46. [XLII]—Pelagius Professes to Respect the Catholic Authors.

Such are the particulars which, to the best of my ability, I have succeeded in obtaining from the writings of Pelagius, whenever he makes mention of grace. You perceive, however, that men who entertain such opinions as we have reviewed are “ignorant of God’s righteousness, and desire to establish their own,”109    Rom. x. 3. and are far off from “the righteousness which we have of God”110    Phil. iii. 9. and not of ourselves; and this they ought to have discovered and recognised in the very holy canonical Scriptures. Forasmuch, however, as they read these Scriptures in a sense of their own, they of course fail to observe even the most obvious truths therein. Would that they would but turn their attention in no careless mood to what might be learned concerning the help of God’s grace in the writings, at all events, of catholic authors; for they freely allow that the Scriptures were correctly understood by these, and that they would not pass them by in neglect, out of an overweening fondness for their own opinions. For note how this very man Pelagius, in that very treatise of his so recently put forth, and which he formally mentions in his self-defence (that is to say, in the third book of his Defence of Free Will), praises St. Ambrose.

CAPUT XLII.

46. Haec ergo pro meo captu intelligere potui in Pelagii scriptis, quando nominat gratiam. Videtis autem, quod qui ista sentiunt, ignorantes Dei justitiam, suam volunt constituere (Rom. X, 3), et longe ab illa sunt, quae nobis ex Deo est (Philipp. III, 9), non ex nobis, quam in Scripturis maxime sanctis canonicis , advertere atque agnoscere debuerunt. Sed quia eas secundum suum sensum legunt, profecto in illis nec aperta contuentur. Utinam ergo saltem in catholicorum virorum scriptis, a quibus eas recte intellectas esse non dubitant, quid sit de adjutorio divinae gratiae sentiendum, non negligenter attenderent, nec suae sententiae amore nimio praeterirent. Nam iste ipse Pelagius in illo ipso recenti opusculo suo, cujus se commemoratione defendit, id est, in tertio Libro pro libero Arbitrio, sanctum Ambrosium quemadmodum laudet, accipite.