Augustine in His Own Words
Against the Pelagians 409 rect my journeying according to your word, and let no iniquity have dominion over me" (Ps 118:133). It prays, it does not promise; it confesses, it does not make claims for itself; it begs for fullest freedom, it does not boast of its own power. . . . (10) The freedom of the will is not destroyed by being helped; it is rather helped because it is not destroyed. The one who says to God, "Be my helper" (Ps 26:9), confesses that he wishes to carry out what is commanded but asks help of the One who gave the command so that he may be able to do it.72
Pelagius Vindicated in the East (415)
When Pelagius was acquitted in Palestine, it set off a complex chain of events. Here is a recently discovered letter of Augustine to his powerful colleague in the Greek East, Cyril of Alexandria, who sixteen years later oversaw the formal ecumenical condemnation of Pelagianism at the Council of Ephesus. This letter fills in one factual tidbit: Cyril was the one who sent Augustine the complete transcript of Pelagius's trial. Before its discovery, we did not know that Cyril and Augustine had ever been in direct contact. From Letter 4* (Divjak):
(2) Your Sincerity recalls, I think, that you sent us the transcript (acta) of the council held in the province of Palestine where the supposedly Catholic Pelagius was acquitted, when he succeeded in concealing himself within the clever hiding places of his words and deceived our brothers who then presided as judges when no one representing the other side came forward to expose him. When I read and studied these proceedings as carefully as I could, I wrote a book about them73 for our venerable brother and fellow bishop, Aurelius, bishop of the church of Carthage, in which, as much as the Lord permitted, it was demonstrated how it was that Catholic judges understood Pelagius's answers so that they came to the verdict that he was a Catholic. For many who were caught in that error of his were boasting that, since he had been acquitted, his heretical teachings had been confirmed as Catholic by the judgment of Catholic bishops, and with these people spreading this story just about everywhere, very many, not knowing what had really happened, believed what they were saying to the great scandal of the churches.
(3) In order to get rid of this misconception, I wrote the book mentioned above. Here, to the best of my ability, I showed that, even though Pelagius had been acquitted—not by God, whom no one can deceive, but in a human court
72. Ep. 157.8–10 (BA 21:44–48); my trans., based on Parsons, FOTC 20:323–25. See also Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum 1.25 (CSEL 60:445). On this issue, see Burns, Development, 109–19.
73. "Wrote a book about them": Augustine is referring to On the Deeds of Pelagius (De gestis Pelagii).