Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. VHI. of Freewill. 2 1 3
give the same cause to opposite effects. Augustine s argu
ment proceeds on the supposition of the necessity of a
cause for human actions, and is substantially the same ar
gument with that used by Edwards, that an act of the
will cannot directly and immediately arise out of a state of
indifference because the act ; implies an antecedent choice,
]
which choice cannot be simultaneous with indifference ;
the assumption in this latter argument being that actions
must have a cause out of which they spring which ; cause
can only be calculated to produce one effect, and not either
one or the other of two effects. The advocates of freewill,
on the other hand, do not admit this assumption, and so
answer the argument which is raised upon it. They allow
that this power of choice is no cause of the determination
of the will, nor do they profess it to be such ; but they
maintain that for a determination of the will one way or
another, it is not necessary to assign a cause, such deter
mination being an original motion of the will. It must be
added, however, that in using such an argument as this,
for he admits in the case of the
Augustine is inconsistent,
first man this power, this freewill in the complete sense,
this power of either side ; appealing to it, as throwing the
responsibility of sin upon him, and removing it from God ;
after which admission, he is properly precluded from argu
ing upon abstract grounds against such a, power.
The power of choice, as the account of the evil and
good actions and lives of men, being thus set aside, S.
Augustine proceeds to lay down a rationale of two dif
ferent roots or causes for the two. Our Lord says, that a
good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, nor an evil tree
1
If the act springs immediately
out of a state of indifference, then it
does not arise from antecedent choice
soul, while it yet remains in a state
of perfect indifference, chooses to put
itself out of that state and to turn
or preference. But if the act arises
directly
itself one way, then the soul ig al-
out of a state of indifference, ready come to a without any intervening choice to
determine it, then the act not being
determined by choice is not determined
by the will. ... An antecedent
choice, then, he says, must
be granted. But if it is, if the
choice, and chooses
that way. And so the soul is in a
state of. choice, and in a state of
equilibrium, both at the same time.
On the Freedom of the Will, part
ii. sect. 7.