just a school of Greek philosophy overlain with a thin veneer of the Gospel, and the Roman Church is the Roman Empire with the same veneer.[1] We may, perhaps, say that the Greek philosophical mind found the questions of Christology—of nature and person, unity and distinction—congenial, while the Latin mind, that had built up the legal system of the Empire, was naturally attracted to legal questions, such as those of predestination. In any case, the subtle system explained by St. Augustine in his de Dono perseverantiæ and de Prædestinatione sanctorum, the great field of discussion that he left to his Church, the endless controversy that has gone on amongst us ever since about the fine line between antecedent reprobation on the one hand and semi-Pelagianism on the other—all these things have never troubled Easterns at all. As always happens to people who have not gone far into the matter, they rather inclined to the opposite of St. Augustine's system, to loose and kindly principles which, if driven out of their vagueness, would become semi-Pelagian. St. John Chrysostom is an example of this. He did not intend to formally discuss the matter, he had never heard of Pelagianism, and was concerned to defend free will against Manichæism. He does in many places maintain the need of grace for every good deed,[2] but he also, inconsistently, in other places uses such expressions as "We must first choose what is right, and then God will do his part,"[3] expressions that would be inconceivable in Augustine. This want of definiteness about Grace and Predestination has always been a note of the Eastern Church. Long after the schism, in 1575, when the Tübingen Protestants sent an exposition of their belief to Jeremias II of Constantinople (1572–1579), the Patriarch in his answer to their Calvinism teaches pure semi-Pelagianism.[4] Lastly, Mgr. Duchesne sees a different attitude of mind between the two Churches in the 3rd and 4th centuries even about the
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FAITH AND RITES
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