Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. iv. of Original Sin. 107
was thus met on its own ground, gave a conspicuous place
to this character of our Lord. The result was, without any
intention on their part, some loss of pre-eminence to our
Lord s office of Victim and Expiator. The doctrine of the
Logos divided a theological attention, which was afterward
given more wholly to the doctrine of the atonement. And
this position of the atonement would naturally affect the
position of the doctrine of original sin.
But, whatever were the reasons, an earlier school repre
sented man s nature as continuing fundamentally sound
after the fall, and laid down, as the consequence of that
event, a state of defect and loss of perfection as distin
guished from a state of positive corruption. Man was
deprived of impulses which elevated his moral nature; but
still that moral nature remained entire and able to produce
fruits pleasing in their measure to God. And though it
was admitted that all mankind were, as a matter of fact,
positive sinners, such positive sin was not regarded as the
necessary consequence of original, but referred to the free
will of each individual, who could have avoided it, had he
1
chosen all that -,
original sin had entailed as of necessity
and beyond the power of man to avoid, being a state of
defect. 2
Such an estimate of the effects of the fall, as it was
partly produced by, in its turn produced, a more favourable
view of the moral condition of that large proportion of
1 Tb avdaiperov rf/s avQpcaTrivrjs arbitrio factus et suse potestatis,
tyvxris rb avreov<ri6v rb avdai- ipse sibi causa est, ut aliquando
perov aSouXwroj/ irpbs ^^oyyv fiiov quidem frumentum, aliquando autem
alpfffis MCTajBoA.?}? curia irpoatpeats
tXevOepa rb c<p vjfuv a</>
palea fiat. Irenseus, 1. 4. c. 9. Id
quod erat semper liberum in homine
tavrov e\6/*fvos rb ayaOov
Kparr)s. These expressions
eurooccuret
suse potestatis.
below Tertullian s
C. 29. I give
elaborate state-
ring in the early fathers (Justin ment of man s freewill. No dis-
Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alex- tinction, as regards the will, appears
andria, Athenagoras, Tatian, Cyril) to have been made between man
are applied to man fallen as well as fallen and unfallen, but man as such
unfallen. All the Greek fathers, is spoken of as having it.
2
says Hagenbach, maintain the
Bull, On the State of Man
avretyvffiov of the human soul. before the Fall, describes the loss
The early westerns are no less ex- of the supernatural gifts as the
plicit : Homo vero rationabilis et consequence which the early fathers
secundum hoc similis Deo, liber in annexed to the fall.