Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

i o Conclusion. CHAP. XI.
we receive these truths by revelation, and should not other
wise have possessed them in anything like the fulness in
which we do. But when revealed they are seen to lie deep
in the human conscience. The doctrine of original sin
lies deep in the human heart, which has never truly and
earnestly perceived its guilt at all,, without coupling with
it the idea of a mysterious alloy and taint antecedent to
action, and coeval with its own life. And in like manner
man has in all ages craved an atonement for sin ; he has
always ejected the source of good from himself, and referred
it to Grod. These are religious feelings and instincts be
longing to human nature, and which can never be eradi
cated so long as that nature remains itself. The Pelagian,
then, in rejecting these doctrines, opposed himself to facts,
he separated himself from that whole actual body of senti
ment, instinct, and feeling which constitutes the religious
life of mankind, and placed himself outside of human
nature. A true system of religion must represent these
facts ; these large, these deep, these powerful, these pene
trating, and marvellous instincts : and it is the glory of
Catholic Christianity that it does this, that it expounds
faithfully the creed of the human heart, that nothing in
human nature is left unrepresented in it ; but that in its
vast and intricate fabric of doctrine is reflected, as in a
mirror, every vague perception of our nature, every inex
plicable fear and desire, grief and joy
; every internal
discord, unfinished thought, beginning of unknown truth ;
all that in the religious conscience, will, and affections can
or cannot be understood. But the Pelagian discarded the
religion of human nature and of fact, for an idea of his own
mind because his own idea was ;
simple and intelligible,
and the religion of human nature was mysterious and com
plex ; as if, when facts were mysterious, it were anything
in favour of the truth of a religion that it was not.
Rather as if such an absence of mystery did not prove that
the system was a fiction and a fancy ; the artificial produc
tion of human thought, instead of a true revelation from
the Author of nature, who makes all things double one of
another, and who adapts His revelations to that human