Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Note XXL 409
man s power to resist grace in this sense? He could not,
for it would leave him free to hold his whole doctrine of
irresistible grace. The doctrine of irresistible i> grace
concerned with the will alone, and its determination ; and
this admission says nothing about the determination of
the will. Calvin, then, would allow at once that man had
the power to resist grace if he willed, but that lie c<m!<l
not will to resist effective grace ; for that this grace de
termined his will and inclination itself, and caused it to
be what it was. He would simply say with Pascal himself,
( Mais comment le voudrait-il ? with the writer whom
Pascal quotes, Encore qu il puisse ne pas consentir, il nm-
sente neanmoins en effet ;"*
and
with Augustine, A ]><
,,
factum est ut vellent quod nolle potuissent.
This sense of the term power is the key to the state
ment quoted from Jansen : Qu on a toujours le pouvoir
de resister a la grace, selon le concile; que le libre arbitre
peut toujours agir et n agir pas, vouloir et ne vouloir pas.
consentir et ne consentir pas, fa ire le bien et le mal, <-t
que 1 homme en cette vie a toujours ces deux libertes, qiir
vous appelez de contrariete et de contradiction. The
on which understand
power spoken of is potestas si vult ;
ing the admission comes to nothing; Jansen expressly
saying that practically
the individual cannot act but in
the way in which grace moves: Xon quod cessatio ab
actu quern tune (gratia) elicit, cum graticv delectanti*
influxu consistere possit . . . quamvis fieri nequeat ut
ipsanonactio cum gratia operations
in eadem simul
voluntate copuletur. De Grat. Christi, p. 870.
short, all that the Augustinian and Jansenist admission
with respect to freewill amounts to, is the admission o
will in man and this admission Calvin is equally ready
;
to make. The condemned
position by the Council
Trent, as that of the Keformers, that man was moved
Divine grace like an inanimate thing, was not their por
tion ; they fully acknowledged a will in man, that
acted willingly and without constraint ; they ack:
ledged all the facts of our consciousness ; and, admitt
them, they admitted admitted.
all that S. Augustine
and his
E E