GRACE. 



515 



ous success, when, ten years after the death of his 

 brother Tiberius (year of Rome 630), the younger 

 Gracchus obtained the tribuneship. With more 

 various and shining talents than his brother, he 

 united a stormy eloquence, which carried away his 

 hearers. In the discharge of his office as tribune, 

 he, first of all, renewed his brother's law, and re- 

 venged his memory by expelling many of his most 

 violent enemies from the city. At the same time he 

 carried through a law, " that monthly distributions 

 of a certain quantity of corn should be made to the 

 poor iu Rome," and, by another law, effected some 

 alleviations in the rigour of the military service, and 

 ensured for the soldiers clothing, besides their pay. 

 He also caused some additional highways to be run 

 through Italy. The people were animated with an 

 unlimited enthusiasm tor their favourite; his enemies 

 were terrified and weakened ; hence he obtained the 

 renewal of his office for the following year with ease. 

 His attempt to introduce three hundred knights into 

 the senate failed ; but on the other hand, at his pro- 

 posal, the administration of justice was taken from 

 the senate, and transferred to the equestrian order. 

 This gave rise to a new political power in the Roman 

 commonwealth, which, holding a station intermedi- 

 ate between the senate and the people, had a most 

 powerful influence in its subsequent history. The 

 senate now resorted to a new, but sure, means of 

 destroying Caius. Livius Drusus, a tribune gained 

 over to their interests, had the art to withdraw the 

 affections of the populace from Cains by making 

 greater promises to them, and thus obtained a supe- 

 rior popularity for himself and the senate. Hence it 

 resulted that Caius did not obtain a third tribuneship, 

 and Opimius, one of his bitterest enemies, was 

 chosen to the consulate. A tumult, in which a 

 iictor of Opimius was killed, gave the senate a pre- 

 tence for empowering the consuls to take strong 

 measures. A proposition, which Opimius made to 

 the people, for the repeal of a law of Gracchus (it 

 only related to a colony which he had procured to be 

 decreed, but it was used as a test of the repeal of 

 all the laws which had been passed by the Gracchi), 

 increased the ferment. Gracchus appeared upon the 

 forum, and Flaccus had his followers armed. Upon 

 this, Opimius made an attack upon the people with a 

 well armed band of disciplined soldiers. Nearly 3000 

 were slain, and Gracchus himself, although bravely 

 defended by some faithful friends, fell a sacrifice to the 

 rage of his enemy. The agrarian law was some time 

 after repealed; but the reverence of the people for 

 the senate was destroyed. (See H. K. Rein's Ge- 

 schichte der Romischen Biirgerkriege vomAnfang der 

 Grucchischen Unruhen bis zur Alleinherrschaft ties 

 Augustus History of the Roman Civil Wars from 

 the Beginning of the Disturbances by the Gracchi, 

 till the reign of Augustus, printed at Berlin, 1825.) 



GRACE, in the general acceptation of the term, 

 is the gratuitous favour of the powerful towards the 

 weak. In theology, it is the disposition with which 

 God communicates his benefits to us ; and, in its 

 restricted sense, the inclination and efficiency which 

 he evinces for our recovery and salvation. 



Before the fifth century, little attention was paid 

 to the dogmatic question of grace and its effects. It 

 had merely been occasionally hinted at by the fathers 

 of the Greek church. 1'elagius, a native of Britain, 

 having used some free expressions, which seemed to 

 attribute too little to the assistance of divine grace 

 in the renovation of the heart of man, and too much 

 fj his own ability to do good, Augustine undertook 

 an accurate investigation of this doctrine, with a zeal 

 congenial to his ardent nature. Me said that " man 

 is by nature corrupt, and incapable of any good, and 

 absolutely unable to do anything for his own renova- 



tion ; that, as he cannot even w ill that which is good, 

 every thing must be effected by the internal opera- 

 tion of grace upon the heart." Hence, to be con- 

 sistent with himself, he came to the opinion, which 

 lias since been so much discussed, that God, of his 

 own free will, has foreordained some to eternal 

 felicity, and others to irrevocable and eternal 

 misery ; that, in consequence of this decision, all 

 children that die unbaptized, and even those among 

 the baptized, not ordained to eternal life before they 

 die, although they have committed no actual sin. nre 

 condemned without hope of deliverance; but that 

 no one on earth knows who, of professed Christians, 

 have been elected or who have been reprobated, and 

 every one ought to give himself up to the inscrutable 

 will of God. From this view of Augustine, and the 

 construction put upon a few passages of Scripture, 

 originated the ecclesiastical dogma concerning pre- 

 destination, which, among teachers of religion in the 

 church, from the fifth century to the times of the 

 reformation, and subsequently, has been a subject of 

 warm discussion. The majority of those who called 

 themselves Catholic or Orthodox, coincided with 

 Augustine, and, with him, pronounced the Pelagians 

 heretics, without accurately examining how far his 

 opinion was founded on the Scriptures, which he him- 

 self was unable to read in the original. But even 

 learned men, of later times, who excelled him in this 

 respect, have been captivated by his philosophical 

 acuteness, and his great adroitness at interpreting 

 passages so as to support his opinion, by the force of 

 his reasoning, and his overpowering eloquence. 



We may, therefore, justly call Augustine the 

 leader of the long succession of Western theologians, 

 who, by their unyielding perseverance in the Augus- 

 tinian doctrines concerning an unconditional election, 

 have created as much confusion in moral philosophy 

 as dissension in the church. Many, however, 

 especially the French theologians, perceived that 

 Augustine had gone too far, and followed the ex- 

 ample of the abbot Cassianus of Marseilles, who, in 

 a book written about the year 420, had adopted a 

 middle course, in order to reconcile the operations of 

 grace and free will in man's renovation, by a milder 

 and more scriptural mode. He considered the pre- 

 destination of God, in respect to man's salvation, as 

 a conditional one, resting upon his own conduct. 

 His followers were named semi or half -Pelagian a, 

 though the Catholic church did not immediately de- 

 clare them heretics, as this church left the doctrine 

 of predestination in the main undetermined. 



Subsequently, the singular spectacle of a gradual 

 change of sides was exhibited. On account of the 

 increasing ignorance of the clergy, the doctrines of 

 Augustine, concerning an unconditional and particu- 

 lar election, fell into oblivion, notwithstanding the 

 reverence paid that saint ; and therefore it was not 

 difficult for the scholastic theology of the middle ages 

 so to pervert him, that he should appear easily recon- 

 ciled to the Pelagians. As early as t(48, Gotteschalk, 

 a fugitive monk of Fulda, was pronounced a heretic 

 by the synod at Mentz, on account of his adherence 

 to the Augustinian dogma, and condemned to prison 

 for life. At the disputation which the Catholic doc- 

 tor Eckius held with Martin Luther's friend Karlstadt, 

 in 1519, at Leipsic, the latter defended the opinion 

 of Augustine concerning divine grace, while Eckius 

 opposed to him the views of saint Thomas Aquinas, 

 which, at the least, must be called semi-Pelagian. 

 The Lutherans, in the mean time, approximated to 

 the Catholics with respect to this doctrine ; while 

 Calvin and Beza, and the great body of Calvinists, 

 returned to the fundamental principles of Augustine, 

 and made an unconditional divine predestination for 

 the salvation of some men, and the damnation ot 

 2*2 



