Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

2 5 Examination of the CHAP, n.
be argued
that we cannot have this sense of originality or
self-determination in the will, because all that we are ac
tually conscious of is our will itself, the fact that we decide
in one way or another, and not the cause of it, whether in
ourselves or beyond us ; it is sufficient to say that this sense
or perception of originality is not professed to be absolute
or complete, but that it is still a sense or perception of a
certain kind. There is a plain instinct in us, a perception
of a truth, in this direction ; and that being ^the case, to say
that it is not apprehension and does not arrive at a positive
conclusion or is
point,
to say no more than may be said of
many other great ideas of our intelligent nature, such as that
of substance, cause, infinity.
There being these two counter ideas, then, with respect
to the necessity of a cause ; as on the one hand we demand
a cause, and on the other reject it; neither of these can be
neither of
truths absolute and complete and. ; therefore,
them a basis for an absolute and complete theory or doctrine
to be raised it, upon So far as the maxim that there must
be a cause of every event is true, so far it is a premiss for
a scheme of fatalism. But it is not true absolutely, and
thus no absolute system of this kind can be founded upon
it. Did the fatalist limit himself to a conditional incom
plete conclusion, i.e. for this would be all that it would
come to in such a case to a mystery on this subject, no one
could object. But if he raises a definite scheme, his con
clusion exceeds his premiss.
The same may be said of any absolute doctrine of Pre
destination drawn from the attribute of the Divine Power,
or the idea of God as the cause of all things. There is an
insurmountable contradiction between this idea and that of
freewill in the creature ; for we cannot conceive how that
which is caused can itself be a first cause, or a spring of
motion to itself. And therefore the idea of Divine Power
leads to predestination as its result. But what is this truth
of the Divine Power or Omnipotence, as we apprehend it ?
Does it belong to the class of full and distinct, or of incom
plete truths ?
Certainly to the latter, for there appears
at once a counter truth to it, in the existence of moral evil