Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

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Note VII.
of things. But the doctrine of original sin professes to be
concerned with a mystery, not with a matter of fact, and
to be an incomprehensible, and not an intelligible truth.
For all this vivid picture, then, of injustice, and monstrous
cruelty which Jeremy Taylor raises as a representation of
this doctrine, there is no warrant ; because the doctrine
does not profess to assert anything whatever that we can
understand. He argues as if human analogies gave us a
sufficient and true idea of the truth asserted in this doc
trine, whereas the doctrine takes us out of all human
analogies. His whole argument thus beats the air, and
he refutes what no sound-minded and reasonable person
asserts.
His argument against the assertion of the impotence
and slavery of the will, involved in the doctrine of original
sin, is open to the same remark ; i.e. that he takes it as
an absolute assertion, whereas it is only maintained in this
doctrine as one side of a whole truth on this subject, which
is beyond our knowledge. To deny to the will of man
powers of choice and election, or the use of it in the actions
of our life, destroys the immortality of the soul. Human
nature is in danger to be lost if it diverts to that which is
nature ! For if it be immortal it can never die in
against
its noblest faculty. But if the will be destroyed, that is,
disabled from is choosing (which all the work the will hath
to do), then it is dead. For to live and to be able to
operate in philosophy are all one. If the will, therefore,
cannot operate, how is it immortal ? And we may as well
suppose an understanding that can never understand, and
passions that can never desire or refuse, and a memory
that can never remember, as a will that cannot choose.
Vol. ix. p. 47. When it is affirmed in the writings of
some doctors that the will of man is depraved, men pre
sently suppose that depravation is a natural or physical
effect, and means a diminution of power, whereas it signi
fies nothing but a being in love with, or having chosen an
evil object, and not an impossibility or weakness to the
contrary, but only because it will not ; for the power of
the will cannot be lessened by any act of the same faculty,