SEMIPELAGIANS, in Ecclesiastical History, a name given to such as retain some tincture of Pelagianism. See PELAGIANS.

The doctrines of this sect, ns well as those of their predecessors the Pelagians, have their common source in Pelagius, a native of Britain, of whom we have already taken notice. He is said to have been but a simple monk, and not in orders. Having gone to Rome about the end of the fourth century, he lived there for some years with reputation, and was considered ns both pious and virtuous. Rufinus, a priest of Aquileia, having come to Rome in the year 397, is affirmed by some to have been the person who suggested to Pelagius his peculiar doctrines.

In the year 400 Pelagius began to teach his opinions at Rome, both by speech and by writing. He was not the only person who taught these doctrines, of which we have elsewhere enumerated the heads. His friend and companion Celestius, an abler man than himself, likewise maintained them, and with much more address and subtilty. After having promulgated them in Rome, they went into Sicily, where they lived for some time; and thence, in the year 411, they passed over into Africa. Pelagius soon afterwards went into Palestine, while Celestius remained at Carthage, and was preparing himself to take the order of priesthood; but it being soon discovered that he taught a new doctrine,^[1. Augustinus, lib. ii. De Gratia. ] he was accused by the deacon Paulinus in a synod held at Carthage in 412, at which Aurelius the bishop presided. Celestius, on being charged by Paulinus with denying original sin, made answer, “that in truth he doubted whether the sin of Adam was transmitted to his posterity.” He did not, however, own that children had no need of baptism, although this was one of the Pelagian tenets. On the contrary, he wrote a little discourse, in which he acknowledged that children had need of redemption, and that they could not obtain it without baptism. The bishops at the council of Carthage condemned the doctrines of Celestius, and excommunicated him. From this sentence he appealed to the bishop of Rome; but he neglected to pursue his appeal, and went to Ephesus, where he endeavoured to get himself ordained priest. In the mean time, Pelagius having retired into Palestine, was kindly received by St Jerome’s enemy, John of Jerusalem. With him he entered into an engagement to attack the reputation of that author. St Jerome defended himself from their assault, attacking the doctrines of Pelagius,^[2. St Jerome’s Works, and the Apology of Orosius. ] a and in this undertaking he was soon assisted by St Augustin. About this time Orosius having gone from Spain into Africa, and thence into Palestine, published there the proceedings against Celestius at Carthage, and was prevailed upon by the bishop of Jerusalem to enter into a conference with Pelagius in his presence; but the bishop having shown too much partiality for Pelagius, Orosius would not acknowledge him as a judge, but demanded that the decision of that affair, which was among the Latins, might be referred to judges who understood the language. This happened in the year 415, at which time there were in Palestine two French prelates, who, being driven from their dioceses, fled into that country, and having been apprised of the opinions of Pelagius and Celestius, drew up an abridgment from their own books, of the errors imputed to them.^[3. ’ St’Augustin on Original Sin, and against the Pelagians. ] 'To this they joined the articles condemned in the synod of Carthage, and some others, which were sent from Sicily by Hilarius to St Augustin, and then presented the abridgment to the bishop of Caesarea. The matter was referred to a council of fourteen bishops, at which, when the memoir was read, Pelagius explained himself upon some articles, and denied that he was the author of others. He also disowned the propositions condemned at Carthage, and some others ascribed to Celeslius. He did not even hesitate to condemn them; upon which the bishops decided, that since Pelagius approved the doctrines of the church, and rejected and condemned what was contrary to its belief, they acknowledged him to be of the ecclesiastical and catholic communion.

Orosius, on his return to Africa, took with him the memoir against Pelagius, and presented it to a meeting of bishops held at Carthage in 416.^[4. The Epistles of St Augustin. ] Having read over what had been done at a former meeting against Celestius, they declared that both he and Pelagius ought to be anathematized if they did not publicly renounce and condemn the errors imputed to them. The bishops of this meeting, and those of Numidia, assembled the same year at Milivetum, wrote upon the subject to Pope Innocent, who approved of the judgment of the African prelates, and declared Pelagius, Celestius, and their followers excommunicated.^[5. Marius Mercator’s Commentary ] Innocent gave an account of this judgment to the bishops of the East, and the matter seemed altogether at an end, when he died; but Celestius having been made priest at Ephesus, and having gone to Constantinople, whence he was driven by Atticus, bishop of that city, who also wrote against him to Asia and Africa, he came to Rome in the beginning of the pontificate of Zozimus, and undertook to pursue the appeal which he had formerly made from the judgment of the synod of Carthage. Having cited his accuser Paulinus, and offered to justify himself, he presented a confession of faith, in which he acknowleged that children ought to be baptized, in order to inherit the kingdom of heaven; but he denied that the sin of Adam was transmitted to his children. He appeared before the bishops and clergymen assembled by the pope, and declared that he condemned all the errors with which he had been charged. The pope delayed his judgment for two months, and in the mean time received a letter and a confession of faith from Pelagius, which were very artfully drawn up. When the time for judgment arrived, Zozimus held a synod, and said that he thought the declarations of Pelagius and Celestius sufficient for their justification. He was displeased at the two French bishops for not appearing against them, and wrote two letters on that head, one to the bishops of Africa, and another in particular to Aurelius, bishop of Carthage. The African bishops, to the number of 214, without regarding the judgment passed at Rome, assembled at Carthage, and, having confirmed their former decisions, condemned the doctrines of the Pelagians. They wrote to the bishop of Rome to acquaint him that he had been deceived by Celestius, and discovered to him the equivocations of his letter and the confession of faith of Pelagius, sending him a memoir of the errors of which he should require a distinct and precise revocation from the two heretics. The pope made answer, that although his authority was so great that none durst dissent from his judgment, still that he was willing to communicate the matter[7:20:88] to them, and would let it remain in the same state, until a new deliberation could take place. This letter was presented to a council held at Carthage in 418, at which eight canons were drawn up against the Pelagian heresy. The bishop of Rome, in the mean time, was inclined to examine again the affair of Celestius, and to endeavour to draw from him distinct and precise answers according to the plan suggested by the African bishops in their memoir; but Celestius would not come forward, and accordingly withdrew from Rome. From his flight the pope concluded that he had formerly imposed upon him, and that he held the new doctrines; and, accordingly, changing his opinion with respect to him, he approved of the decrees of the African prelates, and renewed the condemnations of his predecessor, Pope Innocent, against him and Pelagius.^[6. See the Letters of St Augustin. ] This judgment he published in a letter which was sent to all the bishops. About the same time an edict was published by the Emperor Honorius against Pelagius and Celestius, ordering that they should be banished from Rome, and that all their followers should be sent into exile.

In the following year Honorius published another edict, by which it was ordered, that the bishops who would not sign the pope’s letter should be deprived of their churches. Accordingly, Julian the bishop of Eclana, who was afterwards head of the party, and seventeen other bishops, were cashiered; upon which they wrote a letter to Rufus, bishop of Thessalonica, and demanded a universal council from the emperor, which was refused. Celestius returned again to Rome, but was again expelled from the city; whilst his followers, being expelled from Italy, retired to different countries. Some of them came over into Britain, and others went into the East. Atticus banished them from Constantinople, and they were also banished from Ephesus. Theodotus, bishop of Antioch, condemned them in a synod held at Diospolis, and banished Pelagius and his followers out of Palestine, whither they had returned. Julian, the bishop, was condemned in a provincial synod of Cilicia, whither he had retired to Theodorus, bishop of Mopsuesta, who was obliged to anathematize him. What became of Pelagius is unknown, as history gives no further account of him; but Celestius having returned to Rome, and being driven from thence by Pope Celestin, went with Julian and some other bishops of their party to Constantinople, where they endeavoured to prevail upon the Emperor Theodosius to assemble a council, instead of which he ordered them to leave the city. After this they joined with the Nestorians,^[7. ’ Prosper in his Chronicle. ] and were condemned together with them in a general council held at Ephesus in 431; and there now remained but a small number of Pelagians dispersed in the West. Julian, after having endeavoured several times to get himself reinstated in his bishopric, was at last obliged to retire into Sicily, where he died.

To the Pelagians succeeded the Semipelagians, who rejected the doctrines of the former with respect to original sin and the power of free will to do any good.^[8. Hilary’s Letters to Augustin. ] They owned that man had need of the grace of God to persevere in welldoing; but they believed that the beginning of good will and faith did not necessarily depend upon grace; for that man, by the mere force of nature, might desire to do good, and that God seconded that good will by his assistance, which depended upon liberty, and was given to all men. Besides these, they maintained some other peculiar tenets. The origin of some of their opinions is founded in this, that some of the books which were written by St Augustin in his last years, with respect to the ∞ntroversies which arose in the monastery of Adrumetum, relative to correction, grace, and predestination, having been carried into Gaul, happened to give offence to several persons, and particularly to the monks of Lerins, who considered his doctrines as hostile to that of free will. This led them to think and to maintain, that, in order to be saved, it was necessary to leave to man the power of knowing and desiring good by the force of nature, so that the beginning might come from man. Several considerable persons in Gaul, and even some bishops, but particularly the priests, were of this opinion. Cassian, deacon of Constantinople, and afterwards priest of Marseilles, authorized it in his conferences; and Faustus, bishop of Riez, supported it very strenuously. From its very first appearance, St Augustin stood up to oppose this doctrine, and was supported by Prosper and Hilarius. Pope Celestin complained to the bishops of Gaul, that they suffered their priests to speak ill of the doctrines of St Augustin; Popes Gelasius and Hormisdas condemned the books of Faustus; and, last of all, the council of Orange, held in 529, condemned particularly the principal tenets of the Semipelagians, and put an end at that time to the controversy, about a hundred years after the death of St Augustin.

The Semipelagians were very numerous; and their doctrines, though variously explained, were received in many of the monastic schools in Gaul, whence they spread themselves far and wide throughout Europe. With respect to the Greeks and other Christians of the East, we may remark, that they had adopted the Semipelagian tenets, even before they were promulgated in Gaul by Cassian and Faustus.

After the period, however, at which the Semipelagian doctrines were condemned in the council of Orange, we find but little notice taken of this sect by historians. Although its tenets were maintained by a few in the succeeding centuries, the sect could boast of no eminent leaders, and sunk into obscurity. In the beginning, indeed, of the Reformation, some of the Pelagian tenets were again brought into circulation. Every one is acquainted with the hostility of Luther to the doctrine of free will, who went so far into the opposite extreme as to entitle one of his works against the celebrated Erasmus on this subject, Be Servo Arbitrio. But notwithstanding that Luther was their leader, this doctrine of his was not adopted by some of the most eminent of the reformers. His learned friend, the mild and worthy Melancthon, although he at first, either from not having sufficiently considered the subject, or because this doctrine was so unpalatable to the great body of the reformers on account of the authority of Luther, joined with Luther in his hostility to the doctrine of free will so far as to say that free will could have no effect under the influence of grace, shortly afterwards changed his opinion so as to run into the opposite extreme. For although Luther at his outset had affirmed, that the prescience of God annihilated free will in all his creatures, he was so softened down into moderation at the time of the drawing up of the famous Confession of Augsburg, as to allow Melancthon, who composed it, to insert these words, “that it was necessary to allow free will to all who possessed the use of reason, not however in such things as regarded God, which they could not commence, or at least which they could not complete, without his assistance and grace, but in the affairs or works of the present life solely, and in order to perform their duty towards society.”^[9. See the 18th article, and Melancthon’s Apology. ] In this passage two truths are clearly admitted: First, that there is free will in man; and, secondly, that of itself it has no efficacy in such works as are purely Christian or religious. But although this be evident, and although it would seem as if he attributed the efficacy of religious works solely to the grace of God, yet the restricting words “at least,” show that he was of opi-[7:20:89] nion that free will, by its own natural force and efficacy, though it could not complete, could at least commence, Christian or religious works, without the assistance of grace.

To such of our readers as are acquainted with ecclesiastical history, it is unnecessary to remark, that this was one of the leading tenets of the Semipelagians. But Melancthon did not stop here. It is true, that, in order to keep well with the reformers, he was obliged, in those public instruments which he drew up, to insinuate rather than avow his partiality for the doctrine of free will, the exercise of which, we see, he confined, in the Confession of Augsburg, to such actions merely as regarded civil life and our duties to society. In the Saxon Confession of Faith, however, he proceeds a step farther, and says, “that the will is free; that God neither wishes for, nor approves, nor co-operates in the production of sin; but that the free will of man and of the devils is the true cause of their sin and of their fall.” Many, no doubt, will be of opinion, that Melancthon merits praise for having thus corrected Luther, and for having more clearly expressed his own opinion, than he had done in the Confession of Augsburg. He even proceeds farther, and extends the exercise of free will to religious or Christian works. For after having explained in the Saxon Confession of Faith the nature of free will, and the manner in which it makes a choice, and having also shown that it is not of itself sufficient in those works, or actions, which regard a future life, he affirms twice “that the will, even after having received the influence of the Holy Spirit, does not remain idle that is to say, it is not merely passive under the influence of grace, but can reject it, or co-operate with it, at pleasure. Necessity, it is true, obliged him to express his opinion rather obscurely. But what he insinuates only in these last-quoted words, is clearly and fully expressed in one of his letters to Calvin. “1 had,” says he, “a friend who, in reasoning upon predestination, believed equally the two following things; namely, that every thing happens among men as it is ordained by Providence, but that there is, nevertheless, a contingency in actions or in events. He confessed, however, that he was unable to reconcile these two things. For my part,” continues Melancthon, “who am of opinion that God neither wishes for nor is the cause of sin, I acknowledge this contingency in the feebleness of our judgment, in order that the ignorant may confess that David fell of himself, and voluntarily, into sin; that he had it in his power to preserve the grace of the Holy Spirit which he had within him; and that in this combat or trial it is necessary to acknowledge some exercise or action of the will.”^[10. See Calvin’s Letters. ] This opinion he confirms and illustrates by a passage from St Basil, where he says, “Have but the will or the inclination, and God is with you.” By these words Melancthon seems to insinuate, that the will is not only active in the works of religion, but even begins them without grace. This, however, was not the meaning of St Basil, as is evident from several other parts of his writings; but tl∣3t it was the opinion of Melancthon, appears fully from this passage, as well as from that which we have cited from the Confession of Augsburg, in which he insinuates that the error is not in saying that the will can of itself commence, but in thinking that it can, without grace, finish or complete religious or Christian works. Thus it appears, that he considered the will as capable of reject-mg the influence of grace, since he declares, that David could preserve the Holy Spirit when he lost it, as well as he could lose it when he kept it within him. But although this was his decided opinion, he durst not avow it fully in the Saxon Confession of Faith, but was obliged to content himself with insinuating it gently in these* words: “The will, even after receiving the grace of the Holy Spirit, is not idle or without action.” All this precaution, however, was insufficient to save Melancthon from censure. Fran-cowitz, better known by the name of Illyricus, being jealous of him, and his enemy, by his influence with his party procured the condemnation of these words of the Saxon Confession, and of the passage from St Basil, at two synods held by the reformers. At the same time that one party of the Lutherans were unwilling to adopt Melancthon’s opinion, “that the will is not passive when under the influence of grace,” we are at a loss to think how they could deny it, since they almost unanimously confess, that a person under the influence of grace may reject and lose it. This opinion is avowed in the Confession of Augsburg and in Melancthon’s Apology. It was even, long after that, decided upon anew, inculcated strongly in their book of Concord, and brought frequently against them by their opponents as a proof of inconsistency and contradiction.

These are not the only instances in which the Lutherans were charged with Semipelagian principles. One of the ablest and the most learned of their opponents, we cannot help thinking, had in more than one instance made good the charge against them. To prove this we need only refer to the remarks that have been made on the eight celebrated propositions in the third book of Concord, relative to the co-operation of the will with grace. According to the first seven of these propositions, an attentive listening to the preaching of the word of God produces grace; and according to the fifth, any man, even a libertine or an infidel, is free, or has it in his power, to listen attentively to the preaching of the word of God. He has it then in his power to give to himself that which to him is productive of grace, and may thus be the sole author of his own conversion or regeneration. In the eighth proposition it is affirmed, that we are not permitted to doubt that the grace of the Holy Spirit, even though it may not be felt, does accompany an attentive hearing of the word of God; and, to do away every doubt about the species of attention which they mean, we must observe, that they speak of attention inasmuch as it precedes the grace of the Holy Spirit, and of that attention which, in consequence of its dependence on free will, we have it in our power to bestow upon the word or not, just as we please. It is the exercise of this free attention which they say operates grace. But here it would seem that they were in extremes; for, as they said, upon the one hand, that when the Holy Spirit begins to move us we act not nt all, so they maintained, on the other, that this operation of the Holy Spirit, which converts us without any co-operation on our part, is necessarily attendant upon an act of our wills, in which the Holy Spirit has no share, and in which our liberty acts purely by its natural force or power. Such of our readers as are anxious to examine the progress of the Pelagian and Semipclagian principles after the dawn of the Reformation, we must refer to the works of the principal reformers and to those of their adversaries, as well as to the different writers upon ecclesiastical history.