Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

58 The Pelagian Controversy. CHAP. in.
a state of necessity ; and the power of choice, so far from
being essential to a true and genuine will, is its weakness
and defect. What can be a greater sign of an imperfect
and immature state of the will than that, with good and
evil before it,
it should be in suspense which to do ? That
it should take the worse alternative is its prostration ;
but that it should be even undetermined is weakness.
Even with the good action done, does not a great sense of
imperfection attend the thought that it was but an instant
ago uncertain whether it would be clone or not ? And, as
we dwell in recollection on the state of our will previous
to its decision, in that interval of suspense in which we
might have acted in one way or another, does not so un
steady and indeterminate a source of action interfere even
with the comfort of certainty which is derived from the
action as being done? Is not the circumstance that it was
but just now uncertain whether it would be done or not a
? Was it a sort of luck
surviving reflection upon the agent
that he did it ? And would he do it again if tried again ?
We have indeed at first an idea that the power of choice
is that which ennobles and dignifies the will, and that the
will would be an imperfect one without it : but this arises
from a misconception.
The power of choosing good or evil
is indeed that which ennobles the will of man as compared
with the lower wills of the brute creation ; but it is not
therefore the perfection of man s will. If we imagine it
to be so, we appear to attach this value to* it, for this
reason, viz., because a power in the will of determining
itself either way is power, and we suppose power to be an
advantage. But power is not itself an advantage. In our
ordinary mode of speaking, indeed, we regard it as such ;
because we ordinarily associate power with an advantageous
subject-matter, or think of it as the power to do things
which are advantageous to ourselves. But power in itself
is neither an advantage nor the contrary, but depends
entirely on its object, or that which it has the power to
do, for being the one or the other. The power to do that
which is injurious to oneself is a disadvantage, inasmuch
as it involves the chance of injury ; and the power to do