Pelagius, whose real name was Morgan, and who is supposed to have been a Welshman, belonged to that numerous class of thinkers, who, from their peculiar idiosyncrasy, are apt to start at the sovereignty of divine grace, developed in the plan of redemption, as if it struck at once at the equity of God and the responsibility of man. He is said to have betrayed his heretical leanings, for the first time, by publicly expressing his disapprobation of a sentiment of Augustine, which he heard quoted by a bishop “_Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis_—Give, Lord, what thou biddest, and bid what thou wilt.” It would be easy to show that, in recoiling from the odious picture of the orthodox doctrine, drawn by his own fancy, he fell into the very consequences which he was so eager to avoid. The deity of Pelagius being subjected to the changeable will of the creature, all things were left to the direction of blind chance or unthinking destiny; while man, being represented as created with concupiscence, to account for his aberrations from rectitude—in other words, with a constitution in which the seeds of evil were implanted—the authorship of sin was ascribed, directly and primarily, to the Creator.[3] Augustine was a powerful but unsteady writer, and has expressed himself so inconsistently as to have divided the opinions of the Latin Church, where he was recognized as a standard, canonized as a saint, and revered under the title of “The Doctor of Grace.” On the great doctrine of salvation by grace, he is scriptural and evangelical; and hence he has been frequently quoted with admiration by our Reformed divines, partly to evince the declension of Rome from the faith of the earlier fathers, partly from that veneration for antiquity, which induces us to bestow more notice on the ivy-mantled ruin, than on the more graceful and commodious modern edifice in its vicinity. When arguing against Pelagianism, Augustine is strong in the panoply of Scripture; when developing his own system, he fails to do justice either to Scripture or to himself. Loud, and even fierce, for the entire corruption of human nature, he spoils all by admitting the absurd dogma of baptismal regeneration. Chivalrous in the defence of grace, as opposed to free-will, he virtually abandons the field to the enemy, by teaching that we are justified by our works of evangelical obedience, and that the faith which justifies includes in its nature all the offices of Christian charity.