uestion of the need for the operation of the grace of God, he
allowed that there was that need. But he explained that when he said God's
grace must be given in order that a man might turn to God, he meant that
the man must be set in a position and under conditions and with
surroundings which rendered it natural and likely that he should so turn.
It seems clear, further, that the Pelagian view of the position and nature
of man in respect to God is inconsistent with the doctrine of the
Redemption wrought by Christ. That great sacrifice is rendered
unnecessary, if the views of Pelagius are accepted. Men could, so to
speak, turn to God and be saved without the Atonement. It is only fair to
say that the extreme view on the opposite side seems to be equally
inconsistent with this vital doctrine. If it be true that each man is
predestined absolutely to life or to death, whether before the fall of
Adam or as the immediate consequence of that fall, it would appear that
not all the Atonement of Christ can add one single soul to them that
shall be saved.

My object is to speak of Church History, not of doctrine. But this
Pelagian question is the most important fact in the history of the British
Church; and unless these few words were said to bring out the extreme
gravity of the matter in dispute, the episode would not appear to fill the
important place it does in fact fill.

With Pelagius himself we have but little to do. He spent his life far from
his native shores; he propounded his views in Rome and Carthage and
Palestine, not in London and York and Bangor. But the history of what
happened to him and his views in those distant parts is so curious--if one
may say so, so comical--and the evidence it affords of the importance of
the controversy is so great, that I must say a little about it. We shall
find in it, I think, an explanation of the course taken by the British
Church.

At Rome Pelagius met Coelestius, a Scot--that is, a native of Ireland--and
Coelestius became a devoted champion of his views, publishing them in a
more definite form than Pelagius himself adopted. These views were
condemned at a Council held at Carthage in 412. A Council at Jerusalem in
415 heard the explanations of Pelagius and did not condemn him. A Council
at Lydda in the same year fully accepted his explanations, to the great
wrath of Jerome. Carthage then took the matter up again, and requested
that Pelagius should be summoned to return to Rome, and