The Christian Church in These Islands before the Coming of Augustine

It may have seemed to you rather barren, this talk of Councils. But it is in reality far from being barren talk. It shews us the representatives of the British Church in the full swim of ecclesiastical affairs; summoned as a matter of course to the greatest councils; addressed as a matter of course by the greatest writer of their quarter of the world; taking their share in the settlement of the most subtle and vital points of Christian faith and practice. At Arles, they dealt with the question, so practical after Diocletian’s recent persecution, how men were to be re-admitted to the Church, who in time of persecution had fallen away. They decided, further, one of the gravest questions they could have had to decide, whether baptism in the name of the blessed Trinity was valid baptism, even though a schismatic had administered the rite. Their decision was against re-baptism in such cases, a fact of which I may have time to remind you when I speak of some of the practices of the British Church; admission by the laying on of hands was to suffice. They also determined that Easter must be kept everywhere on one and the same day, again a fact which reappears very prominently in their later history. At Nicaea, they dealt with the greatest question that ever stirred the Church of Christ, the question of the coequal deity, the oneness of nature, of the Son with the Father; and they laid down a rule for observing Easter, from which their descendants 350 years later accused the Roman Church of having departed. At Sardica they asserted the innocence of St. Athanasius; and gave authority to Julius, Bishop of Rome, to receive appeals from a province, if a bishop was dissatisfied with a decision of his synod. Their descendants were too busy with the inroads of barbarians and the subtleties of heretics, to pay much heed to the amusing exposure by the African Church of the Popes Zosimus, Boniface, and Celestine, 417-432, for quoting this Sardican Canon as a Canon of Nicaea, with “Julius” altered to “Sylvester” to make the name fit the forged date. The difference between calling it a Nicene Canon and calling it Sardican may seem little more than a question of a right name and a wrong. But its effect was tremendous. It added the greater part of the known world to the sphere of influence of the Bishop of Rome. For the Sardican Canons were passed by the Western bishops, after the Easterns had left Sardica, and could bind at most only the West. The Canons of Nicaea were binding on the whole of the Christian world. The sarcastic comments of the African Church, in their letter to Celestine, at the close of the controversy, should have had more effect in checking such proceedings than it had. At Rimini the British upheld the coequal deity of the Son; and when the Arian Emperor compelled the signature of a heterodox creed, the bishops of the provinces of Gaul gathered themselves together on their way home, and re-asserted their Catholic belief. Time after time, from Constantine onwards, the unswerving orthodoxy of the British was the subject of special and favourable comment. They were, as I began by saying, in the full swim of ecclesiastical affairs; and they held a position of recognised importance with dignity and effect.

Nor was the journeying of British Christians limited to attending Councils. A historian writing in 420, of the time before 410, says that from East and West people were flocking on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, from Persia and from Britain. And Theodoret, writing of the years about 423, says that many went to the Holy Land from the extreme West, Spaniards, and Britons, and the Galatae who dwelled between them.

We now come to a time when two natives of these islands played a large part – one of them, a very large part, in the origin the principal part – in the great theological controversy of the Western Church, a controversy which touched the East too, but less pointedly. Pelagius and Coelestius enunciated the views on the nature of man, and the operation of the grace of God, which were combated with vehemence by two of the leading men of the West, Augustine and Jerome. From that day to this the controversy has never died out. When the first beginnings of the theory of transubstantiation were heard, this Pelagian controversy divided those who opposed the new idea. Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, in their turn, differed on this point, as Pelagius and Augustine did. The Franciscans and the Dominicans took respectively the views of those two great schoolmen. The Jesuits and the Jansenists of Louis XV’s time shewed a like cleavage. Wherever you find Calvinistic views held and combated, there you have in fact the controversy which was started by our countrymen. Calvin declared that every man is predestined to life or to death, from before the foundation of the world. Pelagius maintained the freedom of will and action of every man; his power by nature to turn and come to God; his natural independence, so to speak.

One of the two great opponents of Pelagius, Augustine of Hippo, says that Pelagius was a Briton. The name is Greek, and means “of the sea,” “belonging to the sea,” and hence his native name has been supposed to be Morgan, sea-born: that, however, is only a guess. The other writers who were his contemporaries call him a Briton. His second principal opponent, Jerome, says that he was by birth one of the Scots, neighbours of the Britons. This meant in those times, and for some centuries after, a native of Ireland, whether living in Ireland or settled in the northern parts of Britain, if any Scots were settled there so early as 370, which was about the date of his birth. It is, however, quite as likely that Jerome is speaking not of Pelagius, but of his companion Coelestius, whom all allow to have been an Irishman. Whichever he means, he is not civil, as he seldom was in controversy. He describes his opponent as “a huge fellow, stuffed to repletion with Scotch porridge,” a most disrespectful way of speaking of porridge. Pelagius was a layman, and a monk. About 400 he went to Rome, and he remained there till the shadow of Alaric’s siege began to fall upon the city. In those eight years he lived an exemplary life. He urged upon others the necessity of so living, and the uselessness of religious observance combined with laxity of life. It is easy to see how this admirable line of teaching might be diverted, by the pressure of controversion, into a declaration that all men could, if they pleased, so live; that it was a matter of will, not of grace, a man’s turning to God and living as a believer should live. This was quite different from the controversy between faith and works, which some have believed to exist between St. Paul and St. James. It was the controversy between the necessity of the grace of God for a man to live as he should, and the comparative subordination of grace to the sufficient power of the will of man. Pelagius held that if the will was not free, man was a mere puppet: if the will was not free, man was not responsible. From this position, which is one side of a great truth, he passed to the denial of the need for God’s grace, that is, he denied the other side of the same great truth; or he so defined grace as to make it a mere matter of suitable circumstances.

A great controversy on a great subject can scarcely stop short at its first limits. Other points rise, unexpected results follow. I venture to say that it is impossible to go on pressing one side of this great and lasting controversy on the freedom of the will, to the disregard of the other side, without arriving at results which shock the reverent common sense of the devout Christian.

It is clear, for example, that when Pelagius asserted the freedom of man’s will to turn to God, he denied the Catholic doctrine of original sin, and denying that, he denied so far the need for baptism. Indeed he taught directly, it was in fact the key of his position, that when man sinned he sinned after the example which Adam had set, not because he had received the taint of sin by his descent from Adam. When pressed on this question of the need of baptism, he allowed that there was the need, but he put it on a different basis from that which his opponents took. It was not necessary for salvation, he maintained; but for those who desired to reach the full Christian heaven, a state different from that of ordinary salvation, for them it was necessary. Entrance to that higher order of the heavenly life was not to be obtained without baptism. When pressed again, on the question of the need for the operation of the grace of God, he allowed that there was that need. But he explained that when he said God’s grace must be given in order that a man might turn to God, he meant that the man must be set in a position and under conditions and with surroundings which rendered it natural and likely that he should so turn. It seems clear, further, that the Pelagian view of the position and nature of man in respect to God is inconsistent with the doctrine of the Redemption wrought by Christ. That great sacrifice is rendered unnecessary, if the views of Pelagius are accepted. Men could, so to speak, turn to God and be saved without the Atonement. It is only fair to say that the extreme view on the opposite side seems to be equally inconsistent with this vital doctrine. If it be true that each man is predestined absolutely to life or to death, whether before the fall of Adam or as the immediate consequence of that fall, it would appear that not all the Atonement of Christ can add one single soul to them that shall be saved.

My object is to speak of Church History, not of doctrine. But this Pelagian question is the most important fact in the history of the British Church; and unless these few words were said to bring out the extreme gravity of the matter in dispute, the episode would not appear to fill the important place it does in fact fill.

With Pelagius himself we have but little to do. He spent his life far from his native shores; he propounded his views in Rome and Carthage and Palestine, not in London and York and Bangor. But the history of what happened to him and his views in those distant parts is so curious – if one may say so, so comical – and the evidence it affords of the importance of the controversy is so great, that I must say a little about it. We shall find in it, I think, an explanation of the course taken by the British Church.

At Rome Pelagius met Coelestius, a Scot – that is, a native of Ireland – and Coelestius became a devoted champion of his views, publishing them in a more definite form than Pelagius himself adopted. These views were condemned at a Council held at Carthage in 412. A Council at Jerusalem in 415 heard the explanations of Pelagius and did not condemn him. A Council at Lydda in the same year fully accepted his explanations, to the great wrath of Jerome. Carthage then took the matter up again, and requested that Pelagius should be summoned to return to Rome, and the whole matter be fully inquired into there, the controversy being one affecting the West and not the East. To enable the Bishop to form an opinion on the views of Pelagius, they sent him a copy of one of his books, with the worst passages marked. Innocent, the Bishop of Rome, gladly received this request, treating it as a request for his authoritative verdict, which it was not. He replied in three letters dated January 27, 417. He began each with a strong assertion of the supreme authority of his see, and many expressions of his satisfaction that the controversy had been referred to him for final decision. The Bishop was clearly not to the manner born. These were not the sayings of unconscious dignity, of unquestionable authority. He did protest too much. The book of Pelagius forwarded to him he pronounced unhesitatingly to be blasphemous and dangerous; and he gave his judgement that Pelagius, Coelestius, and all abettors of their views, ought to be excommunicated.

Nothing could be more clear. But, unfortunately for the consistency of official infallibility, Innocent died six weeks after writing these letters, and Zosimus succeeded him. Coelestius and Pelagius between them were too much for Zosimus. Coelestius came to Rome. He argued with Zosimus that the points in dispute lay outside the limits of necessary articles of faith, and declared his adherence to the Catholic faith in all points. Pelagius did not come, but he wrote to Zosimus. Zosimus declared the letter and creed of Pelagius to be thoroughly Catholic, and free from all ambiguity; and the Pelagians to be men of unimpeachable faith, who had been wrongly defamed. Augustine appears to imply that in his opinion Zosimus had allowed himself to be deceived by the specious and subtle admissions of the heretics.

Zosimus did not rest satisfied with that. He wrote to the African bishops, vehemently upbraiding them with their readiness to condemn, and declaring that Pelagius and his followers had never really been estranged from Catholic truth. Far from accepting his decision or his rebukes, the Africans, who enjoyed a successful tussle with a Pope, sent a subdeacon with a long reply. Zosimus, in acknowledging their letter, wrote in extravagant terms of the dignity of his own position as the supreme judge of religious appeals, and, quaintly enough, hinted at the possibility of reconsidering his decision. The Africans did not wait. They met in synod, 214 bishops or more, and passed nine canons, anathematizing the Pelagian views. The Emperors Honorius and Theodosius banished Pelagius and Coelestius from Rome. What was Pope Zosimus to do, under these singularly trying circumstances? These men, thus banished from Rome, he had declared to be men of unimpeachable faith, wrongly defamed, never estranged from Catholic truth. He dealt with the matter in this way. He wrote a circular letter, declaring that the Popes inherit from St. Peter a divine authority equal to that of St. Peter, derived from the power which our Lord bestowed on him; so that no one can question the Pope’s decision. He then proceeded to censure, as contrary to the Catholic faith, the tenets of Pelagius and Coelestius, specially censuring some of Pelagius’s comments on St. Paul which had been laid before him since his former decision. He ordered all bishops, in the churches acknowledging his authority, to subscribe to the terms of his letter on pain of deprivation. In Italy itself, Rome’s own Italy, eighteen bishops protested against this change of front, and were deprived of their sees under the authority of the civil power.

Of course all men, however exalted their position, are liable to these sudden changes, whether pressed by external circumstances or impelled by inward conviction. And men who have themselves known what it is to be tried in any such way, on however humble a scale, are inclined rather to feel with them than sharply to condemn them; especially when, as in this case, their second thoughts are best. But if they are to be treated thus, with kindly judgement not unmixed with sympathy, they must not herald their change of view with statements that they have a divine authority, equal to that of St. Peter, and that no one can question their contradictory decisions.

To come nearer home after this long digression, which yet is not really a digression from the British point of view. The views of Pelagius had considerable success in Gaul, and gave a good deal of trouble there. In Britain their success was alarmingly great. The bishops and clergy were unable to make head against the wave of heresy. Whether there was anything, in the independence of the position claimed by Pelagius for man, which specially appealed to the nature of the Britons and their Celtic congeners; anything in the claim of each individual to be good enough in himself, if he pleases to be good enough; which harmonised with the opinion those races had – dare I say have? – of themselves; these are questions to which I cannot venture to give an answer. There the fact remains, that Pelagianism did appeal very strongly to the temperament of those who then dwelt in our land. And coupled with this is the fact, that, however orthodox the clergy and bishops might be, and however well versed in the great controversy in which in the previous century they had played their part, the subtleties of this new controversy, initiated as it was by one of their own or kindred race, springing up from their own nature and appealing to the nature of their people, were too much for them – as indeed they had been for Pope Zosimus. Agricola was the name of the man who acted as the apostle of the Pelagians in the home regions, the son, we are told, of a bishop of Pelagian views.

What our predecessors may have lacked in subtlety, they more than made up in practical common sense. If they could not grapple with the heresy themselves, they sent for those who could. They applied to their nearest ecclesiastical neighbour, the Church of Gaul, to which no doubt they looked partly as their mother and partly as their elder sister. The account of their application and the response it met with comes to us from a life of Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, the person chiefly concerned, written by special request forty years after his death by an eminent person, and published on the request of the then Bishop of Auxerre. When the application reached the heads of the Gallican Church, a numerous synod was called together, and Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, were appointed to visit Britain. The manner of treating the heresy had been forced upon the attention of the Gallican prelates by their own experiences. At that very time semi-Pelagianism was rife in the south of Gaul, about Marseilles, and it continued in force there for a long time, another fellow-countryman of ours, Faustus the Briton, imbuing even the famous monastery of Lérins with this modified form of the heresy. To concert measures for dealing with the south of Gaul, Prosper of Aquitaine, a monk and probably a layman, afterwards secretary to Pope Leo the Great, went to Rome about two years after this to consult the Pope, and from Celestine he no doubt heard what he repeated or embellished twenty-five years later. He tells us that the Pope took pains to keep the “Roman island” Catholic, referring of course to the long occupation of Britain by the Roman troops, at this time abandoned. In another passage, whose genuineness has been questioned, Prosper says that Celestine sent Germanus in his own stead to Britain. Prosper was certainly in a position to receive from the best-informed source an account of what was done; but the Gallican Church appears to have known nothing of this sending of Germanus by Celestine. Prosper’s inclination to magnify the importance of the Popes has been referred to already29; and we may take it as certain that if such an unparalleled step as going himself or sending some one in his stead, a forecast of Gregory’s action, had been attempted or taken by the Pope, we should have heard of it in the records of Gaul or in the life of Germanus. The successor of Germanus would have known of it. That Celestine had known at the time what was going on, and that he felt and probably expressed warm approval, we may regard as certain too. I must defer, to an opportunity in my third lecture, remarks which I wish to make on what may seem an ungenerous questioning of these assertions of benefits conferred by Rome.

In 429, then, the Gallican prelates came to Britain. They had a very rough crossing, and a story, rejected with scorn by quite modern writers, is told of a miracle wrought by Germanus. He stilled the storm by pouring oil upon the sea in the name of the Trinity. We now know that if they had oil on board, and knew how to use it, the stilling of the waves was done; without miracle, but with not the less earnest trust in the watchful care of God30.

It was on this journey to Britain that Germanus and Lupus saw at Nanterre a little girl aged seven, and prophesied great things of her. Her name was Genofeva, and she became the famous Ste. Geneviève. In these days when people coquet with the principles of revolution and shut their eyes to its realities, it may be well to add that her coffin of silver and gold was sold in 1793, and her body burned on the Place de Grève, by public decree.

When they got to work in Britain, they proceeded on a definite plan. Some sixty or seventy years before, Hilary, the Bishop of Poitiers, dealing in Gaul with the great heresy which preceded this, had found it of great service to go about from place to place and collect in different parts small assemblies of the bishops, for free discussion and mutual explanation. He found that misunderstandings were in this way, better than in any other, got rid of, and differences of opinion were reduced to a minimum. Germanus and Lupus dealt with the people of Britain as their predecessor had dealt with the bishops of Gaul. They went all over, discussing the great question with the people whom they found. They preached in the churches, they addressed the people on the highroads, they sought for them in the fields, and followed them up bypaths. It is clear that the visitors from Gaul could speak to the people, both in town and in country, in their own tongue, or in a tongue well understood by them. No doubt the native speech of Gaul and that of Britain were still so closely akin that no serious difficulty was felt in this respect. They met with success so great that the leaders on the other side were forced to take action. They felt, so the biographer tells us, not that his is likely to be convincing evidence as to their feelings, that they must run the risk of defeat rather than seem by silence to give up the cause. They undertook to dispute with the Gallicans in public. The biographer is not an impartial chronicler. The Pelagians came to the disputation with many outward signs of pomp and wealth, richly dressed, and attended by a crowd of supporters. Why should the biographer thus indicate that the Pelagian heresy was specially rife among great and wealthy and popular people? Perhaps it may be the case, that, with imperfectly civilised people, a position of wealth and distinction tends to make men less humble in their view of the need of the grace of God. Besides the principals, we are told that immense numbers of people came to hear the dispute, bringing with them their wives and children; coming, in the important phrase of the biographer, to play the part of spectator and judge. That is the first note we have of the function of the laity in religious disputes in this land of ours. It is a pregnant hint. The disputants were now face to face. On one side divine authority, on the other human presumption; on one side faith, on the other perfidy; on one side Christ, on the other Pelagius. The description is Constantius’s, not mine. The bishops set the Pelagians to begin, and a weary business the Pelagians made of it. Then their turn came. They poured forth torrents of eloquence, apostolical and evangelical thunders. They quoted the scriptures. The opponents had nothing to say. The people, to whose arbitration it was put, scarce could keep their hands off them; the decision was given by acclamation, against the Pelagians.

Where did this take place? Certainly not far from Verulam, for Constantius goes on to say that the bishops hastened to the shrine of St. Alban, which at the request of Germanus was opened, that he might deposit there some relics which he had brought with him. He took away, in exchange, some earth from the actual spot of the martyrdom. Presumably the disputation took place somewhere near London, on the road to St. Albans; perhaps at Verulam itself.

The British Church was thus saved from enemies within; but enemies without soon had it by the throat. There were no Roman troops to guard the northern wall, to guard the Saxon shore. The Roman troops had gone, and with them the flower of the British youth31. From north and east the barbarians poured in upon the Britons, pell mell. Gildas, crying bitter tears, and using bitter ink, in his Welsh monastery, tells us of the weakness and the follies of the British and their kings, of the cruelties of the barbarous folk. We see in his pages the smoke of burned churches, the blood of murdered Christians. Matthew of Westminster tells us that the churches that were burned had the happier fate. In thirty cases churches were saved and made into heathen temples, the altars polluted with pagan sacrifice. But the Saxons and Angles made way so slowly that it is certain they met with a much sturdier opposition than Gildas credits his countrymen with. Strive as they would, however, and did, the Britons gradually gave way. Thus, and thus only, can we fill the dreary void in British history, which we know as the first hundred and fifty years of the Making of England.