Anti-Pelagian Dossier 6

Julian is challenged and invited to repentance after the example of his associates. 1. These men, therefore—namely Pelagius and Coelestius—being caught in errors of so impious a kind, let Julian and his other partners now at least condemn them, to the satisfaction of the Church; and if there are any whom they are confident hold wrong views against the catholic faith, let them not hesitate to designate them by name, and by ecclesiastical order they shall receive from us, according to our ability, a reply—or assuredly from him whom they shall say to deviate from the catholic understanding. 2.

For as we have stated above, many who had followed Coelestius and Pelagius along with him, and had become Julian's partners and associates, having forsaken him, and Pelagius being condemned, submitting themselves to the Apostolic See, and professing repentance over the things they had wrongly held, were judged by the holy Fathers worthy of compassion and were received. This work was divided by Mercator into two parts. The one received the name 'Commonitorium to the reader,' since it stands in the place of a preface; the other, 'Annotations on the words of Julian,' which is the work itself. Both indeed comprise much that is excellent; but the first chiefly contains what pertains to history;

the second, what pertains to doctrine—though this latter also brings to light certain things about Julian that remained unknown until this very day. Here one question is set forth to be treated in itself: concerning the mortality of Adam through sin; while others are touched upon as it were as appendices: concerning original sin, concerning the baptism and redemption of infants, and so forth. Whence Mercator (in the Commonitorium or Prologue, part one of this book): 'The whole sum of the inept and rather impious labor of Julian seems to be reduced to one perverse opinion: namely, that the transgression of Adam and Eve did not make them mortal.' And afterward (at the end of the book of Annotations):

'You know that upon this question disputed between us concerning mortality—namely, of the human race, which through the first transgressors of the divine command ran generally through the seeds, and runs, and will run even to the end—your whole case is built.' From this I think something can probably be gathered concerning the time. Mercator wrote after the death of Theodore of Mopsuestia, as is clear from these words (at the beginning of the Prologue or Commonitorium): 'By Theodore, formerly bishop of the town of Mopsuestia'; indeed, after the death of St. Augustine: 'Augustine, bishop of holy memory, at various times,' etc.; and even after the publication of his own reply to Julian's last work. For thus Mercator (ibid., toward the end):

'Saint Augustine, with his six books, overthrew the first four of that man's, and with the eight latter ones too, by his individual replies subjoined to the individual chapters: which work of both, when it had come into our hands,' etc. Since therefore Theodore departed this life in the year 427, and Augustine in the year 430 (Theodoret at the end of his Ecclesiastical History), and the 'Unfinished Work' could scarcely have reached Mercator stationed in the East before the deacon Bassula arrived at Ephesus—who, as is credible, brought this work together with the letters of Capreolus, bishop of Carthage, as the sacred testament of that most holy man dying in the defense of grace—it does not seem far from the truth that the Annotations were indeed composed by Mercator toward the end of the year

431, in which the synod of Ephesus was held, but collected into a single book at the urging of Pientius in the following year; for it doubtless befell Mercator what is wont to befall the eager: he avidly read a long-awaited work as soon as he received it; having read it he annotated it, and in due time gathered the Annotations into one. It concerns the reader to have observed three things here. First, that we indeed have divided the Annotations into eight chapters, but in this following Mercator, who set before himself just so many excerpts from Julian's books to be examined; and that he distinguished the individual chapters, and the Commonitorium itself, by various numbers, so that if anything should ever need to be cited by us, it may be found the more easily the more it has been designated by many marks.

The second, that to each of Julian's excerpts we have nevertheless subjoined Augustine's reply—even though Mercator did not append it—so that the replies of both teachers, set together side by side, may shed mutual light upon one another. Lastly, that nowhere—either in Mercator or in other authors of the same age—are more secrets contained in themselves that pertain to the Coelestian history; so that someone might deservedly, on that account, call this little work 'The Mystery of the Coelestian Heresy Revealed.'