Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

IO2 Different Interpretations
CHAP. iv.
man s guilt cannot be transferred to another. This truth
of natural reason mingled intimately in the statements of
the early fathers with the truth of revelation so ; inti
mately indeed, that often no definite meaning can be ex
tracted from them. Two opposite truths are expressed
together, and side by side. 1 The consequence is, that
persons accustomed to the later theological
statements of
this doctrine have been often dissatisfied, when they have
gone to examine the earlier one, and have set down the
writers as not full believers in it. But the truth is, such
mixed and double statements more faithfully express the
truth than single-sided ones drawn out in either direction
would, because they express the whole truth, and not a
part of it. What appears to be ambiguity is comprehen
siveness, and is a merit and perfection, and not a defect.
Nor, on the same grounds on which the early fathers are
charged with a disbelief in this itself be acquitted.
doctrine, could Scripture
But it was not in accordance with the nature of the
human mind to allow these great, truths respecting the
moral condition of man to go on thus mixed and united.
Theology began soon to draw out each separately ; and this
mixture parted into two great doctrinal views or schemes,
of which the earlier took the side of the natural truth,
the later of the revealed, The earlier fathers, without
negativing their witness to the true doctrine of original
sin as expressed in Scripture, and handed down in the
Church, wrote as theologians with a strong bias in favour
of the natural truth; and gave it, in their scheme of
philosophy and doctrine, a disproportionate expansion.
Instead of
leaving the truth of revelation in its original
mystery and contradiction to human reason, as individual
thinkers they modified and limited it, so as to be consistent
with reason ; while a later school went to the other ex
treme, and developed the revealed truth at the expense of
the natural.
But an account of the doctrine of the fall will require
1 NOTE XV.