Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. VIT. of Final Perseverance. 187
favourable supposition, except something very peculiar in
the case prevents it. 1
The rule of final perseverance, then, as a test, is not
itself unjust ; but whether it is unjust or not in its applica
tion depends upon our discrimination and charity in apply
it. This rule is not intended to over-ride our natural
ing
ideas of justice, as if because we admitted it, we allowed a
self-applying power to it, to which those ideas must suc
cumb but those ideas of ; justice must be our guide in
applying the rule. We must apply it then in the particular
case, according to the evidence ; and remember that, after
all, we cannot apply it with certainty, because God only
knows the final state of man s heart. There cannot in that
case be any unjust application of the rule^ because its
application will be suspended altogether. Indeed this rule,
when we go to the bottom of it, issues after all in being
substantially no more than the rule that a man must be
judged according to his character for ; by a man s character
we meanhis final character, and no character previous to it.
The rule then is certain, because it is no more than the rule,
that the good are rewarded and the bad punished but it
;
cannot be applied to the individual with certainty, because
we do not know who are the bad, and who are the good.
II. Final perseverance has thus far been treated of as
a testy in which sense the doctrine is no predestinarian one,
but only one of ordinary religion and morality. But it
remains to see what produces, in the Augustinian system,,
this saving obedience of which final perseverance is the
test, that is, to consider final perseverance as a grace.
Final perseverance, then, is maintained by S. Augustine
to be the free gift of God; that is to say, not a gift
bestowed in consideration of the man s previous acts, or as
an assistance to his own efforts, but an absolute gift bestowed
upon certain individuals of the human race, in accordance
1 The following is not a cautious tari potest, si donee moreretur fide-
statement of S. Augustine s, though
it admits of : explanation Potius
hanc perseverantiam habuit unius
liter vixit, quam multorum annorum,
si exiguum temporis ante mortem a
fidei stabilitate defecit. De Dono
anni fidelis et quantum infra cogi- Perseverantise, c. 1.