Of all the disputes in which Augustine was engaged, that with the Pelagians was the most famous. The leader of these people, Pelagius, was a Briton. His name would mean, either in Latin or in Greek, a _man of the sea_; and it is said that his British name was Morgan--meaning the same as the Greek or Latin name. Pelagius was the first native of our own island who gained fame as a writer or as a divine; but his fame was not of a desirable kind, as it arose from the errors which he ran into. He was a man of learning, and of strict life; and at Rome, where he spent many years, he was much respected, until in his old age he began to set forth opinions which brought him into the repute of a heretic. At Rome he became acquainted with a man named Celestius, who is said by some to have been an Italian, while others suppose him an Irishman. It is not known whether Celestius learnt his opinions from Pelagius, or whether each of them had come to think in the same way before they knew one another. But, however this may be, they became great friends, and joined in teaching the same errors. Augustine, as we have seen, had passed through such trials of the spirit that he thoroughly felt the need of God's gracious help in order to do, or even to will, any good thing. Pelagius, on the contrary, seems to have always gone on steadily in the way of his religion. Now this was really a reason why he should have thanked that grace and mercy of God which had spared him the dangers and the terrible sufferings which others have to bear in the course of their spiritual life. But unhappily Pelagius overlooked the help of grace. He owned, indeed, that all is from God; but, instead of understanding that the power of doing any good, or of avoiding any sin, is the especial gift of the Holy Spirit, he fancied that the power of living without sin was given to us by God as a part of our _nature_. He saw that some people made a wrong use of the doctrine of our natural corruption. He saw that, instead of throwing the blame of their sins on their own neglect of the grace which is offered to us through Christ, they spoke of the weakness and corruption of their nature as if these were an excuse for their sins. This was, indeed, a grievous error, and one which Pelagius would have done well to warn people against. But, in condemning it, he went far wrong in an opposite way: he said that man's nature is _not_ corrupt; that it is nothing the worse for the fall of our first parents; that man can be good by his own natural power, without needing any higher help; that men might live without sin, and that many _had_ so lived. These notions of his are mentioned and are condemned in the ninth Article of our own Church, where it is said that "Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, as the Pelagians do vainly talk" [that is to say, original sin is not merely the actual imitation of Adam's sin]; "but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man that naturally is