#pelagians

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“"But," you say, "it does not mean a camel, which cannot possibly pass through a needle's eye, but a "camelus," which is a kind of ship's hawser." What intolerable subtlety when human greed grasps at the name of ropes to keep its earthly wealth! [...] It is a rotten argument that will do the rich no good. As if it were easier to get a huge rope through the needle's eye than that well-known animal the camel!” -  The "Sicilian Briton" (aka the Anonymous Pelagian), c 420, from The Letters of Pelagius and his followers. Edited by B. R. Rees, 1991.

[lovegodsmashtyrants]

Luther begins by saying that concupiscence is invincible and that certain commands, as a consequence of original sin, are impracticable. Moreover, without the help of divine grace, free will can do nothing but sin. Grace of itself efficacious, though it was not neccessary for perseverance in good in the state of innocence, became so by reason of our infirmity, and man is powerless to resist what is offered him. The subsequent outcome of this pessimistic conception of human nature, such as it is in the present state, was that original integrity came to be viewed as something due to human nature, and grace, which is divine participation in the divine nature, as due to the state of natural integrity.This pessimistic view led to the confusion of the order of nature with the order of grace, a confusion which the Pelagians reached by the inverse method.

From Predestination: The Meaning of Predestination in Scripture and the Church by Father Reginald Garrigou Lagrange, O.P.