Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. in. The Pelagian Controversy. 89
distinguishing the motive to the first sin as being a depraved
will as contrasted with concupiscence or lust ; by a depraved
will meaning a perverse opposition to the good will estab
lished in the first man, a voluntary abandonment of the
a violation of
high ground on which he stood by nature,
his own created inclination to good. 1 A kind of horror
attaches to the falls of saints, when those who have main
tained a high and consistent course of holiness commit
some deep sin. Such sins are like unaccountable convul
sions in nature, and our moral instincts immediately draw
a distinction between them and common sins. The pecu
liarity, however, of the sin of Adam, exceeded that of any
sin of fallen man, in that it was the sin of man unfallen.
It may be added, that such an inspired good habit or
disposition of man as first created is part of the tradition of
the golden age. A certain disposition is described in that
legend as being that of the whole human race at the com
mencement of its existence an original moral formation,
like the creation of the race itself, -and it is described
as continuing some time ; a disposition involving general
goodness and uprightness, love, gentleness, serenity, content.
So suitable has it seemed even to the unenlightened human
mind that the morning of a world of moral beings should
arise in
light and purity, that the creation fresh from the
Divine hands should shine with the reflection of the Divine
goodness, and bear the stamp of a proximity to Grod, that
the will of man as first created should not be neutral or
indeterminate, but disposed to good. Nor have the defini
tions of Catholic theology, however elaborate and subtle in
form, diverged in substance from the ground of general
tradition and natural ideas.
Scripture and common tradition thus assert a paradisal
life as the original
state of man. But the Pelagian,
in
as he would not admit
denying the fall, rejected Paradise ;
1
Prsecessit mala voluntas, et vitiatem venenosa persuasione ser-
secuta est mala concupiscentia . . . pentis, ut oriretur cupiditas quse
Voluntas cupiditatem, non cupiditas sequeretur potius voluntatem quam
voluntatem duxit. Op. 1. Imp. 1. resisteret voluntati. Ibid. 1. 6.
c. 71. Voluntatem ejus prius fuisse c. 14.