Fourteen bishops attended it—Eulogius, John, Ammonianus, Eutonius, two Porphyrys, Fidus, Zomnus, Zoboennus, Nymphidius, Chromatius, Jovinus, Eleutherius, and Clematius. The two accusers were absent from the hearing owing to the illness of one of them, but a document (libellus) was handed in containing the principal charges. Some of the propositions it attributed to Pelagius were capable of being explained in an orthodox sense, and he did so explain them. It was objected to him that he had said that no one could be without sin unless he had the knowledge of the law. He acknowledged that he had said this, but not in the sense his opponents attached to it; he intended by it that man is helped by the knowledge of the law to keep free from sin. The synod admitted that such teaching was not contrary to the mind of the church. It was charged again that he had affirmed that all men are governed by their own will. He explained that he intended by this to assert the responsibility of man's free will, which God aids in its choice of good; the man who sins is himself in fault as transgressing of his own free will. This too was pronounced in agreement with church teaching, for how could any one condemn the recognition of free will or deny its existence, when the possibility of God's aid to it was acknowledged? It was alleged that Pelagius had declared that in the day of judgment the wicked and sinners would not be spared, and it was inferred that he had intended thereby to imply that all sinners would meet eternal punishment, even those who had substantially belonged to Christ—it was probably implied that such teaching was a denial of the temporary purgatorial fire which was to purify the imperfectly righteous. Pelagius replied by quoting our Lord's words (Matt. xxv. 46), and declared that whoever believed otherwise was an Origenist. This satisfied the synod. It was alleged that he wrote that evil did not even enter the thought of the good Christian. He defended himself by saying that what he had actually said was that the Christian ought to study not even to think evil. The synod naturally saw no objection to this. It was alleged that he had disparaged the grace of N.T. by saying that the kingdom of heaven is promised even in O.T. It was supposed that by this he had proclaimed a doctrine that salvation could be obtained by the observance of the works of the Law. He explained it as a vindication of the divine authority of the O.T. dispensation, and its prophetic character. It was alleged that he had said that man can, if he will, be without sin, and that in writing a letter of commendation to a widow who had assumed the ascetic life, he used fulsome and adulatory language which glorified her unexampled piety as superlatively meritorious. He explained that though he might have admitted the abstract possibility of sinlessness in man, yet he had never maintained that there had existed any man who had remained sinless from infancy to old age, but that a man on his conversion might continue without sin by his own efforts and the grace of God, though still liable to temptation, and those who held an opposite opinion he begged leave to anathematize not as heretics but as fools. The bishops were satisfied with this acknowledgment that man by the help of God and by grace can be with. out sin. Other propositions alleged against him, such as those condemned by the synod of Carthage in 412, he declared were not his own, but made by Coelestius and others; yet he was willing freely to disavow them. It is hard to believe that in so doing Pelagius was not pronouncing condemnation on views he had himself on other occasions maintained. Finally, Pelagius professed his belief in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and in all the teaching of the holy Catholic church, and the synod acknowledged him as a Catholic and in full communion with the church. Party feeling evidently ran very high. Jerome was regarded as a chief mover in the prosecution of Pelagius, and apparently by way of vengeance a violent and outrageous assault was made upon his monastery at Bethlehem, which was ascribed to some of the Pelagian party, with what justice it is not easy to ascertain. As Neander remarks, it is not likely that Pelagius had any share in the tumultuous proceedings, as in that case evidence of the outrage would doubtless have been laid before the Roman bp. Innocent in the subsequent proceedings. Jerome, suspecting the orthodoxy of many of its members, spoke of the synod of Diospolis as a "miserable synod." Augustine, in his treatise de Gestis Pelagii, written after he had received a full official record of the synod, argued that Pelagius had only escaped by a legal acquittal of little moral worth, obtained by evasive explanations and by his condemning the very dogmas he had before professed.
The controversy once more returned to the West. A synod of more than 69 bishops assembled at Carthage towards the close of 416. Orosius produced the accusations which had been presented against Pelagius by Heros and Lazarus. They recognized in them the same heretical opinions previously condemned at Carthage in 412, and determined to appeal to Innocent, bp. of Rome, on the great questions at issue. Granting that the synods of Jerusalem and Diospolis might have been justified in the acquittal of Pelagius on the ground of his explanations, evasions, and disclaimers of responsibility for some of the positions alleged, they called attention to the continued prevalence of doctrines which affirmed the sufficiency of nature for the avoidance of sin and fulfilment of the commandments of God (thus virtually superseding the need of divine grace), and which denied the necessity of baptism in the case of infants, as the way of obtaining deliverance from. guilt and eternal salvation. A synod at Mileum in Numidia in 416, attended by 61 bishops, wrote a letter to Innocent to the same effect, and with these two synodical letters was sent a letter from Augustine and four brother-bishops, Aurelius, Alypius, Evodius, and Possidius, in which they sought to discount the acquittal of Pelagius in the East at Diospolis by saying that the result had only been obtained by the accused concealing his real sentiments and acknowledging the orthodox faith in ambiguous language, calculated to deceive the Eastern prelates, ignorant as they
