All right, Augustine. We call him Augustine of Hippo, because as I said, and as we'll get into here, he eventually ended up being the bishop in the town of Hippo. But that's not where he was born. That's not originally where he was from. He was born on a Sunday, November 13th, 354. Again, I don't wanna harp too much on dates. I don't think that's quite as critical as the date. Important teachings and things that that went behind it, but just to kind of give you a time frame there That's when he was born in a city called Phagost. I think I'm pronouncing that right I looked it up on YouTube, so I'm sure I'm pronouncing it right because everything YouTube says is right t-h-a-g-a-s-t-e Say it again T-H-A-G-A-S-T-E and on YouTube they say it's pronounced Thagast. Thagasty? Thagast? I don't know. They said Thagast so that's what I'm going to say. This was a small town. It's not extant today anymore to any degree. And it wasn't a really big influential town in that day, but it was near Carthage. And I'm sure you've heard of Carthage in North Africa. It was a much more influential, larger city. It's in North Africa. And that's where he was born. He was born to a pagan father and a Christian mother, as unfortunately seems to be all too common in that day as it is in our day, to have these unequal yokings. And I don't know the full story behind his mother's conversion. I don't know if she was saved before she got married or not. But his father, his name was Patricius. He was a middle class Roman official, so it's not like Ambrose's father, who you know was just over vast slavs of the Roman Empire, nothing like that. He was just middle class Roman official and very typical pagan. He was interested in his son advancing in Roman culture, in Roman education, making something of himself in the Roman culture, just like you see of American pagans. I want my kid, Doug and I were just talking about this the other day, I want my kid to go to college, have a good education, get a good job, and that's the extent of what the unconverted man thinks about. He doesn't think about holiness or piety or anything like that. Augustine's father. He wanted to see his son succeed in a worldly sense. But his mother, Monica, was a devout Christian. And from all accounts from Augustine himself and from what other little information we have about her, she was a woman of great piety. One historian has called her one of the famous mothers of history. When you look back through history and you see these great men and the mothers that were behind them, Monica has been called one of the famous mothers of history because of the kind of influence that she ended up wielding on her son, although it wasn't seen for many years. Monica had great spiritual influence on her son, as we'll see as we go through his story, but it wasn't from a young boy. As a young boy, he seemed to be very much under his father's influence. He followed the ideals that his father had for him in just pursuing a secular education there in Thagast. And Patricius worked hard to make sure that his son had the best education possible. And so Augustine was taught the basics of grammar, kind of your grade school stuff right there in Thagost, in his small hometown. And then at 11 years old, he was sent to the town of Medura to study further. And so from 11 years old to 15 years old, that's where Augustine spent his life studying. Madura was pagan to the core. Madura was all in all a pagan city. And even though Augustine was a good student, a diligent student, You can imagine a young teenage boy away from home in a worldly city that gave him every opportunity that his lustful heart could imagine. And that's the way that he described it later on in his life, that from 11 to 14 it was just like a seething cauldron of lusts and worldliness there in Madura. And he had every opportunity to fulfill those things. When he was 16, his father died. And a distinguished citizen of Thagost stepped in and paid for Augustine to go study in the largest city on the continent, Carthage. You might remember a couple of the men we've already talked about were bishops there in Carthage, Tertullian and Cyprian, most notably, both there from Carthage. And this is where Augustine got sent at the age of 16. Again, we don't have a whole lot of backstory here. We don't know what relationship this distinguished citizen already had, maybe a coworker of his father's or something of this nature, but he was Augustine's benefactor and he paid for him to go on to Carthage and study further. Augustine continued to be a diligent student, but if A young teenage boy was full of youthful lusts in a mid-sized town. You can imagine what a late teenage boy would have been away from home in the largest, most worldly influential city on the continent of Africa. And he moved away from home, he moved away from his first school, but everywhere he went his lustful heart followed him. And he was completely given in to fleshly and worldly lusts. He continued to be a diligent student, but he also continued to give in to whatever wickedness his heart imagined. And it was here in Carthage that he began a 15-year living relationship with a woman who would eventually bear him a son. So he never married her, but he lived with a woman for the next 15 years. When he moved, she moved, and she ended up bearing him a son. It was his mistress, if you will. So now you're beginning to see that when I said that his mother had great spiritual influence over him, but not for years, you see what we mean. This man's in his 20s by now, just completely given over to the lusts of his heart and to paganism. Now while he was in Carthage, Carthage again wasn't completely devoid of any Christian influence. We know there was a church there, and in fact there were several influential church fathers, pastors there through history, as I mentioned, Tertullian and Cyprian, but God's providence wasn't moving on Augustine's heart at this time. The Spirit of God didn't have him under conviction. Augustine was looking for the answers of where does evil come from? What is the battle going on between good and evil? And he became a proselyte of the Manichaean cult. I think I mentioned then, several weeks ago perhaps, there was a man in the 200s named Mani, M-A-N-I, and he said that he was a prophet, he said that he was a teacher, and he started this Manichaeanism that purported to combine all the elements of Christianity, Paganism, and Hellenism. And they said, each of these religions have some truth, and so we're going to pick bits and pieces from each of them and combine them into this sect that was really a form of Gnosticism. It said you had to obtain some supernatural knowledge in order to ascend to a higher plane. But it really wasn't Christian at all. There really wasn't anything in it that would allow you to say this was even a heretical sect of Christianity. There was nothing about it that could be called Christian. It was dualism. I believe that there was equal forces of light and darkness that were battling each other and balancing each other. And that if we were the ones blessed with secret knowledge, we could advance up the scale of light. I was doing a little bit of a background study and I was just making my head hurt. I don't understand enough to even purport to try to teach you what Manichaeanism was, but if you could get high enough, your soul would actually be brought back to the moon from whence it came because that's where the light was coming from. Just crazy cultish stuff. We're not talking about anything mainstream in any shape, sense, or form. This was really a cultish sect. Augustine was drawn to it because of its purporting that you ascended to higher levels of knowledge and understanding, and he being an intellectual, that appealed to him. It appealed to him that it combined Christianity, Hellenism, and Paganism so that he didn't have to be one or the other, that he could kind of purport to be taken the truth from all of the above. You hear people talk like this today, particularly, it seems, high intellectuals and universities, there's a little bit of truth in all of it. The Muslims and the Christians and the Buddhists, they each have their own little bits and pieces of the truth and we can't give truth solely to any one religion. This is kind of what the Manichaeists were saying. And so he fell in with them and he became a proselyte. He became a disciple of that teaching and an adherent to it. Now, after this time spent in Carthage, he moved back home to be a teacher. He went back to Fagost and he was going to teach rhetoric back there in his hometown. However, when he moved back, his mother refused to allow him to move back in with her because he was an idolater. She said, you don't worship the true God, you're worshiping a false God with this cultish religion, and I won't have an idolater under my roof. You can't live with me as long as you're holding to that. So he moved in with that rich benefactor who had paid for him to go to Carthage and to study. He moved in with that man. He actually tutored that man's son, among other students that he had there in Thagost, and settled into a somewhat comfortable life. But all of that was changed. His whole world was turned upside down with the unexpected death of his closest friend. We don't know how he died, but apparently by Augustine's telling of it in his confessions and in other works, they had gone everywhere together, they had done everything together. And now living in Phagost, everywhere he went he saw He saw, well that's where we used to go eat, that's where we used to go play, that's where we would have our conversations. And so every corner that he turned was a new level of misery for him because it simply reminded him of his friend who had died. And on top of this, his student's disorderliness was disturbing him. He had always been a very diligent student. He'd always been a very rigorous student. And apparently his students didn't take teaching quite as seriously as he did. And this bothered him. You've probably been around people like that. People who are very focused and diligent. And anyone who doesn't live up to their level of focus, it's hard for them to work with them because I'm trying to take this seriously. Why don't you take it as seriously as I do? And that seemed to be Augustine's mindset. He wanted to be a teacher, but he didn't really seem to have the patience to be a teacher. His level of intellect was so high that it's as if none of his students could match up to that. And so Augustine moved to Rome. to teach rhetoric and practice law there. He thought if he could get away from his hometown, then maybe he could forget some of the sorrows of losing his friend and not be reminded of it at every turn. And perhaps he thought the students in Rome would be a little bit more serious and studious than his students there in Thagast were. His mother clung to him and begged him not to go. She knew if Carthage was awful and even Medea was bad for him. What would Rome be like for an unconverted man with a lustful heart? And she knew it wouldn't be good for him. She begged him not to go, but he wouldn't be dissuaded. He was determined to go. And so he set off with his mistress and his son in tow and headed off to Rome. His mother was near despair because of his rebellion. She was almost inconsolable, but a Christian friend encouraged her with a line that has now become somewhat famous in some circles, and I don't know how solid it is in its theology, but I'm sure it was very encouraging for her to hear, which was the line, a son of so many prayers cannot be lost. So she said, you pray for him so fervently and so often, certainly he can't be lost. He can't be gone forever. Well, it turned out to be somewhat prophetic, as Augustine was not eternally lost. But in Rome, Augustine stayed with other members of the Manichaean cult. You know, if you were going to a big city or somewhere out of town that you'd never been before, you didn't know anybody there, you'd probably look up the local church, maybe, and say, hey, is there someone that I can stay with until I get my feet under me? Well, that's kind of what Augustine did, only with his cultish religion. But in staying with them, it almost made his situation worse, because we said that he was annoyed by the disorderliness of his students because of how seriously he took life. Well, if you transfer that over into the religious realm, Augustine's staying with this Manichaean cult, and I said it was kind of a form of Gnosticism. They were supposedly, in their philosophy, they were supposed to be a very Anti-materialism, everything in the world is bad, everything physical is bad and evil and we're trying to rid ourselves of everything physical and return just to the spiritual. And yet these people who claim to be Manichaeans there in Rome, we're living extremely unproductive and materialistic lives. And that's true, I suppose, of hypocrites in every religion. We say this world is not our home and then we live like this world is our home. And that's what's going on with these Manichaeans there in Rome. And Augustine just became more and more upset about what he was seeing and what was going on. He found that his students in Rome were no less unruly. They were just like his students back home in Fagost. And he continued to ponder questions about the afterlife. About, well, my friend has died, where has he gone? Am I ever going to see him again? Was he a good enough person to have ascended to a higher plane of light? Or is that even something that Manichaeanism can have true answers for that kind of a question? And so an opportunity opened for him to teach rhetoric at the Imperial Court in Milan. Now remember we said at this point in history, Milan really was the center of politics for the Roman Empire, not Rome. And so the imperial court, where the emperor was, was in Milan. And an opening came up. I don't know. He was on JobQuest.com or something. And he saw that, hey, they have an opening there for a teacher of rhetoric. And so Augustine applied for the job. He pursued that job, and he got it. He had become known as one of the best lawyers in Rome by this point. And so he was given a chance to come to the imperial court in Milan and teach rhetoric there. But when he arrived at Milan, it was life-changing for Augustine. There were two influences in particular that changed Augustine's life forever, and as a result, changed the course of history. There were two things, one that cracked the door open, and the next one that kicked the door in. The first influence that he came over that we might say illustratively cracked the door open to Christianity for Augustine was, ironically enough, Neoplatonic books. Neoplatonism is what this philosophy was called, that he started reading these books. Neo, of course, meaning new, this new Plato teaching. And there was all kinds of things wrong with this philosophy, because this cracked the door open for Christianity. For Augustine, I'm not recommending you go out and become a disciple of Neoplatonism. That's not what I'm saying at all. But there was one question in particular that this Neoplatonism answered for Augustine, which made him begin to reassess everything that he thought he knew and believed. And that is that Neoplatonism taught That evil is simply the absence of good. That evil isn't its own entity to itself, but that evil is to good what darkness is to light. It's simply the absence of it. And Augustine's main controversy with Christianity had been, how can you have a good God, who's a creator of all things, and yet have evil in the world? A good God can't create evil and still be a good God. That was this hurdle that Augustine couldn't come over in his mind. He began reading this Neoplatonism and it was saying evil is not its own entity, but it is simply an absence of that which is good. And that answer to that one question got Augustine to thinking. If that's true, if evil is simply the absence of good, then there could be a good God who is a creator of all things. Then perhaps evil really could be introduced to the world as an absence of good. Maybe everything my mother taught and believed could actually be true. Maybe the Bible really could have more answers than I thought it ever did." So that was the first thing. Again, that doesn't change anything eternally, but it got him to thinking. It answered a question in his mind. However, the influence, if we're to stick with that same illustration that kicked the door down, was that while he was in Milan, Augustine caught wind of this man named Ambrose. Ambrose, of course, was the bishop there in Milan, as we talked about last week. And Augustine didn't care anything about what Ambrose was teaching. It didn't matter to him if Ambrose was a pagan, if Ambrose was a Christian. He didn't care at all about that. However, he heard that he was the best orator in the world. that there was no one who could give a speech like Ambrose could give a speech. And Augustine had been a teacher of rhetoric all these years. He'd been a lawyer, he'd studied rhetoric, and then he taught in his hometown, then he'd gone to Rome to teach, and now he's here in Milan teaching in the imperial court rhetoric. And he thinks, hey, in the town where I'm staying right now is perhaps the best orator on earth. I should go listen to him. I should go here." And so he began, week by week, to sit under Ambrose's preaching. And by his own confession, any thought he gave to the content of what Ambrose was teaching was a contemptual consideration. But he wanted to hear how he said what he had to say. He wanted to hear the nuances of his delivery. He wanted to hear the Master at work. And yet, as we know, And as Augustine came to find out, the Word of God is more powerful than the greatest order on earth, and the content that Ambrose was preaching could not be separated from the delivery with which it was being given. This is what Augustine said about that time. He said, for although I took no trouble to learn what He said, but only to hear how He said it. He said, I didn't go there to hear anything about what He said, I just wanted to hear how He said it. For this empty concern remained foremost with me as long as I despaired of finding a clear path from man to thee. So he's writing as if this is part of his confessions, which is written as though it's a letter to God. And so he says, I had despaired that man could ever find a way to God. So as long as I was in that empty mindset, I only cared to hear the eloquency of what he said. Yet along with the eloquence I prized, there also came into my mind the ideas which I ignored. For I could not separate them. And while I opened my heart to acknowledge how skillfully he spoke, there also came an awareness of how truly he spoke, but only gradually." So God used this opportunity in Augustine's life. He goes and he sits under a preacher, and I think I mentioned this in passing last week, up until this point, and we may hear it in another quote I'm going to read to you here in a moment. He thought Christianity was anti-intellectual. He thought it was base. It was kind of for the poor man. It was for the dumb man. He was too educated for that. And yet when he began to sit under this incredible orator, Ambrose, simply to hear how he said what he said began to ring true in his heart. As Augustine continued to hear the gospel expounded, he came to want to know more of the doctrine and so enrolled as a catechumen, which is It means he went to be catechized. He went as a student to learn the catechism of the church. And he was taught there the specifics of the gospel, the nature of God, the origin of evil, the nature of immorality, and the person of Christ. And as he sat under Ambrose's preaching, and as he went through these classes as a catechumen, he eventually got to the point where he could combat it no more. He was convinced of its truth, And yet how to live that truth out, he couldn't find. He was convinced that Christianity was true, and yet he had lived so long in his sins that it was as if he couldn't give them up. And this is his account of his conversion. His first paragraph is the author, and then it goes into Augustine's quote. Augustine eventually became convinced of the Gospel, but while he now hated his sin, he could not forsake it. Finally, in August of 386, Augustine sat in the garden of his rented villa, overcome with misery, in his own words, I flung myself down under a fig tree. How I know not. and gave free course to my tears. The streams of my eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to you. And not indeed in these words, but to this effect I cried to you. And thou, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever? Oh, remember not against us our former iniquities. For I felt that I was still enthralled by them. I sent up these sorrowful cries, how long, how long? Tomorrow and tomorrow, why not now? Why not this very hour make an end to my uncleanness?" So he still felt like he was captured by his sins even though he recognized the truth of Christianity. And at that moment he heard the voice of a child playing nearby. And the young voice was chanting, tole lege, tole lege. I guess I'm pronouncing that right. Which means, take up and read, take up and read. Now, why this child was chanting that is unknown. Apparently it was a part of some poem or maybe a game he was playing. But Augustine took it as divine direction for which he was searching. So he said, So damning the torrent of my tears, I got to my feet, for I could not but think that this was a divine command to open the Bible and read the first passage I should light upon. Augustine ran to his copy of Paul's epistle to the Romans, opened it, and read the first passage he saw, Romans 13, 13-14. He recalled, I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof. I wanted to read no further, nor did I need to. For instantly as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty, and all the gloom of doubt vanished away. At that defining moment, the light of salvation flooded Augustine's soul and he was dramatically converted." So the Spirit of God opened his spiritual eyes, opened his heart, gave him true faith and an ability to put away sin and to love righteousness. Well, Augustine obviously went at once to his mother, who had moved to Milan in hopes of winning her son to Christ. And so as soon as this happened, he went to her and he told her about what had happened and how it had happened. And she leapt for joy and blessed God, who is able to do abundantly above all we ask or think. He immediately began to read the Scriptures on a regular basis, starting with the Psalms, which became his first love. If you read his confessions and some of his other works, he quotes the Psalms profusely, as you saw even in those quotes there. He loved the Psalms, and he became very familiar with them. Ambrose baptized him soon after, on Easter Sunday in 387. And Augustine decided to return to North Africa with a small group of family and associates. Unfortunately, on the way home, his mother caught a fever and died. And while it's very sad, I can't help but think what a blessed providence that she got to live to see the conversion of her son for whom she had prayed for all those years and followed him around the world trying to win him to Christ. And he did, eventually. And then as soon as he headed home, his mother got sick and died. Well, he got back to North Africa and he settled in a small town called Kasikekim. I think. And he began his writing at this point. Remember, he was already an incredibly accomplished and skilled orator and rhetorician and lawyer. And so he begins to write, and he soon became known for his towering intellect and his powerful rhetorical skills. When you read his works and read what other people said about him in that time. I mean, it was the type of skill and gift that God had given him that couldn't be hidden. He couldn't hide that under a bushel if he tried to. And Donatism and Manachianism continued to plague the church. And people began to look to Augustine for help. Here's this Christian man, he's an incredibly good writer, he's a good preacher, he's a good apologist, defender of the faith, and help us defend the faith against some of these errors. But much like some of these other church fathers that we read about, he didn't want to be recruited into church office. He didn't want to hold a position as a bishop or a presbyter. And so he left town and he moved to the town of Hippo. And as we already know by his name, that didn't go the way that he was hoping it would go. He couldn't outrun his reputation, and in the midst of a worship service there at Hippo, he was there at church in the middle of the worship, he was apprehended by the congregation, brought before the church, and ordained to the presbytery by the laying on of hands in 391. All I can figure is the culture was so different. You don't ever hear about that happening anymore. They don't just force someone in front of the church. You've got to be our pastor. But it just seemed to be going on regularly with these guys. And maybe we just don't have men of the towering intellect and godliness that these men seem to have. I don't know. the full case of it is, but whatever the case, similarly to some of his predecessors, almost against his will, he was physically put in the position of a presbyter first there, and then shortly thereafter appointed as co-bishop. There was already a bishop there in Hippo. His name was Valerius, but he was a very old man. Augustine was ordained as his co-bishop, and they served as co-bishops there in the church for five years. And after five years, Valerius died, and the 42-year-old Augustine became the sole bishop. And that was a position that he held until his death in 430 AD. So for the next 34 years, Augustine served as the bishop there in the town of Hippo. Augustine wrote and debated against the Manichaeans, which was a position he was uniquely qualified to have because he used to be one. So he knew why their teachings were influential over people, why they were attractive to some people. He knew exactly what they believed. He wasn't building straw men against them. But he was able to defend Christianity and expose their error because he'd been right there in the middle of them for years and years. And also the Donatists. Now the Donatists, you might remember we talked about them, I think, in a previous class. They weren't heretics. They believed in the Trinity. They didn't seem to have any errors, particularly with what causes a man to be saved or not, but they were in error because they seemed to be extremists, maybe. If the Manichaeans were cultists and the Gnostics were heretics, the Donatists were simply extremists. The Donatists believed that the church could have no cooperation at all with the state. So whereas Christians, like Ambrose, were saying the state can't be over the church, the Donatists were saying the church can't have anything at all ever to do with the state. In fact, the church must always be persecuted, and its highest saints must always be martyrs. And if anyone's ever a traitor, if they ever give in a Bible to be burned by order of the emperor, if they ever pour out an offering to the emperor, if there's anything like that, that seems to be a traitorous act toward the church, Remember we said that this controversy was the Donatists took the position they can't ever be allowed back in the church. There can be no place of repentance and restoration. And if by some extreme rare situation we were to allow him back in, he'd have to be re-baptized. There's been some Baptists who have claimed that the Donatists are forefathers, but really they're not, because this was one of their errors, one of their extremities, that they believed if you were ever put under discipline, then in order to be brought back into the church, you had to be rebaptized. We believe that there's one baptism. And so Augustine advanced the idea that there was an invisible church within the visible church. Now we have a membership here and we, by profession of faith and by outward works, we allow someone to join the membership here, but we can't see their heart. We can't see their soul. We don't know if they're truly converted or not. All we have to go on is their outward profession. and what we can see on the outside. And that's what Augustine was saying. He's saying, there's some people in the church who are actually unconverted. But there's a spiritual church, there's an invisible church, there are those who are truly gods, and He knows who they are, even within those who have professed Christianity. We know that Jesus told us that there will be some who say, Lord, Lord, have we not done many great works in Thy name? And He'll say to them, depart from Me, I never knew you. And so he said that if there was one who had been a traitor under persecution or whatever the cases may be, and he came back and seemed truly repentant and was working the works of repentance, that he ought to be welcomed back into the communion of the Church upon repentance. So he was writing and debating the Manichaeans and the Donatists, but his defining conflict came with the heretic Pelagius. Pelagius was an eminently moral person, and he wrote against the Arians and the Manichaeans. So you first hear this guy, and you think, he's on our side. He's a Christian. He's fighting right alongside us. He doesn't like the Arians, who deny the Trinity. He doesn't like the Manichaeans, who are combining all these religions in a cult-like way. And early on, Pelagius was actually studying Augustine's works. Augustine had written a couple of books at this time. He'd written his Confessions, and he'd written a book called On Free Will, which talked about the will of man. And Pelagius was studying these books, as he was also debating the same people that Augustine was debating with at this time. And he came to Rome, Pelagius did. Pelagius came to Rome in the early 5th century, in the early 400s. He was going to take a teaching position among the Christian aristocrats there. And he got there, and he was shocked at how undisciplined and indulgent the lives of the Roman Christians were. Now, he came from a very ascetic lifestyle. He was like some of these other men that we've been talking about who was not eating any kind of food that might have been seen as luxurious, not putting on any clothes that might have been comfortable. He's actually, by some accounts, had been a monk for some time. So this is the kind of lifestyle. And he comes into Rome and hears these probably overly indulgent Christians, if we can just imagine that maybe the Christians in Rome in that day looked something like the Christians in America today. And he was shocked by this. And in his mind it seems as though he drew a connection between Augustine's view of God's sovereign free grace and this indulgent lifestyle of the Roman Christians. And he said, they're living like this because Augustine's telling them that God gives grace, and it's free grace, and it's not earned grace, and we don't have to do anything to earn God's grace, but God just gives it freely so they can just sin. And this is all Augustine's fault. apparently the conclusion that he was coming to. Now we know Paul said, shall we sin that grace may abound? God forbid, because he knew that would be the kind of argument that would be leveled against the teachings of God's free sovereign grace. And that's exactly the argumentation that Pelagius laid against Augustine. Augustine's teachings have been summed up in 18 short statements. So don't try to write these down because there's a lot of them. But I'm going to read them to you and then we'll quit for this evening and we'll pick up there next week and talk about Augustine's battle with Pelagius from there on out. This is basically, if you want to try to summarize what Pelagius was teaching. He was teaching that God's highest attributes are His righteousness and justice, It's God's highest attribute. It's His righteousness and His justice. That everything God creates is good. So far we're kind of on board with Him. That sounds right. As created, nature cannot be changed, essentially. So if God created man good, man couldn't fall from that. If God created him good, he had to be good forever. That's where we begin to diverge. Human nature is indestructibly good. Evil is an act that we can avoid. Pelagius actually taught that several of the Old Testament saints lived sinless lives. They never sinned. Sin comes via satanic snares and sensuous lust. There can be sinless men. As I said, he taught that there actually were sinless men. Adam was created with free will and natural holiness, which we believe. Adam sinned through free will, which we believe. Adam's progeny did not inherit natural death from him, which we don't believe. We believe that the people who were born of Adam received death because of him. Neither Adam's sin nor his guilt was transmitted to his offspring. This is what Pelagius taught. All men are created as Adam was before the fall. All men, just like Adam, was created perfect and holy. So all men are created perfect and holy. The habit of sinning weakens the will. The grace of God facilitates goodness, but is not necessary to achieve goodness. The grace of God helps us, but we can be good without it. The grace of creation yields perfect men. The grace of God's law illumines and instructs. Here's where he really begins getting into heresy. Christ works chiefly by His example. So Christ was an example more than He was a propitiation. He didn't take our place, He just showed us how to live a good life. You can see the heresy inherent in that. And grace is given according to justice and merit. You have to earn grace. So those are the 18 points of Pelagius' teachings. And when Augustine caught wind of this, he said, hold on just a minute. We're going to have to have a conversation about this. And he did, and it was a conversation that in many ways changed the course of church history. Thanks be to God. So that's our lecture for this evening.