Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

264 Scholastic Doctrine CHAP. x.
such an inference from his use of the term contingent.
Aquinas divides proximate or mediate or secondary causes
into two classes, necessary and contingent ; but the con
tingent causes are still mediate causes only, not original
ones. They are as in complete subordination to the first
cause, as necessary causes are ; only differing
from the
latter in their manner of operation, which is variable and
irregular, instead of fixed and uniform. And the human
will, as a contingent cause, is no more than a mediate one.
(rod is cause of the will ipse actus liberi arbitrii reducitur
in Deum sicut in causam. Contingency then in
acts is not, according to the doctrine of Aquinas, opposed
to their ultimate causation from without ; which is the
doctrine of necessity : contingency is a certain mode in
which things take place ; and volition is such a mode in
the case of actions ; but volition is a mode, and not the
cause, in the sense of original cause, of them.
There is another set of expressions in the Augustinian
schoolmen relating to human blame and responsibility, to
which Archbishop Laurence refers. To the inquiry why
some are unendowed with grace, their answer was, because
some are not willing to receive it, and not because (rod is
unwilling to give it ; He, they said, offers His light to all :
He is absent from none, but man absents himself from the
present Deity, like one who shuts his eyes against the noon
day blaze. J The language he refers to is that of Aquinas,
whom again he quotes as saying that there are two reasons
why grace, where it is withheld, is withheld ; one because
the man is not willing to receive it, the other because Grod
does not will to give it ;
of which two the latter is posterior
in order to the former talis est ordo ut secundum non
sit nisi ex suppositione primi.* Understanding the want
of desire for grace, referred to here, to be the opposition of
the individual s free and self-determining will, he takes
these expressions as involving the common doctrine of
freewill, that Grod offers His grace to all, while man rejects
or accepts it according to his own choice. But the fault
1
Bampton Lectures, p. 151.
3
Aquinas inLomb. 1. 1. Dist. 40. Q. 4. A. 2.