Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

52 The Pelagian Controversy. CHAP. m.
of his task, and imagines himself solving what is inex
plicable.
But the question
of transmitted or hereditary sin gave
place to the larger question of necessary sin. Sin was re
presented, in the doctrine of the fall, as attaching to human
nature, i.e. as necessary. But was not this opposed to the
self-evident truth, that sin must be voluntary ? * To deserve
properly praise or blame, must not a man be a free agent ?
and was he a free agent if he could not act otherwise than
as he did ? The Pelagian thus adopted, as a plain maxim
of reason, and a fundamental truth of morals, the position
that virtue and vice derived their essential characteristics
from the power of the individual beforehand to choose the
one or the other ; possibilitas utriusque partis; that an
act of the will, to be good or bad, must be a decision out
of a neutral or undecided state. 2 The Pelagian controversy
thus took up the question of the conditions of virtue and
vice ; whether virtue or vice were consistent with necessity
or repugnant to it, whether they involved in their own
nature the trial of the will or not.
The Pelagian, then, as the above statement shows, ex
pressed himself unguardedly on this question, and exposed
himself immediately to the irresistible answer of S. Augus
tine, that, on the ground he adopted, he must be prepared
to deny all goodness to the angels in heaven, to the saints
in glory, 3 and even to God Himself. The impossibility of
sinning belonged to the Divine Being as His nature, and
to the saints and angels as a privilege and reward ; and
therefore were contingency, or the absence of necessity,
1
Naturale nullum esse peccatum ex utraque parte per sequalia mo-
potest. Si est naturale peccatum menta suspendere, ut voluntas quannon
est voluntarium. Voluntas turn sit ad malum, tantum etiam sit
necessitati non potest admoveri. ad bonum libera. 1. Op. Imp. 3. c.
Non potest velle antequam potuerit 112. 117. Sic definis liberam vo-
et nolle. Suum non est si neces- luntatem, ut nisi utrumque, id est,
sarium est. et bene et male agere possit, libera
2 Julian : Inculco liberum arbi- esse non possit. L. 3. c. 120.
trium nee ob aliud datum esse, nee 3 Accedere nobis debet virtus
intelligi in alio posse, quam ut nee major in przemio, ut rnalam volun-
ad justitiam, nee ad iniquitatem, tatem sic non haberemus, ut nee
captiva aliquis voluntate rapiatur. habere possemus. desideranda
Augustine : Libra tua quam conaris necessitas ! Op. Imp. 1.5. c. 61.