ar 431. Yet some of its principles, in their full force, were
actually not accepted. For instance, his dogma of unconditional
election that some were absolutely predestinated to eternal
salvation, others to eternal damnation has never been taught by
the Roman Catholic Church. When Gottschalk urged it in the ninth
century, it was condemned as a heresy;5 and among the Protestants
in the sixteenth century Calvin was obliged to fight for it
against odds. Augustine's belief must therefore be taken as a
representation of the general patristic belief only with caution
and with qualifications. The distinctive views of Augustine as
contrasted with those of Pelagius were as follow.6 Augustine held
that, by Adam's fault, a burden of sin was entailed on all souls,
dooming them, without exception, to an eternal banishment in the
infernal world. Pelagius denied the doctrine of "original sin,"
and made each one responsible only for his own personal sins.
Augustine taught that baptism was necessary to free its subject
from the power which the devil had over the soul on account of
original sin, and that all would infallibly be doomed to hell who
were not baptized, except, first, the ancient saints, who foreknew
the evangelic doctrines and believed, and, secondly, the martyrs,
whose blood was their baptism. Pelagius claimed that Christian
baptism was only necessary to secure an

3 Ibid. lib. ii. cap. 9, 10.

4 Commentaries on the Affairs of the Christians in the First Three
Centuries: Third Century sects. 27-29.

5 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 183.

6 Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, trans. from the German by
R. Emerson, ch. xix.; also pp. 62, 68, 75, 79.

entrance into heaven: infants and good men, if unbaptized; would
enjoy a happy immortality in Paradise, but they never could enter
the kingdom of heaven. Augustine affirmed that Adam's sin
destroyed the freedom of the will in the whole human race.
Pelagius asserted the freedom of the individual will. Augustine
declared that a few were arbitrarily elected to salvation from
eternity, and that Christ died only for them. Pelagius taught that
salvation or reprobation depended on personal deserts, and that
the Divine election was merely through prescience of merits.
Augustine said that saving grace was supernatural, irresistible,
unattainable by human effort. Pelagius said it might be won or
resisted by conformity to certain conditions in each person's
power. Augustine b