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Note IX.
by rejecting the natural meaning of passages, and then lay
the difficulty on the passages.
NOTE IX. p. 46.
THE first work of Pelagius referred to in the controversy,
is his letter to Paulinus, which appears to have been
written about A.D. 405, during his stay at Rome. Benedic
tine Editors Preface^ c. 1. But Augustine s doctrinal
bias had clearly asserted itself some years before, in the
book De Diversis Qucestionibus ad Simplicianum, which
came out A.D. 397 ; and had evidently commenced as early
as the book De Libero Arbitrio, which he began to write
A.D. 388. In his Retractations ( 1. 1. c. 9.) he refers to this
early treatise, with which the Pelagians taunted him as
contradicting his later ones on the subject of freewill, and
shows that, though not consistently brought out, the germ
of his ultimate system was to be found in parts of that
treatise. He refers particularly to the scheme of the two
kinds of Divine gifts laid down in 1. 2. cc. 18, 19 ; accord
ing to which both those which did and those which did not
admit of a bad use (virtutes and potentice] were alike gifts
of God. The explanation which he gives in the Retracta
tions of some of the statements favourable to freewill in
the other treatise may be far-fetched ; but such a view as
this is evidently agreeable to his later doctrine. Nor is
Augustine at all a pertinacious interpreter of his early
writings in the sense of his later ones. Consistency has
less charm for him than development as a writer and
thinker ; and he dwells on the changes he has gone through
with the satisfaction of one who believes his later notions
to be a great improvement in depth and acuteness upon
his earlier ones.
To these two earlier treatises may be added the Confes
sions, written A.D. 400. A celebrated dictum in this book
da quod jubes, et jube quod vis was the first apparent
stimulus to the speculations of Pelagius, whom it greatly
irritated. Pelagius ferre non potuit, et contradicens
aliquanto commotius, pene cum illo qui ilia commemora-