), because he knew that his faith could not dispense with the man Jesus, and he supplanted the pseudo-theological speculation as to the Word by the evangelical one that the Word had become the content of Christ's soul. [216] Therefore, also, the uncertainty which we find already in Augustine as to whether the Incarnation was necessary. In De Trinit. XIII. 13, he answers the momentous question whether God might not have chosen another way, by leaving the possibility open, but describing the way selected as bonus, divinæ dignitati congruns and convenientior. By this he opened up a perilous perspective to the Middle Ages. [217] Op. imperf. l.c. [218] He definitely rejects the idea held by him before his conversion that Christ was only a teacher; see, e.g., Confess. VII. 25: "Tantum sentiebam de domino Christo meo, quantum de excellentis sapientiæ viro, cui nullus posset æquari; præsertim quia mirabiliter natus ex virgine ad exemplum contemnendorum temporalium pro adipiscenda immortalitate divina pro nobis cura tantam auctoritatem magisterii meruisse videbatur." [219] De trin. XIII. 13: "Quid tam necessarium fuit ad erigendam spem nostram, quam ut demonstraretur nobis, quanti nos penderet deus quantumque diligeret?" That takes place through the Incarnation. [220] The "work" of Christ falls to be discussed afterwards; for we cannot include Augustine's views concerning it among his fundamental conceptions. In part they alternate (between redemption from the devil, sacrifice, and removal of original sin by death), and in part they are dependant on his specific view of original sin. Where he indulges in expositions of practical piety, he has no theory at all regarding Christ's work. [221] The clearest, and on account of the historical connection the most decisive, testimony is given in Confess. VII. 24-27, where, in telling what Christ had become to him, he at the same time explains why Neoplatonism was insufficient. He knew what the Neoplatonists perceived, but "quærebam viam comparandi roboris quod esset idoneum ad fruendum te, nec inveniebam donec amplecterer mediatorem dei et hominem, hominem Christum Jesum vocantem et dicentem: Ego sum via et veritas et vita, et cibum, cui capiendo invalidus eram, miscentem carni; quoniam verbum caro factum est, ut infantiæ nostræ lactesceret sapientia tua per quam creasti omnia. Non enim tenebam dominum meum Jesum, humilis humilem, nec cujus rei magistra esset ejus infirmitas noveram. Verbum enim tuum æterna veritas . . . subditos erigit ad se ipsam: in inferioribus autem ædificavit sihi humilem domum de limo nostro, per quam subdendos deprimeret a seipsis et ad se trajiceret, sanans tumorem et nutriens amorem, ne fiducia sui progrederentur longius, sed potius infirmarentur videntes ante pedes sues infirmam divinitatem ex participatione tunicæ pelliceæ nostræ, et lassi prosternerentur in eam, illa autem surgens lavaret eos." He then explains in the sequel that the Neoplatonic writings led him to thoroughly understand the nature of God, but: "garriebam plane quasi peritus, et nisi in Christo salvatore nostro viam tuam quærerem, non peritus, sed periturus essem." I sought to be wise, puffed up by knowledge. "Ubi enim erat illa ædificans caritas a fundamento humilitatis, quod est Christus Jesus?" This love rooted in humility those writings could not teach me. It was from the Bible I first learned: "quid interesset inter præsumptionem et confessionem, inter videntes quo eundun sit nec videntes qua, et viam ducentem ad beatificam patriam, non tantum cernendam, sed et habitandam." Now I read Paul. "Et apparuit mihi una facies eloquiorum castorum. Et coepi et inveni quidquid illac verum legeram, hac cum commendatione gratiæ tuæ dici, ut qui videt non sic glorietur quasi non acceperit, non solum id quod videt, sed etiam ut videat, et ut te non solum admoneatur ut videat, sed etiam sanetur ut teneat, et qui de longinquo videre non potest, viam tamen ambulet, qua veniat et videat et teneat." For if a man delights in the law of God after the inner man, what does he do with the other law in his members? . . . What shall wretched man do? Who shall deliver him from the body of this death? Who but thy grace through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the handwriting which was against us was abolished. "Hoc illæ litteræ non habent. Non habent illæ paginæ vultum pietatis hujus, lacrimas confessionis, sacrificium tuum, spiritum contribulatum. . . . Nemo ibi cantat: Nonne deo subdita erit anima mea. Ab ipso enim salutare meum. Nemo ibi audit vocantem: Venite ad me, omnes qui laboratis. Dedignantur ab eo discere quoniam mitis est et humilis corde. Abscondisti enim hæc a sapientibus et prudentihus, et revelasti ea parvulis." "For it is one thing from the mountain's wooded top to see the land of peace and yet to find no way to it, and another to keep steadfastly on the way thither." Compare with this the elaborate criticism of Platonism in De civit. dei, X., esp. ch. 24 and 32, where Christ is presented as "universalis animæ liberandæ via," while his significance is for the rest explained much more in the popular Catholic fashion than in the Confessions. In ch. 1 ff. there is even an attempt to conceive the angels and saints as a heavenly hierarchy as the Greeks do. [222] Augustine accordingly testifies that in order that the truth which is perceived should also be loved and extolled, a person is necessary who should conduct us and that on the path of humility. This is the burden of his Confessions. The truth itself had been shown clearly to him by the Neoplatonists; but it had not become his spiritual possession. Augustine knew only one person capable of so impressing the truth as to make it loved and extolled, and he alone could do this, because he was the revelation of the verbum dei in humilitate. When Christendom has attained securely and clearly to this "Christology," it will no longer demand to be freed from the yoke of Christology. [223] This is linked together by Augustine in a wonderful fashion. The scepticism of the thinker in genre and the doubts, never overcome in his own mind as to the Catholic doctrine in specie, demanded that Christ should be the indisputable authority of the Church. To this is added, in connection with gratia infusa, the Christ of the sacraments. I do not discuss this authoritative Christ more fully, because he coincides with the authority of the Church itself, and we have already dealt with the latter. [224] De civ. dei XIX. 13: "Pax cælestis civitatis ordinatissima et concordissima societas fruendi deo et invicem in deo." Enchir. 29: "Contemplatio ejus artifices, qui vocat ea quæ non sunt tamquam ea quæ sunt, atque in mensura et numero et pondere cuncta disponit," see 63. [225] Yet the conception of blessedness as peace undoubtedly involves a tendency to think primarily of the will. [226] The whole of Book XIX. of De civit. dei--it is perhaps on the whole the most important--comes to be considered here. In Ch. IV., it is expressly denied that virtue is the supreme good. [227] See De spiritu et lit. 5 (the passage follows afterwards). [228] That Augustine was able from this point of view to make the conscious feeling of blessedness a force entering into the affairs of this world, is shown by the passage De civit. dei XIX. 14, which, indeed, so far as I know, is almost unique. "Et quoniam (Christianus) quamdin est in isto mortali corpore, peregrinatur a domino, ambulat per fidem non per speciem; ac per hoc omnem pacem vel corporis vel animæ vel simul corporis et animæ refert ad illam pacem, quæ homini mortali est cum immortali deo, ut ei sit ordinata in fide sub æterna lege oboedientia. Jam vero quia duo præcipua præcepta, hoc est dilectionem dei et dilectionem proximi, docet magister deus . . . consequens est, ut etiam proximo ad diligendum deum consulat, quem jubetur sicut se ipsum diligere (sic uxori, sic filiis, sic domesticis, sic ceteris quibus potuerit hominibus), et ad hoc sibi a proximo, si forte indiget, consuli velit; ac per hoc erit pacatus, quantum in ipso est, omni homini pace hominum, id est ordinata concordia cujus hic ordo est, prinmm ut nulli noceat, deinde ut etiam prosit cui potuerit. Primitus ergo inest ei suorum cura; ad eos quippe habet opportuniorem facilioremque aditum consulendi, vel naturæ ordine vel ipsius societatis humanæ. Unde apostolus dicit: Quisquis autem suis et maxime domesticis non providet, fidem denegat et est infideli deterior.' Hinc itaque etiam pax domestica oritur, id est ordinati imperandi oboediendique concordia cohabitantium. Imperaut enim, qui consulunt: sicut vir uxori, parentes finis, domini servis. . . . Sed in domo justi viventes ex fide et adhuc ab illa cælesti civitate peregrinantis etiam qui imperant serviunt eis, quibus videntur imperare. Neque enim dominandi cupiditate imperant, sed officio consulendi, nec principandi superbia, sed providendi misericordia." [229] The element of "pax" obtains a value higher than and independent of knowledge (see above). That is shown also in the fact that the definitive state of the unsaved (De civit. dei, XIX., 28) is not described as ignorance, but as constant war: "Quod bellum gravius et amarius cogitari potest, quam ubi voluntas sic adversa est passioni et passio voluntati, ut nullius earum victoria tales inimicitiæ finiantur, et ubi sic confligit cum ipsa natura corporis vis doloris, ut neutrum alteri cedat? Hic [in terra] enim quando contingit iste conflictus, aut dolor vincit et sensum mors adimit, aut natura vincit et dolorem sanitas tollit. Ibi autem et dolor permanet ut affligat, et natura perdurat ut sentiat; quia utrumque ideo non deficit, ne poena deficiat." Undoubtedly, as regards the sainted (see Book, XXII.), the conception comes again and again to the front that their felicity will consist in seeing God. [230] Augustine has (De trin. I. 20) applied this comparison to the Churches of the future and present world; we may also adapt it to the relations of his doctrines of the Church and of God. [231] Ritschl published in his Treatise on the method of the earliest history of dogma (Jahrb. f. deutsche Theol., 1871) the grand conception that the Areopagite in the East, and Augustine in the West, were parallels; that the former founded a ritualistic ecclesiasticism, the latter an ecclesiasticism of moral tasks, in the service of a world-wide Christianity that both thus modified in the same direction, but with entirely different means, the old state of feeling (the bare hope of the future life). This conception is substantially correct If we keep firm hold of the fact that the traditional popular Catholic system was not modified by either to its utmost limit, and that both followed impulses which had been at work in their Churches even before their time. The doctrine regarding the Church was not Augustine's "central idea," but he took what every Catholic was certain of, and made it a matter of clearer, in part for the first time of any clear, conviction; and moved by very varied causes, he finally produced an ecclesiasticism whose independent value he himself never thoroughly perceived. [232] Solil. I. 5: "Nihil aliud habeo quam voluntatem; nihil aliud scio nisi fluxa et caduca spernenda esse, certa et æterna requirenda . . . si fide te inveniunt, qui ad te refugiunt, fidem da, si virtute, virtutem, si scientia, scientiam. Auge in me fidem, auge spem, auge caritatem." De spiritu et lit., 5: "Nos autem dicimus humanam voluntatem sic divinitus adjuvari ad faciendam justitiam, ut præter quod creatus est homo cum libero arbitrio voluntatis, præterque doctrinam qua ei præcipitur quemadmodum vivere debeat, accipiat spiritum sanctum, quo fiat in animo ejus delectatio dilectioque summi illius atque incommutabilis boni quod deus est, etiam nunc cum adhuc per fidem ambulatur, nondum per speciem: ut hac sibi velut arra data gratuiti muneris inardescat inhærere creatori atque inflammetur accedere ad participationem illius veri luminis, ut ex illo ei bene sit, a quo habet ut sit. Nam neque liberum arbitrium quidquam nisi ad peccandum valet, si lateat veritatis via, et cum id quod agendum et quo nitendum est coeperit non latere, nisi etiam delectet et ametur, non agitur, non suscipitur, non bene vivitur. Ut autem diligatur, caritas dei diffunditur in cordibus nostris, non per arbitrium liberum quod surgit ex nobis, sed per spiritum sanctum qui datus est nobis." L.c., 22: "Quod operum lex minando imperat, hoc fidei Iex credendo impetrat. Ipsa est illa sapientia quæ pietas vocatur, qua colitur pater luminum, a quo est omne datum optimum et omne donum perfectum. . . . Lege operum dicit deus: Fac quod jubeo; lege fidei dicitur deo: Da quod jubes. . . . Non spiritum hujus mundi accepimus, ait constantissimus gratiæ prædicator, sed spiritum qui ex deo est, ut sciamus quæ a deo donata sunt nobis. Quis est autem spiritus mundi hujus, nisi superbiæ spiritus? . . . Nec alio spiritu decipiuntur etiam illi qui ignorantes dei justitiam et suam justitiam volentes constituere, justitiæ dei non sunt subjecti. Unde mihi videtur magis esse fidei filius, qui novit a quo speret quod nondum habet, quam qui sibi tribuit id quod habet. Colligimus non justificari hominem littera, sed spiritu, non factorum meritis, sed gratuita gratia." __________________________________________________________________ 2. The Donatist Controversy. The Work: De civitate Dei. Doctrine of the Church, and Means of Grace. Augustine was still occupied with the controversy with the Manichæans, in which he so sharply emphasised the authority of the Catholic Church, [233] when his ecclesiastical position--Presbyter, A.D. 392, Bishop, A.D. 396, in Hippo--compelled him to take up the fight with the Donatists. In Hippo these formed the majority of the inhabitants, and so violent was their hatred that they even refused to make bread for the Catholics. Augustine fought with them from 393 to 411, and wrote against them a succession of works, some of these being very comprehensive. [234] We must here take for granted a knowledge of the course of the controversy at Synods, and as influenced by the intrusion of the Civil power. [235] It was carried on upon the ground prepared by Cyprian. His authority was accepted by the opponents. Accordingly, internal antitheses developed in the dispute which had remained latent in Cyprian's theory. The new-fashioned Catholic theory had been already stated impressively by Optatus (see above, p. 42 ff.). It was reserved to Augustine to extend and complete it. But, as it usually happens in such questions, every newly-acquired position opened up new questions, and for one solution created any number of problems. And thus Augustine left more problems than he had solved. The controversy did not now deal directly with the hierarchical constitution of the Church. Episcopacy was an accepted fact. The competency of the Church was questioned, and therewith its nature, significance, and extent. That ultimately the constitution of the Church should be dragged into the same peril was inevitable; for the hierarchy is, of course, the tenderest part in a constitution based upon it. The schism was in itself the greatest evil. But in order to get over it, it was necessary to go to its roots and show that it was utterly impossible to sever oneself from the Catholic Church, that the unity, as well as truth of the Church, was indestructible. The main thesis of the Donatists was to the effect that the empirical is only the true Church when those who propagate it, the priests, are "pure"; for no one can propagate what he does not himself possess. [236] The true Church thus needs pure priests; it must therefore declare consecration by traditores to be invalid; and it cannot admit the efficacy of baptism administered by the impure--heretics, or those guilty of mortal sins; finally, it must exclude all that is manifestly stained and unworthy. This was followed by the breach with such Christian communions as did not strictly observe these rules, and by the practice of re-baptism. [237] Separation was imperative, no matter how great or small the extent of the Church. This thesis was supplemented, during the period of the State persecutions, by a second, that the persecuted Church was the true one, and that the State had nothing to do with the Church. Augustine's counter-argument, based on Cyprian, Ambrosiaster, and Optatus, but partly disavowing, though with due respect, the first-named, went far beyond a bare refutation of the separatists. He created the beginnings of a doctrine of the Church, and means of grace, of the Church as institute of salvation, the organism of the good, i.e., of divine powers in the world. Nor did the Donatist controversy furnish him with his only motive for developing this doctrine. The dispute with the Manichæans had already roused his interest in the authority of the Church, and led him to look more closely into it than his predecessors (see above, p. 79 ff.), who, indeed, were quite at one with him in their practical attitude to the Church. The Pelagian controversy, the state of the world, and the defence of Christianity against heathen attacks, had an extremely important influence on conceptions of the Church. Thus Augustine created the Catholic doctrine of the Catholic Church on earth, and we attempt in what follows to give, as far as possible, a complete and connected account of it. Finally, the earthly Church was and remained absolutely nothing but a means for the eternal salvation of the individual, and therefore the doctrines of the Church was also meant to be nothing but a subsidiary doctrine. But if all dogmatic ran the risk, with its means and subsidiary conceptions, of obscuring the important point, the danger was imminent here. Does not the doctrine of salvation appear in Catholicism to be almost nullified by the "subsidiary doctrine," the doctrine of the Church? [238] Grace and Authority--these two powers had, according to Augustine's self-criticism, effected his conversion. The authority was the Church. Every one knew what the Church was: the empirical, visible Church, which had triumphed ever since the days of Constantine. A "logical definition" of the Church was therefore unnecessary. The important point was to show that men needed an authority, and why it was the authority. The weak intellect needed revelation, which brings truth to the individual, before he himself is capable of finding it; this revelation is bound up in the Church. The fact that the Church was the authority for doctrine constituted for long Augustine's only interest in it. He produced in support of this principle proofs of subjective necessity and of an objective nature; yet he never reached in his exposition the stringency and certainty which as a Catholic he simply felt; for who can demonstrate that an external authority must be authoritative? The most important point was that the Church proclaimed itself to be the authority in doctrine. One was certainly a member of the Church only in so far as he submitted to its authority. There was no other way of belonging to it. Conversely, its significance seemed, on superficial reflection, to be entirely limited to doctrinal authority. We occupy our true relation to God and Christ, we possess and expect heavenly blessings only when we follow the doctrinal instructions given by the Church. Augustine embraced this "superficial reflection" until his ecclesiastical office and the Donatist controversy led him to more comprehensive considerations. He had arrived at his doctrine of predestinating grace without any external instigation by independent meditation on the nature of conversion and piety. The development of his doctrine regarding the Church, so far as it carried out popular Catholic ideas, was entirely dependent on the external circumstances in which he found himself placed. But he did not himself feel that he was stating a doctrine; he was only describing an actual position accepted all along by every Catholic, one which each had to interpret to himself, but without subtraction or addition. In addition to the importance of the Church as a doctrinal authority, he also felt its significance as a sacred institution which imparted grace. On its latter feature he especially reflected; but the Church appeared to him much more vividly after he had gained his doctrine of grace: it was the one communion of saints, the dwelling-place of the Spirit who created faith, love, and hope. We condense his most important statements. 1. The Catholic Church, held together by the Holy Spirit, who is also the bond of union in the Trinity, possesses its most important mark in its unity, and that a unity in faith, love, and hope, as well as in Catholicity. 2. This unity in the midst of the divisions existing among men is the greatest of miracles, the proof that the Church is not the work of men, but of the Holy Spirit. 3. This follows still more clearly when we consider that unity presupposes love. Love is, however, the proper sphere of the Spirit's activity; or more correctly, all love finds its source in the Holy Spirit; [239] for faith and hope can be acquired to a certain extent independently--therefore also outside of the Church--but love issues only from the Holy Spirit. The Church, accordingly, because it is a unity, is the alliance of love, in which alone sinners can be purified; for the Spirit only works in "love the bond of unity" (in unitatis vinculo caritate). If then the unity of the Church rests primarily on faith, yet it rests essentially on the sway of the spirit of love alone, which presupposes faith. [240] 4. The unity of the Church, represented in Holy Scripture by many symbols and figures, obtains its strongest guarantee from the fact that Christ has made the Church his bride and his body. This relationship is so close that we can absolutely call the Church "Christ"; [241] for it constitutes a real unity with Christ. Those who are in the Church are thus "among the members of Christ" (in membris Christi); the means and bond of this union are in turn nothing but love, more precisely the love that resides in unity (caritas unitatis). 5. Heretics, i.e., those who follow a faith chosen by themselves, cannot be in the Church, because they would at once destroy its presupposition, the unity of faith; the Church, however, is not a society like the State, which tolerates all sorts of philosophers in its midst. Expelled heretics serve the good of the Church, just as everything must benefit those who love God, for they exercise them in patience (by means of persecutions), in wisdom (by false contentions), and in love to their enemies, which has to be evinced on the one hand in saving beneficence, and on the other in the terrors of discipline. [242] 6. But neither do the Schismatics, i.e., those who possessed the true faith, belong to the Church; for in abandoning its unity--being urged thereto by pride like the heretics--they show that they do not possess love, and accordingly are beyond the pale of the operations of the Holy Spirit. Accordingly the Catholic Church is the only Church. 7. From this it follows that salvation (salus) is not to be found outside the Church, for since love is confined to the visible Church, even heroic acts of faith, and faith itself, are destitute of the saving stamp, which exists through love alone. [243] Means of sanctification, a sort of faith, and miraculous powers may accordingly exist outside of the Church (see afterwards), but they cannot produce the effect and afford the benefit they are meant to have. 8. The second mark of the Church is holiness. This consists in the fact that it is holy through its union with Christ and the activity of the Spirit, possesses the means--in the Word and sacraments--of sanctifying its individual members, i.e., of perfecting them in love, and has also actually attained this end. That it does not succeed in doing so in the case of all who are in its midst [244] --for it will only be without spot or wrinkle in the world beyond--nay, that it cannot entirely destroy sin except in a very few, detracts nothing from its holiness. Even a preponderance of the wicked and hypocritical over the good and spiritual [245] does not lessen it, for there would be no Church at all if the Donatist thesis were correct, that unholy members put an end to the Church's existence. The Donatists required to limit their own contention in a quite capricious fashion, in order to avoid destroying the Church. [246] 9. Although the tares are not to be rooted out, since men are not omniscient, and this world is not the scene of the consummation, yet the Church exercises its discipline, and in certain circumstances even excommunicates; but it does not do so properly in order to preserve its holiness, but to educate its members or guard them against infection. But the Church can also tolerate. "They do not know the wicked in the Catholic unity, or they tolerate those they know for the sake of unity." [247] It can even suffer manifest and gross sinners, if in a particular case the infliction of punishment might result in greater harm. [248] It is itself secured from contamination by the profane by never approving evil, and always retaining its control over the means of sanctification. [249] 10. But it is indeed an attribute of its holiness also to beget actually holy members. It can furnish evidence of this, since a few have attained perfection in it, since miracles and signs have constantly been wrought, and a general elevation and sanctification of morals been achieved by it, and since, finally, its whole membership will in the end be holy. 11. Its holiness is, however, shown more clearly in the fact that it is only within the Church that personal holiness can be attained (see above sub. 7). [250] 12. The unholy in the Church unquestionably belong to it; for being in its unity they are subject to the operation of the means of sanctification, and can still become good and spiritual. Yet they do not belong to the inner court of the Church, but form a wider circle in it. [They are "vessels to dishonour in the house of God" (vasa in contumeliam in domo dei); they are not themselves, like the "vessels to honour" (vasa in honorem), the house of God, but are "in it"; they are "in the communion of the sacraments," not in the proper society of the house, but "adjoined to the communion of the saints" (congregationi sanctorum admixti); they are in a sense not in the Church, because they are not the Church self; therefore the Church can also be described as a "mixed body" (corpus permixtum).] [251] Nay, even the heretics and schismatics, in so far as they have appropriated the Church's means of sanctification (see under), belong to the Catholic Church, since the latter makes them sons without requiring to impart a second baptism. [252] The character of the Church's holiness is not modified by these wider circles in the sphere to which it extends; for, as regards its foundation, means, and aim, it always remains the same, and a time will come when the holiness of all its members--for Augustine does not neglect this mark--will be an actual fact. 13. The third mark of the Church is Catholicity. It is that which, combined with unity, furnishes the most impressive external proof, and the surest criterion of its truth. That is, Catholicity--extension over the globe--was prophesied, and had been realised, although it must be described as a miracle, that an association which required such faith and obedience, and handed down such mysteries, should have obtained this extension. The obvious miracle is precisely the evidence of the truth. Donatists cannot be the Church, because they are virtually confined to Africa. The Church can only exist where it proves its Catholicity by union with Rome and the ancient Oriental Churches, with the communities of the whole globe. The objection that men's sin hinders the extension is without weight; for that would have had to be prophesied. But it is the opposite that was prophesied and fulfilled. [253] The reminder, also, that many heresies were extended over the world is of no consequence; for, firstly, almost all heresies are national, secondly, even the most wide-spread heresy finds another existing at its side, and thereby reveals its falsehood. [This is the old sophism: on the one hand, disintegration is regarded as the essential characteristic of heresies; on the other, they are represented as forming a unity in order that the existence of others side by side with it may be urged against each in turn.] 14. The fourth mark of the Church is its apostolicity. It was displayed in the Catholic Church, (1) in the possession of apostolic writings, [254] and doctrine, (2) in its ability to trace its existence up to the Apostolic communities and the Apostles, and to point to its unity (communicatio) with the churches founded by the latter. [255] This proof was especially to be adduced in the succession of the Bishops, though their importance is for the rest not so strongly emphasised by Augustine as by Cyprian; indeed passages occur in his works in which the universal priesthood, as maintained by Tertullian, is proclaimed. [256] 15. While among the apostolic communities those of the East are also very important, yet that of Rome, and in consequence its Bishop, hold the first place. Peter is the representative of the Apostles, of Christians in general (Ep. 53, 2: "totius ecclesiæ figuram gerens"), of weak Christians, and of Bishops, or the Episcopal ministry. Augustine maintained the theory of Cyprian and Optatus regarding Peter's chair: it was occupied by the Roman Bishop and it was necessary to be in accord with it, because it was the apostolic seat par excellence, i.e., the bearer of the doctrinal authority and unity of the Church. His statements as to the infallibility of the Roman chair are as uncertain and contradictory as those dealing with the Councils and Episcopate. He had no doubt that a Council ranked above the Roman Bishop (Ep. 43, 19). [257] 16. Augustine was convinced of the infallibility of the Catholic Church; for it is a necessary consequence of its authority as based on Apostolicity. But he never had any occasion to think out this predicate, and to establish it in the representation and decisions of the Church. Therefore he made many admissions, partly without thought, partly when hard pressed, which, logically understood, destroyed the Church's infallibility. 17. So also he holds the indispensableness of the Church, for it follows from the exclusive relation to Christ and the Holy Spirit revealed in its unity and holiness. This indispensableness is expressed in the term "Mother Church" [258] (ecclesia mater or corpus Christi); on modifications, see later. 18. Finally, he was also convinced of the permanence of the Church, and therewith also of its primeval character; for this follows from the exclusive relation to God; yet ideas entered into the conception of permanence and primevalness, which did not flow from any consideration of the empirical Church ("the heavenly Church" on the one hand, the "city of God" on the other; on this see under). 19. The empirical Catholic Church is also the "Kingdom of God" (regnum dei, civitas dei). As a matter of fact these terms are primarily employed in a view which is indifferent to the empirical Church (see under); but since to Augustine there was ultimately only one Church, everything that was true of it was also applicable to the empirical Church. At all times he referred to the Catholic Church the old term which had long been applied to the Church, "the kingdom (city) of God," of course having in mind not that the Church was the mixed, but the true body (corpus permixtum, verum). [259] 20. But Augustine gave a much stronger hold than his predecessors to the conception that the Church is the kingdom of God, and by the manner in which in his "Divine Comedy," the "De civitate dei," he contrasted the Church with the State, far more than his own expressed view, he roused the conviction that the empirical Catholic Church sans phrase was the kingdom of God, and the independent State that of the devil. That is, although primarily the earthly State (civitas terrena) consisted for Augustine in the society of the profane and reprobate, inclusive of demons, while the city of God (civitas dei) was the heavenly communion of all saints of all times, comprising the angels, yet he held that the former found their earthly historical form of expression and manifestation in the secular State, the latter in the empirical Church; for there were by no means two cities, kingdoms, temples, or houses of God. Accordingly the kingdom of God is the Church. And, carried away by the Church's authority and triumph in the world, as also profoundly moved by the fall of the Roman world-empire, whose internal and external power manifestly no longer existed save in the Church, Augustine saw in the present epoch, i.e., in the Church's History, the millennial kingdom that had been announced by John (De civit. XX.). By this means he revised, without completely abolishing, the ancient Chiliasm of the Latin Church. [260] But if it were once determined that the millennial kingdom was now, since Christ's appearance, in existence, the Church was elevated to the throne of supremacy over the world; for while this kingdom consists in Christ's reign, he only reigns in the present through the Church. Augustine neither followed out nor clearly perceived the hierarchical tendency of his position; yet he reasoned out the present reign of Christ which he had to demonstrate (XX. 9-13) by reflecting that only the "saints" (sancti) reign with Christ, and not, say, the "tares"; that thus only those reign in the kingdom who themselves constitute the kingdom; and that they reign because they aim at what is above, fight the fight of sanctification, and practise patience in suffering, etc. But he himself prepared the way directly for the sacerdotal interpretation of his thought, or positively expressed it, in two of his arguments. The one was drawn from him by exegesis, [261] the other is a result of a manifest view of his own. In the first place, viz., he had to show that Rev. XX. 4 ("those sitting on thrones judge") was even now being fulfilled. He found this fulfilment in the heads of the Church, who controlled the keys of binding and loosing, accordingly in the clergy (XX. 9). Secondly, he prepared the way for the supremacy of the Church over the State [262] in his explicit arguments both against and in favour of the latter (XIX., and even before this in V.). The earthly State (civitas terrena) and accordingly secular kingdoms are sprung from sin, the virtue of the ambitious, and simply because they strive for earthly possessions--summed up in the pax terrena, carried out in all earthly affairs--they are sinful, and must finally perish, even if they be legitimate and salutary on earth. The secular kingdom is finally, indeed, a vast robbery (IV. 4): "righteousness being abolished, what are kingdoms but great robberies?") [263] which ends in hell in everlasting war; the Roman Republic never possessed peace (XIX. 21). From this point of view the Divine State is the only legitimate association. But Augustine had yet another version to give of the matter. The establishment of earthly peace (pax terrena)--see its manifold forms in XIX. 13--is necessary upon earth. Even those who treasure heavenly peace as the highest good are bound to care on earth by love for earthly peace. (Already the Jewish State was legitimate in this sense; see the description IV. 34, and the general principle XV. 2: "We therefore find two forms in the earthly State, one demonstrating its present existence, the other serving to signify the heavenly State by its presence"; [264] here the Divine State is also to be understood by the earthly, in so far as the former is copied on earth.) The Roman kingdom has become Christian, and Augustine rejoices in the fact. [265] But it is only by the help of justitia that rests on love that the State can secure earthly peace, and lose the character of being a robbery (latrocinium). But righteousness and love only exist where the worship of the true God is found, in the Church, God's State. [266] Accordingly the State must be dependent on the kingdom of God; in other words, those who, as rulers, administer the earthly peace of society, are legitimate and "blessed" (felices), when they make "their power subservient to the divine majesty for the extension as widely as possible of the worship of God, if they love that kingdom more, where they do not fear having colleagues." [267] Rulers, therefore, must not only be Christians, but must serve the Church in order to attain their own object (pax terrena); for outside the Divine State--of love and righteousness--there are no virtues, but only the semblance of virtues, i.e., splendid vices (XIX. 25). However much Augustine may have recognised, here and elsewhere, the relative independence and title of the State, [268] the proposition stands, that since the Church is the kingdom of God it is the duty of the State to serve it, because the State becomes more legitimate by being, as it were, embodied in it. [269] It is especially the duty of the State, however, to aid the Church by forcible measures against idolatry, heretics, and schismatics; for compulsion is suitable in such cases to prevent the good from being seduced, to instruct the wavering and ignorant, and to punish the wicked. But it by no means follows from this that in Augustine's view the State was to pursue anything that might be called an independent ecclesiastical or religious policy. It rather in matters of religion constantly supports the cause of the Church, and this at once implies that it is to receive its instructions from the Church. And this was actually Augustine's procedure. His conception of the "Christian State" did not include any imperial papistical title on the part of the civil power; such a title was rather absolutely precluded. Even if the Church begged for clemency to heretics, against whom it had itself invoked the arm of the State, this did not establish the independent right of the latter to inflict punishment: it served the Church in punishing, and it gratified it in practising clemency. [270] II. 21. Augustine was compelled by the Donatist practice of re-baptism and re-ordination to examine more closely, following Optatus, the significance and efficacy of the functions of the Church. It was inevitable that in doing so he should give a more prominent place to the notion of the Church as the communion of the Sacraments, and at the same time have instituted extremely sophistical discussions on the Sacraments--which, however, he did not yet carry out to their conclusion--in order to prove their objectivity, and make them independent of men, yet without completely externalising them, while vindicating them as the Church's exclusive property. 22. To begin with, it was an immense advance, only possible to so spiritual a man as Augustine, to rank the Word along with the Sacraments. It is to him we owe the phrase "the Word and Sacraments." If he did not duly appreciate and carry out the import of the "Word," yet he perceived that as gospel it lay at the root of every saving rite of the Church. [271] 23. Exhaustively as he dealt with the Sacraments, he was far from outlining a doctrine regarding them; he contented himself rather with empirical reflections on ecclesiastical procedure and its defence. He did not evolve a harmonious theory either of the number or notion of the Sacraments. [272] Every material sign with which a salvation-conferring word was connected was to him a Sacrament. "The word is added to the element, and a Sacrament is constituted, itself being, as it were, a visible word." [273] The emphasis rests so strongly on the Word and faith (on John XXV. 12: "believe and thou hast eaten") that the sign is simply described in many places, and indeed, as a rule, as a figure. But this view is modified by the fact that in almost as many passages the Word, with its saving power, is also conceived as a sign of an accompanying invisible entity, [274] and all are admonished to take whatever is here presented to the senses as a guarantee of the reality. But everything beyond this is involved in obscurity, since we do not know to what signs Augustine would have us apply his ideas about the Sacrament; in De doctr. Christ. he speaks as if Baptism and the Lord's Supper were almost alone in question, but in other passages his language is different. [275] 24. He himself had no occasion to pursue his reflections further in this direction. On the other hand, the Donatist thesis that the efficacy of the Sacrament depended on the celebrant, and the Donatist practice of re-baptism, forced him to set up two self-contradictory positions. First, the Sacraments are only efficacious in the Church, but they are also efficacious in circles outside the Church. If he abandoned the former principle, he denied the indispensableness of the Church; if he sacrificed the second, he would have required to approve of re-baptism. Secondly, the Sacraments are independent of any human disposition, and they are inseparably attached to the Catholic Church and faith. To give up the one thesis meant that the Donatist was right; to doubt the other was to make the Sacrament a magical performance indifferent to Christianity and faith. In order to remove these contradictions, it was necessary to look for distinctions. These he found, not, say, by discriminating between the offer and bestowal of grace, but by assuming a twofold efficacy of the Sacraments. These were (1) an indelible marking of every recipient, which took place wherever the Sacrament was administered, no matter by whom, [276] and (2) an administration of grace, in which the believer participated only in the union of the Catholic Church. According to this he could teach that: the Sacraments belong exclusively to the Catholic Church, and only in it bestow grace on faith; but they can be purloined from that Church, since, "being holy in themselves," they primarily produce an effect which depends solely on the Word and sign (the impression of an indelible "stamp"), and not on a human factor. [277] Heretics have stolen it, and administer it validly in their associations. Therefore the Church does not again baptise repentant heretics (schismatics), being certain that at the moment of faithful submission to the Catholic communion of love, the Sacrament is "efficacious for salvation" (ad salutem valet) to him who had been baptised outside its pale. [278] 25. This theory could not but leave the nature of the "stamp" impressed and its relation to the communication of grace obscure. [279] The legal claim of schismatics and heretics to belong to the Catholic Church appears to be the most important, and, indeed, the sole effect of the "objectivity" of the Sacraments outside the Church. [280] But the theory was only worked out by Augustine in baptism and ordination, though even here he did not succeed in settling all the problems that arose, or in actually demonstrating the "objectivity." But in his treatment of the Lord's Supper, e.g., it cannot be demonstrated at all. For since, according to him, the reality of the Sacrament (res sacramenti) was invisible incorporation in the body of Christ (Augustine deals with the elements symbolically), and the eucharistic sacrifice was the sacrifice of love or peace, the co-operation of the Catholic Church is always taken to be essential to the Lord's Supper. Accordingly there is here no "stamp" independent of the Church. [281] But in the case of Baptism, he could assume that it could establish, even outside of the Church, an inalienable relation to the triune God, whose place could not be supplied by anything else, which in certain circumstances created a kind of faith, but which only bestowed salvation within the pale of the Church. [282] And in the case of Ordination he could teach that, properly bestowed, it conveyed the inalienable power to administer the Sacraments, although the recipient, if he stood outside the Church, only officiated to his own perdition. [283] In both cases his view was determined by the following considerations. First, he sought to defend the Church, and to put the Donatists in the wrong. Secondly, he desired to indicate the mark of the Church's holiness, which could not, with certainty, be established in any other way, in the objective holiness of the Sacraments. And, thirdly, he wished to give expression to the thought that there must exist somewhere, in the action of the Church, an element to which faith can cling, which is not supported by men, but which sustains faith itself, and corresponds to the assurance which the believer rests on grace. Augustine's doctrine of grace has a very great share in his doctrine of the sacraments, or, more accurately, of the sacrament of baptism. On the other hand, he had by no means any sacerdotal interest in this conception. But it could not fail afterwards to develop in an essentially sacerdotal sense. But, at the same time, men were impelled in quite a different direction by the distinction between the outward rite and accompanying effect, by the value given to the "Word" and the desire to maintain the objectivity of the Sacrament. The above distinction could not but lead in later times to a spiritualising which refined away the Sacraments, or, on the other hand, centred them in the "Word," where stress was laid on a given and certain authority, and therewith on the supremacy of the Word. Both these cases occurred. Not only does the Mediæval Catholic doctrine of the Sacraments go back to Augustine, but so do the spiritualists of the Middle Ages, and, in turn, Luther and Calvin are indebted to him for suggestions. [284] __________________________________________________________________ Augustine's conception, above described, of the visible Church and means of grace is full of self-contradictions. His identification of the Church with the visible Catholic Church was not a success. He meant that there should be only one Church, and that none but believers should belong to it; but the wicked and hypocrites were also in it, without being it; nay, even heretics were in a sense in it, since they participated in the Sacraments. But in that case is the Church still visible? It is--in the Sacraments. But the Church which is visible in the Sacraments is certainly not the bride and body of Christ, the indispensable institution of salvation; that is alone the Church which is possessed by the spirit of love; and yet it is masked by the presence of the wicked and hypocritical. And the Sacrament cannot be relied upon; for while it is certainly not efficacious for salvation outside the Catholic Church, it is by no means certainly efficacious within it. The one Church is the true body of Christ, a mixed body, and the outward society of the Sacraments; in each instance we have a different circle; but it is as essential and important that it should be the one as the other. What is the meaning, then, "of being in the Church" (in ecclesia esse)? Every speculation on the notions of things is fated to stumble on contradictions; everything can be something else, anything is everything, and everything is nothing. The speculation surprises us with a hundred points of view--that is its strength--to end in none of them being really authoritative. But all Augustine's deliverances on this subject are seen to be merely conditional in their value, not only from their self-contradictions, but from the fact that the theologian is not, or is only to a very limited extent, expressing his religious conviction. He felt and wrote as he did because he was the defender of the practice of the Church, whose authority he needed for his faith. But this faith took quite other directions. Even those inconsistencies, which indeed were partly traditional, show that his conception of the Church was penetrated by an element which resisted the idea that it was visible. This element, however, was itself by no means congruous throughout, but again cornprehended various though intertwined features. 1. The Church is heavenly; as bride and body of Christ it is quite essentially a heavenly society (cælestis societas). This ancient traditional idea stood in the foreground of Augustine's practical faith. What the Church is, it cannot at all be on earth; it possesses its truth, its seat, in heaven. There alone is to be found the true sphere of its members; a small fragment wander as pilgrims here upon earth for a time. It may indeed be said that upon earth we have only the copy of the heavenly Church for in so far as the earthly fragment is a "civitas terrena" (an earthly state) it is not yet what it will be. It is united with the heavenly Church by hope. It is folly to regard the present Church as the Kingdom of Heaven. "What is left them but to assert that the kingdom of heaven itself belongs to the temporal life in which we now exist? For why should not blind presumption advance to such a pitch of madness? And what is wilder than that assertion? For although the Church even as it now exists is sometimes called the kingdom of heaven, it is surely so named because of its future and eternal existence?" [285] 2. The Church is primeval, and its members are therefore not all included in the visible institution of the Catholic Church. We now meet with the conception expounded by Augustine in his great work "De civitate dei," at which he wrought for almost fifteen years. The civitas dei, i.e., the society in which there rules "the love of God to the contempt of self" (amor dei usque ad contemptum sui, XIV. 28), and which therefore aspires to "heavenly peace" (pax cælestis), began in the angelic world. With this the above conception (see sub. 1) is combined: the city of God is the heavenly Jerusalem. But it embraces all believers of the past, present, and future; it mingled with the earthly State (civitas terrena) before the Deluge, [286] ran through a history on earth in six periods (the Deluge, Abraham, David, the Exile, Christ, and Christ's second Advent), and continues intermingled with the secular State to the end. With the transcendental conception of the City of God is thus combined, here and elsewhere, [287] the universalist belief applied to the present world: [288] Christianity, old as the world, has everywhere and in all ages had its confessors who "without doubt" have received salvation; for the "Word" was ever the same, and has always been at work under the most varied forms ("prius occultius, postea manifestius") [289] down to the Incarnation. He who believed on this Word, that is Christ, received eternal salvation. [290] 3. The Church is the communion of those who believe in the crucified Christ, and are subject to the influences of his death, and who are therefore holy and spiritual (sancti et spiritales). To this view we are conducted by the conclusion from the previous one, the humanist and universalist element being stript away. If we ask: Where is the Church? Augustine answers in innumerable passages, wherever the communion of these holy and spiritual persons is found. They are Christ's body, the house, temple, or city of God. Grace on the one hand, faith, love, and hope on the other, constitute accordingly the notion of the Church. Or briefly: "the Church which is on earth exists by the remission of sins," or still more certainly "the Church exists in love." [291] In any number of expositions Augustine ignores every idea of the Church except this, which leads him to think of a spiritual communion alone, and he is as indifferent to the conception of the Church being an outward communion of the Sacraments as to the last one now to be mentioned. [292] 4. The Church is the number of the elect. The final consequence of Augustine's doctrine of grace (see next section) teaches that salvation depends on God's inscrutable predestination (election of grace) and on that alone. Therefore the Church cannot be anything but the number of the elect. This is not, however, absolutely comprehended in the external communion of the Catholic Church--for some have been elect, who were never Catholics, and others are elect who are not yet Catholics. Nor is it simply identical with the communion of the saints (that is of those who submit themselves in faith to the operation of the means of grace); for these may include for the time such as will yet relapse, and may not include others who will ultimately be saved. Thus the thought of predestination shatters every notion of the Church--that mentioned under 2 can alone to some extent hold its ground--and renders valueless all divine ordinances, the institution and means of salvation. The number of the elect is no Church. The elect of God are to be found inside and outside the Church, under the operation and remote from the operation of sacramental grace; God has his subjects among the enemy, and his enemies among those who for the time being are "good." [293] Augustine, the Catholic, did not, however, venture to draw the inexorable consequences of this conception; if he was ever led to see them he contented himself with bringing more closely together the notions of the external communion, communion of saints, Christ's body, city of God, kingdom of heaven, and number of elect, and with thus making it appear as if they were identified. He stated his conviction that the number of the elect was substantially confined to the empirical Catholic Church, and that we must therefore use diligently all its benefits. But on the other hand, the faith that actuated his own life was too personal to let him bind grace, the source of faith, love, and hope, indissolubly to mechanical means and external institutions, and he was too strongly dominated by the thought of God's majesty and self-sufficiency to bring himself to examine God narrowly as to the why and how of his actions. He never did maintain that predestination was realised by means of the Church and its communication of grace. [294] Augustine's different conceptions of the Church are only united in the person of their originator, whose rich inner life was ruled by varied tendencies. The attempts to harmonise them which occur in his writings are, besides being few in number, quite worthless. But the scholastic endeavour to combine or pack together the different notions by new and flimsy distinctions leads to theological chatter. Even Augustine's opponents apparently felt only a small part of the inconsistencies. Men at that time were far from seeking in religious conceptions that kind of consistency which is even at the present day felt as a want by only a small minority, and in any case is no necessary condition of a sincere piety. Perhaps the most important consequence of Augustine's doctrine of the Church and Sacraments consists in the fact that a complex of magical ceremonies and ideas, which was originally designed to counter-balance a moralistic mode of thought based on the doctrine of free-will, now held its ground alongside of a religious frame of mind. The Sacrament had a deteriorating effect on the latter; but, on the other hand, it was only by this combination that it was itself rendered capable of being reformed. It is impossible to mistake, even in the case of Augustine himself, that the notion of the Church in which his own life centred was swayed by the thought of the certainty of grace and earnestness of faith and love, and that, similarly, his supreme intention, in his doctrine of the means of grace, was to establish the comfort derived from the sure grace of God in Christ, which was independent of human agency. Augustine subordinated the notions of the Church and Sacraments to the spiritual doctrine of God, Christ, the gospel, faith and love, as far as that was at all possible about A.D. 400. __________________________________________________________________ [233] The Manichæans professed, in the controversy of the day, to be the men of "free inquiry" ("docendi fontem aperire gloriantur" De utilit. 21). We cannot here discuss how far they were; Augustine did not conscientiously feel that his breach with them was a breach with free inquiry. Therefore the efforts from the outset to define the relations of ratio and auctoritas, and to save what was still possible of the former. [234] Psalmus c. partem Donati--C. Parmeniani epist. ad Tichonium b. III.--De bapt. c. Donatistas, b. VII.--C. litteras Petiliani, b. III.--Ep. ad Catholicos c. Donatistas--C. Cresconium, b. IV.--De unico bapt. c. Petilianum--Breviculus Collationis c. Donatistis--Post collationem ad Donatistas. Further, at a later date Sermo ad Cæsareensis ecclesiæ plebem--De gestis cum Emerito--C. Gaudentium Donatistam episcopum, b. II. The Sermo de Rusticiano is a forgery by the notorious Hieronymus Viguerius. [235] Augustine supported, at least from A.D. 407, the suppression by force of the Donatists by the Christian state in the interest of "loving discipline." The discussion of A.D. 411 was a tragi-comedy. Last traces of the Donatists are still found in the time of Gregory I., who anew invoked the aid of the Civil power against them. [236] C. Litt. Petil I. 3: "Qui fidem a perfido sumpserit non fidem percipit, sed reatum." I. 2: "Conscientia dantis adtenditur, qui abluat accipientis." Other Donatistic theses ran (l.c.) "Omnes res origine et radice consistit, et si caput non habet aliquid, nihil est." "Nec quidquam bene regenerat, nisi bono semine (boni sacerdotis) regeneretur." "Quæ potest esse perversitas ut qui suis criminibus reus est, alium faciat innocentem?" [237] The Donatists, of course, did not regard it as re-baptism, l.c. "non repetimus quod jam erat, sed damus quod non erat." [238] Doctrine is, strictly speaking, inaccurate; for Catholicism does not know of any "doctrines" here, but describes an actual state of matters brought about by God. [239] Grace is love and love is grace: "caritas est gratia testamenti novi." [240] C. Crescon. I. 34: "Non autem existimo quemquam ita desipere, ut credat ad ecclesiæ pertinere unitatem eum qui non habet caritatem. Sicut ergo deus unus colitur ignoranter etiam extra ecclesiam nec ideo non est ipse, et fides una habetur sine caritate etiam extra ecclesiam, nec ideo non est ipse, ita et unus baptismus, etc." God and faith also exist extra ecclesiam but not "pie." The relevant passages are so numerous that it would give a false idea to quote singly. The conception given here constitutes the core of Augustine's doctrine of the Church: The Holy Ghost, love, unity, and Church occupy an exclusive connection: "caritas christiana nisi in unitate ecclesiæ non potest custodiri, etsi baptismum et fidem teneatis" (c. Pet. litt. II. 172). [241] De unit eccl. 7: "totus Christus caput et corpus est." De civit. XXI. 25. De pecc. mer. I. 59: "Homines sancti et fideles fiunt cum homine Christo unus Christus, ut omnibus per ejus hanc gratiam societatemque adscendentibus ipse unus Christus adscendat in cælum, qui de cælo descendit." Sermo 354, I: "Prædicat Christus Christum." [242] De civit. dei, XVIII. 51, X. [243] Ep. 173, 6: "Foris ab ecclesia constitutus et separatus a compagine unitatis et vinculo caritatis æterno supplicio puniveris, etiam si pro Christi nomine vivus incenderis." [244] The Biblical texts are here used that had been already quoted against Calixtus and the Anti-Novatians (Noah's Ark, The Wheat and Tares, etc.). [245] Augustine seems to have thought that the bad were in the majority even in the Church. He at anyrate held that the majority of men would be lost (Enchir. 97). [246] De bapt. II. 8: If the Donatists were right, there would have been no Church even in Cyprian's time; their own origin would therefore have been unholy. Augustine often reproaches them with the number of gross sinners in their midst. Their grossest sin, it is true, was--schism (c. litt. Pet. II. 221). [247] C. Petil. I. 25: "Malos in unitate catholica vel non noverunt, vel pro unitate tolerant quos noverunt." [248] Here and there in Augustine the thought occurs that the new covenant was throughout milder than the old. [249] C. litt. Pet. III. 4: "Licet a malis interim vita, moribus, corde ac voluntate separari atque discedere, quæ separatio semper oportet custodiatur. Corporalis autem separatio ad sæculi finem fidenter, patienter, fortiter exspectatur." [250] Sermo 4, 11: "Omnes quotquot fuerunt sancti, ad ipsam ecclesiam pertinent." [251] "Corpus permixtum" against the second rule of Tichonius, who had spoken of a bipartite body of the Lord, a term rejected by Augustine. Not a few of Augustine's arguments here suggest the idea that an invisible Church present "in occulto" in the visible was the true Church (De bapt. V. 38). [252] De bapt. I. 13: The question of the Donatists was whether in the view of Catholics baptism begot "sons" in the Donatist Church. if the Catholics said it did, then it should follow that the Donatists had a Church, and since there was only one, the Church; but if the question was answered in the negative, then they drew the inference: "Cur ergo apud vos non renascuntur per baptismum, qui transeunt a nobis ad vos, cum apud nos fuerint baptizati, si nondum nati sunt?" To this Augustine replies: "Quasi vero ex hoc generet unde separata est, et non ex hoc unde conjuncta est. Separata est enim a vinculo caritatis et pacio, sed juncta est in uno baptismate. Itaque est una ecclesia, quæ sola Catholica nominatur; et quidquid suum habet in communionibus diversorum a sua unitate separatis, per hoc quod suum in eis habet, ipsa utique general, non illæ." [253] A Donatist, "historicus doctus," indeed urged the telling objection (Ep. 93, 23) "Quantum ad totius mundi pertinet partes, modica pars est in compensatione totius mundi, in qua fides Christiana nominatur." Augustine, naturally, was unable really to weaken the force of this objection. [254] We have already remarked that Augustine held these to have--at least in many respects--an independent authority; see Doctrina Christ. and Ep 54, 55. In not a few expositions it seems as if the appeal to the Church was solely to the Church that possessed Scripture. [255] Besides the whole of the anti-Donatist writings, see, e.g., Ep. 43, 21; 44, 3; 49, 2, 3; 51, 5; 53, 3. [256] De civit. dei, XX. 10: Distinction between sacerdotes and proprie sacerdotes. [257] Augustine's attitude to the Roman Bishop, i.e. to the infallible Roman tradition, is shown clearly in his criticism of Zosimus (Reuter p. 312 ff., 325 ff.) and in the extremely valuable 36 Epistle, which discusses the work of an anonymous Roman writer, who had glorified the Roman Church along with Peter (c. 21 "Petrus, apostolorum caput, coeli janitor, ecclesiæ fundamentum"), and had declared statutory institutions of the Roman Church to be universally binding. [258] C. litt. Pet. III. 10: "deum patrem et ejus ecclesiam matrem habere." [259] Perhaps the most cogent evidence of this is Ep. 36, 17. The anonymous Roman Christian had appealed to the verse "Non est regnum dei esca et potus," and simply identified "regnum dei" with "ecclesia," to prove that the Roman command to fast on the Sabbath was apostolic. Augustine does not reject this identification, but only the inference drawn from it by the anonymous writer. Here, however, ecclesia is manifestly the Catholic Church. In De trinit. I. 16, 20, 21, Augustine has no doubt that the regnum, which Christ will hand over to the Father, "omnes justi sunt, in quibus nunc regnat mediator," or the "credentes et viventes ex fide; fideles quippe ejus quos redemit sanguine suo dicti sunt regnum ejus." That is the Church; but at the same time it is self-evident that its "wrinkles" are ignored, yet not so its organisation; see on Ps. CXXVI. 3: "Quæ autem domus dei et ipsa civitas? Domus enim dei populus dei, quia domus dei templum dei . . . omnes fideles, quæ est domus dei, cum angelis faciunt unam civitatem. Habet custodes. Christus custodiebat, custos erat. Et episcopi hoc faciunt. Nam ideo altior locus positus est episcopis, ut ipsi superintendant et tamquam custodiant populum." [260] How far he went in this is shown by observing that in B. XX. he has connected with the present, as already fulfilled, not a few passages which plainly refer to Christ's Second Advent; see c. 5: "Multa præterea quæ de ultimo judicio ita dici videntur, ut diligenter considerata reperiantur ambigua vel magis ad aliud pertinentia, sive scilicet ad eum salva oris adventum, quo per totum hoc tempus in ecclesia sua venit, hoc est in membris suis, particulatim atque paulatim, quoniam tota corpus est ejus, sive ad excidium terrenæ Hierusalem, quia et de illo cum loquitur, plerumque sic loquitur tamquam de fine sæculi atque illo die judicii novissimo et magno loquatur." Yet he has left standing much of the dramatic eschatology. [261] See Reuter, Studie III. [262] Augustine had already written in Ep. 35 (A.D. 396, c. 3): "Dominus jugo suo in gremio ecclesiæ toto orbe diffuso omnia terrena regna subjecit." [263] "Remota justitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia"? [264] "Invenimus ergo in terrena civitate dual formas, unam suam præsentiam demonstrantem, alteram cælesti civitati signifcandæ sua præsentia servientem." [265] It is not, accordingly, involved under all circumstances in the notion of the earthly State that it is the organism of sin. Passages on the Christian State, Christian ages, and Catholic emperors, are given in Reuter, p. 141. [266] Augustine, indeed, also holds that there is an earthly justitia, which is a great good contrasted with flagitia and facinora; he can even appreciate the value of relative blessings (Reuter, p. 135 ff.), but this righteousness finally is dissipated, because, not having itself issued from "the Good," it cannot permanently institute anything good. [267] V. 24: If they "suam potestatem ad dei cultum maxime dilatandum majestati ejus famulam faciunt, si plus amant illud regnum, ubi non timent habere consortes." [268] What holds true of the State applies equally, of course, to all particular blessings marriage, family, property, etc. [269] Augustine, therefore, hold; a different view from Optatus (see above, p. 48); at least, a second consideration is frequent, in which the Church does not exist in the Roman empire, but that empire is attached to the Church. In matters of terrena felicitas the Church, according to Augustine, was bound to obey the State. [270] On the relation of Church and State, see Dorner, pp. 295-312, and the modifications considered necessary by Reuter in Studien, 3 and 6. Augustine did not at first approve the theory of inquisition and compulsion (c. Ep. Man. c. 1-3), but he was convinced of its necessity in the Donatist controversy ("coge intrare"). He now held all means of compulsion legitimate except the death penalty; Optatus approved of the latter also. If it is not difficult to demonstrate that Augustine always recognised an independent right of the State to be obeyed, yet that proves little. It may, indeed, be the case that Augustine valued the State relatively more highly than the ancient Christians, who were still more strongly influenced by eschatological views. But we may not forget that he advanced not only the cælestis societas, but the catholica, in opposition to the State. [271] Ep. 21, 3: "sacramentum et verbum dei populo ministrare." Very frequently verbum = evangelium = Christ and the first cause of regeneration. C. litt. Pet. I. 8: "Semen quo regeneror verbum dei est." The objective efficacy of the Word is sharply emphasised, but--outside of the Church it does not succeed in infusing love. C. Pet. III. 67: "minister verbi et sacramenti evangelici, si bonus est, consocius fit evangelii, si autem malus est, non ideo dispensator non est evangelii." II. 11: "Nascitur credens non ex ministri sterilitate, sed ex veritatis foecunditate." Still, Luther was right when he included even Augustine among the new-fashioned theologians who talk much about the Sacraments and little about the Word. [272] "Aliud videtur aliud intelligitur" (Sermo 272) is Augustine's main thought, which Ratramnus afterwards enforced so energetically. Hahn (L. v. d. Sacram., p. 11 ff.) has detailed Augustine's various statements on the notion of the Sacrament. We learn, e.g., from Ep. 36 and 54, the strange point of view from which at times he regarded the conception of the Sacrament: see 54, 1: "Dominus noster, sicut ipse in evangelio loquitur, leni jugo suo nos subdidit et sarcinæ levi; unde sacramentis numero paucissimis, observatione facillimis, significatione præstantissimis societatem novi populi colligavit." Baptism and the Lord's Supper follow "et si quid aliud in scripturis canonicis commendatur. . . . Illa autem quæ non scripta, sed tradita custodimus, quæ quidem toto terrarum orbe servantur, datur intelligi vel ab ipsis apostolis, vel plenariis conciliis, quorum est in ecclesia saluberrima auctoritas, commendata atque statuta retineri, sicut quod domini passio et resurrectio et ascensio in cælum et adventus de cælo spiritus sancti anniversaria sollemnitate celebrantur, et si quid aliud tale occurrit quod servatur ab universa, quacumque se diffundit, ecclesia." [273] On John T. 80, 3: "Accedit verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum, etiam ipsum tamquam visibile verbum. [274] De catech. rud. 50: "Signacula quidem rerum divinarum esse visibilia, sed res ipsas invisibiles in eis honorari." [275] Hahn (p. 12) gives the following definition as Augustinian: "The Sacrament is a corporeal sign, instituted by God, of a holy object, which, from its nature, it is adapted by a certain resemblance to represent, and by means of it God, under certain conditions, imparts his grace to those who make use of it." [276] Ep. 173, 3: "Vos oves Christi estis, characterem dominicum portatis in Sacramento." De bapt. c. Donat. IV. 16: "Manifestum est, fieri posse, ut in eis qui sunt ex parte diaboli sanctum sit sacramentum Christi, non ad salutem, sed ad judicium eorum . . . signa nostri imperatoris in eis cognoscimus . . . desertores sunt." VI. 1: "Oves dominicum characterem a fallacibus deprædatoribus foris adeptæ." [277] De bapt. IV. 16: "Per se ipsum considerandus est baptismus verbis evangelicis, non adjuncta neque permixta ulla perversitate atque malitia sive accipientium sive tradentium . . . non cogitandum, quis det sed quid det." C. litt. Pet. I . 8: "(Against various Donatist theses, e.g., conscientia dantis adtenditur, qui abluat accipientis') Sæpe mihi ignota est humana conscientia, sed certus sum de Christi misericordia . . . non est perfidus Christus, a quo fidem percipio, non reatum . . . origo mea Christus est, radix mea Christus est . . . semen quo regeneror, verbum dei est . . . etiam si ille, per quem audio, quæ mihi dicit ipse non facit . . . me innocentem non facit nisi qui mortuus est propter delicta nostra et resurrexit propter justificationem nostram. Non enim in ministrum, per quem baptizor, credo, sed in eum, qui justificat impium." [278] We have to emphasise the distinction between "habere" and "utiliter habere" often drawn in the writings against the Donatists; c. Cresc. I. 34: "Vobis (Donatistis) pacem nos annuntiamus, non ut, cum ad nos veneritis, alterum baptismum accipiatis, sed ut eum qui jam apud vos erat utiliter habeatis," or "una catholica ecclesia non in qua sola unus baptismus habetur, sed in qua sola unus baptismus salubriter habetur." De bapt. c. Donat. IV. 24: "Qui in invidia intus et malevolentia sine caritate vivunt, verum baptisma possunt et accipere et tradere. (Sed) salus, inquit Cyprianus, extra ecclesiam non est. Quis negat? Et ideo quæcumque ipsius ecclesiæ habentur, extra ecclesiam non valent ad salutem. Sed aliud est non habere, aliud non utiliter habere." [279] In the Catholic Church the seal and salvation coincide where faith is present. Augustine's primary concern was that the believer should receive in the Sacrament a firm conviction of the mercy of Christ. [280] Augustine did not really lay any stress on legal relation; but he did, as a matter of fact, a great deal to set matters in this light. [281] Sermo 57, 7: "Eucharistia panis noster quotidianus est; sed sic accipiamus illum, ut non solum ventre sed et mente reficiamur. Virtus enim ipsa, quæ ibi intelligitur, unitas est, ut redacti in corpus ejus, effecti membra ejus, simus quod accipimus." 272: "panis est corpus Christi . . . corpus Christi si vis intelligere, apostolum audi: vos estis corpus Christi." Augustine maintains the traditional conception that, in speaking of the "body of Christ," we may think of all the ideas connected with the word (the body is pneumatikon, is itself spirit, is the Church), but he prefers the latter, and, like the ancient Church, suffers the reference to forgiveness of sins to fall into the background. Unitas and vita (De pecc. mer. I. 34) occupy the foreground. Therefore in this case also, nay, more than in that of any other signum, the sign is wholly irrelevant. This "sacramentum unitatis" assures believers and gives them what they are, on condition of their possessing faith. (On John XXVI. 1: "credere in eum, hoc est manducare panem vivum"; De civit. XX I. 25.) No one has more strongly resisted the realistic interpretation of the Lord's Supper, and pointed out that what "visibiliter celebratur, oportet invisibiliter intelligi" (On Ps. XCVIII. 9 fin.). "The flesh profits nothing," and Christ is not on earth "secundum corporis præsentiam." Now it is possible that, like the Greeks, Augustine might here or there have entertained the thought that the sacramental body of the Lord must also be identified with the real. But I have found no passage which clearly supports this (see also Dorner, p. 267 ff.). All we can say is that not a few passages at a first glance can be, and soon were, understood in this way. Augustine, the spiritual thinker, has in general greatly weakened the dogmatic significance of the Sacrament. He indeed describes it, like Baptism, as necessary to salvation; but since he hardly ever cites the argument that it is connected with the resurrection and eternal life, the necessity is reduced to the unity and love which find one expression along with others in the Lord's Supper. The holy food is rather, in general, a declaration and assurance, or the avowal of an existing state, than a gift. In this Augustine agrees undoubtedly with the so-called pre-Reformers and Zwingli. This leads us to the import of the rite as a sacrifice ("sacrificium corporis Christi"). Here there are four possible views. The Church presents itself as a sacrifice in Christ's body; Christ's sacrificial death is symbolically repeated by the priest in memory of him; Christ's body is really offered anew by the priest; and Christ, as priest, continually and everywhere presents himself as a sacrifice to the Father. Of these views, 1, 2, and 4 can certainly be instanced in Augustine, but not the third. He strictly maintains the prerogative of the priest; but there is as little mention of a "conficere corpus Christi" as of Transubstantiation; for the passage (Sermo 234, 2) to which Catholics delight to appeal: "non omnis panis sed accipiens benedictionem fit corpus Christi," only means that, as in all Sacraments, the res is now added to the panis, and makes it the signum rei invisibilis; by consecration the bread becomes something different from what it was before. The res invisibilis is not, however, the real body, but incorporation into Christ's body, which is the Church. According to Augustine, the unworthy also obtain the valid Sacrament, but what they do receive is indeed wholly obscure. I could not say with Dorner (p. 274): "Augustine does not know of any participation in the real (?) body and blood on the part of unbelievers." [282] It is now the proper administration of baptism (rite) that is emphasised. The Sacrament belongs to God; therefore it cannot be rendered invalid by sin or heresy. The indispensableness of baptism rests of sheer necessity on the "stamp," and that is the most fatal turn it could take, because in that case faith is by no means certainly implied. The "Punici" are praised in De pecc. mer. I. 34, because they simply call baptism "salus"; but yet the indispensableness of the rite is not held to consist in its power of conferring salvation, but in the stamp. This indispensableness is only infringed by the baptism of blood, or by the wish to receive baptism where circumstances render that impossible. In the corresponding line of thought baptism rightly administered among heretics appears, because possessed unlawfully, to be actually inefficacious, nay, it brings a judgment. The Euphrates, which flows in Paradise and in profane countries, only brings forth fruit in the former. Therefore the controversy between Dorner and Schmidt, whether Augustine did or did not hold the Sacrament to be dependent on the Catholic Church, is idle. It is independent of it, in so far as it is necessary; dependent, if it is to bestow salvation. Yet Dorner (l.c. p. 252 f., and elsewhere) seems to me to be advancing not an Augustinian conception, but at most a deduction from one, when he maintains that Augustine does not contradict the idea that the Church is rendered holy by its membership, by emphasising the Sacraments, but by laying stress on the sanctity of the whole, namely the Church. He repeatedly makes the suggestion, however, in order to remove the difficulties in Augustine's notion of the Sacraments, that he must have distinguished between the offer and bestowal of grace; even the former securing their objective validity. But this is extremely questionable, and would fall short of Augustine; for his correct religious view is that grace operates and does not merely make an offer. Augustine, besides, has wavered to such an extent in marking off the place of the stamp, and of saving efficacy in baptism, that he has even supposed a momentary forgiveness of sin in the case of heretics (De bapt. I. 19; III. 18: "rursus debita redeunt per hæresis aut schismatis obstinationem et ideo necessarium habent hujusmodi homines venire ad Catholicam pacem;" for, on John XXVII. 6: "pax ecclesiæ dimittit peccata et ab ecclesiæ pace alienatio tenet peccata; petra tenet, petra dimittit; columba tenet, columba dimittit; unitas tenet, unitas dimittit"). The most questionable feature of Augustine's doctrine of baptism (within the Church) is that he not only did not get rid of the magical idea, but strengthened it by his interest in infant baptism. While he intended that baptism and faith should be connected, infant baptism made a cleavage between them. He deduced the indispensableness of infant baptism from original sin, but by no means also from the tendency to make the salvation of all men dependent on the Church (see Dorner, p. 257). In order to conserve faith in baptism, Augustine assumed a kind of vicarious faith on the part of god-parents, but, as it would appear, he laid no stress on it, since his true opinion was that baptism took the place of faith for children. However, the whole doctrine of baptism is ultimately for Augustine merely preliminary. Baptism is indispensable, but it is, after all, nothing more. The main thing is the active presence of the Holy Spirit in the soul; so that, from this point of view, baptism is of no real importance for salvation. But Augustine was far from drawing this inference. [283] Little reflection had hitherto been given in the Church to ordination. The Donatists furnished a motive for thinking about it, and it was once more Augustine who bestowed on the Church a series of sacerdotal ideas, without himself being interested in their sacerdotal tendency. The practice had indeed for long been sacerdotal; but it was only by its fateful combination with baptism, and the principle that ordination did not require (as against Cyprian) a moral disposition to render it valid, that the new sacrament became perfect. It now conferred an inalienable stamp, and was, therefore, if it had been properly administered, even though outside the Church, not repeated, and as it communicated an objective holiness, it gave the power also to propagate holiness. From Book I. c. 1 of De bapt. c. Donat. onwards, the sacramentum baptismi and the sacramentum baptismi dandi are treated in common (§ 2: "sicut baptizatus, si ab unitate recesserit, sacramentum baptismi non amittit, sic etiam ordinatus, si ab unitate recesserit, sacramentum dandi baptismi non amittit." C. ep. Parm. II. 28: "utrumque in Catholica non licet iterari." The clearest passage is De bono conjug. 32: "Quemadmodum si fiat ordinatio cleri ad plebem congregandam, etiamsi plebis congregatio non subsequatur, manet tamen in illis ordinatis sacramentum ordinationis, et si aliqua culpa quisquam ab officio removeatur, sacramento domini semel imposito non carebit, quamvis ad judicium permanente"). The priests are alone appointed to administer the sacraments (in c. ep. Parm. II. 29 we have the remarkably tortuous explanation of lay-baptism; Augustine holds that it is a veniale delictum, even when the necessity is urgent; he, at least, believes it possible that it is so. But baptism, even when unnecessarily usurped by laymen, is valid, although illicite datum; for the "stamp" is there. Yet Augustine warns urgently against encroaching on the office of the priest.) None but the priest can celebrate the Lord's Supper. That was ancient tradition. The judicial functions of priests fall into the background in Augustine (as compared with Cyprian). We do not find in him, in a technical form, a sacrament of penance. Yet it actually existed, and he was the first to give it a substructure by his conception that the gratia Christi was not exhausted in the retrospective effect of baptismal grace. In that period, baptism and penance were named together as if they were the two chief Sacraments, without the latter being expressly called a Sacrament; see Pelagius' confession of faith (Hahn, § 133): "Hominem, si post baptismum lapsus fuerit, per pænitentiam credimus posse salvari;" which is almost identical with that of Julian of Eclanum (l.c. § 535): "Eum, qui post baptismum peccaverit, per pænitentiam credimus posse salvari;" and Augustine's (Enchir. 46): "Peccata, quæ male agendo postea committuntur, possunt et pænitendo sanari, sicut etiam post baptismum fieri videmus;" (c. 65): "Neque de ipsis criminibus quamlibet magnis remittendis in sancta ecclesia dei misericordia desperanda est agentibus pænitentiam secundum modum sui cujusque peccati." He is not speaking of baptism, but of the Church's treatment of its members after baptism, when he says (l.c. c. 83): "Qui vero in ecclesia remitti peccata non credens contemnit tantam divini muneris largitatem et in hac obstinatione mentis diem claudit extremum, reus est illo irremissibili peccato in spiritum sanctum." [284] A passage in Augustine's letter to Januarius (Ep. 55, c. 2) on the nature of the sacrament became very important for after ages: "Primum oportet noveris diem natalem domini non in sacramento celebrari, sed tantum in memoriam revocari quod natus sit, ac per hoc nihil opus erat, nisi revolutum anni diem, quo ipsa res acta est, festa devotione signari. Sacramentum est autem in aliqua celebratione, cum rei gestæ commemoratio ita fit, ut aliquid etiam signfcari intelligatur, quod sancte accipiendum est. Eo itaque modo egimus pascha ut non solum in memoriam quod gestum est, revocemus, id est, quod mortuus est Christus et resurrexit, sed etiam cetera, quæ circa ea adtestantur ad sacramenti significationem non omittamus." [285] De virgin. 24: "Quid aliud istis restat nisi ut ipsum regnum cælorum ad hanc temporalem vitam, in qua nunc sumus, asserant pertinere? Cur enim non et in hanc insaniam progrediatur cæca præsumptio? Et quid hac assertione furiosius? Nam etsi regnum cælorum aliquando ecclesia etiam quæ hoc tempore est appellatur ad hoc utique sic appellatur, quia futuræ vitæ sempiternæque colligitur." It is needless to quote more passages, they are so numerous. [286] See on this above, p. 151. [287] E.g., Ep. 102, quæst 2, esp. § 12. [288] See above, p. 152, n. 2. [289] Formerly more hiddenly, afterwards more manifestly. [290] In this line of thought the historical Christ takes a very secondary place; but it is quite different in others; see Sermo 116, 6: "Per Christum factus est alter mundus." [291] "Per remissionem peccatorum stat ecclesia quæ est in terris." "In caritate stat ecclesia." [292] We see here that the assumption that the Church was a corpus permixtum or an externa communio sacramentorum was only a make-shift conception; see the splendid exposition De baptis. V. 38, which, however, passes into the doctrine of predestination. [293] De bapt. V. 38: "Numerus ille justorum, qui secundum propositum vocati sunt, ipse est (ecclesia). . . . Sunt etiam quidam ex eo numero qui adhuc nequiter vivant aut etiam in hæresibus vel in gentilium superstitionibus jaceant, et tamen etiam illic novit dominus qui sunt ejus. Namque in illa ineffabili præscientia dei multi qui foris videntur, intus sunt, et multi, qui intus videntur, foris sunt." We return to this in dealing with Augustine's doctrine of predestination. [294] Here Reuter is entirely right as against Dorner. __________________________________________________________________ 3. The Pelagian Controversy. The Doctrine of Grace and Sin. Augustine's doctrine of grace and sin was constructed independently of the Pelagian controversy. It was substantially complete when he entered the conflict; but he was by no means clear as to its application in separate questions in the year of his conversion. At the time of his fight with Manichæism (see the Tres libri de libero arbitrio) he had rather emphasised, following the tradition of the Church teachers, the independence of human freedom, and had spoken of original sin merely as inherited evil. It was his clerical office, a renewed study of Romans, and the criticism of his spiritual development, as instituted in the Confessions, that first led him to the Neoplatonic Christian conviction that all good, and therefore faith, came from God, and that man was only good and free in dependence on God. Thus he gained a point of view which he confessed at the close of his life he had not always possessed, and which he opposed to the earlier, erroneous conceptions [295] that friends and enemies frequently reminded him of It can be said that his doctrine of grace, in so far as it was a doctrine of God, was complete as early as A.D. 387; but it was not, in its application to Bible history, or to the problem of conversion and sanctification (in the Church), before the beginning of the fifth century. It can also be shown that he was at all times slightly influenced by the popular Catholic view, and this all the more as he was not capable of drawing the whole consequences of his system, which, if he had done so, would have led to determinism. This system did not evoke Pelagianism. Pelagius had taken offence, indeed, before the outbreak of the controversy, at Augustine's famous sentence: "Grant what thou commandest, and command what thou dost desire," and he had opposed it at Rome; [296] but by that date his doctrine was substantially settled. The two great types of thought, involving the question whether virtue or grace, morality or religion, the original and inalienable constitution of man, or the power of Jesus Christ was supreme, did not evolve themselves in the controversy. They gained in clearness and precision during its course, [297] but both arose, independently of each other, from the internal conditions of the Church. We can observe here, if anywhere, the "logic" of history. There has never, perhaps, been another crisis of equal importance in Church history in which the opponents have expressed the principles at issue so clearly and abstractly. The Arian dispute before the Nicene Council can alone be compared with it; but in this case the controversy moved in a narrow sphere of formulas already marked off by tradition. On the other hand, in spite of the exegetical and pseudo-historical materials that encumbered the problems in this instance also, there is a freshness about the Pelagian controversy and disputants that is wanting in the Greek contentions. [298] The essentially literary character of the dispute, the absence of great central incidents, did not prejudice it any way; the main issue was all the freer of irrelevant matter. But it is its most memorable feature that the Western Church so speedily and definitely rejected Pelagianism, while the latter, in its formulas, still seemed to maintain that Church's ancient teaching. In the crucial question, whether grace is to be reduced to nature, or the new life to grace, in the difficulty how the polar antitheses of "creaturely freedom and grace" are to be united, [299] the Church placed itself resolutely on the side of religion. In doing so it was as far from seeking to recognise all the consequences that followed from this position as it had been a hundred years earlier at Nicæa; indeed it did not even examine them. But it never recalled--perhaps it was no longer possible to recall--the step taken as soon as rationalistic moralism clearly revealed its character. Not only is the inner logic of events proved by the simultaneous and independent emergence of Augustinianism and Pelagianism, but the how strikes us by its consistency. On the one side we have a hot-blooded man who had wrestled, while striving for truth, to attain strength and salvation, to whom the sublimest thoughts of the Neoplatonists, the Psalms, and Paul had solved the problems of his inner life, and who had been over-powered by his experience of the living God. On the other, we have a monk and a eunuch, [300] both without traces of any inner struggles, both enthusiasts for virtue, and possessed by the idea of summoning a morally listless Christendom to exert its will, and of leading it to rnonachist perfection; equally familiar with the Fathers, desirous of establishing relations with the East, and well versed in Antiochene exegesis; [301] but, above all, following that Stoic and Aristotelian popular philosophy--theory of knowledge, psychology, ethics and dialectics--which numbered so many adherents among cultured Christians of the West. The third member of the league, Julian of Eclanum, the early widowed Bishop, was more active and aggressive than the reserved and prudent Pelagius, [302] more circumspect than Cælestius, the agitator, and more cultured than either. Overbearing in manner, he had a talent for dialectics, and, more stubborn than earnest, was endowed with an insatiable delight in disputing, and a boyish eagerness to define conceptions and construct syllogisms. He was no monk, but a child of the world, and jovial by nature. He was, indeed, the first, and up to the sixteenth century, the unsurpassed, unabashed representative of a self-satisfied Christianity. Pelagius and Cælestius required the aid of Julian, if the moralistic mode of thought was not to be represented from one side alone--the religious view needed only one representative. Certainly no dramatist could have better invented types of these two contrasted conceptions of life than those furnished by Augustine on the one hand, and the two earnest monks, Pelagius and Clestius, and the daring, worldly bishop Julian on the other. [303] We have thus already indicated the origin of Pelagianism. It is the consistent outcome of the Christian rationalism that had long been wide spread in the West, especially among the more cultured, that had been nourished by the popular philosophy influenced by Stoicism and Aristotelianism, [304] and had by means of Julian received a bias to (Stoic) naturalism. [305] (We may not overlook the fact that it originally fell back upon monachism, still in its early stages in the West, and that the two phenomena at first sought a mutual support in each other.) [306] Nature, free-will, virtue and law, these--strictly defined and made independent of the notion of God--were the catch-words of Pelagianism: self-acquired virtue is the supreme good which is followed by reward. Religion and morality lie in the sphere of the free spirit; [307] they are won at any moment by man's own effort. The extent to which this mode of thought was diffused is revealed, not only by the uncertain utterances of theologians, who in many of their expositions show that they know better, [308] but above all by the Institutes of Lactantius. [309] In what follows we have first to describe briefly the external course of the controversy, then to state the Pelagian line of thought, and finally to expound Augustine's doctrine. [310] I. We first meet with Pelagius in Rome. In every century there have appeared preachers in Italy who have had the power of thrilling for the moment the vivacious and emotional Italians. Pelagius was one of the first (De pecc. orig. 24: "He lived for a very long time in Rome"). Roused to anger by an inert Christendom, that excused itself by pleading the frailty of the flesh and the impossibility of fulfilling the grievous commandments of God, he preached that God commanded nothing impossible, that man possessed the power of doing the good if only he willed, and that the weakness of the flesh was merely a pretext. "In dealing with ethics and the principles of a holy life, I first demonstrate the power to decide and act inherent in human nature, and show what it can achieve, lest the mind be careless and sluggish in pursuit of virtue in proportion to its want of belief in its power, and in its ignorance of its attributes think that it does not possess them." [311] In opposition to Jovinian, whose teaching can only have encouraged laxity, he proclaimed and urged on Christians the demands of monachism; for with nothing less was this preacher concerned. [312] Of unquestioned orthodoxy, [313] prominent also as exegete and theologian in the capital of Christendom, [314] so barren in literary work, he was so energetic in his labour that news of his success penetrated to North Africa. [315] He took to do with the practical alone. Apparently he avoided theological polemics; but when Augustine's Confessions began to produce their narcotic effects, he opposed them. Yet positive teaching, the emphasising of the freedom of the will, always remained to him the chief thing. On the other hand, his disciple and friend Cælestius [316] seems to have attacked original sin (tradux peccati) from the first. His converts proclaimed as their watchword that the forgiveness of sin was not the object of infant baptism. [317] When Alaric stormed Rome, the two preachers retreated by Sicily to North Africa. They intended to visit Augustine; but Pelagius and he did not meet either in Hippo or Carthage. [318] Probably the former left suddenly when he saw that he would not attain his ends in Africa, but would only cause theological strife. On the other hand, Cælestius remained, and became candidate for the post of Presbyter in Carthage. But as early as A.D. 412 (411) he was accused by Paulinus, Deacon in Milan (afterwards Ambrose's biographer), at a Synod held in Carthage before Bishop Aurelius. [319] The points of the complaint, reduced to writing, were as follows:--He taught "that Adam was made mortal and would have died whether he had or had not sinned--that Adam's sin injured himself alone, and not the human race--infants at birth are in that state in which Adam was before his falsehood--that the whole human race neither dies on account of Adam's death or falsehood, nor will rise again in virtue of Christ's resurrection--the law admits men to the kingdom of heaven as well as the gospel--even before the advent of our Lord there were impeccable men, i.e., men without sin--that man can be without sin and can keep the divine commands easily if he will." [320] Cælestius declared at the conference that infants needed baptism and had to be baptised; that since he maintained this his orthodoxy was proved; that original sin (tradux peccati) was at any rate an open question, "because I have heard many members of the Catholic Church deny it, and also others assent to it." [321] He was, nevertheless, excommunicated. In the Libellus Brevissimus, which he wrote in his own defence, he admitted the necessity of baptism if children were to be saved; but he held that there was a kingdom of heaven distinct from eternal life. He would not hear of forgiveness of sin in connection with infant baptism. [322] He was indisputably condemned because he undid the fixed connection between baptism and forgiveness, thus, as it were, setting up two baptisms, and offending against the Symbol. He now went to Ephesus, [323] there became Presbyter, and afterwards betook himself to Constantinople. Pelagius had gone to Palestine. He followed different tactics from his friend, who hoped to serve the cause by his maxim of "shocking deeply" (fortiter scandalizare). Pelagius desired peace; he wrote a flattering letter to Augustine, who sent him a friendly but reserved answer. [324] He sought to attach himself to Jerome, and to give no public offence. He plainly felt hampered by Cælestius with his agitation for the sinlessness of children, and against original sin. He wished to work for something positive. How could anyone thrust a negative point to the front, and check the movement for reform by precipitancy and theological bitterness? He actually found good friends. [325] But his friendly relations with John, Bishop of Jerusalem, could not please Jerome. Besides, reports of Pelagius' questionable doctrines came from the East, where, in Palestine, there always were numerous natives of the West. Jerome, who at the time was on good terms with Augustine, broke with Pelagius, [326] and wrote against him the Ep. ad Ctesiphontem (Ep. 133), and the Dialogi c. Pelag., writings which constitute a model of irrational polemics. He put in the foreground the question, "whether man can be without sin," and at the same time did all he could to connect Pelagius with the "heretic" Origen and other false teachers. But still greater harm was done to Pelagius [327] by the appearance, at this precise moment, of the work already known to us, in which Cælestius played so regardlessly the rôle of the enfant terrible of the party (see above). [328] Augustine's disciple, the Spanish priest Orosius, who had come to Jerome in order to call his attention to the dangers of Pelagianism, ultimately succeeded in getting John of Jerusalem to cite Pelagius, and to receive a formal report on his case in presence of his presbyters (A.D. 415). But the inquiry ended with the triumph of the accused. Orosius referred to the authority of his celebrated teacher, and to that of Jerome and the Synod of Carthage, but without success, and when Pelagius was charged with teaching that man could be sinless and needed no divine help, the latter declared that he taught that it was not possible for man to become sinless without divine grace. With this John entirely agreed. Now since Orosius for his part would not maintain that man's nature was created evil by God, the Orientals did not see what the dispute was all about. The conference, irregular and hampered by Orosius' inability to speak Greek, was broken off: it was said that the quarrel might be decided in the West, or more precisely in Rome. [329] Pelagius had repelled the first attack. But his opponents did not rest. They succeeded, in December, 415, in getting him brought before a Palestinian Synod, presided over by Eulogius of Cæsarea, at Diospolis, where, however, he was not confronted by his accusers. [330] He was at once able to appeal to the favourable testimonies of many Bishops, who had warmly recognised his efforts to promote morality. He did not disown the propositions ascribed to him regarding nature and grace, but he succeeded in explaining them so satisfactorily, that his judges found him to be of blameless orthodoxy. The extravagant sentences taken from the letter to Livania he in part set right, and in part disowned, and when the Synod required him expressly to condemn them, he declared: "I anathematise them as foolish, not as heretical, seeing it is no case of dogma." [331] Hereupon the Synod decided: "Now since with his own voice Pelagius has anathematised the groundless nonsense, answering rightly that a man can be without sin with the divine help and grace, let him also reply to the other counts." [332] There were now laid before him the statements of Cælestius as to Adam, Adam's sin, death, new-born children, the perdition of the rich, sinlessness of God's children, the unessential character of divine assistance--in short, all those propositions which had either been already condemned at Carthage, or were afterwards advanced by Cælestius in a much worse form. Pelagius was in an awkward position. He hated all theological strife; he knew that Christian morality could only lose by it; he wished to leave the region of dogma alone. [333] Cælestius had only said, indeed, what he himself had described as correct when among his intimate friends; but the former had spoken publicly and regardlessly, and--"the tone makes the music." Thus Pelagius considered himself justified in disowning almost all those statements: "but the rest even according to their own testimony was not said by me, and for it I am not called upon to give satisfaction." But he added: "I anathematise those who hold or have held these views." With these words he pronounced judgment on himself; they were false. The Synod rehabilitated him completely: "Now since we have been satisfied by our examination in our presence of Pelagius the monk, and he assents to godly doctrines, while condemning those things contrary to the faith of the Church, we acknowledge him to belong to our ecclesiastical and Catholic Communion." [334] No one can blame the Synod: [335] Pelagius had, in fact, given expression to its own ideas; Augustinianism was neither known nor understood; and the "heresy of Cælestius" [336] was condemned. [337] But Pelagius now found it necessary to defend himself to his own adherents. While on the one hand he was zealous in promoting in the West the effect of the impression produced by the decision in his favour, he wrote to a friendly priest, [338] that his statement, "that a man can be without sin and keep the commands of God easily [339] if he will," had been recognised as orthodox. His work, De natura, made its appearance at the same time, and he further published four books, De libero arbitrio, [340] which, while written with all caution, disclosed his standpoint more clearly than his earlier ones. [341] But North Africa [342] did not acquiesce in what had taken place. The prestige of the West and orthodoxy were endangered. Synods were held in A.D. 416 at Carthage and Mileve, Augustine being also present at the latter. Both turned to Innocent of Rome, to whom Cælestius had appealed long before. Soon after the epistles of the two Synods (Aug. epp. 175, 176,) the Pope received a third from five African Bishops, of whom Augustine was one (Ep. 177). [343] It was evidently feared that Pelagius might have influential friends in Rome. [344] The letters referred to the condemnation, five years before, of Cælestius; they pointed out that the Biblical doctrine of grace and the doctrine of baptism were in danger, and demanded that, no matter how Pelagius might express himself, those should be excommunicated who taught that man could overcome sin and keep God's commands by virtue of his own nature, or that baptism did not deliver children from a state of sin. It was necessary to defeat the enemies of God's grace. It was not a question of expelling Pelagius and Cælestius, but of opposing a dangerous heresy. [345] The Pope had, perhaps, never yet received petitions from North African Synods which laid such stress on the importance of the Roman Chair. Innocent sought to forge the iron while it was hot. In his four replies (Aug. Epp. 181-184 = Innoc. Epp. 30-33) he first congratulated the Africans on having acted on the ancient rule, "that no matter might be finally decided, even in the most remote provinces, until the Roman Chair had been informed of it, in order that every just decision might be confirmed by its authority;" for truth issued from Rome, and thence was communicated in tiny streams to the other Churches. The Pope then praised their zeal against heretics, declared it impious to deny the necessity of divine grace, or to promise eternal life to children without baptism; he who thought otherwise was to be expelled from the Church, unless he performed due penance. "Therefore (Ep. 31, 6) we declare in virtue of our Apostolic authority that Pelagius and Cælestius are excluded from the communion of the Church until they deliver themselves from the snares of the devil;" if they did so, they were not to be refused readmission. Any adherents of Pelagius who might be in Rome would not venture to take his part after this condemnation; besides, the acquittal of the man in the East was not certain; nothing indubitably authentic had been laid before him, the Pope, and it appeared even from the proceedings, if they were genuine, that Pelagius had got off by evasions; if he felt himself to be innocent, he would have hastened to Rome that he might be acquitted by us; he would not summon him, however; those among whom he resided might try him once more; if he recanted, they could not condemn him; there lurked much that was blasphemous, but still more that was superfluous, in the book, De Natura; "what orthodox believer might not argue most copiously about the potentiality of nature, free-will, the whole grace of God and daily grace?" [346] He who can read between the lines will readily observe that the Pope left more than one back-door open, and had no real interest in the controversy. [347] Pelagius now sent his remarkably well-composed confession of faith [348] to Rome, along with an elaborate vindication of himself. [349] The accusation that he refused baptism to children, or promised them admission to heaven without it, and that he taught that men could easily fulfil the divine commands, he declared to be a calumny invented by his enemies. As already at Diospolis, so now he guarded himself against the worst charges, though they were not indeed unwarranted, partly by mental reservations, and partly by modifications; but we cannot say that he was unfaithful to his main conception. He declared that all men had received the power to will aright from God, but that the divine aid (adjutorium) only operated in the case of Christians. It was blasphemous to maintain that God had given impossible commands to men. He took his stand between Augustine and Jovinian. This letter did not reach Innocent, he having died. It was thus received by his successor Zosimus. Cælestius, who had come to Rome and submitted a Libellus fidei that left nothing to be desired in point of submission to the Pope, vindicated himself to the latter. Cælestius, on the whole, seems now, when matters had become critical, to have sounded the retreat; [350] he at least modified his statements, and took care not to come into conflict with the theory, deducible from the Church's practice, that infant baptism did away with sin. [351] After these similar declarations of the two friends, Zosimus did not see that the dogma or Church practice of baptism was endangered in any respect. At a Roman Synod (417), Cælestius, who was ready to condemn everything banned by the Pope, was rehabilitated; [352] and Pelagius, for whom Orientals interceded, was likewise declared to have cleared himself. The complainants were described as worthless beings, and the Africans were blamed for deciding too hastily; they were called upon to prove their charges within two months. This result was communicated in two letters [353] to the African Bishops. [354] They were told that Pelagius had never been separated from the Church, and that if there had been great joy over the return of the lost son, how much greater should be the joy of believing that those about whom false reports had been circulated were neither dead nor lost (Ep. 4, 8)! The Carthaginians were indignant, but not discouraged. A Synod (417) determined to adhere to the condemnation until it was ascertained that both heretics saw in grace not merely an enlightenment of the intellect, but the only power for good (righteousness), without which we can have absolutely no true religion in thought, speech, and action. [355] This resolution was conveyed to Zosimus. Paulinus of Milan declared at the same time in a letter to the Pope that he would not come to Rome to prosecute Cælestius, for the case had been already decided. [356] This energetic opposition made the Pope cautious. In his reply, [357] he glorified Peter and his office in eloquent language, but changed his whole procedure, declaring now that the Africans were under a mistake if they believed that he had trusted Cælestius [358] in everything, and had already come to a decision. The case had not yet been prejudiced, and was in the same position as before (March, 418). Immediately after the arrival of this letter in Africa, a great Council was held there--more than 200 Bishops being present--and Pelagianism was condemned, without consulting the Pope, in 8 (9) unequivocal Canons; [359] indeed, such was the indignation felt against Zosimus--and on different grounds--that the Council, in its 17 Canon, threatened with excommunication any appeal to Rome. [360] But it had first assured itself of the Emperor's support, who had published on the 30th April, 418, an edict to the Prefect of the Prætorium, banishing the new heretics with their followers from Rome, permitting their prosecution, and threatening the guilty with stringent penalties. [361] Zosimus, whose action had been hitherto influenced by the strength of Pelagius' party in Rome, now laid down his arms. In his Ep. tractatoria to all the Churches, [362] he informed them of the excommunication of Cælestius and Pelagius, was now convinced that the doctrines of the absolute importance of justifying grace, and of original sin, belonged to the faith (de fide), and required all Bishops to signify their assent by their signatures. But eighteen Bishops refused; [363] they appealed to a General Council, and recalled with reason the fact that the Pope had himself formerly considered a thorough conference to be necessary. In their name Julian of Eclanum wrote two bold letters to the Pope, [364] while also rejecting the propositions once set up by Cælestius. [365] From now onwards the stage was occupied by this "most confident young man," for whom Augustine, a friend of his family, possessed so much natural sympathy, and whom, in spite of his rudeness, he always treated, as long as the case lasted, affectionately and gently. [366] At the instigation of the new Pope, Boniface, Augustine refuted one of the letters sent to Rome and circulated in Italy, as well as another by Julian (addressed to Rufus of Thessalonica) in his work c. duas epp. Pelagianorum (420). Julian, who had resigned or been deposed from his bishopric, now took up his sharp and restless pen. No one else pressed Augustine so hard as he; he compelled him to work out the consequences of his line of thought; he displayed inexorably the contradictions in his works, and showed how untenable was the great man's doctrine when it was fully developed; he pointed out the traces of a Manichæan type of thinking in Augustine, traces of which the latter tried in vain to get rid. He could indeed explain that he did not mean them, but could not show that they were not there. Julian's charge that Augustine's teaching desecrated marriage had made an impression on the powerful Comes Valerius in Rome. Augustine sought to weaken the force of the charge in his writing, De nuptiis et concupiscentia, Lib. I.; but Julian now wrote a work in four volumes against the treatise. Augustine based a reply on extracts from the latter (De nupt. et concup., 1. II.), and when he received the work itself, he substituted, for this preliminary answer, a new work: Libri sex c. Julianum hæresis Pelagianæ defensorem. Julian replied to the "Preliminary pamphlet" with a work in eight volumes (written already in Cilicia). Augustine was engaged with the answer to this work, Opus imperf. c. Julianum (l. sex), up to his death. Since he follows Julian almost sentence by sentence, we possess the most accurate information as to the latter's positions. [367] In his latest years, Augustine composed other four writings which are not aimed directly at the Pelagians, but discuss objections raised against his own doctrine by Catholics or Semi-Pelagians [368] (De gratia et libero arbitrio; De correptione et gratia: to the monks of Hadrumetum; De prædestinatione sanctorum and De dono perseverantiæ: to Prosper and Hilary as against the Gallic monks). In these works the doctrine of predestinating grace is worked out in its strictest form. The Pelagians nowhere came to form a sect or schismatical party. [369] They were suppressed in the years after A.D. 418, without it being necessary to apply any special force. The Emperor once more published a sharp edict. Cælestius, who had hitherto escaped punishment, was still chiefly dealt with. He was forbidden to reside in Italy, and sentence of exile was pronounced on anyone who should harbour him. Pelagius is said to have been condemned by a Synod in Antioch. But this information, given by Marius, is uncertain. He disappears from history. [370] Julian and other Pelagians took refuge with Theodore in Cilicia. There they were at first left in peace; for either the controversy was not understood, or the attitude to Augustinianism was hostile. The indefatigable Cælestius was able in A.D. 424 to demand once more an inquiry in Rome from Bishop Cælestine, but then betook himself, without having obtained his object, to Constantinople, where, since Julian and other friends were also assembled, the party now pitched their headquarters. [371] The Patriarch Nestorius joined hands with them, a proceeding fatal to both sides; for Nestorius thereby incurred the displeasure of the Pope, and the Pelagians fell into the ranks of the enemies of the dominant party in the East (Cyril's). Marius Mercator agitated successfully against them at the Court, and in the comedy at Ephesus Cyril obliged the Roman legates by getting the Council to condemn the doctrine of Cælestius, Rome having concurred in his condemnation of Nestorius. [372] Thus Pelagianism had brought upon itself a kind of universal anathema, while in the East there were perhaps not even a dozen Christians who really disapproved of it, [373] and the West, in turn, was by no means clear as to the consequences to which it would necessarily be led by the condemnation of the Pelagians. II. As regards the history of dogma, the "system" of Pelagianism, i.e. of Julian of Eclanum, is tolerably indifferent; for it was only produced after the whole question was already decided, and its author was a theologian, who, by renouncing his ecclesiastical office, had himself thrown away much of his claim to be considered. From the standpoint of the history of dogma, the controversy closed simply with rejection of the doctrines, (1) that God's grace (in Christ) was not absolutely necessary--before and after baptism--for the salvation of every man, and (2) that the baptism of infants was not in the fullest sense a baptism for remission of sins (in remissionem peccatorum). The contrary doctrines were the new "dogmas." But, since those two doctrines and the main theses of Pelagianism involved a multitude of consequences, and since some of these consequences were even then apparent, while others afterwards occupied the Church up till and beyond the Reformation, it is advisable to point out the fundamental features of the Pelagian system, and the contrary teaching of Augustinianism. [374] In doing so we have to remember that Pelagius would have nothing to do with a system. To him "De fide" (of the faith) meant simply the orthodox dogma and the ability of man to do the good. All else were open questions which might be answered in the affirmative or negative, among the rest original sin, which he denied. He laid sole stress on preaching practical Christianity, i.e., the monastic life, to a corrupt and worldly Christendom, and on depriving it of the pretext that it was impossible to fulfil the divine commands. Cælestius, at one with his teacher in this respect, attacked original sin more energetically, and fought by the aid of definitions and syllogisms theological doctrines which he held to be pernicious. But Julian was the first to develop their mode of thought systematically, and to elevate it into a Stoic Christian system. [375] Yet he really added nothing essential to what occurs scattered through the writings of Pelagius and Cælestius. He only gave it all a naturalistic tendency, i.e., he did away with the monastic intention of the type of thought. But even in Pelagius, arguments occur which completely contradict the ascetic monastic conception. In his letter to Demetrius he shows that fasting, abstinence and prayer are not of such great importance; they should not be carried to excess, as is often done by beginners; moderation should be observed in all things, therefore even in good works. The main thing is to change one's morals and to practise every kind of virtue. And thus no one is to think that the vow of chastity can let him dispense with the practice of spiritual virtues and the fight with anger, vanity, and pride, etc. It was the actual development of the character in goodness on which he laid stress. The monastic idea appears subordinate to this thought, which in some passages is expressed eloquently. The ancient call to wise moderation has not a naturalistic impress in Pelagius. In treating the thought of these three men as a whole we have to remember this distinction, as also the fact that Pelagius and Cælestius for the most part paid due heed to Church practice, and besides avoided almost entirely any appeal to the ancient philosophers. [376] They were all actuated by a courageous confidence in man's capacity for goodness, along with the need for clearness of thought on religious and moral questions. 1. God's highest attributes are his goodness and justice, and, in fact, righteousness is the quality without which God cannot be thought of at all; indeed, it can even be said that there is a God, because there is righteousness. [377] "Justice, as it is wont to be defined by the learned (s. Aristotle) and as we can understand, is (if the Stoics will allow us to prefer one to the other) the greatest of all virtues, discharging diligently the duty of restoring his own to each, without fraud, without favour." [378] Its genus is God; its species are the promulgation and administration of the laws; its difference consists in its being regulated by circumstances; its modus in its not requiring from anyone more than his powers permit, and in not excluding mercy; its quality in sweetness to pious souls. This notion of righteousness is so sure that it appears also to be ideally superior to Holy Scripture (see Op. imperf. II. 17): "Nothing can be proved by the sacred writings which righteousness cannot support." [379] 2. It follows, from the goodness and righteousness of God, that everything created by him is good--and that not only at the beginning--but what he now creates is likewise good. [380] Accordingly, the creature is good, and so also are marriage, the law, free will, and the saints. [381] 3. Nature, which was created good, is not convertible, "because the things of nature persist from the beginning of existence (substance) to its end." [382] "Natural properties are not converted by accident." [383] Accordingly, there can be no "natural sins" (peccata naturalia); for they could only have arisen if nature had become evil. 4. Human nature is thus indestructibly good, and can only be modified accidentally. To its constitution belongs--and that was very good--the will as free choice; for "willing is nothing but a movement of the mind without any compulsion." [384] This free choice, with which reason is implied, [385] is the highest good in man's constitution, "he who upholds grace praises human nature." [386] We know that Pelagius always began in his sermons by praising man's glorious constitution, his nature which shows itself in free will [387] and reason, and he never wearied of extolling our "condition of willing" (conditio voluntatis), as contrasted with the "condition of necessity" (conditio necessitatis) of irrational creatures. "Nature was created so good that it needs no help." [388] With reason as guide (duce ratione) man can and should do the good, i.e., righteousness (jus humanæ societatis). [389] God desires a voluntary performer of righteousness (voluntarius executor justitiæ); it is his will that we be capable of both, and that we do one. According to Pelagius freedom of will is freedom to choose the good; according to Julian it is simply freedom of choice. The possibility of good as a natural faculty is from God, [390] willing and action are our business; [391] the possibility of both (possibilitas utriusque) is as a psychological faculty inevitable (a necessario); for this very reason a continual change is possible in it. [392] 5. Evil, sin, is willing to do that which righteousness forbids, and from which we are free to abstain, [393] accordingly what we can avoid. [394] It is no element or body, no nature--in that case God would be its author; nor is it a perverted nature (natura conversa), but it is always a momentary self-determination of the will, which can never pass into nature so as to give the to an evil nature. [395] But if this cannot happen, so much the less can evil be inherited; for that would do away with the goodness and righteousness of God, the notion of sin (as that which can be avoided), and the notion of redemption; a "natural" guilt could never be got rid of. [396] 6. Pelagius deduced the actual existence of sin from the snares of the devil and sensuous lusts (gula and libido), and condemned concupiscence accordingly. It was necessary to overcome it by virginity and continence. It sprang not from the substance of the flesh (de substantia carnis), but from its works (ex operibus carnis), otherwise God would be its author. Pelagius took a serious view of this whole matter; but he was certain, on the other hand, that the body was subject to the soul, and that thus the relationship willed by God could be restored. [397] But Julian felt that this was a vexed point. Whence came the evil desires of the flesh (desideria carnis mala) if the substance was good, and if it was yet manifest that they frequently did not spring from the will? The case of marriage, which is unthinkable without sexual desire, showed Julian that libido was permitted by God, and he attacked inexorably the artificial distinctions which Augustine sought and was compelled to make between nuptiæ and concupiscentia. [398] Julian taught that concupiscence was in itself indifferent and innocent; for the actual creation was of all conceivable kinds the best; but this creation embraced sexual and all other desires. [399] Libido was guilty non in genere suo, non in specie, non in modo, but only in excessu; genus and species were from God, the modus depended on an honest decision (arbitrium honestatis), excess followed from a fault of will (vitium voluntatis). [400] If it were otherwise, then baptism would necessarily eradicate, and not merely regulate, concupiscence. [401] Accordingly the latter, within limits (intra modum), was good; [402] he who used it moderately, used a blessing rightly; he who indulged in it immoderately, used a blessing badly; but he who from love to virginity despised even moderate indulgence, did not thereby use a good thing better. [403] The shame alluded to by Augustine, which is felt even at the lawful enjoyment of desire, was explained by Julian, following the Cynics, as mere convention and custom. [404] Christ himself possessed concupiscence. [405] 7. It follows from this teaching that there can always have been sinless men: [406] Pelagius, indeed, argued further that since every man could resist sin (easily), he who sinned passed into hell at the Judgment; [407] for every sin was really mortal, the sinner having acted against his ability to do better. Julian, moreover, taught that every excess was a mortal sin, since it was done absolutely without compulsion. [408] In the end, it is said, God punishes the wicked and rewards the virtuous. But it remains wholly obscure how there can exist virtue (righteousness) and sin at all if, in practising them, a character can never be gained, if we are only concerned with fragmentary actions from which no deposit is left or sum-total formed. In the foregoing the fundamental conceptions of the Pelagians are described. But they were also, of course, Catholic Christians; they were accordingly compelled to harmonise these doctrines of theirs with Holy Scripture and its historical contents, with Christ and the teaching of the Church. How they did so we have still briefly to discuss in what follows. It is apparent that the difficulties in showing this agreement were extraordinarily great, and, indeed, not only for them, but for everyone who would harmonise a coherent rational doctrine with Gen. I.-III., and with hundreds of passages in Scripture. 8. Adam was created with free will--according to Pelagiusalso with "what is called natural holiness" (naturalis quæ dicitur sanctitas), which consisted just in free will and reason. Julian considered this state to be morally very high and intellectually low. [409] All are, however, agreed that Adam's endowments were the peculiar and inalienable gift of divine grace (gratia). 9. Adam sinned through free will (Julian esteemed this sin of slight account); [410] but by this sin his nature was not corrupted. Nor was natural death a consequence of it, for it is natural; but spiritual death, the condemnation of the soul on account of sin, was the result of sin. [411] 10. Natural death was accordingly not inherited from Adam; moreover, spiritual death was only in so far as his descendants likewise sinned. If all men died through Adam's death, then all would necessarily rise again through the resurrection of Christ. [412] 11. Still much less was Adam's sin or guilt transmitted. The doctrine of transmitted and original sin (tradux peccati and peccatum originis) is Manichæan and blasphemous; it is equally absurd whether viewed in relation to God, or man, or the notion of sin, or Christ, or Holy Scripture. In relation to God, for his righteousness is annulled by imputing the sins of others, and regarding as sinful a nature that has not yet sinned, just as much as it would be by ushering into the world, laden with sin, human beings born after Adam's fall. In relation to man, for a vitiated nature is then equivalent to a bad nature; if a nature possesses evil, it is bad; but in that case the guilt falls upon God, for he is responsible for our nature; further, sin could only propagate itself, if we assumed a procreation of souls; but this assumption is absurd; finally, if sin is propagated through marriage, so that desire in marriage is and transmits sin, marriage is thereby condemned. In relation to the notion of sin, for sin is absolutely embraced by the will, so that it does not exist at all, where there is no free-will; further, even if it could propagate itself, it could not be transmitted by baptised parents; lastly, Augustine's contention that sin is itself used by God as a punishment of sin, that there is a divine law of sin, etc., is absurd and immoral. In relation to Christ, for were nature bad, it could not be redeemed, or, were there an inherited sin which became natural to man, Christ also must have possessed it. In relation to Holy Scripture, as countless passages show that sin is a matter of the will, and that God punishes each for his own sins alone. Rom. V. 12, merely asserts that all die because they themselves sin like Adam, or something similar; in any case it contains nothing to support inherited sin. [413] 12. Thus all men created by God are in the position in which Adam was before the fall. [414] An unessential difference exists only in so far as Adam possessed at once the use of reason, while children do not; that Adam was still untaught, while children are born into a society in which the custom of evil prevails. Pelagius at least teaches this. [415] The mere capacity city of either (mera capacitas utriusque) is the original innocence. [416] 13. The habit of sinning, working by example, according to Pelagius, weakens the will (?). Yet nothing can be said as to how it really works; for otherwise the indifference of the will [417] is destroyed. Probably the meaning was that the possibility of good remained wholly intact, but the habit of sinning darkened reason. [418] 14. It is when we come to discuss grace that it is hardest to reproduce the view of the Pelagians; for it was here that they found it most necessary to accommodate their opinions. Very strong assertions occur in Pelagius and Julian--Cælestius was more reserved [419] --as to the necessity of divine grace (adjutorium) for every good work. [420] We also find statements to the effect that grace facilitated goodness. [421] Finally, others occur which teach that grace is superfluous, nay, strictly speaking, in itself impossible. [422] It is no injustice to the Pelagians to take the two latter positions, which, to a certain extent can be combined, as giving their true opinion; for it was assuredly the chief intention of Pelagius to deprive Christians of their indolent reliance on grace, and Julian's main object was to show that the human constitution bore merit and salvation in its own lap. The proposition "homo libero arbitrio emancipatus a deo" really contains the protest against any grace. [423] 15. By grace we have throughout to understand in the first place the grace of creation; [424] it is so glorious that there have been perfect men even among heathens and Jews. [425] 16. In the second place, it denotes the law (lex) of God; indeed, all grace, in so far as it is not nature, can at bottom have no other character than that of illumination and instruction (doctrina). This facilitates the doing of the good. [426] 17. Thirdly, grace means the grace of God through Christ. This also is at bottom illuminatio et doctrina; [427] Christ works by his example. [428] Pelagius and Julian admit that the habit of sinning was so great that Christ's appearance was necessary. [429] Julian's conception of this appearance was that Christ owed what he became to his free will. [430] But it was necessary, over and above instruction (doctrina), to assume, in conformity with Church teaching and practice, an effective action through Christ on the part of God. The Pelagians did not deny that this was represented in baptism and the remissions granted by God; they taught the forgiveness of sins through baptism. But they could not show wherein this forgiveness consisted without coming into conflict with freedom. As regards infant baptism, they dared no longer dispute its necessity; indeed, they dared no longer flatly declare that it was not given for the remission of sins. They derived a certain consecration and sanctification from it, but they disputed the doctrine that children dying unbaptised were lost; these would only fail to enter the kingdom of heaven, the highest grade of felicity. [431] 18. Finally, the Pelagians taught that this grace through Christ was compatible with the righteousness (justitia) of God, because the latter did not preclude an increase of benefits, [432] but that grace was given secundum merita (according to the merits of the rational spirit) because in any other case God would have been unjust. [433] The contention, however, that it was absolutely necessary was never seriously advocated by them, and was frequently denied, and in the thesis that the operation of the gospel is not different from that of the law, the former is in point of fact completely reduced to the level of the latter. But the law is itself nothing but a crutch not necessary to everyone. Man is to be sinless: this state we can attain by our will; but sinlessness (impeccantia) is rendered easy to the Christian; for by looking to Christ he can easily turn, and in baptism, the mysteries, dogmas, and the commandments, he from the first possesses nothing but means to promote virtue. All that Christ did and the Church does is considered not as action but as teaching. The Pelagians deserve respect for their purity of motive, their horror of the Manichæan leaven and the opus operatum, their insistence on clearness, and their intention to defend the Deity. [434] But we cannot but decide that their doctrine fails to recognise the misery of sin and evil, that in its deepest roots it is godless, that it knows, and seeks to know, nothing of redemption, and that it is dominated by an empty formalism (a notional mythology) which does justice at no single point to actual quantities, and on a closer examination consists of sheer contradictions. In the form in which this doctrine was expressed by Pelagius--and in part also by Julian--i.e., with all the accommodations to which he condescended, it was not a novelty. [435] But in its fundamental thought it was; or, rather, it was an innovation because it abandoned, in spite of all accommodations in expression, the pole of the mystical doctrine of redemption, which the Church had steadfastly maintained side by side with the doctrine of freedom. [436] III. The fundamental notion of Pelagianism is nature embracing free will (liberum arbitrium); the fundamental notion of Augustinianism is grace, and in the Pelagian controversy the grace of God through Christ. [437] In Pelagianism the doctrine of grace amounts to an "appendix" badly connected with the main subject; in Augustinianism the doctrine of nature is beset with contradictions, because it is impossible to give a rational account of nature and history from the standpoint of the grace of experience. For it is absolutely impossible to develop as a rational doctrine the conviction of the transforming grace of God who is also the creator; it must begin and end with the confession: "How incomprehensible are God's judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" Augustine, sneered at as "Aristoteles Poenorum" as "philosophaster Poenorum" (Op. imperf. III. 198, V. 11), knew this also. But living in an age when it was held to be culpable ignorance and unbelief not to answer all possible questions, and penetrated by the vulgar conviction that Holy Scripture solved all problems, he, too, made the highest facts and the feelings of the inner life which he had gained in the gospel the starting-point of a description of "primitive history" and the history of mankind that could not but end in contradictions. At the same time, the pathological experiences of the course of his life are mirrored in this description. The stream of living water still bears in its depths traces of the gloomy banks past which it once had flowed, and into which it had almost sunk. [438] 1. Mankind is, as experience shows, a "mass of sin" [massa peccati (perditionis)], waited on by death, and incapable of raising itself to the good; for having revolted from God, it could no more return to him than an empty vessel could refill itself. But in Christ the Redeemer--and in him alone--the grace of God manifested itself and entered on the work of man's deliverance. Christ by his death removed the gulf between God and mankind--breaking the rule of the devil--so that the grace of God, which for that reason is gratia per (propter) Christum, could pursue its work. [439] This free grace (gratia gratis data) [440] working in the Church, is beginning, middle, and end. Its aim is the rescue from the massa perditionis, that as guilty falls justly a prey to eternal death, of a fixed number of elect (certus numerus electorum), who enter eternal life. They are saved because God, in virtue of his eternal decree of salvation, has predestinated, chosen, called, justified, sanctified, and preserved them. [441] This is done through grace, which thus is (1) prevenient; [442] for it must first create the good will (faith). [443] (This prevenient grace can be combined with "the call" (vocatio); [444] but we must even here remember that the call comes to some who are not "called according to the purpose." [445] In the strict sense the whole transactions of grace apply only to those who are predestinated; [446] in the wider sense, grace operates as far as sanctification in a much greater circle, who, however, finally perish, because they have not received its last work.) [447] Augustine has inserted his whole religious experience in the confession of free and prevenient grace. He nowhere speaks with greater conviction, more simply and grandly, than where he praises the grace that snatches man from his sinful condition. But grace (2) works co-operatively. [448] This work evolves itself in a series of stages, since naturally it is only possible slowly and gradually to reach the goal whose attainment is desired, viz., the perseverance and complete and actual regeneration of man [449] --re-creation into good men--accordingly his being rendered capable of doing good works of piety and possessing merit. The calling (vocatio) first results in faith as God's gift. This faith is itself subject to growth, i.e., it begins as unquestioning acceptance based on the authority of the Church and Scripture; it presents itself further as obedience, then trust (fiducia) believing God, belief about God, belief on God (credere deum, credere de deo, credere in deum) and as such passes into love. [450] Parallel with this goes the effective (visible) action of grace in the Church, [451] which begins with the remission of sins. [452] This is administered in baptism, and since the latter removes the guilt of original sin, [453] and blots out sins previously committed, it is the "bath of regeneration." But it is so only as an initiatory act; for the actual justification, which corresponds to co-operating grace, is not yet gained, where sin is no longer imputed, but only where the irreligious man has become just, where accordingly an actual renovation has taken place. This is effected through the infusion of love into the heart by the Holy Spirit, and this love substitutes good for evil desire (concupiscence). That is, the man now not only makes the joyful confession: "To me to cleave to God is a good thing," and delights in God as the summum bonum, instead of in perishable possessions (the humility of faith, love and hope in place of pride of heart), but gains also the power to do good works. This new frame of mind and capacity, which grace begets through the gift of the Holy Spirit, is the experience of justification by faith (justificatio ex fide). [454] Justification is an act that takes place once for all, and is completed sub specie æternitatis, and with reference to the fact that everything can be comprised in faith. As an empirical experience, however, it is a process never completed in this world, because the being replenished with faith, which through love labours to effect the complete transformation of man, is itself subject to limitation in our present life. [455] This operation of the spirit of love has its parallel in the effective (visible) dealings of grace in the Church, and that in the Lord's Supper (the incorporation into the love and unity of Christ's body) as well as in the Eucharistic sacrifice, penance, and Church works, so far as these are capable of blotting out sin. [456] These works, however, possess still another value. Renunciation of worldly pleasure is only completed in asceticism, and since at the Judgment God will deal with us in accordance with our works, the completion of justification can only consist in the sanctification, in virtue of which particular possessions--marriage, property, etc.--are wholly abandoned. It is not, indeed, absolutely necessary for everyone to fulfil the counsels of the gospel (consilia evangelica); we can live in faith, hope, and love without them. God's grace does not make everyone a saint, [457] to be worshipped, and to be implored to intercede for us. But everybody who is to be crowned must ultimately possess merits in some degree; for, at the Judgment, merits will alone be crowned, these ever being, indeed, like all good, God's gifts. [458] But the perseverance of the elect in love through the whole course of their life until the Judgment is (3) the highest and last gift of grace, which now appears as irresistible. Perseverance to the end is the good, without which all that went before is nothing. Therefore, in a sense, it alone is grace; for only those are finally saved who have obtained this irresistible grace. The called who do not possess it are lost. But why only a few obtain this gift, though it is bestowed secundum merita, is God's secret. [459] Eternal life and eternal damnation are decreed by one and the same justice. [460] 2. The doctrine of sin, the Fall, and the primitive state is sketched from the standpoint of free and prevenient grace. It follows from the doctrine of grace that sin characterises mankind as they now exist. Sin presents itself essentially as being without God (carentia dei), the voluntary diminution of strength of being. [461] The failure to possess God (privatio boni), the non inhærere deo, constitutes sin, and, indeed, the two thoughts--the one metaphysical, that sin is defect of being, the other ethical, that it is defect of goodness--coincide as we reflect on them, [462] just as in the examination of grace the metaphysical (the finding of being from not-being) and the ethico-religious elements always accord. This sin is a state: the wretched necessity of being unable to refrain from sinning (misera necessitas non posse non peccandi). Freedom in the sense of free choice is not destroyed; [463] but the freedom still existing always leads to sin; and this state is all the more dreadful, as there exists a certain knowledge of the good, nay, even a powerless desire for it, which invariably succumbs. [464] Positively, however, the sinful state presents itself as the rule of the devil over men, as pride [465] and concupiscence. [466] From that rule it follows that man must be redeemed from without before he can be helped. [467] Pride in relation to God and concupiscence show that man is sinful in soul and body. Yet the emphasis falls on concupiscence; [468] it is the lower desire, sensuous lust, which shows itself above all in the lust of the flesh. The motus genitalium, independent even of the will, teaches us that nature is corrupt; it has not become vice (vitium), but it is vitiated (natura vitiata). [469] It therefore propagates sin. That it does so is attested by the evidence of the senses, the sensuous, and therefore sinful pleasure in the act of procreation, and by Holy Scripture (Rom. V. 12 f.). Thus mankind is a massa perditionis also in the sense that it procreates sin in itself from a corrupt nature. But since the soul in all probability is not procreated at the same time, it is in each case created by God, [470] so the body, begotten in the lust of the flesh, is quite essentially the bearer of sin. [471] That the latter thus descends is decreed by God; for sin is not always merely sin, but also, or often only, the punishment of sin (peccatum and malum combine in the sense of evil). [472] The sin which descends in the massa perditionis (peccatum originis, tradux peccati) is at once sin and sin's punishment. This has been ordained by him who decreed sins (the "ordinator peccatorum)." Every desire involves infatuation. It is the penalty of sin that we do the evil we would not. Every sin carries with it dissolution, the death of the sinner. It rends and dismembers him, it empties him and exhausts him, until he no longer exists. Thus death reigns in its various forms, till it reaches eternal death, in the massa perditionis. This humanity which is subject to the dreary necessity of not being able to refrain from sin (non posse non peccare) is therefore also and at the same time subject to the dreadful necessity of not being able to escape death (non posse non mori). [473] No power of its own can rescue it. Its best deeds are all stained from the roots; therefore they are nothing but splendid vices. Its youngest offspring, even if they have done nothing sinful, must necessarily be lost; for since they possess original sin, i.e., are destitute of God, and are burdened with concupiscence, they pass justly into damnation. [474] This is attested also by the Church when it baptises newly-born children. [475] How did this state arise--a state which could not have been due to God the creator? Scripture and the Church answer: through Adam's Fall. The magnitude of this Fall had already been depicted in the Church; but from his standpoint Augustine had rightly to say that Adam's sin, and therewith sin in general, had not yet been duly perceived--yet the Church, as its institutions prove, had, it was alleged, appreciated it truly; writers, however, had fallen short of this estimate. Adam's Fall was inconceivably great. [476] When, in the hope of becoming like God, he transgressed God's command not to eat the apple, all conceivable sins were compressed into his sin: the revolt to the devil, pride of heart, envy, sensuous lust--all in all: self-love in place of love of God. [477] And it was all the more dreadful, as it was easy for Adam to refrain from sin. [478] Therefore also came the unspeakable misery, viz., the punishment of sin, with and in sin, working itself out in death. Adam lost the possession of God. [479] This was followed by complete deprivation (defectio boni), which is represented as the death of the soul; for the latter without God is dead (spiritual death). [480] The dead soul is now drawn downwards; it seeks its blessings in the mutable and perishable, and is no longer capable of commanding the body. The latter then asserted itself with all its wanton impulses, and thus corrupted the whole human nature. [481] The corruption is manifest in sexual lust, whose sinfulness is evidenced by compulsion and shame, and it must be inherited since the central seat of nature is disordered. [482] It indeed still continues to be capable of redemption--it does not become an evil substance--but it is so corrupt that even grace can only blot out the guilt (reatus) of original sin; it cannot completely extirpate concupiscence itself in the elect, as is proved by the survival of the evil sexual lust. This inheriting of sin and of Adam's death is, however, not merely a fact, but it is just, because Scripture says that we have all sinned in Adam, [483] because all owe their life to sinful lust, [484] and because--God is just. Adam's Fall presupposes that his previous constitution had been good. This is taught, too, by Scripture, and it follows likewise from the assurance that God is the creator, and the good creator, of all things. [485] If Adam was created good, then he possessed not only everything that a rational creature needs (body and soul and their due relationship as servant and master, reason and free will), but, above all, grace ever supporting and preserving him, the adjutorium, that is the bond of union with the living God; for the virtuous man is not independent of God; he is only independent when completely dependent on God. Adam, accordingly, not only had a free will, but this will was influenced in the direction of God. [486] For this very reason he was free (in God); but he was also free (able) to will evil; for evil springs from freedom. If Adam had not possessed a free will, he would have been unable to sin; but in that case he would not have been a rational creature. So he possessed the power not to sin, or die, or forsake the good (posse non peccare, --mori,--deserere bonum), but this through the adjutorium (auxiliary grace) went so far in the direction of inability to sin (non posse peccare) that it would have been easy for Adam to attain it. [487] Had he attained it by means of free will (liberum arbitrium), he would have received perfect blessedness in return for the merit involved in his perseverance, he would have remained, and escaped death, in Paradise, and would have begotten children without sinful lust. We see that the primitive state was meant to be portrayed in accordance with the state of grace of the present; but an important difference prevailed, since in the former case, the adjutorium was only the condition, under which Adam could use his free will lastingly in being and doing good, while in the latter, it is the power, that, being irresistible, brings fallen man to perfection. __________________________________________________________________ Contemporary criticism on this system may here be briefly summed up. Augustine contradicted himself in maintaining that all ability to attain goodness had been lost, and in yet admitting that freedom of choice--the decisive thing--remained. His notion of freedom was self-destructive, since he defined freedom as lasting dependence on God. His conception of original sin was self-contradictory, because he himself admitted that sin always springs from the will. He was compelled to teach Traducianism, which, however, is a heresy. And his Scriptural exegesis was arbitrary. In particular, God provokes sins, if he punishes sin with sin, and decrees the reign of sin; he is unjust if he imputes to men the sins of others, while forgiving them their own, and, further, if he accepts some, and not others, just as he pleases. This contention leads to despair. Above all, however, the doctrine of original sin leads to Manichæan dualism, which Augustine never surmounted, and is accordingly an impious and foolish dogma. For, turn as he will, Augustine affirms an evil nature, and therewith a diabolic creator of the world. His doctrine of concupiscence conduces to the same view. Besides, he depreciates the glorious gift of human freedom, nay, even divine grace in Christ, since he holds that original sin is never entirely removed. Finally, his doctrines of the exclusive efficacy of grace and predestination put an end not only to asceticism and the meritoriousness of good works, but also to all human doings. It is useless to exhort, intercede for, or blame sinners, etc. In the end, even the connection with the Church, which Augustine insisted on so energetically in the Donatist controversy, seemed to be superseded. Truth and error exist side by side in these observations. Perhaps the following considerations will be more pertinent. (1) The impossibility of determining the fate of the whole body of mankind and of every separate individual from the stand-point of gratia gratis data, is shown in the thesis of the damnation of children who die unbaptised. Here Augustine impugns the thought of God's righteousness. But this thought must become worthless altogether if everything is overruled by predestinating and irresistible grace. Thereby a grave injury is inflicted on piety. (2) The carrying out of the conception of predestinating grace, which should be no more than a sentiment, confined to himself, of the redeemed, leads to a determinism that conflicts with the gospel and imperils the vigour of our sense of freedom. Besides, the assumption of irresistible grace rests above all experience, even above that of the believer, and the doctrine of God's twofold will (see de grat. et lib. arb. 45) makes everything affecting faith uncertain. (3) Augustine did not by any means hold so certainly that grace was grace through Christ, as that it proceeded from the secret operation of God. The acosmic Neoplatonic element in the doctrine of predestination imperilled not only the efficacy of the Word and Sacrament (vocatio and justificatio), but also redemption through Christ in general. (4) The religious tendency in the system, the belief that the decisive point was cleaving or not cleaving to God, received in the sequel a new version, and the moral attitude became rather the crucial question--the will, of course when freed, was an efficient cause of righteousness. For this reason the meaning of forgiveness, of the new fundamental relation to God, and of the assurance of faith, was misunderstood. The former became an act of initiation, the relation became temporary, and the assurance of faith, which even according to the doctrine of predestination need not arise, was lost in the conception of a process of sanctification never or almost never completed in this world, a process to which various grades of salvation, just as there were various degrees of damnation, corresponded in the world beyond. What a proof of moralism! [488] Between the thesis of the ancient (Greek) Church: "Where the knowledge of God is, come also life and salvation," and Luther's principle: "Where we have forgiveness of sins, we have also life and salvation," we find Augustine's: "Where love is there also follows a salvation corresponding to the measure of love." Augustine examined the equation remission of sins = grace through Christ, and expressly rejected it. This turn he gave his doctrine also explains the contention that God, in the end, crowns our merits, a view that conflicts with predestinating grace, and opens the door to a refined form of righteousness by works. [489] (5) The Neoplatonic notion of God and the monastic tendency demand that all love should at the same time present itself in the form of asceticism. Thereby love drifts still further apart from faith (as fiducia), threatens the sovereignty of the latter, and gives free scope for all sorts of popular Catholic conceptions. (6) The conception--necessary in the system--of Adam's Fall and original sin contains--apart from the mythology which here takes the place of history--a bundle of inconsistencies and extremely questionable ideas. The latter Augustine also perceived, and he tried, but without success, to guard against them. Absolutely Manichæan is the view that man sins because he was created from nothing, "nothing" being here treated as an evil principle. (The Neoplatonic doctrine also sees in this "nothing" the ground of sin; but to it sin is merely finitude. Augustine took a more profound view of sin, but he had also to conceive the nilhil as "more evil" in proportion, i.e., to convert it into the evil substance of Manichism.) Manichæan also is the opinion that sexual desire is sinful, and that inherited sin is explained simply from procreation as the propagation of a vitiated nature (natura vitiata). [490] Absolutely contradictory are the positions that all sin springs from freedom (the will), and that children just born are in a state of sin. It is extremely suspicious to find that, when sin is more minutely dealt with, concupiscence is practically ranked above alienation from God (deo non adhærere), this also, indeed, resulting from uncertainty as to Traducianism. It again raises our doubts when we see original sin treated as if it were more serious than actual sin; for while the former can only be washed out by baptism, the latter can be atoned for by penance. The whole doctrinal conception at this point shows that the conviction of the redeemed, that without God he is lost and unfit to do any good work, is a verdict of the believer on himself, a verdict that marks a limit, but can never become a principle by which to consider the history of mankind. At this point, just because the contradictions were so enormous, the development of dogmatic with Augustine was on the verge of casting off the immense material in which it had been entangled, and of withdrawing from the interpretation of the world and history; but as Augustine would not abandon that material, so men will not, even at the present day, let it go, because they suppose that the Bible protects it, and because they will not learn the humility of faith, that shows itself in renunciation of the attempt to decide on God's government of the world in history. [491] (7) But apart from original sin, Augustine's notion of sin raises doubts, because it is constructed at least as much on the thought of God as the supreme and true being (summum and verum esse) as on that of his goodness (bonum esse). Although the stamp of guilt is not wholly misunderstood, yet it is the thought of the misery produced by sin with its destructiveness and hideousness that comes to the front. Hence we understand why Augustine, passing over justifying faith, perceived the highest good in "infused love" (caritas infusa). (8) Finally the doctrine of the primitive state is beset by inconsistency, because Augustine could not avoid giving grace another meaning in that state from that it possessed in the process by which the redeemed is justified. With him grace is ultimately identical with irresistible grace--anything else is a semblance of it; but though Adam possessed grace, it was not irresistible. But all these grave objections cannot obscure the greatness of the perception that God works in us "to will and to accomplish," that we have nothing that we have not received, and that dependence on God is good, and is our possession. It is easy to show that in every single objectionable theory formulated by Augustine, there lurks a true phase of Christian self-criticism, which is only defective because it projects into history, or is made the foundation on which to construct a "history." Is not the doctrine of predestination an expression of the confession: "He who would boast, let him boast in the Lord"? Is not the doctrine of original sin based on the thought that behind all separate sins there resides sin as want of love, joy, and divine peace? Does it not express the just view that we feel ourselves guilty of all evil, even where we are shown that we have no guilt? __________________________________________________________________ [295] De praed. 7; De dono persev. 55; c. Jul. VI. 39; also the Retract. [296] De dono persev. 53: "Cum libros Confessionum ediderim ante quam Pelagiana hæresis exstitisset, in eis certe dixi deo nostro et sæpe dixi: Da quod jubes et jube quod vis. Quæ mea verba Pelagius Romæ, cum a quodam fratre et episcopo meo fuissent eo præsente commemorata, ferre non potuit et contradicens aliquanto commotius pæne cum eo qui commemoraverat litigavit. [297] De doctr. Christ. III. 46: "Hæresis Pelagiana multum nos, ut gratiam dei quæ per dominum nostrum Jesum Christum est, adversus eam defenderemus, exercuit." [298] Pelagius and his friends were always convinced that the disputed questions, while extremely important, were not dogmatic. We can once more, therefore, study very clearly what at that time was held to be dogma; (see De gestis Pelag. 16: Pelagius denied at the Synod at Diospolis that statements of high dogmatic import were his; when it was proposed that he should anathematise those who taught them, he replied: "Anathematizo quasi stultos, non quasi hæreticos, si quidem non est dogma." Cælestius says of Original sin (De pecc. orig. 3): "licet quæstionis res sit ista, non hæresis." He also declared in the Libellus fidei (26) submitted at Rome: "si quæ vero præter fidem quæstiones natæ sunt . . . non ego quasi auctor alicujus dogmatis definita hæc auctoritate statui." Hahn, § 134. This was also the view at first of Pope Zosimus (Ep. 3, 7). Julian (Op. imp. III. 106) saw dogmas in the doctrine of the Trinity and Resurrection, "multisque aliis similibus." [299] Augustinianism and Pelagianism were akin in form, and opposed to the previous mode of thought, in that both conceptions were based on the desire for unity. They sought to get at the root of religion and morality, and had ceased to be satisfied with recognising freedom and grace as independent and equivalent original data, as if religion with its blessings were at the same time superior and subordinate to moral goodness. The "either--or" asserted itself strongly. [300] Pelagius, a monk leading a free life--Cælestius, "naturæ vitio eunuchus matris utero editus," both laymen, Cælestius auditorialis scholasticus. Pelagius was a Briton (an Irishman? called Morgan?), but in view of the intercourse between different countries at the time, the birthplace is somewhat indifferent. Cælestius was won over by Pelagius in Rome, and then gave up his worldly career. [301] It is uncertain whether Pelagius had been in the East before he appeared in Rome. Cælestius had heard Rufinus in Rome, and stated that the latter would have nothing to do with the "tradux peccati" (De pecc. orig. 3). Marius Mercator has even sought to deduce Pelagianism from Theodore of Mopsuestia's teaching, and supposed that Rufinus "the Syrian" (identical (?) with Rufinus of Aquileia) brought it to Rome. Others have repeated this. While the direct points of contact at the beginning are problematical, it is certain (1) that Pelagianism and Theodore's teaching approximate very closely (see Gurjew, Theodor v. Mopsu. 1890 [in Russian] p. 44 ff.); (2) that Theodore took up sides in the controversy against the teaching of Augustine and Jerome: he wrote a work "against those who maintain that men sin by nature, and not at their own discretion;" (see Photius cod. 177); (3) that the Pelagians looked to him as a protector and Julian of Eclanum fled to him; (4) that the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians were convinced that they could count on the East (and even on the Church of Constantinople) for support, and that some of them studied in Constantinople. Theodore's distinctive doctrine of Grace is not found in Pelagian writings; for this reason he could not ally himself thoroughly with Julian (see Kihn, Theodor v. Mopsu. p. 42 ff.). But their affinity was unquestionable. It is therefore no mere inference that leads Cassian (c. Nestor. I. 3 sq.) to combine the Nestorians with the Pelagians ("cognata hæresis"). The interests and methods of both were the same. The comparison with Eunomius and Aetius is also pertinent. [302] De pecc. orig. 13: "Quid inter Pelagium et Cælestium in hac quæstione distabit, nisi quod ille apertior, iste occultior fuit; ille pertinacior, iste mendacior, vel certe ille liberior, hic astutior." "Cælestius incredibili loquacitate." Many adherents of the new teaching preferred to be called "Cælestiani." [303] The earnestness and "holiness" of Pelagius are often attested, especially by Augustine himself and Paulinus of Nola. His untruthfulness, indeed, throws a dark shadow on his character: but we have not the material to enable us to decide confidently how far he was entrapped into it, or how far he reserved his opinion in the legitimate endeavour to prevent a good cause being stifled by theology. Augustine, the truthful, is here also disposed to treat charitably the falsehoods of his opponent. But we must, above all, reflect that at that time priests and theologians lied shamelessly in self-defence, in speeches, protocols, and writings. Public opinion was much less sensitive, especially when accused theologians were exculpating themselves, as can be seen from Jerome's writings, though not from them alone. The people who got so angry over Pelagius' lies were no small hypocrites. Augustine was entitled to be wroth; but his work De gestis Pelagii shows how considerate and tolerant he remained in spite of everything. Pelagius and Cælestius must have belonged to those lucky people who, cold by nature and temperate by training, never notice any appreciable difference between what they ought to do and what they actually do. Julian was an emotional character, a young man full of self-confidence (c. Julian II. 30: "itane tandem, juvenis confidentissime, consolari te debes, quia talibus displices, an lugere?"), who, in his youth, had had dealings with the Roman Bishop Innocent (c. Julian I. 13) and Augustine, "vir acer ingenio, in divinis scripturis doctus, Græca et Latina lingua scholasticus; prius quam impietatem Pelagii in se aperiret, clarus in doctoribus ecclesiæ fuit" (Gennad. script. eccl. 46). In particular, he was unusually learned in the history of philosophy. Early author and bishop, he seems, like so many precocious geniuses, never to have got beyond the stage reached by the clever youth. Fancy and passionate energy checked his growth, and made him the fanatical exponent of the moralistic theory. In any case he is not to be taken lightly. The ancient Church produced few geniuses so hold and heedless. His criticism is often excellent, and always acute. But even if we admitted that his whole criticism was correct, we would find ourselves in the end in possession of nothing but chaff. We also miss in his case that earnest sense of duty which we do not look for in vain in Pelagius. For this very reason, the delightful impression produced by a serene spirit, who appeared to avenge despised reason and authoritative morality, is always spoiled by the disagreeable effect caused by the creaking sound of a critical chopping-machine. An excellent monograph on Julian by Bruckner will appear immediately in the "Texten and Unters." [304] Cicero's words: "virtutem nemo unquam acceptam deo retulit," could be inscribed as a motto over Pelagianism. [305] Pelagianism and Augustinianism are also akin in form, in that in both the old dramatic eschatological element, which had hitherto played so great a rôle in the West, and had balanced moralism, wholly disappears. But Julian was the first to secularise the type of thought. [306] The Antiochene theologians also were notoriously zealous defenders of monachism. [307] Here we have a third point (see p. 170, n. 1) in which Pelagianism and Augustinianism are akin in form. Neither is interested in the mysticism of the cultus; their authors rather strive to direct spiritual things in spiritual channels, though Augustine, indeed, did not entirely succeed in doing so. [308] See the remarks on Ambrose, p. 50. Perhaps the three rules of Tichonius best show the confusion that prevailed (Aug. de doctr. Christ. III. 46: "opera a deo dari merito fidei, ipsam vero fidem sic esse a nobis ut nobis non sit a deo." Yet Augustine sought (c. Julian. L. I.) to give traditional evidence for his doctrine. [309] One passage (IV. 24 sq.) became famous in the controversy: "oportet magistrum doctoremque virtutis homini simillimum fieri, ut vincendo peccatum doceat hominem vincere posse peccatum . . . ut desideriis carnis edomitis doceret, non necessitatis esse peccare, sed propositi ac voluntatis." [310] Our sources are the writings of Pelagius, Cælestius, and Julian (chiefly in Jerome and Augustine) Augustine's works (T. X. and c. 20, letters among which Epp. 186, 194 are the most important), Jerome, Orosius, Marius Mercator, and the relevant Papal letters. Mansi T. IV:, Hefele, Vol. II. For other literature see above, p. 61. Marius was the most active opponent of the Pelagians towards the close of the controversy, and obtained their condemnation in the East (see Migne, T. 48, and the Art. in the Dict. of Chr. Biog). [311] Pelag. Ep. ad Demetr.: "ne tanto remissior sit ad virtutem animus ac tardior, quanto minus se posse credat et dum quod inesse sibi ignorat id se existimet non habere." [312] He was, perhaps, not the first; we do not know whom Augustine meant in De pecc. orig. 25 ("Pelagius et Cælestius hujus perversitatis auctores vel perhibentur vel etiam probantur, vel certe si auctores non sunt, sed hoc ab aliis didicerunt, assertores tamen atque doctores"), and De gest Pelag. 61 ("post veteres hæreses inventa etiam modo hæresis est non ab episcopis seu presbyteris vel quibuscumque clericis, sed a quibusdam veluti monachis"). Pelagius and Cælestius may themselves be understood in the second passage. [313] The Confession of Faith, afterwards tendered (Hahn, § 133), is clear and confident in its dogmatic parts. The unity of the Godhead is not so strongly pronounced in the doctrine of the Trinity as with Augustine; Pelagius resembled the Greeks more strongly in this respect also. [314] At Rome Pelagius wrote the Ep. to Paulinus of Nola, the three books De fide trinitatis, his Eulogia and Commentaries on Paul's Epistles, to which Augustine afterwards referred. The latter have been preserved for us among Jerome's works; but their genuineness is suspected. Augustine mentions, besides, an Ep. ad Constantium episc. (De grat. 39); it is not known when it was written. [315] De gestis Pelag. 46: "Pelagii nomen cum magna ejus laude cognovi." [316] By him are three works de monasterio. "Cælesti opuscula," De gratia, 32. [317] So Augustine heard when in Carthage; see De pecc. mer. III. 12. [318] De gestis Pelag. 46. [319] Marius Merc. Common. and Aug., De pecc. orig., 2 sq. It is worthy of note that the complaint came from a disciple of Ambrose. This establishes the continuity of the Antipelagian teaching. [320] "Adam mortalem factum, qui sive peccaret sive non peccaret moriturus fuisset--peccatum Adæ ipsum solum læsit, non genus humanum--parvuli qui nascuntur in eo statu sunt, in quo fuit Adam ante prævaricationem--neque per mortem vel prævaricationem Adæ omne genus hominum moritur, nec per resurrectionem Christi omne genus hominum resurget--lex sic mittit ad regnum coelorum quomodo et evangelium--et ante adventum domini fuerunt homines impeccabiles, i.e., sine peccato--hominem posse esse sine peccato et mandata dei facile custodire, si velit." On the transmission of these propositions, see Klasen, Pelagianismus, p. 48 f. [321] "Quia intra Catholicam constitutos plures audivi destruere nec non et alios adstruere." [322] De pecc. mer. I. 58, 62. [323] He is said to have stayed before this in Sicily, but that is merely a guess on Augustine's part, an inference from the spread of Cwlestian heresies there. See Augustine's interesting letters, Epp. 156, 157, 22, 23 sq. From these we learn that Cælestius actually taught: "divitem manentem in divitiis suis regnum dei non posse ingredi, nisi omnia sua vendiderit; nec prodesse eidem posse, si forte ex ipsis divitiis mandata fecerit." In the "definitiones Cælestii" a document which came to Augustine from Sicily, and whose origin is indeed uncertain, the Stoic method of forming definitions is noteworthy. In it there also occurs the famous definition of sin--"that which can be let alone"--(Goethe gives the converse description: "What, then, do you call sin? With everyone I call it what can not be let alone.") The whole argument serves to prove that since peccatum vitari potest, man can be sinless (De perfect. just. 1 sq.). In the passage just cited, and again at Diospolis (De gestis Pelag. 29-63) a work by Cælestius is mentioned, whose title is unknown. Not a few sentences have been preserved (l.c.): "Plus facimus quam in lege et evangelis jussum est--gratiam dei et adjutorium non ad singulos actus dari, sed in libero arbitrio esse, vel in lege ac doctrina--dei gratiam secundum merita nostra dari, quia si peccatoribus illam dat, videtur esse iniquus--si gratia dei est, quando vincimus peccata, ergo ipse est in culpa, quando a peccato vincimur, quia omnino custodire nos aut non potuit aut noluit--unumquemque hominem omnes virtutes posse habere et gratias--filios dei non posse vocari nisi omni modo absque peccato fuerint effecti--oblivionem et ignorantiam non subjacere peccato, quoniam non secundum voluntatem eveniunt, sed secundum necessitatem--non esse liberum arbitrium, si dei indigeat auxilio, quoniam in propria voluntate habet unusquisque aut facere aliquid aut non facere--victoriam nostram non ex dei esse adjutorio, sed ex libero arbitrio--si anima non potest esse sine peccato, ergo et deus subjacet peccato, cujus pars, hoc est anima, peccato obnoxia est--pænitentibus venia non datur secundum gratiam et misericordiam dei, sed secundum merita at laborem eorum, qui per pænitentiam digni fuerint misericordia." We readily see, what indeed has not hitherto been clearly perceived, that this writing of Cælestius must have been the real cause of offence. It could not but open the eyes even of the waverers. We return to it in the text. [324] De gestis Pelag. 51, 52. The interpretation added by Augustine to a few conventional phrases used in the letter seems to us superfluous and laboured. He, besides, spared Pelagius in Carthage itself; for in his first great work against Pelagianism, De pecc. mer. et remiss. et de bapt. parvulorum ad Marcellinum (412), the name of Pelagius is not yet mentioned. Before this, Augustine had sought to influence the Church only by sermons and discourses. Even the Tractate De spiritu et litera, which followed immediately, is not directed against Pelagius. [325] I am disposed to regard as a forgery the letter of condolence to the widow Livania (Fragments in Aug. De gestis Pel. 16, 19, Hieron. and Marius; partly reported in the indictment at Diospolis). Yet we cannot decide with certainty. We must allow the possibility of Pelagius having so expressed himself in a flattering letter, not meant to be published, to a sanctimonious widow. Indeed, words like the following sound like mockery: "Ille ad deum digne elevat manus, ille orationem bona conscientia effundit qui potest dicere, tu nosti, domine, quam sanctæ et innocentes et mundæ sunt ab omni molestia et iniquitate et rapina quas ad te extendo manus, quemadmodum justa et munda labia et ab omni mendacio libera, quibus offero tibi deprecationem, ut mihi miserearis." Pharisee and Publican in one! [326] The latter afterwards complained (c. Jul. II. 36), "quod Hieronymus ei tamquam æmulo inviderit." That is very credible. [327] From motives of prudence he did not answer Jerome publicly; for he wished to avoid all controversy. Jerome was, for the rest, much more akin to him really than Augustine. The former maintained, e.g., in a later controversial work, that it was orthodox to teach that the beginning of good resolves and faith is due to ourselves. [328] Pelagius himself wrote to the nun Demetrias (A.D. 413 or 414) a letter still preserved, and forming the clearest memorial of his doctrine, and shortly before the Synod of Diospolis he composed his book De natura, in which there is much that he abjured at the Synod. It is extremely probable that this book also was not meant for the public, but only for his friends (against the charges of Jerome). Augustine, as soon as he got it, refuted it in his tractate De natura et gratia (415). Pelagius had essayed to give a dialectical proof of his anthropology in the book. Augustine's work, De perfectione justitiæ, composed also in A.D. 415, was aimed at Cælestius. [329] See Orosii Apolog. [330] The indictment was composed by two Gallic Bishops, Heros and Lazarus, who had been forced to fly from their own country. It was very comprehensive; but no strict line was drawn between what Pelagius had himself said, and what belonged to Cælestius. The two Bishops were, for the rest, afterwards treated as under suspicion at the conferences in Rome. [331] "Anathematizo quasi stultos, non quasi hæreticos, si quidem non est dogma." [332] "Nunc quoniam propria voce anathematizavit Pelagius incertum stultiloquium, recte respondens, hominem cum adjutorio dei et gratia posse esse sine peccato, respondeat et ad alia capitula." [333] The above quoted phrase, "non est dogma," is extremely characteristic. It shows how painfully anxious Pelagius was not to extend the sphere of dogma. In this he quite shared the feeling always entertained even to the present day by the Greeks. A Greek priest once said to the author that the great freedom of the Greek Church, compared with the Western, consisted in the possibility of holding very different views of sin, grace, justification, etc., if only the dogmas were adhered to. Pelagius accordingly opposed the introduction of a great new tract being included in the dogmatic sphere. He saw merely the inevitable evils of such an advance. We must judge his whole attitude up to his death from this point of view. Seeberg (Dogmengesch. I., p. 282 f.) holds that the phrase, "non est dogma," was merely meant to provide a means of defence; but if we consider Pelagius' whole attitude, we have no ground for taking any such view. [334] De gestis Pelag. 44: "Reliqua vero et secundum ipsorum testimonium a me dicta non sunt, pro quibus ego satisfacere non debeo." "Anathematizo illos qui sic tenent aut aliquando tenuerunt." "Nunc quoniam satisfactum est nobis prosecutionibus præsentis Pelagii monachi, qui quidem piis doctrinis consentit, contraria vero ecclesiæ fidei anathematizat, communionis ecclesiasticæ eum esse et catholicæ confitemur." [335] "Synodus miserabilis," Jerome, Ep. 143, 2. [336] Jerome, Ep. 143, 1. [337] In his work, De gestis Pelagii, Augustine, following a written account, criticises the proceedings of the Synod, and shows that Pelagius uttered the falsehood. The latter, always anxious to keep peace, addressed a report of his own after the Synod to Augustine (l.c. 57 sq.), in order to influence him in his favour. But Augustine rightly gave the preference to the other account, since Pelagius had omitted from his the "anathematizo." Again in the work De pecc. orig., Augustine shows, from the writings of Pelagius with which he was acquainted, that the latter had got off by evasions at Diospolis, and that he really held the same opinions as Cælestius.--We can only excuse the man by repeating that he wished to do practical work, and felt himself put out by dogmatic questions as to original sin, etc. [338] De gestis, 54 sq. [339] There was no word of "easily" at Diospolis. [340] Augustine's tractates, De gratia Christi et De peccato originali, are directed against this book. [341] De pecc. orig. 20: "Denique quomodo respondeat advertite et videte latebras ambiguitatis falsitati præparare refugia, offundendo caliginem veritati, ita ut etiam nos cum primum ea legimus, recta vel correcta propemodum gauderemus. Sed latiores disputationes ejus in libris, ubi se quantumlibet operiat, plerumque aperire compellitur, fecerunt nobis et ipsa suspecta, ut adtentius intuentes inveniremus ambigua." [342] Orosius had carried there information of the events. [343] The letter was accompanied by Pelagius' work De natura and Augustine's reply. [344] Ep. 177, 2.--To about this date belong, according to Caspari's investigations, the Pelagian letters and tractates published by him A.D. 1890 (Briefe, Abhandlungen and Predigten, etc. pp. 3-167, 223-389, Christiania), and ascribed on good grounds to Agricola, of Britain. The fragments were written, however, in Italy. They add nothing new to our knowledge of Pelagianism. But they confirm the fact that the earliest Pelagianism--before Julian--was associated with the most stringent monastic demands, and was extremely rigorous. In particular, Agricola flatly forbids the possession of wealth. He also regards ignorance of the divine will as no excuse for the sinner, but as an aggravation. [345] Epp. 177, 3: "Non agitur de uno Pelagio, qui jam forte correctus est." The consideration for him is very remarkable; it is explained by his prestige and his justification at Diospolis. The letter of the five Bishops composed by Augustine and sent afterwards was obviously meant thoroughly to instruct the Pope, who was held to be insufficiently informed as to the importance of the question. Yet we have at the close, (c. 19): "Non rivulum nostrum tuo largo fonti augendo refundimus." [346] Ep. 183, 2-5: "Nam de naturæ possibilitate, de libero arbitrio, et de omni dei gratia et quotidiana gratia cui non sit recte sentienti uberrimum disputare?" [347] This is not the view that has hitherto been taken of the letters; Zosimus has rather been simply contrasted with Innocent. Seeberg (p. 283) sees in the letter a monument of the Pope's helplessness in dogma: he was so ignorant as to admit that the Africans were right, and yet to make them talk like Pelagians. That seems to me an exaggeration. [348] Hahn. 133. In it we have the words "liberum sic confitemur arbitrium, ut dicamus nos indigere dei semper auxilio" (but in what does the auxilium consist?), and "baptismum unum tenemus quod iisdem sacramenti verbis in infantibus, quibus etiam in majoribus, asserimus esse celebrandum." [349] Fragments in Aug., De Gratia Christi et de pecc. orig. [350] Fragments of the Libellus in Aug., De pecc. orig. 5 sq. [351] L.c.: "Infantes debere baptizari in remissionem peccatorum secundum regulam universalis ecclesiæ et secundum evangelii sententiam confitemur, quia dominus statuit, regnum coelorum non nisi baptizatis posse conferri; quod, quia vires naturæ non habent, conferri necesse est per gratiæ libertatem. In remissionem peccatorum baptizandos infantes non idcirco diximus, ut peccatum ex traduce firmare videamur (he thus clung to this point), quod longe a catholico sensu alienum est, quia peccatum non cum homine nascitur, quod postmodum exercetur ab homine, quia non naturæ delictum, sed voluntatis esse demonstrator. Et illud ergo confiteri congruum, ne diversa baptismatis genera facere videamur, et hoc præmunire necessarium est, ne per mysterii occasionem ad creatoris injuriam malum, antequam fiat ab homine, tradi dicatur homini per naturam." [352] He wisely refused to discuss the separate points of complaint. [353] Zosim., Epp. 3, 4. [354] The Bishops are arrogantly rebuked. For the rest, the whole question in dispute is regarded as due to an epidemic of curiosity, as superfluous and pernicious: one ought to abide by Scripture. No wonder that Rome hesitated to declare a question important in which the disputants were agreed as regards Holy Scripture, dogma, and Church practice. The Church only took hesitatingly the momentous step involved in acknowledging anything outside of these to be of equal importance to "dogmas." [355] Prosper, c. collat. 5. [356] Zosim., Ep. 10. [357] Zosim., Ep. 15. [358] It was with Cælestius that he was chiefly concerned. [359] Let him be condemned: who derives death from natural necessity; who denies the presence of original sin in children and rebels against Paul (Rom. V. 12); who assigns any form of salvation to unbaptised children; who refers God's justifying grace in Christ merely to past sins; who applies grace to knowledge alone, while not perceiving in it the power necessary to us; who sees in grace merely a means of rendering the good easier, but not its indispensable condition; or who derives the confessions of sin by the pious from humility alone, and interprets their prayer for pardon of guilt as applying solely to the guilt of others. [360] The proceedings in Mansi III., p. 810 sq. [361] The edict in Aug. Opp. X. app., p. io5. It is certainly doubtful whether the Africans effected this; perhaps it was instigated from Milan or by Italian Anti-Pelagians. The attempt has been made to prove that Zosimus' change of front was independent of the edict. [362] Aug. Opp. X. app., p. 108. [363] C. duas epp. Pel. I. 3. [364] See Op. imperf. I. 18. Fragments in Marius. [365] The confession of faith contained in one of the letters (Hahn, § 135) shows also that Julian wished to stand by Pelagius. [366] We must remember in excuse of Julian's violent and unmeasured polemics that he was defending an already hopeless case. He himself knew this--Op. imp. I. 1, 2: "magnis impedimentis angoribus, quos intuenti mihi hac tempestate ecclesiarum statum partim indignatio ingerit partim miseratio"--"labentis mundi odia promeremur"--"rebus in pejorem partem properantibus, quod mundi fini suo incumbentis indicium est" (l.c. I. 12). His violence is in any case not explained from secret uncertainty, for there certainly have been few theologians so thoroughly convinced as he of being on the right path. Religious pioneers, besides, have as a rule surpassed their opponents in strength of conviction. They also possess it more readily; for the certainty of religion and morality, as they understand it, is involved for them in personal assurance. [367] When we realise the exceptional qualities of two such outstanding opponents, we wish that nature had rolled them into one. What a man that would have been! [368] This name appears first in the Middle Ages. In ancient times men spoke of the "reliquiæ Pelagianorum." [369] They still hoped for their rehabilitation up to A.D. 430, and urged it in Rome on every new Pope. [370] It is noteworthy that Julian speaks in his works as if he now alone represented the destituta veritas, a claim that Augustine tells him shows extreme arrogance (see c. Jul. II. 36). [371] I do not here discuss more minutely the history of Julian, who once more paid a passing visit to Rome; see art. in the Encycl. of Christ. Biogr. [372] Julian's name was expressly mentioned; perhaps he was in Ephesus with Nestorius. It is maintained by Marius that he had been already condemned in his absence (with Theodore's concurrence) at a Cilician Synod. [373] Bishop Atticus of Constantinople was undoubtedly a decided enemy of the Pelagians; but we do not know his motives. [374] This is also necessary because the mode of thought at the root of Pelagianism never reappeared--up to the time of Socinianism--in so pure a form as in Julian. [375] Augustine says very gracefully (c. Jul. VI. 36): "Quæ tu si non didicisses, Pelagiani dogmatis machina sine architecto necessario remansisset." [376] As regards form (Klasen, pp. 81-116), i.e. in their teaching as to Scripture, tradition, and authority, no innovations occur in Pelagius and Cælestius. Pelagianism, indeed, implicitly involves the rejection of every doctrine, quæ ratione defendi non potest, and he interpreted Scripture accordingly (see examples of exegesis in Klasen l.c.). In his treatise, De natura, he quotes the Fathers in support of his form of doctrine, as Augustine did for his (Chrysostom was especially often quoted, but so also were Jerome, Ambrose, and Lactantius). Julian, on the contrary, expressly gave the first place to ratio: "Quod ratio arguit, non potest auctoritas vindicare" (Op. imp. II. t6). With Origen--in sharp contrast to Augustine--he observes the rule not that a thing is good, because God wills it and it stands in Scripture, but that reason establishes what is good: "Hæreat hoc maxime prudentis animo lectoris, omnibus scripturis sacris solum illud, quod in honorem dei catholici sapiunt, contineri, sicut frequentium sententiarum luce illustratur, et sicubi durior elocutio moverit quæstionem, certum quidem esse, non ibi id quod injustum est loci illius auctorum sapuisse; secundum id autem debere intelligi, quod et ratio perspicua et aliorum locorum, in quibus non est ambiguitas, splendor apparuerit" (l.c. II. 22; cf. I. 4). "Sanctas quidem apostoli esse paginas confitemur, non ob aliud, nisi quia rationi, pietati, fidei congruentes erudiunt nos" (II. 144). Julian declares time and again that "wrong" and right must be the standard to be applied to all traditions regarding God. Now if the interpretations of Scripture given by Pelagius and Cælestius are "shallow," Julian's are sometimes quite profane. Our first parents clothed themselves after the Fall, because they were cold, and had learned for the first time the art of making clothes (c. Jul. IV. 79 sq.). But the rationalist standpoint of historical criticism appears most clearly in Julian's attitude to tradition. He is the author of the famous saying that we ought to weigh and not count opinions (c. Julian, II. 35: "non numerandas, sed ponderandas esse sententias; ad aliquid inveniendum multitudinem nihil prodesse cæcorum"). He says boldly that in dogmatic questions we must set aside the strepitus turbarum de omni ordine conversationis hominum, all de plebeia fæce sellularii, milites, scholastici auditoriales, tabernarii, cetarii, coqui, lanii, adolescentes ex monachis dissoluti, and further the turba qualiumcumque clericorum; "honorandam esse paucitatem, quam ratio, eruditio, libertasque sublimat." Compare Op. imperf. I. 41, where Julian says "et si philosophorum ego senatum advocavero, tu continuo sellularios, opifices omneque in nos vulgus accendas," and II. 14 "Traduciani pro se sursum deorsum plebecularum aut ruralium aut theatralium scita commendant." He justifies the setting aside of laymen and the uneducated clergy; he says: "quia non possunt secundum categorias Aristotelis de dogmatibus judicare." Here (c. Julian. II. 36, 37) Julian's chief interest becomes clearly evident. Without Aristotle, no theology; everything else is clod-hoppers' theology; but we have the cultured on our side (l.c. V. 1., Augustine suggests that is a contention of all heretics, already soiled and worn by frequent use). Julian adhered to Aristotle and Zeno; he knew their ethics thoroughly and reflected on their differences (c. Jul. II. 34; VI. 36; VI. 64: "de scholis Peripateticorum sive Stoicorum;" Op. impf. I, 35, 36). In contents and method his teaching was closely related to that of these philosophers--Augustine alludes very often to this. Besides, he quotes (c. Jul. IV .75) Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Leucippus, Democritus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Melissus, Plato, and Pythagoras ("quis non ipso nominum sectarumque conglobatarum strepitu terretur?" remarks Augustine). Of these philosophers--along with whom Sallust and Cicero are quoted--Julian says (l.c.), while granting they were idolaters ("licet in scholis aliud disserentes"), that they had enjoyed, in the midst of many errors, "de naturalibus aliquas veritatis partes," and that these were rightly to be preferred to the dogma of original sin. Augustine justly speaks of "nebulæ de Aristotelicis categoriis;" but the Stoic element prevails in Julian. The whole conception of ratio and Nominalism is Stoic. The mania for definitions is also Stoic and Ciceronian. Without definition no knowledge (Op. imp. II. 30, said against Augustine: "Ad quid ergo persuadendum aut scripturas releges aut conscios nominabis, qui adhuc quod sentis non potes definire"). But these definitions never rise out of the actual and thoroughly observed case--and that was indeed also usual in the Stoa--but glide over it. Julian by no means despised altogether the appeal to the Fathers. Here also he proved himself reasonable. It was only their formal authority that he would have nothing to do with. His standpoint is most clearly expressed in c. Jul. I. 29: "Cum igitur liquido clareat hanc sanam et veram esse sententiam, quam primo loco ratio, deinde scripturarum munivit auctoritas et quam sanctorum virorum semper celebravit eruditio, qui tamen veritati auctoritatem non suo tribuere consensu, sed testimonium et gloriam de ejus suscepere consortio, nullum prudentem conturbet conspiratio perditorum." Here we perceive the descending series of authorities, which is yet only authoritative, in so far as the witnesses are rational. The "Fathers" he really regarded as nothing, and well he knew how to make use of the admissions wrung from Augustine regarding their authority (Op. imp. IV. 112): "Sed bene quod nos onere talium personarum prior levasti. Nam in libro ad Timasium cum s. Pelagius venerabilium virorum tam Ambrosii quam Cypriani recordatus fuisset, qui liberum arbitrium in libris suis commendaverant, respondisti nulla te gravari auctoritate talium, ita ut diceres eos processu vitæ melioris, si quid male senserant, expiasse." "Numquid"--exclaims Julian (l.c. IV. 110)--"legi dei aut operi dei scripta disputatorum præjudicant!" Julian felt most acutely his having to call to its senses the West, in bondage to "stupid and godless" dogma; in the East alone did he now see salvation. The rock on which he stood was reason; his winged organ was the word. He knew that God would honour him for having alone to lead the cause of righteousness. He confronted, as the most resolute "Aufklärer" of the ancient Church, its greatest religious personality. [377] Cælestius in Aug., De perf. just. 15; Julian in the Op. imp. I. 27-38 and often. The thought of goodness--characteristically enough--is dropped, or accompanies it, as it were, incidentally. The idea of righteousness as legislative, distributive, and social, governs the whole system. "Lex dei fons ac magistra justitiæ," Op. imp. I. 4. [378] Op. imp. I. 35: "Justitia est, ut ab eruditis definiri solet (s. Aristoteles), et ut nos intelligere possumus, virtus (si per Stoicos liceat alteri alteram præferre), virtutum omnium maxima fungens diligenter officio ad restituendum sua unicuique, sine fraude, sine gratia." By this is gained for religion and morality the supreme principle by which man confronts God as judge in complete independence. [379] "Nihil potest per sanctas scripturas probari, quod justitia non possit tueri." [380] Op. imp. VI. 16. [381] Aug. c. duas epp. Pelag. III. 24: "Hae sunt nebulæ Pelagianorum de laude creaturæ, laude nuptiarum, laude legis, laude liberi arbitrii, laude sanctorum, IV. 1, 2. [382] "Quia naturalia ab initio substantiæ usque ad terminum illius perseverant." (Op. imp. II. 76). [383] Naturalia per accidens non convertuntur." "Quod innascitur usque ad finem ejus, cui adhæserit, perseverat." L.c. I. 61. [384] "Voluntas est nihil aliud quam motus animi cogente nullo" (Op. imp. 1. V. ). More precisely (I. 78-82): "Libertas arbritii, qua a deo emancipatus homo est, in admittendi peccati et abstinendi a peccato possibilitate consistit . . . Posse bonum facere aula virtutis est, posse malum facere testimonium libertatis est. Per hoc igitur suppetit homini habere proprium bonum, per quod ei subest posse facere malum. Tota ergo divini plenitudo judicii tam junctum habet negotium cum hac libertate hominum, ut harum qui unam agnoverit ambas noverit. . . . Sic igitur et libertas humani custodiatur arbitrii, quemadmodum divina æquitas custoditur . . . Libertas igitur arbitrii possibilitas est vel admittendi vel vitandi peccati, expers cogentis necessitatis, quæ in suo utpote jure habet, utrum surgentium partem sequatur, i.e., vel ardua asperaque virtutum vel demersa etpa lustria voluptatum." [385] The Pelagians were very silent as to the relation of ratio and liberum arbitrium. They did not even notice that it involved a main difficulty. All that they found it necessary to say consisted in quite childish arguments. Even the above definition of the will is absolutely untenable. After all, reason impels to what is bad as well as good; the wicked man does not act, at least, without reason. But what does justitia mean, if the separate acts of will always pass into vacancy? The original equilibrium, forsooth, remains fixed. [386] Op. imp. III. 188: "Qui gratiam confirmat, hominum laudat naturam." [387] "Libertas utriusque partis." [388] Ep. ad Demetr. [389] Op. imp. I. 79. Here the humanist notion of the good is clear. To this Julian adhered, in so far as he followed out the thought at all. [390] De grat. Christi 5; de nat. et gratia, passim. (Expositions by Pelagius). [391] The notion of freedom taught by the Pelagians lies in the possibilitas, and that according to Julian, the possibilitas utriusque, not merely boni. In Pelagius the possibilitas boni, and therewith responsibility, are more prominent. He does not merely say that man has freedom of choice, but also (ep. ad Demetr.) that "in animi nostris naturalis quædam sanctitas est." [392] Klasen (pp. 229-237) distinguishes a threefold possibilitas in the Pelagians' teaching, i.e., so many distinctions are, in fact, required, if we would escape the contradictions covered by the notion. [393] Op. imp. I. 44; V. 28, 43; VI. 17 and often. [394] Cælest. in Aug. de perfect. 1. [395] Besides the indefiniteness of the relation of reason to freedom, the wrong definition of the will, the obscurity as to the notion of ratio, and the contradictions in the notion of possibilitas, especially characteristic are the inability to give a concrete definition of evil, and the mythological fashion in which nature and will are distinguished. Why should will and nature be so completely divided, if the possibilitas belongs to nature? What is nature in general over and above will, since it is by no means held to be merely the flesh? [396] To this point the Pelagians applied their greatest acuteness, and made just objections, see under. Pelag. in Aug. de pecc. orig. 14: "Omne bonum ac malum, quo vel laudabiles vel vituperabiles sumus, non nobiscum oritur, sed agitur a nobis: capaces enim utriusque rei, non pleni nascimur, et ut sine virtute ita et sine vitio procreamur atque ante actionem propriæ voluntatis id solum in homine est, quod deus condidit." [397] See the Ep. ad Demetr.; De nat. et grat. 60-71. A grave experience is revealed in the confession (Ep. ad Demetr. 26) that the devil may often fill even those who are separated from the world with such foul and impious thoughts, that they imagine they are as wicked as when they loved the res sæculi. [398] With his distinction of marriage as good and had, Augustine resembles the charlatan who would exhibit a beast that devours itself; Jul. III. 47. [399] See especially Op. imp. Book V., and c. Julian, Book V. Augustine calls him "laudator concupiscentia;" c. Jul. III. 44. [400] C. Jul. IV. 7; III. 27. [401] L.c. IV. 8. [402] L.c. IV. 52. [403] Asceticism is thus declared to be superfluous, l.c. III. 42. [404] Op. imp. IV. 37-43. There undoubtedly occur other passages in Julian in which the "blessing" of libido appears small, and virginity is admired. [405] L.c. IV. 45-64, and elsewhere. [406] We must here, indeed, remember the twofold meaning of posse. [407] De gest. Pelag. 11. [408] On this Pelagius laid great stress (see Op. imp. V.), expressly denying (against Augustine) that man sins because he was created ex nihilo. By referring evil to the will, every possibility of explaining its origin comes to an end; for any such explanation means proving its necessity. V. 41: "Quæritis necessitatem rei quæ esse non potest si patitur necessitatem. Huic motui animi libero, sine coactu originis inquieto, si causa ipso motu detur antiquior, non gignitur omnino sed tollitur." V. 57-60: "ideo habuit voluntatem malam, quia voluit." [409] Op. imp. VI. 14-23. [410] Op. Imp. VI. 23; VI. 14, he lets it appear plainly enough that the Fall was an advantage for Adam: "porro ignorantia quam profunda quamque patiendi ejus dura conditio, ut liberari ab ea nisi prævaricatione non posset, scientiam quippe boni malique absque ansa condemnabili nequaquam capessiturus." [411] Thus first Cælestius (Karthago, s. Diospolis; de pecc. mer. 2). So also Julian, op. imp. II. 66. Common death is natural. Yet here Julian has tried to compromise. He will not deny that natural death has a connection with sin; i.e., it had really to be annulled by merits; but his explanations in Book II. are very tortuous. Without sin death would have been "levissima"; but God cannot do away with it entirely even for saints, for (VI. 30): "non est tanti unius meritum, ut universa quæ naturaliter sunt instituta perturbet." [412] Thus already Cælestius. [413] It is superfluous to quote passages; see the detailed account in Klasen, pp. 116-182. Julian's explanation of Rom. V. 12 occurs in c. Jul. VI. 75-81. Besides charging him with Manichæism, Julian also accused Augustine of Traducianism, though he was no Traducian. The heretical name of "Traduciani" was originated by Julian (Op. imp. I. 6). [414] De pecc. orig. 34. [415] Ep. ad Demetr. The reign of sin in the world is also elsewhere strongly emphasised by Pelagius. [416] This talk of primitive innocence is already in Julian a case of accommodation; for innocence of course always remains really the same. C. Jul. III. 36: "homo igitur innocentia quidem plenus, sed virtutis capax nascitur, aut laudem aut reprehensionem ex proposito accedente meriturus . . . nec justos nasci parvulos nec injustos, quod futuri sunt actibus suis, sed tantummodo infantiam innocentiæ dote locupletem." But the same chapter shows what is after all meant by this "innocence": Perfecta ignorantia (in scripturis justitia nominatur). [417] Op. imp. I. 91: "liberum arbitrium et post peccata tam plenum est quam fuit ante peccata." [418] Here, as in Stoicism, there is a gap in the system. Why is rational man irrational and bad? How can he possess ratio and an evil will at the same time? And how is the sinful habit explained?--Julian also says, besides (Op. imp. I. 16) "consuetudo peccati amorem delicti facit et exstinguit pudorem;" but he means in the teaching of Augustine. [419] "The will is not free, if it needs God's help" (De gestis 42). "Si per gratiam (De gestis 30) omnia facimus, quando vincimur a peccato, non nos vincimur, sed dei gratia, quæ voluit nos adjuvare omni modo et non potuit." [420] We can, indeed, exemplify almost all the principles of Augustinianism from the utterances of Pelagius and Julian. The number of passages in their works which sound like good Church doctrine is very great. We should require to quote these also in order to give an idea of the figure presented by the two men to the world; but this would carry us beyond our present limits. We do not, however, do injustice to their thought by omitting them; for they are only characteristic of their mode of expression. Pelagius never denied publicly that man always needed the divine grace, that he could only adjuvante gratia esse sine peccato (see De gestis 16, 22, 31; De gratia 2: "anathemo qui vel sentit vel dicit, gratiam dei, qua Christus venit in hunc mundum peccatores salvos facere, non solum per singulas horas aut per singula momenta, sed etiam per singulos actus nostros non esse necessariam, et qui hanc conantur auferre, poenas sortiantur æternas"; see also his Confession to the Pope). Julian used, if possible, still stronger expressions; but both very often said exactly the opposite of what is here given. But they never did say that the grace of God through Christ established freedom from sin and salvation. [421] These are the usual ones: free will exists in all men, but it is only supported by grace in the case of Christians (De gratia, 34); the rest only possess the "nudum et inerme conditionis bonum." Similarly Julian, but still more strongly (Op. imp. I. 40): "quos fecit quia voluit nec condemnat nisi spretus; si cum non spernitur, faciat consecratione meliores, nec detrimentum justitiæ patitur et munificentia miserationis ornatur." I. 111: "malæ voluntati veniam pro inæstimabili liberalitate largitur et innocentiam, quam creat bonam, facit innovando adoptandoque meliorem" (but can anything be better than good?). III. 106: "Quod ais, ad colendum recte deum sine ipsius adjutorio dici a nobis sufficere unicuique libertatem arbitrii, omnino mentiris. Cum igitur cultus dei multis intelligatur modis, et in custodia mandatorum et in execratione vitiorum et in simplicitate conversationis et in ordine mysteriorum et in profunditate dogmatum . . . qui fieri potest, ut nos in confuso dicamus, sine adjutorio dei liberum arbitrium sufficiens ad ejus esse culturam . . . cunt utique ista omnia, tam quæ dogmatibus quam quæ mysteriis continentur, libertas arbitrii per se non potuerit invenire, etc." There we see clearly how we are to understand the "adjutorium"; it consists solely in the law of dogmas and mysteries given by God and not discovered by man, but not in a power. Therefore, because God had invented so many institutions, Julian can proceed: "hominem innumeris divinæ gratiæ speciebus juvari . . . præcipiendo, benedicendo, sanctificando, coercendo, provocando, illuminando." [422] Impossible as a power, since the will cannot actually be determined. On this point Cælestius has alone expressed himself clearly, but Julian holds the same view, as he is never tired saying: "cunctarum origo virtutum in rationabili animo sita est." [423] This proposition of Julian's is properly the key to the whole mode of thought: man created free is with his whole sphere independent of God. He has no longer to do with God, but with himself alone. God only re-enters at the end (at the judgment). [424] The statements of the Pelagians as to grace are very often rendered intentionally (e.g., De gestis Pel. 22) ambiguous, by their understanding it to mean the grace of creation, and accordingly nature. Yet this is not the rule. Pelagius and Julian distinguish three states: ex natura, sub lege, sub gratia (Christi); see C. duas epp., I. 39. [425] "Perfecta justitia" also in the old covenant (l.c.) and among "antiqui homines." Julian often cites the perfect heathens, and sneers at Augustine's "splendida vitia." If the virtues of the heathens are not virtues, their eyes are not eyes (c. Jul. IV. 26-30). Pelagius has made wholly contradictory statements on this point; Julian afterwards became more prudent; but, finally, he always held the opinion that there was no difference between a good Christian and a good heathen. [426] The law was the first augmentum beneficiorum dei; but it was at the same time the fundamental form of all that God could further do after creation. Pelagius has expressed himself very plainly (De gestis 30): "gratiam dei et adjutorium non ad singulos actus dari (in other places he says the opposite) sed in libero arbitrio esse vel in lege ac doctrina." That accordingly is all. Augustine therefore says very rightly that Pelagius only admitted the grace "qua demonstrat et revelat deus quid agere debeamus, non qua donat atque adjuvat ut agamus." [427] See preceding note and Cælestius' statement: "lex sic mittit ad regnum cælorum quomodo et evangelium." [428] Example and imitation, see Op. imp. II. 146 sq. C. Jul. V. 58: "tolle exempli causam, tolle et pretii, quod pro nobis factus est." Julian also ultimately reduced the death of Christ to a type, Op. imp. II. 223. [429] Op. imp. II. 217-222. [430] It is very instructive that to Julian (as to Augustine) it is the man that forms the personality in Jesus. He is distinguished from Augustine by saying that the man Jesus was chosen by God and united with Christ secundum merita. The profectus is also more plainly marked: Jesus was gradually adopted by the Word of God; the filius hominis gradually became the filius dei through the achievement of his will. Accordingly, unless Augustine has greatly exaggerated, this still might be taught with impunity at that time in the West (see Op. imp. IV. 84). [431] The evasions in the case of baptism are so numerous that it is not worth while mentioning separate instances. The notion of forgiveness was in itself very irksome to the Pelagians; it could be at most a kind of indulgence, with difficulty compatible with justice. They also touched on the question whether baptism extirpates sin or removes guilt; but for them the question was senseless. As regards infant baptism, all their statements are to be derived from the fact that they would neither abolish it, nor admit baptisms of different value. The distinction between regnum cælorum and vita æterna was an eschatological rudiment, in this case welcome. [432] Op. imp. I. 72, III. 163: "augmenta beneficiorum divinorum utilia esse et necessaria omnibus in commune ætatibus dicimus, ita tamen ut nec virtus nec peccatum sine propria cuiquam voluntate tribuatur." [433] De gestis 30: "De gratiam secundum merita nostra dari, quia si peccatoribus illam det, videtur esse iniquus." This destroys the notion of grace; for it is only as gratuitous that it is grace. Here it takes the form of a means of rewarding the good. But if grace is neither gratis nor a power, it is nothing but an empty word. [434] That Augustinianism is identical with Manichæism runs through Julian's polemic like a red line. "Sub laude baptismatis eructat Augustinus Manichæorum sordes ac naturale peccatum, ut ecclesiæ catholicæ pura hactenus sacramenta contaminet" (Op. imp. I. 9). [435] His condemnation was, therefore--from a legal standpoint--not above question; the rejection of his energetic appeal to freedom in Church instruction not in every respect salutary. [436] But from this point of view it could not be thoroughly opposed. Augustinianism could alone overcome it. Augustine's criticism of this system will be best given through an exposition of his own. [437] Therefore the Pelagians attacked Augustine's doctrine of nature, and he their doctrine of grace. Everything that Augustine has to say to the Pelagians springs properly from the proof that they were ignorant of the nature of grace, and therefore also of that of sin. [438] Since Augustine's fundamental theological conceptions have been already discussed above (see p. 94 ff. ), we have here only to examine the doctrine of grace, and that of sin and the primitive state. This order is self-evident, while Pelagianism started at the doctrine of an indestructible nature. [439] Expositions of the death of Christ as the ground of salvation are frequent in Augustine. But they refer mostly to the reign of the devil, which was legally abrogated by Christ's death; on the other hand, they are much rarer when Augustine speaks of positive redemption. This deliverance from the devil's power was the common conception of Christ's death; it was the pretium paid for us to the devil, which he could not, however, retain. But it plays a subordinate part in Augustine's whole system; even the thought that God must be propitiated, of which we have echoes in Augustine, is not strictly carried out. The grace of God to him means, as a rule, the annulling of the state of sin. It is involved, however, in the nature of the case, that the reference is uncertain; for it is hard to demonstrate how a "state" is changed effectively by the death of Christ. But the looseness of connection was also a result of Augustine's conception of God; for grace, at bottom, emanated from the inscrutable decree of God, or the bonum esse. Augustine rarely connects gratia infusa in his thought with Christ, but with caritas, which is the essence of the Good. Here we have once more to remember that Christ himself, as a historical manifestation, was an instance in Augustine's view of predestinating grace (see above, p. 129). "Therefore the activity of Christ, who, as living eternally, works directly in us, is loosely connected with the historical process of propitiation" (Dorner, p. 182). That is, this "ever living Christ" is himself nothing but grace. In Enchir. 108, Augustine has summed up all he had to say on the import of Christ's work; but it will be found that, although the reconciliatio cum deo--only, indeed, as restoration to God--is not wanting, what is called "objective redemption" is left pretty much in the background. Augustine accordingly conceived the import of Christ spiritually: "Neque per ipsum liberaremur unum mediatorem dei et hominum hominem Jesum Christum, nisi esset et deus. Sed cum factus est Adam homo, scil. rectus, mediatore non opus erat. Cum vero genus humanum peccata longe separaverunt a deo, per mediatorem, qui solus sine peccato natus est, vixit, occisus est, reconciliari nos oportebat deo usque ad carnis resurrectionem in vitam æternam, ut humana superbia per humililatem dei argueretur (that is the main thought, see above, p. 131 f.) ac sanaretur et demonstraretur homini quam longe a deo recesserat (to-day this conception of Christ's work would be called rationalistic), cum per incarnatum deum revocaretur et exemplum obedientiæ per hominem-deum (this expression, "homo-deus" was not used, so far as I know, before Augustine) contumaci homini præberetur, et unigenito suscipiente formam servi, quæ nihil ante meruerat, fons gratiæ panderetur et carnis etiam resurrectio redemptis promissa in ipso redemptore præmonstraretur, et per eandem naturam quam se decepisse lætabatur, diabolus vinceretur, nec tamen homo gloriaretur, ne iterum superbia nasceretur, etc." [440] Enchir. 107: "Gratia vero nisi gratis est, gratia non est." [441] See the writings De corrept. et gratia, De dono perseverantiæ, De prædest. sanctorum, as well as expositions in all the works of Augustine's last years; for they never fail to prove that he more and more recognised the doctrine of predestinating grace to be the main one. Predestination does not rest on the foreknowledge that those particular men would follow grace, but it effects this result. The scriptural proof is Rom. IX. (see De prædest. 34). [442] Enchir. 32: "Nolentem prævenit ut velit, volentem subsequitur, ne frustra velit." De gratia et lib. arb. 33: "præparat voluntatem et cooperando perficit, quod operando inficit. Quoniam ipse ut velimus operatur incipiens." There are countless other passages. [443] De spir et litt. 34: "Non credere potest quodlibet libero arbitrio, si nulla sit suasio vel vocatio cui credat; profecto et ipsum velle credere deus operatur in homine et in omnibus misericordia ejus prævenit nos: consentire autem vocationi dei vel ab ea dissentire propriæ voluntatis est." Augustine's favourite text was, "Quid habes, quod non accepisti." [444] See preceding note. [445] See Augustine's last writings, e.g., De corr. 39; De præd. 32. The means of grace are uncertain; the universal vocatio should be successful, but it is not. [446] Here it is true that "deus ita suadet ut persuadeat." De prædest. 34: "Electi sunt ante mundi constitutionem ea prædestinatione, in qua deus sua futura facta præscivit; electi sunt autem de mundo ea vocatione, qua deus id, quod prædestinavit, implevit. Quos enim prædestinavit, ipsos et vocavit, illa scilicet vocatione secundum propositum, non ergo alios sed quos prædestinavit ipsos et vocavit, nec alios, sed quos prædestinavit, vocavit justificavit, ipsos et glorificavit, illo utique fine, qui non habet finem." [447] Therefore it was possible for Augustine to conceive the means of grace as acting in the case of heretics, because he felt their efficacy in general to be in the end uncertain. [448] See above, note 1. The commonest term is "adjutorium," which the Pelagians also used, but with a quite different meaning. They thought of a crutch, Augustine of a necessary power. [449] That is, this regeneration, surpassing forgiveness of sin and faith, is always considered the goal. That is the moral phase of the religious movement. Renovatio = justificatio = sanctificatio = sanctitas. Thus even regeneration is only perfect at the close. Enchir. 31: "We become free when God fashions us into good men." [450] On faith as an advancing process of faith see Dorner, pp. 183-195. Originally, faith is contrasted with knowledge; it is the acceptance on authority of things we cannot know, nay, of what is contrary to reason; but it grows into assensus, fiducia, and spiritual perception, and thus passes into love, or, according to Paul and James, into the faith that works in love. [451] Yet, as follows from the above exposition, the whole process of grace is completely subjective, although the parallel of the rites of the Church is maintained. [452] Augustine was the first to make baptism a real act of initiation (Ench. 64: "a baptismate incipit renovatio"). The forgiveness of sins has an independent value only for the baptised child if it dies; otherwise it is an initiation. Here, and for this reason, we have Luther's divergence in the notion of faith. De grat. et lib. arb. 27: "neque scientia divinæ legis, neque natura neque sola remissio peccatorum est illa gratia per Christum, sed ipsa facit, ut lex impleatur." [453] For Augustine's system it is a grave defect, sufficiently animadverted on also by the Pelagians, that baptism only removes the guilt of inherited sin; for with him removal of guilt is really a slight matter, in any case not the chief concern. But in the formulas the "non imputare," as well as fides, undoubtedly appears as the chief thing. In reality, while the removal of guilt is the object of fides historica, sin is blotted out by gratia infusa. Where Augustine seeks to retain guilt as the supreme conception, he always turns to its punishment. Man is emptied by sin. Thus sin bears its punishment in itself. Man despoiled, however, is much too dependent, too much of a cipher, to be able to possess guilt. [454] The formula justificatio ex fide is very frequent in Augustine. De spiritu et litt. 45: "cum dicat gratis justificari hominem per fidem sine operibus legis, nihil aliud volens intelligi in eo, quod dicit gratis, nisi quia justificationem opera non præcedunt. . . Quid est aliud justificati quam justi facti ab illo scilicet qui justificat impium ut ex impio fiat justus." 15: "non quod sine voluntate nostra justificatio fiat, sed voluntas nostra ostenditur infirma per legem, ut sanet gratia voluntatem et sanata voluntas impleat legem." C. Jul. II. 23: "justificatio in hac vita nobis secundum tria ista confertur: prius lavacro regenerationis, quo remittuntur cuncta peccata, deinde congressione cum vitiis, a quorum reatu absoluti sumus, tertio dum nostra exaudiatur oratio, qua dicimus, Dimitte nobis debita nostra." The whole process up to the meritis and vita æterna in De gratia et lib. arb. 20. Love alone decides salvation, because it alone replenishes the man despoiled by sin. Man receives his final salvation by being restored through the spirit of love to goodness, being, and God, and by being united with him mystically yet really. The depreciation of faith follows necessarily from the notions of God, the creature and sin, all three of which have the mark of the acosmic. Since there is no independence beside God, the act of faith on the part of a subject in the presence of God only obtains any value when it is transformed into union with God--the "being filled" by God. This union, however, is a product of the freed will and gratia (cooperans). [455] This is argued very often by Augustine. The bona concupiscentia can, as experience shows, never wholly supplant on earth the mala. (De spiritu 6: "adjuvat spiritus sanctus inspirans pro concupiscentia mala concupiscentiam bonam, hoc est caritatem diffundens in cordibus nostris.") For this very reason diffusio caritatis (gratia infusa, inspiratio dilectio--Augustine has many synonyms for this power of justification) is never perfected. Thus justification, which is identical with sanctification, is never completed because "opera" also are essential to it. Augustine appealed expressly to James. Gratia, however, is never imparted secundum merita bonaæ voluntatis, let alone bonorum operum; it first calls them forth. [456] See above, p. 155. We have to notice here also the juxtaposition of the two processes, the outer and inner. For the rest, the whole account of the process of salvation is not yet reduced to a strict plan. Augustine still confuses the stages, and, fortunately, has no fixed terminology. Scholasticism first changed all this. [457] No one can wholly avoid sin; but the saints can refrain from crimes (Enchir. 64). [458] The work "De fide et operibus" is especially important at this point. Augustine expressly denies, c. 40, that faith and knowledge of God suffice for final blessedness. He holds by the saying: "Hereby we know him, if we keep his commandments." Against reformers like Jovinian, and not only against them, he defended the consilia, monachism, the higher morality, and the saints. De gratia et lib. arb. 1: "per gratiam dei bona merita comparamus quibus ad vitam perveniamus æternam." By these merita, works thoroughly ascetic are to be understood; see also the writings, De sancta virgin., and De bono viduit., in which, for the rest, Augustine is still more favourable to marriage than at a later date. His writings are at all times marked by a lofty appreciation of almsgiving. [459] That grace is gratis data only appears certain to Augustine from the contention that it is irresistibilis, and embraces the donum perseverantiæ. The doctrine that the election of grace is unconditioned thus appears most plainly at the close of the whole line of thought; see De corrept et grat. 34, and the writings De dono persev. and De prædest. sanct. But, according to Augustine, no one can be certain that he possesses this grace. Therefore with all his horror of sin, Augustine had not experienced the horror of uncertainty of salvation. For this reason Christ can take so secondary a place in the working out of the process of grace. Christ is for him the Redeemer, and is actively present in the Sacraments; but he is not the pledge of the inner assurance of salvation. [460] But Augustine assumes different degrees also in definitive salvation and perdition. That is characteristic for his moral theory. [461] Dorner, p. 124 ff. [462] See above, p. 114 f. [463] This was constantly admitted by Augustine. [464] We find in Augustine the two positions, that sinful man does not will goodness, and that he yet, under a blind impulse, pursues blessings, nay, even the good, but without ever attaining them. [465] The inclination to nothing (not-being) is always at the same time a striving for independence, which is false, and ends in being resultless. [466] Pride is the sin of the soul, concupiscence essentially that of the body which masters the soul. The inner evolution of sin from privatio (defectus) boni to ignorantia, concupiscentia, error, dolor, metus, delectatio morbida, see Enchir. 23. What Augustine always regarded most in sin was the infirmity, the wound. [467] The work of the historical Christ is essentially redemption from the power of the devil. [468] Here enters the popular Catholic element, still further accentuated, however, by Augustine. Enchir. 117: "Regnat carnalis cupiditas, ubi non est dei caritas." [469] The extremely disgusting disquisitions on marriage and lust in the polemical writings against Julian (also De civ. dei XIV.) are, as the latter rightly perceived, hardly independent of Augustine's Manichæism: (Julian, indeed, traces Traducianism to Manichæism; see Op. imperf. III. 172). (Manichæism, besides, already appears, in the treatment of the "ex nihilo," as if it were an evil substance; Neoplatonism alone does not, in my opinion, explain this conception; yet the above dependence cannot be strictly proved--see Loofs, D.-Gesch., 3 Ed., p. 215.) And the disquisitions are by no means a mere outwork in Augustine's system; they belong to its very centre. The most remarkable feature in the sexual sphere was, in his view, the involuntariness of the impulse. But instead of inferring that it could not therefore be sinful--and this should have been the inference in keeping with the principle "omne peccatum ex voluntate"--he rather concludes that there is a sin which belongs to nature, namely, to natura vitiata, and not to the sphere of the will. He accordingly perceives a sin rooted in natura, of course in the form which it has assumed, a sin that propagates itself with our nature. It would be easy now to prove that in thinking of inherited sin, he always has chiefly in view this very sin, the lust of procreation; but it is impracticable to quote his material here. It is clear that inherited sin is the basis of all wickedness, and that it is in quite a different position front actual sins, because in it nature, having become evil, infects the whole being. But it is obvious that this was an unheard of novelty in the Church, and must be explained by reference to Manichæism. Of course Augustine did not intend to be a Manichæan. He distinguishes sharply between vitium and natura vitiate (De nupt. 36; Op. imp. III. 188, etc., etc.,); he strives to introduce the "voluntarium" even into inherited sin (Retract. I. 13, 5); but dualism is not surmounted simply by supposing nature to have become "mala," and yet to propagate itself as evil, and the voluntarium is a mere assertion. The dualism lies in the proposition that children possess original sin, because their parents have procreated them in lust--and by this proposition stands or falls the doctrine of original sin (De nupt. II. 15). So also Christ has sinlessness attributed to him, because he was not born of marriage (Ench. 41, 34), and Augustine imagined paradisaical marriages in which children were begotten without lust, or, as Julian says jestingly, were to be shaken from trees. All that he here maintains had been long ago held by Marcion and the Gnostics. One would have, in fact, to be a very rough being not to be able, and that without Manichæism, to sympathise with his feeling. But to yield to it so far as Augustine did, without rejecting marriage in consequence, could only happen at a time when doctrines were as confused as in the fifth century. Those, indeed, have increased the confusion still further, who have believed that they could retain Augustine's doctrine of inherited sin while rejecting his teaching as to concupiscence. But the history of dogma is the history of ever increasing confusions, and of a growing indifference not only to the absurd, but also to contradictions, because the Church was only with difficulty capable of giving up anything found in tradition. It cannot also be said that Augustine by his theory simply gave expression to the monastic tendency (Jerome, indeed, has gone just as far in his rejection of marriage--see lib. adv. Jovin.); for this was a tendency and not a theory. The legitimate point in Augustine's doctrine lies in the judgment passed by the child of God on himself, viz., that without God he is wretched, and that this wretchedness is guilt. But this paradox of the verdict of faith is no key to the understanding of history. [470] See the correspondence with Jerome on this point which was never settled by Augustine. [471] This destroys the beautiful proposition (pride and humility) out of which, of course, no historical theories could be constructed. [472] On sin and sin's punishment (inherited sin is both), see Op. imp. I. 41-47, but even in the Confessions often, and De pecc. mer. II. 36. [473] Even inherited sin is quite enough for damnation, as Augustine has very often maintained--and rightly, if there is such a thing. [474] "Mitissima poena" (Enchir. 103)--thus the man permits himself to soften the inscrutable righteousness of God which he teaches elsewhere. He answered the question why then should God continue to create men if they must almost all be lost, by referring to baptism, and the peculiar power of Divine Omnipotence to make good out of evil. Had God not been omnipotent, then he could not have permitted evil (Enchir. 11); "melius judicavit, de malis bene facere, quam mala nulla esse permittere" (c. 27, 100). But he himself was shaken by the problem presented by the death, unbaptised, of Christian children (De corr. et gr. 18), All who are lost are juste prædestinati ad poenam (mortem)--see Enchir. 100; De civ. XXII. 24. Whether God damns all, or pardons some--nulla est iniquitas; for all have deserved death (Enchir. 27). "Tenebatur justa damnatione genus humanum et omnes erant iræ filii" (c. 33). Here in the later writings arises the doctrine of God's twofold will (judicium), the secret and the manifest. God does not will that all be blessed (Enchir. 203). [475] It was very incorrect to derive Augustine's whole conception of original sin from the practice of infant baptism. It was, of course, very important to him as a means of proof. [476] The description of the magnitude of Adam's Fall is in most of the anti-Pelagian writings, but also elsewhere. [477] In the case of Adam's Fall Augustine gives the greatest prominence to the sin of the soul: "in paradiso ab animo coepit elatio" (c. Jul. V. 17). We have "amor sui" as chief and radical sin in the Confessions; Enchir. 45 gives a precise enumeration of all the sins committed in one act by Adam. [478] That is, he was not only created good, but grace stood by him also as adjutorium: see under. [479] The grace supporting him (adjutorium). [480] Augustine always thinks first of this death. That the Pelagians accepted for their own purposes, since they held natural death to be natural. Augustine never maintained that formal freedom had been lost by Adam's sin, nay, in C. duas epp. Pelag. I. 5 he distinctly disputed this: "libertas periit, sed illa, quæ in paradiso fuit, non liberum arbitrium." But Augustine has represented the latter to be hopelessly hampered. See also the writing De gratia et lib. arb. In it he says (c. 45): "deus induravit per justum judicium, et ipse Pharao per liberum arbitrium. But (Enchir. 105): "Multo liberius erit arbitrium, quod omnino non poterit servire peccato." [481] Thus sensuousness appears as the main detriment. [482] Enchir. 26: "Hinc post peccatum exul effectus stirpem quoque suam, quam peccando in se tamquam in radice vitiaverat, poena mortis et damnationis obstrinxit, ut quidquid prolis ex illo et simul damnata per quam peccaverat conjuge per carnalem concupiscentiam, in qua inobedientiæ poena similis [so far as the flesh here is not obedient to the will, but acts of itself] retributa est, nasceretur, traheret originale peccatum, quo treheretur per errores doloresque diversos ad illud extremum supplicium." [483] Augustine's exposition of the eph' ho in De pecc. mer. I. 11; c. Jul. VI. 75 sq.; Op. imp. II. 48-55 (against mere imitation). The translation "in quo" was received by Augustine from tradition, and in general his doctrine of original sin is at this point closest to tradition. If he had contented himself with the mystical, i.e., the postulated, conception that all are sinners, because they somehow were all in Adam, his theory would have been no novelty. But this "in quo" does not include, but excludes, original sin in the strict sense; all are sinners personally, because they were all in Adam, or were Adam. The conception that Adam's sin passed to all as actual sip, and affected them through contagion (by means of the parents who infect their children, Enchir. 46; doubts as to the extent of descent by inheritance, 47), is the complete antithesis of that mystical conception. [484] See above, p. 210 f. [485] On the doctrine of the primitive state, see Dorner, p. 114 ff. [486] Both formal freedom and the true freedom which established Adam's obedience as the mater omnium virtutum are very strongly emphasised by Augustine as belonging to the primitive state; De civ. XIV. 12; De bono conjug. 32. On the primitive state, l.c. XI.-X1V.; De corrept. 28-33. [487] This "ease" is strongly emphasised in De civ. XIV. 12-15. The whole doctrine of the primitive state, like all teaching on this subject, is full of contradictions; for we have here a grace that is meant to be actual, and is yet merely a condition, i.e., it by no means makes a man good, but only leaves scope to the will. Thereby the whole doctrine of grace is upset; for if there is a grace at all which only produces the posse non peccare, is not this the sole significance of all grace? and if that is correct, were not the Pelagians right? They, of course, maintained that grace was only a condition. Augustine's doctrine of grace in the primitive state (the adjutorium) is Pelagian, and contradicts his doctrine of grace elsewhere. We have here the clearest proof that it is impossible to construct a history from the standpoint of predestinating grace. Augustine falls back on the assumption that God wished to bestow on man a higher good than that he had received at first. Enchir. 25, 105: "Sic enim oportebat prius hominem fieri, ut et bene velle posset et male, nec gratis si bene, nec impune, si male; postea vero sic erit, ut male velle non possit, nec ideo libero carebit arbitrio . . . ordo prætermittendus non fuit, in quo deus ostendere voluit, quam bonum sit animal rationale quod etiam non peccare possit, quamvis sit melius quod peccare non possit." But how does that accord with irresistible grace? Therefore the question rightly arises (De corrept. et gratia): "Quomodo Adam non perseverando peccavit, qui perseverantiam non accepit?" Is not the whole doctrine of grace upset if we have to read (Enchir. 106): "Minorem immortalitatem (i.e., posse non mori) natura humana perdidit per liberum arbitrium, majorem (i.e., non posse mori) est acceptura per gratiam, quam fuerat, si non peccasset, acceptura per meritum, quamvis sine gratia nec tunc ullum meritum esse potuisset?" Accordingly, at the beginning and end (the primitive state and the Judgment) the moral view is set above the religious. The whole doctrine of predestinating irresistible grace is set in a frame incompatible with it. Thus Augustine is himself responsible if his Church in after times, arguing from the primitive state and the Judgment (secundum merita), has eliminated practically his doctrine of gratia gratis data. He, indeed, said himself (107): "ipsa vita æterna merces est operum bonorum," That would have been the case with Adam, and it is also ours. The infralapsarian doctrine of predestination, as understood by Augustine, is very different from Calvin's. [488] Enchir. 93: "Tanto quisque tolerabiliorem ibi habebit damnationem, quanto hic minorem habuit iniquitatem!" Also 111. [489] Augustine attempted, in opposition to Pelagianism, to exhibit the difference between the law and faith: "fides impetrat quod lex imperat." He also succeeded as far as the difference can he evolved from the notion of grace as the exclusive operation of God. But since he had not obtained an insight into the strict and exclusive cohesion of grace and faith, he did not succeed in thinking out and holding fast the distinction between law and faith to the end. He had no assured experience that the law prepared the way for wrath and despair. At this point Luther intervened. [490] It is perhaps the worst, it is at any rate the most odious, consequence of Augustinianism, that the Christian religion in Catholicism is brought into particularly close relations to the sphere of sex. The combination of grace and sin (in which the latter takes above all the form of original sin identified with the sexual impulse and its excesses) became the justification of that gruesome and disgusting raking up of human filth, which, as is proved by the moral books of Catholicism, is a chief business of the priest, the celibate priest and monk, in the confessional. The dogmatic treatises of mediæval and modern times give, under the heading "sin," a wholly colourless idea of what is really considered "sin," of that which incessantly occupies the imagination of common Christians, priests, and, unfortunately, also many "saints." We have to study the mirrors of the confessional, the moral books and legends of the saints, and to surprise the secret life, to perceive to what point in Catholicism religious consolation is especially applied. Truly, the renowned educational wisdom of this Church makes a sad shipwreck on this rock! It seeks here also to oppose sin; but instead of quieting the imagination, which is especially interested in it, it goes on exciting it to its depths, drags the most secret things shamelessly to the light in its dogmas of the virgin, etc., and permits itself to speak openly of matters of which no one else ventures to talk. Ancient naturalism is less dangerous, at any rate for thousands less infectious, than this seraphic contemplation of virginity, and this continual attention to the sphere of sex. Here Augustine transmitted the theory, and Jerome the music. But how far the beginnings reach back! Tertullian had already written the momentous words (De pudic. 17): "Quid intelligimus carnis sensum et carnis vitam nisi quodcunque pudet pronuntiare?" Later writers were nevertheless not ashamed to utter broadly what the far from prudish African only suggested. [491] We have at the same time to notice that no Church Father was so keenly conscious as he of the limitations of knowledge. In almost all his writings--a bequest of the Academy and a result of his thought being directed to the main matter--he exhorts his hearers to refrain from over-curiousness, a pretence of knowledge that runs to seed. He set aside as insoluble very many problems that had been and were afterwards often discussed, and he prepared the way for the concentration of the doctrinal system on its own material. __________________________________________________________________ 4. Augustine's Interpretation of the Symbol (Enchiridion ad Laurentium). The New System of Religion. After the exposition given above p. 106 f., we shall best conclude our account of Augustine's rôle in the history of dogma, by reviewing the expositions given in the Enchiridion of the contents of the Catholic religion. Everything is combined in this book to instruct us as to the nature of the revision (and on the other hand of the confirmation) by Augustine of the popular Catholic dogmatic doctrine that gave a new impress to the Western Church. We shall proceed first to give a minute analysis of the book, and then to set down systematically what was new and at the same time lasting. Augustine begins by saying that the wisdom of man is piety ("hominis sapientia pietas est" or more accurately "theosebeia") (2). The answer to the question how God is to be worshipped, is--by faith, hope, and love. We have accordingly to determine what is meant by each of these three virtues (3). In them is comprised the whole doctrine of religion. They cannot, however, be established by reason or perception, but must be derived from Holy Scripture, and be implicitly believed in on the testimony of the sacred writers (4). When the soul has attained this faith, it will, if faith works in love, strive to reach that vision by which holy and perfected souls perceive the ineffable beauty, the complete contemplation of which is supreme blessedness. "The beginning in faith, the completion in sight, the foundation Christ." But Christ is the foundation only of the Catholic faith, although heretics also call themselves by his name. The evidence for this exclusive relationship between Christ and the Catholic Church would carry us too far here (5). We do not intend to enter into controversy, but to expound (6). The Symbol and the Lord's Prayer constitute the contents of faith (symbol), and of hope and love (prayer); but faith also prays (7). Faith applies also to things which we do not hope for, but fear; and further to our own affairs and those of others. So far as it--like hope--refers to invisible, future blessings, it is itself hope. But without love it profits nothing, because the devils also believe. Thus everything is comprehended in faith, which works by love and possesses hope (8) Augustine now passes to the Symbol (the ancient Apostolic creed), in order to state the contents of faith. In § 9-32, he deals with the first article. The knowledge of nature and physics does not belong to faith--besides, scholars conjecture rather than know in this matter (opinantes quam scientes). It is enough for the Christian to believe that the goodness of the creator is simply the first cause of all things, so that there is no nature unless either it is he himself, or is of him. Further, that this creator is the "Trinity, supremely and equally, and unchangeably good" (trinitas summe et æquabiliter et immutabiliter bona), and that while created things do not Possess this quality, they are good; nay, everything collectively is very good, and produces a wonderful beauty, in which evil, set in its right place, only throws the good into relief (9, 10). Augustine at once passes to the doctrine of evil. God permits it only because he is so powerful that he can make good out of evil, i.e., he can restore the defect of the good (privatio boni), evil being represented as such defect (morbus [disease] vulnus [wound]). In the notion of that which is not supremely good (non summum bonum esse) we have the capacity for deterioration; but the good, which is involved in the existence of any substance, cannot be annihilated, unless the substance itself be destroyed. But in that case corruption itself also ceases, since it can never exist save in what is good: evil can only exist in what is good (in a bonum). This is expounded at length (11-15). The causes of good and evil must be known, in order to escape the errors and infirmities (ærumnæ) of this life. On the other hand, the causes of great movements in nature--Augustine returns to § 9--need not be known; we do not even know the conditions of our health, which yet lie nearest us (16)! But is not every error an evil, and what are we to think of deception, lying? These questions are minutely discussed in §§ 17-22. Every case of ignorance is not an error, but only supposed knowledge is, and every error is not hurtful; there is even a good error, one that is of use. But since it is unseemly (deforme atque indecens) for the mind to hold the truth to be false, and the uncertain certain, our life is for that very reason wretched, because at times we need error that we may not lose our life. Such will not be that existence, "where truth itself will be the life of our soul" (ubi ipsa veritas vita animæ nostræ erit). But the lie is worst, so bad that even liars themselves hate being lied to. But yet falsehood offers a difficult problem. (The question of lying in an emergency, whether it can become a duty for a righteous man, is elaborately discussed.) Here again the most important point is to determine wherein one errs: "it is far more tolerable to lie in those things that are unconnected with religion than to be deceived in those without belief in, or knowledge of, which God cannot be worshipped" (18). [492] Looked at accurately, every error is an evil, though often, certainly, a small one. It is possible to doubt whether every error is also sinful--e.g., a confusion about twins, or holding sweet to be bitter, etc.; at all events, in such cases the sin is exceedingly small and trivial (minimum et levissimum peccatum), since it has nothing to do with the way that leads to God, i.e. with the faith that works in love. Error is, indeed, rather an evil than a sin, a sign of the misery of this life. In any case, however, we may not, in order to avoid all error, seek to hold nothing to be true--like the Academicians; for it is our duty to believe. Besides the standpoint of absolute nescience is impracticable; for even he who knows not must deduce his existence from this consciousness of nescience (20). We must, on the contrary, avoid the lie; for even when we err in our thought, we must always say what we think. [493] Even the lie which benefits another is sinful, although men who have lied for the general advantage have contributed a great deal to prosperity (22). Augustine returns to § 16: we must know the causes of good and evil. The sole first cause of the good is the goodness of God; the cause of evil is the revolt of the will from the unchangeable God on the part of a being, good but changeable, first, an angel, then man (23). From this revolt follow all the other infirmities of the soul [ignorance, concupiscence, etc.] (24). But the craving for blessedness (appetitus beatitudinis) was not lost. We now have an exposition of Adam's endowment, the Fall, original sin, the sentence of death, the massa damnata, which suffers along with the doomed angels, etc. God's goodness is shown, however, in his grant of continued existence to the wicked angels, for whom there is no conversion besides, and in his preservation of men. Although it would have been only justice to give them also over to eternal punishment, he resolved to bring good out of evil (25-27). It was his merciful intention, i.e., to supplement from mankind the number of the angels who persevered in goodness, rendered incomplete by the fall of some, in order that the heavenly Jerusalem might retain its full complement, nay, should be increased by the "sons of our Holy Mother" [filii sanctæ matris] (28-29). But the men chosen owe this not to the merits of their own works (to free will); for in themselves they are dead like the rest (suicides), and are only free to commit sin. Before they are made free, accordingly, they are slaves; they can only be redeemed by grace and faith. Even faith is God's gift, and works will not fail to follow it. Thus they only become free, when God fashions them anew (into the nova creatura), producing the act of will as well as its accomplishment ("quamvis non possit credere, sperare, diligere homo rationalis, nisi velit"--although rational man cannot believe, hope, or love, unless he will). [494] That is, God makes the will itself good (misericordia præveniens) and constantly assists it [miseric. subsequens] (30-32). The exposition of the second article follows in §§ 33-55. Since all men are by nature children of wrath, and are burdened by original sin and their own sins, a mediator (reconciliator) was necessary, who should appease this wrath (justa vindicta) by presenting a unique sacrifice. That this was done, and we from being enemies became children, constitutes the grace of God through Jesus Christ (33). We know that this mediator is the "Word" that became flesh. The Word was not transformed, but assumed our complete human nature from the virgin, being conceived not by the libido matris, but by faith--and therefore sinlessly. [495] The mother remained a virgin in giving birth (in partu) (34). We have now a short discussion on Christ as "God and man in unity of person, equal to God, and as man less than God" (35). Christ, the man who was deemed worthy to be assumed by God to form one person with him, is the most splendid example of grace given gratis, and not according to merits. The same grace that fell to the man Christ and made him sinless falls to us in justification from sins. It also revealed itself in Christ's miraculous birth, in connection with which, besides, the Holy Ghost did not act like a natural father. It was rather the whole Trinity that created the offspring of the virgin: the man Jesus, like the world, is the creation of the Trinity. But why precisely the Holy Ghost is named, it is hard to say. In any case, the man Jesus was not the son of the Spirit, but the latter is probably named in order to point to the grace that, existing without any preceding merits, had become in the man Jesus an attribute which in some way was natural (quodammodo naturalis); for the Holy Spirit is "so far God that he may be called the gift of God" [sic deus, ut dicatur etiam dei donum] (36-40). This is followed again by a long section (41 to 52) on sin and the relation of Christ to it. Christ was free from original and actual sin, but was himself--on account of similarity to sinful flesh--absolutely called sin. That is, he became a sacrifice for sin, representing our sin in the flesh in which he was crucified, "that in some way he might die to sin, in dying to the flesh," [496] and from the Resurrection might seal our new life (41). That is bestowed on us in baptism. Everyone dies to sin in baptism--even the children, who die to original sin--and in this respect sin is to be understood collectively; for even in Adam's sin many forms of sin were contained. But children are obviously infected not only by Adam's sin, but also by those of their parents. For their birth is corrupt, because by Adam's sin nature was perverted; moreover the actual sins of parents "although they cannot thus change nature, impose guilt on the children" (etsi non ita possunt mutare naturam, reatu tamen obligant filios). But Augustine refrains from deciding how far the sins of ancestors project their influence in the chain of descent. It is all expiated by the mediator, the man Jesus Christ, who was alone equipped with such grace as not to need regeneration; for he only accepted baptism by John in order to give a grand example of humility, just as he also submitted to death, not from compulsion, but in order to let the devil receive his rights (42-49). Christ is thus Adam's anti-type; but the latter only introduced one sin into the world, while Christ took away all that had since been committed. All were condemned in Adam; none escapes the condemnation without Christ. Baptism is to be solemnised as "the grand mystery in the cross of Christ" (mysterium grande in cruce Christi); for according to Paul baptism is "nothing but the similitude of Christ's death; but the death of Christ crucified is nothing but the similitude of the remission of sin, that as in him a true death took place, so in us a true remission of sins." [497] This is elaborated in accordance with Rom. VI; we are dead to sin through baptism (50-52). The clauses of the Symbol are now enumerated down to the "sitting at the right hand" with the observation: "It was so carried out that in these matters the Christian life which is borne here should be typified not only mystically by words but also by deeds." [498] That is established in connection with each separate article. Thus the "sitting at the right hand" means: "set your affections on those things that are above" (quæ sursum sunt sapite). On the other hand, the Return of Christ has no reference to our earthly life. It belongs entirely to the future. The judgment of the living and dead may also suggest to us the just and unjust (53-55). To the third article §§ 56-113 are devoted; it is accordingly most elaborately elucidated. §§ 56-63 treat of the Holy Ghost, who completes the Trinity, and so is no part of creation, and also of the Holy Church. This is the temple and city of the Trinity. But it is here regarded as a whole. That is, it includes the section which exists in heaven and has never experienced a fall--the angels who aid the pilgrim part (pars peregrinans) being already united with it by love (56). The Church in heaven is void of evil and unchangeable. Augustine admits that he does not know whether there are degrees of rank among the angels, whether the stars belong to them, or what the truth is as to their bodily form (57-59). It is more important to determine when Satan invests himself in the form of an angel of light (60). We shall only know the state of the heavenly Church when we belong to it ourselves. The Church of this world, for which Christ died, we do know; for the angels he did not die; yet the result of his work also extends to them, in so far as enmity to them is at an end, and their number is once more complete. Thus by the one sacrifice the earthly host is again united with the heavenly, and the peace is restored that transcends all thought--not that of angels, but of men; but even angels, and men who have entered the state of felicity, will never comprehend the peace of God as God himself does (61-63). Augustine now passes to the "remission of sins" (64-83): "by this stands the Church on earth" (per hanc stat ecclesia qua in terris est). So far as our sins are forgiven, "the angels are even now in harmony with us" (concordant nobiscum angeli etiam nunc). In addition to the "great indulgence," there is a continuous remission of sins, which even the most advanced of the righteous need, for they often descend to their own level and sin. Certainly the life of the saints may be free from transgressions, but not from sin (64). But even for grave offences there is forgiveness in the Church after due penance; and the important point is not the time of penance, but the anguish of the penitent. But since this emotion is concealed from our fellow-men, and cannot be inspected, the bishops have rightly instituted penitential seasons "that the Church may also be satisfied," the Church beyond whose pale there is no forgiveness; for it alone has received the pledge of the Holy Ghost (65). Evils remain in this world in spite of the salutaria sacramenta, that we may see that the future state is their goal. There are punitive evils; for sins last on, and are punished in this life or the next (66). We must certainly not fancy that faith by itself protects from future judgment (hos dia puros), it is rather only the faith that works in love (faith and works). By "wood and stubble" we are not to understand sins, but desires after earthly things lawful in themselves (67, 68). It is credible that a purifying fire exists for believers even after death (69)--sinners can only be saved by a corresponding penance combined with almsgiving. Almsgiving is now discussed in detail (69-77). At the Last Judgment the decision turns on it (Mat. XXV. 34 ff.). Of course we are at the same time to amend our lives; "God is to be propitiated for past sins by alms, not by any means to be bribed that we may always be allowed to commit sins with impunity." [499] God blots out sins "if due satisfaction is not neglected" (si satisfactio congrua non negligatur), without giving permission to sin (70). Daily prayer furnishes satisfaction for small and light daily sins (71). [500] The forgiveness, also, that we bestow on others is a kind of alms. Speaking generally, everything good we give to others, advice, comfort, discipline, etc., is alms. By this we besides help to gain forgiveness of our own sins (72). But the highest stages of almsgiving are forgiveness of sins and love of our enemies (73). [501] Those virtues everyone must practise, that he himself may be forgiven (74). But all these alms fail to benefit us unless we amend ourselves; that is, the alms we give to ourselves are the most important. Of him alone who has mercy on himself is the saying true: "Give alms and all is right (pure) with you." We must love ourselves with the love that God has bestowed on us; this the Pharisees, who only gave outward alms, did not do, for they were the enemies of their own souls (75-77). The divine judgment, however, can alone determine what sins are light or grave. Many things permitted by the apostles--e.g., matrimonial intercourse prompted by desire--are yet sinful; many sins which we consider wholly trifling (e.g., reviling), are grave; and many--e.g., unchastity--which custom has brought us to look on lightly, are dreadful, even though Church discipline itself has become lax in dealing with them (78-80). All sin springs either from ignorance or weakness. The latter is the more serious; but divine grace alone aids us to overcome either (81). Unfortunately, from false weakness and shame, public penance is frequently withheld. Therefore God's mercy is not only necessary in the case of penitence, but also that men may resolve to show penitence. But he who disbelieves in and despises the forgiveness of sin in the Church commits the sin against the Holy Ghost (82, 83). The resurrection of the body is dealt with in §§ 84-113. First, the resurrection of abortions and monstrosities is discussed (85-87); then the relation of the new body to its old material--every particle of which need not pass into the former; and further, the corporeal difference, the stainlessness and spirituality of bodies in the future state (88-91). We must not concern ourselves with the constitution of the bodies of the lost who also rise again, although we are here confronted by the great paradox that a corruptible body does not die nor an incorruptible feel pain). [502] (92). Those will have the mildest punishment who have only original, but not actual, sin. Damnation in general will be marked by degrees, depending in each case on the measure of sin (93). Augustine now comes to speak of predestination in detail (94-108): "no one is saved except by undeserved mercy, and no one is condemned except by a deserved judgment." [503] That is the theme. It will become manifest in eternal life why of two children the one is accepted out of mercy, and the other rejected in accordance with justice. God's refusal of salvation is not unjust, though all might have been saved if he had willed; for nothing happens without his will or permission (95). Even in permitting evil his action is good, or the first article of the Symbol would no longer hold true (96). But if God's will cannot be frustrated by any choice of his creatures, how does the fact that all are not saved agree with the assurance that "he wills that all should be saved" (1 Tim. II. 4)? The usual answer, that men will not, is obviously false; for they cannot hinder God's will, as he can certainly turn even the bad into a good will. Accordingly, God does not will that all be saved, but he justly sentences sinners to death (Rom. IX.), that he who receives salvation may boast in the Lord. God is free in his election to grace; he would not have been to be blamed if he had redeemed no one after Adam's Fall; so neither is he to be blamed if in his mercy he redeems only a few, that none may boast of his own merits, but in the Lord. God's will is expressed in the case of the lost as much as in that of the saved ("in the very deed by which they opposed his will, his will regarding them was done"). [504] So great are the works of the Lord that nothing that takes place against his will happens outside (præter) of it. A good son wishes his father to live, but God, whose will is good, decides that he should die. Again, a bad son wishes his father to die, and God also wills this. The former wills what God does not; the latter what he does. Yet the former stands nearer God; for in the case of men it is the final intention that counts, while God accomplishes his good will even through the bad will of men. He is always just and always omnipotent (97-102). Therefore 1 Tim. II. 4 can only mean that God wills all classes of men to be saved, or that all those whom he resolves to save will be saved. In any case it is not to be imagined that he desires to save all, but is prevented (103). Had God foreknown that Adam, in keeping with his constitution, would have retained forever the will to avoid sin, he would have preserved him in his original state of salvation. But he knew the opposite, and therefore shaped his own will to effect good through him who did evil. For man must have been so created originally as to be able to do good and evil. Afterwards he will be changed, and will no longer be able to will evil; "nor will he therefore be without free choice" (nec ideo libero carebit arbitrio); for free will still exists, even if a time comes when we cannot will evil, just as it even now exists, although we can never will our own damnation. Only the order of things had to be observed, first the "posse non," then the "non posse." But grace is always necessary, and would have been even if man had not sinned; for he could only have attained the "non posse" by the co-operation of grace. (Men can indeed starve voluntarily, but mere appetite will not keep them alive; they require food.) But since sin entered, grace is much greater, because the will had itself to be freed in order that it might co-operate with grace (104-106.) Eternal life, though a reward of good works, is also a gift of grace, because our merits are God's gifts. God has made one vessel to honour and another to dishonour, that none should boast. The mediator who redeemed us required also to be God, "that the pride of man might be censured by the humility of God" (ut superbia humana per humilitatem dei argueretur), and that man might be shown how far he had departed from God, etc. (107, 108). After this long excursus, Augustine returns to § 93, and deals (log) with the intermediate state (in abditis receptaculis), and the mitigation obtained by departed souls through the Mass, and the alms of survivors in the Church; for there are many souls not good enough to be able to dispense with this provision, and not bad enough not to be benefited by it. "Wherefore here (on the earth) all merit is acquired by which anyone can be relieved or burdened after this life." [505] What the Church does for the dead (pro defunctis commendandis) is not inconsistent with Rom. XIV. 10; II. Cor. V. 10. For those who are wholly good it is a thanksgiving, for those not altogether bad an atonement, for those entirely wicked it is resultless, but gives comfort to the survivors; nay, while it makes remission complete (plena), it renders damnation more tolerable (110). After the Judgment there are only two states, though there are different grades in them. We must believe in the eternal duration of the pains of hell, although we may perhaps suppose that from time to time God lightens the punishment of the lost, or permits some sort of mitigation. "Death will continue without end, just as the collective eternal life of all saints will continue" (111-113). [506] Following his programme, Augustine ought now to have discussed in detail hope and love (prayer); but he omits doing so, because he has really touched on everything already. He therefore confines himself to affirming that hope applies solely to what we pray for in the Lord's Prayer, that three petitions refer to eternal, four to temporal, benefits, and that Matthew and Luke do not really differ in their versions of the Prayer (114-116). As regards love, he points out that it is the greatest of all. It, and not faith and hope, decides the measure of goodness possessed by a man. Faith and hope can exist without love, but they are useless. The faith that works in love, i.e., the Holy Spirit by whom love is infused into our hearts, is all-important; for where love is wanting, fleshly lust reigns (117). There are four human conditions: life among the deepest shades of ignorance (altissimis ignorantiæ tenebris), under the law (which produces knowledge and conscious sin), under grace or good hope, and under peace (in the world beyond). Such has also been the history of God's people; but God has shown his grace even at the first and second stages (118), and thus even now man is laid hold of sometimes at the first, sometimes at the second, stage, all his sins being forgiven in his regeneration (119), so that death itself no longer harms him (120). All divine commands aim at love, and no good, if done from fear of punishment or any other motive than love, is done as it ought. All precepts (mandata) and counsels (consilia) given by God are comprised in the command to love God and our neighbour, and they are only rightly performed when they spring, at present in faith, in the future in immediate knowledge, from love. In the world of sight each will know what he should love in the other. Even now desire abates as love increases, until it reaches the love that leads a man to give his life for another. But how great will love be in the future state, when there no longer exists any desire to be overcome! __________________________________________________________________ No one can mistake the popular Catholic features of this system of religion. It is based on the ancient Symbol. The doctrines of the Trinity and the Two Natures are faithfully avowed. The importance of the Catholic Church is strictly guarded, and its relation to the heavenly Church, which is the proper object of faith, is left as indefinite as the current view required. Baptism is set in the foreground as the "grand mystery of renovation," and is derived from Christ's death, in which the devil has obtained his due. Faith is only regarded as a preliminary condition; eternal life is only imparted to merits which are products of grace and freedom. They consist of works of love, which are summed up in almsgiving. Almsgiving is freely treated; it constitutes penance. Within the Church forgiveness is to be had for all sins after baptism, if only a fitting satisfaction is furnished (satisfacere ecclesiæ; satisfactio congrua). There is a scale of sins, from crimes to quite trivial daily offences. For this reason, wicked and good men are graded; but even the best (sancti, perfecti) can only be sinless in the sense that they commit none but the lightest sins. The saints are the perfect ascetics; asceticism is the culmination of love; but all do not need to practise it; we must distinguish between commands and counsels. In the future state both felicity and perdition will also be graded. Departed souls, if at death they have only left trivial sins unatoned for by penance, will be benefited by the masses, alms, and prayers of survivors. They are placed in a purgatory that cleanses them in the form of a decreed punishment. [507] If here popular Catholic elements are already strengthened, and the way prepared for their future elaboration, that is equally true of the doctrines of the intermediate state, the temporary mitigation of the punishment of the lost, the help afforded by holy angels to the Church of the present world, the completion--by means of redeemed mortals --of the heavenly Church reduced in number through the Fall of the wicked angels, the virginity of Mary even in partu, [508] and the grace of Christ as being greater than Adam's sin. This also applies to the opinion that the ignorant adherence to a false religion is worse than the knowing utterance of a lie, and to many other doctrines developed by Augustine in other writings. Finally, the conception of salvation that holds it to consist in "vision" and "fruition" is at the root of and runs through everything. Yet the most spiritual fact, the process of sanctification, is attached to mysteriously operating forces. But on the other hand, this system of religion is new. The old Symbol--the Apostles interpreted by the Nicene--was supplemented by new material which could only be very loosely combined with it, and which at the same time modified the original elements. In all three articles the treatment of sin, forgiveness, and perfecting in love is the main matter (10-15; 25-33; 41-52; 64-83). Everything is presented as a spiritual process, to which the briefly discussed old dogmatic material appears subordinated. Therefore, also, the third article comes into the foreground; a half of the whole book is devoted to the few words contained in it. Even in the outline, novelty is shown: religion is so much a matter of the inner life that faith, hope, and love are all-important (3-8). No cosmology is given in the first article; indeed, physical teaching is expressly denied to form part of dogmatics (9, 16 f.). Therefore any Logos doctrine is also wanting. The Trinity, taught by tradition as dogma, is apprehended in the strictest unity; it is the creator. It is really one person; the "persons," as Augustine teaches us in other writings, are inner phases (moments) in the one God; they have no cosmological import. Thus the whole Trinity also created the man Christ in Mary's womb; the Holy Ghost is only named because "spiritus" is also a term for "God's gift" (donum dei). Everything in religion relates to God as only source of all good, and to sin; the latter is distinguished from error. Hereby a breach is made with ancient intellectualism, though a trace of it remains in the contention that errors are very small sins. Wherever sin is thought of, so is free, predestinating grace (gratia gratis data). The latter is contrasted with the sin inherited from Adam; it first gives freedom to the enslaved will. The exposition of the first article closes with the reference to prevenient and subsequent mercy. How different would have been the wording of this article if Augustine had been able to give an independent version! The case is not different with the second article. The actual contents of the Symbol are only briefly touched on--the Second Advent is merely mentioned without a single Chiliastic observation. On the other hand, the following points of view come to the front. On the one side we have the unity of Christ's personality as the man (homo) with whose soul the Word united itself, the predestinating grace, that introduced this man into personal unity with the Deity, although he possessed no merits (hence the parallel with our regeneration); the close connection of Christ's death with redemption from the devil, atonement, and baptism (forgiveness of sins). But on the other side we find the view of Christ's appearance and history as loftiness in humility, and as the pattern of the Christian life. Christ's significance as redeemer [509] is quite as strongly expressed for Augustine in this humility in splendour, and in his example of a Christian life (see S. Bernard and S. Francis), as in his death. He fluctuates between these two points of view. The Incarnation wholly recedes, or is set in a light entirely unfamiliar to the Greeks. Thus the second article has been completely changed. The chief and novel point in the third article consists in the freedom and assurance with which Augustine teaches that the forgiveness of sins in the Church is inexhaustible. When we consider the attitude of the ancient Church, Augustine, and Luther, to the sins of baptised Christians, an external criticism might lead us to say that men grow more and more lax, and that the increasing prominence given to grace (the religious factor) was merely a means of evading the strict demands made by the gospel on morality--the Christian life. And this view is also correct, if we look at the great mass of those who followed those guides. But in their own case their new ideas were produced by a profounder consciousness of sin, and an absorption in the magnitude of divine grace as taught by Paul. Augustine stands midway between the ancient Church and Luther. The question of personal assurance of salvation had not yet come home to him; but the question: "How shall I get rid of my sins, and be filled with divine energy?" took the first place with him. Following the popular Catholic view, he looked to good works (alms, prayer, asceticism); but he conceived them to be the product of grace and the will subject to grace; further, he warned Christians against all external doing. As he set aside all ritualistic mysticism, so he was thoroughly aware that nothing was to be purchased by almsgiving pure and simple, but that the issue depended on an inner transformation, a pure heart, and a new spirit. At the same time he was sure that even after baptism the way of forgiveness was ever open to the penitent, and that he committed the sin against the Holy Ghost who did not believe in this remission of sins in the Church. That is an entirely new interpretation of the Gospel saying. The concluding section of the Symbol (resurrectio carnis) is explained even more thoroughly than the forgiveness of sins in its third treatment in the third article. But after a short discussion of the subject proper--the doctrine of predestination [510] and a view which as doctrine is likewise virtually new, and takes the place of Origen's theory of Apokatastasis--the main theme is the supposition of an intermediate state, and of a cleansing of souls in it, to which the offerings and prayers of survivors can contribute. Piety: faith and love instead of fear and hope. Theory of religion: something higher than aught we call doctrine, a new life in the power of love. The doctrine of Scripture: the substance--the gospel, faith, love and hope--God. The Trinity: the one living God. Christology: the one mediator, the man Jesus into union with whose soul the Deity entered, without that soul having deserved it. Redemption: death for the benefit of enemies and humility in greatness. The Sacraments: the Word side by side with the Symbols. Salvation (felicity): the beata necessitas of the good. The good: blessedness in dependence on God. History: God works everything in accordance with His good pleasure. With that compare the dogmatics of the Greeks! [511] The extent and position of dogma were also modified by this revolution. The old dogmas of the undivided Church, simply because they passed into the background, and were no longer expressive of piety itself, became more rigid; they more and more received the character of a legal system. The new dogmas, on the contrary, the doctrines of sin and grace in which piety lived, did not yet receive in their positive form the position and value of the old, nor were they definitely stated in rounded formulas. [512] Thus, through the instrumentality of Augustine, the extent and importance, in the history of dogma, of the doctrine of the Church became more uncertain. On the one hand, that doctrine was referred back to the gospel itself; on the other, it was much less sharply marked off than before from theology, since the new thoughts were not enclosed in fixed formulas. There was formed round the old dogma, which held its ground as an inflexible authority, a vast indefinite circle of doctrines, in which the most important religious conceptions lived, and which yet no one was capable of examining and weaving into a fixed connection. That is the state of dogma in the Middle Ages. Side by side with the growing inflexibility, the process of internal dissolution had already begun. During the storms of the tribal migrations, just before the power of barbarianism broke in, God bestowed on the Church a man who judged spiritual things spiritually, and taught Christendom what constituted Christian piety. So far as we can judge, the young Germano-Roman peoples, like the Slays, would have remained wholly incapable of ever appropriating independently and thoroughly the contemporary Christian religion, the Church system transmitted to them as law and cultus in fixed formulas, they would never have pierced through the husk to the kernel, if along with that system they had not also received Augustine. It was from him, or rather from the Gospel and Paulinism under his guidance, that they derived the courage to reform the Church and the strength to reform themselves. __________________________________________________________________ [492] "Longe tolerabilius est in his quæ a religione sunt sejuncta mentiri, quam in iis, sine quorum fide vel notitia deus coli non potest, falli." E.g., to tell anyone falsely that a dead man is still alive is a much less evil than to believe erroneously that Christ will die once more. [493] C. 22. "Et utique verba propterea sunt instituta, non per quæ se homines invicem fallunt, sed per quæ in alterius quisque notitiam cogitationes suas perferat." (Compare Talleyrand). [494] C. 32: "Ex utroque fit, id est, ex voluntate hominis et misericordia dei." [495] Augustine's whole conception of the sinfulness mingled with all procreation, and his view that sexual desire is due not to nature as originally cleated, but to sin, have admittedly their roots in the earliest period. But they were expressed with Augustine's thoroughness only by the Gnostics, Marcion and--the author of the fragment De resurrectione ascribed to Justin. The parallel offered by the latter (c. 3) is extremely striking. There is not yet, naturally, any question of sin being propagated through sexual union; that union is held simply to be sinful; metras estin energeia to kuiskein kai moriou andrikou to spermainein; hosper de, ei tauta mellei energein tautas tas energeias, houtos ouk anankaion autois estin to ten archen energein (horomen goun pollas gunaikas me kuiskousas, hos tas steiras, kai metras echousas), houtos ouk eutheos kai to metran echein kai kuiskein anankazei; alla kai me steirai men ex arches, partheneuousai de, katergesan kai ten sunousian, heterai de kai apo chronou; kai tous arsenas de tous men ap'arches partheneuontas horomen, tous de apo chronou, hoste di' auton kataluesthai ton di' epithumias anomon gamon; There are also beasts that refrain from having connection, hoste kai di anthropon kai di alogon katargoumenen sunousian prin tou mellontos aionos horasthai; kai ho kurios de hemon Iesous ho Christos ou di' allo ti ek parthenou egennethe, all' hina katargese gennesin epithumias anomou kai deixe to archonti kai dicha sunousias anthropines dinaten einai to theo ten anthropou plasin; [496] "Ut quodammodo peccato moreretur, dum moritur carni." [497] "Nihil aliud nisi similitudo mortis Christi; nihil autem aliud mortem Christi crucifixi nisi remissionis peccati similitudinem, ut quemadmodum in illo vera mors facta est, sic in nobis vera remissio peccatorum." [498] "Ita gestum est, ut his rebus non mystice tantum dictis sed etiam gestis configuraretur vita Christiana quæ hic geritur." [499] "Per eleemosynas de peccatis præteritis est propitiandus deus, non ad hoc emendus quodam modo, ut peccata semper liceat impune committere." Accordingly some Catholics must even then have looked on alms as conferring a license. [500] "Delet omnino hæc oratio minima et quotidiana peccata." [501] Augustine here says with great truth that love of our enemies is possible only to a small minority (the perfect). But even those who do not attain it are heard if they utter the fifth petition in faith. [502] In hell "mors ipsa non moritur." [503] "Nisi per indebitam misericordiam nemo liberatur et nisi per debitum judicium nemo damnatur." [504] "Hoc ipso quod contra voluntatem fecerunt ejus, de ipsis facta est voluntas ejus." [505] Quocirca hic (in terra) omne meritum comparatur, quo possit post hanc vitam relevari quispiam vel gravari. [506] Manebit sine fine mors, sicut manebit communiter omnium vita æterna sanctorum. [507] The Enchiridion is not the only work in which Augustine has spoken of this ignis purgatarius. [508] The growing Marian dogma (see Vol. IV., p. 314) was thus strengthened rather than weakened by Augustine. He agreed entirely with Ambrose and Jerome (against Jovinian). By a woman came death, by a woman came life; Mary's faith conceived the Saviour. Julian's remarkable objection to the doctrine of original sin, that it made Mary to be subject to the devil (nascendi conditione), Augustine met by saying (Op. imp. IV. 122): "ipsa conditio nascendi solvitur gratia renascendi." We may not maintain it to be certain (see Schwane II., p. 691 f.) that Augustine thus implicitly taught Mary's immaculate conception. On the other hand, he undoubtedly held her to be without active sin; see De nat. et gr. 36: "Excepta itaque s. virgine Maria, de qua propter honorem domini nullam prorsus, cum de peccatis agitur, haberi volo quæstionem; unde enim scimus, quid ei plus gratiæ collatum fuerit ad vincendum omni ex parte peccatum, quæ concipere et parere meruit, quem constat nullum habuisse peccatum? hac ergo virgine excepta si omnes illos sanctos et sanctas, cum hic viverent, congregare possimus et interrogare, utrum essent sine peccato, quid fuisse responsuros putamus, utrum hoc quod ista dicit an quod Johannes apostolus?" Gen. ad litt. X. 18-21. Augustine helped to give Mary a special position between Christ and Christians, simply because he first emphasised strongly the sinfulness of all men, even the saints, and then excepted Mary. Mary's passive receptivity in relation to grace is emphasised with the same words as that of the man Jesus. [509] Sin and original sin are again discussed in §§ 41.52, but they are now looked at from the standpoint of their removal through the baptism that emanates from Christ's death. [510] The doctrine of predestination--before Augustine almost unheard of in the Catholic Church--constituted the power of his religious life, as Chiliasm did that of the post-apostolic, and mysticism that of the Greek Church. In Augustine, in addition to its Biblical and Neoplatonic supports, the doctrine had indeed a strong religious root--free grace (gratia gratis data). But the latter by itself does not explain the importance which the doctrine had gained in his case. As everything that lives and works in nature is attached to something else, and is never found in an independent state, so, too, there is no distilled piety, On the contrary, so long as we men are men, precisely the most vital piety will be least isolated and free. None but the dogmatist can construct such a religion. But history teaches that all great religious personalities have connected their saving faith inextricably with convictions which to the reflecting mind appear to be irrelevant additions. In the history of Christianity there are the three named--Chiliasm, mysticism, and the doctrine of predestination. It is in the bark formed by these that faith has grown, just as it is not in the middle of the stem, but at its circumference, where stem and bark meet, that the sap of the plant flows. Strip the tree, and it will wither! Therefore it is well-meant, but foolish, to suppose that Augustine would have done better to have given forth his teaching without the doctrine of predestination. [511] An excellent comparison between Origen and Augustine occurs in Bigg, The Christian Platonists, pp. 284-290. He has sharply emphasised the inconsistencies in Augustine's doctrine of the primitive state, original sin, and grace, but he has not overlooked the advance made by Augustine on Origen. If we evolve Augustine's doctrine from predestination, then Bigg is right when he says: "Augustine's system is in truth that of the Gnostics, the ancestors of the Manichees. For it makes no real difference whether our doom is stamped upon the nature given to us by our Creator, or fixed by an arbitrary decree." [512] The resistance of the Pelagians and their associates was also a resistance to the formation of new dogmas in general. Exactly like the Eusebians in the Arian conflict, they also fought against the new construction of dogmas by the North African Church on formal grounds. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER V. HISTORY OF DOGMA IN THE WEST DOWN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE AGES (A.D. 430-604). __________________________________________________________________ We have already described in Vol. III. of our present work, as far as it bore on the history of dogma, the part taken by the West during this period in the Christological controversies of the East, the great impetus given to the papacy by the successors of Damasus, and further by Leo I. and his successors. We have shown how the papal power was in the sixth century embroiled, and (under Justinian) almost perished, in the East Gothic and Byzantine turmoils; how the fifth Council produced a schism in the West, and shook the position of the papacy, and how on the other hand the latter regained and strengthened its importance through the instrumentality of Gregory I. [513] [514] We also reviewed the important work, in which Vincentius of Lerinum standing on Augustine's shoulders, described the antiquitas catholicæ fidei, i.e., the Catholic conception of tradition. [515] The whole West was agitated in our period by the storms of the tribal migrations. The ancient world received its final blow, and the Church itself, so far as it was composed of Romans, seemed to run wild under the horror and pressure of the times. [516] The young peoples which streamed in were Christian, but Arian. In the kingdom of the Franks alone there arose a Catholic, German nation, which began slowly to be fused with the ancient Roman population; but the Church, with its cultus, law, and language, remained Latin: victus victori legem dat. The Franks were at the outset in the Latin Church, as at the present day the Mongolian tribes of Finland are in the Greek Church of Russia. This Latin Church, which, however, had parted in Franconia with the Roman Bishop, or was only connected with him by respect for him, preserved its old interests in Gaul and Spain, and continued its former life until the end of the sixth century. [517] Even up till that time the old civilisation had not wholly perished in it, but it was almost stifled by the barbarianism, which resulted from fusion with the invading populace. In North Africa, in spite of dreadful sufferings, Catholic Latin ecclesiasticism held its ground till on into the seventh century. But the Church, once so independent in its relations with Rome, found itself compelled more than once in this period to turn for succour to Rome for its self-preservation. The position of Italy, i.e., of the Roman Bishop, was wholly peculiar, for the Church of Middle and Lower Italy never played any part in Church history. So far as a Catholic Church still existed in the West in the German Empire, it represented the remnant of the shattered Western Roman Empire, and therefore lay in the sphere of power of the Roman Bishop, even if this relationship might not take any definite shape for the moment. But this Roman Bishop was himself fettered to the East, and political and ecclesiastical ties compelled him to look more to the East than the West. The fact that he nevertheless did not lose his connection with the latter, he, in the sixth century, owed more to his past, and his impregnable position in Rome, than to a deliberate policy. [518] Under the Catholic Bishops who had survived in Gaul and North Africa as representatives of the Roman Empire, a not altogether unimportant part of the history of dogma was enacted in our period, viz., the fight for and against complete Augustinianism. The Roman Bishop, though much more concerned with the Christological and political questions of the East, intervened also in this matter. At the close of our period, when absolute darkness had settled on the West, the great monachist Pope and "father of superstitions" introduced the ecclesiastical world to the Middle Ages in the form required by uncivilised peoples. In doing so, he had not to do violence to his own convictions; for the civilisation that was passing away inclined to barbarianism. [519] We have only therefore to consider, in what follows, the conflict waged round Augustinianism, and the position of Gregory the Great in the history of dogma. [520] __________________________________________________________________ [513] Gregory, certainly, had almost to abandon the fifth Council. [514] The papal power received its greatest accession of authority from the days of Damasus to the end of the fifth century: it was then settled that the primacy was to be a permanent institution of the Catholic Church. This accession of strength was partly due to the fact that in that century the Chair of St. Peter was occupied by a number of peculiarly capable, clever, and energetic Bishops. But the advance was caused to a still greater extent by external conditions. The most important may be mentioned here. (1) The dogmatic complications in the East gave the Popes an opportunity of acting as umpires, or of exhibiting in full light the doctrinal correctness "characteristic of the Chair of St. Peter." (2) The Western Roman Empire leant ultimately for support, in its decline, on the Roman Bishop (see the Ep. Valent. III. to Leo. I.); when it perished the latter was its natural heir, since the central political power in the West was gone, and the Byzantine Emperor had not the power, the leader of the German hosts not the prestige, necessary to restore it. (3) The storms of the tribal migration drove the Catholics of Western countries, which were seized by Arians, into the arms of Rome; even where this did not happen at once, the opposition ceased which had been previously offered to the claims of the Roman Bishop by the provinces, especially North Africa. (4) The patriarchal constitution never got established in the West, and the Metropolitan only succeeded in part; thus the development into the papal constitution was ensured for the future. (5) The transactions with the political power of Eastern Rome and the Imperial Bishop there now compelled the Roman Bishops, that they might not be at a disadvantage in dealing with Constantinople, to deduce their peculiar position, which they owed to the capital of the world, entirely from their spiritual (their apostolic or Petrine) dignity. But this exclusive basing of the Roman Chair on Peter afforded the firmest foundation at a time when all political force tottered or collapsed, but the religious was respected. Even the thought of political sovereignty, so far as such a thought could arise in the Roman Empire at all, seems to have dawned on Leo's successors. In any case, the position of the papacy was so secure at the close of the fifth century, that even the frightful storms of the sixth century were unable to uproot it. That in the West--outside of Rome--the theory of the Roman Bishop (following Matt. XVI.) came but slowly to be recognised, and that the attempt was made to retain independence as far as the exigencies of the case permitted, ought to be expressly noticed. Theologians only admitted that the Roman Bishop represented ecclesiastical unity, and did not assent to the papistical inference that it was the prerogative of Rome to govern the Churches. [515] Vol. III., p. 230 ff. [516] Salvian. de gubern. I II. 44: "Ipsa ecclesia, quæ in omnibus esse debet placatrix dei, quid est aliud quam exacerbatrix dei? aut præter paucissimos quosdam, qui mala fugiunt, quid est aliud poene omnis coetus Christianorum quam sentina vitiorum?" [517] See Hatch, "The Organisation of the Early Christian Churches," Lecture viii., and "The Growth of Church Institutions," p. 1 f. [518] The recognition in Rome of the fifth Council had almost alienated Italy and North Africa from the Pope. [519] Yet classical culture was never quite extinct in Italy (Rome). Its representatives in the sixth century were Cassiodorus, the pious churchman, on the one hand, and Boethius, the latitudinarian, on the other. The former laboured earnestly on behalf of the Church and monachism of his time (compare also the exertions of Junilius); the latter was the instructor of a later age (see above, p. 34). [520] On the history of the Apostolic Symbol in our period see my article in Herzog's R. E. 3 Ed.; Caspari, Quellen I.-IV. Vols.; v. Zerschwitz, System der Katechetik II. 1. Of the additions made to the ancient Roman Symbol, and afterwards universally accepted, the only one important dogmatically is the phrase "communio sanctorum." It can be proved from the second homily of Faustus of Rhegium (Caspari, Kirchenhist. Anekdota, p. 338), and his Tractat de symbolo, which he certainly did not edit himself (Caspari, Quellen IV., p. 250 ff.), that South Gallican Churches had the words "communio sanctorum" in the Apostolicum in the second half of the fifth century. It is debatable whether they already stood in the Symbol of Nicetas, whom I identify with Nicetas of Romatiana--the friend of Paulinus of Nola; they may also have merely belonged to the exposition, which was strongly influenced by Cyril's Catechisms (see Kattenbusch, Apost. Symbolum, 1894, Vol. I). If it were certain that they were merely meant in the Gallican Symbol to stand in exegetical apposition to "sancta ecclesia," then we would have to suppose that that Symbol had been influenced by the countless passages in which Augustine describes the Church as communio sanctorum, i.e., of the angels and all the elect, inclusive of the simple justi (or with synonymous terms). But, firstly, one does not conceive how a mere exegetical apposition should have got into the Symbol, and why that should have happened particularly in Gaul; secondly, the explanation of the words by Faustus points in another direction. We read in his second homily: "Credamus et sanctorum communionem, sed sanctos non tam pro dei parte, quam pro dei honore veneremur. Non sunt sancti pars illius, sed ipse probatur pars esse sanctorum. Quare? quia, quod sunt, de illuminatione et de similitudine ejus accipiunt; in sanctis autem non res dei, sed pars dei est. Quicquid enim de deo participant, divinæ est gratiæ, non naturæ. Colamus in sanctis timorem et amorem dei, non divinitatem dei, colamus merita, non quæ de proprio habent, sed quæ accipere pro devotione meruerunt. Digne itaque venerandi sunt, dum nobis dei cultum et futuræ vitæ desiderium contemptu mortis insinuant." And still more clearly in the Tractate (p. 273 f.): ". . . transeamus ad sanctorum communionem. Illos hic sententia ista confundit, qui sanctorum et amicorum dei cineres non in honore debere esse blasphemant, qui beatorum martyrum gloriosam memoriam sacrorum reverentia monumentorum colendam esse non credunt. In symbolum prævaricati sunt, et Christo in fonte mentiti sunt." Faustus accordingly understands by the "sancti" not all the justi, but--as Augustine not infrequently does--the specifically "holy," and he contends that the words aimed at the followers of Vigilantius who rejected the worship of the saints. In that case "communio sanctorum" means communion of or with the specifically "holy." It is still matter of dispute whether this is really the idea to which the Apostolicum owes its questionable acquisition, or whether the latter is only a very early artificial explanation. On the "filioque" in the Constantinopolitan Creed, see Vol. IV., p. 126 f. __________________________________________________________________ 1. The Conflict between Semi-Pelagianism and Augustinianism. Augustine and the North-African Church had succeeded in getting Pelagianism condemned; but this did not by any means involve the acceptance of Augustinianism in the Church. Augustine's authority, indeed, was very great everywhere, and in many circles he was enthusiastically venerated; [521] but his doctrine of gratia irresistibilis (absolute predestination) met with opposition, both because it was new and unheard of, [522] and because it ran counter, not only to prevalent conceptions, but also to clear passages of Holy Scripture. The fight against it was not only a fight waged by the old conception of the Church against a new one--for Semi-Pelagianism was the ancient doctrine of Tertullian, Ambrose, and Jerome--but the old gospel was also defended against novel teaching; for Semi-Pelagianism was also an evangelical protest, which grew up on Augustinian piety, against a conception of the same Augustine that was intolerable as doctrine. [523] Accordingly, it is not strange that "Semi-Pelagianism" raised its head in spite of the overthrow of Pelagianism; rather it is strange that it was ultimately compelled to submit to Augustinianism. This submission was never indeed perfectly honest. On the other hand, there lurked an element of "Semi-Pelagianism" in Augustinianism itself; viz., in the doctrines of the primitive state, of righteousness--as the product of grace and the will--and of merits. When Augustinianism triumphed, these points necessarily came to the front. But a situation was thus created that was wholly insecure, capable of various interpretations, and untrue in itself. Augustine himself found by experience that his doctrine of grace produced internal disturbances among the monks at Hadrumetum. Free-will was done with; men could fold their hands; good works were superfluous; even at the Last Judgment they were not taken into account. Augustine sought to appease them by his treatise, De gratia et lib. arbitrio, and he followed this with his work, De correptione et gratia, when he heard that doubts had risen whether the erring and sinful should still be reprimanded, or if their case was sufficiently met by intercession. Augustine strove in these writings to remove the misunderstandings of the monks, but he formulated his doctrine of grace more sharply than ever, trying, however, to retain free choice and the popular Catholic view. A year or two afterwards (428-9) he was informed by his devoted friends, Prosper, Tyro, [524] and Hilary [525] (Epp. 225, 226,), that at Marseilles and other places in France there was an unwillingness to admit the strict doctrine of predestination, and the view that the will was completely impotent, [526] because they paralysed Christian preaching. Augustine replied, confirming his friends, but giving new offence to his opponents by his two writings, De prædestinatione sanctorum and De dono perseverantiæ. He died soon afterwards, bequeathing his mantle to disciples whose fidelity and steadfastness had to atone for their want of independence. The Gallican monks ("servi dei") now advanced to open opposition. [527] It is quite intelligible that monks, and Greek-trained monks, should have first entered the lists. Among them the most prominent were Johannes Cassianus, father of South Gallican monachism [528] and disciple of Chrysostom and Vincentius of Lerinum. [529] The former has especially formulated his standpoint in the 13th Conference of his "collationes patrum," which bears the title "De protectione dei." [530] He takes objection above all to absolute predestination, the particularism of grace, and the complete bondage of the will. His teaching as to grace and liberty is as follows. God's grace is the foundation of our salvation; every beginning is to be traced to it, in so far as it brings the chance of salvation and the possibility of being saved. But that is external grace; inner grace is that which lays hold of a man, enlightens, chastens, and sanctifies him, and penetrates his will as well as his intelligence. Human virtue can neither grow nor be perfected without this grace--therefore the virtues of the heathens are very small. [531] But the beginnings of the good resolve, good thoughts, and faith--understood as the preparation for grace--can be due to ourselves. Hence grace is absolutely necessary in order to reach final salvation (perfection), but not so much so in order to make a start. It accompanies us at all stages of our inner growth, and our exertions are of no avail without it (libero arbitrio semper co-operatur); but it only supports and accompanies him who really strives, "who reaches forward to the mark." Yet at times God anticipates the decision of men, and first renders them willing--e.g., at the call of Matthew and Paul; but even this--rare--action of grace is not irresistible. Free-will is never destroyed by God--that we must hold, even if we admit the incomprehensibleness of divine grace. Similarly, we must hold firmly to the conviction that God wills earnestly the salvation of all, and that therefore Christ's redemption applies not only to the small number of elect, but to all men. The contrary doctrine involved "a huge blasphemy" (ingens sacrilegium). Predestination can therefore be only grounded on prescience--and the proposition that it was foreknown what anything would have been, if it had been at all, had at that time arisen in connection with the question of those dying in infancy. [532] But Cassian has hardly given an opinion on the relation of prescience and predestination. Regarding the primitive state, he taught that it was one of immortality, wisdom, and perfect freedom. Adam and Eve's Fall had entailed corruption and inevitable sinfulness on the whole race. But with a free, though a weakened, will, there also remained a certain ability to turn to the good. [533] It is usual to condemn "Semi-Pelagianism." But absolute condemnation is unjust. If a universal theory is to be set up, in the form of a doctrine, of the relation of God to mankind (as object of his will to save), then it can only be stated in terms of "Semi-Pelagianism" or Cassianism. Cassian did not pledge himself to explain everything; he knew very well that "God's judgments are incomprehensible and his ways inscrutable." Therefore he rightly declined to enter into the question of predestination. In refusing, however, to probe the mystery to the bottom, he demanded that so far as we affirmed anything on the subject, we should not prejudice the universality of grace and the accountability of man, i.e., his free-will. That was an evangelical and correct conception. But as Augustine erred in elevating the necessary self-criticism of the advanced Christian into a doctrine, which should form the sole standard by which to judge the whole sphere of God's dealings with men, so Cassian erred in not separating his legitimate theory from the rule by which the individual Christian ought to regard his own religious state. He thus opened the door to self-righteousness, because from fear of fatalism he would not bluntly say to himself and those whose spiritual guide he was, that the faith which does not know that it is produced by God is still entangled in the life of self. [534] Prosper, himself an ascetic and a frequenter of the famous cloisters of Provence, had already attacked his friends as Troubadour of Augustinianism during the lifetime of Augustine (Carmen de ingratis, see also the Ep. ad Rufinum). Now, after 430, he wrote several works in which he defended Augustine, and also himself, against charges that had been brought against Augustinianism. [535] He did not succeed in convincing the monks; for his admission that Augustine spoke too harshly ("durius") when he said that God did not will that all men should be saved, [536] did not satisfy, and their scruples were not even removed by his contention that there was only one predestination (to salvation), that we must distinguish between this and prescience (as regards the reprobati), and in doing so be certain that God's action was not determined by caprice, but by justice and holiness. [537] He did, however, succeed in getting Pope Celestine to send a letter to the Gallican monks, supporting Augustine and blaming the opposition for presumption. The Pope was, however, very reserved in dealing with the matter in question, although he stated strongly the activity of grace as prevenient. [538] Prosper now wrote (432) his chief work against the 13th Collatio of Cassian, in which he showed more controversial skill, convicted his opponent of inconsistencies, and stated his own standpoint in a more cautious form, but without any concession in substance. He left Gaul, and took no further part in the dispute, but showed in his "Sentences" and "Epigrams" that as a theologian he continued to depend on Augustine alone. [539] Another Augustinian, unknown to us, author of the work, De vocatione omnium gentium, [540] sought to do justice to the opposition by undertaking to combine the doctrine of the exclusive efficacy of divine grace with the other that God willed that all men should be saved. His intention proves that even among Augustine's admirers offence was taken at his principle of the particularism of God's purpose to save. But the laudable endeavour to combine the truth of Augustinianism with a universalist doctrine could not but fail. For all the author's distinctions between universal grace (creation and history) and special (Christ), and between the sensual, animal, and spiritual will (voluntas sensualis, animalis, spiritalis), as well as his assertions that grace, while preparing the will, does not supersede it, and that God desires the salvation of all, could not remove the real causes of offence (the damnation of children who died unbaptised, and reprobation in general) since Augustinianism was to be strictly upheld. [541] The work was at all events written with the honourable intention of removing doubts and establishing peace. On the other hand, attempts had been made on the Semi-Pelagian side from the first to make Augustinianism impossible, by an unsparing exposure of its real and supposed consequences, and these efforts culminated (about 450?) in the notorious "Prædestinatus" first discovered in A.D. 1643. The mystery that overhangs this work has not yet been fully solved; but it is probable that the writing of a predestinationist, introduced into Book II., and refuted, from the standpoint of Semi-Pelagianism, in Book III., is a forgery. For Augustine's teaching is unfolded in it entirely in paradoxical, pernicious, and almost blasphemous propositions, such as no Augustinian ever produced. [542] (We have both kinds of predestination strictly carried out: "those whom God has once predestined will, even if they neglect, sin, or refuse, be brought unwillingly to life, while those whom he has predestined to death labour in vain, even if they run or hasten)." [543] And the contention that the "sect of the predestinationists" [544] covers itself with Augustine's name, like the wolf in sheep's clothing, is a bold, controversial trick of fence. Of the effects produced by this venomous writing nothing is known; on the other hand, we do know that Semi-Pelagianism continued to exist undisturbed in Southern Gaul, [545] and, indeed, found its most distinguished defender in Faustus of Rhegium (died shortly before 500), formerly Abbot at Lerinum. [546] This amiable and charitable Bishop, highly respected in spite of many peculiar theories, took an active part in all the controversies and literary labours of his time. He was the forerunner of Gregory I. in establishing, from the Episcopal Chair, monastic Christianity in the Gallican communities. He had entered the lists against Pelagius ("pestifer"), and he now fought as decidedly against the tenet of the extinction of free-will and the doctrine of predestination, which he declared to be erroneous, blasphemous, heathen, fatalistic, and conducive to immorality. The occasion was furnished by Lucidus, a Presbyter of Augustinian views, who made an uncompromising statement of the doctrine of predestination. He recanted formally after the "error prædestinationis" had been condemned at a Synod at Arles (475), with the assistance, if not on the instigation, of Faustus. [547] After this Synod, and a second at Lyons, Faustus composed his work, De gratia dei et humane mentis libero arbitrio, lib. II., meant to explain the dogmatic attitude of the Synods--against Pelagius and predestination. [548] Grace and freedom are parallel; it is certain that man, since Adam's Fall, is externally and internally corrupt, that original sin and death as the result of sin reign over him, and that he is thus incapable of attaining salvation by his own strength; but it is as certain that man can still obey or resist grace. God wills the salvation of all; all need grace; but grace reckons on the will which remains, though weakened; it always co-operates with the latter; otherwise the effort of human obedience (labor humanæ obedientiæ) [549] would be in vain. Original sin and free-will, in its infirm, weakened state (infirmatum, attenuatum), are not mutually exclusive. But those who ascribe everything to grace fall into heathen and blasphemous follies. [550] Our being saved is God's gift; it does not rest, however, on an absolute predestination, but God's predetermination depends on the use man makes of the liberty still left him, and in virtue of which he can amend himself (prescience). Faustus no longer shows himself to be so strongly influenced by Augustine's thoughts as Cassian, [551] although, as a theologian, he owes more to him than the latter does. He is "more of a monk." Faith also is a work and a human achievement; [552] ascetic performances are in general brought still more to the front by him, and the possibility of grace preceding the movement of the will towards good is understood to mean that salvation is first offered to a man from without by means of preaching, law, and reproof. (In this sense Faustus is even of opinion that the beginning is always the work of grace.) The most questionable (Pelagian) feature, however, consists in Faustus giving a very subordinate place to internal grace--the adjutorium essentially means for him external aid in the form of law and doctrine--and that he clearly returns to the Pelagian conception of nature as the original (universal) grace [gratia prima (universalis)]. It is manifest, on the other hand, that he sought to lead precisely ascetics to humility; even where they increase their own merits they are to remember that "whatever we are is of God," (dei est omne quod sumus), i.e., that perfect virtue is impossible without grace. [553] We see when we look closely that Faustus already distinctly preached implicitly the later doctrine of meritum de congruo et de condigno. [554] In faith as knowledge, and in the exertions of the will to amend ourselves, we have a merit supported by the first grace (gratia prima); to it is imparted redeeming grace, and the latter now co-operates with the will in producing perfect merits. In his own time Faustus hardly met with an opponent, not to speak of one his equal. [555] But in Rome Augustine was held in high honour, without anyone, certainly, saying how far he was prepared to go with him, and doctrines which directly contradicted him were not tolerated. If we may ascribe the decree, De libris recipiendis et non recipiendis, to Gelasius, then that Pope, who is also proved by other facts to have been a strong opponent of Pelagianism, declared Augustine and Prosper's writings to be in harmony with the Church, but those of Cassian and Faustus "apocryphal." But the course of affairs in Rome at the beginning of the sixth century makes the ascription of this decree to Gelasius--in its present form--improbable. That is, as Pelagianism had formerly amalgamated with Nestorianism, to which it gravitated, and had thus sealed its doom, so Semi-Pelagianism did not escape the fate of being dragged into the Christological controversy, and of being assailed by the dislike which orthodoxy influenced by Monophysitism cherished against all "that was human." Those Scythian monks in Constantinople, who wished to force Theopaschitism on the Church, [556] handed to the Legate of Pope Hormisdas a Confession of faith, in which they opposed the remains of Nestorianism as well as the doctrine that grace did not effect the act of will and its accomplishment (519). [557] Dismissed by the Legate, they brought their view in person before the Pope, and sent a report to the banished North African Bishops, who were residing in Sardinia, and among whom the most important was Fulgentius of Ruspe, a practised disputant against Arianism, and a faithful adherent of Augustine. The report of the Scythians, which discussed Christology as well as the doctrine of grace, and quoted in support of the latter--in its Augustinian form--Eastern and Western authorities, closes with the words: "We hold it necessary to add this; not as if you did not know it, but we have considered it useful to insert it in our short paper, in order to refute the folly of those who reject it as containing tenets novel and entirely unheard of in the churches. Instructed in the teaching of all these holy Fathers, we condemn Pelagius, Cælestius, Julian, and those of a similar type of thought, especially the books of Faustus of the cloister of Lerinum, which there is no doubt were written against the doctrine of predestination. In these he attacks the tradition not only of these holy Fathers, but also of the Apostle himself, annexing the support of grace to human effort, and, while doing away with the whole grace of Christ, avowing impiously that the ancient saints were not saved, as the most holy Apostle Peter teaches, by the same grace as we are, but by natural capacity." The North Africans assented to this, and Fulgentius in reply wrote his work, De incarnatione et gratia, in which, as in earlier writings, he defended the Augustinian standpoint, and especially derived original sin from the lust of sexual intercourse. Free-will in the state of sin was wickedly free (male liberum), and Christ's grace was to be sharply distinguished from grace in creation (gratia creans) [c. 12]; the act of willing is not ours, and assistance God's, business, but "it is the part of God's grace to aid, that it may be mine to will, believe" (c. 16: gratis dei est adjuvare, ut sit meum velle credere). Rom. II. 14, is to be applied to the Gentiles justified by faith (c. 25); and the particularism of grace is also maintained. [558] The Scythians left Rome, leaving behind them an anathema on Nestorians, Pelagian,, and all akin to them. The celebrated name of Faustus appeared in a bad light, and Possessor, an exiled African Bishop who lived in Constantinople, hastened to recommend himself to the Pope by the submissive query, What view was now to be taken of Faustus? assuring him at the same time that distinguished State officials equally desired enlightenment. [559] Hormisdas gave a reserved answer (Aug. 520). The Scythian monks were branded as vile disturbers of orthodoxy; Faustus was described as a man whose private views need disquiet nobody, as the Church had not raised him to the post of a teacher; the doctrine of the Roman Church as regards sin and grace could be seen from Augustine's writings, especially those to Prosper and Hilary. The Scythians sent a vigorous reply, sparing the Pope in so far as they questioned the authenticity of his letter. If Augustine's teaching was that of the Catholic Church, then Faustus was a heretic; that is what the Pope would have necessarily said. The heresy was perfectly clear; for Faustus only understood by prevenient grace, external grace--the preaching of the gospel. At the same time, the monks instigated Fulgentius now to write directly against Faustus, which he did in the Seven Books c. Faustum (lost) and--on his return to Africa A.D. 523--in his work, De veritate prædestinationis et gratin dei (l. III.) In this work Fulgentius expounds out and out Augustinianism (particularism of the will to save), but rejects the idea of a predestination to sin (nevertheless to punishment). [560] The Bishops remaining in Sardinia concurred fully with their colleague in the Ep. Synodica addressed to the Scythian monks: grace is the light, the will the eye; the eye needs light in order to be able to see the light. Faustus' theses are "inventions, contrary to the truth, entirely hostile to the Catholic faith" (commenta, veritati contraria, catholicæ fidei penitus inimica). These conflicts could not be without consequence for Southern Gaul. Still greater effect was produced by the reading of Augustine's writings, especially his sermons. In an age that thought solely in contrasts, the dilemma whether Augustine was a holy doctor or a heretic could only be decided ultimately in favour of the incomparable teacher. Cæsarius of Arles, the most meritorious and famous Bishop at the beginning of the sixth century, had, though trained in Lerinum and never wholly belying his training, so steeped himself in Augustine's works, that he would not abandon him, and his theology and sermons became a mirror of the master's important thoughts and forms of expression (though not of all or the most characteristic of them). [561] He fought against (+ 542) the writings and authority of Faustus. [562] In Southern Gaul he at first met with much opposition, but still more indifference--for how many Bishops were there at the beginning of the sixth century capable of understanding Augustinianism? In Rome, on the contrary, he found approval. [563] This approval was not without effect in Gaul. [564] A mixed Synod at Orange [565] in A.D. 529 under the presidency of Csarius approved of twenty-five Canons, i.e., headings extracted by Pope Felix IV. from Augustine and Prosper's writings, and sent by him to the South Gallicans as the doctrine of the "ancient Fathers," in order to support Cæsarius in his fight against Semi-Pelagianism. [566] These Canons [567] are strongly anti-Semi-Pelagian:--3: "The grace of God is not granted in response to prayer, but itself causes the prayer to be offered for it." 4: "That we may be cleansed from sin, God does not wait upon, but prepares, our will." 5: "The beginning of faith is not due to us, but to the grace of God--that state of believing by which we believe in him who justifies the impious, and attain the regeneration of holy Baptism, is brought about through the gift of grace, i.e., the inspiration of the Holy Spirit correcting our will from unbelief to faith, and is not ours naturally." 6: "It is the work of grace that we believe, will, desire, attempt, knock, etc., and not vice-versâ." 7: "We cannot without grace think or choose, by our natural powers, anything good that pertains to salvation." 8: "It is untrue that some attain baptismal faith by mercy, others by free-will." 9: "As often as we do good, God works in and with us, that we may work." 10: "Even the regenerate and holy always need the divine aid." 11: "We can only vow to God what we ourselves have received from him." 12: "God loves us as we shall be by his gift, not as we are by our merit." 13: "Choice of will, weakened in the first man, cannot be repaired except by the grace of Baptism." 16: "Let no one boast of what he seems to have as if he did not receive it, or think that he has received, because the letter appeared or was sounded outwardly that it might be read or heard." 17: "On the love of God diffused in hearts by the Holy Spirit." 18: "Undeserved grace precedes meritorious works." 19: "Even if it had remained in the sound state in which it was created, human nature would by no means preserve itself without the aid of its creator." 21: "The law does not justify, and grace is not nature; therefore Christ died not gratuitously, but that the law might be fulfilled, and that nature, ruined by Adam, might be repaired by him." 22: "No one has anything of his own but falsehood and sin," and "The virtue of heathens is produced only by worldly desire, that of Christians springs not from free will, but from the gift of the Holy Ghost." [568] 23: "In (doing) evil men carry out their own will, but when they do what they resolve in order to serve the divine will, although their actions are willed by them, yet it is his will by which their act of will is both prepared and commanded." 24: "The twig does not benefit the stem, but the stem the twig; so also those who have Christ in them and abide in him do not benefit Christ, but themselves." 25: "To love God is the gift of God." The definition given by the Bishops, after drawing up these heads, is likewise strongly anti-Semi-Pelagian. [569] But no mention is made of predestination, [570] nor is the inner process of grace, on which Augustine laid the chief stress, properly appreciated. The former fact would have been no blemish in itself; but at that time, when the question was whether the whole Augustine was authoritative or not, silence was dangerous. Those who were disposed to Semi-Pelagianism could appeal to the fact that Augustine's doctrine of predestination was not approved, and might then introduce into this unsanctioned tenet a great deal that belonged to the doctrine of grace. This actually took place. Accordingly the controversy only came apparently to an end here. But the continued vitality of Semi-Pelagian ideas, under cover of Augustinian formulas, was further promoted by that external conception of grace as the sacrament of Baptism, which lay at the root of the decree. "Love," it is true, was also discussed; but we see easily that the idea of the sacrament was all-predominant. "Even Augustine's adherents," it has been truly remarked, "lost sight of the distinction between Augustinianism and Semi-Pelagianism in relation to all who were baptised." It was Augustine himself, who, because he had not comprehended the notion of faith, was to blame for the fact that, at the close of the dispute, a conception was evolved as his doctrine which, while explaining grace to be beginning and end, really held to the magical miracle of Baptism, and to "faithful working with the aid of Christ" (fideliter laborare auxiliante Christo). The new Pope, Boniface II., approved of these decrees in a letter to Cæsarius; [571] they have retained a great esteem in the Catholic Church, and were very thoroughly considered by the Council of Trent. [572] Henceforth, the doctrine of prevenient grace, on which the Pope also laid particular stress, is to be regarded as Western dogma; the Semi-Pelagians have to be acknowledged heretics. But the controversy could begin anew at any moment, as soon, namely, as any one appeared, who, for the sake of prevenient grace, also required the recognition of particular election to grace. If we consider which of Augustine's doctrines met with acceptance, and which were passed over, if further we recollect why the former were approved, we are compelled to say that, next to anxiety to secure to the Sacrament of Baptism its irreplaceable importance, it was the monastic view of the impurity of marriage that especially operated here. All are sinful, and grace must come before our own efforts, because all are born from the sinful lust of sexual intercourse. The Catholic system of doctrine has risen from a compromise between two equally monastic conceptions: the meritoriousness of works and the impurity of marriage. Both thoughts were Augustinian in themselves and in their working out; but the moving soul of Augustinianism was starved. It is a fact that has not yet been sufficiently appreciated that Catholic doctrine did not adhere to Semi-Pelagianism, because the former declared sexual desire to be sinful. [573] __________________________________________________________________ [521] See the Ep. Prosperi ad Aug. [225]. Here Augustine is called "ineffabiliter mirabilis, incomparabiliter honorandus, præstantissimus patronus, columna veritatis ubique gentium conspicua, specialis fidei patronus." [522] See Vincentius' Commonitorium. [523] Semi-Pelagianism also rests undoubtedly on Augustinian conceptions. Loof's designation of it as "popular Anti-Pelagian Catholicism" is perfectly just (see Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1895, Col. 568, against Krüger, l.c. Col. 368). "Semi-Pelagianism" is a malicious heretical term. The literary leaders of this doctrine were in no respect influenced, so far as I see, by Pelagius, nor did they learn anything from him; on the contrary, they take their stand--the later the more plainly (but not more Augustinian)--on doctrines of Augustine, and it is impossible to understand them apart from his teaching. "Semi-Pelagianism" is popular Catholicism made more definite and profound by Augustine's doctrines. The Semi-Pelagians are accordingly the Eusebians of the doctrine of grace. See also Sublet, Le Semi-Pélagianisme des Origines. Namur, 1897. [524] On him see Wörter's Progr., Freiburg, 1867, and Hauck in the R. E. [525] Not to be confounded with Hilary of Arles, the Semi-Pelagian. [526] The opposition was at first cautious. [527] An accurate description of the controversy has been given by Wiggers in the 2nd vol. of his "Pragmatische Darstellung des Augustinismus and Pelagianismus (1833); see also Luthardt, Die L. v. fr. Willen (1863). The later development from Gregory I. to Gottschalk is described by Wiggers in the Ztsch. f. d. hist. Theol., 1854-55-57-59. [528] See De coenobiorum institutis 1. XII. Cf. Hoch, L.d. Johannes Cass. v. Natur u. Gnade, 1895 (besides Krüger, Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 1895, Col. 368 ff.). [529] The Commonitorium is directed exclusively against Augustine. The fact that it has reached us only in a mutilated form is explained, indeed, by its opposition to him. Apart from it, Prosper has preserved for us Vincentius' objections to Augustine. [530] He speaks still more frankly and therefore "more like a Pelagian" in the Institutions. [531] Here Cassian has learned thoroughly Augustine's teaching, and we see that he not only accommodated himself to it, but had been convinced by it. [532] Some maintained, namely, that the fate of these children was decided by how they would have acted if they had lived; for that was known to God. [533] Statements by Cassian. (Coll. XIII. 3): "non solum actuum, verum etiam cogitationum bonarum ex deo esse principium, qui nobis et initia sanctæ voluntatis inspirat et virtutem atque opportunitatem eorum quæ recte cupimus tribuit peragendi . . . deus incipit quæ bona sunt et exsequitur et consummat in nobis, nostrum vero est, tit cotidie adtrahentem nos gratiam dei humiliter subsequamur." 5: "gentiles veræ castitatis (and that is the virtue kat' exochen) virtutem non agnoverunt." 6: "semper auxilio dei homines indigere nec aliquid humanam fragilitatem quod ad salutem pertinet per se solam i.e., sine adiutorio dei posse perficere." 7: "propositum dei, quo non ob hoc hominem fecerat, tit periret, sed ut in perpetuum viveret, manet immobile, cuius benignitas cum bonæ voluntatis in nobis quantulamcunque scintillam emicuisse perspexerit vel quam ipse tamquam de dura silice nostri cordis excuderit, confovet eam et exsuscitat et confortat . . . qui enim ut pereat unus ex pusillis non habet voluntatem, quomodo sine ingenti sacrilegio putandus est non universaliter omnes, sed quosdam salvos fieri velle pro omnibus? ergo quicumque pereunt, contra illius pereunt voluntatem . . . deus mortem non fecit." 8: "tanta est erga creaturam suam pietas creatoris, ut non solum comitetur eam, sed etiam præcedit iugiter providentia, qui cum in nobis ortum quendam bonæ voluntatis inspexerit, inluminat eam confestim atque confortat et incitat ad salutem, incrementum tribuens ei quam vel ipse plantavit vel nostro conatu viderit emersisse." 9: "non facile humana ratione discernitur quemadmodum dominus petentibus tribuat, a quærentibus inveniatur et rursus inveniatur a non quærentibus se et palam adpareat inter illos, qui eum non interrogabant." 10: "libertatem scriptura divina nostri confirmat arbitrii sed et infirntitatem." 11: "ita sunt hæc quodammodo indiscrete permixta atque confusa, ut quid ex quo pendeat inter multos magna quæstione volvatur, i.e., utrum quia initium bonæ voluntatis præbuerimus misereatur nostri deus, an quia deus misereatur consequamur bonæ voluntatis initium (in the former case Zacchæus, in the latter Paul and Matthew are named as examples)." 12: "non enim talum deus hominem fecisse credendus est qui nec velit umquam nec possit bonum . . . cavendum nobis est, ne ita ad dominium omnia sanctorum merita referamus, ut nihil nisi id quod malum atque perversum est humanæ adscribamus naturæ . . . dubitari non potest, inesse quidem omni animæ naturaliter virtutum semina beneficio creatoris inserta, sed nisi hæc opitulatione dei fuerint excitata, ad incrementum perfectionis non potuerunt pervenire." [534] Semi-Pelagianism is no "half truth." It is wholly correct as a theory, if any theory is to be set up, but it is wholly false if taken to express our self-judgment in the presence of God. [535] Pro Augustino responsiones ad capitula objectionum Gallorum calumniantium (against the Gallican monks); Responsiones pro Augustino ad excerpta quæ de Genuensi civitate sunt missa (against Semi-Pelagian priests who desired aufklärung); Responsiones pro Augustino ad capitula objectionum Vincentiarium (here we have the most acute attacks by opponents). The "Galli" adhered to Cassian, though he hardly mentions original sin, while they taught it, and he does not speak so definitely as they about predestination. [536] Sentent. sup. VIII. on the respons. ad capp. Gallorum. [537] Even Augustine, in addition to expressing himself in a way that suggests the two-fold doctrine of predestination, said (De dono persev. 14): "Hæc est prædestinatio sanctorum nihil aliud: præscientia scil. præparatio beneficiorum dei quibus certissime liberantur, quicunque liberantur." Prosper takes his stand on this language (see resp. ad excerpt. Genuens. VIII.): "We confess with pious faith that God has foreknown absolutely to whom he should grant faith, or what men he should give to his Son, that he might lose none of them; we confess that, foreknowing this, he also foresaw the favours by which he vouchsafes to free us, and that predestination consists in the foreknowledge and preparation of the divine grace by which men are most certainly redeemed." The reprobate accordingly are not embraced by predestination, but they are damned, because God has foreseen their sins. In this, accordingly, prescience is alone at work, as also in the case of the regenerate, who fall away again. But prescience compels no one to sin. [538] Cælest. ep. 21. The appendix was added later, but it perhaps was by Prosper. [539] Gennadius relates (De script. eccl. 85) that Prosper dictated the famous letters of Leo I. against Eutyches. But he gives this as a mere rumour. [540] Included among the works of Prosper and Leo I. [541] A minute analysis of the work is given by Wiggers, II. p. 218 ff. and Thomasius. I. pp. 563-570. It is to be admitted that the work marks an advance by its desire to admit the universality of God's purpose of salvation. But the doctrine of the universitas specialis is only a play on words, if universitas does not here mean more than with Augustine and Prosper, namely, that men of all nations and periods will be saved. [542] See Wiggers, II., pp. 329-350. [543] "Quos deus semel prædestinavit ad vitam, etiamsi negligant, etiamsi peccent, etiamsi nolint, ad vitam perducentur inviti, quos autem prædestinavit ad mortem, etiamsi currant, etiamsi festinent, sine causa laborant." [544] Of any such sect absolutely nothing is known. There is no original authority to show that there actually existed "libertines of grace," i.e., Augustinians who, under cover of the doctrine of predestination, gave themselves up to unbridled sin. The Semi-Pelagians would not have suffered such "Augustinians" to escape them in their polemics. There may have arisen isolated ultra-Augustinians like Lucidus, but they were not libertines. [545] North Africa was removed from theological disputes by the dreadful invasion of the Vandals. The majority there were certainly Augustinians, yet doubts and opposition were not wanting; see Aug. Ep. 217 ad Vitalem. [546] See Tillemont, Vol. XVI., and Wiggers, II. 224-329; Koch, Der h. Faustus von Riez, 1895 (further, Loofs, Theol. Lit.-Ztg. 1895, Col. 567 ff.). [547] See Mansi VII., where we have also (p. 1010) Lucidus' recantation in a Libellus ad episcopos. Even before the Synod Faustus had an interview with his friend, and he wrote a doctrinal letter to him (VII. 1007 sq.) which, however, was equally unsuccessful. [548] Further, the Professio fidei (to Leontius) contra eos, qui dum per solam dei voluntatem alios dicunt ad vitam attrahi, alios in mortem deprimi, hinc fatum cum gentilibus asserunt, inde liberum arbitrium cum Manichæis negant. [549] "Obedientia" plays the chief part with Faustus next to castitas. In this the mediæval monk announces himself. [550] Faustus took good care not to contend against Augustine; he only opposed Augustinianism. This is true of the Catholic Church at the present day. [551] Yet he expressed himself very strongly as to original sin, and even taught Traducianism. As with Augustine, pro-creation is the means of transmitting original sin, which rises "per incentivum maledictæ generationis ardorem et per inlecebrorum utriusque parentis amplexum." Since Christ was alone free from this heritable infection, because he was not born of sexual intercourse, we must acknowledge the pleasure of intercourse and vice of sensuality to be the origin of the malum originale. We readily see that everything in Augustinianism met with applause that depreciated marriage. And these monks crossed themselves at the thought of Manichæism! [552] Faustus even supposes that fides remained as the knowledge of God after the Fall. [553] See lib. II. 4. On the other hand, Abel, Enoch, etc., were saved by the first grace, the law of nature, II. 6, 7. Since Enoch preceded the rest, in that so early age, by the merit of faith (fidei merito), he showed that faith had been transmitted to him with the law of nature; see also II. 8 ("et ex gentibus fuisse salvatos," 7). [554] Wiggers calls attention (p. 328) to Faustus' principle, important for the sake of later considerations in the Church: "Christus plus dedit quam totus mundus valebat" (De grat. et lib. arb. 16). [555] The most distinguished writers of the age held similar views, e.g., Arnobius the younger, Gennadius of Marseilles, Ennodius of Ticinum. Augustine's own authority was already wavering; for Gennadius permitted himself to write of him (De script. eccl. 39): "unde ex multa eloquentia accidit, quod dixit per Salomonem spiritus sanctus: ex multiloquio non effugies peccatum" and "error tamen illius sermone multo, ut dixi, contractus, lucta hostium exaggeratus necdum hæresis quæstionem absolvit." Many MSS. have suppressed these passages! We find it said of Prosper (c. 85) that in his work against Cassian he "quæ ecclesia dei salutaria probat, infamat nociva." Cassian and Faustus are highly praised.--As sources for Semi-Pelagianism there fall further to be considered the homilies, only in part by Faustus, which are printed in the Max. Bibl. Lugd. T. VI., pp. 619-686; see on them Caspari, Briefe, Abhandlungen u. Predigten (1890) p. 418 ff. [556] See Vol. IV., p. 231. [557] These "Scythians" were well versed in Western thought, their leader, Maxentius, who wrote in Latin, belonged himself to the West. In the Confession of faith they treat of grace, "non qua creamur, sed qua recreamur et renovamur." Pelagius, Cælestius, and Theodore of Mopsuestia are grouped together. [558] See Wiggers II., pp. 369-4 9. According to Fulgentius, even Mary's conception was stained, and therefore not free from original sin, see c. 6. [559] All these transactions in Mansi VIII. [560] On the derivation of original sin, see I. 4: "proinde de immunditia nuptiarum mundus homo non nascitur, quia interveniente libidine seminatur." [561] See Arnold's interesting monograph, Cæsarius von Arelate and die gallische Kirche s. Zeit, 1894. An edition of the Opp. Cæsarii is forthcoming. [562] Avitus of Vienne is usually named along with him; but after Arnold's authoritative account of the former (p. 202 ff.), he must be disregarded. On the other hand, Mamertus Claudianus is to be named as an opponent of Faustus (Arnold, p. 325); he is an Augustinian and Neoplatonist, and thus an enemy of Semi-Pelagianism as a metaphysician. [563] Cæsarius' work, however, De gratia et libero arbitrio, and its approval by Felix IV. belong to the realm of fiction (Arnold, p. 499). On the other hand, we have to notice some indirect manifestations on the part of Rome about A.D. 500 in favour of Augustinianism and against Faustus. Yet Rome never took the trouble really to comprehend Augustinianism. [564] We only know of the Synod of Valencia, at which Cæsarius was not present, owing to illness, but where he was represented by a friendly Bishop, from the Vita Cæsarii by his disciple Cyprian (Mansi VIII., p. 723). Hefele has shown (Conciliengesch., II.2 p. 738 ff.), that it is to be dated before the Synod of Orange. It seems necessary to infer from the short account that the Bishops met to oppose Cæsarius, and published a decree condemning, or at least disapproving his teaching (see also Arnold, p. 346 ff.). At Orange Cæsarius justified himself, or triumphantly defended his doctrine from "Apostolic tradition," and Pope Boniface agreed with him, and not with his Valencian opponents. [565] See Arnold p. 350 ff. [566] We cannot now decide whether the 25 Canons are absolutely identical with those transmitted heads, or whether the Synod (perhaps even the Pope?) proposed trifling modifications; see Chap. XIX. of the Treves Codex in Mansi VIII., p. 722. However, it is very improbable that the Bishops made important changes in these heads (yet see Arnold, p. 352) since according to them they expounded their own view in the Epilogue. [567] See Hahn, § 103; Hefele, p. 726 f. [568] This Canon caused the greatest distress to the Catholic Church in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries (see Hefele, p. 733 f.). [569] Yet Augustine would not have written the sentence: "hoc etiam credimus, quod accepta per baptismum gratia omnes baptizati Christo auxiliante et co-operante, quæ ad salutem animæ pertinent, possint et debeant, si fideliter laborare voluerint, adimplere." Besides, the words "que ad salutem pertinent adimplere" and "fideliter laborare" are ambiguous. [570] The word only occurs in the epilogue, and there merely to reject prædestinatio ad malum: "aliquos vero ad malum divina potestate prædestinatos esse non solum non credimus, sed etiam, si sunt qui tantum malum credere velint, cum omni detestatione illis anathema dicimus." The decree is also silent as to gratia irresistibilis, and the particularism of God's will to bestow grace. [571] Mansi VIII., p. 735 sq. The resolutions were also subscribed by laymen, a thing almost unheard of in the dogmatic history of the ancient Church, but not so in Gaul in the sixth century; see Hatch, "The Growth of Church Institutions" chap. VIII. [572] The Roman Bishops evidently felt their attitude in the Semi-Pelagian controversy prejudiced by the decisions of their predecessors against Pelagius. We look in vain for an independent word coming from internal conviction (Gelasius is perhaps an exception), and yet it is quite essentially "thanks" to them that the Semi-Pelagian dispute ended with the recognition of the Augustinian doctrine of prevenient grace and with silence as to predestination. [573] Seeberg (Dogmengesch. I., p. 326), has disputed this, because the representatives of Semi-Pelagianism made the strongest assertions on this point (see especially Faustus), and because the opposition between them and the Augustinians actually depended on quite different issues. Both objections are quite correct, but they do not meet the above statement; the Semi-Pelagian doctrine of grace could not but react upon and modify Augustine's doctrine of original sin, and therefore also the view of the evil of sin as necessarily propagated by sexual intercourse, involving damnation, and destructive of all goodness. As regards this it is quite indifferent how individual Semi-Pelagian monks looked at sexual desire and marriage, as also whether this point came at once to light in the controversy. __________________________________________________________________ 2. Gregory the Great. The doctrine of grace taught by Pope Gregory the Great (590 to 604) shows how little Augustinianism was understood in Rome, and how confused theological thought had become in the course of the sixth century. A more motley farrago of Augustinian formulas and crude work-religion (ergismus) could hardly be conceived. Gregory has nowhere uttered an original thought; he has rather at all points preserved, while emasculating, the traditional system of doctrine, reduced the spiritual to the level of a coarsely material intelligence, changed dogmatic, so far as it suited, into technical directions for the clergy, and associated it with popular religion of the second rank. All his institutions were wise and well considered, and yet they sprang from an almost naif monastic soul, which laboured with faithful anxiety at the education of uncivilised peoples, and the training of his clergy, ever adopting what was calculated by turns to disquiet and soothe, and thus to rule the lay world with the mechanism of religion. [574] Because Gregory, living in an age when the old was passing away and the new presented itself in a form still rude and disjointed, looked only to what was necessary and attainable, he sanctioned as religion an external legality, as suited to train young nations, as it was adapted to the Epigones of ancient civilisation, who had lost fineness of feeling and thought, were sunk in superstition and magic, and did homage to the stupid ideals of asceticism. [575] It is the accent that changes the melody, and the tone makes the music. Gregory created the vulgar type of mediæval Catholicism by the way he accented the various traditional doctrines and Church usages, [576] and the tone to which he tuned Christian souls is the key we hear echoed by Catholicism down to the present day. [577] The voice is the voice of Gregory, and also of Jerome, but the hands are Augustine's. Only in one respect he was not Augustine's disciple. Akin to Cyprian and Leo I. and well versed in jurisprudence, he laid stress on the legal element in addition to the ritual and sacramental. Through him the amalgamation of doctrine and Church government made a further advance in the West. [578] A few lines are sufficient to depict the emasculated Augustinianism represented by Gregory. Reason, science, and philosophy, are more strongly depreciated by him than by Augustine (Evang. II. hom. 26); [579] miracle is the distinguishing mark of the religious. Reason can, indeed, establish the existence of God, but it is only "by faith that the way is opened to the vision of God" (per aditum fidei aperitur aditus visionis dei; Ezech. II. hom. 5, following Augustine). The doctrine of angels and the devil comes to the front, because it suited popular and monastic piety. We can call Gregory the "Doctor angelorum et diaboli." As regards the angels, he took particular delight (see Evang. II. hom. 34) in working out their ranks (under the influence of Greek mysticism), in glorifying Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael--the hero of miracle, the great messenger and warrior against the spirits of the air, and the medicine-man--in the exact division of angelic tasks and the idea of guardian spirits; he held that angels watched over men, as the latter did over cattle. He who thought so little of Græco-Roman culture sanctioned its most inferior parts in his doctrine of the angels. His monkish fancy dealt still more actively in conceptions about the devil and demons, and he gave new life to ideas about Antichrist, who stood already at the door, because the world was near its end. As the Logos had assumed human nature, so the devil would be incarnate at the end of the world (Moral. 31, 24; 13, 10). Before Christ appeared, the devil possessed all men of right, and he still possesses unbelievers. He raged through the latter; but as regarded believers he was a powerless and cheated devil. The doctrines of redemption, justification, grace, and sin show an Augustinianism modified in the interests of miracle, sacred rites and monachism. The God-man--whose mother remained a virgin at and after the birth--was sinless, because he did not come into the world through fleshly lust. He is our redeemer (redemptor) and mediator--these titles being preferred--and he especially propitiated the devil by purchasing men from him with his death, [580] and he abolished the disunion between angels and men. It is also remarked incidentally that Christ bore our punishments and propitiated God's wrath. But, besides redemption from the devil, the chief thing is deliverance from sin itself. It was effected by Christ putting an end to the punishment of original sin, and also destroying sin itself, by giving us an example. [581] This amounts to saying that Christ's work was incomplete, i.e., that it must be supplemented by our penances, for it transformed the eternal punishment of original sin into temporary penalties, which must be atoned for, and it acts mainly by way of example. [582] In fact, in Gregory's teaching, Christ's death and penance appear side by side, as two factors of equal value. [583] We must remember this, or we may assign too high a value to another line of thought. Gregory regards Christ's death as an offering (oblatio) for our purification: Christ presents it constantly for us, ever showing God his (crucified) body. [584] But this apparently high pitched view after all means very little. It has risen from the observance of the Lord's Supper. What was constantly done by the priest has been transferred to Christ himself. But both oblations, related as they are to our "purification," possess their sole value in the mitigation of sin's penalties. Still another consideration was at work in this case, one that, though relying on Biblical statements, sprang in reality from wholly different sources. It is the conception of Christ's continual intercession. But this intercession must be combined with the whole apparatus of intercessions (of angels, saints, alms and masses for the dead, which were conceived as personified forces), to see that we are here dealing with a heathen conception, which, though it had indeed long been established in the practice of the Church, was only now elevated into a theory--that of "aids in need." Gregory's candid avowal that the death of Christ was not absolutely necessary, showed how indefinite was his view of the part it played in this mediation. As God created us from nothing, he could also have delivered us from misery without Christ's death. But he willed to show us the greatness of his compassion by taking upon himself that from which he desired to deliver us; he willed to give us an example, that we should not dread the misfortune and miseries of the world, but should avoid its happiness; and he sought to teach us to remember death. [585] Nor has Gregory yet sketched a theory of Christ's merit--after the analogy of the merits which we can gain. That was reserved for the Middle Ages; but he has examined Christ's work from the point of view of masses for the dead and the intercession of saints. In the doctrines of the primitive state, original sin, sin, faith and grace, the Augustinian formulas are repeated--after the Canons of Orange, without irresistible grace and particular election. [586] But a very real significance was attributed to free-will, which Augustine had abstractly admitted. Here we have the fully developed doctrines of free and prevenient grace, of the primitive state and original sin; (the carnal lust of parents is the cause of our life, therefore the latter is sinful; the "disobedience" or "disorderliness" of the genital organs is the proof of original sin; intercourse in marriage is never innocent). And side by side with all this, we have a calm statement of the doctrine of the will, which is merely weakened, and of free choice (liberum arbitrium) which must follow grace, if the latter is to become operative, [587] --and yet grace is first to determine the will to will. From the first two powers co-operate in all good, since free-will must accept what grace offers. It can therefore be said "that we redeem ourselves because we assent to the Lord redeeming us." [588] Predestination is simply reduced in the case of sinners and elect to prescience, while at the same time it is maintained in other passages that it rests on God's free power and grace. The latter assumption was necessary, because Gregory also adhered to "a fixed and definite number of the elect"--to supply the place of angels; but ultimately all belong to that number whose perseverance in faith and good works God knew beforehand. After all, everything spiritual is reduced to the rites of the Church. As in the East, these come to the front; but they are regarded in a different way. In the East more scope is given to religious sentiment, which exalts itself and luxuriates in the whole of the Cultus as a divino-human drama; in the West, as befitted the Roman character, everything is more prosaic and calculating. Man accomplishes and receives; submissive obedience is the chief virtue; merits are rewarded, but on the humble a merit not his own is also bestowed: that is grace. Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and penance are the central points in the legal process of grace. We are baptised: thereby inherited guilt is expiated, and all sins committed before baptism are blotted out; but original sin is not obliterated, and the guilt of later sins remains. [589] It must be cancelled or atoned for. For this there are numerous means, which are as necessary as they are uncertain. A man must make himself righteous; for righteousness is the supreme virtue (radix virtutum). He is instructed to pray, give alms, and mourn over life. But he is further told: "Those who trust in no work of their own run to the protection of the holy martyrs, and throng to their sacred bodies with tears, entreat that they may merit pardon at the intercession of the saints." [590] This practice of resorting to saints and relics had existed for a long time, but Gregory has the merit of systematising it, at the same time providing it with abundant material by means of his "Dialogues," as well as his other writings. [591] A cloud of "mediators" came between God and the soul: angels, saints, and Christ; and men began already to compute cunningly what each could do for them, what each was good for. Uncertainty about God, perverse, monkish humility, and the dread entertained by the poor unreconciled heart of sin's penalties, threw Christians into the arms of pagan superstition, and introduced the "mediators" into dogmatics. But in terrifying with its principle: "sin is in no case absolved without punishment" (nullatenus peccatum sine vindicta laxatur), [592] the Church not only referred men to intercessors, alms, and the other forms of satisfaction, to "masses for the dead," which obtained an ever-increasing importance, but it even modified hell, placing purgatory in front of heaven; it thereby confused conscience and lessened the gravity of sin, turning men's interest to sin's punishment. Gregory sanctioned and developed broadly the doctrine of purgatory, [593] already suggested by Augustine. [594] The power of the Church, of prayers, and intercessors extended, however, to this purgatory of his. [595] The whole life even of the baptised being still stained at least by small sins, their constant attitude must be one of penitence, i.e., they must practise penance, which culminates in satisfactions and invocations to "Aids in need." Gregory systematised the doctrine of penance in the exact form in which it passed over into the Middle Ages. [596] Penance included four points, perception of sin and dread of God's judgments, regret (contritio), confession of sin, and satisfaction (satisfactio). The two first could also be conceived as one (conversio mentis). [597] The chief emphasis was still held to fall on "conversion," even penance was not yet attached to the institution of the Church and the priest; but "satisfaction" was necessarily felt to be the main thing. The last word was not indeed yet said; but already the order of penance was taking the place due to faith; nay, it was called the "baptism of tears." [598] And the Lord's Supper was also ultimately drawn into the mechanism of penance. In this case, again, Gregory had only to accentuate what had long been in use. The main point in the Lord's Supper was that it was a sacrifice, which benefited living and dead as a means of mitigation (laxatio). As a sacrifice it was a repetition of Christ's--hence Gregory's development of the ceremonial ritual--and it is self-evident that this was conceived altogether realistically. In this rite (eucharistia, missa, sacrificium, oblatio, hostia, sacramentum passionis, communio), the passion of Christ; [599] who "is entire in the single portions" (in singulis portionibus totus est), was repeated for our atonement. Yet even here the last word was not yet uttered, transubstantiation was not yet evolved. Indeed, we find, accompanying the above, a view of the Lord's Supper, which lays stress on our presenting ourselves to God as the victim (the host), in yielding ourselves to him, practising love, rendering daily the sacrifice of tears, despising the world, and--daily offering the host of the body and blood of Christ. [600] What has been left here of Augustinianism? All the popular Catholic elements which Augustine thrust aside and in part remodelled have returned with doubled strength! The moral and legal view has triumphed over the religious. What we see aimed at in Cyprian's work, De opere et eleemosynis, now dominates the whole religious conception, and the uncertainty left by Augustine as to the notion of God, because his ideas regarding God in Christ were only vague, has here become a source of injury traversing the whole system of religion. For what does Gregory know of God? That, being omnipotent, he has an inscrutable will; [601] being the requiter, he leaves no sin unpunished; and that because he is beneficent, he has created an immense multitude of institutions for conveying grace, whose use enables the free will to escape sin's penalties, and to exhibit merits to God the rewarder. That is Gregory's notion of God, and it is the specific conception held by the Roman Catholic Church: Christ as a person is forgotten. He is a great name in dogmatics, i.e., at the relative place; but the fundamental questions of salvation are not answered by reference to him, and in life the baptised has to depend on "means" which exist partly alongside, partly independently of him, or merely bear his badge. From this standpoint is explained the whole structure of Gregory's theory of religion, which once more sets up fear [602] and hope instead of faith and love, and for the grace of God in Christ substitutes not an improved, but merely a more complicated doctrine of merit. And yet Augustine could not have complained of this displacement of his ideas; for he had left standing, nay, had himself admitted into his system, all the main lines of this theory of religion. Even the manifest and grave externalisation of sin, the direction that we must be ever bathed in tears, while at the same time zealous and watchful to escape the penalties of sin, the perversion of the notion of God and sin, as if God's sole concern was to be satisfied, since he was the requiter--all these thoughts have their points of contact in the range of Augustine's conceptions. [603] The darkest spot in mediæval piety, the fact that it commanded constant contrition, while at the same time it incited the penitent to make calculations which deadened the moral nerve and changed regret for sin into dread of punishment--this source of evil, which makes religious morality worse than non-religious, was from this time perpetuated in the Catholic Church of the West. [604] But in the case of Gregory himself this system of religion is traversed by many other ideas gained from the Gospel and Augustine. He could speak eloquently of the impression made by the person of Christ, and describe the inner change produced by the Divine Word [605] in such a way as to make us feel that he is not reproducing a lesson he has learnt from others, but is speaking from his own experience. "Through the sacred oracles we are quickened by the gift of the Spirit, that we may reject works that bring death; the Spirit enters, when God touches the mind of the reader in different ways and orders." [606] The Spirit of God works on the inner nature through the Word. Thus, many of Augustine's best thoughts are reproduced in Gregory's writings. [607] Again, in his Dogmatics he was not a sacerdotalist. If, as is undeniable, he gave an impetus to the further identification of the empirical Church with the Church, if all his teaching as to the imputed merit of saints, oblations, masses, penance, purgatory, etc., could not but benefit the sacerdotal Church, and favour the complete subjection of poor souls to its power, if, finally, his ecclesiastical policy was adapted to raise the Church, with the Pope at its head, to a supremacy that limited and gave its blessing and sanction to every other power, yet his dogmatic was by no means mere ecclesiasticism. We wonder, rather, that he has nowhere drawn the last, and apparently so obvious consequences, [608] in other words, that he did not rigidly concentrate the whole immense apparatus in the hand of the priest, and give the latter the guidance of every single soul. Already this had been frequently done in practice; but the thought still predominated that every baptised person was alone responsible for himself, and had to go his own way in the sight of God and within the Church, by aid of penance and forgiveness. It was reserved for the mediæval development first to set up dogmatically the demand that the penitent, i.e., every Christian from baptism to death, should depend wholly on the guidance of the priest. [609] __________________________________________________________________ [574] After reading Gregory's abundant correspondence, we gain a high respect for the wisdom, charity, tolerance, and energy of the Pope. [575] Yet side by side with this external legality there are not wanting traits of Gospel liberty; see the letters to Augustine. [576] So Lau. Gregor d. Grosse, p. 326: "Without perceiving, perhaps, the significance of what he did, he prepared the way for the development of later Catholicism by imperceptibly altering the conception of the tradition received from a preceding age." [577] Gregory was most read of the Western Church Fathers, as the literature of the Middle Ages and our libraries show. Even in the seventh century he was extolled by tasteless and uncritical writers as wiser than Augustine, more eloquent than Cyprian, more pious than Anthony ("nihil illi simile demonstrat antiquitas" Ildefond. de script. I). [578] Lau gives a detailed account of Gregory's teaching; l.c. pp. 329-556. We see here the extent of Gregory's dependence on Augustine. He especially lays as great stress on Holy Scripture being the rule of life and doctrine. The most profound of Augustine's thoughts are touched on, but they are all rendered superficial. [579] "Fides non habet meritum, cui humana ratio præbet experimentum" (§ 1). Tertullian, certainly, had already said that (Apolog. 21) once. [580] The deception theory is thus given by Gregory in its most revolting form. The devil is the fish snapping at Christ's flesh, and swallowing the hidden hook, his divinity; see Moral. 33, 7, 9. [581] Moral. I. 13: "Incarnatus dominus in semetipso omne quod nobis inspiravit ostendit, ut quod præcepto diceret, exemplo suaderet." II. 24: "Venit inter homines mediator dei et hominum, homo Christus Jesus, ad præbendum exemplum vitæ hominibus simplex, ad non parcendum malignis spiritibus rectus ad debellandum superbiam timens deum, ad detergendam vero in electis suis immunditiam recedens a malo." [582] Lau. p. 434: "The chief stress is placed on instruction and example; reconciliation with God, certainty of which is absolutely necessary to man's peace of mind, is almost entirely passed over; and deliverance from punishment is inadequately conceived, as referring merely to original sin, or is regarded purely externally. . . . All that Gregory can do to give man peace is to direct him to penance and his good works." He speaks of even the holiest remaining in constant uncertainty as to their reconciliation. He can make nothing of the thesis that our sins are forgiven for Christ's sake. God rather punishes every sin not atoned for by penance, even if he pardons it; see Moral. IX. 34: "Bene dicit Hiob (IX. 28): Sciens quod non parceris delinquenti, quia delicta nostra sive per nos sive per semetipsum resecat, etiam cum relaxat. Ab electis enim suis iniquitatum maculas studet temporali afflictione tergere, quas in eis in perpetuum non vult videre," In his commentary on 1 Kings (1. IV. 4, 57), which was hardly transcribed indeed in its present form by Gregory himself, we even read: "Non omnia nostra Christus explevit, per crucem quidem suam omnes redemit, sed remansit, ut qui redimi et regnare cum eo nititur, crucifigatur. Hoc profecto residuum viderat, qui dicebat: si compatimur et conregnabimus. Quasi dicat: Quod explevit Christus, non valet nisi ei, qui id quod remansit adimplet." [583] Therefore we find over and over in the Moral. in reference to the expiation of sins: "sive per nos, sive per deum." [584] Moral. i. 24: "Sine intermissione pro nobis holocaustum redemptor immolat, qui sine cessatione patri suam pro nobis incarnationem demonstrat; ipsa quippe ejus incarnatio nostræ emundationis oblatio est; cumque se hominem ostendit, delicta hominis interveniens diluit. Et humanitatis suæ mysterio perenne sacrificium immolat, quia et hæc sunt æterna, quæ mundat." [585] Moral. 20, 36; 2, 37. Ezek. 1. II. hom. 1, 2. Here occur fine ideas: "Nos minus amasset, nisi et vulnera nostra susciperet" (M. 20, 36). [586] See the proof of positive points of agreement between Gregory and the Canons of Oranges in Arnold, Cæsarius, p. 369 f. Yet Gregory never himself appealed to those resolutions. [587] How could a bishop, who felt himself to be the pastor of all Christendom, have then made pure Augustinianism the standard of all his counsels? [588] Moral. 24, 10; gee also 33, 21; "Bonum quod agimus et dei est et nostrum, dei per prævenientem gratiam, nostrum per obsequentem liberam voluntatem. . . . Si nostrum non est, unde nobis retribui præmia speramus? Quia ergo non immerito gratias agimus, scimus, quod ejus munere prævenimur; et rursum quia non immerito retributionem quærimus, scimus, quod obsequente libero arbitrio bona eligimus, quæ ageremus." See Ep. III. 29: Christ will comfort us richly at the judgment, when he observes that we have punished our faults by ourselves. [589] Moral. IX. 34: "Salutis unda a culpa primi parentis absolvimur, sed tamen reatum ejusdem culpæ diluentes absoluti quoque adhuc carnaliter obimus." The casuistical treatment of sins is by no means puritanical in Gregory. He displays in this matter a lofty wisdom united with charity, and gives directions which were certainly the best for the circumstances of the time. He says once (Ep. XI. 64): "It is characteristic of pious souls to imagine that they are guilty of faults when there is absolutely none." [590] Moral. XVI. 51: "Hi qui de nullo suo opere confidunt, ad sanctorum martyrum protectionem currunt atque ad sacra eorum corpora fletibus insistunt, promereri se veniam iis intercedentibus deprecantur." [591] Similar things to those recorded by Gregory were often narrated at an earlier date; but no Western writer before him had developed these superstitions to such an extent--and he was the most influential bishop. Miracles wrought by relics were to him every-day events; the miraculous power of some was so great that everyone who touched them died. Everything that came in contact with them was magnetised. What powerful intercessors and advocates must then the saints be, when even their bodies did such deeds! Gregory therefore sought to preserve the attachment of influential people by sending relics and--slaves. On pictures, see Ep. IX. 52; IX. 105; XI. 13. [592] Moral, IX. 34, or: "delinquenti dominus nequaquam parcit, quia delictum sine ultione non deserit. Aut enim ipse homo in se pænitens punit, aut hoc deus cum homine vindicans percutit." [593] See Dial. IV. (25) and 39. After God has changed eternal punishments into temporary, the justified must expiate these temporary penalties for sin in purgatory. This is inferred indirectly from Matth. XII. 31, directly from 1 Cor. III. 12 f. There are perfect men, however, who do not need purgatory. [594] See above, p. 232. [595] Dial. IV. 57: "Credo, quia hoc tam aperte cum viventibus ac nescientibus agitur, ut cunctis hæc agentibus ac nescientibus ostendatur, quia si insolubiles culpæ non fuerint, ad absolutionem prodesse etiam mortuis victima sacræ oblationis possit. Sed sciendum est, quia illis sacræ victimæ mortuis prosint, qui hic vivendo obtinuerunt, ut eos etiam post mortem bona adjuvent, quæ hic pro ipsis ab aliis fiunt." [596] On the older Western order of penance, see Preuschen, Tertullian's Schriften de pænit. and de pudicit. 1890; Rolff's Das Indulgenzedict des röm. Bischofs Kallist 1893 (Texte and Unters. Vol. Part 3); Götz, Die Busslehre Cyprian's 1895; Karl Muller, Die Bussinstitution in Karthago unter Cyprian (Zeitschr. f. K.-Gesch., Vol. 16 [1895-96] p. 1 ff., p. 187 ff.). [597] 1 Reg. 1. VI. 2, 33: "tria in unoquoque consideranda sunt veraciter pænitente, videlicet conversio mentis, confessio oris et vindicta peccati." Moral 13, 39: "convertuntur fide, veniunt opere, convertuntur deserendo mala, veniunt bona faciendo." Voluntarily assumed pains constitute satisfactio. [598] Evang. 1. I. hom. 10: "Peccata nostra præterita in baptismatis perceptione laxata sunt, et tamen post baptisma multa commisimus, sed laxari iterum baptismatis aqua non possumus. Quia ergo et post baptisma inquinavimus vitam, baptizemus lacrimis conscientiam." [599] Evang. 1. II. hom. 37, 7: "Singulariter ad absolutionem nostram oblata cum lacrimis et benignitate mentis sacri altaris hostia suffragatur, quia is, qui in se resurgens a mortuis jam non moritur, adhuc per hanc in suo mysterio pro nobis iterum patitur. Nam quoties ei hostiam suæ passionis offerimus, toties nobis ad absolutionem nostram passionem illius reparamus." [600] See Dial. IV. 58, 59. Gregory already laid great stress on the frequency of masses. He also approved of their use to avert temporal sufferings. He tells with approval of a woman having delivered her husband from prison by their means, and he sees in them generally the remedy against all torments in this world and in purgatory. Only to eternal blessedness the mass does not apply. [601] That is the impression that was preserved of Augustine's doctrine of predestination. [602] "Deus terrores incutit"--often. [603] The term "tutius," and the via tutior already play a great part in Gregory's writings; see e.g., Dial. IV. 58: "Pensandum est, quod tutior sit via, ut bonum quod quisque post mortem suam sperat agi per alios, agit ipse dum vivit per se." Accordingly that is only tutius, and not a self-evident duty. [604] Gregory also expressly forbids anyone to be certain of his salvation; for this he could, indeed, appeal to Augustine. His letter to the Empress Gregoria's lady of the bed-chamber is most instructive (V. 25). This poor woman wished to have assurance of her salvation, and had written the Pope that she would ply him with letters until he should write that he knew by a special revelation that her sins were forgiven. What an evangelical impulse in A.D. 596! The Pope replied, first, that he was unworthy of a special revelation; secondly, that she should not be certain of forgiveness until, the last day of her life having come, she should no longer be in a position to deplore her sins. Till then she must continue to fear; for certainty is the parent of indolence; she must not strive to obtain it lest she go to sleep. "Let thy soul tremble for a little while just now, that it may afterwards enjoy unending delight." [605] Divinus sermo. The phrase "verbum fidei" is also very common. [606] Ezech. I., h. 7. "Per sacra eloquia dono spiritus vivificamur, ut mortifera a nobis opera repellamus; spiritus vadit, cum legentis animum diversis modis et ordinibus tangit deus." [607] Gregory's veracity, indeed, is not altogether above suspicion. His miraculous tales are often not ingenuous, but calculated; read e.g., Ep. IV. 30. His propaganda for the Church did not shrink from doubtful means. The Jews on papal properties were to be influenced to accept Christianity by the remission of taxes. Even if their own conversion was not sincere, their children would be good Catholics (Ep. V. 8). Yet Gregory has expressed himself very distinctly against forcible conversions (Ep. I. 47). [608] Besides, he by no means sought to introduce the usages of the Roman Church by tyrannical force, but rather directed Augustine, the missionary, to adopt what good he found in other national Churches; see Ep. XI. 64. On the other hand, the bewildering identification of Peter and the Pope made a further advance in the hands of Gregory. He means the Pope when he says: "s. ecclesia in apostolorum principis soliditate firmata est." And he declares (Ep. IX. 12): "de Constantinopolitana ecclesia quod dicunt, quis eam dubitet sedi apostolica; esse subjectam;" see also the fine passage Ep. IX. 59: "Si qua culpa in episcopis invenitur, nescic quis Petri successori subjectus non sit; cum vero culpa non exigit, omnes secundum rationem humilitatis æquales sunt." [609] Gregory's extensive correspondence shows how far even at this time strictly theological questions had come to be eclipsed by practical ones as to pastoral supervision and education by means of the cultus and church order. On Gregory's importance in connection with the cultus, see Duchesne's excellent work, Orig. du culte chrétien (1888), esp. p. 153 sq. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER VI. HISTORY OF DOGMA IN THE PERIOD OF THE CARLOVINGIAN RENAISSANCE. __________________________________________________________________ Among the young uncivilised peoples, all ecclesiastical institutions occupied a still more prominent place than had been given them even by the development of the Church in the Roman Empire. The philosophical and theological capital of antiquity, already handed down in part in compendia, was propagated in new abridgements (Isidore of Seville, Bede, Rabanus, etc.). John Scotus the unique excepted, [610] no one was now able to probe that intellectual world to its ultimate ideas and perceptions, and make it part of their own spiritual experience. [611] To the historian of civilisation everything in the epoch is interesting; in the Carlovingian age, the foundations were laid for the developments of the Middle Ages; but to the historian of dogma, if we are to consider not the appropriation of familiar material, but the advance of evolution, that period does not offer much. The Carlovingian epoch was a great, and in many respects an unsuccessful, essay at a renaissance of antiquity. It was not the product of the slow natural evolution of the Germano-Roman peoples, but Charlemagne and his circle sought to gain by storm a higher culture for the Frankish Empire, by a frequently forced return to antiquity, or by the establishment in their midst of Byzantine culture. Antiquity was still a living thing in Constantinople. Springer has shown, in dealing with the history of art, that the Carlovingian school is to be regarded as the after-bloom of ancient, and not as the beginning of mediæval, art; and this applies also to theological and philosophical efforts. The Carlovingian period marks the epoch-making beginnings in the history of institutions; [612] in the history of spiritual 1ife it is an appendix to that of the ancient world. Therefore the history of dogma in the Middle Ages begins, strictly speaking, with the age of Clugny. [613] It is also useless to discuss, in connection with this branch of study, the so-called popular forms of German Christianity found in poetical and prose fragments. For, firstly, their popular character is very limited; secondly, popular Christianity has hardly exercised any influence at all on institutions, not to speak of dogma. He who wished to reach a higher theological culture, read Augustine and Gregory, Gregory and Augustine, and he felt himself to be merely a disciple in relation to these and the other Latin Fathers, having still to learn the lessons delivered to him. [614] At that time many of the clergy were undoubtedly keenly desirous of culture; to see this we have only to look at the manuscripts preserved from the eighth and ninth centuries. [615] Nor must we overlook the fact that a small number of scholars went further than those belonging to the period A.D. 450-650, that they advanced beyond Isidore and Gregory to Augustine himself, saw through the emasculation of religion and its perversion into a ceremonial service and belief in miracle, and returned to the spiritual teaching of Augustine. [616] But the lofty figure of the African Bishop set bounds to any further advance. The best looked up to him, but none saw past him, not even Alcuin and Agobard, though the latter has also studied Tertullian. [617] It is very attractive to study, in connection with Church history, the energetic efforts of the Carlovingian Augustinians, to observe their attempts, following but surpassing the great Emperor, to purify the traditional form of religion, and to narrow the range of a stupid awe of the mysteries and of a half-heathen superstition. But it would merely lead to confusion in the history of dogma if we were to try to examine these attempts. [618] The transactions and determining events important to the history of dogma in our epoch divide into the following groups. 1. Controversies as to Byzantine and Roman Christology contrasted with that of Augustine and the West, and between the Gregorian system of doctrine and Augustine's theory of predestination. [619] 2. Disputes shared in by Rome against the East regarding the filioque, and against Rome and the East about images. [620] 3. The development of the practice and theory of the Mass and of penance. [621] __________________________________________________________________ [610] Johannes Scotus Erigena's system (chief work: De divisione nature, see Migne CXXII.; Christlieb 1860, Huber 1861, see Ritter and Baur), does not belong to the history of dogma in the West, for it is an entirely free, independent reproduction of the Neoplatonic (pantheistic) type of thought, as represented by the Areopagite and especially "the divine philosopher Maximus Confessor," whom Scotus had read. Augustine also undoubtedly influenced him; but he has not brought his speculation any nearer Christianity. The most learned and perhaps also the wisest man of his age, he maintained the complete identity of religio vera and philosophia vera, and thus restored to its central place the fundamental thought of ancient philosophy. But to him, only nominally conceding a place to authority beside reason, the philosophia vera was that monism of view in which the knowledge of nature and that of God coincide, thought and being in that case also coinciding. (Everything is nature, and finally indeed, "nature which does not create and is not created," and the notion of being existing in the human mind is the substance of being itself: "intellectus rerum veraciter ipsæ res sunt.") Acosmic idealism is carried by Scotus (as by Stephan bar Sudaili) to the point at which even deity disappears in the intellect of man. All agreements with Church doctrines rest with Scotus on accommodation; they do not spring, however, from perplexity, but from the clear insight that wrappings must exist. In reality, even the living movement of nature itself is only an appearance. Without influence, indeed regarded with suspicion in his own time, he did not afterwards become the instructor of the West, though Western mystics have learnt much from him. He was too much of a Greek. In love and power of systematic construction he was phenomenal, and speculative philosophers rightly revere him as a master. [611] It is, on the other hand, wonderful with what strength of memory and intellect men like Alcuin and Paulinus of Aquileia familiarised themselves with the separate lines of Augustine's thought. Alcuin also lived a life of Augustinian piety. [612] See Hatch: An introductory lecture on the study of ecclesiastical history, 1885. [613] On the history of dogma in the Carlovingian age, see Schwane, Dogmengesch. der mittleren Zeit. 1882; Bach, Dogmengesch. des Mittelalters I. Th. 1873, Thomasius-Seeberg, Dogmengesch. II. 1, 1888: Reuter, Gesch. der relig. Aufklärung im Mittelalter, 1875, I. pp. 1-64. The last book discusses the efforts to promote culture. Cf. also Göbl, Gesch. der Katechese im Abendland 1880, and Spiess, Gesch. des Unterrichtswesens in Deutschland von den ältesten Zeiten bis zur Mitte des 13 Jahrhunderts, 1885. Further the histories of the German Church by Rettberg and Hauck. On "popular theology" among Anglo-Saxons, Saxons, and Franks, see Bach, l.c. I., p. 81 ff. [614] John Scotus forms an exception, and so also does, in some sense, Fredegis of Tours, so far as the latter took an independent view of the ominous "nihil" presented by Augustinian metaphysics. Ahner has, however, shown in his Dissertation on Fredegis and his letter "De nihilo et tenebris" (1878) that this work has been over-estimated by earlier scholars. [615] Our gratitude is due to Schrörs for having given in his monograph on Hinkmar (1884), pp. 166-174, an account of the ancient works read or quoted by the great Bishop. What an amount of learning and reading is evident from this comparison, and yet Hinkmar was by no means the greatest scholar. It is also interesting to notice that Hinkmar held strictly to the edict of Gelasius. [616] A greater interest in Dialectics was also shown by many teachers of the Carlovingian period than by earlier theologians. Compare Alcuin's work, De fide trinitatis, which also displays a valiant effort to reach systematic unity in theological thought. Fredegis, Alcuin's discipulus dulcissimus, was also reproved by Agobard as a "philosopher" for his preference for dialectics, the syllogism, and vexed questions. ("Invenietis nobilitatem divini eloquii non secundum vestram assertionem more philosophorum in tumore et pompa esse verborum" Agobardi lib. c. object. Fredegisi abb.) Yet his teaching as to auctoritas and ratio was not different from Augustine's; but distrust was caused by the earnest attempt, on the basis of authority, to use reason in dealing with dogma. In the dispute between Agobard and Fredegis many controversial questions emerged which would have become important if the opponents had really developed them. [617] On Alcuin, see Werner's monograph (1881). Radbert had also read Tertullian. [618] The conditions which heralded the Carlovingian Renaissance consisted in the political position of the Frankish Empire, the flourishing of theological studies among the Anglo-Saxons (Bede), the ecclesiastical activity of Boniface on the Continent, and the partly new, partly revived, relations of the Empire to Rome and Constantinople. The fact that elements of culture from England, Rome, Lombardy, and finally also the East converged at Charlemagne's Court, and found so energetic a Mæcenas in the king, made possible the renaissance, which then continued to exist under Louis the Pious, and at the Court of Charles the Bald. We cannot over-estimate the contribution made by Constantinople. We need only recall the works of the Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus, and John of Damascus, which at that time had reached the Frankish Kingdom. Not only John Scotus, but e.g., Hinkmar, read or quoted the Pseudo-Dionysius. Some knowledge of Greek was possessed by a few Anglo-Saxons from the days of Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus in Canterbury; but they were to a much greater extent teachers of Augustinianism; yet not in the Christological question (see under). It was in Augustine along with the Areopagite that the mediæval mysticism of the West--and also Scotus--found its source; for it is very one-sided to make the latter alone responsible for mysticism. The Franks' love of culture received its greatest strength from the acquisition of the Crown of Imperial Rome, A.D. 800. What had formerly been a voluntary aspiration now assumed the appearance of a duty and obligation; for the king-emperor of the Franks and Romans was the successor of Augustine and Constantine. But how rapidly all this blossom withered! Walafrid writes truly in the prologue to Einhard's Life of Kaiser Karl: "When King Karl assembled wise men, he filled with light, kindled by God, the mist-shrouded, and so to speak almost entirely dark, expanse of the kingdom entrusted to him by God, by the new radiance of all science such as till then had been in part wholly unknown to these barbarians. But now, since these studies once more relapse into their opposite, the light of wisdom, which finds few who love it, becomes ever rarer." [619] In these conflicts the controversy as to Augustine is represented. See also the dispute as to the Lord's Supper. [620] These controversies are of universal interest in Church history. [621] In this development the dogmatic interest of the Carlovingians was alone really acute, leading to new definitions, if not at once expressed in strictly dogmatic forms. To this subject also belongs the doctrine of the saints (Mary), relics, and indulgences. __________________________________________________________________ I. (a.) The Adoptian Controversy. [622] After the Western Christological formula of the two natures had been forced on the East at the fourth Council, the latter had at the fifth Council given the formula a Cyrillian interpretation, which it confirmed by condemning the Three Chapters. Since the Roman Bishop had to accede to the new definition, which was regarded in the West as a revolt from that of Chalcedon, a schism took place in Upper Italy, which was only got over with difficulty, extending into the seventh century, and damaging the Pope's prestige in the West. The Monothelite controversies brought the schism to an end, [623] and the sixth Council restored the formula of Chalcedon in the new version .af the problem--the question as to the will in Christ. But men were far from drawing the consequences of the formula in the East, or in Rome itself. Mysticism, which taught the complete and inseparable union of the divine and human, and celebrated its triumph in all the ritual institutions of the Church, had long overgrown the intractable dogmatic formula and stifled its influence. But the case was different with many Western Bishops, so long as they had not yet been reached by Greek mysticism, and still were under the influence of the ancient Western tradition, especially Augustine. They held the Christological theory that the Holy Trinity had effected the Incarnation by the second Person of the Godhead, the Son, selecting a man (homo) in virtue of eternal election--without antecedent merits on the part of the man--by uniting with him to form a personal unity, and by thus adopting him to perfect sonship. [624] This scheme is distinguished toto coelo from the Greek one (received in Rome) of the fifth Council, even if--as happened--the whole of human nature was also understood by the homo. For, according to the prevailing Greek conception, the God-Logos; in the moment of the Incarnation, so assumed human nature and received it into the unity of his being (idiopoiein), that it participated completely in the dignity, and accordingly in the sonship, of the Son, the incarnate Logos thus being in every respect as much the one real Son of God as the pre-existent. To hold Jesus Christ as Son of Man to be merely the adopted Son of God destroyed, according to Greek ideas, the whole mystery of the Incarnation, and took the Church back to the abyss of Nestorianism. Conversely, it was possible for one who took his stand on Augustinian Christology to feel that the contention that the Son of Man was as essentially Son of God as the Logos, was a relapse into Docetism or even Pantheism--the fusion of divine and human. The great claim of Cyril's conception consisted in its maintenance of the perfect unity of the Redeemer's personality, [625] the justification of the other in its adherence to Christ's real humanity. This humanity was to the opposite party in truth only a theorem, whose avowal permitted them to deify in concreto everything human in Christ, [626] while the Adoptians were only able to postulate the unity of the Son of God and Son of Man. [627] It is the old antagonism of Monophysitism and Nestorianism, toned down, indeed, in phraseology, but not lessened in substance--how could it be lessened? It is not wonderful that it broke out once more after the sixth Council, and that in connection with the term "adoptio." It is only surprising that it arose at the outskirts of Christendom; and that the controversy occasioned by it in the Church was so rapidly and thoroughly quieted. If we reflect that Augustine had unhesitatingly taught that Christ, on his human side, was the adopted Son of God and the supreme example of prevenient free grace (gratia gratis data præveniens), that he was read everywhere, that many passages in the Western Fathers gave evidence of Adoptianism, [628] and that even Isidore of Seville had written without being questioned: "he is called sole-begotten from the excellence of his divinity, because he is without brothers, first-begotten on account of the assumption of a man, in which act he has deigned to have brothers by the adoption of grace, with regard to whom he should be the first-begotten," [629] we are seized with astonishment at the secret, energetic counter-action of the Christological mysticism of Cyril and the Areopagite. It captivated thoughtful and superstitious Christians in Rome, and thence in England, Upper Italy, and France. It succeeded in doing so, because it was allied both with the philosophical speculation of the time and the superstitious craving for mysteries. Plato and Aristotle, as they were understood, were its evangelists, and, again, every celebration of the Lord's Supper, yea, every relic, was a silent missionary for it. In this men experienced the identity of the heavenly and earthly; accordingly, that identity had to be recognised above all in Christ himself. Thus the Western and Augustinian Christology, with its last, and yet so significant, remnant of a historical view of Christ--his subjection to divine grace--was effaced, not by a conflict, but much more certainly by a silent revolution. [630] But Augustinian Christology was advocated in Arabian Spain about A.D. 780 by Elipandus, Metropolitan of Toledo, and soon afterwards in Frankish Spain by Felix, Bishop of Urgel; it being also supported by the Mozarabian liturgy. [631] They strongly emphasised the view that Christ was adopted as man, and the redeemed were accordingly, in the fullest sense, brothers of the man Jesus. There has been a good deal of argument as to how the two bishops, who, for the rest, had the approval of the majority of their colleagues in Spain, were influenced thus to emphasise the adoptio. After what we have observed above we ought rather to ask why the other Western Bishops did not do the same. In any case, the hypothesis that this Adoptianism is to be explained from Ancient West Gothic Arianism [632] is still less tenable than its derivation from Arab influences. [633] Nor do we obtain much enlightenment from the reference to the controversy which Elipandus had previously waged with a heretic named Migetius, [634] since the doctrines ascribed to him do not seem to have been the reverse of Adoptianism, while the whole figure is obscure. [635] All that is clear is that at that date the Spanish Church possessed no connection with Rome, that it rejected the alliance sought by Hadrian I., and, while relatively uninfluenced by the Roman and Byzantine Church tradition, [636] was in a state of great confusion internally. [637] It is further evident that Elipandus gladly seized the opportunity to extend the sphere of his metropolitan power to Asturia under the sure protection of the unbelievers. A dogmatic Spanish formula was welcome to him as a means of doing this. It is probable, finally, that Latin translations of Nestorian writings (i.e., of Theodore of Mopsuestia) were read in Spain. This cannot, indeed, be proved; but there can be no doubt that Felix of Urgel gave a Nestorian (Theodorian) development to Augustine's Christology, and thus went beyond Augustine, and it is on the other hand certain that from the sixth century Latin translations of works by Nestorian (and Syrian) writers were current in the West. [638] Elipandus was a loyal adherent to the Augustinian and Chalcedonian Christology; this is attested by his epistles; see also the two books written against him by Beatus and Eterius of Asturia, as well as Alcuin's writings. He meant to maintain the unity of person throughout; but this unity did not, in his view, do away with the strict distinction of natures. The human nature remained human, being thence raised to the dignity of divinity, and for this reason he held the term "adoptio" to be peculiarly fitting: "the son adoptive in his humanity but not in his divinity" (filius adoptivus humanitate nequaquam divinitate). Everyone in the West (even Alcuin) still spoke at that time of the assumtio hominis, and not merely of the assumtio humanæ naturæ (assumption of a man not of human nature). It was a correct inference that assumtio hominis = adoptio hominis. If the word "adoptio" was not exactly common in the more ancient literature, [639] the matter designated by it was correctly expressed in Augustine's sense. [640] The sonship of Christ was therefore twofold; as God he was son by race and nature (genere et natura), as man by adoption and grace. Elipandus quoted texts in support of this, and inferred quite correctly that he who disputed the Redeemer's adoptio had to deny the reality of his human nature, and consequently to suppose that Christ derived his humanity, which would be unlike ours, from the substance of the Father. Elipandus therefore designates his opponents Docetics or Eutychians. If we find that even he was interested really in Christ's complete humanity for his work's sake, the same fact shows much more clearly in the important case of Felix (see the writings directed against him by Paulinus and Alcuin). He has also left the God-Logos resting in the background; but his theory of religion deals with the second Adam in a way that had not been heard of in the Church since the days of Theodore. Since the Son of Man was actually a man, the whole stages of his humiliation were not voluntarily undertaken, but were necessary. It was only the resolve of the Son of God to adopt a man that was freely made. After this resolve was realised the Son of Man had to be a servant, had to be subject to the Father in everything, had to fulfil his will and not his own. Like all men he was only good so far as, and because, he was subject to the Father's grace; he was not omniscient and omnipotent, but his wisdom and power were bounded by the limits imposed on humanity. He derived his life from the Father, and to him he also prayed for himself. [641] Felix's final interest consisted in the fact that only thus can we be certain of our adoption. He insisted very strongly on raising to the central place in the conception of redemption the thought that the adoption of believers is only certain if Christ adopted a man like other men, or humanity: we are only redeemed if Christ is our oldest brother. The assurance of the redemption of humanity rests, as with Augustine, on the sole-begotten (in the divine sphere) having united with himself the first-begotten (in the human) ["adoptivi cum adoptivo, servi cum servo, Christi cum Christo, deus inter deos" ]. Christ, who as man was sacrificed for sakes, was the head of humanity, not by his divinity, but by his humanity. For this very reason the members are only certain of their adoption if the head is adopted. [642] If we are not dealing in Christ's case with an adoption as in our own, the then Incarnation was enacted outside of our sphere, and is of no benefit to us. But Felix went a step farther. He did not, like Augustine, satisfy himself with stopping at the simple contention that the man (homo) Christ was adopted in virtue of the prevenient grace of predestination, and with combining, by a mere assertion, this contention with the thesis of personal unity. On the contrary he rigidly separated the natures, and sought to form a clear idea of the way in which the adoption was accomplished (see the Antiochenes.) As regards the first point, he applied the phrase "true and peculiar son" (verus et proprius filius) to the God-Logos alone, and did not shrink from the proposition "the son is believed one in two forms" (duobus modis unus creditur filius); he distinguished between "the one" and "the other" (alter and alter), "this one" and "that" (ille and ille), nay, he called the Son of Man "God by adoption" (nuncupativus deus: meaning that he became God). He speaks, like the Antiochenes, of a "dwelling" of God in man, of the man who is united (conjunctus; applicatus) with deity, or bears deity. He has, indeed, compared the union of the two natures in Christ with the relation of soul and body; but the figure is still more inapt from his standpoint than from Augustine's; for the community of attributes is to him not real, but nominal, and "we must by no means believe that the omnipotent divine Father, who is a spirit, begets the body from himself" (nullo modo credendum est, ut omnipotens deus pater, qui spiritus est, de semetipso carnem generet). The man Christ has two fathers, one natural (David), and the other by his adoption. With reference to the second point, Felix taught that the Son of Man underwent two births: he was born of the virgin--that was his natural birth, and of grace or adoption in baptism--his spiritual birth. Christ, accordingly, like all Christians, experienced a twofold birth. His spiritual birth, as indispensable for him as for the rest, was accomplished, as in every other case, in baptism; but in this instance also baptism was only the beginning. It was not completed till the Resurrection. [643] As the Son of Man, therefore, was subject to the different stages of divine grace arising from his election, he was also originally, though sinless, [644] the "old man" (vetus homo), and passed through the process of regeneration until he reached complete adoption--undergoing everything that and as we do. But we follow the Head, and it is only because he experienced this that he can be our redeemer and intercessor. For the rest, it is besides to be held that the Son of God also accepted human birth for himself, as in that case he is further to be conceived as sharing in all the acts of the Son of Man. [645] Elipandus had given currency to his teaching in letters. His first opponents were the Abbot Beatus and the youthful Bishop Eterius. Their opposition inflamed the anger of the ageing Metropolitan, jealous of his orthodoxy. All who refused to see in the two natures more than one filius proprius he called "servants of Antichrist" (A.D. 785). Those he attacked, however, did not keep silent, but exposed the heretical character of Adoptianism in an elaborate document; they also noted the fact that the controversy had already excited the Bishops of all Spain, and had extended into France. [646] Hadrian I. entered into the dispute at this time. He could not but welcome the chance of proving to the Spanish Metropolitan, whose independence rendered him obnoxious, that he had fallen into the heresy of Nestorius, and that the Spanish Bishops were therefore bound to adhere to the teaching of Rome and the Fathers. [647] Soon afterwards Felix of Urgel energetically championed the thesis laid down by Elipandus. Thereby the question at issue became important for the kingdom of the Franks. The Synod of Regensburg (792), whose transactions are unfortunately lost, was convened to deal with Adoptianism. Felix himself required to appear. He defended himself before Charlemagne, [648] but is said to have ultimately recanted, since all the Bishops declared his teaching to be erroneous. The recantation is, indeed, supported by several witnesses, but is not placed beyond doubt, for we hear that Felix was sent to Rome, and was kept in prison by the Pope until he yielded to swear to an orthodox confession. He now returned to Spain (to his bishopric?) but soon renounced his forced recantation, and withdrew to Toledo in Saracen territory, in order to escape the censorship of the Franks. Alcuin's attempt to recover for the Church its highly prized bishop by means of a very friendly letter that breathed Augustine's spirit (A.D. 793) perhaps crossed the effort made by the heads of the Adoptianists to maintain their teaching in the Church by an encyclical to the Bishops of the Frankish kingdom. and a letter to Charlemagne, which took the form of a remonstrance, and contained a petition for a new investigation. Elipandus always regarded the "sleek" Beatus as the chief enemy, who had instilled his poison into the Church and seduced the Bishops. He adjures the King to judge justly; to reinstate Felix, and be warned by Constantine's revolt to Arianism. The heresy that through Beatus now threatened the whole Church was nothing less than the denial that Christ received his body from the Virgin. At the brilliant Synod of Frankfurt, Charlemagne, after reporting to the Pope, set on foot a new investigation (794). Learned bishops and theologians were summoned from all quarters. The assembly rejected Adoptianism in two Synodal deeds--the Italian Bishops under Paulinus of Aquileia voted separately. The same course was followed by a Synod assembled contemporaneously at Rome. All these resolutions were transmitted, along with a letter of his own, by Charlemagne to Elipandus. We are not interested in following the controversy further, for new phases did not appear. But we have the impression that Adoptianism made advances in Saracen Spain and the neighbouring province until about A.D. 799. Even the personal influence of famous doctors (Benedict of Aniane, Leidrad of Lyons) met at first with little success. But Frankish Spain could not resist the influence of the whole empire, and Felix himself was ultimately induced once more to recant at the Synod of Aachen (799). At this date, besides Paulinus, [649] Alcuin was indefatigable in producing works, some of them extensive, against the heresy (Libell. adv. Felic. hair., IV. lib. adv. Elipandum, VII. lib. adv. Felic.). It is interesting to notice how this Anglo-Saxon, the disciple of Bede, was entirely dependent in his Christology on the Greeks, and had abandoned the Augustinian tradition. Augustine as well as Græco-Roman speculative theology had become domesticated in England through the Romanising of that country. But in those questions on which the Greeks had pronounced their views, they were ever regarded as the more honourable, reliable, and learned. They were the representatives of the sublime theology of the mystery of the Incarnation. [650] The Latins were only after all to be considered in so far as they agreed with the Greeks. How great is the imposing prestige and power of an ancient culture, and how cogent is every "advance" that it experiences, even if that advance passes imperceptibly into a refinement which produces a new barbarianism! Alcuin's arguments might have occurred just as well in the works of Cyril, Leontius, or John of Damascus, and they are sometimes actually to be found there word for word:--Christ is the personal God-Logos who assumed impersonal human nature, and fused it into the complete unity of his being. Accordingly, even apart from sin, Christ's humanity was by no means like ours in all points, but was very different. Since it acquired all the attributes of deity, all human limitations shown in the life of Jesus were voluntarily accepted, in other words were due to accommodation, were pedagogic or illusory. Alcuin dissipates the records of the gospels as thoroughly as the Monophysite and Crypto-Monophysite Greeks. This form of piety had ceased to regard Christ in any sense as a human person; nay, it felt itself gravely hurt if it was told that it ought to suppose a really human consciousness in Christ. Not only was the dismemberment of the one Christ disowned as blasphemous, but still more the application to him of categories that were held to describe believers. [651] In fact, we are correct in saying that faith in Christ as Redeemer had no interest in expounding broadly wherein Christ is like us. [652] But the Adoptians had, consistently with this likeness, which they asserted, characterised him as head of the community, and demonstrated a way in which the man Christ could be apprehended as redeemer and intercessor. [653] But then, as now, no one who had once been initiated into the mysteries was influenced by this. He who has once but sipped the intoxicating cup of that mysticism, which promises to transform every worthless stone into gold, sees everywhere the mystery of deification, and then it is not easy for the watchman to recall the dreamer to life. [654] For this is the last motive of this speculation: from the transformation of the impersonal human substance into the divine (in the case of Christ) to derive the divino-human means of ea joyment in this world. Even in the instance of Beatus, the realistic conception of the Lord's Supper turns out to be a decisive motive against Adoptianism, [655] and this motive can also be demonstrated in Alcuin's works. [656] Thus the Christological controversy is closely connected with the magical conceptions of the Lord's Supper as the centre of Church doctrine and practice. It is all the more instructive that, as we shall see, images were not yet thought of, while the East had long had them in view, as well as the Lord's Supper, in connection with its Crypto-Monophysite Christology. In this matter the Anglo-Saxon and Frankish Church still "lagged" behind its guide. Felix secluded himself with Leidrad in Lyons. The re-conversion of the Frankish Adoptians now made great strides, and Felix himself had to exhort his congregation to abandon the error which he had formerly taught them. But he was by no means thoroughly convinced at heart, as is shown by papers found, after the death of the unfortunate Bishop, by Leidrad's successor, Agobard. Agobard held it necessary to refute the dead Felix. If aggressive Adoptianism soon expired in the Frankish kingdom, it was revived by the daring dialectic of the eleventh and twelfth centuries as a doctrine of the schools, [657] and it afterwards continued during all centuries of the Middle Ages, though without rousing more than a theological dispute. Little is known of how the "heresy" gradually died out in Saracen Spain. Even in the time of Elipandus it did not escape censure. It still had power to attract about A.D. 850; [658] but then there came times when it was necessarily worth more to Christian Spaniards to feel that they were in agreement with the whole Church than to defend the legitimacy of a distinctive position. The decisive result of the whole controversy was that the West set aside its own earlier Christological system, and--for the sake of the Lord's Supper and the imposing tradition of the Greeks--thought like the latter within the sphere of dogma. Christ's unity was maintained; but this unity absorbed his humanity, and removed far off the dread incarnate Son of God (dei filius incarnatus tremendus). Strict dogmatic only permitted him to be approached in the Lord's Supper. But that did not prevent the vision of the lowly Man of Sorrows continuing, still secretly at first, to make its way side by side with dogmatic theory, that vision that had dawned upon Augustine, and was in ever-increasing vividness to form the strength of piety in the future. __________________________________________________________________ [622] See Bach, l.c. Walch, Ketzerhistorie, Vol. IX.; Hefele, Concil. Gesch. III.,2 p. 642 ff. (628 ff.); Helfferrich, D. westgothische Arianismus u. die spanische Ketzergeschichte 1860; Gams, Kirchengesch. Spaniens, Vol. II.; Dorner, Entwickel. Gesch. Vol. II.; Hauck, K.-Gesch. Deutschlands, Vol. II., p. 256; Opp. Alcuini ed. Froben; Mansi, T. XII., XIII.; Migne, T. XCVI.-CI. [623] Yet not yet everywhere. [624] See Augustine's Christology above, p. 127 ff. The idea of the adoptio of the man Jesus, or human nature, also occurs in Tertullian, Novatian, Marius Victorinus, and Hilary. [625] So far as the retention of this is the condition of understanding Jesus Christ, the Greek conception is superior to the Adoptian. [626] The defenders of the anti-Adoptian Christology (Alcuin's) have not latered their tactics at the present day. Thus Bach says (l.c. I., p. 109 ff.): "The Adoptians had no presentiment of that which the (Greek) Fathers call the pneumatic quality of Christ's flesh. Christ's body is to them that of common human nature in every respect. In this kenotic (!!) we have the basis of Adoptian dualism. . . . Felix, like Elipandus, does not understand the pneumatic human nature in Christ." If these words suggest any meaning at all, they show that the modern historian of dogma is as honest a Docetic as the orthodox after Justinian's heart. [627] The case is precisely the same as in Christological conflicts generally from the days of Apollinaris. There is right and wrong on both sides, but after all on neither, because the conception of a divine nature in Christ leads either to Docetism or the double personality. All speculations that seek to escape these consequences can display at most their good intentions. [628] This was bluntly asserted by Marius Victorinus (adv. Arium I.) to whom is entirely due the Augustinian view of Christology sub specie prædestinationis. [629] Migne, CI., p. 1322 sq.: "Unigenitus vocatur secundum divinitatis excellentiam, quia sine fratribus, primogenitus secundum susceptionem hominis, in qua per adoptionem gratiæ fratres habere dignatus est, de quibus esset primogenitus." [630] Western Augustinian Christology, like Nestorianism, deserved its fall; for since it taught that the God-Logos existed behind the man Jesus who was supported by divine grace, the relation of the work of redemption to that homo was extremely uncertain. The result was a duplicity of view which could only produce confusion, and which had to come to an end, until the conception of faith should be thoroughly accepted, unhampered by pernicious speculations as to the two natures, that God himself was in the man Jesus. [631] See the seven, though not equally valuable passages in Hefele, l.c., p. 650 f.: "adoptivi hominis passio"--"adoptivi hominis non horruisti vestimentum"--"salvator per adoptionem carnis sedem repetiit deitatis," etc. [632] So Helfferich, l.c.; also Hauck, R.-Encyklop I3., p. 185, leaves it open. [633] Gfrörer, K.-Gesch. III., p. 644 ff. Graf. Baudissin, Eulogius und Alvar 1872, p. 61 f. The traces cited of a connection between Elipandus and Felix with the Saracens are very slight; besides, the objections felt by the latter to the doctrine of the Trinity are not lessened by Adoptianism. Elipandus defended the doctrine with peculiar emphasis. [634] Hefele, Op. cit., p. 628 ff. [635] Besides his enthusiasm for Rome, Migetius' main heresy seems to have been that he conceived God strictly as a single person, and maintained that he had revealed himself in three persons, namely, David (Father?), Jesus, and Paul (the Holy Ghost?). Besides this "Sabellianism," one might be tempted to discover "Priscillian" errors in him. But the slight information we possess (see Hadrian and Elipandus' letters) do not warrant a confident decision. [636] This explains the uninterrupted prestige of Augustinian theology. Isidore of Seville, e.g., felt it so strongly, that he even taught twofold predestination (Sentent. II. 6): "gemina predestinatio . . . sive reproborum ad mortem." [637] The comparatively slight influence exerted by the great main current of Church development is also shown by the fact that the opposition of the Spaniard Vigilantius to saints and relics continued to influence Spain, as is evidenced, e.g., by the attack made upon him by Faustus of Rhegium (see above, p. 244, note 1). Paradoxical as it sounds, the veneration of these objects lay in the van of Church evolution, in so far as it was most closely connected with the development of Christology. Those who resisted this worship soon ceased to do so on evangelical grounds, but because ecclesiastically they were "laggards." The dislike to relics and pictures, however, is as closely connected with the Adoptian theory, as their worship and the materialistic dogma of the Lord's Supper are with the Christology of Cyril, Justinian, and Alcuin (see under). But even after Reccared passed over to Catholicism, the Spanish Church showed its disorderly state, not only in the persistent mingling of Pagan and Christian morals, and (in some circles) the continuance of certain Arian leanings, but still more in numerous heretical intrigues. To this class belong Priscillianism, degenerated into dualism, Migetius, that Marcus who rejuvenated Basilidianism, and above all the sect of Bonosians that held its ground in Spain--phenomena that were profoundly opposed to Catholicism, and prove how hard it was for the rising Roman Catholic Church in Spain to adopt the sentiments of Roman Catholicism. No other Western Church had at this date still to strive so keenly with powerful heresies as the Spanish. Hence is explained the growth in this Church, especially after contact with Islam, of the cold, determined fanaticism of its orthodoxy and persecution of heretics. Wherever it arises, this is a sign that men have forced themselves after severe sacrifices to submit to the sacred cause, and that they now seek to compensate themselves by making others do the same. As regards the sect of Bonosians in particular, their founder, Bonosus, Bishop of Sardica, advanced from a denial of Mary's perpetual virginity to the doctrine of Photinus (see the Synod of Capua, A.D. 391; Ambrose's letters, Siricius, and Innocent I., and Marius Mercator). Strange to say, he found adherents in South Gaul, and especially in Spain, up till into the eighth century; in Spain, as it appears, they were numerous; see the 2 Synod of Arles (443?) c. 17, Synod of Clichy (626) c. 5, Synod of Orleans (538) c. 31, Gennad. de vir. inl. 4, Avitus Vienn., Isidore de script. eccl. 20, de hær. 53. In the sixth century Justinian of Valentia opposed them in Spain, and in the seventh the Synod of Toledo (675), referred in the Symbol to the doctrine of the Bonosians that Christ had only existed after Mary bore him, and was merely a filius adoptivus, by confessing: "hic etiam filius dei natura est filius, non adoptione." Naturally Elipandus and Felix were conjoined by their opponents with the Bonosians, but with the greatest injustice; they were rather their most implacable enemies, since they never denied that Christ as Son of God was filius dei naturalis. They even tried to hurl back the charge of Bonosianism at their enemies (Beatus and Eterius), an attempt, indeed, that could not succeed. It was at any rate prejudicial, seeing that men cling to catchwords, to place in the Toledan Symbol of 675 the words "non filius adoptione," although by them the Photinian error, which Elipandus himself "condemned to hell," was exclusively meant. We may, indeed, say of Bonosianism, but not of Elipandus' teaching, that its circulation in Spain is explained by the Arian leanings of the Western Goths; for not only in the Arianism of scholarly theologians, but still more in its popular form, there lurked an element of the doctrine of Paul of Samosata and Photinus. [638] Since the Three Chapter controversy. We have to remember, further, that Theodore's commentary on Paul's Epistles still exists in a Latin translation, and that the work of Junilius comes from a Syrian copy; see Neander's Dogmengesch. II., p, 25 f., and Jacobi's note there, p. 26 f. Möller (Art. Adoptianism in Herzog's R.-E., 2nd Ed.) has stated, on the basis of Gam's discoveries, a conjecture that is worth noting: "Perhaps we ought to regard the orthodox brethren in Cordova extolled by Elipandus (Er). ad Felic. in Alcuin's letters, ep. 123), who provided him with scholarly material, and to whom Alcuin (ep. ad Leidrad. 141) supposes the evil originally to have been due, as Eastern Christians of Nestorian culture who had come in the train of the Arabs, and who, if they did not produce, supported the Adoptian tendency." It is further important that Elipandus has not mentioned Nestorianism among the ancient heresies rejected by him. [639] Alcuin says too much when he exclaims (adv. Elip. IV. 2): "Ubi latuit, ubi dormivit hoc nomen adoptionis vel nuncupationis de Christo?" or Ep. 110: "Novitas vocum in adoptione, nuncupatione, omnino fidelibus omnibus detestanda est." [640] Compare how also Facundus of Hermiane (pro defens. trium capp. p. 708, ed. Paris, 1616, II.) acknowledges that Christ accepted the "Sacrament of Adoption." [641] See passages cited by Bach, Opp. cit., p. 110 ff. [642] The clearest passages--Felix's own words--occur in Agobard, lib. adv. Fel. 27-37. [643] Alcuin adv. Felic. II. 16 (Felix says): "Christus qui est secundus Adam, accepit has geminas generationes, primam vid. quæ secundum carnem est, secundam vero spiritualem, quæ per adoptionem fit, idem redemptor noster secundum hominem complexus in semetipso continet: primam vid. quam suscepit ex virgine nascendo, secundam vero quam initiavit in lavacro a mortuis resurgendo." [644] Alcuin indeed does not believe that Felix was sincere in professing to hold the sinlessness of Christ, for, if he had been, he would not have spoken of a regeneration of Christ (l.c., c. 18). [645] Felix's words in Agobard 33: "Propter singularitatem personæ, in qua divinitas filii dei cum hurnanitate sua communes habeat actiones, qua ex causa aliquando ea quæ divina sunt referuntur ad humana, et ea quæ humana fiunt interdum adscribuntur ad divina, et hoc ordine aliquando dei filius in hominis filio filius hominis appellari dignatur et hominis filius in dei filio filius dei nuncupatur." The Nestorians, too, maintained such a double personality. [646] See the analysis of this writing in Bach, p. 116 ff. It follows Cyril. The old charge formerly made against the Nestorians is also urged against the Adoptians, that by making the Son of Man independent they expanded the Trinity into a Quaternity. A few western reminiscences are, however, not wanting, although the human nature is substantially conceived to be the impersonal caro; see e.g., II. 68, where the filius secundum carnem is named as mediator ("reconciliati sumus per solum filium secundum carnem, sed non soli filio secundum divinitatem"); also II. 40: "dominus ac redemptor noster cum sancta ecclesia, quam redemit secundum carnem, una substantia est." [647] Ep. 97 in the Cod. Carol. in Migne, T. CII., see analysis in Hefele III., p. 661 ff., which is also to be compared with what follows. [648] In the controversy the King proved that he felt fully his responsibility as a Christian ruler, and was at the same time thoroughly anxious to be just. He was really convinced by the propositions of his theologians. They extolled him highly as protector of the faith, as a David and a Solomon. Alcuin says of the King (adv. Elipand. I. 16): "Catholicus in fide, rex in potestate, pontifex in prædicatione, judex in æquitate, philosophus in liberalibus studiis, inclytus in moribus (?) et omni honestate præcipuus." Ep. 100 ad dominum regem: "hoc mirabile et speciale in te pietatis dei donum prædicamus, quod tanta devotione ecclesias Christi a perfidorum doctrinis intrinsecus purgare tuerique niteris, quanta forinsecus a vastatione paganorum defendere vel propagare conaris. His duabus gladiis vestram venerandam excellentiam dextra lævaque divina armavit potestas." [649] See on his polemics, Bach, p. 121 ff. [650] This is true above all of Cyril. [651] See the analysis of Alcuin's Christology in Bach, p. 128 ff. Alcuin seeks to show (1) that all the statements of Scripture and the Fathers regarding Christ have for their subject the concrete person in two natures; (2) that the notion of adoption occurs neither in Scripture nor the Fathers, and is thus novel and false; and (3) that the Adoptianist theory is inconsistent, and upsets the basis of faith. He tries to show that adoptio, if taken to mean anything different from assumptio, leads to heresy. Assumption is held to express the natural relation in which humanity is connected with deity by the Incarnation, and which is annulled by the adoptio that designates a relation due to grace. Alcuin indeed also speaks (following Augustine) of grace having been in Christ, for it does not, like adoptio, exclude the natural relation of sonship. But his strongest argument consists in his explanation that passive adoption was impossible, because the Son of Man did not exist at all before he was actual Son of God. Neither he nor Paulinus supposes that the man Christ was a person before the God-man. He certainly possessed his personality from the first in the Son of God. Accordingly, if we think abstractly, we may not conceive of a man (homo) Christ who existed before the Incarnation, but of human nature, which only became personal by its assumption, and was at once made an essential constituent of the person of the God-man. Therefore this nature, even apart from sin, was infinitely superior to and unlike ours. Therefore the doctrine of the Agnoetes, who had besides been already strongly assailed by Gregory I. in his letters, was to be condemned; and the servile form of the Son of God was in every respect worthy of adoration, because it was not necessary to his nature, but was at every point freely undertaken. Accordingly Christ required neither baptism nor adoption, and even as man was no ordinary creature, but always the God-man. "In spite of the assumption of human nature, the God-man retained sole property in the person of the Son." Humanity was merely added like something impersonal to this unity of person of the Son of God, "and there remained the same property in two natures in the name of the Son that formerly existed in one substance." But Alcuin adds very inaptly (c. Felic. II. 12): "in adsumtione carnis a deo persona petit hominis, non natura;" for he certainly did not assume that a "persona hominis" had existed previously. We can only explain this lapse by supposing that Alcuin had not yet let Cyril's Christology expunge from his mind every reminiscence of Augustine's. Bach rightly remarks (p. 136 f.: against Donner) "that no opponent of the Adoptians imagined that personality was essential to the completeness of the human nature; (like Bach himself) they taught exactly the opposite." Bach's own explanation of the above passage, which is only intelligible as a lapse, is, for the rest, wholly incorrect. By persona he would understand "the person of man as such, of humanitas, and not of the man Christ." [652] Epist. ad Carol. M.: "Quid enim prodest ecclesiæ dei Christum appellare adoptivum filium vel deum nuncupativum? [653] The explanations given by Felix as to the man Christ as sacerdos, sacrificium, caput ecclesiæ are Augustinian, and in part more precise than they occur in Augustine. The part played in the controversy by the thought of Christ as head of the Church is worthy of note. We are not prepared for it, if we start from the more ancient tradition. The greater emphasis laid on Christ as priest and sacrifice was already determined by the all-prevailing reference to the Mass. [654] Adoptianism, like Nestorianism, necessarily remained a half thing, because it did not correct this pseudo-Christian motive. This is the ultimate cause of its speedy death. Adoptianism and the Eucharistic Christ do not suit each other. [655] See Bach, p. 119 f. Beatus has pointed out, like Cyril, that the concrete unity of Christ's person is shown most clearly in the fact that in the Lord's Supper the whole Christ is adored, and that his flesh is the principle of eternal life. Bach (p. 120) has eloquently evolved as his own view the cause for which the opponents of the Adoptians ultimately contended. "Beatus and Eterius, in opposition to the externality of Elipandus, pointed with a profoundly realistic glance to the central significance of Christ in the collective ethical and sacramental constitution of Christianity, and the morally free life of humanity. The organic and physical relation of Christ to humanity, and the physiology of grace in its inner relation to human freedom, which has its living roots in the concrete God-man, are hereby indicated. A divided Christ cannot be a new physical ethical ferment of life to mankind." This materialistic ghost unfortunately also announces its presence in Protestant Christianity. [656] With him and Paulinus, only indeed in unimportant hints, wherefore Each calls Paulinus "less profound and thorough" than Beatus. How the speculation reached the latter is not known. [657] See Bach, II., p. 390 ff. [658] See the letters of Alvar, Bandissin, 1.c. Bach I., p. 146 ff. __________________________________________________________________ I. (b). The Controversy as to Predestination. [659] The revival of theological science in the ninth century led to a thorough study of Augustine. But the theology of Gregory I. had already accustomed men to combine the formulas of Augustinianism with the Pelagianism required by the system of the cultus. Hence a renewal of the controversy would hardly have taken place had not the monk Gottschalk of Orbais asserted the doctrine of predestination with as much energy as Augustine had done in his latest writings, and had he not been opposed by Hinkmar, whom his jealous colleagues would gladly have charged with heresy. It was not his use of Augustinian formulas that lifted Gottschalk out of the mass of theologians, and gave a startling effect to his confession. It was the fact that the doctrine of predestination had become the strength and support of his being after a misspent life. Here again it is palpable that words are not everything, that they remain a tinkling cymbal as long as they are not the expression of experience. Many joined and followed Gottschalk in speaking as he did at the time; but he alone was persecuted as a heretical teacher, because the opposition felt that he alone was dangerous to their Church system. Gottschalk's teaching regarding predestination was not different, either in matter or form, from that of Augustine, Fulgentius, and Isidore; [660] but it must also be said that he taught nothing but predestination. With the devotion, at first of resignation, and afterwards of fanaticism, he committed himself to the hands of God who does all things according to his good pleasure, and does nothing without having determined it irrevocably from the beginning. Predestination is the content of the Gospel, is the object of faith. It is the truth--that twofold predestination to life and death, according to which eternal life is decreed for the good, and death for the sinner, in which, therefore, some are appointed to life, and the rest to death. Nothing is to be set aside that the Church elsewhere teaches, or that it does; but it is a revolt from the Gospel to obscure in the hearts of men the certainty of this eternal unchangeable dispensation of divine grace--for justice and punishment are also good. Until his death Gottschalk defended inflexibly this faith of his, in the living and original language of the convinced advocate. [661] But what did the historical Christ, or the Christ of the sacramentally ordered Church, mean here? If the hidden God with his hidden will was a comfort to Gottschalk, then that comfort consisted in the assurance that this God had also predestinated some to life, and the assurance flowed from the economy which culminated in Christ. For from what other source was it known that eternal predestination also embraced the pardon of a section of mankind? The assurance of the individual gained nothing by this; but among the opposition also no one would have anything to do with certainty of salvation; the individual did not count for much to himself or others. Individualism was not yet developed. Christ accordingly was not in question. Even the resolute defender of predestination looked to him when he thought of election to life. But the system of the Sacraments, legal demands and works, which constituted the Church itself, tottered, as it must always totter, wherever religion is recalled from externality to the inner life. This recall was accomplished in a much more abstract way in the present instance than by Augustine. The most profound of the African's expositions on liberating grace and the blessed necessity of goodness (beata necessitas boni), which form the background of the doctrine of predestination, do not tell strongly upon Gottschalk. Nor had the Frankish monk been able to appropriate the Neoplatonic speculation, that had been toned down or transferred to a wholly different sphere of ideas by Augustine's teaching. And, again, he did not know the dialectic of the notion of time, which is inseparable from Augustine's conception. Yet he was not unfamiliar with dialectics; indeed, if we may trust the accounts given us, he at first took pleasure in the problem on dialectical grounds; but the fire he played with afterwards mastered him. The subject matter itself became precious to him. It corresponded to his own mood, ever growing gloomier, and he championed it with the zeal of the missionary. It was not original sin, or sin that he regarded as the chief subject, but the unchangeableness and wisdom of God. He was a theologian in the narrowest sense of the term. Gottschalk was first opposed by Rabanus in his letters to Noting and Eberard--shortly before A.D. 848. [662] He was accused of teaching that right faith and good works were of no avail to him who was not appointed to salvation, and that God forced men to sin and perdition (invitum hominem facit peccare). [663] Other opponents soon arose, and it was declared that he taught a predestination to sin. At the Council of Mainz (848) Rabanus got him condemned, [664] and handed over, by command of King Lewis, to Hinkmar to whose province as monk he belonged. [665] In his letter to Hinkmar, Rabanus declares a predestination as regards wickedness to be simply erroneous, and he is able to tell already of people, who, seduced by Gottschalk, gave up pious practices because, forsooth, they were wholly useless. [666] Hinkmar got the judgment against the "miserable monk" repeated at an imperial synodal diet at Chiersey (849). He was deposed from his office, scourged, and rendered harmless in prison. [667] Neither Rabanus nor Hinkmar seems at first to have formed as yet any idea of the difficulty of the whole question--caused by the authority of Augustine and other Fathers. Hinkmar contented himself with referring God's prescience to good or evil, but predestination to goodness alone. [668] But the position of the case soon changed. Gottschalk composed two confessions, in which he stated his teaching, supporting it from Scripture and the Fathers, [669] and he also wrote essays in which he emphasised the particularism of Christ's saving work, [670] subordinating the latter strictly to the premundane decree of God. He also, in a letter to Amolo, gave expression to the particularly objectionable principle "that baptism and the other sacraments were given in vain to those who perished after receiving them;" for "those of the number of the faithful who perish were never incorporated in Christ and the Church." [671] But it was perceived in the more cultured South, apart from Mainz and Rheims, that it was not Gottschalk but his opponents who diverged from Augustine's teaching. The best theologians ranged themselves on the side of the Confessor e.g., Prudentius of Troyes, Ratramnus of Corbie, then also the learned and acute Lupus of Ferrières, [672] the priest Servatus Lupus and Remigius of Lyons, for the most part disciples of Alcuin. [673] There now began a lively theological controversy (849-50), which was not, however, violent enough to involve the rest of the Church and the Pope, and which was unspeakably unsatisfactory, because staunch Augustinians neither could nor would abandon the ruling ecclesiastical system, and had therefore to seek for compromises where Gottschalk's results endangered it, and because the Frankish Semi-Pelagians soon saw that they would have to approximate their phraseology to Augustinianism. Among the writings in defence of Gottschalk there were accordingly many shades of opinion, but so were there also on the other side. [674] Florus Magister, e.g., advocated the twofold (gemina) predestination, but yet opposed Gottschalk, since he rejected the thought of the irresistibleness of grace. [675] Amolo of Lyons treated him in a friendly spirit; but no one else showed so emphatically that Gottschalk's teaching did away with the historical redemption, the fruits of Christ's death, and sacramental grace. [676] The only one who took up a consistent standpoint, and from it opposed the monk, was John Scotus. His teaching did not rest on Augustine's doctrine of predestination but on the Neoplatonic and Augustinian ontology, which he developed boldly. According to this, evil and death were nothing. Unchangeable being had only one unchangeable will, namely itself, and it evolved itself alone. Everything else consisted in negation, was nothing actual, and bore this very not-being in itself as a punishment. Applying this to the question of predestination, it followed that those were right who would only admit one predestination. [677] But friend and foe felt, without seeing through the pantheism of Scotus, that this was a case of casting out the devil by the aid of Beelzebub ("commentum diaboli"). There was only one way out of the difficulty besides that given by Scotus. This was to give up altogether putting the question in the form of the predestination problem, to hold to the historical Christ, and to do justice to Augustine's doctrine of grace by reducing the Church system to the experience of the new birth and faith. But no one discovered this expedient, [678] and so the whole controversy necessarily became a maze of insincerity, partly objective, partly conscious. Augustine's authority, however, was so powerful that the result, if we may speak of such a thing, came nearer Gottschalk's teaching in words than to the original utterances of Rabanus and his comrades (of whom Pardulus also was one). The latter sought to carry their distinction between prescience and predestination (as regards evil and punishment), and would therefore have nothing said of persons being predestined to punishment. When God foresaw evil, he predestined punishment for those who should not deserve to be redeemed by grace; room, accordingly, is left indirectly to free-will, although, so far as words go, the saved are saved solely in virtue of election. The artificial distinction here made (predestination of life and of the good, prescience of the wicked, predestination of punishment) is apparently defensible, even on an Augustinian basis, since Hinkmar now spoke of a complete loss of freedom through Adam's Fall. But the distinction was in truth meant to open a door for the entrance of Semi-Pelagianism. This doctrine was adopted at a new Synod of Chiersey (853) under Hinkmar's leadership. [679] But what took place here was not authoritative in the Archbishopric of Sens [680] and the Empire of Lothar. Remigius of Lyons sharply attacked the four chapters of Chiersey as running counter to Scripture and the Fathers. [681] At the great Synod held at Valencia of the provinces of Lyons, Vienne and Arles (855), canons were adopted which adhered much more closely to Augustine, and contained the teaching of Remigius. Dislike to the powerful Hinkmar also played a part in their composition. The Synod rejected the four chapters: they had been entered on with too little prudence ("minus prospecte suscepta.") It taught the double predestination, applied the latter to persons also, and maintained that Christ shed his blood for believers. The question whether God willed to save all men was carefully evaded. If the Synod disowned a predestination to sin, it did not thereby abandon strictly Augustinian ground. On the contrary, the contention that condemnation was based on prescience, and that in the Church's Sacraments "nothing was futile or delusive" (nihil sit cassum, nihil ludificatorium) shows the anxiety felt not to give up what was held valid by the Church. [682] If we compare the resolutions of the two Synods word for word, the differences are extremely subtle, and yet the little addition (plus) of the alien co-efficient attached to Augustinianism in the Chiersey decrees is highly significant. Rabanus, Hinkmar, and Charles's Synod take their stand on ecclesiastical empiricism, and try, because they must, to come to terms with Augustinianism, therein yielding more than can have been agreeable to them. Remigius, Prudentius, and Lothar's Synod take their stand on Augustinianism, and yet would not give up this ecclesiastical empiricism. But in neither case did anyone permit the suggestion of a doubt as to whether this empiricism and Augustinianism were compatible. Political affairs prevented the threatened breach from being consummated. The matter was taken up again in the reign of King Charles, Lothar's son. A few slight modifications of the chapters of Valencia were decided on at Langres (859) in order to enable Charles the Bald, who had subscribed those of Chiersey, to approve of them. [683] The great Synod of Savonieres (859), at which there were present bishops from three kingdoms, as well as the sovereigns themselves, Charles the Bald, Charles of Provence, and Lothar of Lothringen, adopted the modified chapters of Valencia, and also, as it appears, those passed at Chiersey; the members did not condemn one another on account of disbelief or belief in twofold predestination (gemina predestinatio), and this meant the greatest advance towards peace. [684] Hinkmar, indeed, did not doubt that there had been and was a predestinationist heresy, which it was necessary to oppose, and whose adherents appealed unjustifiably to Augustine. He composed at the time his prolix work, De prædestinatione (against Remigius and others), under the auspices of his theological king. But the kings' need of peace was stronger than the zeal of bishops fighting in the dark. At the great Synod of the three realms at Toucy (860), the case postponed at Savonières was brought to an end in a comprehensive synodal edict, which dealt indefinitely with the real kernel of the question, and was destitute of meaning and badly arranged. Controversial points were left alone, and those were confessed on which all were agreed. Hinkmar composed this document. Besides predestination to life, which was set forth in good Augustinian language, it was declared that God willed to save all, that Christ died for all, and that while free-will required to be redeemed and healed after the Fall, it had never been wholly lost. [685] If the worth of a confession depends on its really expressing the existing belief, then the triumph of Hinkmar's formula was really more valuable than would have been that of the contrary doctrine. The avowal of twofold predestination, in itself even more the expression of a theological speculation than of Christian faith in God the Father, would have meant less than nothing coupled with the retention of ecclesiastical empiricism. Of course the formula of Hinkmar, which no artifice could reconcile with that of Orange, did not mean much either; for, in spite of words, Augustine remained deposed. Gregory I.'s system of doctrine held the field. Men thought of the sacramental Christ, as they rejected, along with Adoptianism, the Augustinian Christology, and it was still this Christ and the good works of believers to which they looked, when, along with twofold predestination, they in fact set aside Augustine's doctrine of grace. Gottschalk died in prison, irreconcilable and unreconciled (869), clinging to the prædestinatio ad mortem, which he understood in so "erroneous a sense" that he did not abandon it as Remigius seems to have done. He had prophesied in vain the unmasking and fall of his mortal enemy Hinkmar as Antichrist, that great exemplar of predestination to death. [686] __________________________________________________________________ [659] Sources, collected by the Jansenist Maugin, Veterum auct. qui IX. sæc. de prædest. et gratia scripserunt, Paris 1650; see the works of Carlovingian theologians in the time of Charles the Bald, Mansi, T. XIV. and XV.; Gfrörer, Gesch. der Karol. Vol. I., and K.-Gesch., Vol. III. 2; Dümmlei, Gesch. des ostfränk. Reichs, Vol. I.; Hauck, K.-Gesch. Deutschlands, Vol. II.: Wiggers in the Ztschr. f. d. hist. Theol. 1859; Weizsäcker in the Jahrbb. f. deutsche Theol. 1859; Hefele, Concil,-Gesch. IV2., p. 130 ff.; Bach, Op. cit. I., p. 219 ff; Reuter l.c. I., p. 43 ff; Borrasch, Der Mönch Gottschalk, 1868; Monographs on Hinkmar by v. Noorden and Schrörs; Freystedt, Der wissensch. Kampf im Prädest.-Streit des 9 Jahrh.; also, Der synodale Kampf im Prädest.-Streit des 9 Jahrh. (Ztschr. f. wissensch. Theol. Vol. 36, pp. 315-368; New Series, Vol. I., pp. 447-478), and Studien zu Gottschalk (Ztschr. f. K. Gesch., Vol XVIII., p. 1 ff.). [660] Gottschalk is especially dependent on Fulgentius. On Isidore's doctrine of predestination, see Wiggers, Ztschr. f. d. hist. Theol. 1855; on Bede's, l.c. 1857. [661] On Gottschalk's life till the outbreak of the dispute, see Hefele, 1.c. The Augustinian spirit, and Augustine's language in the Confessio prolixior (Migne, CXXI., p. 349): "Tui profecto sic semper indigent omnes electi tui, quo videlicet tibi de te solo semper valeant placere. Quemadmodum palmites indigent vite, quo fructum queant ferre, vel aër aut oculi luce, quo vel ille lucidus esse vel illi possint videre. . . . te igitur supplex invoco . . . ut largiaris indigentissimo mihi per gratuitae gratiæ tuæ invictissimam virtutem, etc." [662] See Opp. Raban. in Migne, CXII., p. 1530 sq., Kunstmann, Rabanus Magnentius Maurus 1841. [663] The view of Rabanus himself, that great, pure, truly pious and unpolitical prince of the Church, was Semi-Pelagian. [664] Fragment of a confession of Gottschalk laid before the Synod in Hinkmar, De prædest. 5, Migne, CXXV., p. 89 sq. (Hefele, p. 138): "gemina prædestinatio . . . similiter omnino omnes reprobos, qui damnabuntur propter ipsorum mala merita, incommutabilis deus per justum judicium suum incommutabiliter prædestinavit ad mortem merito sempiternam." [665] Migne, CXII., p. 1574. [666] Op. cit. [667] Hincm. De prædest. 2; Migne, CXXV., p. 85; cf. Migne, CXXI, p. 1027. [668] Hinkmar's large works on the question in dispute were not written till several years later; (yet see the writing Ad reclusos et simplices, A.D. 849-50; Gundlach in the Ztschr. für K.-Gesch., Vol. X., p. 258 ff.; Freystedt, l.c. p. 320 ff., 358 ff.). The first in three books (856 and 857) was so extensive, that it was not transcribed, and so has perished (see Schrörs, p. 136 f. ). The second, De prædestinatione dei et libero arbitrio, was also prolix enough and very meaningless (written 859 to 860, Schrörs, p. 141 ff.). In the introduction to this work, the history of the sect of predestinationists, which is said to have risen even in St. Augustine's lifetime, is described in a very unhistorical fashion. The sect has now revived, and its newer members adhere to Fulgentius, who never enjoyed a lofty prestige in the Church (c. 3, 8, 13). Hinkmar's main proposition is that predestination to punishment embraces compulsion to commit sin. "Præscivit deus hominem ad poenam." Accordingly there is only a predestination of, not to, punishment. [669] Migne, CXXI., pp. 347-349: "Confiteor, deum omnipotentem et incommutabilem præscisse et prædestinasse angelos sanctos et homines electos ad vitam gratis æternam, et ipsum diabolum . . . cum ipsis quoque hominibus reprobis . . . propter præscita certissime ipsorum propria futura mala rnerita prædestinasse pariter per justissimum judicium suum in mortem merito sempiternam." "Credo siquidem atque confiteor præscisse teante sæcula quæcunque erant futura, sive bona sive mala, prædestinasse vero tantummodo bona. Bona autem a te prædestinata bifariam sunt tuis a fidelibus indagata . . . i.e. in gratiæ beneficia et justitiæ simul judicia . . . Frustra electis prædestinasses vitam, nisi et illos prædestinasses ad ipsum. Sic etiam . . . omnibus quoque reprobis hominibus perennem merito prædestinasti poenam, et eosdem similiter prædestinasti ad eam, quia nimirum sine causa et ipsis prædestinasses mortis perpetuæ poenam, nisi et ipsos prædestinasses ad eam: non enim irent, nisi destinati, neque profecto destinarentur, nisi essent prædestinati." From Gottschalk's standpoint both confessions are conciliatory. [670] Gottschalk frequently maintained that Christ did not die for the reprobi, though he taught a certain general redemption of all the baptised; see Hincm. De præd. 29, 34, 35; Migne, CXXV., p. 289 sq., 349 sq., 369 sq. [671] Hefele, p. 169: "baptistum et alia sacramenta frustatorie eis dari, qui post eorum perceptionem pereunt;" for "qui ex numero fidelium pereunt, Christo et ecclesiæ nunquam fuerunt incorporati." [672] See Freystedt, i.e., p. 329 ff. [673] Bach (I., p. 232 ff.) has analysed and discussed the various writings of these men. [674] Men at that time disputed about predestination, just as "positive" theologians to-day quarrel among themselves about the right of historical criticism. Some defend this right, others would restrict or abolish it; but even the former don't really believe in it, since they take care not to carry out its conclusions. [675] Bach, I., p. 240. [676] Bach, I., p. 241 ff. [677] De divina prædest. Migne, CXXII., p. 355 sq. The Synods at Valencia and Langres (859) condemned the work, after Prudentius and Florus Magister had written against it. [678] Amolo came nearest it. [679] The four chapters of Chiersey yielded more to Augustinianism than was consistent with truthfulness: I. "Deus hominem sine peccato rectum cum libero arbitrio condidit et in paradiso posuit, quem in sanctitate justitiæ permanere voluit. Homo libero arbitrio male utens peccavit et cecidit, et factus est massa perditionis totius humani generis. Deus autem bonus et justus elegit ex eadem massa perditionis secundum præscientiam suam, quos per gratiam prædestinavit ad vitam, et vitam illis prædestinavit æternam. Ceteros autem, quos justitiæ judicio in massa perditionis reliquit, perituros præscivit, sed non ut perirent prædestinavit, poenam autem illis, quia justus est, prædestinavit æternam. Ac per hoc unam dei prædestinationem tantummodo dicimus, quæ aut ad donum pertinet gratiæ, aut ad retributionem justitiæ." II. "Libertatem arbitrii in primo homine perdidimus, quam per Christum dominum nostrum recepimus. Et habemus liberum arbitrium ad bonum, præventum et adjutum gratia. Et habemus liberum arbitrium ad malum, desertum gratia. Liberum autem habemus arbitrium quia gratia liberatum et gratia, de corrupto sanatum." III. "Deus omnes homines sine exceptione vult salvos fieri, licet non omnes salventur. Quod autem quidem salvantur, salvantis est donum; quod autem quidem pereunt, pereuntium est meritum." The fourth chapter says that Christ adopted the nature of each man, and accordingly died for each, though all are not redeemed. The cause of this fact is that those not redeemed are infideles or are deficient in the faith that works by love; "poculum humanæ salutis, quod confectum est infirmitate nostra et virtute divina, habet quidem in se, ut omnibus prosit, sed si non bibitur non medetur." Mansi, XIV., p. 919. [680] See on Prudentius and the Synod of Sens, Hefele, p. 188 f. The four chapters of this Synod, which teach the gemina prædestinatio, are by Prudentius: see Migne, CXXV., p. 64. [681] Migne, CXXI., p. 1083: "Libellus de tenenda immobiliter scripturæ veritate" as an official paper of the Church of Lyons. [682] It is superfluous to give the canons here--they are very prolix; see Mansi, XV., p. 3; Hefele, IV., p. 193 ff.; Schrörs, p. 133 ff. [683] Mansi, XV., p. 537; Hefele, p. 205. [684] Mansi, XV., p. 529; Hefele, p. 206. [685] The prolix Ep. synodalis in Mansi, XV., p. 563; Hefele, p. 217 ff. Prædestinatio ad mortem is not mentioned. [686] The ill-usage he had suffered seems to have rendered Gottschalk at times irresponsible for his actions in the last years of his life. His dispute with Hinkmar about the phrase "trina deitas" is noteworthy. The latter would not permit it on the ground that it was Arian; Gottschalk and Ratramnus defended it by accusing Hinkmar of Sabellianism. Both phrases "una deitas" and "trina deitas" can be defended from the Augustinian standpoint; see Hinkmar's writing, De una et non trina deitate (Migne, CXXV., p. 473; Schrörs, Hinkmar, p. 150 ff.), in which Boethius' notion of personality ("rationabilis naturæ individua subsistentia") plays a part. The number of theological problems discussed at the date of this renaissance of theology was very great; see Schrörs, Hinkmar, p. 88 ff. But the questions were almost all exceedingly minute and subtle, like those suggested by clever children. Nor was the culture of the period possessed of the scholastic technique required for their treatment. __________________________________________________________________ 2. The Controversy regarding the Filioque and Pictures. By the position it had taken up in the Adoptianist as well as in the predestination controversy, the Church of the Frankish kingdom identified itself, abandoning tendencies to higher characteristics of its own, [687] with the popular Church ideas as represented by Constantinople and Rome. The theology it had inherited from Augustine was transformed into an ecclesiastical system such as had long prevailed in those chief Churches. But the West at that time still held tenaciously to its own characteristic position as compared with the East in two doctrines; it supported the filioque and rejected images. Both these subjects have been already discussed in Vol. IV., pp. 133, 317, therefore only a little falls to be added. Even if we had not known it already, we see very clearly in the controversy regarding the filioque clause that the doctrine of the Trinity and Christology constituted dogma and the legal basis of the Church kat' exochen, even for the West--see the Athanasian Creed. [688] The filioque, which originated in Augustinian theology, came to the Frankish kingdom from Spain, but we know nothing more precisely as to how it did. It was held to be certain that it belonged to the Symbol, and this conviction was already expressed at the Synod of Gentilly (767). [689] Charles's learned theologians confirmed it, as is proved by Alcuin's work De processione spiritus sancti, and the Libri Carolini. [690] Official action was provoked by Western monks having had to submit to grave injustice in Jerusalem, because in the Liturgy they added, "sicut erat in principio" to the "Gloria patri," and "tu solus altissimus" to the "Gloria in excelsis," and in the Symbol "filioque" to "a patre." They complained to the Pope, who turned to the Emperor. The latter commissioned Theodulf of Orleans to compose a work, "De spiritu sancto," and got it decreed at the Synod of Aachen (809) that the filioque belonged to the Symbol. [691] The Pope, however, who had to approve of this decision, still took the East into consideration, and did not permit the admission of the word, though he assented to the doctrine. Even the remonstrance of the Franks that the filioque was necessary to salvation did not move him. [692] The matter continued thus till the great controversy under Photius, until the filioque became the Symbolic watchword in the whole of the West. [693] The most worthless formula of Augustinianism, once recommended by its opposition to Arianism, was thus preserved in the West. If in this controversy between the West and East the former at first received only a lukewarm support from Rome, which was still half Byzantine, the Pope ranged himself entirely on the side of the pious Eastern theologians in the Oriental controversy about images, and therewith his relations became strained with Frankish theology or the efforts made by Charles I. to promote civilisation. The attitude of that theology in the great conflict is extremely characteristic of the transition time in which it found itself. The spiritual (inner) element introduced into it by Augustine no longer reacted in Christology, and in the conception of the Mass, against mystical superstition and magic sacramentalism. It had been swallowed up by the more powerful Byzantine Roman current. But the Franks could not yet force themselves to adopt the Oriental worship of images. [694] A halt was made at the Host. A spiritual, Augustinian element reacted against image-worship, but, paradoxical as it sounds, the lower state of dogmatic culture had also its effect here. It would indeed seem, on a superficial view, that he who rejects the veneration of images is always the more cultured. But that only holds in circumstances that did not then exist. Where men had once entered, as was the case in the Frankish kingdom, the magic circle of the Byzantine mysticism that enveloped Christ and the cultus, it was simply the sign of a religious faith not yet fully developed on this basis to halt at the Host, and to disdain the riches offered by images to theological thought and pious fancy. The East and Rome made their Christology living for themselves in pictures, and so saw the past mystery in the abiding present. How could a faith dispense with them that already aimed at the sensuous enjoyment of heavenly things and revelled in the worship of relics? But dogmatic culture was still backward in the West, the theosophy of images had not yet been learnt, and--what was most important--but few pictures were possessed. It has been maintained, [695] but it is not absolutely certain, that the Synod of Gentilly (767) emitted a declaration as to image-worship satisfactory to the Pope. The Synod of Frankfort (794) unanimously condemned the decision of the seventh OEcumenical Council, which required "service and adoration" (servitium, adoratio) to be rendered to images. The decisions of the Council were undoubtedly extant only in a very bad translation. [696] "Certain chapters" had been previously sent to Rome against the worship of images, these being an extract (85 ch.) from the Libri Carolini, which Alcuin had composed shortly before, at the Emperor's command, in conjunction with other theological Court officials; they were written against the Oriental Councils of 754 and 787. [697] In these iconoclasm, but still more strongly image-worship, are forbidden as foolish and mischievous. It was right to have pictures for decoration and recollection, but not to adore them (Gregory I., Ep. VII. III: "therefore the picture is used in Churches that those who are ignorant of letters may at least read by seeing upon the walls what they cannot read in books," and, further, Libri Carol. præf.: "having images in the ornaments of our churches and in memory of past events, and worshipping God alone, and exhibiting fit veneration to his saints, we are neither iconoclasts with the one party nor worshippers with the other"). Image-worship is then refuted at greater length, and the addition of the seventh to the six OEcumenical Councils is condemned; the two Synods (of 754 and 787) are "infamous" and "most foolish" (infames, ineptissimæ). Some would see in these books a proof of the Carlovingian "illumination"; [698] but the enlightenment, which is unmistakable in other respects, only went the length of ignorance of the theosophy of images, failure to understand the subtle distinctions between latreia (worship) and proskunesis (veneration), and the king's effort to advance civilisation. What the books really show is the self-reliance and sense of power of the Frankish Church, which break out with youthful audacity, convicting with mischievous glee the older and wiser sister of error, and actually summoning, and requiring the Pope formally to prosecute, the Byzantine Emperor and the Empress-Regent. These books already show that the Roman West and the East could no longer go together, because the former sought to take command. They also reveal a trace of Augustinian spiritual teaching, but knowing what we do of the sort of thing held sacred at that time in the Frankish kingdom, they cannot be taken as proving that men were more enlightened in the Western than in the Eastern Church. [699] Pope Hadrian refuted the chapters, [700] but took care not to exaggerate the difference. Under Louis the Pious, a Synod convoked at Paris on account of an embassy from Michael the Stammerer (825) pronounced itself decidedly against the image-worshipping Pope, and held strictly to the line laid down in the Libri Carolini: pictures might be set up "in memory of pious love" (pro amoris pii memoria), as ornaments, and, above all, for the sake of the uneducated; but they were not to be adored, and their erection might therefore be dispensed with. [701] Louis adopted more stringent measures against image-worship than Charles. [702] Pope Eugene II. wrapped himself in silence; nay, even in A.D. 863 a Lateran Synod, while it recognised image-worship in guarded language, said nothing about the seventh OEcumenical Council. [703] Image-worship and the seventh Synod of 787 were gradually accepted only after the time of the eighth general Synod (869). [704] Yet the Carlovingian theologians were still hostile to image-worship at the close of the period. Hinkmar, who wrote a work, no longer preserved, "on the worship of pictures of the Redeemer and the Saints," [705] would only admit them as means of instruction (or for ornament); and Agobard, [706] Jonas of Orleans, [707] Walafrid Strabo, [708] and Æneas of Paris [709] held the same view. Hinkmar also calls the Council of 787 a Pseudo-Synod, and all Frankish authorities known to us, of the ninth century, reckon only six Councils. Even the (eighth) Council of 869 was at first not recognised by Hinkmar. It was only when the Frankish German Church again came to the light after the dark ages that it also saw the seventh and eighth Councils. Yet the difference with the Pope regarding the pictures hardly did any harm to his prestige in the ninth century. His authority, that is, had not been carried so high or become so sensitive that such shocks could bring about its fall. [710] Image-worship was never able to domesticate itself thoroughly where antiquity was not the ruling spirit. Even at the present day Italy is still the classic land of image-worship in the West. While, however, in the East that worship expresses the religious faith and the philosophy of religion themselves, because it is evolved from the Christology, in the West pictures form part of the system of intercessors and helpers in need. In practice, indeed, the difference is pretty well obliterated. __________________________________________________________________ [687] Of course only tendencies--the confusion that still prevailed at the close of the eighth century as regards Augustinianism is best shown by the fact that the Symbol admitted into the Libri Carolini (symbolum Hieronymi, sermo Augustini) was Pelagius' Confession of Faith ad Innocentium. But it was also, as late as A.D. 1521, produced by the Sorbonne against Luther as Augustine's confession. [688] I have dealt with the origin and authority of the Athanasian Symbol in Vol. IV., p. 134. Since then Loofs (R. Encykl., Vol. II.3, pp. 177-194) has published an investigation regarding it, distinguished by a comprehensive knowledge of sources and literature. We are agreed as to the following points. (1) The Symbol, whether we may think it to have risen out of two originally independent documents or not, belongs to Roman Southern Gaul. (2) Its first, longer, Trinitarian half, as well as the second, shorter, Christological portion belongs to the period c. 450--(at latest) 600. In the pre-Carlovingian age the Symbol had only a partial authority--the Canon of Autun proves that it was accepted there c. 670. Not till the Carlovingian period was the way prepared for its universal acceptance. Thus only two important points are in dispute. (1) Did the Symbol originate in a sermo de symbolo, or was it directly conceived as a formulary of the faith? (2) Does it consist of two portions originally independent, or was it framed from the first in its present extent? I may here leave the first question alone. As regards the second, I had supported the original independence of the Trinitarian first half, and supposed that the Christological section was only added a considerable time later, perhaps not till the Carlovingian epoch. Loofs (p. 185 ff.) has convinced me, by his evidence as to the Cod. Paris, 3836, that this date has been put too late. But I never based my opinion of an original independence of the two parts on this external testimony invalidated by Loofs, but on the internal matter of the Symbol. The latter Loofs has practically left alone. The following facts fall to be considered. (1) In the opening of the Symbol, §§ 1-3, the doctrine of the Trinity is alone announced as "catholica fides" (compare the edict of Theodosius I. of A.D. 380); there is nothing to suggest that the author means also to deal with Christology. (2) In § 26 we find, consistently with this, the solemn conclusion reverting to the beginning; "Qui vult ergo salvus esse, ita de trinitate sentiat." This whole first half is accordingly a rule of faith complete in itself and entire, elaborated by the aid of Augustine and Vincentius, and anti-Arian. Nothing essential is to be found in it which could not have been written by Augustine, if of course the sentences may have been only gradually polished afterwards. (3) The following section, not hitherto introduced, is, indeed, bracketed with the preceding one by §§ 27 and 48; but these brackets testify plainly enough that an original organic unity is not to be supposed. For (a) § 40 is a replica of § 26, yet (b) the language is somewhat different (in the second section we have "fideliter credere," "fides recta, ut credamus et confiteamur," "fideliter et firmiterque credere"; in the first section: "catholicam fidem tenere," or "integram inviolatamque fidem servare"). (4) Looking to the contents, the Christological section, §§ 28-39, shows, first, the Antinestorian (32) and Antimonophysite attitude (34, 35) completely balanced; secondly, the Gallican rescension of the Apostle's Creed ("passus," "descendit ad inferos," "sedet ad dexteram dei patris omnipotentis--these could only be attributed to Spain); thirdly, the influence of the Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed ("passus est pro nostra salute,"), so that we can hardly ascend beyond the beginning of the sixth century for this part. (5) Weight is to be given to the fact that the author, who has adhered strictly in §§ 36, 37 to the curt form of the Symbol, has considered it necessary in §§ 38, 39 to make a wordy addition, that at Christ's coming all men "reddituri sunt de factis propriis rationem, et qui bona egerunt ibunt in vitam æternam, qui vero mala in ignem æternum." Is this addition not to be understood as in the interests of Semi-Pelagianism? The two portions may have been combined as early as the sixth century. If we could date the Sermo Trevir. we would know more accurately about this. [689] See Hefele, III., p. 432. [690] Hefele, III., p. 704; see Libr. Carol. III. 3 (Migne, Vol. 98), where Tarasius is blamed for teaching that the Holy Spirit proceeds ex patre per filium instead of ex filio. [691] Hefele, III., 750-755. [692] See Mansi, XIV., p. 18 sq. It is very important that the Pope objected to the last-mentioned argument of the Franks, saying that other things were also necessary for salvation, and were yet not received into the Symbol, since it could admit of no change at all. This meant (as opposed to the Eastern view) that the Symbol did not embrace everything that belonged to salvation. The Pope says (p. 20): "Verumtamen, quæso, responde mihi: num universa hujusmodi fidei mystica sacramenta, quæ symbolo non continentur, sine quibus quisque, qui ad hoc pertingere potest, catholicus esse non potest, symbolis inserenda et propter compendium minus intellegentium, ut cuique libuerit, addenda sunt?" The Pope, besides, asserted, in a very remarkable way, in the interview with the Frankish missi, he thought that all stages of culture could not take up the same attitude to dogma, hat accordingly what was important to some was not to others. [693] The papal legates in Constantinople (A.D. 88o) still subscribed the Symbol without filiogue. On John VIII., see Hefele IV., p. 482. The Frankish kingdom took the liveliest interest in the controversy in that period; but the grounds on which it rested its own view were always the same. It is not known how and when the "filioque" was admitted in Rome into the Symbol; and we know just as little about how and when Rome accepted the Gallican Apostles' Creed and the Athanasian. [694] This is true of the cultured, and at that time governing, portion of the clergy. [695] Hefele, III., p. 433; Hauck, K.-Gesch. II., p. 278 f. [696] Mansi, XIII., p. 909. [697] Migne, CII., p. 999 sq. [698] Reuter, l.c. I., p. 10 f. [699] The most vigorous defenders of Augustinian spiritual teaching were Claudius of Turin and Agobard; see Reuter, I., p. 16 ff. We are reasonably astonished that Claudius did not fare worse than he did. The study of Augustine had opened his as well as Agobard's eyes to the contrast between the external, superstitious Christianity of their time and the ideal type of Catholicism that had taken shape to itself in the work of the great African. [700] Mansi, XIII., p. 759. [701] Mansi, XIV., p. 415 sq. Hefele, IV., 38 ff. [702] See Claudius' mission in Upper Italy, where iconoclasm broke out, and the worship was described as idolatry. [703] Mansi, XV., p. 178, 244; XIV., p. 106. Hefele, IV., p. 272. [704] But the dispute between Rome and Byzantium had already become acute, the gap impassable, so that the west was unable to take part in the great renaissance of the sciences experienced by Byzantium from the time of Photius until the beginning of the tenth century. [705] See Schrörs, l.c., p. 163. [706] Contra eorum superstitionem, qui picturis et imaginibus sanctorum adorationis obsequium deferendum putant. Migne, CIV., p. 199. [707] De cultu imaginum, 1. III. Migne, CVI., p. 305. [708] De eccles. rerum exordiis. Migne, CXIV., p. 927. [709] Lib. adv. Græc. Migne, CXXI., p. 685 sq. [710] On the authority of Peter's Chair itself in Hinkmar's view, see Schrörs, l.c., p. 165 f. But when men spoke of the Pope, they did not always think of the primacy (which, besides, included no administrative power in other dioceses), but also of the Roman Church. She is the "nurse and teacher" of all churches (Hinkmar). __________________________________________________________________ 3. The Development of the Practice and Theory of the Mass (the Dogma of the Lord's Supper) and of Penance. Three factors co-operated to promote a development of the theory of the Lord's Supper in the West in the Carlovingian age. Firstly, the influence of Byzantium, where the controversy about images had led their worshippers to disconnect the symbolical conception from the consecrated elements, in order to avoid the necessity of identifying the Sacrament with the images, and of thus robbing the great mystery of its unique character. [711] Secondly, the practice of the Western Church. The divine service of the Mass was the central point of all Christianity, to which everything referred, and from which every saving influence flowed for the baptized Christian. But if the ordinary life of the Christian was connected with miraculous powers and mysteries, if miracles were in the present, and still more in the accounts of the past, every-day events, [712] then the sacred act effected in the Lord's Supper had to be developed into the wonder of wonders, lest its significance should be impaired by comparison with hundreds of miracles of a common stamp. [713] Thirdly, theology and Christology come before us in this connection. The greater the prominence given in the notion of God to the idea that God, because omnipotent, was a mysterious arbitrary power, and the more vague became the perception of God in Christ and the knowledge measured by moral holiness, the more firmly did men cling to the institutions of the Church as the alone manifest, and seek in them, i.e., in mystery and miracle, to apprehend the hidden God. Further, the more the historical Christ was lost in light which no man can approach, and the more resolutely religious speculation, in order to be truly pious, only saw in him the God, who had added human nature to his fulness (see the Adoptian controversy), the more clearly did men feel themselves constrained to seek Christ not in the historical picture or the Word, but where the mystery of his Incarnation and death was present and palpable. [714] The active influence of these combined factors undoubtedly received an extremely significant check in the case of Bede, and in the first decades of the Carlovingian age, from the rise of the study of Augustine, whose teaching on the Lord's Supper had been predominantly spiritual. Charles's theologians, or Charles himself, frequently used quite Augustinian language, in speaking of the Lord's Supper. But even in their case variations occur, [715] and towards the end of the period of Louis the Pious, Paschasius Radbertus was able to assert as doctrine, what had long been felt by the majority, that the real (historical) body of Christ was sacrificed in the Mass, and partaken of in the Lord's Supper. [716] Paschasius Radbertus was perhaps the most learned and able theologian, after Alcuin, as well versed in Greek theology as he was familiar with Augustinianism, a coinprehensive genius, who felt the liveliest desire to harmonise theory and practice, and at the same time to give due weight to everything that had been taught till then by Church tradition regarding the Lord's Supper. [717] His great work on the Lord's Supper was the first Church monograph on the subject. [718] It is a one-sided description of its contents to sum them up in the phrase: "Paschasius taught transubstantiation." [719] The importance of the book lies rather in the fact that the Lord's Supper is exhaustively discussed from all possible points of view, and that a certain unity is nevertheless attained. Paschasius did for this dogma what Origen did for the whole of dogmatics; he is the Origen of the Catholic doctrine of the Lord's Supper, which was placed by him as a theory in the central position that it had long held in practice. We can only appreciate Paschasius' teaching if we keep it in mind that Greek Christological mysticism, Augustinian spiritualism, and--unconsciously to the author himself--the practice of the Frankish Church, had an equal share in it. But we must also remember that the notion of God as inscrutable omnipotence, i.e., arbitrary power, was dominant. Without this conception of deity the doctrine of transubstantiation would never have been reached. [720] To begin with, Paschasius has given most vigorous expression to Augustinian doctrine not as something foreign to him, but as if he had thoroughly assimilated it. [721] The sacrament is a spiritual food for faith; to eat Christ's flesh means to be and remain in Christ. The rite is given to faith, and faith is to be roused by it. Faith, however, is always related to the invisible; and thus the sacrament in its deepest sense can only be received by the faith that has withdrawn into the invisible world. Christ, the soul, faith, heaven, and the sacrament are most intimately connected--the bodily eye must always look beyond the sensuous to the heavenly behind it. Therefore the meal is a meal for the holy, the elect. Only he who belongs to Christ and is a member in his body enjoys the food worthily, nay, he alone enjoys the food of faith actually. Unbelievers receive the sacrament, but not its virtue (virtus sacramenti). But even Augustine had so distinguished between these two notions that virtus sacramenti sometimes describes its saving efficacy alone, sometimes the miraculous nature of the holy food itself, so that in the former case the sacrament itself signifies the totality of the rite without its corresponding effect, and in the latter merely something objective incapable of further definition. Radbert, like Augustine, prefers the latter version. The believer alone receives the virtus sacramenti as food of faith and incorporation into Christ's body--there was no eating on the part of unbelievers (manducatio infidelium); Christ's flesh as contained in the sacrament did not exist apart from faith. The unbeliever, indeed, receives the sacrament--what that is is indefinable--but he does so to his condemnation; for without the virtus sacramenti the sacrament exists ad judicium damnationis. [722] In addition to this Augustinianism, a Greek element is very strongly marked in the description of the effects of the holy food; for besides incorporation in Christ and forgiveness of venial sins, the chief emphasis is laid on our soul and body being nourished by this food for immortality. The combination contained in the statement that this is effected by baptism, the Lord's Supper, and Holy Scripture (c. 1, 4), is Western; but the intention to which prominence is given in connection with the Lord's Supper alone, viz. "that even our flesh may be renewed by it to immortality and incorruption," [723] is Greek. Indeed Radbert even says conversely: "the flesh of Christ spiritually digested is transformed into our flesh." [724] But he now went still further with the Greeks--Cyril and John of Damascus. He had learned from them that although the rite existed for faith only, yet the reality of Christ's body was present. [725] This assumption was rendered easy, nay imperative, to the Greeks by their view that Christ's historical body was itself pneumatic from the moment of the Incarnation. Although they then (John of Damascus) completed the identification, and assumed a real presence of Christ's body in the Sacrament, they still hesitated secretly, because they did not get over the difficulty caused by the fact that the body once received into heaven did not return. Therefore they assigned the form of the miracle (sacramental transformation and assumption) to the "mystery." Radbert took up the matter here, at the same time influenced by the popular conception and his certainty that the practice of the Church was justified. For the first time in the Church he declares without hesitancy that the sacramental body is that which had been born of Mary, and that this is due to a transformation which only leaves the sensuous appearance unchanged. This is a miracle against nature (or quasi contra naturam: for nature always depends on the will of God); but it is to be believed for that very reason, for we only think worthily of God, who can do anything, when we acknowledge him to be the power that works miracles. What he does here is a miraculous creative act, effected, as always, through the word, in this case the word of institution, and this is spoken not by the priest, but on each occasion by God through the eternal Word (Christ), so that the priest only issues the appeal to God. This constantly repeated creation by God is exactly parallel to the Incarnation--Christ's word corresponds to the Holy Spirit, the elements to the virgin's womb; the effect is the same. The sacramental is the historical body, of course also historically transfigured; for from Cyril's standpoint the transfiguration of the body in the Resurrection is only the manifestation of the properties which it always possessed. [726] In order to explain the startling fact that the results of the transformation were not capable of being perceived by the senses, Radbert had a number of reasons ready: it was unnecessary and repulsive, [727] and besides it would happen often. [728] The most important of these was that--it was necessary the rite should remain a mystery given to faith alone. We are as far as possible from being prepared for this idea, and yet it was very important to Radbert. The Lord's Supper always presupposes faith and is meant to rouse faith, where it exists, to advance to the undisguised Christ who is not daily sacrificed. Hence the sacrament cannot be a manifest, but is always a disguised, miracle. Hence, moreover, the elements, in so far as they are not perceptibly transformed (colour, taste, and smell remaining), must be regarded as symbols of Christ's body, from which faith penetrates to the mysterious but really created source of salvation. The sensuous appearance of the consecrated elements is the symbol of Christ's body, their essence is the true historical body itself. [729] We readily perceive that in this phase the bridge to the Augustinian conception has been recovered. Paschasius intended to unite and did unite two positions in his doctrine of the Lord's Supper: the Augustinian, that the sacraments are given to faith and everything in them is spiritually handled, and the Greek, which also seemed to him commended by the letter of Scripture, the Fathers, and a few miracles, that we are confronted by a reality existent prior to all faith, since only the true body and the blood actually shed can redeem us, and since we need the corporeal indwelling of Christ. Both considerations seemed to be served by the view, that in the elements we are dealing with a miraculous creation of Christ's body, which is, however, effected in such a way that faith alone can rise from the still existent semblance of the mere bodily figure (figura corporis) to the apprehension of the heavenly reality. The voluminous books, afterwards written by Catholics and Lutherans on the Lord's Supper, prove that Radbert's theory opened up a perspective to hundreds of questions, which he did not solve, and, indeed, did not even put. His treatment of the part played by the priest at the sacrament seemed unsatisfactory. His brief expositions as to the creation of the body failed to make certain the identity of the heavenly and the sacramental Christ. There was still no definition of the relation of the unconverted to the converted object of sense-perception. When men began to attempt this definition, nothing short of the whole of philosophy necessarily passed before the mind of the cultured theologian. The claim of the symbolical view had to be determined, and thereby the sacrament, symbol, virtue, reality (res) and, again, the graded and yet identical bodies of Christ (the historical on earth, the transfigured in heaven, the sacramental on earth, the body as Church in heaven and on earth) had to be defined, as it were geologically, as intersecting boulders. "One deep called to the others"; and the fact that in after times the most intelligent men leant an ear to this clamour, and yet remained sane in other respects, proved that the most absurd speculations in the sphere of religion do not necessarily make the whole reason sick. [730] But the most remarkable feature in Radbert's fundamental theory is that he did not refer primarily to the Mass, or indeed to Christ's death on the Cross; in other words, he did not draw all the consequences which resulted from it. Radbert is not the theologian of the Catholic Mass. The Incarnation and Lord's Supper were for him more intimately connected, as it seems, than Christ's sacrificial death and the dogma of the Lord's Supper. From this we see that Radbert was a disciple of the Greeks, that he was really a theologian, and his interest did not centre primarily on the Church institution of penance, and the divine service of the Mass connected with it. [731] Rabanus [732] and Ratramnus alone opposed him. The opposition is as obscure, logically, as in the controversy about the virgin birth. As Ratramnus had then taught that the natural had come to pass by a miracle, while Radbert held that the event was contrary to nature; so here again Rabanus and, above all, Ratramnus taught that, while the external miracle (contra naturam)--the communication in the Lord's Supper of the body that was born, that died and rose again--did not take place, the true body was potentialiter (effectively) created, yet in mysterio, by the consecration of the Holy Spirit. [733] Ratramnus examines elaborately the problem that the king had set him, whether that which is received into his mouth by the believer, is in mystery or reality Christ's body. From the king's question he himself formulates other two: whether participation, in the cultus, in the body of Christ was an act in mysterio or in veritate, and whether the sacramental body was identical with the historical which now sits at the right hand of the Father. [734] To the second question he replies that that which lies consecrated on the altar is by no means the historical body, but only the mystery of the body, as also the mystery of the Church. As regards the historical body the consecrated elements are thus only a figure (figura), means of reminiscence for our present earthly life, since we cannot yet see what we believe. [735] But nevertheless believers receive Christ's body and blood in this rite; for faith does not receive what it sees, but what it believes, Accordingly in the Lord's Supper Christ's body exists in an invisbile reality for faith as real food of the soul. [736] The extremely obscure and at least seemingly contradictory statements of Ratramnus make it hard to hit on his meaning correctly. In any case he taught no mere figurative conception. We shall perhaps be most certain to do him justice if we observe what above all he did, and what he did not, intend. He meant above all to emphasise and verify the absolute necessity of faith throughout the rite; the sacrament belonged to faith, existed for it alone, etc. [737] In this he coincides entirely with Radbert, who shared the same interest equally strongly. But in what he would not allow he is distinguished to his advantage from Radbert; since everything is given to faith he would not recognise the common reality, because in view of the latter faith and disbelief are indifferent. To Ratramnus reality (veritas) is concrete being as it presents itself to the senses; for this very reason "sub figura" and "in veritate" he looks on as mutually exclusive opposites. Faith has its own realities, which are real, but only disclose themselves to faith; Ratramnus designates them--mistakenly--as "sub figura," because they are copied by sensuous realities, or, better, rest behind the latter. Radbert, on the other hand, believed himself compelled, precisely as an Augustinian, to conceive veritas as reality in general; hence to him "sub figura" and in veritate are not opposites, since heavenly realities when they appeared as earthly had in his view to manifest themselves sub figura. But Ratramnus was superior to Radbert as a Christian, in that he did not conceive the presence of the heavenly in the earthly to be a miracle against nature, i.e., he followed a different notion of God from the latter. [738] The mysteries of faith are not brought to pass by a continual interruption of the natural order, but they rest as a world administered by the Holy Spirit behind the phenomenal world, and what takes place in the Lord's Supper is not a departure, by means of a special miracle, from operations such as are carried out, e.g., in Baptism (c. 17, 25, 26.) In a word, Ratramnus would have the mystery of the Lord's Supper recognised as in harmony with the method by which God bestows salvation through Baptism and the Word, because as an Augustinian and Christian he shrank from the brutal miracle (the idea of God is here involved), and because he was afraid that otherwise nothing would be left to faith. It is in this that the importance of Ratramnus consists. But it is questionable whether the learned king for whom he wrote was any the wiser for his book; for not only is Ratramnus confused in his terminology, but also in his matter, [739] because he would not give up the idea that the efficacy of the sacrament was objective, whence it always follows that the miraculous efficacy depends not on the recipients, but on the means. Hence we find numerous expositions in which he talks like Radbert: by the ministry of the priest the bread becomes Christ's body, nay, it is transformed. [740] He does not venture to pursue consistently the parallel he seeks to establish with baptismal water; for the words "body and blood of Christ" are too strong for him. It is sinful to deny that the consecrated elements are Christ's body. [741] Thus the difference between Radbert and Ratramnus can be reduced to the following formula. The former openly and deliberately transferred the spiritual teaching of Augustinianism into the realistic conception, and gave clear expression to the belief of the Church. The latter attempted to maintain complete spiritualism in the interests of a loftier notion of God and of faith, but he was not in a position to carry this out absolutely, because he himself was far too much under the influence of the formula. Therefore he only speaks clearly where he is disowning the miracle. [742] The future belonged to Radbert; [743] nay, Ratramnus' book, it would seem, did not even excite attention, but afterwards met with the most curious history down to the present day. [744] The doctrine expressed by Radbert, a Pandora's casket of problems to future scholars, was extremely intelligible to the simple. Nothing can guarantee the success of a dogma more fully than the possession of these two qualities. It received its application, above all, in the Mass. The thought of the repeated sacrificial death of Christ, long since conceived, was now as firmly established as that of the repeated assumption of the flesh. What could now approach the Mass? There was no need to alter the ancient wording of missal prayers, which still, when they dealt with the sacrifice, emphasised the sacrifice of praise; for who attended to words? The Mass as a sacrificial rite, in which the holiest thing conceivable was presented to God, had, however, ceased long ago to end in participation, but found its climax in the act that expiated sin and removed evil. It was received into the great institution that conferred atonement. On this a few further remarks are necessary, although no dogmatic conflicts arose. The frequent repetition of the Mass (in one and the same Church), and its simple celebration (without communion), show that this rite was not intended so much for the congregation as for God: God was to be appeased. The ancient element of commemoration on the part of the celebrants had, especially since the days of Gregory I., been made an independent service, and the communion had been, as it were, changed into a second celebration. [745] The practice, according to which the laity looked on while the priests partook, the laity taking merely a passive part--the rite being consummated on their behalf--while the priests performed the ceremony, corresponded to the prevailing view, especially among German peoples, that laymen were second-class Christians, and that partaking in the Lord's Supper was for them associated with grave dangers. The holy rite belonged to the laity, so far as it represented a form of the Church's intercession peculiarly effective for the mitigation of sin's penalties. The Mass was thereby included in the Church's atoning institute; but for laymen the Church had long been essentially a baptismal institution, and an establishment for the reconciliation necessary after baptism. In order to understand this, and the immense extent and value acquired by the practice of Confession in the West, we have to observe the following points. 1. The prevailing notion of God was that of omnipotent absolutism, requital and remission. It was in these conceptions that God was a present and really living God, and they directed the thought and practice of trained theologians and laymen. The hidden God was manifest in the fact that he suffered no sin to be unatoned; but he was merciful because he granted remissions (through the mediation of heavenly persons and the Church) a fact which, indeed, did not contravene the general rule that everything must be expiated or punished. This notion of God was already complete when the Church entered into the national life of Germany. It is accordingly not to be regarded as a German modification, but as a conception in harmony with and rising from the unrefined religious consciousness, and especially the Latin spirit. Cyprian and Gregory I. attest this. But as this conception of God could easily combine with German ideas of justice, it was also well adapted to train uncivilised peoples. It had long been settled on purely Latin soil that no sin committed after Baptism could be simply forgiven, but that due penitence (pænitentia legitima), or fitting satisfaction (satisfactio congrua) formed the necessary condition of remission. In keeping with the strict regard for law and sense of duty, which distinguished the Latin Church more than the Greek, ecclesiastical methods paid more heed to the sins of Church members in general. And in accordance with the conviction that sins represented breaches of contract or outrages, of greater or less gravity, the Church had been working at the codification of pænitentia legitima, or the definition of the measure of satisfaction, since the second half of the third century. All this took place without German influence. 2. This system had originally been elaborated with a view to public penance, in presence of the congregation, for the sake of reconciliation, and thus referred to open and gross sins, for which as a rule only a single act of penance was possible. It therefore suffered a severe blow when all society became Christian, and magistrates, being themselves Christians, punished these gross offences of different kinds, even such as the State had not formerly dealt with. The whole ancient institution of penance collapsed in the East. It came almost entirely to an end in the West also in its old form, in so far as the list of public sins, punished by the Church alone, was always growing smaller. [746] But in the German kingdoms, where the Church had not sunk to the level of an institution for worship in the State, and had not entirely abandoned higher religion to the monks, where, on the contrary, it long went hand in hand with the State as a Latin institution with its old Roman law, and trained the nations as a universal power, it did not renounce its penance regulations, which besides suited the German spirit. But a change was necessary in this case also, a change in which German dislike to public humiliations had perhaps as great a share as fear of purgatory and the tendency of the Church to establish throughout the regulations of its monkish castes, in other words, to monachise the secular clergy, and finally also the laity. From this there sprang a deepening of the notion of sin, since new sins, namely, the "roots of sin" themselves were put in the place of the old mortal sins, [747] but there also resulted an externalising of the notion, as "satisfactions," which are more tolerable in the case of great overt offences, were now also applied to these "roots" (intemperance, fornication, greed, anger, ill-temper, secret fear and dislike, presumption and pride). But, above all, this was followed by the intrusion of the Church into all affairs of private life. What had been the rule in primitive times, namely, the subjection of the private life of the individual to the control of the Church, returned in an entirely new form. But then it was a congregation of brethren which lived together like a family, and in which each was the conscience of the other; now one institution and one class ruled the irresponsible community; and while the latter was restrained, indeed, from extremes, yet, since no one was really capable of properly controlling the life of the individual, consciences were sophisticated by incentives and sedatives, by a frequently over-refined morality (legislation as to fasting and marriage), and by extremely external directions as to satisfaction. The transition to the new practice resulted in the laity themselves demanding the intercession of the Church, the reading of the Mass, invocations of the saints, etc., to an increasing extent, since preachers had always been telling them that they were a sinful people, incapable of coming near God, [748] that the priests held the keys, and that the Church's intercession was the most effective. But the gradual settlement of monachist practice in the world-Church alone explains the facts that actual confession of all sins to the priest, and the imposition of all sorts of satisfactions, [749] for the hundred and one offences in life and conduct, in a word, that private penance in the presence of the priest, became the rule. This state of matters began in the Iro-Scottish Church, which was in an eminent degree monachist. There penitential regulations--meaning private penance--were, so far as we know, first drawn up for the laity, who were directed to confess their sins to the priest, as the monks had long been enjoined to do in their cloisters. From Ireland, books dealing with penance came to the Anglo-Saxons (Theodore of Canterbury), to the Franks and Rome; they did not establish this footing without opposition, and after they had become a settled institution, they very soon gave offence again, since their directions became more and more external and questionable. To the practice of private penance which thus arose is to be ascribed the new conception of sin, and the new attitude to it, which now became the ruling one in the West, namely, the facile and deadening readiness with which every one confessed himself to be a mortal sinner. What was more tolerable in the ranks of the monks, nay, was in many cases the expression of a really sensitive conscience--I mean the readiness at once to confess oneself a sinner, and to make a less and less distinction between sins and sins--threatened when transferred to the masses to become a worthless practice, because one that blunted the moral sense. Men sinned, and coolly confessed wholesale to a host of sins, lest they might miss the miraculous help of the Church, for some one or other actually committed. If the men of those days had not been so simple, this system would even then have made them thorough hypocrites. But as it was, it worked more like an external system of law--a police institution, which punished wantonness and barbarianism, outbreaks of wild energy and passion. This was not the intention, but it was its actual import, so far as a certain salutary effect cannot be denied it. 3. The institution was already certain in its operations, and made great strides especially in the later Carlovingian period, since the complete separation of the clergy and laity, which had been obliterated in the Merovingian age, was only then made once more complete, and measures began at the same time to be taken to make monks of the former. Nevertheless the dogmatic theory was still entirely awanting. It was not settled that the priest alone could forgive sins--it was still conceded that trifling sins could be expiated without the priest, by means of prayer and alms. Nor were the value and result of priestly forgiveness fixed: was it declaratory or deprecatory? Nor had it been stated to be absolutely necessary to confess all sins to the priest. [750] And finally no fixed definitions had been deduced from the matter itself of mortal and venial sins, or of the treatment of public and private offences. It was only long afterwards that all these points were decided. We see clearly here that ecclesiastical practice does not wait for dogmatic, indeed, that it does not really need it, as long as it goes with the great stream. The Church possessed a sacrament of penance with all its subtleties for many centuries, during which dogmatic knew of no such thing, but span a finer thread. 4. This is not the place to give the interesting history of the growth of satisfactions. Let us, however, notice four points. (1) The old, more or less arbitrary, definitions dealing with the selection (prayers, alms, lamentations, temporary exclusion), and duration of compensatory punishments were supplemented to an increasing extent by new ones (pilgrimages), as well as by definitions taken from the Old Testament law and German legal ordinances. Charlemagne took a great stride in advance with reference to dependence on the Old Testament. But this led to the computation of compensatory penalties being itself looked at in the light of a divine dispensation, and definitions not taken from the Old Testament were also regarded from the same standpoint. (2) The performance of penance was a means of compensation, so far as--if no sin had preceded it--it would have established merit in the sight of God, or would have bestowed something upon him. (It was accordingly not merely a substitution for punishment, but also a positive property in the sight of God, and therefore a compensation for injury.) Accordingly the whole institution was included under the conception of merit, from of old connected with works and alms (operibus et eleemosynis). But if the performance of penance was after all the presentation of something valuable (sacrifice) to God, something which gave him pleasure, and that for its own sake, it became more effective if as many and as good persons as possible took part in it. If a saint helped by his intercession, then God could not really resist; for there was nothing to be made good by the saint, and therefore his offering was a pure present to God. This dreadful idea that the mighty Judge in Heaven could demand nothing more of the saints, while they were able to bestow much upon him, makes it evident that the system of intercessions necessarily played the most important rôle in the system of penance. The conception of Christ taken by faith, that he represents men in the Father's presence, was perverted in the saddest way, and he was dragged into this system; and since nothing was too lofty or precious to be included as investments in this petty calculation, the repeated sacrificial death of Christ was itself the most important instalment. Masses were the surest protection against sins' penalties in purgatory, because in them Christ himself was presented to the Father, and the infinite value [751] of his Passion was anew brought before him, in other words, the merit of that Passion was multiplied. Hence the accumulation of a treasury of masses was the best "palliative" against the fire, or the most reliable means of abridging it. (3) Since performances of penance [752] --the penitent disposition was always presupposed in theory--had an objective value to God, and were at the same time in part equivalents, they could be bartered. Not only, however, could like be bartered for like, but a less valuable act could be taken as full payment, if circumstances rendered a complete discharge difficult, or if it was supplemented by the intercession of others, or if the slighter performance sufficiently displayed the penitent mood. It had been the custom in earlier times to shorten the duration and diminish the number of penances imposed by the Church after the penitent had proved his sincerity. This was appropriate enough, for the purpose was to effect reconciliation with the community; but it was now applied to the penitent's relation to God. It was at the same time remembered that the strict Judge was also merciful, i.e., indulgent. Thus arose the system of remissions, i.e., of commutations and redemptions, or of substitutions. The latter originated in German conceptions, but they had a latent root even in ancient times. Commutations and redemptions are first met with in any number in the eighth and ninth centuries. "Weregeld" or blood-money is found sanctioned then; but they already follow from the ancient system, and had certainly been practised in the cloisters long before the Carlovingian age. Therewith, however, indulgences were created, as soon, namely, as the possibility of commutation was admitted and legally fixed, independently of the special circumstances of the individual case. These commutations, which were only established against opposition, completely externalised the whole system. Above all, they interested the Church financially, and made it, already the great landed proprietor, into a banking establishment. How poor was the Greek Church, with its scanty trade in relics, pictures, and lights, compared with her rich sister, who drew bills on every soul! (4) The whole system of merits and satisfactions had really no reference to sins, but only to their punishment. But since everything ultimately served this system, men were trained to evade sins' penalties as well, securely, and cheaply as possible. The element which seemingly mitigated the dangers of this whole view--namely, that sin itself was left out of sight, since it must be forgiven by God who excites penitence and faith--necessarily resulted in the case of the multitude in their paying little or no attention to sin, and in their thinking only of punishment. Even if they finally entered the cloister, or gave their goods to the poor, they did so, not because they loved God, but because they wished to escape his punishments. Punishment ruled the world and the consciences for whose possession good and evil angels contend. It would not have been necessary to discuss this practice within the limits of the history of dogma if it had not had a very active influence on dogma in the succeeding period. It had wound itself round Augustinianism from the beginning, and had prevented it from obtaining complete sway in the Church; it influenced Christology even in the time of Gregory I., and then in the classic period of the Middle Ages it acted decisively upon and remodelled all the dogmas that had come down from antiquity. [753] __________________________________________________________________ [711] On the development of the mysteries and Lord's Supper in the Greek Church, see Vol. IV. p. 268. John of Damascus (De fide orth. IV. 13), declared expressly: ouk esti tupos ho artos tou somatos all' auto to soma tou kuriou tetheomenon. After the Synod of 754 (Mansi, XIII., p. 261 sq.), had called the consecrated elements types and images, the second Nicene Synod of 787 (l.c. p. 265) expressly declared that they were not that, since neither the Apostles nor Fathers had so named them; by consecration they rather became auto soma kai auto aima. Yet Transubstantiation, taken strictly in the Western sense, was admittedly never taught by the Greeks. [712] See Reuter, I., pp. 24 ff. 41 ff. [713] In order to perceive that the Lord's Supper needed a special prominence to be given to it, notice the view taken by Hinkmar of ordeals, on which Augustine, indeed, had already laid great stress (Schrörs, p. 190 ff.); he regarded them, namely, as sacraments instituted in Scripture, and placed them on a level with the baptismal ceremonies. Hinkmar was not alone in the value he attached to the oath of purgation and divine judgments (see Rozière, Recueil général des formules, Paris, 1859, n. DLXXXI.-DCXXV.; on p. 70, the ceremony is described as christianæ religionis officium), but Agobard, who opposed them, stood almost alone; see Reuter, I., p. 32 ff. [714] The controversies de partu virginis (Bach, I., p. 152 ff.; see Ratramnus, Liber de eo, quod Christus ex virgine natus est; Radbertus, Opusculum de partu virginis, d'Achery, Spicil. I. p. 52, 44), show still better than the Adoptian controversy, the kind of Christology that was honoured by the religion of the community and monks. Ratramnus described as the poison of the old serpent the fact that some Germans denied that Christ had issued from Mary's womb in the natural way, for thus the reality of Christ's birth was destroyed, although he also acknowledged Mary's perpetual virginity and taught the partus clauso utero: "clausa patuit dominanti." Radbert on the other hand, without answering Ratramnus, consoled some nuns, who had been unsettled by the alleged denial of Mary's virginity, by saying that the Church held firmly to the "clauso utero"; for if Christ had come to the light in the natural way, he would have been like an ordinary man; everything connected with the incarnation, however, was miraculous. He who did not admit Christ to have been born clauso utero, set him under the common law of nature, i.e. sinful nature, and in that case Christ was not free of sin. The difference between the two scholars thus consisted solely in the fact that while Ratramnus maintained the natural process of birth to have taken place miraculously clauso utero, Radbert taught that the birth was a supernatural process, and that Christ had left his mother in a different way from other children. Radbert here also is the more consistent; Ratramnus seeks to unite natural and supernatural. Radbert, at least, in imparting his curious instruction to the virgins of the cloister, does not display the pruriency of Jerome, who is the father of these gynæcological fancies, and the nuns may have taken this question very seriously, as seriously as Marcion and Augustine, because they recognised all that was sexual to be the hearth of sin. To later scholasticism is clue the credit of having explained the partus clause utero scientifically from the ubiquity of Christ's body. Such miraculous conceptions having been diffused as to the body of the historical Christ, it being held, in a word, to be already pneumatic in itself, it was by that very reason sacramental (mysterious). But, in that case, it was impossible not to take the next step, and finally and completely identify the real with that sacramental (mysterious) body that was offered in the Lord's Supper. The lines drawn from the incarnation dogma and the Lord's Supper necessarily converged in the end. That this did not happen earlier was due, apart from the material hindrance presented by Augustine with his sober conceptions of the historical Christ as a real homo, to formal difficulties caused by the traditional idiom (the sacramental body is figura corporis Christi). These had to be removed. Bach remarks very justly (I. p. 156): "The cause of present day misunderstandings of the ancient controversies regarding the Lord's Supper, consists in mistaking the law that governs the formation of language, and that also applies to theological idiom. We refer here to the gradual change of meaning of theological words, even when they have become, as regards their outward verbal form, fixed categories, i.e. termini technici." The admission here frankly made by the Catholic historian of dogma is, we know, not always granted by Lutheran theologians. We have indeed had to listen, in the controversy of our own days, to the wonderful cry that we ought to restore to words their original meaning. As if any one still possessed the old die! [715] Bede's teaching was thoroughly Augustinian. ("In redemptionis memoriam," "corporis sanguinisque sacramentum," "ad corpus Christi mystice refertur," "spiritualiter intellegite," "non hoc corpus, quod videtis--Christus inquit--manducaturi estis, sacramentum aliquod vobis commendavi, spiritualiter intellectum vivificabit vos," "lavat nos a peccatis nostris quotidie in sanguine suo, cum beatæ passionis ad altare memoria replicatur, cum panis et vini creatura in sacramentum carnis et sanguinis ejus ineffabili spiritus sanctificatione transfertur"); passages in Münter (D.-Gesch. II., 1 [1834] p. 223 f.). But we then see how the conception changed step by step until the middle of the ninth century. Alcuin repeats his teacher's principles; but both his opposition to the Council of A.D. 754 (De impio imag. cultu IV. 14: "non sanguinis et corporis dominici mysterium imago jam nunc dicendum est, sed veritas, non umbra, sed corpus"), and in part his study of Greek Christology and adoption of sentiments expressed in the Church practice led him to make statements like the following (Ep. 36): "profer nomen amici tui eo tempore opportuno, quo panem et vinum in substantiam corporis et sanguinis Christi consecraveris." Münter justly remarks (l.c.) that this is not yet synonymous with "in substantiam corporis convertere;" but it approaches it. The general notion of the Sacrament is completely identical in the cases of Isidore, Rabanus Maurus, Ratramnus, and Paschasius Radbertus, and so entirely follows Augustine in its construction that we are not prepared by it for the strictly realistic version in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper. [716] See Radberti Lib. de corp. et sang. domini (831), new edition, with an Ep. ad Carolum, thirteen years later (Migne, CXX., p. 1267). Steitz in the R.-Encykl. XII., p. 474. Rückert in Hilgenfeld's Ztschr. 1858. Bach. I., p. 156 ff. Reuter, I., p. 41 ff. Choisy, Paschase Radbert, Genève, 1888. Hausher, Der hl. Paschasius, 1862. Ernst, Die Lehre d. h. P. Radbert v. d. Eucharistie, 1896. Geschichte der Abendmahlsfeier by Dieckhoff, p. 13 ff., Ebrard, Kahnis, etc. Ebert, Gesch. d. Lit. des Mittelalters, II. Mabillon, in the second and third parts of the Benedictine Annals. Ratramnus' work (De corpore et sanguine domini ad Carolum) in Migne CXXI., p. 125. Köhler, Rabanus' Streit mit Paschasius, in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschr. 1879, p. 116 ff. A detailed account of the doctrine of the Lord's Supper from Paschasius to Berengar is given by Schnitzer, Berengar von Tours (1890), pp. 127-245. [717] Radbert's work, De fide, spe et caritate is also important, because it shows greater power to grasp religious doctrine as a whole than we expect at this date. [718] So far as I know, no inquiry has yet been undertaken as to the homily, De corpore et sanguine Christi, which is found in Jerome's works (Migne, T. XXX., Col. 271 ff.), being ascribed by tradition to Eusebius of Emesa, and of which a copy is also given among the works of Faustus of Riez. In it occurs the sentence: "Visibilis sacerdos visibiles creaturas in substantiam corporis et sanguinis sui verbo suo secreta potestate convertit." The homily belongs to a whole group, on which consult Caspari, Briefe, Abhandlungen and Predigten (1890), p. 418 ff. (see above, p. 254). [719] Choisy seeks to show that Paschasius was the father of the Catholic dogma even to the manducatio infidelium, and that the spiritual form of the dogma of the Lord's Supper is in his case only apparent, since ultimately everything is dominated by crass realism. [720] Compare Radbert's extremely characteristic introduction to his treatise: he discusses the almighty will of God as ground of all natural events. God's arbitrary power is the ultimate cause; therefore his actions can be described as contrary to nature as well as natural (the latter, because even the regular course of things is subject to divine absolutism). The new dogma is explicitly based on this conception of God. Notoriously everything can be deduced from it, predestination, accommodation, transubstantiation, etc. Radbert holds the Lord's Supper to be the miracle of miracles, towards which all others point; see 1, 5. [721] Radbert expressly attacks the Capernaite coarse conception of participation in the Lord's Supper; he declines to adopt the crudely sensuous ideas diffused in the widest circles (Bach, I. 167 ff.); see De corp. et sang. 8, 2. Expos. in Mat. 1. XII., 26. Reality in its common sense is "natura" in Radbert's view; but he never says that the elements are naturaliter transformed. Therefore also Christ's body is not digested. [722] See esp. ch. VIII., but also 5-7, 14, 21. This spiritual conception, on which Steitz (1.c.) has rightly laid great stress, runs through the whole book. But when Radbert positively calls the body present in the Lord's Supper a corpus spiritale, he does not mean this in contrast with the natural, but the lower bodily nature (caro humana) confined to space. C. 21, 5: "Non nisi electorum cibus est." 6, 2: "Quid est, quod manducant homines? Ecce omnes indifferenter quam sæpe sacramenta altaris percipiunt. Percipiunt plane, sed alius carnem Christi spiritaliter manducat et sanguinem bibit, alius vero non, quamvis buccellam de manu sacerdotis videatur percipere. Et quid accipit, cum una sit consecratio, si corpus et sang. Chr. non accipit? Vere, quia reus indigne accipit, judicium sibi manducat." [723] "Ut etiam caro nostra per hoc ad immortalitatem et incorruptionem reparetur." [724] "Carni nostræ caro Christi spiritaliter conviscerata transformatur." See c. 11 and 19, 1: "Non sicut quidam volunt anima sola hoc mysterio pascitur, quia non sola redimitur morte Christi et salvatur, verum etiam et caro nostra, etc. etc.; "nos per hoc in incorruptionem transformamur" (therefore as in Justin); the same thought already in I. 4, 6. [725] "Spiritale" and "verum" are thus not mutually exclusive. [726] C. 1, 2: "Nullus moveatur de hoc corpore Christi et sanguine, quod in mysterio vera sit caro et verus sit sanguis, dum sic voluit ille qui creavit: omnia enim quæcumque voluit fecit in cælo et in terra, et quia voluit, licet in figura panis et vini, hæc sic esse, omnino nihil aliud quam caro Christi et sanguis post consecrationem credenda sunt. Unde ipsa veritas ad discipulos: Hæc, inquit, caro mea est pro mundi vita, et ut mirabilius loquar, non alia plane quam quæ nata est de Maria et passa in cruce et resurrexit de sepulcro." Further 7, 2: "corpus quod natum est de Maria virgine . . . resurrexit a mortuis, penetravit coelos et nunc pontifex factus in æternum quotidie interpellat pro nobis." 12, I: "ubi catholica fide hoc mysterium celebratur, nihil a bono majus nihilque a malo minus percipi sacerdote, nihilque aliud quam caro Christi et sanguis dum catholice consecratur, quia non in merito consecrantis sed in verbo efficitur creatoris et virtute spiritus s., ut caro Chr. et sanguis, non alia quam quæ de spiritu s. creata est, vera fide credatur et spiritali intellegentia degustetur . . . Christi est qui per s. s. hanc suam efficit carnem." Cf. 15, 1: "non æstimandum est, quod alterius verbis, quod ullius alterius meritis, quod potestate alicujus ista fiunt, sed verbo creatoris, quo cuncta creata sunt." 8, 2: "substantia panis et vini in Christi carnem et sanguinem efficaciter interius commutatur." 2, 2: "sensibilis res intellegibiliter virtute dei per verbum Christi in carnem ipsius divinitus transfertur." [727] See c. 10 and 13, and esp. 4, 1: "quia Christum vorari fas dentibus non est, voluit in mysterio hunc panem et vinum vere carnem suam et sanguinem consecratione spiritus s. potentialiter (i.e. efficaciter) creari, creando vero quotidie pro mundi vita mystice immolari." [728] See c. 14; besides Bach I., p. 168 ff. A lamb, or real blood, or the Christ-child appeared. [729] On this point Radbert speaks like Ratramnus; see 1, 5: "visu corporeo et gustu propterea non demutantur, quatenus fides exerceatur ad justitiam." 13, 1, 2, "quod colorem aut saporem carnis minime præbet, virtus tamen fidei et intellegentiæ, quæ nihil de Christo dubitat, totum illud spiritaliter sapit et degustat . . . Sic debuit hoc mysterium temperari, ut et arcana secretorum celarentur infidis et meritum cresceret de virtute fidei et nihil deesset interius vere credentibus promissæ veritatis." Nay the disguise incites to loftier aspiration (as with the Greeks): "insuper et quod majus est per hæc secretius præstita ad illam tenderent speciem satietatis ubi jam non pro peccatis nostris quotidie Christus immolabitur, sed satietate manifestationis ejus sine ulla corruptione omnes sine fine fruemur." (One imagines that he is listening to Origen or Gregory of Nyssa.) On figura and veritas, see 4, 1: ". . . ut sicut de virgine per spiritum vera caro sine coitu creatur, ita per eundem ex substantia panis ac vini mystice idem Christi corpus et sanguis consecretur . . . figura videtur esse cum frangitur, dum in specie visibili aliud intelligitur quam quod visu carnis et gustu sentitur. Veritas appellatur, dum corpus Christi et sanguis virtute spiritus in verbo ipsius ex panis vinique substantia efficitur." [730] The doctrine of the real conversion of the elements in the West is to be regarded as an importation from the East, and is closely connected with the anti-Adoptian version of Cliristology. But it was first in the West that the legal mind and dialectics cast themselves on this subject, and produced a complicated and never to be completed doctrine of endless extent. [731] Not primarily; for undoubtedly he more than once in his work thinks of the Mass, and draws the inference of the daily sacrifice of Christ's body pro peccatis; see 13, 2; 4, 1, etc. [732] Ep. ad Eigil. Migne, CXII., p. 1510. [733] Ratramnus and Rabanus are nearer each other than is currently supposed; but Bach (I. p. 191 ff.) is wrong, when, after the precedent of other Catholics, he tries by an interpretation of Ratramnus' use of language to make him a genuine Catholic. Ratramnus also holds that a miracle takes place, but not the miracle that magically produces the body worn by Christ as a person. [734] See the opening of the work. [735] Following on a reference to Ambrose, he writes (c. 75 sq.): "De carne Christi quæ crucifixa et sepulta est, ait, Vera utique caro Christi est.' At de illo quod sumitur in sacramento dicit, Veræ carnis illius sacramentum est,' distinguens sacramentum carnis a veritate carnis. Veritas carnis quam sumpsit de virgine; quod vero nunc agitur in ecclesia mysterium, veræ illius carnis . . . sacramentum . . . non est specie caro, sed sacramentum, siquidem in specie panis est, in sacramento vero verum Christi corpus . . . (elementa) secundum quod spiritualiter vitæ substantiam subministrant corpus et sanguis Christi sunt. Illud vero corpus, in quo semel passus est Christus, non aliam speciem præferebat quam in qua consistebat; hoc enim erat vere quod esse videbatur; . . . at nunc sanguis Christi quem credentes ebibunt et corpus quod comedunt, aliud sunt in specie et aliud in significatione, aliud quod pascunt corpus esca corporea et aliud quod saginant mentes æternæ vita substantia . . . aliud igitur est, quod exterius geritur, aliud item quod per fidem capitur; ad sensum corporis quod pertinet, corruptibile (Radbert also said this) est, quod fides vero capit incorruptible. Exterius igitur quod apparet non est res sed imago rei, mente vero quod sentitur et intelligitur, veritas rei." Even to the last sentence a Radbertian meaning can be given; but this ceases to be possible where Ratramnus--as often happens--designates the whole rite (and it is the rite with which he is generally concerned) as "figura," in "figuram sive memoriam dominicæ mortis," "repræsentatio memoriæ dominicæ passionis," and, further, as "pignus" (see c. 10, 11, 16: "figurate facta"; c. 88: "corpus et sanguis quod in ecclesia geritur, differt ab illo corpore et sanguine quod in Christi corpore jam glorificatum cognoscitur; et hoc corpus pignus est et species, illud vero ipsa veritas. Hoc enim geretur, donec ad illud perveniatur; ubi vero ad illud perventum fuerit hoc removebitur." Reconciliation with Radbert is absolutely impossible where Ratramnus strictly disowns the "permutatio corporalis," and reduces everything to a memorial meal; c. 12: "et quomodo jam Christi corpus dicitur, in quo nulla permutatio facta cognoscitur?" c. 15: "dicant, secundum quod permutata sunt; corporaliter namque nihil in eis cernitur esse permutatum." Catholics excuse him here by saying that he meant to deny "conversion" into a crassly realistic body, "Fatebuntur igitur necesse est aut mutata esse secundum aliud quam secundum corpus, ac per hoc non esse hoc quod in veritate videntur, sed aliud quod non esse secundum propriam essentiam cernuntur. Aut si hoc profiteri noluerint, negare corpus esse sanguinem Christi, quod nefas est non solum dicere verum etiam cogitare." c. 100: "iste panis et sanguis qui super altare ponuntur, in figuram sive memoriam dominicæ mortis ponuntur, et quod gestum est in præterito, præsenti revocet (dominus) memoriæ, ut illius passionis memores effecti, per eam efficiamur divini muneris consortes." [736] C. 101: "Fides non quod oculus videt sed quod credit accipit, quoniam spiritualis est esca et spiritualis potus, spiritualiter animam pascens et æternæ satietatis vitam tribuens, sicut ipse salvator mysterium hoc commendans loquitur: spiritus est qui vivificat." C. 49: "Christ's true body is distributed in the Lord's Supper according to its invisibilis substantia, and that because the invisibilis substantia is like the potentia divini verbi. Many similar passages elsewhere." [737] C. 11: "Nam si secundum quosdam figurate hic nihil accipitur, sed totum in veritate conspicitur, nihil hic fides operatur, quoniam nihil spiritale geritur . . . nec jam mysterium erit, in quo nihil secreti, nihil abditi continebitur." [738] Ratramnus always thinks of the God who excites and nourishes faith. [739] The difference between Paschasius and Ratramnus is really very subtle if we confine our attention to the question of the reality of Christ's body (and the transformation); but it is not quite so subtle as is represented by Schnitzer (l.c., 167-194). It was, besides, long before Ratramnus' work was held to be heretical. [740] C. 16, a commutatio is taught, "sed non corporaliter sed spiritualiter facta est . . . spiritualiter sub velamento corporei panis . . . corpus et sanguis Christi existunt." [741] See C. 15. [742] Ratramnus has the elements of Zwingli and Calvin's doctrines. Besides, in relation to the invisible substance, he assumes the identity of the eucharistic and historical body, or, at any rate, will not give it up. [743] In connection with Matt. XXVI. 26, he defended himself skilfully against Ratramnus, whom, for the rest, he does not name. [744] Bach, I., p. 191 ff. [745] Walafried Strabo was the first to justify expressly the celebration of the Lord's Supper without communicants, and therefore Masses (Migne, T. 114, col. 943 ff). [746] When the State punished, e.g., in cases of murder and theft, the ecclesiastical consequences followed without further trial. [747] This was also effected in the Greek Church through the action of the monks. [748] See the view taken of the laity in the forged fragments of the pseudo-Isidorian decretals. [749] Among these, pilgrimages of a year's duration played a great part, a fact that shows the monks' contempt of family life and civic occupations; for these were severely affected by pilgrimages. [750] I adhere to these statements, in spite of Karl Müller's arguments in his treatise "Der Umschwung in der Lehre von der Busse während des 12 Jahrh." (Abhandl. für Weizäcker, 1892, p. 287 ff.) If I am not mistaken, Müller has been misled by Morinus, and has looked at the state of penance and confession, at the close of ancient and the beginning of mediæval Church history, too much from the standpoint of the modern Roman conception; he has at least presupposed too great a uniformity of theoretical ideas--if one may speak of such. I cannot accept the blunt assertion on p. 292, that down to the twelfth century the priest's absolution was always regarded as simply identical with divine forgiveness, and therefore as indispensable. There was no doctrine proper on this question for centuries, but almost only a practice. As soon as the doctrine is again introduced, doubts also arise, to be once more gradually allayed. [751] In the fourth ch. of the Synod of Chiersey, 853, it is called "pretii copiositas mysterii passionis;" that is also an anticipation of Anselm's theory of satisfaction. [752] The peregrinationes also belong to them. That indulgences rest quite essentially on the custom of pilgrimages and their commutation is shown by Götz, Ztschr. f. K.-Gesch., vol. XV., p. 329 ff. [753] On the history of penance, see Steitz, Das römische Busssacrament, 1854; Wasserschleben, Bussordnungen d. Abendl. Kirche, 1851; v. Zerschwitz Beichte, in Herzog's R.-E. II., p. 220 ff., System der Katechetik I., p. 483 ff., II. 1, p. 208. ff.; Göbl, Gesch. der Katachese in Abendland, 1880. Further, on the history of the ordinances of penance, Wasserschleben, Die irische Kanonensammlung, 2 ed., 1855; and Schmitz, Die Bussbücher and die Bussdisciplin der Kirche, 1883. On the latter's attempt to refer the regulations of penance to Rome, see Theol. Lit.-Ztg., 1883, col. 614 ff. On the development of the separation of clergy and laity in the 9th century, and the beginning of the monachising of the clergy, see Hatch, "Growth of Christian Institutions," Chap. IX. On divine service and discipline in the Carlovingian age, see Gieseler II., 1 (1846) pp. 152-170; on the constitution of German law-courts, feuds, and penance, outlawry and death of the victim, see Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgesch. I., pp. 143 ff., 156 ff., 166 ff.; on the principle of personality and the amount of blood-money and penances, l.c., p. 261 ff.; on the personal rights of the clergy, p. 269 f.; and on the rise of written law, p. 282 ff. If we review the state of the development of German law in the age of the Merovingians, and compare it with the ecclesiastical discipline of penance, as it was independently evolved on Latin ground until Gregory I., we are astonished at the ease with which these systems could be and actually were dovetailed into each other. The Roman law received by the Church underwent great modifications within its pale caused by the conceptions of the Communio of the Church militant with the saints, of satisfactions, merits, and the claim of the Church to remit sins. Above all, the Church's right to punish, which had originally accepted the Roman thought of the public character of crimes, and had treated them accordingly, became more and more a private right. That is, transgressions against God were regarded as injuries done to God--not the violation of public order and the holy, inviolable divine law; and accordingly the idea arose, and got more and more scope, that they were to be treated, as it were, like private complaints. In such cases the alternative, either punishment or satisfaction (compensation), was appropriate. But as regards satisfactions, all the liberties were necessarily introduced that are inherent in that conception, namely, that the injured party himself, or the Church as his representative, could indulgently lessen their amount, or could commute or transfer them, etc. It is obvious how easily this view could fuse with the German one. One or two examples are sufficient. German law held the principle: either outlawry or penance. This corresponds to the Church principle: either excommunication or the performance of satisfactory acts of penance. According to German law, vengeance did not require to be executed on the evil-doer himself, but might he on a member of his clan; nay, it was held in Norway to be a more severe vengeance to strike the best man of the clan instead of the murderer. The Church looked on Christians as forming a "clan" with the saints in heaven, and the performance of penance could to a certain extent, or entirely, be passed on to the latter; Christ had, above all, borne beforehand by his death God's vengeance on the ill-doing race of his brethren. German law held, similarly, that the compensation, the payment of the fine, could be divided. According to the practice of the Church, the saints interceded if prayed to, and presented their merits to God, taking from the sinner a part of the penance imposed upon him. Afterwards the Church positively adopted the German institution, and let earthly friends, comrades, members of the family, and bondmen share in the performance of penance in order to lighten the task. In one respect, however, the action of the Church had a softening and beneficial effect. It restricted to an extraordinary extent the capital punishments closely connected with outlawry. They were objectionable in themselves, and doubly so where they were regarded, on the ground of a primitive priestly law of punishment, as a human sacrifice offered to the gods (Brunner, pp. 173-177). Even in the Roman period the Church in Gaul exerted itself to soften the Roman administration of justice where the latter admitted capital punishment. It continued its efforts with success in the Merovingian age, so that arrangements were more and more frequently made in substitution for the death penalty. The chief argument urged by the Church was doubtless that God did not will the death of the sinner, and that Christ died an atoning and sacrificial death for all. Thus Christ's death obtained an extraordinary importance. It became the grand achievement, whose value even softened the earthly right of punishment. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ Indexes __________________________________________________________________ Index of Scripture References Genesis [1]1:1-3:24 Deuteronomy [2]104 [3]104 [4]104 [5]104 [6]104 [7]104 [8]104 [9]104 [10]104 [11]104 Psalms [12]98:9 [13]126:3 Ezekiel [14]1 Matthew [15]1 [16]6:25-34 [17]7:7-11 [18]9:2 [19]10:28-33 [20]11:25-30 [21]12:31 [22]16:1-28 [23]25:34 [24]26:26 John [25]25:12 [26]26:1 [27]27:6 Romans [28]5:12 [29]5:12 [30]5:12 [31]5:12 [32]6:1-23 [33]8:31-39 [34]9:1-33 [35]9:1-33 [36]14:10 1 Corinthians [37]3:12 2 Corinthians [38]5:10 Galatians [39]3 [40]22 Ephesians [41]1 [42]2 [43]5 [44]14 Philippians [45]2 [46]4 [47]9 [48]13 Colossians [49]271 [50]368 [51]368 [52]567 [53]568 1 Timothy [54]2:4 [55]2:4 Revelation [56]2:3 [57]20:4 __________________________________________________________________ Index of Greek Words and Phrases * nous: [58]1 * aphtharsia: [59]1 [60]2 * en to logo: [61]1 * eph' ho: [62]1 * idiopoiein: [63]1 * ho on: [64]1 * ho me o: [65]1 * homoousioi: [66]1 * on: [67]1 * onta: [68]1 * organon leptikon: [69]1 * hos dia puros: [70]1 * hoste kai di anthropon kai di alogon katargoumenen sunousian prin tou mellontos aionos horasthai; kai ho kurios de hemon Iesous ho Christos ou di' allo ti ek parthenou egennethe, all' hina katargese gennesin epithumias anomou kai deixe to archonti kai dicha sunousias anthropines dinaten einai to theo ten anthropou plasin;: [71]1 * Gnothi seauton: [72]1 * a: [73]1 [74]2 * auto soma kai auto aima: [75]1 * b: [76]1 [77]2 * g: [78]1 [79]2 * d: [80]1 [81]2 * ei gar ho theos theon se ethelese poiesai, edunato; echeis tou logou to paradeigma: [82]1 * theosebeia: [83]1 * kat' exochen: [84]1 [85]2 [86]3 * katexochen: [87]1 * latreia: [88]1 * me einai: [89]1 * metras estin energeia to kuiskein kai moriou andrikou to spermainein; hosper de, ei tauta mellei energein tautas tas energeias, houtos ouk anankaion autois estin to ten archen energein (horomen goun pollas gunaikas me kuiskousas, hos tas steiras, kai metras echousas), houtos ouk eutheos kai to metran echein kai kuiskein anankazei; alla kai me steirai men ex arches, partheneuousai de, katergesan kai ten sunousian, heterai de kai apo chronou; kai tous arsenas de tous men ap'arches partheneuontas horomen, tous de apo chronou, hoste di' auton kataluesthai ton di' epithumias anomon gamon;: [90]1 * ouk esti tupos ho artos tou somatos all' auto to soma tou kuriou tetheomenon: [91]1 * peri archon: [92]1 * pneumatikon: [93]1 * proskunesis: [94]1 __________________________________________________________________ Index of Latin Words and Phrases * anima: [95]1 * ærumnæ: [96]1 * non meam justitiam' tunc enim mea est vel nostra, cum moribus nostris justitiam dei mereri nos putamus perfectam per mores. At non, inquit, hanc habens justitiam, sed quam? Illam ex fide. Non illam quæ ex lege; væ in operibus est et carnali disciplina, sed hanc quæ ex deo procedit justitia ex fide;': [97]1 * . . . transeamus ad sanctorum communionem. Illos hic sententia ista confundit, qui sanctorum et amicorum dei cineres non in honore debere esse blasphemant, qui beatorum martyrum gloriosam memoriam sacrorum reverentia monumentorum colendam esse non credunt. In symbolum prævaricati sunt, et Christo in fonte mentiti sunt.: [98]1 * . . . ut sicut de virgine per spiritum vera caro sine coitu creatur, ita per eundem ex substantia panis ac vini mystice idem Christi corpus et sanguis consecretur . . . figura: [99]1 * ;vita vitæ meæ: [100]1 * Accedit verbum ad elementum et fit sacramentum, etiam ipsum tamquam visibile verbum: [101]1 * Ad gratiam dei pertinet qui credit, non ille, pro cujus voluntate, ut dicitis, sanctitas vestra succedit.: [102]1 * Ad quid ergo persuadendum aut scripturas releges aut conscios nominabis, qui adhuc quod sentis non potes definire: [103]1 * Adam mortalem factum, qui sive peccaret sive non peccaret moriturus fuisset--peccatum Adæ ipsum solum læsit, non genus humanum--parvuli qui nascuntur in eo statu sunt, in quo fuit Adam ante prævaricationem--neque per mortem vel prævaricationem Adæ omne genus hominum moritur, nec per resurrectionem Christi omne genus hominum resurget--lex sic mittit ad regnum coelorum quomodo et evangelium--et ante adventum domini fuerunt homines impeccabiles, i.e.: [104]1 * Admissus ad dominica præcepta ex ipsis statim eruditur, id peccato deputandum, a quo deus arceat.: [105]1 * Aliter quidem quod ipse est, aliter quæ ab ipso. Quod ipse est unum est totumque est quidquid ipse est; quod vero ab ipso est, innumerum est. Et hæc sunt quibus refletur omne quod uno toto clauditur et ambitur. Verum quod varia sunt quæ ab ipso sunt, qui a se est et unum est, variis cum convenit dominare. Et ut omnipotens apparet, contrariorum etiam origo ipse debuit inveniri.: [106]1 * Aliud videtur aliud intelligitur: [107]1 * Amor amatur, et hinc probamus, quod in hominibus, qui rectius amantur, ipse magis amatur.: [108]1 * Anathematizo illos qui sic tenent aut aliquando tenuerunt.: [109]1 * Anathematizo quasi stultos, non quasi hæreticos, si quidem non est dogma: [110]1 * Anathematizo quasi stultos, non quasi hæreticos, si quidem non est dogma.: [111]1 * Auctoritas: [112]1 * Audi excellentem dei dispensatorem, quem veneror ut patrem; in Christo Jesu enim per evangelium me genuit et eo Christi ministro lavacrum regenerationis accepi. Beatum loquor Ambrosium cujus pro Catholica fide gratiam, constantiam, labores, pericula sive operibus sive sermonibus et ipse sum expertus et mecum non dubitat orbis prædicare Romanus.: [113]1 * Audivi (verba Ego sum qui sum) sicut auditur in corde, et non erat prorsus unde dubitarem; faciliusque dubitarem vivere me, quam non esse veritatem: [114]1 * Baptizatum hominem sive justum sive peccatorem loco sancti: [115]1 * Beatus Ambrosius episcopus, in cujus præcipue libris Romana: [116]1 * Bene dicit Hiob (IX. 28): Sciens quod non parceris delinquenti, quia delicta nostra sive per nos sive per semetipsum resecat, etiam cum relaxat: [117]1 * Bono unitatis: [118]1 * Bonorum quorundam intolerabilis magnitudo est, ut ad capienda et præstanda ea sola gratia divinæ inspirationis operetur. Nam quod maxime bonum, id maxime penes deum, nec alius id, quam qui possidet, dispensat, ut cuique dignatur.: [119]1 * Bonorum unus est titulus salus hominis criminum pristinorum abolitione præmissa.: [120]1 * Bonum quod agimus et dei est et nostrum, dei per prævenientem gratiam, nostrum per obsequentem liberam voluntatem. . . . Si nostrum non est, unde nobis retribui præmia speramus? Quia ergo non immerito gratias agimus, scimus, quod ejus munere prævenimur; et rursum quia non immerito retributionem quærimus, scimus, quod obsequente libero arbitrio bona eligimus, quæ ageremus: [121]1 * Cælestius auditorialis scholasticus: [122]1 * Cælestius incredibili loquacitate.: [123]1 * Caritas inchoata inchoata justitia est; caritas provecta provecta justitia est; caritas magna magna justitia est; caritas perfecta perfecta justitia est: [124]1 * Carni nostræ caro Christi spiritaliter conviscerata transformatur.: [125]1 * Cathedra Cypriani: [126]1 * Cathedra Petri: [127]1 * Catholicam (scil. ecclesiam) facit simplex et verus intellectus in lege (scil. duobus testamentis) singulare ac verissimum sacramentum et unitas animorum.: [128]1 * Catholicus in fide, rex in potestate, pontifex in prædicatione, judex in æquitate, philosophus in liberalibus studiis, inclytus in moribus (?) et omni honestate præcipuus.: [129]1 * Christianus mihi nomen est, catholicus cognomen.: [130]1 * Christus erat voluntas et potestas patris.: [131]1 * Christus in certamine agonis nostri et coronat pariter et coronatur.: [132]1 * Christus in pace negavit: [133]1 * Christus indutus in homine: [134]1 * Christus non vicem passionis sitit: [135]1 * Christus qui est secundus Adam, accepit has geminas generationes, primam vid. quæ secundum carnem est, secundam vero spiritualem, quæ per adoptionem fit, idem redemptor noster secundum hominem complexus in semetipso continet: primam vid. quam suscepit ex virgine nascendo, secundam vero quam initiavit: [136]1 * Commendare: [137]1 * Communio: [138]1 * Confiteor, deum omnipotentem et incommutabilem præscisse et prædestinasse angelos sanctos et homines electos ad vitam gratis æternam, et ipsum diabolum . . . cum ipsis quoque hominibus reprobis . . . propter præscita certissime ipsorum propria futura mala rnerita prædestinasse pariter: [139]1 * Conscientia dantis adtenditur, qui abluat accipientis.: [140]1 * Contemplatio ejus artifices, qui vocat ea quæ non sunt tamquam ea quæ sunt, atque in mensura et numero et pondere cuncta disponit: [141]1 * Contra eorum superstitionem, qui picturis et imaginibus sanctorum adorationis obsequium deferendum putant.: [142]1 * Corpus permixtum: [143]1 * Credamus et sanctorum communionem, sed sanctos non tam pro dei parte, quam pro dei honore veneremur. Non sunt sancti pars illius, sed ipse probatur pars esse sanctorum. Quare? quia, quod sunt, de illuminatione et de similitudine ejus accipiunt; in sanctis autem non res dei, sed pars dei est. Quicquid enim de deo participant, divinæ est gratiæ, non naturæ. Colamus in sanctis timorem et amorem dei, non divinitatem dei, colamus merita, non quæ de proprio habent, sed quæ accipere pro devotione meruerunt. Digne itaque venerandi sunt, dum nobis dei cultum et futuræ vitæ desiderium contemptu mortis insinuant.: [144]1 * Credo siquidem atque confiteor præscisse teante sæcula quæcunque erant futura, sive bona sive mala, prædestinasse vero tantummodo bona. Bona autem a te prædestinata bifariam sunt tuis a fidelibus indagata . . . i.e: [145]1 * Cultus: [146]1 * Cum antem sub tribus et testatio fidei et sponsio salutis pignerentur, necessario adicitur ecclesiæ mentio, quoniam ubi tres, id est pater et filius et spiritus sanctus, ibi ecclesia, quæ trium corpus est.: [147]1 * Cum autem initio fidei quæ per dilectionem operatur imbuta mens fuerit, tendit bene vivendo etiam ad speciem: [148]1 * Cum igitur liquido clareat hanc sanam et veram esse sententiam, quam primo loco ratio: [149]1 * Cum libros Confessionum ediderim ante quam Pelagiana hæresis exstitisset, in eis certe dixi deo nostro et sæpe dixi: Da quod jubes et jube quod vis. Quæ mea verba Pelagius Romæ, cum a quodam fratre et episcopo meo fuissent eo præsente commemorata, ferre non potuit et contradicens aliquanto commotius pæne cum eo qui commemoraverat litigavit.: [150]1 * Cum propterea credere jubeamur, quia id quod credere jubemur, videre non possumus, ipsam tamen fidem, quando inest in nobis, videmus in nobis.: [151]1 * Cur ergo apud vos non renascuntur per baptismum, qui transeunt a nobis ad vos, cum apud nos fuerint baptizati, si nondum nati sunt?: [152]1 * De Afris quod propria lege sua utuntur, ut rebaptizent, placuit, ut si ad ecclesiam aliquis de hæresi venerit, interrogent eum symbolum; et si perviderint eum in patre et filio et spiritu sancto esse baptizatum, manus ei tantum imponatur ut accipiat spiritum sanctum. Quod si interrogatus non responderit hanc trinitatem, baptizetur.: [153]1 * De carne Christi quæ crucifixa et sepulta est, ait, Vera utique caro Christi est.' At de illo quod sumitur in sacramento dicit, Veræ carnis illius sacramentum est,' distinguens sacramentum carnis a veritate carnis. Veritas carnis quam sumpsit de virgine; quod vero nunc agitur in ecclesia mysterium, veræ illius carnis . . . sacramentum . . . non est specie caro, sed sacramentum, siquidem in specie panis est, in sacramento vero verum Christi corpus . . . (elementa) secundum quod spiritualiter vitæ substantiam subministrant corpus et sanguis Christi sunt. Illud vero corpus, in quo semel passus est Christus: [154]1 * De fide: [155]1 * De gratiam secundum merita nostra dari, quia si peccatoribus illam det, videtur esse iniquus.: [156]1 * De his, qui scripturas s. tradidisse dicuntur vel vasa dominica vel nomina patrum suorum, placuit nobis, ut quicumque eorum ex actis publicis fuerit detectus, non verbis nudis, ab ordine cleri amoveatur. Nam si iidem aliquos ordinasse fuerint deprehensi et hi quos ordinaverunt rationales (able? capable?) subsistunt, non illis obsit ordinatio: [157]1 * De libris recipiendis et non recipiendis: [158]1 * De sancta trimitate, Utrum pater et filius et spiritus s. de divinitate substantialiter prædicentur, Quomodo substantiæ in eo quod sint bonæ sint, cum non sint substantialia bona, De fide Catholica and Contra Eutychen et Nestorium.: [159]1 * Deum et animam scire cupio. Nihilne plus? Nihil omnino.: [160]1 * Deus hominem sine peccato rectum cum libero arbitrio condidit et in paradiso posuit, quem in sanctitate justitiæ permanere voluit. Homo libero arbitrio male utens peccavit et cecidit, et factus est massa perditionis totius humani generis. Deus autem bonus et justus elegit ex eadem massa perditionis secundum præscientiam suam, quos per gratiam prædestinavit ad vitam, et vitam illis prædestinavit æternam. Ceteros autem, quos justitiæ judicio in massa perditionis reliquit, perituros præscivit, sed non ut perirent prædestinavit, poenam autem illis, quia justus est, prædestinavit æternam. Ac per hoc unam: [161]1 * Deus naturam nostram id est animam rationalem carnemque hominis Christi suscepit, susceptione singulariter mirabili vel mirabiliter singulari, ut nullis justitiæ suæ præcedentibus meritis filius dei sic esset ab initio quo esse homo coepisset, ut ipse et verbum, quod sine initio est, una persona esset.: [162]1 * Deus omnes homines sine exceptione vult salvos fieri, licet non omnes salventur. Quod autem quidem salvantur, salvantis est donum; quod autem quidem pereunt, pereuntium est meritum.: [163]1 * Deus ostendens quid magis velit, minorem voluntatem majore delevit. Quantoque notitiæ tuæ utrumque proposuit, tanto definiit, id te sectari debere quod declaravit se magis velle. Ergo si ideo declaravit, ut id secteris quod magis vult, sine dubio, nisi ita facis, contra voluntatem ejus sapis, sapiendo contra potiorem ejus voluntatem, magisque offendis quam promereris, quod vult quidem faciendo et quod mavult respuendo. Ex parte delinquis; ex parte, si non delinquis, non tamen promereris. Non porro et promereri nolle delinquere est? Secundum igitur matrimonium, si est ex illa dei voluntate quæ indulgentia vocatur: [164]1 * Deus solus docere potuit, quomodo se vellet orari.: [165]1 * Deus terrores incutit: [166]1 * Dilectio summum fidei sacramentum, Christiani nominis thesaurus.: [167]1 * Dilectus meus, inquit sponsa, candidus et rubicundus. In hoc nobis et candet veritas et rubet caritas.: [168]1 * Doctor angelorum et diaboli: [169]1 * Domini mors potentior erat quam vita .. . Lex Christianorum crux est sancta Christi.: [170]1 * Domini mors potentior erat quam vita.: [171]1 * Dominus jugo suo in gremio ecclesiæ toto orbe diffuso omnia terrena regna subjecit.: [172]1 * Dominus noster, sicut ipse in evangelio loquitur, leni jugo suo nos subdidit et sarcinæ levi; unde sacramentis numero paucissimis, observatione facillimis, significatione præstantissimis societatem novi populi colligavit.: [173]1 * Dona sua coronat deus non merita tua . . . si ergo dei dona sunt bona merita tua, non deus coronat merita tua tamquam merita tua sed tamquam dona sua.: [174]1 * Dum Christus finis est legis, qui sine lege sunt sine Christo sunt; igitur populus sine lege populus sine Christo est.: [175]1 * Ecce homo.: [176]1 * Ecclesiam tu, frater Parmeniane, apud vos solos esse dixisti; nisi forte quia vobis specialem sanctitatem: [177]1 * Ego autem aliquanto posterius didicisse me fateor, in eo quod verbum caro factum est, quomodo catholica veritas a Photini falsitate dirimatur.: [178]1 * Ego vero evangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicae (ecclesiæ) commoveret auctoritas.: [179]1 * Electi sunt ante mundi constitutionem ea prædestinatione, in qua deus sua futura facta præscivit; electi sunt autem de mundo ea vocatione, qua deus id, quod prædestinavit, implevit. Quos enim prædestinavit, ipsos et vocavit, illa scilicet vocatione secundum propositum, non ergo alios sed quos prædestinavit ipsos et vocavit: [180]1 * Eo quod quisque novit non fruitur, nisi et id diligat . . . neque quisquam in eo quod percipit permanet nisi dilectione.: [181]1 * Est Christiani hominis, quod bonum est velle et in eo quod bene voluerit, currere; sed homini non est datum perficere, ut post spatia, quæ debet homo implere, restet aliquid deo, ubi deficienti succurrat, quia ipse solus est perfectio et perfectus solus dei filius Christus, cæteri omnes semi-perfecti: [182]1 * Est etiam præclarissimum lumen prædestinationis et gratiæ ipse salvator, ipse mediator dei et hominum homo Christus Jesus, qui ut hoc esset, quibus tandem suis vel operum vel fidei præcedentibus meritis natura humana quæ in illo est comparavit? . . . Singulariter nostra natura in Jesu nullis suis præcedentibus meritis accepit admiranda (scil: [183]1 * Et apparuit mihi una facies eloquiorum castorum. Et coepi et inveni quidquid illac verum legeram, hac cum commendatione gratiæ tuæ dici: [184]1 * Et ea quæ dicuntur merita nostra, dona sunt eius: [185]1 * Et in hac vita virtus non est nisi diligere quod diligendum est; faciunt boni amores bonos mores.: [186]1 * Et pervenit cogitatio ad id quod est, in ictu trepidantis aspectus: [187]1 * Et quoniam (Christianus) quamdin est in isto mortali corpore, peregrinatur a domino, ambulat per fidem non per speciem; ac per hoc omnem pacem vel corporis vel animæ vel simul corporis et animæ refert ad illam pacem, quæ homini mortali est cum immortali deo, ut ei sit ordinata in fide sub æterna lege oboedientia. Jam vero quia duo præcipua præcepta, hoc est dilectionem dei et dilectionem proximi, docet magister deus . . . consequens est, ut etiam proximo ad diligendum deum consulat, quem jubetur sicut se ipsum diligere (sic uxori, sic filiis, sic domesticis, sic ceteris quibus potuerit hominibus), et ad hoc sibi a proximo, si forte indiget, consuli velit; ac per hoc erit pacatus, quantum in ipso est, omni homini pace hominum, id est ordinata concordia cujus hic ordo est, prinmm ut nulli noceat, deinde ut etiam prosit cui potuerit. Primitus ergo inest ei suorum cura; ad eos quippe habet opportuniorem facilioremque aditum consulendi, vel naturæ ordine vel ipsius societatis humanæ. Unde apostolus dicit: Quisquis autem suis et maxime domesticis non providet, fidem denegat et est infideli deterior.' Hinc itaque etiam pax domestica oritur, id est ordinati imperandi oboediendique concordia cohabitantium. Imperaut enim, qui consulunt: sicut vir uxori, parentes finis, domini servis. . . . Sed in domo justi viventes ex fide et adhuc ab illa cælesti civitate peregrinantis etiam qui imperant serviunt eis, quibus videntur imperare. Neque enim dominandi cupiditate imperant, sed officio consulendi, nec principandi superbia, sed providendi misericordia.: [188]1 * Et sumus et nos esse novimus et id esse ac nosse diligimus.: [189]1 * Et ut ostenderet filius dei, se vacasse, fidem tantummodo operatam esse: [190]1 * Et utique verba propterea sunt instituta, non per quæ se homines invicem fallunt, sed per quæ in alterius quisque notitiam cogitationes suas perferat.: [191]1 * Eucharistia panis noster quotidianus est; sed sic accipiamus illum, ut non solum ventre sed et mente reficiamur. Virtus enim ipsa, quæ ibi intelligitur, unitas est, ut redacti in corpus ejus, effecti membra ejus, simus quod accipimus.: [192]1 * Eum, qui post baptismum peccaverit, per pænitentiam credimus posse salvari: [193]1 * Ex persona beatissimi Petri forma unitatis retinendæ vel faciendæ descripta recitatur: [194]1 * Ex utroque fit, id est, ex voluntate hominis et misericordia dei.: [195]1 * Excepta itaque s. virgine Maria, de qua propter honorem domini nullam prorsus, cum de peccatis agitur, haberi volo quæstionem; unde enim scimus, quid ei plus gratiæ collatum fuerit ad vincendum omni ex parte peccatum, quæ concipere et parere meruit, quem constat nullum habuisse peccatum? hac ergo virgine excepta si omnes illos sanctos et sanctas, cum hic viverent, congregare possimus et interrogare, utrum essent sine peccato, quid fuisse responsuros putamus, utrum hoc quod ista dicit an quod Johannes apostolus?: [196]1 * Fatebuntur igitur necesse est aut mutata esse secundum aliud quam secundum corpus, ac per hoc non esse hoc quod in veritate videntur, sed aliud quod non esse secundum propriam essentiam cernuntur. Aut si hoc profiteri noluerint, negare corpus esse sanguinem Christi, quod nefas est non solum dicere verum etiam cogitare.: [197]1 * Felices esse volumus et infelices esse nolumus, sed nec velle possumus.: [198]1 * Fide, spe, caritate colendum deum: [199]1 * Fides impetrat quod lex imperat.: [200]1 * Fides non habet meritum, cui humana ratio præbet experimentum: [201]1 * Fides non quod oculus videt sed quod credit accipit, quoniam spiritualis est esca et spiritualis potus, spiritualiter animam pascens et æternæ satietatis vitam tribuens, sicut ipse salvator mysterium hoc commendans loquitur: spiritus est qui vivificat.: [202]1 * Foris ab ecclesia constitutus et separatus a compagine unitatis et vinculo caritatis æterno supplicio puniveris, etiam si pro Christi nomine vivus incenderis.: [203]1 * Fuit Adam, et in illo fuimus omnes; periit Adam, et in illo omnes perierunt.: [204]1 * Gloria in excelsis: [205]1 * Gloria patri: [206]1 * Gratia: [207]1 * Gratia vero nisi gratis est, gratia non est.: [208]1 * Hæc est prædestinatio sanctorum nihil aliud: præscientia scil. præparatio beneficiorum dei quibus certissime liberantur, quicunque liberantur.: [209]1 * Hæc omnia Paulus viderat in apostolis ceteris, qui bono unitas per caritatem noluerunt a communione Petri recedere, ejus scil. qui negaverat Christum. Quod si major esset amor innocentiæ quam utilitas pacis unitatis, dicerent se non debere communicare Petro, qui negaverat magistrum.: [210]1 * Hæreat hoc maxime prudentis animo lectoris, omnibus scripturis sacris solum illud, quod in honorem dei catholici sapiunt, contineri, sicut frequentium sententiarum luce illustratur, et sicubi durior elocutio moverit quæstionem, certum quidem esse, non ibi id quod injustum est loci illius auctorum sapuisse; secundum id autem debere intelligi, quod et ratio perspicua: [211]1 * Hæresis Pelagiana multum nos, ut gratiam dei quæ per dominum nostrum Jesum Christum est, adversus eam defenderemus, exercuit.: [212]1 * Hae sunt nebulæ Pelagianorum de laude creaturæ, laude nuptiarum, laude legis, laude liberi arbitrii, laude sanctorum: [213]1 * Hi qui de nullo suo opere confidunt, ad sanctorum martyrum protectionem currunt atque ad sacra eorum corpora fletibus insistunt, promereri se veniam iis intercedentibus deprecantur.: [214]1 * Hic omnino granditer et evidenter dei gratia commendatur. Quid enim natura humana in homine Christi meruit ut in unitatem personæ unici filii dei singulariter esset assumpta! Quæ bona voluntas, cujus boni propositi studium, quæ bona opera præcesserunt, quibus mereretur iste homo una fieri persona cum deo? Numquid antea fuit homo, et hoc ei singulare beneficium præstitum est, cum singulariter promereretur deum? Nempe ex quo homo esse coepit, non aliud coepit esse homo quam dei filius: et hoc unicus, et propter deum verbum, quod illo suscepto caro factum est, utique deus. . . . Unde naturæ humanæ tanta gloria, nullis præcedentibus meritis sine dubitatione gratuita, nisi quia magna hic et sola dei gratia fideliter et sobrie considerantibus evidenter ostenditur, ut intellegant homines per eandem gratiam se justifcari a peccatis, per quam factum est ut homo Christus nullum habere posset peccatum.: [215]1 * Hinc post peccatum exul effectus stirpem quoque suam, quam peccando in se tamquam in radice vitiaverat, poena mortis et damnationis obstrinxit, ut quidquid prolis ex illo et simul damnata per quam peccaverat conjuge per carnalem concupiscentiam, in qua inobedientiæ poena similis [so far as the flesh here is not obedient to the will, but acts of itself] retributa est, nasceretur, traheret originale peccatum, quo treheretur per errores doloresque diversos ad illud extremum supplicium.: [216]1 * Hoc illæ litteræ non habent. Non habent illæ paginæ vultum pietatis hujus, lacrimas confessionis, sacrificium tuum, spiritum contribulatum. . . . Nemo ibi cantat: Nonne deo subdita erit anima mea. Ab ipso enim salutare meum: [217]1 * Hoc ipso quod contra voluntatem fecerunt ejus, de ipsis facta est voluntas ejus.: [218]1 * Hominem, si post baptismum lapsus fuerit, per pænitentiam credimus posse salvari: [219]1 * Homines sancti et fideles fiunt cum homine Christo unus Christus, ut omnibus per ejus hanc gratiam societatemque adscendentibus ipse unus Christus adscendat in cælum, qui de cælo descendit.: [220]1 * Hominis sapientia pietas est: [221]1 * Ibi (in Cassiciacum) quid egerim in litteris, jam quidem servientibus tibi, sed adhue superbiæ scholam tanquam in pausatione anhelantibus: [222]1 * Ideoque cum essemus infirmi ad inveniendam liquida ratione veritatem, et ob hoc nobis opus esset auctoritate sanctarum litterarum, jam credere coeperam nullo modo te fuisse tributurum tam excellentem scripturæ per omnes jam terras auctoritatem, nisi et per ipsam tibi credi et per ipsam te quæri voluisses. Jam enim absurditatem quæ me in illis litteris solebat offendere, cum multa ex eis probabiliter exposita audissem, ad sacramentorum altitudinem referebam.: [223]1 * Ille ad deum digne elevat manus, ille orationem bona conscientia effundit qui potest dicere, tu nosti, domine, quam sanctæ et innocentes et mundæ sunt ab omni molestia et iniquitate et rapina quas ad te extendo manus, quemadmodum justa et munda labia et ab omni mendacio libera, quibus offero tibi deprecationem, ut mihi miserearis.: [224]1 * In caritate stat ecclesia.: [225]1 * In isto sine intellectu temporis, tempore . . . est alteritas nata, cito in identitatem revenit: [226]1 * In redemptionis memoriam: [227]1 * Incarnatus dominus in semetipso omne quod nobis inspiravit ostendit, ut quod præcepto diceret, exemplo suaderet.: [228]1 * Infantes debere baptizari in remissionem peccatorum secundum regulam universalis ecclesiæ et secundum evangelii sententiam confitemur, quia dominus statuit, regnum coelorum non nisi baptizatis posse conferri; quod, quia vires naturæ non habent: [229]1 * Intret in animam tuam Christus, inhabitet in mentibus tuis Jesus. . . . Quid mihi prodest tantorum conscio peccatorum, si dominus veniat, nisi veniat in meam animam, redeat in meam mentem, nisi vivat in me Christus.: [230]1 * Invenietis nobilitatem divini eloquii non secundum vestram assertionem more philosophorum in tumore et pompa esse verborum: [231]1 * Invenimus ergo in terrena civitate dual formas, unam suam præsentiam demonstrantem, alteram cælesti civitati signifcandæ sua præsentia servientem.: [232]1 * Ipsa ecclesia, quæ in omnibus esse debet placatrix dei, quid est aliud quam exacerbatrix dei? aut præter paucissimos quosdam, qui mala fugiunt, quid est aliud poene omnis coetus Christianorum quam sentina vitiorum?: [233]1 * Ipse quod est esse, subsistit tripliciter.: [234]1 * Ita gestum est, ut his rebus non mystice tantum dictis sed etiam gestis configuraretur vita Christiana quæ hic geritur.: [235]1 * Ita qui per delictorum pænitentiam instituerat dominus satisfacere: [236]1 * Jube quæso atque impera quidquid vis, sed sana et aperi aures meas.: [237]1 * Justitia est, ut ab eruditis definiri solet (s. Aristoteles), et ut nos intelligere possumus, virtus (si per Stoicos liceat alteri alteram præferre), virtutum omnium maxima fungens diligenter officio ad restituendum sua unicuique, sine fraude, sine gratia.: [238]1 * Justitia opus est, ut promereri quis possit deum judicem.: [239]1 * Lex Christianorum crux est sancta Christi filii dei vivi.: [240]1 * Lex dei fons ac magistra justitiæ: [241]1 * Libellus Brevissimus: [242]1 * Libellus de tenenda immobiliter scripturæ veritate: [243]1 * Libellus fidei: [244]1 * Libertas arbritii, qua a deo emancipatus homo est: [245]1 * Libertas utriusque partis.: [246]1 * Libertatem arbitrii in primo homine perdidimus: [247]1 * Libido: [248]1 * Libris tuis, quos tanta in omnibus fere gentibus auctoritate fundasti. . . . Non audiendos esse, si qui forte mihi dicerent; unde scis illos libros unius veri et veracissimi dei spiritu esse humano generi ministratos? idipsum enim maxime credendum erat: [249]1 * Licet a malis interim vita, moribus, corde ac voluntate separari atque discedere, quæ separatio semper oportet custodiatur. Corporalis autem separatio ad sæculi finem fidenter, patienter, fortiter exspectatur.: [250]1 * Longe minor in novo quam in veteri testamento.: [251]1 * Longe tolerabilius est in his quæ a religione sunt sejuncta mentiri, quam in iis, sine quorum fide vel notitia deus coli non potest, falli.: [252]1 * Malos in unitate catholica vel non noverunt, vel pro unitate tolerant quos noverunt.: [253]1 * Malum est contra interdictum aliquid facere; sed pejus est, unitatem non habere, cum possis . . . : [254]1 * Malum si substantia esset, bonum esset. Aut enim esset incorruptibilis substantia, magnum utique bonum; aut substantia corruptibilis esset, quæ nisi bona esset, corrumpi non posset.: [255]1 * Manifestum est, fieri posse, ut in eis qui sunt ex parte diaboli sanctum sit sacramentum Christi, non ad salutem, sed ad judicium eorum . . . signa nostri imperatoris in eis cognoscimus . . . desertores sunt.: [256]1 * Manifestum itaque est, in Adam omnes peccasse quasi in massa; ipse enim per peccatum corruptus, quos genuit, omnes, nati sunt sub peccato. Ex eo igitur cuncti peccatores, quia ex eo ipso sumus omnes.: [257]1 * Mihi adhærere deo bonum est: [258]1 * Minorem immortalitatem (i.e.: [259]1 * Mitissima poena: [260]1 * Multa præterea quæ de ultimo judicio ita dici videntur, ut diligenter considerata reperiantur ambigua vel magis ad aliud pertinentia, sive scilicet ad eum salva oris adventum, quo per totum hoc tempus in ecclesia sua venit, hoc est in membris suis, particulatim atque paulatim, quoniam tota corpus est ejus: [261]1 * Multo liberius erit arbitrium, quod omnino non poterit servire peccato.: [262]1 * Nam de naturæ possibilitate, de libero arbitrio, et de omni dei gratia et quotidiana gratia cui non sit recte sentienti uberrimum disputare?: [263]1 * Nam in illa (catholica) ecclesia quis spiritus esse potest, nisi qui pariat filios gehennæ?: [264]1 * Nam si secundum quosdam figurate hic nihil accipitur, sed totum in veritate conspicitur, nihil hic fides operatur, quoniam nihil spiritale geritur . . . nec jam mysterium erit, in quo nihil secreti, nihil abditi continebitur: [265]1 * Nascitur credens non ex ministri sterilitate, sed ex veritatis foecunditate.: [266]1 * Naturalia per accidens non convertuntur." "Quod innascitur usque ad finem ejus, cui adhæserit, perseverat.: [267]1 * Natus Christus insinuat nobis gratiam dei, qua homo nullis præcedentibus meritis in ipso exordio naturæ suæ quo esse coepit, verbo deo copularetur in tantam personæ unitatem, ut idem ipse esset filius dei qui filius hominis, etc.: [268]1 * Ne quis putaret, in solis apostolis aut episcopis spem suam esse ponendam, sic Paulus ait: Quid est enim Paulus vel quid Apollo? Utique ministri ejus, in quem credidistis. Est ergo in universis servientibus non dominium sed ministerium.: [269]1 * Nec illud mihi placet, quod in ista vita deo intellecto jam beatam esse animam (in Soliloquiis) dixi, nisi forte spe: [270]1 * Nec mulier petiit, nec Christus promisit, sed fides tantum quantum præsumpsit, exegit.: [271]1 * Nec quidquam bene regenerat, nisi bono semine (boni sacerdotis) regeneretur.: [272]1 * Nemo igitur quærat efficientem causam malæ voluntatis; non enim est efficiens sed deficiens (that is, the aspiration after nothing, after the annulling of life, constitutes the content of the bad will), quia nec illa effectio sed defectio. Deficere namque ab eo, quod summe est, ad id, quod minus est, hoc est incipere habere voluntatem malam. Causas porro defectionum istarum, cum efficientes non sint, ut dixi, sed deficientes, velle invenire tale est, ac si quisquam velit videre tenebras vel audire silentium, quod tamen utrumque nobis notum est, neque illud nisi per oculos, neque hoc nisi per aures, non sane in specie, sed in speciei privatione. Nemo ergo ex me scire quærat, quod me nescire scio, nisi forte, ut nescire discat, quod scire non posse sciendum est. Ea quippe quæ non in specie, sed in ejus privatione sciuntur, si dici aut intellegi potest quodammodo nesciendo sciuntur, ut sciendo nesciantur.: [273]1 * Nemo sibi arroget, nemo de meritis, nemo de potestate se jactet, sed omnes speremus per dominum Jesum misericordiam invenire--quæ enim spes alia peccatoribus?: [274]1 * Neque de ipsis criminibus quamlibet magnis remittendis in sancta ecclesia dei misericordia desperanda est agentibus pænitentiam secundum modum sui cujusque peccati.: [275]1 * Neque per ipsum liberaremur unum mediatorem dei et hominum hominem Jesum Christum, nisi esset et deus. Sed cum factus est Adam homo, scil. rectus, mediatore non opus erat. Cum vero genus humanum peccata longe separaverunt a deo,: [276]1 * Nihil aliud habeo quam voluntatem; nihil aliud scio nisi fluxa et caduca spernenda esse, certa et æterna requirenda . . . si fide te inveniunt, qui ad te refugiunt, fidem da, si virtute, virtutem, si scientia, scientiam. Auge in me fidem, auge spem, auge caritatem.: [277]1 * Nihil aliud nisi similitudo mortis Christi; nihil autem aliud mortem Christi crucifixi nisi remissionis peccati similitudinem, ut quemadmodum in illo vera mors facta est, sic in nobis vera remissio peccatorum.: [278]1 * Nihil potest per sanctas scripturas probari, quod justitia non possit tueri.: [279]1 * Nisi per indebitam misericordiam nemo liberatur et nisi per debitum judicium nemo damnatur.: [280]1 * Nomen trinitatis est, quod sanctificat, non opus (operantis).: [281]1 * Non agitur de uno Pelagio, qui jam forte correctus est.: [282]1 * Non autem existimo quemquam ita desipere, ut credat ad ecclesiæ pertinere unitatem eum qui non habet caritatem. Sicut ergo deus unus colitur ignoranter etiam extra ecclesiam nec ideo non est ipse, et fides una habetur sine caritate etiam extra ecclesiam, nec ideo non est ipse, ita et unus baptismus, etc.: [283]1 * Non credere potest quodlibet libero arbitrio, si nulla sit suasio vel vocatio cui credat; profecto et ipsum velle credere deus operatur in homine et in omnibus misericordia ejus prævenit nos: consentire autem vocationi dei vel ab ea dissentire propriæ voluntatis est.: [284]1 * Non est regnum dei esca et potus: [285]1 * Non nisi electorum cibus est.: [286]1 * Non omnia nostra Christus explevit, per crucem quidem suam omnes redemit, sed remansit, ut qui redimi et regnare cum eo nititur, crucifigatur. Hoc profecto residuum viderat, qui dicebat: si compatimur et conregnabimus. Quasi dicat: Quod explevit Christus, non valet nisi ei, qui id quod remansit adimplet: [287]1 * Non respublica est in ecclesia, sed ecclesia in republica est, id est in imperio Romano.: [288]1 * Non rivulum nostrum tuo largo fonti augendo refundimus.: [289]1 * Non sicut quidam volunt anima sola hoc mysterio pascitur, quia non sola redimitur morte Christi et salvatur, verum etiam et caro nostra, etc. etc.: [290]1 * Nos autem dicimus humanam voluntatem sic divinitus adjuvari ad faciendam justitiam, ut præter quod creatus est homo cum libero arbitrio voluntatis, præterque doctrinam qua ei præcipitur quemadmodum vivere debeat, accipiat spiritum sanctum, quo fiat in animo ejus delectatio dilectioque summi illius atque incommutabilis boni quod deus est, etiam nunc cum adhuc per fidem ambulatur, nondum per speciem: ut hac sibi velut arra data gratuiti muneris inardescat inhærere creatori atque inflammetur accedere ad participationem illius veri luminis, ut ex illo ei bene sit, a quo habet ut sit. Nam neque liberum arbitrium quidquam nisi ad peccandum valet, si lateat veritatis via, et cum id quod agendum et quo nitendum est coeperit non latere, nisi etiam delectet et ametur, non agitur, non suscipitur, non bene vivitur. Ut autem diligatur, caritas dei diffunditur in cordibus nostris, non per arbitrium liberum quod surgit ex nobis, sed per spiritum sanctum qui datus est nobis.: [291]1 * Nos minus amasset, nisi et vulnera nostra susciperet: [292]1 * Nos pro nostris angustiis unum inculcamus, bonum atque optimum esse quod deus præcipit. Audaciam existimo de bono divini præcepti disputare. Neque enim quia bonum est, idcirco auscultare debemus, sed quia deus præcepit. Ad exhibitionem obsequii prior est majestas divinæ potestatis, prior est auctoritas imperantis quam utilitas servientis.: [293]1 * Novitas vocum in adoptione, nuncupatione, omnino fidelibus omnibus detestanda est.: [294]1 * Nullus moveatur de hoc corpore Christi et sanguine, quod in mysterio vera sit caro et verus: [295]1 * Numerus ille justorum, qui secundum propositum vocati sunt, ipse est (ecclesia). . . . Sunt etiam quidam ex eo numero qui adhuc nequiter vivant aut etiam in hæresibus vel in gentilium superstitionibus jaceant, et tamen etiam illic novit dominus qui sunt ejus. Namque in illa ineffabili præscientia dei multi qui foris videntur, intus sunt, et multi, qui intus videntur, foris sunt.: [296]1 * Numquid: [297]1 * Numquid nihil est veritas, quoniam neque per finita, neque per infinita locorum spatia diffusa est.: [298]1 * Nunc quoniam propria voce anathematizavit Pelagius incertum stultiloquium, recte respondens, hominem cum adjutorio dei et gratia posse esse sine peccato, respondeat et ad alia capitula.: [299]1 * Nunc quoniam satisfactum est nobis prosecutionibus præsentis Pelagii monachi, qui quidem piis doctrinis consentit, contraria vero ecclesiæ fidei anathematizat, communionis ecclesiasticæ eum esse et catholicæ confitemur.: [300]1 * Obedientia: [301]1 * Obsequii ratio in similitudine animorum constituta est.: [302]1 * Omne bonum ac malum, quo vel laudabiles vel vituperabiles sumus, non nobiscum oritur, sed agitur a nobis: capaces enim utriusque rei, non pleni: [303]1 * Omnes quotquot fuerunt sancti, ad ipsam ecclesiam pertinent.: [304]1 * Omnes res origine et radice consistit, et si caput non habet aliquid, nihil est.: [305]1 * Oves dominicum characterem a fallacibus deprædatoribus foris adeptæ.: [306]1 * Parva erat pro nobis domini nostri humilitas in nascendo; accessit etiam ut mori pro mortalibus dignaretur.: [307]1 * Pater . . . filius . . . ne mater quidam ecclesia præteritur. Si quidem in filio et patre mater recognoscitur, de qua constat et patris et filii nomen.: [308]1 * Pax cælestis civitatis ordinatissima et concordissima societas fruendi deo et invicem in deo.: [309]1 * Peccata nostra præterita in baptismatis perceptione laxata sunt, et tamen post baptisma multa commisimus, sed laxari iterum baptismatis aqua non possumus. Quia ergo et post baptisma inquinavimus vitam, baptizemus lacrimis conscientiam.: [310]1 * Peccata, quæ male agendo postea committuntur, possunt et pænitendo sanari, sicut etiam post baptismum fieri videmus: [311]1 * Pelagii nomen cum magna ejus laude cognovi.: [312]1 * Pelagius et Cælestius hujus perversitatis auctores vel perhibentur vel etiam probantur, vel certe si auctores non sunt, sed hoc ab aliis didicerunt, assertores tamen atque doctores: [313]1 * Pensandum est, quod tutior: [314]1 * Per Christum factus est alter mundus.: [315]1 * Per eleemosynas de peccatis præteritis est propitiandus deus, non ad hoc emendus quodam modo, ut peccata semper liceat impune committere.: [316]1 * Per remissionem peccatorum stat ecclesia quæ est in terris.: [317]1 * Per sacra eloquia dono spiritus vivificamur, ut mortifera a nobis opera repellamus; spiritus vadit, cum legentis animum diversis modis et ordinibus tangit deus.: [318]1 * Per se ipsum considerandus est baptismus verbis evangelicis, non adjuncta neque permixta ulla perversitate atque malitia sive accipientium sive tradentium . . . non cogitandum, quis det sed quid det.: [319]1 * Perfecta ignorantia (in scripturis justitia nominatur): [320]1 * Perfecta justitia: [321]1 * Petrus, apostolorum caput, coeli janitor, ecclesiæ fundamentum: [322]1 * Plus facimus quam in lege et evangelis jussum est--gratiam dei et adjutorium non ad singulos actus dari, sed in libero arbitrio esse, vel in lege ac doctrina--dei gratiam secundum merita nostra dari, quia si peccatoribus illam dat, videtur esse iniquus--si gratia dei est, quando vincimus peccata, ergo ipse est in culpa, quando a peccato vincimur, quia omnino custodire nos aut non potuit aut noluit--unumquemque hominem omnes virtutes posse habere et gratias--filios dei non posse vocari nisi omni modo absque peccato fuerint effecti--oblivionem et ignorantiam non subjacere peccato, quoniam non secundum voluntatem eveniunt, sed secundum necessitatem--non esse liberum arbitrium, si dei indigeat auxilio, quoniam in propria voluntate habet unusquisque aut facere aliquid aut non facere--victoriam nostram non ex dei esse adjutorio, sed ex libero arbitrio--si anima non potest esse sine peccato, ergo et deus subjacet peccato, cujus pars, hoc est anima: [323]1 * Prædestinatio ad mortem: [324]1 * Prædicat Christus Christum.: [325]1 * Præscivit deus hominem ad poenam.: [326]1 * Primum oportet noveris diem natalem domini non in sacramento celebrari, sed tantum in memoriam revocari quod natus sit, ac per hoc nihil opus erat, nisi revolutum anni diem, quo ipsa res acta est, festa devotione signari. Sacramentum est autem in aliqua celebratione, cum rei gestæ commemoratio ita fit, ut aliquid etiam signfcari intelligatur, quod sancte accipiendum est: [327]1 * Pro Augustino responsiones ad capitula objectionum Gallorum calumniantium (against the Gallican monks); Responsiones pro Augustino ad excerpta quæ de Genuensi civitate sunt missa: [328]1 * Professio fidei (to Leontius) contra eos, qui dum per solam dei voluntatem alios dicunt ad vitam attrahi, alios in mortem deprimi, hinc fatum cum gentilibus asserunt, inde liberum arbitrium cum Manichæis negant.: [329]1 * Propter singularitatem personæ, in qua divinitas filii dei cum hurnanitate sua communes habeat actiones, qua ex causa aliquando ea quæ divina sunt referuntur ad humana, et ea quæ humana fiunt interdum adscribuntur ad divina, et hoc ordine aliquando dei filius in hominis filio filius hominis appellari dignatur et hominis filius in dei filio filius dei nuncupatur: [330]1 * Punici: [331]1 * Quæ autem domus dei et ipsa civitas? Domus enim dei populus dei, quia domus dei templum dei . . . omnes fideles, quæ est domus dei, cum angelis faciunt unam civitatem. Habet custodes. Christus custodiebat, custos erat. Et episcopi hoc faciunt: [332]1 * Quæ potest esse perversitas ut qui suis criminibus reus est, alium faciat innocentem?: [333]1 * Quæ tu si non didicisses, Pelagiani dogmatis machina sine architecto necessario remansisset.: [334]1 * Quæritis necessitatem rei quæ esse non potest si patitur necessitatem. Huic motui animi libero, sine coactu originis inquieto, si causa ipso motu detur antiquior, non gignitur omnino sed tollitur.: [335]1 * Qua gratia homo Jesus ab initio factus est bonus, eadem gratia homines qui sunt membra ejus ex malis fiunt boni.: [336]1 * Quam porro ineptum, quam pænitentiam non adimplere, ei veniam delictorum sustinere? Hoc est pretium non exhibere, ad mercem manum emittere: [337]1 * Quantum ad totius mundi pertinet partes, modica pars est in compensatione totius mundi, in qua fides Christiana nominatur.: [338]1 * Quasi vero ex hoc generet unde separata est, et non ex hoc unde conjuncta est. Separata est enim a vinculo caritatis et pacio, sed juncta est in uno baptismate. Itaque est una ecclesia, quæ sola Catholica nominatur: [339]1 * Quem vero judicem poteris Ambrosio reperire meliorem? De quo magister tuus Pelagius ait, quod ejus fidem et purissimum in scripturis sensum ne inimicus quidem ausus est reprehendere.: [340]1 * Quemadmodum si fiat ordinatio cleri ad plebem congregandam, etiamsi plebis congregatio non subsequatur, manet tamen in illis ordinatis sacramentum ordinationis, et si aliqua culpa quisquam ab officio removeatur, sacramento domini semel imposito non carebit, quamvis ad judicium permanente: [341]1 * Qui fidem a perfido sumpserit non fidem percipit, sed reatum.: [342]1 * Qui gratiam confirmat, hominum laudat naturam.: [343]1 * Qui in invidia intus et malevolentia sine caritate vivunt, verum baptisma possunt et accipere et tradere. (Sed) salus, inquit Cyprianus, extra ecclesiam non est. Quis negat? Et ideo quæcumque ipsius ecclesiæ habentur, extra ecclesiam non valent ad salutem. Sed aliud est non habere, aliud non utiliter habere: [344]1 * Qui vero in ecclesia remitti peccata non credens contemnit tantam divini muneris largitatem et in hac obstinatione mentis diem claudit extremum, reus est illo irremissibili peccato in spiritum sanctum.: [345]1 * Qui vult ergo salvus esse, ita de trinitate sentiat.: [346]1 * Quia corpus ille catholicum ad omnem hominem habuit, omne quod passus est catholicum fecit; id est ut omnis caro in ipso crucifixa sit: [347]1 * Quia intra Catholicam constitutos plures audivi destruere nec non et alios adstruere.: [348]1 * Quia naturalia ab initio substantiæ usque ad terminum illius perseverant.: [349]1 * Quia unum verbum dei est, per quod facta sunt omnia, quod est incommutabilis veritas, ibi principaliter atque incommutabiliter sunt omnia simul, et omnia vita sunt et omnia unum sunt.: [350]1 * Quicunque natus est sub peccato, quem ipsa nosciæ conditionis hæreditas adstrinxit ad culpam.: [351]1 * Quid aliud istis restat nisi ut ipsum regnum cælorum ad hanc temporalem vitam, in qua nunc sumus, asserant pertinere? Cur enim non et in hanc insaniam progrediatur cæca præsumptio? Et quid hac assertione furiosius? Nam etsi regnum cælorum aliquando ecclesia etiam quæ hoc tempore est appellatur ad hoc utique sic appellatur, quia futuræ vitæ sempiternæque colligitur.: [352]1 * Quid animam faciet beatam, nisi meritum suum et præmium domini sui? Sed et meritum ejus gratia est illius, cujus, præmium erit beatitudo ejus.: [353]1 * Quid enim prodest ecclesiæ dei Christum appellare adoptivum filium vel deum nuncupativum?: [354]1 * Quid est gratia? peccati remissio, i.e.: [355]1 * Quid est, quod manducant homines? Ecce omnes indifferenter quam sæpe sacramenta altaris percipiunt. Percipiunt plane, sed alius carnem Christi spiritaliter manducat et sanguinem bibit, alius vero non, quamvis buccellam de manu sacerdotis videatur percipere. Et quid accipit, cum una sit consecratio: [356]1 * Quid habes, quod non accepisti.: [357]1 * Quid intelligimus carnis sensum et carnis vitam nisi quodcunque pudet pronuntiare?: [358]1 * Quid inter Pelagium et Cælestium in hac quæstione distabit, nisi quod ille apertior, iste occultior fuit; ille pertinacior, iste mendacior, vel certe ille liberior, hic astutior.: [359]1 * Quid opus est, ut eorum scrutemur opuscula, qui prius quam ista hæresis (Pelagianorum) oriretur, non habuerunt necessitatem in hac difficili ad solvendum quæstione versari? quod procul dubio facerent, si respondere talibus cogerentur. Unde factum est, ut de gratia dei quid sentirent, breviter quibusdam scriptorum suorum locis et transeunter adtingerent, immorarentur vero in eis, quæ adversus inimicos ecclesiæ disputabant, et in exhortationibus ad quasque virtutes, quibus deo vivo et vero pro adipiscenda vita æterna et vera felicitate servitur. Frequentationibus autem orationum simpliciter apparebat dei gratia quid valeret; non enim poscerentur de deo quæ præcipit fieri, nisi ab illo donaretur ut fierent.: [360]1 * Quid primum, quid ultimum, teneatur, quæ totius definitionis summa sit, quod certum propriumque fidei catholicæ fundamentum.: [361]1 * Quid tam necessarium fuit ad erigendam spem nostram, quam ut demonstraretur nobis, quanti nos penderet deus quantumque diligeret: [362]1 * Quis alienam mortem sua solvit nisi solus dei filius.: [363]1 * Quisquis tibi enumerat vera merita sua, quid tibi enumerat nisi munera tua.: [364]1 * Quod ais, ad colendum recte deum sine ipsius adjutorio dici a nobis sufficere unicuique libertatem arbitrii, omnino mentiris. Cum igitur cultus dei multis intelligatur modis, et in custodia mandatorum et in execratione vitiorum et in simplicitate conversationis et in ordine mysteriorum et in profunditate dogmatum . . . qui fieri potest, ut nos in confuso dicamus, sine adjutorio dei liberum arbitrium sufficiens ad ejus esse culturam . . . cunt utique ista omnia, tam quæ dogmatibus quam quæ mysteriis continentur, libertas arbitrii per se non potuerit invenire: [365]1 * Quod bellum gravius et amarius cogitari potest, quam ubi voluntas sic adversa est passioni et passio voluntati, ut nullius earum victoria tales inimicitiæ finiantur, et ubi sic confligit cum ipsa natura corporis vis doloris, ut neutrum alteri cedat? Hic [in terra] enim quando contingit iste conflictus, aut dolor vincit et sensum mors adimit, aut natura vincit et dolorem sanitas tollit. Ibi autem et dolor permanet ut affligat, et natura perdurat ut sentiat; quia utrumque ideo non deficit, ne poena deficiat.: [366]1 * Quod homini proficit, deo servit.: [367]1 * Quod operum lex minando imperat, hoc fidei Iex credendo impetrat. Ipsa est illa sapientia quæ pietas vocatur, qua colitur pater luminum, a quo est omne datum optimum et omne donum perfectum. . . . Lege operum dicit deus: Fac quod jubeo; lege fidei dicitur deo: Da quod jubes. . . . Non spiritum hujus mundi accepimus, ait constantissimus gratiæ prædicator, sed spiritum qui ex deo est, ut sciamus quæ a deo donata sunt nobis. Quis est autem spiritus mundi hujus, nisi superbiæ spiritus? . . . Nec alio spiritu decipiuntur etiam illi qui ignorantes dei justitiam et suam justitiam volentes constituere, justitiæ dei non sunt subjecti. Unde mihi videtur magis esse fidei filius, qui novit a quo speret quod nondum habet, quam qui sibi tribuit id quod habet. Colligimus non justificari hominem littera, sed spiritu, non factorum meritis, sed gratuita gratia.: [368]1 * Quod ratio arguit, non potest auctoritas vindicare: [369]1 * Quomodo Adam non perseverando peccavit, qui perseverantiam non accepit?: [370]1 * Quos deus semel prædestinavit ad vitam, etiamsi negligant, etiamsi peccent, etiamsi nolint, ad vitam perducentur inviti, quos autem prædestinavit ad mortem, etiamsi currant, etiamsi festinent, sine causa laborant.: [371]1 * Rape occasionem inopinatæ felicitatis, ut ille tu, nihil quondam penes deum nisi stilla situlæ et areæ pulvus et vasculum figuli, arbor exinde fias ills quæ penes aquas seritur, etc.: [372]1 * Ratio: [373]1 * Redditur quidem meritis tuis corona sua, sed dei dona sunt merita tua.: [374]1 * Regnat carnalis cupiditas, ubi non est dei caritas.: [375]1 * Reliqua vero et secundum ipsorum testimonium a me dicta non sunt, pro quibus ego satisfacere non debeo.: [376]1 * Remota justitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia: [377]1 * Renovatio = justificatio = sanctificatio = sanctitas: [378]1 * Res dei ratio, quia deus nihil non ratione providit, nihil non ratione tractari intellegique voluit.: [379]1 * Responsiones pro Augustino ad capitula objectionum Vincentiarium: [380]1 * Restat jam de credentis merito: [381]1 * Sæpe mihi ignota est humana conscientia, sed certus sum de Christi misericordia . . . non est perfidus Christus, a quo fidem percipio, non reatum . . . origo mea Christus est, radix mea Christus est . . . semen quo regeneror, verbum dei est . . . etiam si ille, per quem audio, quæ mihi dicit ipse non facit . . . me innocentem non facit nisi qui mortuus est propter delicta nostra et resurrexit propter justificationem nostram. Non enim in ministrum, per quem baptizor, credo, sed in eum, qui justificat impium.: [382]1 * Salutis unda a culpa primi parentis absolvimur, sed tamen reatum ejusdem culpæ diluentes absoluti quoque adhuc carnaliter obimus.: [383]1 * Sanctas quidem apostoli esse paginas confitemur, non ob aliud, nisi quia rationi: [384]1 * Scripturæ sanctæ, quas ecclesiæ catholicæ commendat auctoritas.: [385]1 * Secundum id, quod unigenitus est, non habet fratres; secundum id autem quod primogenitus est, fratres vocare dignatus est omnes qui post ejus et per ejus primatum in dei gratiam renascuntur per adoptionem filiorum.: [386]1 * Sed bene quod nos onere talium personarum prior levasti. Nam in libro ad Timasium cum s. Pelagius venerabilium virorum tam Ambrosii quam Cypriani recordatus fuisset, qui liberum arbitrium in libris suis commendaverant, respondisti nulla te gravari auctoritate talium, ita ut diceres eos processu vitæ melioris, si quid male senserant, expiasse.: [387]1 * Sed non ex toto vult; non ergo ex toto imperat: [388]1 * Semen quo regeneror verbum dei est.: [389]1 * Si Italiæ adjaces habes Romam, unde nobis auctoritas quoque praesto est.: [390]1 * Si per gratiam (De gestis 30) omnia facimus, quando vincimur a peccato, non nos vincimur, sed dei gratia, quæ voluit nos adjuvare omni modo et non potuit.: [391]1 * Si qua culpa in episcopis invenitur, nescic quis Petri successori subjectus non sit; cum vero culpa non exigit, omnes secundum rationem humilitatis æquales sunt.: [392]1 * Sic enim oportebat prius hominem fieri, ut et bene velle posset et male, nec gratis si bene, nec impune, si male; postea vero sic erit, ut male velle non possit, nec ideo libero carebit arbitrio . . . ordo prætermittendus non fuit, in quo deus ostendere voluit, quam bonum sit animal rationale quod etiam non peccare possit, quamvis sit melius quod peccare non possit.: [393]1 * Sic et Non: [394]1 * Signacula quidem rerum divinarum esse visibilia, sed res ipsas invisibiles in eis honorari.: [395]1 * Singulariter ad absolutionem nostram oblata cum lacrimis et benignitate mentis sacri altaris hostia suffragatur, quia is, qui in se resurgens a mortuis jam non moritur, adhuc per hanc in suo mysterio pro nobis iterum patitur. Nam quoties ei hostiam suæ passionis offerimus, toties nobis ad absolutionem nostram passionem illius reparamus.: [396]1 * Spiritale: [397]1 * Spiritus dei, qui cum a confitentibus non discedit neque dividitur, ipse in nobis loquitur et coronatur.: [398]1 * Sub laude baptismatis eructat Augustinus Manichæorum sordes ac naturale peccatum, ut ecclesiæ catholicæ pura hactenus sacramenta contaminet: [399]1 * Tam porro nemo est qui esse se nolit, quam nemo est qui non esse beatus velit. Quo modo enim potest beatus esse, si nihil sit?: [400]1 * Tanto quisque tolerabiliorem: [401]1 * Tantum sentiebam de domino Christo meo, quantum de excellentis sapientiæ viro, cui nullus posset æquari; præsertim quia mirabiliter natus ex virgine ad exemplum contemnendorum temporalium pro adipiscenda immortalitate divina pro nobis cura tantam auctoritatem magisterii meruisse videbatur.: [402]1 * Tenebatur justa damnatione genus humanum et omnes erant iræ filii: [403]1 * Traduciani pro se sursum deorsum plebecularum aut ruralium aut theatralium scita commendant.: [404]1 * Tui profecto sic semper indigent omnes electi tui, quo videlicet tibi de te solo semper valeant placere. Quemadmodum palmites indigent vite, quo fructum queant ferre, vel aër aut oculi luce, quo vel ille lucidus esse vel illi possint videre. . . . te igitur supplex invoco . . . ut largiaris indigentissimo mihi per gratuitae gratiæ tuæ invictissimam virtutem, etc: [405]1 * Ubi enim erat illa ædificans caritas a fundamento humilitatis, quod est Christus Jesus?: [406]1 * Ubi ergo malum et unde et qua huc irrepsit? Quæ radix ejus et quo semen ejus? An omnino non est? Cur ergo timemus et cavemus quod non est? Aut si inaniter timemus, certe vel timor ipse malum est . . . et tanto gravius malum, quanto non est quod timeamus. Idcirco aut est malum quod timemus, aut hoc malum est quia timemus: [407]1 * Ubi latuit, ubi dormivit hoc nomen adoptionis vel nuncupationis de Christo?: [408]1 * Unigenitus vocatur secundum divinitatis excellentiam, quia sine fratribus, primogenitus secundum susceptionem hominis, in qua per adoptionem gratiæ fratres habere dignatus est, de quibus esset primogenitus.: [409]1 * Unitas: [410]1 * Ut etiam caro nostra per hoc ad immortalitatem et incorruptionem reparetur.: [411]1 * Ut quodammodo peccato moreretur, dum moritur carni.: [412]1 * Væ tibi flumen moris humani? quis resistet tibi? quamdiu non siccaberis? quosque volves Evæ, filius in mare magnum et formidolosum, quod vix transeunt qui lignum [ecclesiam] conscenderint?: [413]1 * Venerabilis memoriæ Milevitanus episcopus catholicæ communionis Optatus.: [414]1 * Venit inter homines mediator dei et hominum, homo Christus Jesus, ad præbendum exemplum vitæ hominibus simplex, ad non parcendum malignis spiritibus rectus ad debellandum superbiam timens deum, ad detergendam vero in electis suis immunditiam recedens a malo.: [415]1 * Verumtamen, quæso, responde mihi: num universa hujusmodi fidei mystica sacramenta, quæ symbolo non continentur, sine quibus quisque, qui ad hoc pertingere potest, catholicus esse non potest, symbolis inserenda et propter compendium minus intellegentium, ut cuique libuerit, addenda sunt?: [416]1 * Vides non dubitasse Mariam, sed credidisse et ideo fructum fidei consecutam. . . . Sed et vos beati, qui audistis et credidistis; quæcunque enim crediderit anima et concipit et generat dei verbum et opera ejus agnoscit. Sit in singulis Mariæ anima, ut magnificet dominum; sit in singulis spiritus Mariæ, ut exultet in deo. Si secundum carnem una mater est Christi, secundum fidem tamen omnium fructus est Christus: [417]1 * Virginibus nec maritus dominus, dominus vester ac caput Christus est ad instar et vicem masculi.: [418]1 * Virginitas et prompta fides Christum bibit alvo cordis et intactis condit paritura latebris.: [419]1 * Virtutes ita crescent et perficientur, ut te ad vitam vere beatam, quæ nonnisi æterna est, sine ulla dubitatione perducant: ubi jam nec prudenter: [420]1 * Visibilis sacerdos visibiles creaturas in substantiam corporis et sanguinis sui verbo suo secreta potestate convertit.: [421]1 * Vivit enim unicus pater noster et mater ecclesia.: [422]1 * Vobis (Donatistis) pacem nos annuntiamus, non ut, cum ad nos veneritis, alterum baptismum accipiatis, sed ut eum qui jam apud vos erat utiliter habeatis: [423]1 * Voluntas est nihil aliud quam motus animi cogente nullo: [424]1 * Voluntas facti origo est;: [425]1 * Vos oves Christi estis, characterem dominicum portatis in Sacramento.: [426]1 * a baptismate incipit renovatio: [427]1 * a commutatio: [428]1 * a deo: [429]1 * a necessario: [430]1 * a patre: [431]1 * abyssus corruptionis nostræ: [432]1 * actio rationalis: [433]1 * ad Innocentium: [434]1 * ad corpus Christi mystice refertur: [435]1 * ad deum: [436]1 [437]2 * ad discendum necessarie dupliciter ducimur, auctoritate atque ratione: [438]1 * ad judicium damnationis: [439]1 * ad salutem valet: [440]1 * adjutorium: [441]1 [442]2 [443]3 [444]4 [445]5 [446]6 [447]7 [448]8 [449]9 [450]10 [451]11 * adjuvante gratia esse: [452]1 * adjuvat spiritus sanctus inspirans pro concupiscentia mala concupiscentiam bonam, hoc est caritatem diffundens in cordibus nostris.: [453]1 * adoptio: [454]1 [455]2 [456]3 [457]4 [458]5 [459]6 [460]7 [461]8 [462]9 * adoptivi cum adoptivo, servi cum servo, Christi cum Christo, deus inter deos: [463]1 * adoptivi hominis non horruisti vestimentum: [464]1 * adoptivi hominis passio: [465]1 * alicui rei amore inhærere propter se ipsam: [466]1 * aliquos vero ad malum divina potestate prædestinatos esse non solum non credimus, sed etiam, si sunt qui tantum malum credere velint, cum omni detestatione illis anathema dicimus.: [467]1 * alter: [468]1 [469]2 * alteritas nata: [470]1 * altissimis ignorantiæ tenebris: [471]1 * amor: [472]1 * amor boni: [473]1 * amor dei usque ad contemptum sui: [474]1 * amor essendi et sciendi: [475]1 * amor sui: [476]1 * amore inhærere: [477]1 * amplexus dei: [478]1 * amplius nobis profuit culpa quam nocuit: [479]1 * anathematizo: [480]1 * anathemo qui vel sentit vel dicit, gratiam dei, qua Christus venit in hunc mundum peccatores salvos facere, non solum per singulas horas aut per singula momenta, sed etiam per singulos actus nostros non esse necessariam, et qui hanc conantur auferre, poenas sortiantur æternas: [481]1 * angeli et deinde corporalia omnia subministrata: [482]1 * angelus: [483]1 [484]2 * animae medicina distribuitur in auctoritatem atque rationem: [485]1 * ante unum quod est in numero, plane simplex.: [486]1 * antiqui homines: [487]1 * antiquitas catholicæ fidei: [488]1 * appetitus: [489]1 * appetitus beatitudinis: [490]1 * aptum: [491]1 * arbitrium honestatis: [492]1 * artificium promerendi obsequium est, obsequii vero disciplina morigera subjectio est.: [493]1 * assensus, fiducia: [494]1 * assumptio: [495]1 * assumtio hominis: [496]1 * assumtio hominis = adoptio hominis: [497]1 * assumtio humanæ naturæ: [498]1 * attigimus veritatem modice toto ictu cordis: [499]1 * auctoritas: [500]1 [501]2 [502]3 [503]4 [504]5 [505]6 [506]7 [507]8 [508]9 * augmenta beneficiorum divinorum utilia esse et necessaria omnibus in commune ætatibus dicimus, ita tamen ut nec virtus nec peccatum sine propria cuiquam voluntate tribuatur.: [509]1 * augmentum beneficiorum dei: [510]1 * auxilium: [511]1 * baptismum unum tenemus quod iisdem sacramenti verbis in infantibus, quibus etiam in majoribus, asserimus esse celebrandum.: [512]1 * beata necessitas: [513]1 * beata necessitas boni: [514]1 [515]2 * bona concupiscentia: [516]1 * boni: [517]1 * bonorum operum: [518]1 * bonum: [519]1 * bonum esse: [520]1 [521]2 * bonum velle: [522]1 * bonus, divinæ dignitati congruns: [523]1 * cælestis societas: [524]1 [525]2 * carentia dei: [526]1 * caritas: [527]1 [528]2 [529]3 * caritas christiana nisi in unitate ecclesiæ non potest custodiri, etsi baptismum et fidem teneatis: [530]1 * caritas est gratia testamenti novi.: [531]1 * caritas infusa: [532]1 * caritas unitatis: [533]1 * caro: [534]1 * caro humana: [535]1 * castigatio: [536]1 * castigationem victus atque cultus offenso domino præstare: [537]1 * castitas: [538]1 * catechumenus mereri cupit baptismum, timet adhuc delinquere, ne non mereretur accipere.: [539]1 * cathedra: [540]1 [541]2 * catholica: [542]1 * catholica fides: [543]1 * catholicam fidem tenere: [544]1 * causa causatrix non causata: [545]1 * causatum: [546]1 * certum propriumque fidei catholicæ fundamentum Christus est: [547]1 * certus numerus electorum: [548]1 * certus quidem in istis eram, nimis taken infirmus ad fruendum te.: [549]1 * cessatio delicti: [550]1 * character indelebilis: [551]1 * christianæ religionis officium: [552]1 * civitas dei: [553]1 [554]2 [555]3 [556]4 * civitas terrena: [557]1 [558]2 [559]3 [560]4 * clausa patuit dominanti: [561]1 * clauso utero: [562]1 [563]2 [564]3 * coge intrare: [565]1 * cognata hæresis: [566]1 * collationes patrum: [567]1 * commendat pænitentiam deo et temporali afflictatione æterna supplicia non dicam frustratur sed expungit: [568]1 * commendatior: [569]1 * commenta, veritati contraria, catholicæ fidei penitus inimica: [570]1 * commentum diaboli: [571]1 * communicatio: [572]1 * communio sanctorum: [573]1 [574]2 [575]3 [576]4 * concordant nobiscum angeli etiam nunc: [577]1 * concupiscentia: [578]1 * conditio necessitatis: [579]1 * conditio voluntatis: [580]1 * confertur a trinitate: [581]1 * confessio: [582]1 * conficere corpus Christi: [583]1 * congregationi sanctorum admixti: [584]1 * conjunctus; applicatus: [585]1 * conlatio divinitatis meritorum remunerandorum fuit ratio: [586]1 * conscientia dantis adtenditur, qui abluat accipientis: [587]1 * conscientia et voluntas, ubi et culpa sapit et gratia: [588]1 * consilia: [589]1 [590]2 [591]3 [592]4 [593]5 [594]6 [595]7 * consilia dominica: [596]1 * consilia evangelica: [597]1 * consuetudo: [598]1 * consuetudo peccati amorem delicti facit et exstinguit pudorem: [599]1 * contemplatio rationalis: [600]1 [601]2 * contra naturam: [602]1 * contritio: [603]1 * convenientior: [604]1 * conversio mentis: [605]1 * convertuntur fide, veniunt opere, convertuntur deserendo mala, veniunt bona faciendo.: [606]1 * cooperans: [607]1 * copula: [608]1 * corporis sanguinisque sacramentum: [609]1 * corpus Christi: [610]1 * corpus et sanguis quod in ecclesia geritur, differt ab illo corpore et sanguine quod in Christi corpore jam glorificatum cognoscitur; et hoc corpus pignus est et species, illud vero ipsa veritas. Hoc enim geretur, donec ad illud perveniatur; ubi vero ad illud perventum fuerit hoc removebitur.: [611]1 * corpus permixtum: [612]1 [613]2 * corpus permixtum, verum: [614]1 * corpus quod natum est de Maria virgine . . . resurrexit a mortuis, penetravit coelos et nunc pontifex factus in æternum quotidie interpellat pro nobis: [615]1 * corpus spiritale: [616]1 * corruptibilitas: [617]1 * corruptio optimi pessima: [618]1 * creatio ex nihilo: [619]1 * credentes et viventes ex fide; fideles quippe ejus quos redemit sanguine suo dicti sunt regnum ejus.: [620]1 * credere deum, credere de deo, credere in deum: [621]1 * credere in eum, hoc est manducare panem vivum: [622]1 * credo remissionem peccatorum per sanctam ecclesiam: [623]1 * credo remissionem peccatorum per sanctam ecclesiam.: [624]1 * cui concurrit fides credentium et professio: [625]1 * cultus: [626]1 [627]2 [628]3 * cum deus coronat merita nostra, nihil aliud coronat quam munera sua.: [629]1 * cum dicat gratis justificari hominem per fidem sine operibus legis, nihil aliud volens intelligi in eo, quod dicit gratis: [630]1 * cum solum sit in nobis velle, et in hoc probatur nostra erga deum mens, an ea velimus quæ cum voluntate ipsius faciunt, alte et impresse recogitandum esse dico dei voluntatem, quid etiam in occulto velit. Quæ enim in manifesto scimus omnes.: [631]1 * cunctarum origo virtutum in rationabili animo sita est.: [632]1 * cupiditas, amor: [633]1 * cupido, amor: [634]1 * da quod jubes, et jube quod vis: [635]1 * data: [636]1 * datum: [637]1 * de Constantinopolitana ecclesia quod dicunt, quis eam dubitet sedi apostolica; esse subjectam: [638]1 * de fide: [639]1 * de monasterio: [640]1 * de naturalibus aliquas veritatis partes: [641]1 * de partu virginis: [642]1 * de plebeia fæce sellularii, milites, scholastici auditoriales, tabernarii, cetarii, coqui, lanii, adolescentes ex monachis dissoluti: [643]1 * de substantia carnis: [644]1 * debita: [645]1 * debitum in scripturis delicti figura est.: [646]1 * definitiones Cælestii: [647]1 * deflere, metus dei: [648]1 * deforme atque indecens: [649]1 * dei est omne quod sumus: [650]1 * dei filius incarnatus tremendus: [651]1 * delictum: [652]1 * delinquenti dominus nequaquam parcit, quia delictum sine ultione non deserit. Aut enim ipse homo in se pænitens punit, aut hoc deus cum homine vindicans percutit.: [653]1 * deo non adhærere: [654]1 * descendit ad inferos: [655]1 * desideria carnis mala: [656]1 * destituta veritas: [657]1 * deum iratum, indignatum mitigare, placare, reconciliare.: [658]1 * deum non novit nisi naturali jure, non etiam familiari: [659]1 * deum patrem et ejus ecclesiam matrem habere.: [660]1 * deus: [661]1 * deus induravit per justum judicium, et ipse Pharao per liberum arbitrium.: [662]1 * deus ipse: [663]1 * deus ita suadet ut persuadeat.: [664]1 * deus justus est ad remuneranda: [665]1 * deus offenses: [666]1 * deus quæ vult præcipit et accepto: [667]1 * deus, Jesus, spiritus: [668]1 * dicant, secundum quod permutata sunt; corporaliter namque nihil in eis cernitur esse permutatum.: [669]1 * diffusio caritatis: [670]1 * disciplinæ satisfacere: [671]1 * disciplina: [672]1 * discipulus dulcissimus: [673]1 * divina operatio: [674]1 [675]2 * divina operatio trinitatis: [676]1 * divitem manentem in divitiis suis regnum dei non posse ingredi, nisi omnia sua vendiderit; nec prodesse eidem posse, si forte ex ipsis divitiis mandata fecerit.: [677]1 * docendi fontem aperire gloriantur: [678]1 * docere, flectere, movere: [679]1 * doctor ecclesiæ Romanæ : [680]1 * doctrina: [681]1 [682]2 * doctrina Christiana: [683]1 * domini: [684]1 * dominus ac redemptor noster cum sancta ecclesia, quam redemit secundum carnem, una substantia est.: [685]1 * donum dei: [686]1 * donum perseverantiæ: [687]1 * dotes: [688]1 [689]2 * duobus modis unus creditur filius: [690]1 * durius: [691]1 * ecclesia: [692]1 [693]2 * ecclesia mater: [694]1 * ecclesiastica una conversatio: [695]1 * effensus deus: [696]1 * ego . . . te (scil. deum) quæsivi, te desideravi, tibi credidi; de homine nihil speravi . . . ego verbis antistitis fidem dedi, quæ a te data dicuntur, quæque te inspirant, te loquuntur, de te promittunt; huic de se nihil credidi nec gestis ejus, sed fidei quæ ex te est, me copulavi.: [697]1 * elementum, receptaculum, habitaculum, habitator, locus naturæ.: [698]1 * eo quod quisque novit, non fruitur, nisi et id diligit, neque quisquam in eo quod percipit permanet nisi dilectione: [699]1 * ergismus: [700]1 * error prædestinationis: [701]1 * esse: [702]1 [703]2 * esse, scire, amare: [704]1 * et ex gentibus fuisse salvatos: [705]1 * et qæerebam viam comparandi roboris quod esset idoneum ad fruendum te, etc.,: [706]1 * et quomodo jam Christi corpus dicitur, in quo nulla permutatio facta cognoscitur?: [707]1 * et si philosophorum ego senatum advocavero, tu continuo sellularios, opifices omneque in nos vulgus accendas: [708]1 * et si quid aliud in scripturis canonicis commendatur. . . . Illa autem quæ non scripta, sed tradita custodimus, quæ quidem toto terrarum orbe servantur, datur intelligi vel ab ipsis apostolis, vel plenariis conciliis, quorum est in ecclesia saluberrima auctoritas, commendata atque statuta retineri, sicut quod domini passio et resurrectio et ascensio in cælum et adventus de cælo spiritus sancti anniversaria sollemnitate celebrantur, et si quid aliud tale occurrit quod servatur ab universa, quacumque se diffundit, ecclesia.: [709]1 * etsi non ita possunt mutare naturam, reatu tamen obligant filios: [710]1 * etsi venia est pænitentiæ fructus, hanc quoque consistere non licet sine cessatione delicti. Ita cessatio delicti radix est veniæ ut venia sit pænitentiæ fructus: [711]1 * eucharistia, missa, sacrificium, oblatio, hostia, sacramentum passionis, communio: [712]1 * ex deo: [713]1 * ex filio: [714]1 * ex natura, sub lege, sub gratia (Christi): [715]1 * ex nihilo: [716]1 [717]2 * ex nolentibus volentes: [718]1 * ex operibus carnis: [719]1 * ex patre per filium: [720]1 * ex toto: [721]1 * exempto reatu: [722]1 * exercitium: [723]1 * externa communio sacramentorum: [724]1 * extra ecclesiam: [725]1 * facilius dicimus quid non sit, quam quod sit: [726]1 * felices: [727]1 * fidei merito: [728]1 * fideliter credere: [729]1 * fideliter et firmiterque credere: [730]1 * fideliter laborare: [731]1 * fideliter laborare auxiliante Christo: [732]1 * fides: [733]1 [734]2 [735]3 [736]4 [737]5 * fides credentis: [738]1 [739]2 * fides historica: [740]1 * fides impetrat quod lex imperat.: [741]1 * fides implicita: [742]1 [743]2 * fides præcedit rationem: [744]1 [745]2 * fides prævenit rationem: [746]1 * fides quæ creditur: [747]1 * fides recta, ut credamus et confiteamur: [748]1 * fiducia: [749]1 [750]2 * figura: [751]1 [752]2 [753]3 * figura corporis: [754]1 * figura corporis Christi: [755]1 * figuram sive memoriam dominicæ mortis: [756]1 * figurate facta: [757]1 * filii sanctæ matris: [758]1 * filiogue: [759]1 * filioque: [760]1 [761]2 [762]3 [763]4 [764]5 [765]6 [766]7 [767]8 [768]9 [769]10 * filius adoptivus: [770]1 * filius adoptivus humanitate nequaquam divinitate: [771]1 * filius dei: [772]1 * filius dei naturalis: [773]1 * filius festinat in actionem: [774]1 * filius hominis: [775]1 * filius proprius: [776]1 * filius secundum carnem: [777]1 * fons: [778]1 [779]2 * fortiter scandalizare: [780]1 * fratri satisfacere: [781]1 * fruitio dei: [782]1 * garriebam plane quasi peritus: [783]1 * gemina: [784]1 * gemina prædestinatio: [785]1 * gemina predestinatio: [786]1 * gemina predestinatio . . . sive reproborum ad mortem.: [787]1 * genere et natura: [788]1 * gentiles veræ castitatis (and that is the virtue kat' exochen: [789]1 * genus: [790]1 [791]2 * gratia: [792]1 [793]2 [794]3 [795]4 [796]5 [797]6 [798]7 [799]8 [800]9 [801]10 * gratia Christi: [802]1 * gratia creans: [803]1 * gratia gratis : [804]1 * gratia gratis data: [805]1 [806]2 [807]3 [808]4 * gratia gratis data præveniens: [809]1 * gratia infusa: [810]1 [811]2 [812]3 * gratia infusa, inspiratio dilectio: [813]1 * gratia irresistibilis: [814]1 [815]2 * gratia per: [816]1 * gratia per Christum: [817]1 * gratia prima: [818]1 * gratia prima (universalis): [819]1 * gratiam dei et adjutorium non ad singulos actus dari (in other places he says the opposite) sed in libero arbitrio esse vel in lege ac doctrina: [820]1 * gratis: [821]1 [822]2 * gratis data: [823]1 * gula: [824]1 * hæreditarium vinculum: [825]1 * habere: [826]1 [827]2 * hic etiam filius dei natura est filius, non adoptione.: [828]1 * hic jam carnis interitum in officium pænitentiæ interpretantur, quod videatur jejuniis et sordibus et incuria omni et dedita opera malæ tractationis carnem exterminando satis deo facere: [829]1 * hinc deus irasci exorsus, unde offendere homo inductus.: [830]1 * historicus doctus: [831]1 * hoc etiam credimus, quod accepta per baptismum gratia omnes baptizati: [832]1 * hoc mirabile et speciale in te pietatis dei donum prædicamus, quod tanta devotione ecclesias Christi a perfidorum doctrinis intrinsecus purgare tuerique niteris, quanta forinsecus a vastatione paganorum defendere vel propagare conaris. His duabus gladiis: [833]1 * hominem innumeris divinæ gratiæ speciebus juvari . . . præcipiendo, benedicendo, sanctificando, coercendo, provocando, illuminando.: [834]1 * hominis sapientia pietas est: [835]1 * homo: [836]1 [837]2 [838]3 [839]4 [840]5 [841]6 [842]7 [843]8 * homo igitur innocentia quidem plenus, sed virtutis capax nascitur, aut laudem aut reprehensionem ex proposito accedente meriturus . . . nec justos nasci parvulos nec injustos, quod futuri sunt actibus suis, sed tantummodo infantiam innocentiæ dote locupletem.: [844]1 * homo libero arbitrio emancipatus a deo: [845]1 * honorandam esse paucitatem: [846]1 * humanitas: [847]1 * ideo habuit voluntatem malam, quia voluit.: [848]1 * ideo simplex dicitur quoniam quod habet hoc est: [849]1 * ignis purgatarius: [850]1 * ignorantia, concupiscentia, error, dolor, metus, delectatio morbida: [851]1 * ille: [852]1 [853]2 * illicite datum: [854]1 * illuminatio et doctrina: [855]1 * impeccantia: [856]1 * imperium: [857]1 [858]2 * imputare: [859]1 * in abditis receptaculis: [860]1 * in adsumtione carnis a deo persona petit hominis, non natura: [861]1 * in animi nostris naturalis quædam sanctitas est.: [862]1 * in concreto: [863]1 * in ecclesia esse: [864]1 * in excessu: [865]1 * in membris Christi: [866]1 * in mysterio: [867]1 [868]2 * in occulto: [869]1 * in paradiso ab animo coepit elatio: [870]1 * in partu: [871]1 [872]2 * in quo: [873]1 [874]2 * in remissionem peccatorum: [875]1 * in singulis portionibus totus est: [876]1 * in substantiam corporis convertere: [877]1 * in unitatis vinculo caritate: [878]1 * in uno et altero ecclesia est, ecclesia vero Christus: [879]1 * in veritate: [880]1 [881]2 [882]3 * incommutabile: [883]1 * incorporea veritas: [884]1 * incorporea veritas, spiritalis substantia, incommutabilis et vera veritatis æternitas: [885]1 * indebita bonitas: [886]1 * indulgentia: [887]1 * indulgere: [888]1 * ineffabilis simplex natura: [889]1 * ineffabiliter mirabilis, incomparabiliter honorandus, præstantissimus patronus, columna veritatis ubique gentium conspicua, specialis fidei patronus.: [890]1 * infames, ineptissimæ: [891]1 * infideles: [892]1 * infirmatum, attenuatum: [893]1 * ingens sacrilegium: [894]1 * insubstantiata sunt omnia onta: [895]1 * insuper et quod majus est per hæc secretius præstita ad illam tenderent speciem satietatis ubi jam non pro peccatis nostris quotidie Christus immolabitur: [896]1 * integram inviolatamque fidem servare: [897]1 * intellectus rerum veraciter ipsæ res sunt.: [898]1 * inter alia: [899]1 * intolerandum scilicet pudori, domino offenso satisfacere: [900]1 * intra modum: [901]1 * invisibilis substantia: [902]1 [903]2 * invitum hominem facit peccare: [904]1 * ipsa conditio nascendi solvitur gratia renascendi.: [905]1 * ipsa virtus et præmium virtutis: [906]1 * ipsa vita æterna merces est operum bonorum: [907]1 * ipse se ipsum conterminavit: [908]1 * ira: [909]1 * iste panis et sanguis qui super altare ponuntur, in figuram sive memoriam dominicæ mortis ponuntur, et quod gestum est in præterito, præsenti revocet (dominus) memoriæ, ut illius passionis memores effecti, per eam efficiamur divini muneris consortes.: [910]1 * ita sunt hæc quodammodo indiscrete permixta atque confusa, ut quid ex quo pendeat inter multos magna quæstione volvatur, i.e.: [911]1 * itane tandem, juvenis confidentissime, consolari te debes, quia talibus displices, an lugere?: [912]1 * jejunium iratum deum homini reconciliat: [913]1 * judicium: [914]1 * jus humanæ societatis: [915]1 * justa vindicta: [916]1 * juste prædestinati ad poenam (mortem): [917]1 * justi: [918]1 [919]2 * justificatio: [920]1 * justificatio ex fide: [921]1 [922]2 * justificatio in hac vita nobis secundum tria ista confertur: prius lavacro regenerationis, quo remittuntur cuncta peccata, deinde congressione cum vitiis, a quorum reatu absoluti sumus, tertio dum nostra exaudiatur oratio, qua dicimus, Dimitte nobis debita nostra.: [923]1 * justitia: [924]1 [925]2 [926]3 [927]4 * labentis mundi odia promeremur: [928]1 * labor humanæ obedientiæ: [929]1 * latrocinium: [930]1 * laudator concupiscentia: [931]1 * lavat nos a peccatis nostris quotidie in sanguine suo, cum beatæ passionis ad altare memoria replicatur, cum panis et vini creatura in sacramentum carnis et sanguinis ejus ineffabili spiritus sanctificatione transfertur: [932]1 * laxatio: [933]1 * legi dei aut operi dei scripta disputatorum præjudicant!: [934]1 * levissima: [935]1 * lex: [936]1 [937]2 [938]3 [939]4 [940]5 [941]6 [942]7 [943]8 [944]9 * lex sic mittit ad regnum cælorum quomodo et evangelium.: [945]1 * liberalitas: [946]1 * libero arbitrio semper co-operatur: [947]1 * libertas periit, sed illa, quæ in paradiso fuit, non liberum arbitrium.: [948]1 * libertatem scriptura divina nostri confirmat arbitrii sed et infirntitatem.: [949]1 * liberum arbitrium: [950]1 [951]2 [952]3 [953]4 [954]5 [955]6 * liberum arbitrium et post peccata tam plenum est quam fuit ante peccata.: [956]1 * liberum sic confitemur arbitrium, ut dicamus nos indigere dei semper auxilio: [957]1 * libido: [958]1 [959]2 [960]3 [961]4 * libido matris: [962]1 * licet in scholis aliud disserentes: [963]1 * licet quæstionis res sit ista, non hæresis.: [964]1 * lux incommutabilis: [965]1 * magnis impedimentis angoribus, quos intuenti mihi hac tempestate ecclesiarum statum partim indignatio ingerit partim miseratio: [966]1 * malæ voluntati veniam pro inæstimabili liberalitate largitur et innocentiam, quam creat bonam, facit innovando adoptandoque meliorem: [967]1 * mala: [968]1 [969]2 * mala in ordinem redacta faciunt decorem universi: [970]1 * male liberum: [971]1 * malum: [972]1 * malum originale: [973]1 * mandata: [974]1 * manducatio infidelium: [975]1 [976]2 * massa damnata: [977]1 * massa peccati (perditionis): [978]1 * massa perditionis: [979]1 [980]2 [981]3 [982]4 [983]5 * mater omnium virtutum: [984]1 * melius judicavit, de malis bene facere, quam mala nulla esse permittere: [985]1 * mera capacitas utriusque: [986]1 * merita: [987]1 [988]2 * merita cujusque: [989]1 * merita pænitentiæ: [990]1 * meritis: [991]1 * meritum de congruo et de condigno: [992]1 * meritum fidei: [993]1 [994]2 * meritum, præmium: [995]1 * metus est instrumentum pænitentiæ: [996]1 * militia Christi: [997]1 * minimum et levissimum peccatum: [998]1 * minister verbi et sacramenti evangelici, si bonus est, consocius fit evangelii, si autem malus est, non ideo dispensator non est evangelii.: [999]1 * minus prospecte suscepta: [1000]1 * misera necessitas non posse non peccandi: [1001]1 * misera necessitas peccandi: [1002]1 * miseric. subsequens: [1003]1 * misericordia præveniens: [1004]1 * missi: [1005]1 * mixtura: [1006]1 * modus: [1007]1 [1008]2 * monstrum: [1009]1 [1010]2 * morbus: [1011]1 * mors cum ipso genere traducto: [1012]1 * mors ipsa non moritur.: [1013]1 * motus: [1014]1 * motus genitalium: [1015]1 * moveri ipsum quo est esse: [1016]1 * multisque aliis similibus.: [1017]1 * mundus de nihilo a deo factus: [1018]1 * mundus reconciliatus deo per carnem Christi: [1019]1 * munera: [1020]1 * munera dei: [1021]1 * munus dei: [1022]1 * munus dei per Christum: [1023]1 * mutabilia: [1024]1 * mutatio: [1025]1 * mysterium grande in cruce Christi: [1026]1 * nam si plena esset, nec imperaret ut esset, quia jam esset: [1027]1 * nascendi conditione: [1028]1 * naturæ vitio eunuchus matris utero editus: [1029]1 * natura: [1030]1 [1031]2 [1032]3 [1033]4 * natura conversa: [1034]1 * natura vitiata: [1035]1 [1036]2 [1037]3 * natura vitiate: [1038]1 * natura-gratia: [1039]1 * naturalis quæ dicitur sanctitas: [1040]1 * naturaliter: [1041]1 * ne tanto remissior sit ad virtutem animus ac tardior, quanto minus se posse credat et dum quod inesse sibi ignorat id se existimet non habere.: [1042]1 * nebulæ de Aristotelicis categoriis: [1043]1 * nec ideo libero carebit arbitrio: [1044]1 * nemo indulgentia dei utendo promeretur, sed voluntati obsequendo: [1045]1 * neque scientia divinæ legis, neque natura neque sola remissio peccatorum: [1046]1 * nihil: [1047]1 [1048]2 [1049]3 * nihil illi simile demonstrat antiquitas: [1050]1 * nihil sit cassum, nihil ludificatorium: [1051]1 * nilhil: [1052]1 * non æstimandum est, quod alterius verbis, quod ullius alterius meritis, quod potestate alicujus ista fiunt, sed verbo creatoris: [1053]1 * non est bonæ et solidæ fidei sic omnia ad voluntatem dei referre et ita adulari unum quemque dicendo nihil fieri sine nutu ejus, ut non intellegamus, esse aliquid in nobis ipsis: [1054]1 * non est dogma: [1055]1 [1056]2 * non est tanti unius meritum, ut universa quæ naturaliter sunt instituta perturbet.: [1057]1 * non ex toto volumus, non ergo ex toto [nobis] imperamus.: [1058]1 * non facile humana ratione discernitur quemadmodum dominus petentibus tribuat, a quærentibus inveniatur et rursus inveniatur a non quærentibus se et palam adpareat inter illos, qui eum non interrogabant.: [1059]1 * non filius adoptione: [1060]1 * non hoc corpus, quod videtis--Christus inquit--manducaturi estis, sacramentum aliquod vobis commendavi, spiritualiter intellectum vivificabit vos: [1061]1 * non hoc illa erat; sed aliud, aliud valde ab istis omnibus. Nec ita erat supra mentem meam sicut oleum super aquam, nec sicut coelum super terram, sed superior, quia ipsa fecit me, et ego inferior, quia factus sum ab ea. Qui novit veritatem novit eam, et qui novit eam, novit æternitatem. Caritas novit eam. O æterna veritas, et vera caritas, et cara æternitas! tu es deus meus; tibi suspiro die ac nocte.: [1062]1 * non imputare: [1063]1 * non in genere suo, non in specie, non in modo: [1064]1 * non inhærere deo: [1065]1 * non nostri laboris est, quod sæpe moneo, ut nos salvemus; sed sola fides in Christum nobis salus est . . . nostrum pene jam nihil est nisi solum credere qui superavit omnia. Hoc est enim plena salvatio, Christum hæc vicisse. Fidem in Christo habere, plenam fidem, nullus labor est, nulla difficultas, animi tantum voluntas est . . . justitia non tantum valet quantum fides: [1066]1 * non numerandas, sed ponderandas esse sententias; ad aliquid inveniendum multitudinem nihil prodesse cæcorum: [1067]1 * non omnia restaurantur sed quæ in Christo sunt: [1068]1 * non omnis panis sed accipiens benedictionem fit corpus Christi: [1069]1 * non posse: [1070]1 [1071]2 * non posse non mori: [1072]1 * non posse peccare: [1073]1 * non possumus: [1074]1 * non qua creamur, sed qua recreamur et renovamur.: [1075]1 * non quod sine voluntate nostra justificatio fiat, sed voluntas nostra ostenditur infirma per legem, ut sanet: [1076]1 * non repetimus quod jam erat, sed damus quod non erat.: [1077]1 * non sanguinis et corporis dominici mysterium imago: [1078]1 * non solum actuum, verum etiam cogitationum bonarum ex deo esse principium, qui nobis et initia sanctæ voluntatis inspirat et virtutem atque opportunitatem eorum quæ recte cupimus tribuit peragendi . . . deus incipit quæ bona sunt et exsequitur et consummat in nobis, nostrum vero est, tit cotidie adtrahentem nos gratiam dei humiliter subsequamur.: [1079]1 * non summum bonum esse: [1080]1 * nondum considerasti, quanti ponderis sit peccatum: [1081]1 * nos angelorum, si meruimus, candidati: [1082]1 * nos per hoc in incorruptionem transformamur: [1083]1 * nostra merita, dei munera: [1084]1 * nova creatura: [1085]1 * nudum et inerme conditionis bonum.: [1086]1 * nulla est iniquitas: [1087]1 * nullatenus peccatum sine vindicta laxatur: [1088]1 * nulli compensatio: [1089]1 * nullo modo credendum est, ut omnipotens deus pater, qui spiritus est, de semetipso carnem generet: [1090]1 * nuncupativus deus: [1091]1 * nuptiæ: [1092]1 * oblatio: [1093]1 * offendere deum: [1094]1 * offendere, satisfacere, promereri, acceptare: [1095]1 * offendisti, sed reconciliari adhuc potes; habes cui satisfacias et quidem volentem.: [1096]1 * omne bonum a deo: [1097]1 * omne bonum in humilitate perficitur: [1098]1 * omne delictum aut venia dispungit aut poena, venia ex castigatione, poena ex damnatione: [1099]1 * omne peccatum ex voluntate: [1100]1 * omnes in alternis exsistentes et semper simul homoousioi: [1101]1 * omnes justi sunt, in quibus nunc regnat mediator: [1102]1 * omnes naturæ ex deo, non de deo: [1103]1 * omnes salutis inpromerendo deo: [1104]1 * omnis substantia a deo: [1105]1 * opera: [1106]1 * opera a deo dari merito fidei, ipsam vero fidem sic esse a nobis ut nobis non sit a deo.: [1107]1 * operarii vel ministri baptismi: [1108]1 * operatio divina: [1109]1 * operibus et eleemosynis: [1110]1 * opinantes quam scientes: [1111]1 * oportet magistrum doctoremque virtutis homini simillimum fieri, ut vincendo peccatum doceat hominem vincere posse peccatum . . . ut desideriis carnis edomitis doceret, non necessitatis esse peccare, sed propositi ac voluntatis.: [1112]1 * opus operatum: [1113]1 * ordinatio malorum: [1114]1 * ordinator peccatorum: [1115]1 [1116]2 * ordo, species, modus: [1117]1 * pænitentia demonstratur acceptabilis deo: [1118]1 * pænitentia legitima: [1119]1 [1120]2 * pænitentiam deo immolare . . . magis merebitur fructum pænitentiæ qui nondum ea usus est quam qui jam et abusus est.: [1121]1 * panis: [1122]1 * panis est corpus Christi . . . corpus Christi si vis intelligere, apostolum audi: vos estis corpus Christi.: [1123]1 * pars peregrinans: [1124]1 * partus clause utero: [1125]1 * partus clauso utero: [1126]1 * passus: [1127]1 * passus est pro nostra salute: [1128]1 * patientia corporis [penances] precationes commendat, deprecationes affirmat; hæc aures Christi aperit, clementiam elicit.: [1129]1 * pax: [1130]1 * pax cælestis: [1131]1 * pax ecclesiæ dimittit peccata et ab ecclesiæ pace alienatio tenet peccata; petra tenet, petra dimittit; columba tenet, columba dimittit; unitas tenet, unitas dimittit: [1132]1 * pax terrena: [1133]1 [1134]2 [1135]3 * peccando promeremur: [1136]1 * peccata naturalia: [1137]1 * peccator patri satisfacit: [1138]1 * peccatrix successio: [1139]1 * peccatum: [1140]1 * peccatum originis: [1141]1 * peccatum originis, tradux peccati: [1142]1 * peccatum vitari potest: [1143]1 * per aditum fidei aperitur aditus visionis dei: [1144]1 * per carnem: [1145]1 * per continentiam negotiaberis magnam substantiam sanctitatis: [1146]1 * per gratiam dei bona merita comparamus quibus ad vitam perveniamus æternam.: [1147]1 * per hanc stat ecclesia qua in terris est: [1148]1 * per incentivum maledictæ generationis ardorem et per inlecebror: [1149]1 * per, propter: [1150]1 * peregrinationes: [1151]1 * permixtio: [1152]1 * permutatio corporalis: [1153]1 * persona: [1154]1 * persona hominis: [1155]1 * pestifer: [1156]1 * philosophia vera: [1157]1 [1158]2 * pie: [1159]1 * pignus: [1160]1 * plena: [1161]1 * plena in voluntate bona: [1162]1 * plus: [1163]1 * poculum humanæ salutis, quod confectum est infirmitate nostra et virtute divina, habet quidem in se, ut omnibus prosit, sed si non bibitur non medetur.: [1164]1 * porro ignorantia quam profunda quamque patiendi ejus dura conditio, ut liberari ab ea nisi prævaricatione non posset, scientiam quippe boni malique absque ansa condemnabili nequaquam capessiturus.: [1165]1 * posse: [1166]1 * posse non: [1167]1 * posse non peccare: [1168]1 * posse non peccare, --mori,--deserere bonum: [1169]1 * possibilitas: [1170]1 [1171]2 [1172]3 [1173]4 * possibilitas boni: [1174]1 * possibilitas utriusque: [1175]1 [1176]2 * post veteres hæreses inventa etiam modo hæresis est non ab episcopis seu presbyteris vel quibuscumque clericis, sed a quibusdam veluti monachis: [1177]1 * potentia actuosa: [1178]1 [1179]2 * potentia divini verbi: [1180]1 * potentialiter: [1181]1 * præcepta: [1182]1 [1183]2 [1184]3 [1185]4 * prædestinatio ad malum: [1186]1 * prædestinatio ad mortem: [1187]1 * præter: [1188]1 * pretii copiositas mysterii passionis: [1189]1 * pretium: [1190]1 * primordiale delictum expiare: [1191]1 * prius occultius, postea manifestius: [1192]1 * privatio: [1193]1 * privatio boni: [1194]1 [1195]2 [1196]3 * privatio substantiæ: [1197]1 * pro amoris pii memoria: [1198]1 * pro defunctis commendandis: [1199]1 * pro peccatis: [1200]1 * profectus: [1201]1 * profer nomen amici tui eo tempore opportuno, quo panem et vinum in substantiam corporis et sanguinis Christi consecraveris.: [1202]1 * proinde de immunditia nuptiarum mundus homo non nascitur, quia interveniente libidine seminatur.: [1203]1 * promereri deum: [1204]1 * propositum dei, quo non ob hoc hominem fecerat, tit periret, sed ut in perpetuum viveret, manet immobile, cuius benignitas cum bonæ voluntatis in nobis quantulamcunque scintillam emicuisse perspexerit vel quam ipse tamquam de dura silice nostri cordis excuderit, confovet eam et exsuscitat et confortat . . . qui enim ut pereat unus ex pusillis non habet voluntatem, quomodo sine ingenti sacrilegio putandus est non universaliter omnes, sed quosdam salvos fieri velle pro omnibus? ergo quicumque pereunt, contra illius pereunt voluntatem . . . deus mortem non fecit.: [1205]1 * proprie sacerdotes: [1206]1 * pulchritudo: [1207]1 * pulchrum: [1208]1 * punctum saliens: [1209]1 * quæ a deo: [1210]1 * quæ ecclesia dei salutaria probat, infamat nociva.: [1211]1 * quæ ratione defendi non potest: [1212]1 * quæ salvari possent: [1213]1 * quæ sursum sunt sapite: [1214]1 * quædam enim sunt divinæ liberalitatis, quædam nostræ operationis.: [1215]1 * quærebam viam: [1216]1 * qua demonstrat et revelat deus quid agere debeamus, non qua donat atque adjuvat ut agamus.: [1217]1 * quamvis non possit credere, sperare, diligere homo rationalis, nisi velit: [1218]1 * quasi: [1219]1 * quasi contra naturam: [1220]1 * quasi ecclesia: [1221]1 [1222]2 * quasi necessariam: [1223]1 * que ad salutem pertinent adimplere: [1224]1 * qui sumus membra ejus: [1225]1 * quia Christum vorari fas dentibus non est, voluit in mysterio hunc panem et vinum vere carnem suam et sanguinem consecratione spiritus s. potentialiter (i.e.: [1226]1 * quia ipsum velle a deo nobis operatur, fit ut ex deo et operationem et voluntatem habeamus.: [1227]1 * quia non possunt secundum categorias Aristotelis de dogmatibus judicare.: [1228]1 * quid est aliud caritas quam voluntas?: [1229]1 * quid est altare, nisi sedes et corporis et sanguinis Christi, cujus illic per certa momenta: [1230]1 * quid interesset inter præsumptionem et confessionem, inter videntes quo eundun sit nec videntes qua, et viam ducentem ad beatificam patriam, non tantum cernendam, sed et habitandam: [1231]1 * quidquid nobis optamus, in illum auguramur, et illi deputamus, quod ab illo exspectamus.: [1232]1 * quis non ipso nominum sectarumque conglobatarum strepitu terretur?: [1233]1 * quod Hieronymus ei tamquam æmulo inviderit.: [1234]1 * quod colorem aut saporem carnis minime præbet, virtus tamen fidei et intellegentiæ, quæ nihil de Christo dubitat, totum illud spiritaliter sapit et degustat . . . Sic debuit hoc mysterium temperari, ut et arcana secretorum celarentur infidis et meritum: [1235]1 * quod in eo ex virgine creando efficax Dei sapientia et virtus exstiterit, et in nativitate ejus divinæ prudentiæ et potestatis opus intellegatur, sitque in eo efficientia potius quam natura sapientiæ.: [1236]1 * quod scriptum est et apostolicæ disciplinæ robustissima auctoritate firmatum: [1237]1 * quodammodo naturalis: [1238]1 * quomodo id fieri potuerit: [1239]1 * quomodo multæ mansiones apud patrem, si non pro varietate meritorum