Note 54 — Chapter VII · ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS

More persistently dangerous to the ancient Church were the successive efforts of the struggling spirit of reason within to rectify in some small measure its most arbitrary dogmas. Of these efforts the most prominent were the quasi-Unitarian doctrine of Arius (fourth century), and the opposition by Pelagius and his pupil Cælestius (early in fifth century) to the doctrine of hereditary sin and predestinate salvation or damnation—a Judaic conception dating in the Church from Tertullian, and unknown to the Greeks.54