Chapter 8

Chapter 8 [IV.]—The Pelagians Demolish Free Will.

These proud and haughty people will not have this; and yet they do not maintain free will by purifying it, but demolish it by exaggerating it. For they are angry with us who say these things, for no other reason than that they disdain to glory in the Lord. Yet Pelagius feared the episcopal judgment of Palestine; and when it was objected to him that he said that the grace of God is given according to our merits, he denied that he said so, and condemned those who said this with an anathema. 2542 And yet nothing else is found to be defended in the books which he afterwards wrote, thinking that he had made a p. 380 fraud upon the men who were his judges, by lying or by hiding his meaning, I know not how, in ambiguous words. 2543