Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

220 Augustinian Doctrine CHAP. vm.
sin, and under bondage to righteousness. l Here the term
free is evidently used not in the sense of free for evil or
good, i.e. with the power of doing either; but as meaning
free from evil, and free from good. There is a state of
mind in which the good principle is dominant and supreme,
and the man in entire subjection to it or under its yoke ;
a state of mind in which the will has reached such a point
of strength on the good side, as that the man could not
act against it, without such a violence as it would be ab
surd to suppose him committing toward himself. There
is a state of mind also in which evil has this dominance
and supremacy. Freewill is here understood as will, which
is either free from this yoke of good, or free from this yoke
of evil. In this sense of the word free, then, the freedom
of the will is inconsistent with a power of choice ; for,
according to this use of the term, a freewill, so far from
having ability to do evil or good, has its very name, be
cause it is either not able to do evil on the one hand, or
not able to do good on the other. It is not a will which
has yet to make its choice, but which is already determined,
and is an acting will on one side or the other. Nor has
such a freewill arisen in the first instance by a power of
choice, because such a freewill there has always been on
the evil side or the good ; the will is always free in us,
i.e. is always in one of these states of freedom or the other.
Were the change from the bondage of evil, of which Angustine
speaks, a change from this bondage to evil to a power
of choosing evil or good (and this is what on the common
doctrine of freewill is understood by the freedom of grace
as distinguished from the bondage of nature), a power of
choice in the will would then come in. But this change
is simply an exchange of one bondage for another, a
1
Semper est in nobis voluntas Grat. et Lib. Arb. n. 31.
libera, sed non semper est bona, Liberum arbitrium et ad malum
Aut enim a justitia libera est, quan- et ad bonum faciendum confitendum
do servit peccato, et tune est mala : est nos habere : sed in malo faciendo
aut a peccato libera est, quando ser- liber est quisque justitige eervusque
vit justitise, et tune est bona. Gratia peccati ;
in bono autem liber est
vero Dei semper est bona, et per nullus, nisi fuerit liberatus ab illo.
hanc fit ut sit homo bonse voluntatis, De Corr. et Grat. n. 2.
qui prius fait voluntatis malse. De