predestination and free-will, and obliquely touches upon the death of Christ, inasmuch as the orthodox, assigning a reason why it eventually brings salvation to some persons, always ascend to the Divine predestination, the Pelagians descend to the human will. Prosper, in his epis tle to Augustine, thus expresses their opinion in this matter, As it respects God, they say, that eternal life is procured for all; but as to the freedom of the will, that eternal life is apprehended by those who of their own accord should believe in God, and receive the help of grace through the merit of their believing. A little afterwards, They fear to ascribe the merits of the saints to the Divine operation, nor do they think that that which is predestinated can admit of increase or diminution. The Semipelagians are not blamed by Prosper or Augustine because they assert that Christ died for the whole human race, but because having stated this, they infer that there is no special will of God in predestinating, by which he effectually produces that faith in the elect which regards a saving application to themselves individually of that death of Christ which was endured for all, but suspend it on the uncertain hazard of the human will. This is either the sole or the principal error against which Augustine contended in his books On the predestination of the saints, and the benefit of perseverance. This error also Prosper attacked in his poem On the Ungrateful; in which he teaches from the opinion of the Pelagians, that God equally willed the redemption of all mankind by the death of Christ, But each the voice of his free-will obeys, And of his own accord sends forth his mind Cap. 10, &c. Yet the same Prosper says, that God by his predestinating and operating will, would that those only should be redeemed to whom he should give those things, by means of which they should be infallibly led to salvation. And, lastly, he shews that this efficacious will of saving some by the death of Christ and not saving others, did not flow from the discriminating acts of the human will. To this those words (ch. 13) relate. Do the mind's movements such results produce? Then would God's will stand firm, or weakly yield Cap. 13. Prosper, then, does not oppose (what he elsewhere acknowledges) that Christ suffered for all, but, that God had willed that all men were equally redeemed in fact by the merit of the passion of Christ, and had committed the efficacy of redemption to the will of men. For this is that ulcer of Pelagian doctrine which Faustus of Ries, lib. i. cap. 17, endeavours to conceal under the covering of these words: God as the Remunerator of their good will, redeemed the willing. And rightly indeed; but if we speak of efficacious redemption, He first made them willing, being the Inspirer of their good will. If the Pelagians had held this, that the death of Christ was beneficial to mankind according to the special decree and operation of the Divine will, the orthodox would never have objected to them as an error that they maintained, That Christ died for all. Hitherto (as we have seen) that controversy on the death of Christ was not formed or agitated between the orthodox and the Pelagians which is discussed in the present day. For neither did Augustine ever oppose as erroneous the proposition, That Christ died for the redemption of the whole human race: Nor did he ever acknowledge or defend as his own, That Christ died not for all men, but for the predestinate alone. Let us now proceed, and from the records of antiquity search into the controversies about the death of Christ which sprung up after the age of Augustine. After the death of Augustine and Prosper, Lucidus, a Presbyter, seems to have stirred up this question, which had been some time laid asleep. He taught in plain words, That Christ died not for all mankind. Against him arose Faustus, Bishop of Ries, the ringleader of the Semipelagians. He writes to him a terrible Epistle filled with ana themas. Among other things he pronounces an anathema upon those who teach that Christ had not died for all. At the close of this epistle he commands Lucidus to send it back to him subscribed with his own hand; and threatens, if he should refuse, that he would accuse him before the Synod of Arles, which was then sitting, and had subscribed these letters and anathemas of Faustus. Lucidus being frightened at this thundering epistle, subscribed it, and thus condemned with his own hand the opinion which he had promulgated. A short time afterwards, the Synod of Leyden was assembled, which added some things to the decrees of the former Council, to which also Lucidus yielded his assent. There is extant an epistle of Lucidus to this Synod of Leyden, in which he condemns those who say, That Christ our Saviour did not endure death for the salvation of all men; and, according to the new mode of preaching established in this Council, he asserts, That Christ our Saviour, according to the riches of his goodness, suffered death for all men. Both of these letters are extant in the Bibliotheca Patrum (p. 3. tom. 5), the names also of the Bishops being subscribed who are thought to have been at these councils. But the things which are boasted of in the name of these councils are not of much moment, since for the most part they rest merely on the veracity of the heretic Faustus. For if you set aside these letters of Faustus, you may in vain seek elsewhere the afore-mentioned decrees of the Council of Arles, as they are no where else to be found. Nor can those new decrees about preaching, of which Lucidus speaks in his epistle, be found among the canons of any Council of Leyden. The veracity of Faustus in these things is further diminished, because he seems to intimate in his Epistle to Leontius,* that those books on grace and free-will, which are so full of poisonous sentiments, were not only written by the direction of this Council of Leyden, but were also approved of by it. And moreover, he pretends that he inserted nothing in this writing besides the opinion of this Synod. Leontius, Bishop of Arles, according to Du Pin. But indeed it is neither true nor credible that so many learned men could be so deceived by Faustus, as to approve of Pelagian doctrine by his vote. I say these things, not because I wish to condemn as errors those things which are thought to be defined in this chapter by Faustus on the death of Christ, under the approbation of those Synods, but lest any one, in a controverted point, should attribute too much to the authority, or rather, to the bare name of Synods, of which we have nothing certain from remains worthy of credit. This also is an argument with me, that those Fathers of Arles and Leyden, could not have sanctioned, under so grievous an anathema, that no one should preach that Christ died only for the elect, because in the commentaries of the Fathers who lived in the subsequent ages, that mode of speaking is often found, or at least is left in doubt. Remigius of Rheims, on the 8th of Romans, at the words, He who spared not His own Son, but freely delivered him up for us all, says, for us all, that is, for those who are predestinated to eternal life. And on 1 Tim. ii. 6, Who gave himself a ransom for all, adds in explanation, Understand, for the clect. Yet, that there was some difference at least in the mode of speaking among the Doctors of that age, appears from this same Remigius. For on those words which are in Hebrews ii. 9, That He should taste death for every man, he writes thus, Some Doctors understand this absolutely, that it means for all for whom He tasted it, that is, for the elect, who are predestinated to eternal life. But others understand it generally, that He tasted death for all, believing and unbelieving, saying, He died indeed for all, though all will not be saved. Gregory the Great, in one and the same Homily (Ez. 1. 1. Hom. 2.) calls Christ The Redeemer of mankind, and the Redeemer of all, and yet afterwards subjoins, That this Redeemer of all delivered himself to death for the life of the elect. To these two I will add Haimon, Bishop of Halberstadt, who flourished about the year of Christ 850, and who in his Commentaries so touches upon this controversy, that he determines nothing certain on either side. On the 5th chapter of the latter Epistle to the Corinthians, he says, Christ came into the world, being born without sin, living without sin; though innocent He died for all those who are predestinated to life. And as Prosper says, and John Chrysostom, and other Doctors, although all do not believe, He did his part, dying for all. A little after, on those words, God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, he says, Through Christ He reconciled to himself the world, that is, all those who were predestinated. In the 2d Chapter to the Hebrews also, he mentions both opinions, in the same words as we shewed Remigius had used before. We see, therefore, that these holy Fathers did not much care for that anathema fortified by the authority of Councils, which Faustus brings forward; but notwithstanding retained to themselves the liberty of writing and speaking. Yet I think that it ought to be added, that those Fathers, when they restrict the death of Christ to the predestinate, do not do it absolutely; but in consideration of the saving effect which, by means of faith, it brings to them alone: and on the other hand, when they extend this death of Christ to all, they do not extend to all that special will of God in calling them according to his own purpose, in giving them faith, and effectually working in certain individuals according to his own counsel and operation, that they may reap the benefit of the death of Christ. Therefore they so understand the universality of redemption that they did not subvert the secret counsel of predestination, in which thing they differed widely from the Pelagians and Semipelagians. They also understood redemption in such a restricted sense, that at the same time they acknowledged that it pertained to all men individually under the condition of faith. While Haimon himself (whom we just mentioned) was living, new tragedies were brought forward about this question of the death of Christ. For one Godeschalcus, a Monk, as Flodoardus has recorded (Hist. Remens. 3. 14), that he * FLODOARD, or Frodoard, an Ecclesiastical Historian of this period, being first Keeper of the Archives in the Cathedral, and afterwards Abbot of the Monastery at Rheims, in the former part of the 9th Century, and publishing a history of the Church of Rheims from its foundation to 948, and a Chronicle of his times, much esteemed by the learned. |