Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

282 Scholastic Doctrine CHAP. x.
fore, so far as the spiritual principle is involved in any
bond fide and honest distinction of good and evil, acknow
ledges a spiritual law in his own nature and the constitu
tion of things, to which he defers, and on which he frames
his life and conduct but who lowers this law ;
by his narrow
and confined application of it to present things and visible
relations. This, then, is what Christian moralists call the
virtue of the natural man ; and its defect is in the prin
ciple of faith, which, by opening another world for them,
and so enlarging their scope and field, would have given a
spring and impulse to these moral perceptions, quickening
and strengthening them ; whereas they are now kept down
to a particular level. On the other hand, it is an essential
part of Christian doctrine, that there is a temper of mind
so far in advance of this natural morality, as to seem to
differ from it in kind : in the sense in which everything
seems at its perfection and final point, to be a different
thing from what it was before, as a lens burns at its centre
This is the supernatural temper of charity. 1
only.
From morals the distinction of natural and supernatural
is then extended by Aquinas to religion. It was obvious
that the natural man had not only moral virtue of some
kind, but religion as well. For, independent of the reli
gious men which Paganism had produced, what is the
obedience which the natural man, in his moral course of
life, pays to his own conscience, but an obedience to God,
whom he virtually recognises as speaking to him by that
internal voice ? And as he will obey that conscience, even
at the cost of his worldly interests, suffering the greatest
inconveniences rather than offend against probity and
1 La distance infinie des corps aux valent pas le moindre mouvement de
esprits figure la distance infiniment charite ; car elle est d un ordre inplus
infinie des esprits a la charite ;
ear elle est surnaturelle.
Tous les corps, le firmament, les
finiment plus eleve.
De tous les corps ensemble on ne
saurait tirer la moindre : pensee cela
etoiles, la terre et les roy;iumes ne est impossible, et d un autre ordre.
valent pas le moindre des esprits Tous les ; corps et les esprits ensemble
car il connait tout cela, et soi- ne sauraient produire un mouvememe
et ; le corps, rien. Et tous ment de vraie charite : cela est imles
corps, et tous les esprits ensem- possible, et d un autre ordre tout
ble, et toutes leurs productions, ne surnaturel. Pascal.