Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

1 86 Augustinian Doctrine CHAP. vn.
its applications, appear to be open, not only to this objec
tion, which applies to all limited probation, that we do not
see its justice, but to a positive charge of injustice. For
in the case of a person who has lived uprightly and reli
giously up to the end of life, but has then yielded to some
temptation and fallen into sin, it does appear unjust that
the end should undo the whole of the life previous, and
deprive him of any advantage from it and the rule of final
;
perseverance seems at first to impose such a result. But
this will be found, upon consideration, not to be the case.
The rule of final perseverance is the rule, that a man must
be judged according to his final character ; but what in a
particular case is the final character it does not and cannob
determine. Some rules indeed are of such a kind that
they appear when laid down to decide their own applica
tion ; and the rule which identifies a man s character, good
or bad, with his final one, will appear, unless we are on our
guard, to decide the particular fact of his final character,
its goodness or badness ; the change which is presented to
observation in the particular case appearing to be, without
any further reflection, the change which is supposed in the
rule. But it is evident that we should be deceived here
by an apparent connection between two things which are
really separate. No rule can possibly decide its own appli
cation ; it supposes the case to which it applies and does
not discover or select it. On the question, whether such
and such a case is one of change of character, we must take
the best evidence which our own experience and observa
tion can apply, as we would on any other question of fact.
In the case of a man who at the end of a life of steady
virtue falls into sin, we ought certainly to be slow to believe
th;it such sin is a real change of character. His previous
good life, though of no avail as a counterbalance, supposing
a real change from it, is yet legitimate evidence on the
question whether there is such change ; and evidence, as
far as it goes, against it. For there is a difficulty in sup
posing that one who had evinced such steadiness and con
stancy should*fall away really, however he might appear
to do so; and both reason and charity direct us to a