Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. x. of Predestination. 287
vindicta, justitice ; and it is spoken of as lower good, for it
is represented as a lower grade in the scale of being
infimus locus in universo. But, according to Aquinas, evil
is no part of the universe, of which, however varied and
graduated that good may be, the whole is good ;
so that a
lower, or the lowest place in it is a place of good and not
of evil. And according as reprobation is regarded in one
light or the other, the appeal in defence of it is made either
to original sin or the principle of
variety in nature.
The religious philosophy of Aquinas, then, of which
these are the hints, tends simply to two different moral
creations, a higher and a lower one. The natural man is
created and has the advantages of his creation ; the spiri
tual man is created and has the advantages of his : and
predestination marks for a special glory, and a higher place
in the universe ; but exclusion from it does not involve
positive evil or misery. But it is remarkable that, while
he systematically hints at such a conclusion as this, in one
peculiar remote and isolated case alone does he apply it
a case outside of the general mass of moral beings which
it so deeply affects, and to which the substantial interest
of any application of it attaches the case of infants
sin. Yet the elaborate
dying unbaptized or in original
and minute care with which he examines this particular
case, with a view to it relieving
of the pressure which the
Augustinian doctrine, in its natural meaning, left upon it,
is deserving of attention ; as showing the strength and
firmness of the basis, which, however little built upon, was
formed in the mind of the writer for a general decision on
this subject.
Infants dying, then, in original sin, necessarily came, ac
cording to the pure Augustinian doctrine, under the Divine
wrath which was due to that sin. Being by nature repro
bates, and not being included within the remedial decree of
predestination, they were, in common with all the rest of
mankind who were bom under this curse and were not re
lieved by this decree, subject
to the sentence of eternal
them. How
punishment ; which sentence was executed upon
ever repugnant, then, to natural reason and natural feeling,