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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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290 The first Introduction of the Gospel into Britain .
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evil , apd that he has power to co-operate with the Deity / ' fcc . These are so very like what are said to have been the leading and distinguishing tenets of the Pelagians , that we may
venture to conclude the latter to have sprung from them ,. It does not appear that Pelagius , who was a British Christian , and whose original name , was Morgan , or Morgant , was the founder or inventor of the religious svstem that goes under his name- When he went abroad to Rome , Africa , Jerusalem , and other parts , there is reason to believe that he only taught and defended the religious principles that prevailed , and which
be had imbibed in his own country . He had been educated , it is said , in the college or monastery of Bang or which , in all probability , had been originally a drudical-seminary , and would continue still to inculcate , in some , form or degree , many of the precepts and maxims of the old religion , and among the rest those above mentioned . As a pupil or student there he would , naturally imbibe them , and when he went abroad , would
as naturally promulgate and defend them : hence the rise or origin of that frightful heresy of Pelagius , about which there has been so much clamour and contention in the world ever since , and in opposing which the redoubtable Bishop of Hippo ,
couiiiionly called Saint Augustine , rendered himself so celebrated . After all , may it not really be very fairly questioned whether the dm id ism of Pelagius , or the platonism of his opp-ment ^ was the most foreign from , or inimical to the religion of the New Testament ? The mere opinion or authority of
Augustine can determine nothing against Pelagianism ; for it does not appear that he was either more pious , more honest , more wise more learned , cr more infallible , than his opponent , His chief advantage or superiority seems to have consisted in his having the civil and ecclesiastical powers , with the rabble or majority on his side ; and that advantage or superiority Caiaphas also had , in his controversy with Jesus Christ , and
the Jews , in ( heirs with the apostles . The question must be decided ; like all other religious questions , by the voice of scripture , and not by that of Saint Augustine , or any other such saint or sinner . Pelagius is also supposed to have beeq an universalist , because universalism appears to have been a druidical tenet , but in that he could be no more a heretic than Origen , and others , in ancient as well as modern times .
Other accounts have been piven of the first introduction of the gospel into Britain , of which the following are the most remarkable . —One ascribes it to James the son of Zebedee ; but the little credit that is due to this will soon be perceived by adverting to the early date of that apostle ' s martyrdom . By
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1807, page 290, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2381/page/2/
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