Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

218 Augustinian Doctrine CHAP. vnr.
sively born. At its fountain head this will is self-deter
mining and free in the complete sense ; but at the fall
it loses this freedom, and receives into itself an inclination
to evil, which operates necessarily. Thus biassed, it passes
into the successive generations of individual men, as they
are born, constituting them sinful beings, and issuing in
sinful desires and acts. If mankind complain, then, of this
captive condition, and ask why, when their will acts under
a necessity they are treated as free and responsible beings
subject to punishment for their acts, they are told that
that it
their will was originally free and self-determining ;
only lost that power by its own fault ; and that a loss which
it has brought upon itself does not give it immunity. An
analogy is instituted between the effect of original sin
upon the will, and the effect of habit or custom. The will
of the man who is born under the influence of original sin
is treated as identical with the will which committed that
sin ; just as the will of an individual who is under the
force of a bad habit is identical with the will which con
tracted that habit. And this view accounts for an apparent
contradiction which we meet with in Augustine, in speaking
of the will. He talks of will as being essentially original
and the cause of itself, or
self-determining ; being this, as
l
will ; and he also speaks of will as if the fact of a
being
will, whatever were its cause, made a true and genuine will.
He is first speaking of will as a whole, and secondly of will
in a particular stage. Will as a whole must be original
and self-determining ; that is, there must have been a
time in the history of the will when it was so : otherwise
we make sin simply necessary in the world, and fasten its
authorship on the Deity. But will in a particular stage or
condition may be the conscious fact of willing, and no
more, acting really under a necessity. Such an explanation,
however, is wholly mystical.
II. The will of man is determined to good by grace,
and yet it is freewill ; just as his will, when so determined
by original sin to evil, was free : because it is true will ;
1 P. 206.