Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. XI. Conclusion.
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in the rulers of the Church at that time rejected it. And
this liberty still remains a great advantage to the Church,
and a signal proof at once of judgment and discretion, and
of a correct and enlarged theology. It would indeed have
been a fatal mistake to have excluded from our pale an as
pect of Christian truth, which simply erred in a pardonable
obliquity, such as is incident to minds of the highest order,
to the strongest intellect, to the deepest devotion. Such
an exclusion would have shown also great ignorance of
of Christian doctrine : for with
antiquity and the history
out attaching more than undue importance to a single
name, it will be allowed perhaps that what S. Augustine
held is at any rate a tolerable opinion, and no sufficient
ground for separation either from the communion or the
ministry of the Church. He is, however, only the first of
a succession of authorities that from his own age to the
present have maintained and taught predestinarianism
within the Church. Such a proposal with respect to the
seventeenth article, from the person who made it, only
shows how apt minds are to be confined to the prevailing
notions of their day, and to suppose that there is no room
for any other truth than what happens to have been familiar
to themselves. And it should operate as a warning against
similar attempts, showing, as it does, what great mistakes
may be made when we trust too confidently one apparent
truth ; forgetting how much it might be modified, were we
in possession of the whole system to which it belongs ;
and how easily we may be ignorant and uninformed upon
those further points upon which this modification would
follow.
The formularies of our own Church, following Catholic
precedent, accordingly allow predestinarianism;
and this is
the decision of common sense and common reason on this
subject. For, so long as a man thinks nothing which is
inconsistent with piety, what great difference can it make,
provided his actions are good, on what particular rationale
of causation he supposes them to be done? whether he
thinks them done wholly by Divine grace, or partly by an
original motion of his own will coinciding with grace?