Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. in. The Pelagian Controversy. 67
own to receive straight from His hands an unearned virtue.
And this poverty in acquired virtues arises from the very
fact that they are acquired, from the very manner of their
growth and formation. It is essential to perfect virtue
that it should he truly natural and part of ourselves ; and
self-discipline, care, and culture, much as they can do,
cannot make a nature. For though custom is called a
second nature to express its great power, it only in truth
renders natural or easy to us the original act which it
adopts. And therefore if this act is one of self-control, or
resistance to evil, it only renders resistance to evil easy,
not goodness itself natural. Custom, in short, improves
a character upon its own basis, but does not give a new
one, or make a man what Scripture calls a new creature.
Nor, in fact, do we see it perform even this inferior function
perfectly. For it must be asked, with all the correcting
force of custom, where do we see in the world what may,
in a thorough sense, be called renovation of character ?
Nor do I mean an eradication wholly of wrong tendencies,
but even a complete and successful suppression of them
existing. A serious fault originally attaching to a charac
ter assumes in some persons subtler forms and a more dis
creet and politic bearing, and is finely trained and educated
rather than really resisted. In others it meets a resist
ance ; but where is it suppressed, so that, after a life of
self-improvement, we do not see it ? The possibility of
true mora|| renovation is a truth of faith rather than of
experience.
But such being the defects inherent in the system of
trial, if virtue is ever to be perfect and what it ought to
be, it must be removed from this basis altogether. It must
in a future state become in a way indigenous in us. It
must become a nature, an inspiration, a gift ;
be cut away
completely from the ground of effort ; and be like what
we call natural goodness here, though with this important
difference, that it will have been produced by trial. That
is, to become what it ought to be, it must become ne
cessary.
The highest and the perfect state of the will, then, is
F 2