It is fallen man whom he pursues with his fierce scorn; his view of man's nature - intellect as well as character - is to be read in the light of his unflinching Augustinianism.
The school did not produce an extensive literature, but it played an important part in resisting an exaggerated Augustinianism by reasserting the freedom of the will and the continued existence of the divine image in human nature after the fall.
While Pelagius was condemned, it was only a modified Augustinianism which became the doctrine of the church.
Meanwhile in the Western Church the subject of sin and grace, and the relation of divine and human activity in salvation, received especial attention; and finally, at the second council of Orange in 529, after both Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism had been repudiated, a moderate form of Augustinianism was adopted,, involving the theory that every man as a result of the fall is in such a condition that he can take no steps in the direction of salvation until he has been renewed by the divine grace given in baptism, and that he cannot continue in the good thus begun except by the constant assistance of that grace, which is mediated only by the Catholic Church.
In the Church of Rome the Dominicans favoured Augustinianism, the Jesuits Semi-Pelagianism; the work of Molina on the agreement of free-will with the gifts of grace provoked a controversy, which the pope silenced without deciding; but which broke out again a generation later when Jansen tried to revive the decaying Augustinianism.