o Bernard and Thomas Aquinas,
but even to Calvin and Bossuet and Pascal. And it will be the marvellous
lucidity of the Bishop of Hippo which shall bring back to the true
faith, if it is ever brought back, that part of the Roman Catholic
Church which accepts the verdict of the Council of Trent, when that
famous council indorsed the opinions of Pelagius while upholding the
authority of Augustine as the greatest doctor of the Church.

To a man like Augustine, with his deep experiences,--a man rescued from
a seductive philosophy and a corrupt life, as he thought, by the
special grace of God and in answer to his mother's prayers,--the views
of Pelagius were both false and dangerous. He could find no words
sufficiently intense whereby to express his gratitude for his
deliverance from both sin and error. To him this Deliverer is so
personal, so loving, that he pours out his confession to Him as if He
were both friend and father. And he felt that all that is vital in
theology must radiate from the recognition of His sovereign power in the
renovation and salvation of the world. All his experiences and
observations of life confirmed the authority of Scripture,--that the
world, as a matter of fact, was sunk in a state of sin and misery, and
could be rescued only by that divine power which converted Paul. His
views of predestination, grace, and Providence all radiate from the
central principle of the majesty of God and the littleness of man. All
his ideas of the servitude of the will are confirmed by his personal
experience of the awful fetters which sin imposes, and the impossibility
of breaking away from them without direct aid from the God who ruleth
the world in love. And he had an infinitely greater and deeper
conviction of the reality of this divine love, which had rescued him,
than Pelagius had, who felt that his salvation was the result of his own
merits. The views of Augustine were infinitely more cheerful than those
of his adversary respecting salvation, since they gave more hope to the
miserable population of the Empire who could not claim the virtues of
Pelagius, and were impotent of themselves to break away from the bondage
which degraded them. There is nothing in the writings of Augustine,--not
in this controversy, or any other controversy,--to show that God
delights in the miseries or the penalty which are indissolubly connected
with sin; on the contrary, he blesses and adores the divine hand which
releases men from