PELAGIUS A.D. 



C.390. 



The same in English. 



PElagius, borne in that part of Britaine which is called 

 Wales, was head or governour of the famous Col- 

 ledge of Bangor, not farre from Chester, wherein lived 

 a Societie of 2100. Divines, or Students of Christian 

 philosophie, applying themselves to the profite of the 

 Christian people, and living by the labours of their owne 

 handes, according to Pauls doctrine. He was a man 

 excellently learned, and skilfull both in the Greeke and 

 Latine tongues, and as it were another Tertullian, after 

 his long and great travailes for the good of the Christian 

 common wealth, seeing himselfe abused, and injuriously 

 dealt withall by some of the Clergie of that time, he 

 tooke the matter so grievously, that at the last he re- 

 lapsed from the faith. 



Whereupon he left Wales, and went into France, 

 and having gone through France, hee went therehence 

 into Egypt, Syria, & other Countries of the East, and 

 being made Priest by a certaine Monke of those partes, 

 he there hatched his heresie, which according to his 

 name was called the heresie of the Pelagians : which 

 was, that man was borne without sinne, and might 

 be saved by the power of his owne will without grace, 

 tliat so the miserable man might take away faith 

 and baptisme. With this and the like dregges of false 

 doctrine, hee returned againe into Wales, and there by 

 the meanes of the two false Prelates Julian and Celestine, 

 who favoured his heresie, hee infected the whole 

 Countrey with it. But before his fall and Apostasie from 

 the faith, he exercised himselfe in the best studies, as 

 Gennadius, Beda, Honorius, and other authors doe report 

 of him, and wrote many bookes serving not a litle to 

 Christian utiHtie : but being once fallen into his heresie, 

 hee wrote many more erroneous bookes, then he did 

 before honest, and sincere : whereupon, at the last his 

 owne Countreymen banished him, as Walden testifieth in 

 his Epistle to Pope Martine the fift. He flourished in 



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