Preface to Volume II. Of the Edinburgh Edition.
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volume contains a translation of the three following treatises by St. Augustin on the Pelagian controversy:—
De Gratia Christi, et De Peccato originali contra Pelagium et Cœlestium, ad Albinam, Pinianum, et Melaniam; libri duo, scripti anno Christi 418.
De Nuptiis et Concupiscentiâ ad Valerium Comitem; libri duo, scriptus alter circiter initium anni 419; alter anno Christi 420.
De Animâ et ejus origine, contra Vincentium Victorem; libri quatuor, scriptus sub finem anni Christi 419.
These, with the contents of our former volume, comprise eight of the fifteen works contributed by the great author to the defence of the Catholic faith against Pelagius and his most conspicuous followers. The prefaces and chapter headings, which have been, as heretofore, transferred to their proper places in this volume from the Benedictine edition of the original, will afford the reader preliminary help enough, and thus render more than a few general prefatory remarks unnecessary here.
The second book in the first of these treatises adds some facts to the historical information contained in our preceding volume; Pelagius is shown to be at one, in the main, with Cœlestius, the bolder but less specious heretic. They were condemned everywhere—even at Rome by Pope Zosimus, who had at first shown some favour to them. These authoritative proceedings against them gave a sensible check to their progress in public; there is, however, reason to believe that the opinions, which the Pelagian teachers had with great industry, and with their varied ability, propounded, had created much interest and even anxiety in private society. The early part of the first of the following treatises throws some light on this point, and on the artful methods by which the heretics sought to maintain and extend their opinions; it affords some evidence also of the widespread influence of St. Augustin. The controversy had engaged the attention of a pious family in Palestine; Pelagius was in the neighbourhood; and when frankly questioned by the friends, he strongly protested his adherence to the doctrine of . “I anathematize,” he exclaimed with suspicious promptitude, “the man who holds that the grace of God is not necessary for us at every moment and in every act of our lives: and all who endeavour to disannul it, deserve everlasting punishment.” It was an act of astonishing duplicity, which Augustin, to whom the case was referred, soon detected and exposed. It is satisfactory to find that the worthy Christians to whom the Saint addressed his loving labour were confirmed in their simple faith; and in one of the last of his extant letters, towards the close of his days on earth, the venerable St. Jerome, in the course of the following year, united the gratitude of Albina, Pinianus, and Melania, with his own to his renowned brother in the west, whom he saluted as “the restorer of the ancient faith.” “Macte virtute,” said the venerable man, “in orbe celebraris; et, quod signum majoris est gloriæ, omnes heretici detestantur.” [Go on and prosper; the whole world endows thee with its praise, and all heretics with their hatred.]
In the latter part of the first treatise in this volume, one of the most formidable of the Pelagian objections to the Catholic doctrine of original sin is thrown out against marriage: “Surely that could not be a holy state, instituted of God, which produced human beings in sin!” Augustin in a few weighty chapters removes the doubts of his perplexed correspondents, and reserves his strength for the full treatment of the subject in the second treatise, here translated, On Marriage and Concupiscence. It is a noble monument of his firm grasp of Scripture truth, his loyal adherence to its plain meaning, and his delicate and, at the same time, intrepid handling of a subject, which could only be touched by a man whose mind possessed a deep knowledge of human nature—both in its moral and its physiological aspects, and in its relations to God as affected by its creation, its fall, and its redemption.