Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. v. of Predestination. 135
give privileges to some which He does not give to others,
is no injustice.
It may be said, indeed, that the admission of one
portion of mankind to peculiar religious privileges and
advantages not enjoyed by the rest is a mystery; that
there is something inexplicable in that great inequality
of God s administration in this respect which we see in
the world, especially the remarkable one of one part of
the world only having been admitted into the Christian
Church, while far the larger part has been left in pagan
darkness and ignorance : but it cannot be said, that this
is a mystery in the sense of being a scandal or offence to
our reason. It is a mystery, in the first place, as being a
fact which we are obliged to refer simply to the Divine
will and pleasure ; but in this sense many of the commonest
events which take place in the world are mysteries. It is
one thing to be uninformed, and another to be scandalised ;
one thing not to have curiosity satisfied, and another to
have reason perplexed. It is a mystery also in a sense
somewhat stronger than this ; for without imposing as
obligatory, our moral nature yet favours the rule of equal
dealing, and its bias is in that direction ; so that excep
tions to it are not in themselves acceptable to us. But
neither in this sense is it a difficulty or scandal ; being only
the violation of a rule which is not obligatory. Indeed,
this bias of our minds is one which easily submits, on the
first due consideration, that there may be good reasons for
the inequality we see in the Divine dispensing of religious
privileges. And, on the whole, provided the great rule of
justice be kept to, that men are rewarded and punished
according to their use of the means given them, the gene
ral sense of mankind allows the Almighty the right to
apportion the means themselves as He thinks fit, and give
some higher, and some lower, without making any diffi
culty of the matter. Particular persons, indeed, have
embraced so rigid and importunate an idea of justice, that
they have not been able so to satisfy themselves, but have
insisted on an absolute equality of spiritual condition for
all. And truly the idea of justice, like other ideas, may