Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CTTAP. in. The Pelagian Controversy. 99
self credit for a sound and practical standard of morals,
as opposed to a morbid and too sensitive one. The doc
trine of perfectibility encouraged the same tendency in
the system, demanding a lower moral standard for its
verification.
And the same narrowness of moral basis which dulled
the sense of sin, depressed the standard of virtue. The
Pelagian denied virtue as an inspiration and gift of God,
confining his idea of it entirely to human effort and direct-
choice. But the former conception of the source of virtue
was necessary to a high standard of virtue itself. If we
are to rely on what general feeling and practical experi
ence say on this subject, virtue needs for its own support
the religious rationale, i.e. the idea of itself as something
imparted. There must be that image and representation
of it in men s minds, which present it less as a human
work than as an impulse from above, possessing itself of
the man he knows not how ; a holy passion, and a spark
kindled from the heavenly fire. It is this conception of
it as an inspiration that has excited the sacred ambition
of the human mind, which longs for union with Grod, or a
participation of the Divine life, and sees in this inspiration
this union. Virtue has thus risen from a social and civil
to a sublime and intrinsic standard, and presented itself as
that which raised man above the world, and not simply
moulded and trained him for it. This conception has
accordingly approved itself to the great poets of the world,
who have in their ideal of man greatly leaned to the in
spired kind of virtue. So congenial to the better instincts
even of the unenlightened human mind is the Christian
doctrine of grace, while, disconnected with this ennobling
conception, morality has sunk down to a political and
secular level. Nor is there any justice surer than that by
which the self-sufficient will is punished by the exposure
of its own feebleness, and rejected grace avenged in a
barren and impoverished form of virtue. Those schools
subire supplicium ? Aut si est lex (si dici permittat absurditas) cogit
quidem peccati, sed quando ei non ipsum non peccare peccatum. Op.
consentio non pecco, inestimabilis 1. Imp. 1. c. 71.
potentia voluntatis human se, quse
H 2