Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Note XII.
369
the subject, must ever remain such.
p. 277. What is
the improvement, then, in
consistency, in his
language
upon the received language? While, on the other hand,
the received
language, by attributing the fall to an act of
freewill only, which no evil in the will preceded, expresses
an important truth that sin is not fundamental in, but
only accidental to, human nature ; a, truth which Mr.
Coleridge s language of original evil in the will, so fai
from expressing, rather contradicts.
The same remark may be made on Mr. Coleridge s
objection to the received doctrine of the atonement as a
satisfaction for sin ; which he rejects on the same ground
as he does the received doctrine of original sin, viz., its
opposition to our natural idea of justice. Let us suppose,
with certain divines, that the varied expressions of S. Paul
are to be literally interpreted : ex. gr. that sin is, or in
volves, an infinite debt (in the proper and law-court sense
of the word debt), a debt owing by us to the vindictive
justice of Grod the Father, which can only be liquidated
by the everlasting misery of Adam and all his posterity, 01
by a sum of suffering equal to this. Likewise, that God
the Father, by His absolute decree, or (as some divines
teach) through the necessity of His unchangeable justice,
had determined to exact the full sum, which must there
fore be paid either by ourselves or by some other in our
own name and behalf. But, besides the debt which all
mankind contracted, in and through Adam, as a homo
publicus, even as a nation is bound by the acts of its head
or its plenipotentiary, every man (say these is
divines) an
insolvent debtor on his own score. In this fearful predi
cament the Son of (rod took compassion on mankind, and
resolved to pay the debt for us, and to satisfy the Divine
justice by a perfect equivalent
4
Now, as your whole theory is grounded
on a notion of
But
justice, I ask you, Is this justice a moral attribute ?^
morality commences with, and begins in the sacred distinc
tion between thing and person : on this distinction all law
human and divine is grounded; consequently,
the law of
justice. If you attach any meaning to the term justice,
B B