Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

7 2 The Pelagian Controversy. CHAP. nr.
nature of virtue and vice, succeeded the question of the
Divine justice.
The doctrine of original
sin described all mankind as
punished for the sin of Adam, deriving a positive sinfulness,
and even a necessity to sin, a slavery, and a captivity
from it. But how was it consistent with justice that one
that man
man should be punished for the sin of another ;
kind should be created guilty, and derive from one par
ticular act committed before they were born a positive
necessity to sin ? 1 The objection of the Pelagian was met
in two ways ; first, by an appeal to mystery ; and, secondly,
by an appeal to facts.
1. The objection
that it was contrary to the Divine
justice to punish one man for the sin of another was met
by an appeal to mystery, and the answer that the Divine
justice was incomprehensible. And this was a sound and
was not
proper answer, but the form in which it was put
wholly faultless.
For it is one thing to say that the Divine justice is
incomprehensible, and another thing to say that the Divine
or that we are to
justice is different from human justice ;
have a different idea altogether of justice as a human and
as a Divine characteristic. In saying that the Divine
justice is incomprehensible we make no assertion about it
at all, and therefore do not establish any contradiction
between it and our natural ideas of justice. Having con
ceived of it, so far as we conceived of it at all, as the
ordinary natural quality so called, we only cease at a
certain point to form any conception about it. But to
say that the Divine justice is different from human is to
confuse our moral notions altogether. Pressed by the
Pelagian with the strong testimonies in Scripture to the
rule of natural justice, that no man should be punished except
1 Ais credere te quidem condi- nuum suarum Deus; et quod pertorem
Deutn,sed malorum hominum suasit diabolus teuuiter. solerter et
. . . . et Dei sanctitati informa- perseveranter fingit et protegit et
tionem sceleris
appulisti. Great format Deus. Et fructum ab horaine
igitur malam Deus et puniuntur bonitatis reposcit, cui malum in-
iniipcerites propter quod fecit Deus ; genuit Deus. Julian, ap. Op. Imp.
et imputat hominibus crinien ma- 1. 3. c. 124. et sea.