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ON THE PROCEEDINGS OF PELAGIUS Preface FTER THERE came into our hands, 0 holy father Aurelius , the ecclesiastical proceedings wherein the fourteen bishops1 of the province of Palestine had proclaimed Pelagius to be a Catholic, my hesitation, which had been making me reluctant to furnish any more extensive and more forthright statement concerning the defense that Pelagius had made, came to an end. For I had already read the defense he had made in a paper2 that he had sent to me, and, since I received no letter from him accompanying it, I was afraid that there might be some discrepancy between my statement and the ecclesiastical proceedings. Moreover, if perhaps Pelagius should say that he had not himselfsent me that paper, which would have been difficult for me to refute, since there was only one [CSEL 42.52] witness, then I would instead appear guilty in the eyes of those who were sympathetic to him in his denial, either of a fraudulent falsification or, to put it more mildly, of an ill-considered credulity. Therefore, now when I examine in detail that to which the proceedings testify, it will become apparent,3 as much as it is already apparent to me, whether he conducted his defense in the way described, and with all doubt removed your holiness and all who read this work will surely be able tojudge both his defense and my present work more readily and more certainly. 1. According to Augustine in Contra Iulianum 1.5.19 and 1.17.32, the names ofthese bishops were Eulogius,john ofjerusalem, Ammonianus, Porphyrius, Eutonius, another Porphyrius, Fidus, Zoninus, Zoboennus, Nymphidius, Chromatius, jovinus, Eleutherius, and Clematius. 2. Chartula. Augustine speaks of this paper at length below in 32.57-33,58. He also discusses it in Epp. 177.15, 179.7, and 19*ยท2. 3. Reading, with BA, mihi visum est videbitur utrum; CSEL: mihi videbar utrum, PL: mihi videtur utrum. III 112 PROCEEDINGS OF PELAGIUS First Objection: Can One Be Sinless without Knowledge of the Law? (2) And so I offer first to the Lord my God, our guide and our protector, unutterable thanks, because I was not misled in my estimation of our holy brothers and fellow bishops who presided asjudges in the case. For it was with somejustification that they approved his answers, for they were not considering how in his writings he had stated the points which were brought against him, but only what he responded about them during the course of the interrogation at hand. For the judgement of an unsound faith is one thing, that of an imprudent language another. In brief, certain objections were raised against Pelagius in a written complaint brought by our holy brothers and fellow bishops in Gaul, Heros and Lazarus,4 who, because of the serious illness of one of them (as we later found out from a credible source), were unable to be present. The first of these was that Pelagius wrote in one ofhis works, No one can be without sin except one who has acquired a knowledge of the law.5 After this had been read, the synod asked, "Did you publish that, Pelagius ?" And he answered, "I did indeed say that, but not in the sense in which they understood it. I did not say that one who has acquired a knowledge of the law cannot sin, but that through knowledge of the law one is assisted in not sinning, as it is written, [53] 'He gave them his law for help.' ,,6 Having heard this, the synod declared, "The statements of Pelagius are not contrary to the Church." Plainly, his response is not con4 . On Heros and Lazarus, see the Introduction to the present work. 5. This is taken from a lost work, which is referred to by several different titles: Liber capitulorum (Book of Chapters) in the present work (e.g., 3.7), Liber testimoniorum (Book ofTestimonies) (Augustine, C. duas epp. Pel. 4.8.21), Liber eclogarum (Book ofSelections) (Gennadius, De viris illustribus 43). According to Evans, this work "probably had no connected prose writing of Pelagius in it at all, but was composed of single assertions each followed by a series of biblical quotations to support it" ("Pelagius' Veracity," 22). Augustine tells us, in C. duas epp. Pel. 4.8.21, that Pelagius wrote it after the model of Cyprian's book of testimonies addressed to Quirinus. Although in Degest. Pel. this work is called the Liber capitulorum, we prefer to...

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