Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Examination of the
CHAP. jr.
others, bear witness to a great principle of humility in
human nature, by which it is ever ejecting
the source of
o-ood from itself, and falling back on some source external
and unknown. The act of is
prayer
a witness to the same
principle ; for we pray to God for moral and spiritual good
ness, for conversion and renewal both for ourselves and
others. Our very moral nature thus takes us out of ourselves
to God, referring
us to Him as the sole and meritorious
cause of all moral action ; while it takes upon itself the
responsibility of sin. This constitutional humility, this
fixed tendency of our minds to an external source of good,
expressed in the formal language of theology, becomes the
doctrine of irresistible grace, from which that of predestina
tion immediately follows. But is there not a counter
principle to this co-existing with it in our nature, a princi
ple of self-appreciation and self-respect, whereby we are able
to contemplate ourselves as original agents in good actions ?
Let us turn now from philosophical
to theological pre
destination, or to the doctrine of predestination as resting on
scriptural grounds.
It must, I think, be admitted accord
ing to the argument stated in the last chapter, that the
predestinarian draws his conclusion naturally from the
doctrine of original sin ; while at the same time, that
conclusion must be allowed to be repugnant to natural
reason and justice. For there is no man of ordinary moral
perception, who, on being told of a certain doctrine which
represented God as ordaining one man to eternal life, and
ordaining another to eternal punishment, be fore either had
done a single act or was born, would not immediately say
that God was represented as acting unjustly. There re
mains, however, for extricating us from this dilemma an
examination of the sense and manner in which the church
imposes, and in which we hold, the doctrine of original sin.
From the doctrine of the fall, then, which represents
man as morally impotent, unable by nature to do any good
thing, a lost and ruined being, the conclusion is undoubtedly
a legitimate one, that if he is to be restored, he must be
restored by some power quite independent of and external
to him, or by that act of grace which divines call irre-