Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. TX. of Necessity. 255
substantial ; and the act of sin, as such, existed. But the
inordinateness of the act, or the sin of it the error in
the use and application of these natural passions, these
bodily organs, was no thing. 1 As evil in the case of fire
was a defect of the natural action of fire, so evil in the
case of the will was a defect of the natural action of the
will.
This position, then, was applied as the key to the
solution of the great difficulty of the existence of evil. The
difficulty of the existence of evil respected its cause, how
evil had an existence at all, when the Universal Cause, or
cause of everything, could not have given it. It was a
direct answer, then, to this difficulty, to say that it was a
mistake to begin with, to suppose that evil had existence.
This original mistake removed, all was clear ; for that
which had no existence needed no cause, 2 and that which
needed no cause could dispense with the Universal Cause.
A universal cause was necessary ; but this inconvenience
attended it, viz. that it was universal, and thus contracted
responsibilities from which it had rather be relieved. This
rationale exactly relieved it of its inconvenient charge.
Evil was regarded in an aspect in which it ceased to belong
to the domain even of a universal cause. The fact or
phenomenon of evil, emptied of true or logical essence,
had no place in the nature of things ; seen everywhere, it
existed nowhere, a universal nothing attending on sub
stance as a shadow, but no occupant of room, and without
insertion in the system. This unsubstantial presence, this
inane in the midst of things, escaped as such the action
of the First Cause ; unsusceptible, as a pure negative, of
connection or relation, it was in its very nature a breaking
off from the chain of causes and effects in nature, and not a
link of it. 3 Had evil a cause, indeed, it could have but
1 Peccatum est actus inordina- lam habet. l m* Q. 49. A. 1.
s
tus. Ex parte igitur actus potest
Effectus causae mediae secundum
habere causam, ex parte autem in- quod exit ordinem causse primae non
ordinationis habet causam eo modo reducitur in causam primam. . . .
quo negatio vel privatio potest ha- Defectus a libero arbitrio non re-
bere causam. l ma 2 dae Q,. 75. A. 1. ducitur in Deum sicut in causam.
8 Malum causam formalem mil- l m* 2 (1*e Q,. 79. A. l.