Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. ix. of Necessity. 245
But evil existed in the world, not only in the sense of
lesser good, but in that of positive evil ; and this was a
more difficult fact to account for. The explanations of this
fundamental difficulty, then, by the Augustinian school
men may be placed under two heads : under the first
of which the explanation is almost purely verbal, and can
hardly be said to come into contact even with the real
difficulty ; while under the second the difficulty is really
confronted, and an effort of a philosophical kind made to
solve it.
I. The first of these verbal explanations which I will
instance, and which is
class,
a rather extreme specimen of its
is an attempt to pare down by simple artifices of
language the opposition of the Divine Will to evil, till it
reaches a point at which it substantially ceases, and becomes
a manageable truth to the metaphysician. It is evident
that, so long as the opposition of the Divine Will to evil
remains decided and absolute, there being this evil as a
plain fact in the world, such opposition affects the attri
bute of the Divine Power ; because if (rod does not will
evil, it would appear that evil takes place only because
He has not the power to prevent it. The aim, therefore,
was to reduce by niceties of expression this opposition of
the Divine Will, until that will ceased to disagree with
evil, and, as a consequence, its frustration ceased ; and
with it the danger to the attribute of Power. A distinc
tion was accordingly drawn between God not willing evil
mala velle and God not willing that evil should take
place velle mala non fieri ; and, allowing that God did
not will evil, it was determined that He did will that evil
should take place. Again, those who objected to this posi
tion as being opposed to the goodness of the Divine Will,
made a distinction between God not willing that evil
should take place and God willing that evil should not
take place ; accepting the former, but rejecting the latter
formula, the difference being in the situation of the nega
tive adverb in the two statements ; which in the one is
next to willing, in the other to taking place ; and these