Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

70 The Pelagian Controversy. CHAP. nr.
inferiority of the instrument by
which it was executed.
It is a merit, therefore, which tells against the perfection
of the will, and not in its favour. The act, as such, if we
can separate the act from the will, is more meritorious ;
but that very superior merit of the act is gained at the
cost of the will, from which it proceeds. The act is better
because the is agent
worse.
What has been said of natural or necessary goodness
may be said of natural or necessary evil. Amid the
obscurity which attaches to this class of questions, some
thing to which mankind had borne large testimony would
be relinquished in denying the existence of bad natural
dispositions.
And the system of trial points as much to a
necessary evil state as it does to a necessary good one
as its termination. It must be added, that the law of
custom unhappily produces much nearer approaches in
this life to a necessary state in evil than it does to the
same in good ; furnishing a proof of the compatibleness
of a necessary with a culpable or sinful state, to which
Augustine often appeals in defending
the doctrine of
original sin against the Pelagian objection on that
head. 1
The rational doctrine, then, of voluntariness, i.e. how
far the trial of the will is involved in the nature of virtue
and vice is a modified one. Freewill and necessity have
both their place in it, nor does it oppose the necessary to
1
Consuetude fructus est volun- quo abstinere liberum fuit. L. 1. c.
tatis, quoniam ex voluntate gignitur,
quse tamen id quod agit, negat se
"
105. Dicis quod contr.-mum sit
necessitas et voluntas, ita ut se muagere
voluntate. Op. Imp. 1. 4. c. tua impugnatione consumant 103. The admission of Julian,
"
inde
;
"
nos arguens quod alterum alterius
Evenire hominihus affectionalem subdamus effectui, dicentes necessiqualitatem,
atque ita inhserescere, ut tatem de fructibus voiuntatis exoraut
magnis molitionibus, aut nullis tarn," cum videas necessitatem conseparetur
omnino, and the Pelagian suetudinis fructum esse manifestis-
interpretation of the text Quod nolo simum voiuntatis. Nonne quod tibi
malum hoc ago, on the ground of impossible risum est, "sua se
custom, were thus turned to the voluntas multiplication delevit, et
account of original sin. Ac per statum proprium operata mutavit,"
hoc etiam secundum vos peccandi quge multiplicata necessitatem con-
necessitas unde abstinere liberum suetudinis fecit. 1. Op. Imp. 4. c.
non est, illius peccati poena fait, a 103.