Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. v. of Predestination. 147
S. Augustine then takes that further step which Scrip
ture avoids taking, and asserts a determinate doctrine of
predestination. He erects those passages of Scripture
which are suggestive of predestination into a system, ex
plaining away the opposite ones ; and converts the obscurity
and inconsistency of Scripture language into that clearness
and consistency by which a definite truth is stated. His
was the error of those who follow without due consideration
that strong first impression which the human mind enter
tains, that there must be some definite truth to be arrived
at on the question under consideration, whatever it may
be : and who therefore imagine that they cannot but be
doing service, if they only add to what is defective enough
to make it complete, or take away from what is ambiguous
enough to make it decisive. Assuming arrival at some
determinate truth necessary, he gave an exclusive develop
ment to those parts of Scripture which he had previously
fixed on as containing, in distinction to any apparently
opposite ones, its real meaning. But the assumption itself
was gratuitous. There is no reason why Scripture should
not designedly limit itself, and stop short of expressing
definite truth ; though whether it does so or not is a ques
tion of fact. If Revelation as a whole does not state a
truth of predestination, that stopping short is as much a
designed stopping short, as a statement would have been
a designed statement. Nor are we to be discontented
with the former issue, when the comparison of one part of
(rod s word with another fairly leads to it ; to suppose that
an indeterminate conclusion must be a wrong one, and to
proceed to obtain by forced interpretation what we had
failed to do by natural. If Revelation as a whole does not
Revelation did not intend to do so : and to
speak explicitly,
impose a definite truth upon it, when it designedly stops
short of one, is as real an error of interpretation as to deny
a truth which it expresses.
cum e contrario sacrilegorum et tent, ista considerent, hie audeant
inimicorum. Christi aliquo modo in dicere Deum vel acceptorem in sua
Christianorum manus venientes, ex gratia personarum, vel remunerahac
vita non sine sacramento rege- torem meritorum. Ep. 194. n. 32.
nerationis emigrent. . . . Ista cogi-
r. 2