The author of the Pelagian heresy is said to have been a native of Wales, whose name was Morgan, meaning "born near the sea," which was converted into the Greek Pelagios.  Although he irritated the haughtiest fathers of the church by denying the innate depravity of human nature and appealing to Origen, it is suspected that he was the actual writer of some commentaries and epistles, which are now ascribed to Jerome and Augustin, and included in their works.  The laity took no part in this dispute, because there was no rich see at stake, for the defence or acquisition of which their turbulent spirit was called into action.  The ecclesiastics, who from this time become the principal chroniclers of "the public calamities," have been very studious to conceal from posterity their own share in producing them.  The prostration of reason and energy at their austere bidding, the strangling of education, and the withering of talent, are represented by them as the pious docility of submissive faith.  When by this course they had deranged the social system, they threw off the burden of reproach from themselves, and cast it on the unconscious barbarians, who could not repel the charge. (The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon, v.3, 1854)