Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. in. The Pelagian Controversy. 85
responding happiness.
He comes from the hands of his
Maker an upright being, and he is placed in the garden of
Eden, where he is surrounded with all that can please the
senses and satisfy the mind of a creature thus constituted.
And revelation is here confirmed by general tradition. The
state of
legend of the golden age goes back to a primitive
our nature, in which it was both good and happy.
Such an original moral disposition of man again involves
a certain measure of stability and strength in the formation
such a character implies a certain degree of depth,
of it ;
with which it is stamped upon human nature. Jt may be
said that a being is good till he has sinned and ; that, con
sequently, if he is endowed simply with freewill at his
creation, he is created a good being. But it may be
doubted whether freewill of itself, and prior to its deter
mination to good, can be called goodness 1
: at any rate, the
possession of it alone affords no reason for a state of good
ness lasting beyond the first moment of creation ; and
therefore we are evidently intended to regard man s original
state of uprightness as something more than the mere state
of freewill. Man s uprightness, however, being this farther
state, whatever we may call it ; the support and continuance
of this state depended upon freewill in a being not yet per
fected but on his trial. It thus became an object of atten
tion in Catholic theology to define, under this balance of
considerations, with as much accuracy as the subject ad
mitted of, what was the condition of Adam before the fall,
in respect of goodness on the one side, and liability to sin
on the other.
On the one hand, then,
could not have concupiscence or lust, i.e. the direct inclina
it was determined that Adam
tion to evil ; that positive appetite and craving for corrupt
pleasure which is now the incentive to sin in our nature ;
for this would be to make no difference between man un-
fallen and fallen. There was no positive contrariety as yet
between the flesh and the spirit ; and the inward struggle,
which is now the normal condition of man, was alien to a
1 An rectus erat non habens bilitatem ? Op. Imp. 5. 57. See
v voluntatem bonam sed ejus possi- NOTE XIV.