Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. vr. Doctrine of Grace. 151
Paul, when he says that cupidity is the root of all evil,
intimates also that love is the root of all good. If, there
fore, the two trees good and evil are two men good and
evil, what is the good man but the man of a good will ;
that is, the tree of a good root ? And what is the evil
man, bat the man of an evil will ; that is, the tree of an
evil root? And the fruits of these two trees are acts,
words, thoughts; which if good proceed from a good will,
and if evil from an evil will It is not true, then,
as Pelagius says, that there is
and evil men for there
one and the same root of
is one root of good men,
: good
viz. love ; and another root of evil men, viz. cupidity :
although it is true that that power is capable of both roots
a
ilia possibilitas utriusque radicis est capax
man is able not only to have love but also
because
to have
cupidity. *
He proceeds to say that love, which is the root of good
actions, is a free gift of (rod, and not given according to
our merits.
Now this passage evidently contains a different doctrine,
as to the source of our actions, from the doctrine of free
will. The doctrine of freewill is that we do possess a
power of taking both sides, and act well or ill according
as we use it ; that therefore good and evil acts may both
arise out of one root or one and the same moral condition
of the agent. But Augustine denies the residence in man
of a power to act either way, on the logical or speculative
ground of the absurdity of supposing, that both virtue and
vice can come out of the same moral condition of the
agent, as this neutral state of power would be and main
;
tains that human actions proceed either out of a moral
condition which necessarily produces right action, or out
of a moral condition which necessarily produces wrong.
He denies therefore the doctrine of freewill. He admits,
indeed, that man is capable of either moral condition
or, to use his own language, capable of either root but
;
this is not the doctrine of freewill, which is, that the same
moral condition, or the same root, is capable of either
1 De Grat. Christi, c. xviii.