Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. XT. Conclusion.
from each other on points which can never be settled abso
lutely, in the present state of our capacities, should re
member that they may differ, not in holding truth and
error, but only in holding different sides of the same truth.
And with this reflection I will conclude the present trea
tise. After long consideration of the subject, I must profess
myself unable to see on what strictly argumentative ground
the two great parties in the English Church can, on the
question which has occupied this treatise viz. the opera
tion of Divine grace, and on other questions connected
with it imagine themselves to be so fundamentally op
posed to each other. All differences of opinion, indeed,
even those which are obviously of a secondary and not a
fundamental kind, tend to create division and separation ;
for all difference in its degree is apt to be a sign of some
general difference of mental mould and religious temper,
and men naturally consort together according to their
general sympathies and turn of mind ; and for men to
consort with some as distinct from others, is in itself a sort
a division, too, which, when once
of division in the body ;
begun, is apt to deepen. Such an existence of preference
is suggestive of positive controversy ; and men once
brought together upon such an understanding, and formed
into groups by special sympathies,
are liable to become by
this very position antagonistic parties, schools, and sides.
Yet the differences of opinion
in our Church, on the ques
tion of grace, and on some further questions connected
with it, do not appear to be sufficient to justify either
party in supposing
that it differs from the other funda
mentally, or so as to interfere with Christian fellowship.
If the question of is
grace
one which, depending on irre
concilable but equally true tendencies of thought in man,
cannot be settled absolutely either way, it seems to follow
it should not occasion a distance or
that a difference upon
separation. And this remark will apply to such further
and more as are connected with this
particular questions
general question, and are necessarily affected by the view
we take upon, and the mode in which we decide the general
question. Such, for example, is the doctrine of baptismal