Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. iv. of (Original Sin. 1 1 7
vantage ;
but no mere strength of the passions and affec
tions shows the nature corrupt so long as the will retains
its power. On the contrary, the nature is proved to be
fundamentally sound, by the very fact of its being equal
to the performance of the right act. The test of a sound
or corrupt nature, then, is an able or an impotent will and
;
if a corruption of nature means anything at all, it means
the loss of freewill. This was the legitimate advance which
was wanted to complete the expression of the doctrine and
;
this complement it was left to S. Augustine to give.
S. Augustine s position respecting freewill had its com
mencement at a date in the history of man earlier than the
corruption of his nature, viz. at his creation. Philosophy
raises an insuperable difficulty to the freedom of any created
will ; for freedom of the will implies an original source of
action in the being who has it, original not relatively only,
in the way in which any cause, however secondary, is
original as compared with its effect, but absolutely ; and
to be an original cause of anything is contrary to the very
essence of a being who is not original.
Tertullian had a
distinct philosophical conception of this difficulty, and
met it by the only answer open to a believer in freewill ;
an assertion of the truth together with an acknowledgment
of the difficulty. Originality is the highest form of being ;
and everything which does not move itself, whatever be its
grandeur or sublimity as a spectacle, is intrinsically despic
able, in comparison with that which does. The Divine
Power, then, resolving upon its own highest exertion, chose
originality itself as a subject of creation, and made a being
which, when made, was in its turn truly creative, the
author and cause of its own motions and acts. And
whereas the creature would, as such, have possessed nothing
of his own, God by an incomprehensible act of liberality,
alienated good from Himself in order that the creature
might be the true proprietor of it, and exhibit a goodness
of which His own will was the sole cause. 1 And this re-
1
Sola nune bonitas deputetur, bonus natura Deus solus. . . .
quae tantum homini largita sit, id Homo autem qui totus ex instituest
arbitrii libertatem. . . . Nam tione est, habens initium, cum in-