SEMI-PELA'GIANISM, a modification, as the name implies, of the doctrine of the Pelagians as to the powers of the human will, and as to the effects to be attributed to the action of Mt supernatural grace of God, and of the divine decree for the predestination of the elect. The Pelagians discarding altogether the doctrine of the fall of Adam, and the idea that the powers of the human will had been weakened through original sin, taught that man, without any supernatural gift from God, is able, by 1.is own natural powers. to fulfill the entire law, and to do every act which is necessary for the attain ment of eternal life. The condemnation of this doctrine by the se VCIIII ConneiIs held in the early part of the 5th c. is capable of various colistructions, and has been urged by some to the extreme denying altogether the liberty of man, and converting the human will into a merely passive instrument, whether of divine grace upon the one Laud, or of sinful concupiscence upon the other. The writings of St. Augustine on this controversy have !teen differently construed by the Christian communions( see PELACIANS); and the same diversity of opinion existed in his own (lay. Among those who, dissenting from the extreme view of Pelagius, at the same time did not go to the lull length of tho Atigustini in writings in opposition to Pebights, were some monks of the southern prow. inces of Gaul, and especially of Marseilles, whence their school was called Massilian, front the Latin name Pia-svilia) of that city. Of these leaders, the chief was a priest named Cassian, who had been a deacon at Constantinople. Of the system which
he propounded. without going into the details, although many of them are exceedingly curious and interesting, it will be enough to say that it upheld the sufficiency of man's natural powers only so far as regards the first act of conversion to God and the initial act of man's repentance for sin. Every man naturally possesses the capa bility of beginning the work of self-conversion; hut fur all ulterior acts, as well as for the completion of justification, the assistance of God's grace is indtspensahle. The Semi-Pelagian doctrine is often confounded with that of the Molinistic (sec 1110LINA) school of Itnnan Catholic theology; but there is one essential difference. viz., that the latter persistently maintain the necessity of grace for all supernatural acts, even for the beginning of conversion, although they are generally represented as agreeing with the Semi•Pelagians as to the mode of explaining the freedom of the.human will acting under the influence of divine grace. The chief writers in the controversy were Prosper, Ililarv, and Fulgentins; and the question was referred to Celestine, bishop of Rome in 431. it continued, however, to he agitated in the west for a considerable time. Faustus, bishop of Ries, toward the end of the Silt c., revived the error, and it was condemned in council held at Arles in 475, and still later in a synod (the second)held at Orange (Arau sio) in 525, and again in the third mined of Valence in 530