Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. vr. Doctrine of Grace. 157
being provided that they should will, their will must suc
cumb amid so many infirmities, and persevere they coidd
not. Therefore such a succour is afforded to the infirmity
of their will as that by Divine grace action takes place,
without it being possible to fall away or be overcome. 1
Thus, weak though it is, this will fails not and is not
conquered. The feeble will of man, through the Divine
strength, perseveres in a yet imperfect goodness, when the
strong and sound will of the first man did not in its more
perfect. The strength of freewill failed, because, through
that assistance of God without which a man cannot, if he
wills, persevere, was not wanting, such assistance as that
by which God works in a man to will, was. God left it
to the strong man to do, if he willed ; to the weak He has
reserved, as a gift from Himself, to will unconquerably
what is good and unconquerably persevere in it. 2
Such is the distinction between the two kinds of grace
by which the spiritual wants of man before the fall and
after are respectively supplied,
the grace of the paradisal,
and the grace of the gospel dispensation. Under the former
dispensation grace was weak, because nature was strong ;
under the latter, grace is absolute, because nature is im
potent. Human nature is too corrupt and weak now to
have anything left to itself to do ; and it must be treated
as such, and be taken in hand with the
understanding
that everything must be done for it. It is past all but the
strongest remedy, a self-acting one. The distinction rests
upon the doctrine of the fall of man and the change it in
troduced into his nature. The doctrine of the fall of man
asserts an essential change in the powers of his moral nature
to have followed from that event, in consequence of which
he cannot will or do anything aright now of his own natural
strength. But if man in natural state has not the power
to will
aright, he has not, Augustine says, freewill. Ac
cordingly it is assumed in this argument that this is the
difference between man before, and man after the fall ; that
some editions have inse-
1 Ut divina gratia indeclina- though
biliter et insuperabiliter ageretur.
The acknowledged MS. reading,
parabiliter.
* De Corr. et Grat. n. 38.