Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

3 68 Note XII.
man is as open as any other to this reasoning from effect
to cause, from an evil act to an evil will, and from an evil
will to a source of evil in the will or original sin : so that
Adam s sin in Paradise was the effect of original sin in
him, or a corrupt nature, only differing from other sins in
being the first effect. The corruption of my will may
very warrantably be spoken of as a consequence of Adam s
fall, even as my birth of Adam s existence ; as a conse
quence, a link in the historic chain of instances, ivhereof
Adam was the first. But that it is on account of Adam,
or that this evil principle was a priori inserted or infused
into my will contradiction
by the will of another which is
in terms, my
indeed a
will in such a case being no
will, this is nowhere asserted in Scripture explicitly or
by implication.
doctrine,
It belongs to the very essence of the
that in respect of original sin every man is the
adequate representative of all men. What wonder, then,
that where no outward ground of preference existed, the
choice should be determined by outward relation, and
that the first in time should be taken as the diagram ?
p. 283.
Such being the rationale of original sin substituted by
Mr. Coleridge for the received doctrine of original sin as
the consequence of the sin of Adam, which he rejects on
the ground of its opposition to reason, my remark is this
that T cannot think it philosophical in any writer to
overthrow a whole received language, professing to ex
press an incomprehensible mystery, on such a ground.
Contradictory language, or language opposed to reason, is
the only one in which mysteries and incomprehensible
truths can be expressed ; if they could be expressed in
More
consistent language, they would not be mysteries.
over, the writer professes that he can only substitute other
inconsistent language for that which he rejects. Mr. Cole
ridge admits the absolute inconsistency of an original evil
in the will with the will s self-determination ; yet, because
he thinks both of these to be truths, he adopts a language
which contains them both, as the only mode of expressing
an acknowledged mystery, and one which, by the nature of