Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Note XIV. 375
one a promise of relief from the trials and pains of life. 1
But S. Augustine appealed to the evident meaning of the
curse as a judicial sentence, inflicting a punishment in
of man s sin which did not exist before it ;-
consequence
he appealed to a larger sense of labour than the narrow
3
one of his opponent ; and he showed to the Pelagian the
unavoidable inference from his explanation of the sentence
of death, that man was wiser after his transgression than
he was before it. For if death awaited him before his sin,
as the lot of nature, the only difference which the curse, in
announcing the event to him, made was, that it gave him
the knowledge of it.
4
NOTE XIV. p. 85.
JULIAN the Pelagian interprets Adam being created good
as meaning merely that he was created with freewill, or
the power to do good ; Augustine interprets it as meaning
that Adam was created with a good disposition or formed
habit, and rejects the Pelagian meaning as a false one, for
the plain reason that to be able to be good is not the same
as to be good ; whereas, Adam was made (food. He admits,
a nature which is able not
indeed, that in a certain sense,
Bonum conditum Adam non ego
to sin is a good nature :
tantum nee tu, sed ambo dicimus. Ambo enim dicimus
.
bonam esse naturam quae possit non peccare. Op. Imp
16 c 16. But this sense is put aside as insufficient.
<Quid est ergo quod mine dicis Bonus Deiis bonum
;
fecit hominem," si nee bonus nee mains est, habendo lib
rum arbitrium quod in eo Deus fecit? . . . Et qnomodo
" verum est, Fecit Deus hominem rectum. --Eccl. vn. m.
An rectus erat non habens voluntatem bonam, sed qut
possibilitatem *
Ergo et pravus erat non habens volunfc
. . . Ita fit,
tern pravam, sed ejus possibilitatem. u
tuam mirabilem sapientiam, nee Deus fecerit rectum
hominem; sed qui rectus posset esse si vellet.L. 5.
c. 57.
tenew difficile cst. -L. 6. c. 27.
>
1. Op. Imp. 6. c. 27.
s
Imo, inquis et damnatus est, L. L c. M.
^et nihil ei accidit novi. Hie risum L. 6. c. n.