Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CFAP. xi. Conclusion. 305
on this question ; for no one can be blamed for not doing
that which is impossible. But if this limit is not allowed,
and if God could have created a universe with all the ad
vantages of the present one and none of its evils, and if,
when moral evil had begun, He could have removed it ; it
is certainly very difficult to answer the question why He
did not for we ; necessarily attribute consummate benevo
lence to the Deity. The explanation of such a difficulty
on the principle of variety, that evil and good together,
with their respective reward and punishment, redound to
the glory of God more than good alone of itself would do,
is futile and puerile. Variety is, ccvteris paribus, an ad
vantage; and we praise God s natural creation, not only
because it is good, but because that good is various. Nor
would it be reasonable to object to different degrees of
good in the created universe ; to complain because the
earth was not as beautiful all over as it is at its most
beautiful part, or because all the birds of the air have not
the colours of the tropical birds ; or even, in moral life,
because all have not the same moral capabilities or power
of attaining the same goodness. But when it comes to a
comparison, not of like good with varied, or of higher
good with lower, but of good with evil, the case is very
different.
Upon this abstract idea, then, of the Divine Power, as
an unlimited power, rose up the Augustinian
doctrine of
the abstract idea of
Predestination and grace ; while upon
free-will, as an unlimited faculty, rose up the Pelagian
theory. Had men perceived, indeed, more clearly and
really than they have done, their as human
ignorance
creatures, and the relation in which the human reason
stands to the great truths involved in this question, they
might have saved themselves the trouble of this whole
controversy. They would have seen that this question can
not be determined absolutely, one way or another ; that it
lies between two great contradictory truths, neither <
which can be set aside, or made to give way to the other
two opposing tendencies of thought, inherent in the human
mind, which go on side by side, and are able to be hel<
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