that "God's grace and help was not given with a view to men's several actions, but consisted in free will, or in the (moral) law and teaching :" and this involved the admission of a grace which con. sisted in help as "supplied by the Holy Spirit for such actions,-wherefore we always pray for auxilium opportunum" (ib. 31).

Here, then, was a second inadequate sense of grace-instruction in matters of duty; it was inadequate because, although any light thrown on the question, "What must I do?" was unquestionably a Divine gift, yet it did not come sufficiently home to the inward being; it did not directly touch the will and the heart. The point is again referred to in De Grat. Chr. 3, 8, 11, where Augustine observes that the idea of grace, properly so called, is not satisfied by "a revelation of moral wisdom, or by admonitions to follow what is good." Such admonitions, as he urges in the "De Spiritu et Littera," might only "work death" by irritating the rebellious instinct of selfwill, so that "the stream of man's corruptions would fret and rage more furiously for the obstacle placed in its way, as some mountain torrent foams" with "fiercer activity round a rock that has fallen in its bed" (Trench on St. Augustine as an Interpreter of Scripture, p. 127; compare Rom. vii. 8 ff.).

A third sense of grace, more distinctively Christian, but still falling short of the required mark, would be the "gift" of a perfect moral exemplar in Christ. Augustine says that this sense is suggested by several passages in the treatises of Pelagius (De Grat. Chr. 38). He himself loved to dwell on the pattern of humility exhibited in the Lord Incarnate (see De Agone Christiano, 12): in his long letter (Ep. 140) on "the Grace of the New Testament," he points repeatedly to the teaching of that supreme Example which in his book on "True Religion" he had called "disciplina morum." He was little likely to underestimate the power of its appeals to the conscience of every one who called Christ Master. But still, it was but illuminative and persuasive; it did not, of itself, impart the requisite impulse; nor did the forgiveness of sins, which in the "De Gratia Christi" is referred to as also called " grace" in the Pelagian theology. All these were gifts of God; but something more than all these was wanted for the moral recovery of man's enfeebled and tainted nature; and that "something more was not really recognised by Pelagius.

It has, indeed, been said by a great writer on this controversy that the Pelagians did include in the idea of grace "those internal Divine impulses

and spiritual assistances commonly denoted by the words," and this on the ground of Pelagius's words quoted in De Grat. Chr. 8, and of stronger language quoted from Julian in Op. Imp. c. (Mozley, Aug. Doctr. Predest. p. 54).

Jul. iii. 106

But the first of these passages speaks of "grace" only as illuminative; and the second says that God "makes known His benignity by commanding, by blessing, by sanctifying, by constraining, by exciting, by illuminating," where the context dwells on that revelation of things hidden from the wise which was unattainable by mere free will, and thus limits the scope of the words cited to such assistance as might instruct men on the requirements of the "cultus Dei." This is not the Catholic conception of grace as a Divine power operating, not only on the intellect, but also on the affections and the will.

APPENDIX XX.

AUGUSTINE was informed, probably about the year 427, that Vitalis, a Carthaginian Christian, acknowledged the necessity of real grace-i.e. of a movement or energy of the Holy Spirit on the will and affections-for all good acts subsequent

to the initial act of faith, which he referred to the unassisted will; explaining Phil. ii. 13 to mean that God, through Scripture, made external appeals to the conscience, but did not inwardly enable the conscience to respond to them. As against this view, Augustine argued, in an elaborate letter (Ep. 217), from the Church prayers offered up for the conversion of unbelievers, that faith was believed to be actually a gift. He sums up thus: "If, as I am disposed to believe about you, you agree with us that we ought, and are wont, to pray to God for those who are not willing to believe, that they may be willing to believe, and for those who oppose and contradict His law and doctrine, that they may believe it and follow it, . . . that we also ought, and are wont, to give thanks to God for such persons when they are converted to the faith and doctrine, and become willing instead of not-willing, then you ought undoubtedly to acknowledge that the wills of men are anticipated (præveniri) by God's grace, and that God makes them will the good as to which they were unwilling," etc.

From other language in this letter it is evident that this "prevenient" action of grace was regarded by Augustine as dominant and determinative. The Divine "preparation of the will"

is, with him, a process in which the will is purely passive; the conversion of the unbeliever is effected "omnipotentissima facilitate;" and Augustine does not shrink from representing "the priest of God at His altar as exhorting the people to pray, or himself praying with a loud voice, that He would compel the unbelieving nations to come to the faith in Him." There is no admission of any capacity in the will to resist the grace which thus takes hold of it; on the contrary, such capacity is advisedly put out of the question.1 This letter, therefore, which also exhibits Augustine's unnatural interpretation of 1 Tim. ii. 4 as meaning "None are saved except by the action of God's own will," —and which virtually holds an infant responsible for the parents' neglect to bring it to baptism and to the Eucharist, may fittingly introduce us to the difficulties felt and expressed by the learned Churchmen of Southern Gaul at a slightly later period, and especially to the error into which. they were betrayed with reference to the initial act of faith, or the first good motion of the will.

Of these the chief were John Cassian, who had

1 Dr. Stoughton, in his "Religion in England," iv. 269, says that Truman, an opponent of Bishop Bull, "anticipated the opinions of modern Calvinists" by "representing grace as a Divine influence securing the obedience of the will to the gospel of Christ."