Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

48 The Pelagian Controversy. CHAP. nr.
chief agent to the one that uses and turns to account the
action of the other. If one man furnishes another with
the means and resources for any undertaking, and the other
applies them to it, both indeed COD tribute action but the
;
latter is the chief contributor, and would, in ordinary
language,
be called the doer of the work. Thus to the
actof learning a teacher and a learner both contribute,
the one by giving information, the other by apprehending
it ; but the act of learning is the learner s rather than
the teacher s act. Apply this distinction to the case of
the human will using the assistance of Divine grace for the
work of a holy life. While the giver and the user of that
assistance are both agents in that work, the user is the
principal one. 1 In cases where the use of means, if sup
plied, takes place easily and as a matter of course, the
result may be properly referred to the supplier rather than
the user of them. But the act of the will in using grace
is no easy or matter-of-course one, but involves much effort
and self-denial.
The combination of grace with freewill thus issued in
the assertion of an independent freewill on the one hand,
while this logical result was avoided on the other, only by
a recourse to the opposite extreme. It was seen that an
assisting grace could only be protected by making it some
thing more than assisting, and that the will must have the
credit of the unassisted acceptance and use of it, unless it
were controlled it. by The original formula, therefore,
issued on this side in the doctrine of a controlling and
and upon these two interpretations of the
irresistible grace ;
primitive doctrine rose, with their respective accompani
ments and consequences, the Pelagian and Augustinian
systems.
Pelagianism then started with the position, that, however
necessary Divine assistance might be for a good work
as a whole, there was at the bottom a good act or move-
1 Nam quando ad eundem actum tis, sine qua non potest fieri, sed illi
liberum concurrunt plura sine quibus quse nutu suo totam machinam ad
libertas agendi in actum suum exire motum impellit, aut otiosam esse
non potest, non illi causse tribui sinit. Jaiisen, De Grat. Christi, p.
debet exercitium actus aut volunta- 935.