the constraints which sin imposes. This divine
interposition is wholly based on a divine and infinite love. It is the
helping hand of Omnipotence to the weak will of man,--the weak will even
of Paul, when he exclaimed, "The evil that I would not, that I do." It
is the unloosing, by His loving assistance, of the wings by which the
emancipated soul would rise to the lofty regions of peace and
contemplation.

I know very well that the doctrines which Augustine systematized from
Paul involve questions which we cannot answer; for why should not an
infinite and omnipotent God give to all men the saving grace that he
gave to Augustine? Why should not this loving and compassionate Father
break all the fetters of sin everywhere, and restore the primeval
Paradise in this wicked world where Satan seems to reign? Is He not more
powerful than devils? Alas! the prevalence of evil is more mysterious
than the origin of evil. But this is something,--and it is well for the
critic and opponent of the Augustinian theology to bear this in
mind,--that Augustine was an earnest seeker after truth, even when
enslaved by the fornications of Carthage; and his own free-will in
persistently seeking truth, through all the mazes of Manichean and
Grecian speculation, is as manifest as the divine grace which came to
his assistance. God Almighty does not break fetters until there is some
desire in men to have them broken. If men _will_ hug sins, they must not
complain of their bondage. Augustine recognized free-will, which so many
think he ignored, when his soul aspired to a higher life. When a
drunkard in his agonies cries out to God, then help is near. A drowning
man who calls for a rope when a rope is near stands a good chance of
being rescued.

I need not detail the results of this famous controversy. Augustine,
appealing to the consciousness of mankind as well as to the testimony of
Paul, prevailed over Pelagius, who appealed to the pride of reason. In
those dreadful times there were more men who felt the need of divine
grace than there were philosophers who revelled in the speculations of
the Greeks. The danger from the Pelagians was not from their
organization as a sect, but their opinions as individual men. Probably
there were all shades of opinion among them, from a modest and
thoughtful semi-Pelagianism to the rankest infidelity. There always have
been, and probably ever will be, sceptical and rationalistic people,
even in the bosom of the C