Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

64 The Pelagian Controversy. CHAP. ITT.
and in this adoption of, this cleaving to, barren good, is a
depth of affection, a root of love, contrasted with which, all
the richness of the untried affections is a poor and feeble
offering to Grod.
But though trial is the necessary condition of the high
est kind of in this
goodness life, it is not the necessary
condition of all It is
goodness.
evident that we recognise
and feel toward, as goodness,
certain moral states and dis
positions which have not been the result of trial, but are
altogether natural. We may see this in a very low degree
even in the case of animals of the gentler, more generous,
and confiding character who engage our affections in con
sequence, and towards whom we instinctively feel as pos
sessing a kind of goodness. But the good natural dispo
sitions of moral beings deserve a serious consideration. 1
For though it may be doubted whether these dispositions
are ever sustained entirely without trial of the will, and
though we may not be able to tell in a particular case,
whether what appears to be the man s natural disposition
has not been formed in part by early trial and past moral
acts, still the general sense of mankind acknowledges wnat
are called good natural dispositions ; that some persons
have by nature a good bias in one or other direction, are
amiable, courageous, truthful, humble naturally, or have
a certain general happy conformation ; that tht-y have, that
is, by nature, not only the power to act in a certain way,
but the disposition so to act already formed within them ;
a habit implanted, or, as the schoolmen say, infused, in
distinction to being acquired by acts. But it would be
absurd to say that such dispositions as these were not vir
tues, and that such natural goodness was not real goodness.
We feel towards persons who possess such dispositions as
persons of a particular character, which character is good;
nor do we do this on even the imaginary supposition that
they have acquired it for themselves, the existing moral
1 Cur non anmrimus esse quos- in setate qua usus incipit esse ra-
dam natura misericordes, si natura tionis, sicut ipsa ratio, incipiunt
quosdam non negamus excordes ? apparere. Op. 1. Imp. 4. c. 129.
Stint enim nonnulla congenita, quse