Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

2O2 Augustinian Doctrine CHAP. vin.
unimportant ; as if the acknowledgment
were the only thing of real importance.
of will as a fact
Of course, if this
is so, it is impossible to be in the wrong on this subject ;
for nobody in his senses can deny the fact of the will.
But the farther question of its determination cannot be
said to be unimportant, both in itself, and as involving
these theological results. It makes a difference in what
way
we decide it.
A distinguished writer of the present day, Archbishop
Whately, adopts this line : Let, then, necessitarians of all
descriptions but step forth into light, and explain their
own meaning ; and we shall find that their positions are
either obviously untenable, or else perfectly harmless and
nearly insignificant. If in saying that all things are fixed
and necessary, they mean that there is no such thing as
voluntary action, we may appeal from the verbal quibbles
which alone afford a seeming support to such a doctrine to
universal consciousness ; which will authorise even those
who have never entered into such speculations as the fore
going, to decide on the falsity of the conclusion, though
they are perplexed with the subtle fallacies of the argu
ment. But if nothing more be meant than that every event
depends on causes adequate to produce it, that nothing is
in itself contingent, accidental or uncertain, but is called
so only with reference to a person who does not know all
the circumstances on which it depends, and that it is
absurd to say anything could have happened otherwise than
it did, supposing all the circumstances connected with it
to remain the same, then the doctrine is undeniably true,
but perfectly harmless, not at all encroaching on free agency
and responsibility, and amounting in fact to little more
than an expansion of the axiom, that it is impossible for
the same thing to be and not to be. T
Archbishop Whately in this passage more than tolerates
necessitarianism, because he adopts it. He asserts that
*
nothing is in itself contingent, accidental, uncertain, and
that, supposing all the circumstances connected with it to
remain the same, it is absurd to say anything could have
1
Appendix to Archbp. King, On Predestination, p. 99.