Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

] O4 Different Interpretations
CHAP. iv.
to selfish considerations, and produce no fruits. The will,
in like manner, does not enable us to perform laborious
services in our neighbour s behalf without the stimulus of
the affections. Nor, did it even enable us to perform the
external acts, could it therefore enable us to perform our
whole duty such ; duty involving something of love and
affection in the very performance of it.
There is, then, something defective in the will as a
source of action ; and this defect existed in the will of the
first man, however sound and perfect that will might be ;
because it is a defect inherent in the will itself, and not
attaching to it as a weak and corrupted will only. As
therefore, for fulfilling the relations of common life we re
quire the help of certain natural gifts, such as the natural
affections plainly are, being received from Grod at our crea
tion ;
in the same way the first man, to enable him to per
form the spiritual relations assigned to him, required the
aid of certain gifts supernatural, or such gifts as come
under the head of grace.
But, in the second place, granting that these gifts were
necessary for the first man, it may still be asked, why call
them supernatural ? They were not supernatural as being
Divine gifts for in that case our natural affections would
;
be supernatural gifts. Nor were they supernatural as being
additions to his created state ; though, had they been, they
would not have been supernatural, because they were thus
additional. Is not this, then, it may be asked, an arbi
trary distinction ? How can the nature of a man be defined
but as that assemblage of faculties and affections, higher or
with which God endows him ? and how can we there
lower,
fore, out of this whole assemblage, single out some as natu
ral, others as supernatural ?
In answer to this objection, it may be enough to say,
that when the fathers speak of these gifts as supernatural,
they do not seem to mean that they were above human
nature itself, that nature being whatever it might please
(rod by His various gifts to make it, but above human
nature as adapted to that order of things in which it is at
present placed this visible order of things or the world.