Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Augustinian
Doctrine CHAP. T.
be unduly nourished and ; persons, by brooding narrowly
upon it, may get themselves to regard many things as
grievances, both in human society and the system of Pro
vidence, which they would not otherwise have done. But
such an idea of is
justice
not supported by the general
feeling of mankind, which has adopted a larger and more
liberal one.
Inequality, then, in the dispensing of religious privi
leges, is not a difficulty to reason or contrary to justice ;
but S. Augustine speaks of predestination as a difficulty,
and there
and contrary to our instinctive ideas of justice ;
fore must have included something more than this kind of
inequality in his idea of what predestination was.
Indeed, the very circumstances of the argument which
S. Augustine is carrying on, if any one will consider them,
will be found to involve something more than this as his
meaning of predestination ; for, had he meant no more
than this, there would have been no occasion for this de
fence of the doctrine at all. In arguing with an infidel he
might have had to answer the objection of these inequali
ties in the Divine dispensation ; but he is defending the
doctrine of predestination not against an infidel, but against
a Christian objector i.e. an objector who at the very
outset admits such inequalities, and therefore would not
object to, or call out a defence of that doctrine on that
ground. Indeed, S. Augustine s opponent is not only a
Christian, but sometimes even a Catholic Christian, he
having to defend this doctrine not only against Pelagians
but against opponents within the Church. 1 But it is
absurd to suppose such an opponent taking, against a
particular doctrine, a ground only suitable to an infidel
arguing against revelation altogether, just as it would be
absurd, on the other hand, to suppose S. Augustine not
giving the ready and obvious answer to such an objection
if brought. He answers his opponent by referring him to
God s secret and inscrutable will ;
but had mere inequality
1
The Church of Marseilles, which, book De Co-rreptione et Gratia, and
through Prosper and Hilary, pro- were answered by the book De
tested
against the doctrine of the Prcedestinatione Sanctorum.