{"author":"Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)","date_end":1887,"date_label":"1887 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain)","date_start":1887,"edition_year":1887,"edition_year_basis":"Original NPNF I V title and imprint 1887; physical transcription printing date uncertain; per-work translator allocation unspecified","id":"ws-library-full-note:0c811acf6c5d609e56bd:cite_note-102","is_genuine_commentary_verified":false,"license_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Reusing_Wikisource_content","public_import_allowed":true,"publication_location":"source-library","record_type":"editorial-footnote","references":[],"rights_approved":true,"section":"Chapter uncertain; original source section: Augustin's Part in the Controversy, editorial note cite_note-102","semantic_kind_reviewed":false,"source_context":["It is not without significance, that the error of Vitalis took a semi-Pelagian form. Pure Pelagianism was by this time no longer a living issue. Augustin was himself, no doubt, not yet done with it. The second book of his treatise On Marriage and Concupiscence, which seems to have been taken to Italy by Alypius, in 421, received at once the attention of Julian, and was elaborately answered by him, during that same year, in eight books addressed to Florus. But Julian was now in Cilicia, and his book was slow in working its way westward. It was found at Rome by Alypius, apparently in 427 or 428, and he at once set about transcribing it for his friend’s use. An opportunity arising to send it to Africa before it was finished, he forwarded to Augustin the five books that were ready, with an urgent request that they should receive his immediate attention, and a promise to send the other three as soon as possible. Augustin gives an account of his progress in his reply to them in a letter written to Quodvultdeus, apparently in 428. This deacon was urging Augustin to give the Church a succinct account of all heresies; and Augustin excuses himself from immediately undertaking that task by the press of work on his hands. He was writing his Retractations, and had already finished two books of them, in which he had dealt with two hundred and thirty-two works. His letters and homilies remained and he had given the necessary reading to many of the letters. Also, he tells his correspondent, he was engaged on a reply to the eight books of Julian’s new work. Working night and day, he had already completed his response to the first three of Julian’s books, and had begun on the fourth while still expecting the arrival of the last three which Alypius had promised to send. If he had completed the answer to the five books of Julian which he already had in hand, before the other three reached him, he might begin the work which Quodvultdeus so earnestly desired him to undertake. In due time, whatever may have been the trials and labours that needed first to be met, the desired treatise On Heresies was written (about 428), and the eighty-eighth chapter of it gives us a welcome compressed account of the Pelagian heresy, which may be accepted as the obverse of the account of catholic truth given in the letter to Vitalis. But the composition of this work was not the only interruption which postponed the completion of the second elaborate work against Julian. It was in the providence of God that the life of this great leader in the battle for grace should be prolonged until he could deal with semi-Pelagianism also. Information as to the rise of this new form of the heresy at Marseilles and elsewhere in Southern Gaul was conveyed to Augustin along with entreaties, that, as “faith’s great patron,” he would give his aid towards meeting it, by two laymen with whom he had already had correspondence,—Prosper and Hilary. They pointed out the difference between the new party and thorough-going Pelagianism; but, at the same time, the essentially Pelagianizing character of its formative elements. Its representatives were ready, as a rule, to admit that all men were lost in Adam, and no one could recover himself by his own free will, but all needed God’s grace for salvation. But they objected to the doctrines of prevenient and of irresistible grace; and asserted that man could initiate the process of salvation by turning first to God, that all men could resist God’s grace, and no grace could be given which they could not reject, and especially they denied that the gifts of grace came irrespective of merits, actual or foreseen. They said that what Augustin taught as to the calling of God’s elect according to His own purpose was tantamount to fatalism, was contrary to the teaching of the fathers and the true Church doctrine, and, even if true, should not be preached, because of its tendency to drive men into indifference or despair. Hence, Prosper especially desired Augustin to point out the dangerous nature of these views, and to show that prevenient and co-operating grace is not inconsistent with free will, that God’s predestination is not founded on foresight of receptivity in its objects, and that the doctrines of grace may be preached without danger to souls."],"source_library_url":"/library/0c811acf6c5d609e56bd/#ws-library-full-note:0c811acf6c5d609e56bd:cite_note-102","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nicene_and_Post-Nicene_Fathers:_Series_I/Volume_V/Introductory_Essay/Introductory_Essay/Augustin's_Part_in_the_Controversy#cite_note-102","translator":"Peter Holmes (edition translator credit; work allocation unspecified), Robert Ernest Wallis (edition translator credit; work allocation unspecified), Benjamin B. Warfield (translation reviser and introduction author), Philip Schaff (series editor)","verification":{"proof_file":"raw/review/source-library-note-batch-0061/proof-records.jsonl","proof_file_sha256":"7c4407a5986a306f1eaff33bf3f1bf135fc2e65f72270d1b3381ed0616bfbce3","proof_record_id":"ws-library-full-note:0c811acf6c5d609e56bd:cite_note-102"},"verified":true,"work":"Introductory Essay","work_id":"ws-augustine-antipelagian-npnf1-5-0c811acf6c5d609e56bd"}