Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

ioo Different Interpretations CHAP. iv.
that have seen in the doctrine of grace only an unsound
enthusiasm, and have aimed at fortifying the ground of
morals by releasing it from this connection, have not im
proved their moral standard, but greatly lowered and
relaxed it. With a dulled sense of sin, a depressed stan
dard of virtue, Pelagianism thus tended to the moral tone
of Socinianism, and the religion which denies the Incar
nation. The asceticism of its first promulgators and
disciples could not neutralize the tendencies of a system
opposed to mystery and to grace, and therefore hostile
at once to the doctrinal and the moral standard of Chris
tianity.
The triumphant overthrow of such a school was the
service which S. Augustine performed to the Church, and
for which, under God, we still owe him gratitude. With
all the excess to which he pushed the truth which he de
fended, he defended a vital truth, without which Chris
tianity must have sunk to an inferior religion, against a
strong and formidable attack. He sustained that idea of
virtue as an inspiration to which the lofty thought of even
heathen times ever clung, which the Gospel formally
expressed in the doctrine of grace, and which is necessary
to uphold the attributes of God and the moral standard
of man.
CHAPTEE IV.
DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS OF ORIGINAL SIN.
THE doctrine of the fall of man has been always held as a
fundamental doctrine in the Church; and all Catholic
writers have witnessed to the truth, that the first man
came from the hands of God an upright creature, that he
fell from that uprightness by voluntary transgression, and
that he involved in his fall the whole of his posterity.
But the different ways in which this doctrine has been held