Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

148 Angus finian CHAP. vr.
CHAPTER VI.
AUGUSTINIAN DOCTRINE OF GRACE.
THE doctrine of absolute predestination implies the doctrine
of efficacious or irresistible grace,
for the end implies the
means and ; therefore, if eternal life is ensured, the ne
cessary qualifications for that life, which are holiness and
virtue, must be earned also. But these can only be en
sured by such a Divine influence as does not depend for
its effect on the contingency of man s will; i.e. by what
divines call irresistible or efficacious grace a grace which
S. Augustine accordingly maintains.
The language which the Church has always used for
expressing the relation in which grace stands to the human
will has been that grace assists the will and such a term
;
implies in its natural meaning an original power in our
selves, to which this assistance was given, and by which it
must be used an assistance, in short, which is no more
than assistance. S. Augustine, however, in adopting the
authorised expression, and speaking of grace as assistance,
is obliged by his system to use the term in a meaning
exceeding this natural and obvious one, viz. not as assist
he arrives at his definition
ance, but as control ; though
of such a controlling grace only gradually, after long
familiarity with the subject, and when controversy has
strengthened and sharpened his ideas.
S. Augustine early in his
theological life commits him
self to an idea of the Divine Power as being a power of
creating perfect goodness in the creature, and defends in
his book De Lihero Arbitrio, written against the Mani-
cheans, the act of God in not creating man thus perfect
at once, but only with the power of becoming so ; arguing
that Grocl dispensed different kinds of advantages 1 accord-
1
Bona quibus male uti mains other goodness itself. De Lib. Arb.
potest, et quorum esse usus non 1. 2. c. 17., et seq. ; De Pecc. Merit.
potest malus; the one being free- et Remiss. 1. 2. c. 18.
will or the power of being good, the