Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. vii. of Final Perseverance.
gives perseverance
who makes men stand. The first man
did not receive this gift of God, perseverance. 1
Final perseverance, then, is, according to S. Augustine,
a Divine gift. And that he uses the word gift here in its
natural sense as a free gift, not a conditional one, depending
on man s own disposition and conduct, is evident from the
following considerations.
First, he makes final perseverance a gift in the same
sense in which the end of life is a gift : but the end of life
is undoubtedly an absolute gift of God ; gift, I say, because
we are supposing a case here in which it is advantageous to
the person, and not the opposite,
it is entirely an arrange
ment of Providence when death takes place.
S. Augustine urges strongly that in certain cases, the
,end of life, that is to say, the circumstance of the end of
life taking place at the time it does, makes final perseve
rance. He takes the case of persons who die young, or when
their characters are unformed, but die while their minds
are as yet innocent and uncorrupted. Such persons, he
says, attain final perseverance, because they do as a fact
continue in goodness up to the end ; but their final
the occurrence of the
perseverance is evidently made by
end while they are in a good state of mind, not by their
own stability and constancy. That it is not any stability
of principle in the person which constitutes in such cases
final perseverance is plain, he argues, because final per
severance takes place, even where no principle of stability
exists, but the very reverse ; because it takes place even in
cases where the person, had he lived, would have lapsed :
and he quotes for this assertion the text from the Book of
Wisdom, Speedily was he taken away, lest that wickedness
should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul/
Here, he observes, is manifestly a case in which the person s
lapse, had he lived longer, was foreseen, and yet final per
severance takes place ; in which, therefore, it is manifest
that final perseverance takes place not by the stability of the
man, but by the act of God in putting an end to his life at
the time He does, which is purposely fixed so as to prevent
1 De Corr. et Grat. c. xii.