408. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 343, suggests Paulinus of Nola. (continued)
later compelled me to defend more carefully and laboriously when I began arguing against the Pelagians.55
Pelagius the Spiritual Director
In the 390s and 400s, Pelagius moved among aristocratic circles of the city of Rome and was a respected spiritual guide. One of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the Empire was the Anicii. When one of the Anicii, Demetrias, decided at age 14 to take the veil as a consecrated virgin, the family invited famous theologians from around the Latin-speaking world to compose exhortations. Jerome was invited; so was Augustine. So too was Pelagius. Pelagius's exhortation—really a sort of manifesto—was written around 413, when he was settled in Palestine. We get a glimpse here of Pelagius the tough-minded spiritual director. From Pelagius, Letter to Demetrias: (16.1) We need to pause here for a little while, virgin, and think about the precious pearls within each word of the Apostle [Paul], pearls with which the bride of Christ is to be adorned. He says, "Do everything" (Phil 2:14). So we ought not to pick and choose from God's commandments, but fulfill every one of them without exception. Nor should we scorn certain precepts as mere tokens or trivial matters. We should regard all of them in terms of the imperial majesty of the Ruler. No command of God can seem to us disdain-able if we bear in mind its author, and we should do it without grumbling and stammering. We see worthless, ignoble masters publicly scoffed at by their slaves who are used to resisting even minimal orders right to their face. But this is not permitted to happen with noble personages. The more powerful the lord, the quicker the slaves are to obey; the harder the orders, the more cheerfully they are heard. Certainly, at the king's command, all stand alert, geared and battle-ready to obey, such that they even desire to receive their orders, and they believe themselves fortunate not only when they do what is commanded but even that they are considered worthy of being commanded. Just serving a high dignitary is esteemed as a position of privilege.
(16.2) God Himself, the God of eternal, ineffable majesty and of incalculable power, has sent us sacred writings, the summit of his precepts, truly worthy of our worship, and yet we do not immediately receive them with joy and reverence, nor do we esteem it a great privilege to be ruled by such a great and such an illustrious power, especially when what is being sought for is advantageous not to the One giving the orders but to the ones carrying them out. On the contrary, we, in fact, behave like arrogant, worthless slaves. With a disdainful and lazy mindset, we cry in protest before the Lord's face and say: "That's too hard! That's too tough! We can't do it; we're only human. We're wrapped up in this fragile flesh." What insane blindness! What reckless profanity! We
55. De dono perseverantiae 20.53 (BA 24:730–32); trans. Mourant and Collinge, FOTC 86:323–24.