THE EARLIEST BRITISH AUTHOR.
" ORIGINAL Sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk)," says the ninth of the Thirty-Nine Articles. Th Pelagians and their vain talking have lapsed into obscurity, but it is worth while to remember that Pelagius was the first British author whose name has survived. He lived at the end of the fourth century. Augustine, who con- ducted a lively controversy with him, referred to him as a Briton ; Jerome apparently termed him a Scot—that is, a native of Ireland. Professor Bury has suggested that he was an Irishman born in Britain, and it is certain that Irish theo- logians long continued to treat the eminent heretic, with special respect. His later years were spent in Rome, where he com- posed his Pauline commentaries before the Goths sacked the city in 410. His work, being unorthodox, was edited by later hands, and in an enlarged form came to pass under the name of Jerome, with whose writings it was ultimately printed. Professor Souter of Aberdeen, who has for many years been making a special study of Pelagius, has now produced in the Cambridge series of Texts and Studies a masterly treatise, Pdagius's Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St. Paul ; Intro- duction (Cambridge University Press, 40s. net), which is to be followed. by a critical edition of the text. He has found at Karlsruhe and in the Balliol and Merton libraries manuscripts which preserve the Pelagian commentaries in their original form without the orthodox emendations and interpretations. On the problems arising out of these and other manuscripts Professor Souter has lavished all his scholarship. It is a real pleasure to see a very difficult problem in textual criticism handled with such skill and patience. Professor Souter says that the promised text contains " a form of Old Latin text of the Epistles of St. Paul read by our ancestors of the British Church two centuries before Augustine ruled the Province of Canterbury." That is
one of several reasons why the first British author deserved the attention of scholars.
Previous page
