Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Augustinian Doctrine
CHAP. vm.
tions of the will, and are wholly performed, if there is only
a will to perform them, without going into the question
what decides that will. If man has a will, which will is
intended to act in the particular way of choice and obe
dience, he must be addressed in a manner suitable to such
a design ; he must be commanded, in order that he may
obey, and he must have the alternative placed before him
in order that He choose. But such a mode of addressing
him does not necessarily prove any more than that he is
possessed of a will to which those operations belong. While,
therefore, in the case of Scripture we are justified in taking
such language to imply an original and self-determining
will in man, because Scripture is addressed to the popular
understanding, and this is the popular inference to draw
from such language ; in the case of a philosophical writer
like Augustine, who treats of the human will and the
questions belonging to it in a scientific and subtle way,
and from whose language therefore we are not justified
in inferring more than it logically contains, we cannot
take it as implying more than the existence of a will in
a man.
Indeed, the fact of a will is all the conclusion which he
himself arrives at by this argument, and all thai^ he presses
upon his readers. 1 These commands would not be given
unless man had a will truly belonging to him with which
to obey them nisi homo haberet propriam voluntatem,
qua divinis prceceptis obediret. To the man who says I
cannot do what is commanded, because he is conquered by
concupiscence, the "
Apostle says, Will not to be overcome
"
of evil, but overcome evil with good ; will not to be
overcome noli vinci implying certainly a choice of his
will ; for to will and not to will is of the individual s will
arbitrium voluntatis ejus sine dubio convenitur, velle
enim et nolle proprice voluntatis est. Freewill is suffi-
ordinanda, i.e. vult quod tails sit denda. . . . Deusprimovulthomini
finis talium meritorum secundum prsemium et gloriam tanquam finem,
ordinem ab ipso talibus prsesti- et ideo vult sibi et facit merita
tutum, ita quod merita nullo modo congrua. Bradwardine, p.
antecedenter, causaliter, a priori, seq.
monent, determinant, vel actuant
Yoluntatem divinam ad prsemia red- seq.
150. et
! De Grat. et Lib. Arb. c. ii. et