Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

74
The Pelagian Controversy.
CHAP. in.
of natural justice directly to the Divine conduct, and
represents God as asserting of Himself, that He punishes
no man except for his own sins, and so gives no ground
whatever for such a distinction. But this declaration was not
allowed its obvious interpretation, as stating a universal
law of the Divine dealings, but only a special prophetical
one, as alluding to the Divine mercy under the gospel
dispensation and the covenant of grace, 1 under wh ich the
effect of original sin, the punishment of mankind for the
sin of their first parent, was removed.
But the punishment which all mankind suffered for the
sin of Adam was punishment of a peculiar kind ; because
it was not only pain but sin, and not only sin but captivity
to sin and inability to do any good thing. This worst and
strongest penalty, then, attaching to the sin of Adam, was
defended by an appeal to a remarkable law of (rod s
judicial administration, discernible in his natural provi
dence, and specially attested by Scripture ; the >viz.
rule,
of punishing sin by further $\\\,peccatum pcena peccati,
a rule which, in the present instance, only received a
mysterious application, as being extended to the case of a
mysterious and incomprehensible sin.
S. Augustine argued, then, that original sin was real
sin in the being in whom it resided ; and being such, was
justly punishable by the abandonment of the person guilty
of it, to sin ; that the natural man, therefore, could not
plead his want of moral power as any excuse for his sins,
any more than a man in common life, who had contracted
a bad habit, could plead the dominion of that habit as
such an excuse. That bad habit might be so strong that
he could not help committing the sins to which it inclined
1
Hsec per Ezechielem proplie- dicatur . . .
"
. Non dicetur in Is.
tarn promissio est novi Testament!,
quam non intelligis, ubi Deus rerael"
recte diceres, si veros Israelites
regenerates videres in quibus hoc
generates a generatis si jam in
majoribus
non dicetur. c. 39. 41. Jeremiah
setatibus sunt, secundum xxxi. 21 32. is adduced to confirm
propria facta discernit. Op. Imp.
1. 3. c. 38. "Si dicetur amplius "
: . . . parabola non arguit quia
this interpretation. In diebus illis
non dicent ultra. Patres comede-
runt, &c. c. 84. See Contra Jul.
dicebatur, sed permittit ubi non Pel. 1. 6. n. 82.