Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

232 Augustinian Doctrine CHAP. vni.
of good or evil. The strife is over in the mind of man ;
and the will, finally rooted, goes on producing good or evil
acts and motions with the ease and uniformity of physical
law. But in S. s Augustine application of the principle,
the reason, and time of its introduction, and mode of ope
ration, are all different. Necessity is not the reward or
punishment of a previous exercise of liberty of choice, but
the effect of original sin on the one hand, and an eternal
Divine decree of mercy on the other. And with the diffe
rence of reason for, the time of its introduction is also
different. It does not succeed and come after a state of
trial, but is simultaneous with it, and is in full operation
in this life, instead of being reserved for the next. And
the manner of its operation is for the same reason different,
exhibiting the struggle, the variableness, and interruption
incident to this present state of existence. The difference
between the trial, effort, and alternation of the present, and
the peace and serenity of the future life, which is upon the
doctrine of freewill a difference between a state of liberty
and a state of necessity, is, according to the predestinarian,
only a difference between two modes of operation on the
part of the same necessity. That grace from which good
action
necessarily follows is not given with uniformity in
this life, sometimes being given and sometimes not, to the
same individual ; whereas, in the eternal world it is either
given wholly or taken away wholly, always given or never ;
so that there the determination of the will is constant for
good or for evil. Its mode of operation, then, in this life
is variable, in the next uniform ; here, with pain and effort
to the man, with trouble and anxiety, the feeling of uncer
tainty, and other feelings exactly like what we should have,
supposing our wills were free and our acts contingent ;
there with ease, security, and bliss ; here preparatory, there
final ; here after the mode of trial, there after the mode of
reward.
Such a difference between two doctrines of necessity, it
will be seen, involves all the difference between a doctrine
of necessity and a doctrine of freewill. The former gives
to freewill that period which is the turning part of man s