Pélage citations

“We must now take precautions to prevent you from being embarrassed by something in which the ignorant majority is at fault for lack of proper consideration, and so from supposing with them, that man has not been created truly good simply because he is able to do evil. … If you reconsider this matter carefully and force your mind to apply a more acute understanding to it, it will be revealed to you that man's status is better and higher for the very reason for which it is thought to be inferior: it is on this choice between two ways, on this freedom to choose either alternative, that the glory of the rational mind is based, it is in this that the whole honor of our nature consists, it is from this that its dignity is derived.”

“Their faith alone will not profit them, because they have not done works of righteousness.”

“Do you consider a man to be a Christian by whose bread no hungry man is ever filled?”

“Unless a man has despised worldly things, he shall not receive those which are divine.”

“Whenever I have to speak on the subject of moral instruction and the conduct of a holy life, it is my practice first to demonstrate the power and quality of human nature.”

“Let no man judge himself to be a Christian, unless he is one who both follows the teaching of Christ and imitates his example.”

“The best incentive for the mind consists in teaching it that it is possible to do anything which one really wants to do.”

“If you depart from evil but fail to do good, you transgress the law, which is fulfilled not simply by abominating evil deeds but also by performing good works’”