Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

274 Scholastic Doctrine CHAP. x.
That is to say, habits are sometimes imparted to men
at once, and from without, in distinction to being the
result of successive acts. The doctrine of Conversion,
is the application of this truth to the department of
religion : what this doctrine asserts being, that God, by
particular impulses, either wholly
internal or connected
with outward events, imparts at once a religious disposi
tion or habit to the mind; so that, from being careless and
indifferent, it immediately becomes serious ; which is un
doubtedly sometimes the case. So far, then, as the school
man simply maintains in this scheme the position of
infused habits, or that habits need not necessarily be
obtained by acts, he maintains a true and natural doctrine.
And this was an important modification of the Aristotelian
doctrine, which rested too exclusively upon acts as the
cause of habits. So acute an observer, indeed, of facts,
as that great philosopher was, could not but see himself
and the obser
that this cause did not apply in all cases ;
vation extracted from him a partial modification of his
own system, in the shape of the admission of natural
virtue (frvaircr) aoerr). But the addition of infusion,
as a formal and regular cause, in the case of habits, was a
substantial modification of the Aristotelian doctrine. It
was, however, a modification, which naturally followed from
Christianity. The idea of the Divine power, which was
not fully embraced by the Pagan philosopher, was brought
out by the true religion, and applied to the moral, as well
as to the physical world, to the department of will, as well
as that of matter. In other words, it taught a doctrine,
which the pagan philosopher did not hold, that of Divine
Grace which ; immediately became a fresh element in the
argument, and supplied a new cause for the formation of
the habit.
But, while the scheme thns rested upon a basis of
nature and truth, two great causes of confusion were at work
in it. One was an unreal or artificial distinction in the
subject matter of acquired and infused habits. It will be
evident to any one, on reflection, that the distinction be
tween these two kinds of habits, is a distinction simply in