Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

12
The Argument
CHAP. *
human race deserving of eternal punishment. This decree,
then, does indeed confer gratuitous and undeserved happi
ness upon one portion of mankind and to that ;
nobody will
have any objection ; for it would indeed be a rigorous justice
which objected to an excess of Divine love and bounty: but
it does not do that which alone could be made matter of
accusation against it, inflict gratuitous
and undeserved
misery upon the other. It simply allows the evil which it
already finds in them to go on and its produce
natural fruits.
Had this decree, indeed, to do with mankind simply as
mankind, it could not without injustice devote any portion
of them arbitrarily to eternal punishment : for man has not,
as man, any guilt at all, and some guilt is required to make
his punishment just. But this decree has not to do with
human nature simply, but with human nature under certain
circumstances. Mankind are brought into a particular
position before it deals with them. That position is the
position of guilt in which the doctrine of original sin places
them. Viewed through the medium of that doctrine, the
whole human race lies before us, prior to the action of this
decree upon them, one mass of perdition. This decree only
allows a portion to remain such. Viewed through that
medium,
decree only executes this sentence upon some. But if it
would be just to punish the whole, it cannot be unjust to
all are under one sentence of condemnation : this
punish a part. If two men owe us debts, we may certainly
sue one. If all
antecedently deserve eternal punishment, it
cannot be unjust that some should be antecedently con
signed to it. Or would we fall into the singular contradic
tion of saying that a sentence is just, and yet all execution
of it whatever unjust ?
The question of justice, then, is already settled, when
man first comes under this decree and the ;
question which
is settled by it is not one of justice at all, but one of Divine
arrangement simply. The same human mass which, if
innocent, would have been the subject of God s justice,
becomes, when guilty, the subject of his will solely. His
absolute sovereignty now comes in, and He hath mercy upon
whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth.