GRACE
695
GRACE
God and love of the world, charity and concupiscence,
so that even the prayers of the impious are nothing
else but sins. (Cfr. Prop, xlix: " Oratio impiorum est
novum peccatum et quod Deus illis concedit, est no-
vum in eos judicium"). The answer of the Church
to such severe exaggerations was the dogmatic Bull,
"Unigenitus" (1713), of Pope Clement XI. The
Council of Trent (Sess. VI, can. vii) had however al-
ready decreed against Martin Luther: "Si quis dix-
erit, opera omnia qufe ante justificationem fiunt . . .
vere esse peccata . . . anathema sit" (If anyone
shall say that all the works done before justification
are indeed sins, let him be anathema). Moreover,
what reasonable man would concede that the process
of justification with its so-called dispositions consists
in a long series of sins? And if the Bible, in order to
effect the conversion of the sinner, frequently sum-
mons him to contrition and penance, to prayer and
almsdeeds, shall we admit the blasphemy that the
Most Holy summons him to the commission of so
many sins? — The Catholic doctrine on this point, ob-
stinately adhered to through all the centuries, is so
clear that even an Augustine could not have departed
from it without becoming a public heretic. True,
Baius and Quesnel succeeded in cleverly concealing
their heresy in a phraseology similar to the Augustin-
ian, but without penetrating the meaning of Augus-
tine. The latter, it xnust be conceded, in the course
of the struggle with self-confident Pelagianism, ulti-
mately so strongly emphasized the opposition between
grace and sin, love of God and love of the world, that
the intermediary domain of naturally good works al-
most completely disappeared. But Scholasticism had
long since applied the necessary correction to this ex-
aggeration. That the sinner, in consequence of his
habitual state of sin, must sin in everything, is not the
doctrine of Augustine. The imiversality of sin in the
world which he contemplated, is not for him the result
of a fundamental necessity, but merely the manifesta-
tion of a general historical phenomenon which admits
of exceptions (De spir. et lit., c. xxvii, n. 48). He
specifically declares marital love, love of children and
friends to be something lawful in all men, something
commendable, natural and dutiful, even though Di-
vine love alone leads to heaven. He admits the pos-
sibility of these natural virtues also in the impious:
" Sed videtis, istam caritatem esse posse et impiorum,
i. c. paganorum, Judseorum, hsereticorum " (Serm.
cccxlix de temp, in Migne, P.L., XXXIX, 1529).
O) Pelagianism, which still survives under new forms, fell into the extreme directly opposed to the theories rejected above. It exaggerated the capacity of human nature to an incredible degree, and hardly left any room for Christian grace. It amounted to nothing less than the divinization of the moral forces of free will. Even when it was question of acts tend- ing to supernatural salvation, natural will was de- clared able to rise by its own strength from justification to eternal life. Rank naturalism in its essence, Pela- gianism contained, as a logical con.sequence, the sup- pression of original sin and the negation of grace. It laid down the proud assertion that the sovereign will may ultimately raise itself to complete holiness and impeccability [impeccantia, avaixaprriaia) through the persevering observance of all the precepts, even the most difficult, and through the infallible triumph over every temptation, even the most vehement. This was an unmistakable reproduction of the ancient Stoic ideal of virtue. For the self-confident Pelagian, the petition of the Lord's Prayer, "Lead us not into temptation", served, properly speaking, no purpose: it was at most a proof of his humility, not a profession of the truth. In no other part of the system is the vanity of the Christian Diogenes so glaringly percepti- ble through the lacerated cloak of the philosopher. Hence the Provincial Synod of Carthage (418) in- sisted on the true doctrine on this very point (see
Denzinger, nn. 106-8) and emphasized the absolute
necessity of grace for all salutary acts. True, Pela-
gius (d. 405) and his disciple Coelestius, who found an
active associate in the skilful and learned Bishop
Julian of Eclanum, admitted from the beginning the
improper creative grace, later also a merely external
supernatural grace, such as the Bible and the example
of Christ. But the heresiarch rejected with all the
more obstinacy the inner grace of the Holy Ghost,
especially for the will. The object of grace was, at
the most, to facilitate the work of salvation, in no wise
to make it fundamentally possible. Never before had
a heretic dared to lay the axe so unsparingly to the
deepest roots of Christianity. And never again did it
occur in ecclesiastical history that one man alone, with
the weapons of the mind and ecclesiastical science,
overthrew and annihilated in one generation an
equally dangerous heresy. This man was Augustine.
In the short period between a. d. 41 1 and a. d. 41.3 no
fewer than twenty-four synods were held which con-
sidered the heresy of Pelagius. But the death-blow
was dealt as early as 416 at Mileve, where fifty-nine
bishops, under the leadership of St. Augustine, laid
down the fundamental canons which were subse-
quently (418) repeated at Carthage and received, after
the celebrated "Tractoria" of Pope Zosimus (418),
the value of definitions of faith. It was there that the
absolute necessity of grace for salvation triumphed
over the Pelagian idea of its mere utility, and the
absolute incapacity of nature over supreme self-suffi-
ciency. When Augustine died, in 430, Pelagianism
was dead. The decisions of faith issued at Mileve and
Carthage were frequently renewed by oecumenical
councils, as in 529 at Orange, lastly at Trent (Sess.
VI, can. ii).
The beautiful parable of the vine and its branches (John, XV, 1 sqq.) should have been sufficient to reveal to Pelagianism what a striking contrast there was between it and antecedent Christianity. Augustine and the synods time and again used it in the contro- versy as a very decisive proof out of the mouth of the Saviour Himself. Only when the supernatural vital union of the Apostles with the vine (Christ) planted by the Father is established, does it become possible to bring forth supernatural fruit; for "without me you can do nothing" (John, xv, 5). The categorical assertion of the necessity of grace for the holy Apos- tles themselves brings home to us still more forcibly the absolute incapacity of mere fallen nature in the performance of salutary acts. All supernatural ac- tivity may be concretely summed up in the three fol- lowing elements: salutary thoughts, holy resolves, good actions. Now the Apostle Paul teaches that right thinking is from God (II Cor., iii, 5), that the righteous will must be based on Divine mercy (Rom., ix, 16), finally that it is God who works in us, " both to will and to accomplish" (Phil., ii, 13). The victorious struggle of St. Augustine, which earned for him the honourable title of "Doctor of Grace", was merely a struggle for the ancient Catholic truth. Pelagianism was immediately felt in the Christian community as a thorn in the flesh and as the poison of novelty. Be- fore all the world Augustine could attest: "Talis est hseresis pelagiana, non antiqua, sed ante non multum tempus exorta" (Such is the Pelagian heresy, not ancient, but having sprung up a short time ago." — De grat., et lib. arbitr., c. iv). In fact, the teaching of the most ancient Fathers of the Church, e. g. Irena?us (Adv. hser.. Ill, xvii, 2), did not differ from that of Augustine, although it was less vigorous and explicit. The constant practice of prayer in the ancient Church pointed significantly to her lively faith in the necessity of grace, for prayer and grace are correlative ideas, which cannot be separated. Hence the celebrated axiom of Pope Celestine I (d.432): "Ut legem cre- dendi statuat lex supplicandi" ("That the law of prayer may determine the law of belief ". — See Den-
