d between them.

We now come to a time when two natives of these islands played a large
part--one of them, a very large part, in the origin the principal part--in
the great theological controversy of the Western Church, a controversy
which touched the East too, but less pointedly. Pelagius and Coelestius
enunciated the views on the nature of man, and the operation of the grace
of God, which were combated with vehemence by two of the leading men of
the West, Augustine and Jerome. From that day to this the controversy has
never died out. When the first beginnings of the theory of
transubstantiation were heard, this Pelagian controversy divided those who
opposed the new idea. Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, in their turn,
differed on this point, as Pelagius and Augustine did. The Franciscans and
the Dominicans took respectively the views of those two great schoolmen.
The Jesuits and the Jansenists of Louis XV's time shewed a like cleavage.
Wherever you find Calvinistic views held and combated, there you have in
fact the controversy which was started by our countrymen. Calvin declared
that every man is predestined to life or to death, from before the
foundation of the world. Pelagius maintained the freedom of will and
action of every man; his power by nature to turn and come to God; his
natural independence, so to speak.

One of the two great opponents of Pelagius, Augustine of Hippo, says that
Pelagius was a Briton. The name is Greek, and means "of the sea,"
"belonging to the sea," and hence his native name has been supposed to be
Morgan, sea-born: that, however, is only a guess. The other writers who
were his contemporaries call him a Briton. His second principal opponent,
Jerome, says that he was by birth one of the Scots, neighbours of the
Britons. This meant in those times, and for some centuries after, a native
of Ireland, whether living in Ireland or settled in the northern parts of
Britain, if any Scots were settled there so early as 370, which was about
the date of his birth. It is, however, quite as likely that Jerome is
speaking not of Pelagius, but of his companion Coelestius, whom all allow
to have been an Irishman. Whichever he means, he is not civil, as he
seldom was in controversy. He describes his opponent as "a huge fellow,
stuffed to repletion with Scotch porridge," a most disrespectful way of
speaking of porridge. Pelagius was a layman, and a monk. About 400 he went
to Rome, and he remained there till th