us, 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
engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from
original righteousness" [that is, he is very far gone from that
righteousness which Adam had at the first]. And then it is said in the
next Article--"The condition of man, after the fall of Adam, is such
that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and
good works to faith and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to
do good works, pleasing and acceptable to God, without the grace of God
by Christ preventing us [or _going before_ us], that we may have a good
will, and working with us when we have that good will." Thus at every
step there is a need of grace from above to help us on the way of
salvation.

After Rome had been taken by the Goths, i