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260 F. WINTEBTON : contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologica only reflect the light of past controversies ; and among them that of Pelagius is one of the most famous. The Church, as every- one knows, had considered the British monk's idea of free- will to be exaggerated ; accordingly all works of mediaeval theology tended to abase nature, and to exalt the work of grace in man. 1 And when Protestantism carne upon the field, crying down free-will as much as Pelagius had cried it up, some propositions of St. Thomas did cer- tainly seem not adapted to circumstances. For instance, to quote only from his Summa contra Gentiles, the proposition " Quod motus voluntatis caiisatur a Deo, et non solum potentia voluntatis " (lib. iii. cap. Ixxxix.), and the affirmation (lib. iii. cap. clxiii.) that " necesse est praedictam hominum dis- tinctionem (the elect and the reprobate) a Deo esse ordinatam " must have appeared to Jesuits as both ill-timed and ill- worded without some explanation. Hindered by the decisions of the Church from going openly so far as Pelagianism or as Semi-Pelagianism, it was but natural that they should approach as near to these forms of thought as possible, in order more surely to avoid and more powerfully to resist the opposite tendency, which was more dangerous then. And so long as they confined themselves to struggling with Calvinists and Lutherans, who were outside the Church ; so long as they only grappled with Baius and his followers, who, though in the Church, were the rebellious expounders of a system it had condemned, all went well. But when the most celebrated religious Order in Christendom took up, partially at least, the opinions of Baius, and the Dominican Bannez brought forward the doctrine of ' physical premotion ' as part and parcel of the system of St. Thomas, then the Society of Jesus found itself in a serious difficulty. The Dominicans had comparatively little to do with Pro- testants, and considered all questions from a widely different point of view. The Jesuits asked, on examining any question whatever : Which side is it most expedient to defend in the interests of the Church ? The Dominicans inquired what answer St. Thomas had given, or would have given; what opinion is pointed to by the consequences of his theories, or the language used by him. And so it happened that both Orders were right, from their own points of view. 1 Not only works of theology, but of piety too. The Imitation of Christ contains chapters (on the different motions of nature and grace, and on the corruption of nature and the efficacity of divine grace : iii. 54, 55) that would hardly have been allowed later on.