Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

280 Scholastic Doctrine CHAP. x.
upon so many of the deep and philosophical minds of dif
ferent ages, and especially of modern times, disquieting
some, and sobering and subduing others. His perception
not dulled by the commonness and constancy of the fact,
as inferior ones are, but ever retaining something of a first
surprise, acknowledges, as the eye of a naturalist would
some remarkable law in his department, the prevalence of
moral evil in this lower world bonum videtur esse ut in
paucioribus ; a fact which, as he cannot explain, he en
deavours to outweigh, conjecturing some compensation for
it in other parts of the universe, and isolating this sublu
nary world as one exception to a universal law. This
sphere of natural evil, of generation and corruption, was
small in comparison with the world of heavenly bodies,
whose existence was eternal and fixed. This sphere of
moral evil in the majority was small, again, in comparison
with the angelic world, where a different law was in opera
tion ; and the
angels who stood were much more in number
than those who fell, and, perhaps, even than the whole
number of the condemned, both men and demons et forte
etiam multo plures quam omnes damnandi dcemones et
homines. 1 Such a line of thought had a bearing upon the
present question, and tended to affect his view upon it ;
because an attempt to reduce the amount of evil in the
universe at large disposed to reducing, as far as might be,
the alarming estimate of it in this world.
The distinction, then, involved in Augustinian predes
tination and reprobation, being a distinction between posi-
secundum pium zelum multorum, veluti contrarietatis extremse con-
licet non secundum scientiam, quod fert justis, tanquam scintillse fultotus
infernus cum omnibus suis gentibus, et ut stellse. Quis enim
domesticis reprobatis tolleretur de vel cujus ratio prohibuisset Dominum
medio, essetque ccelum tantummodo ab initio, si fuisset placitum coram
cum civibus suis sanctis tune se- ; eo, creasse ccelum plenum electis in
culum esset multum perfectum, et si
gloria, et infernum plenum reprobis
Deus sic fecisset multum bene fecis- in poena, ut hoc illi comparate appaset.
Nunc autem tanto perfectius
ruisset gloriosius et fuisset ? Non
et tanto melius fecit Deus, quantum deerunt tamen qui hos humano
perfectionis et bonitatis continent in misererentur affectu, et pia compasse
illce nobiles creatures damnatce, sione contenderent sic facere non
quantum etiam resplendent iae et debere. p. 355.
apparent!* purioris ilia comparatio InLomb.l. 1. Dist. 39. Q. 2. A. 2.