Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

7 8 The Pelagian Controversy. CHAP. m.
met us in the world the universal depravation and cor
ruption of mankind? could we account for this by chance,
or the contingent action of each man s freewill ? Or did it
not at once point
to some law in our nature, on the same
principle on which, in the physical world and common life,
whenever we see a uniform set of phenomena, we refer them
to some law ?
The argument, however, for original
sin derived from
the prevalence
of actual sin in the world, though un
doubtedly sound and unanswerable, requires some caution
and discrimination in the use of it. And in the first place
it must be observed that, when we examine this argument,
we find, that upon a nearer view it divides into two dis
tinct arguments, depending upon two different kinds of
reasoning. One is the argument simply of cause and effect.
On the principle that every event must have a cause, actual
sin must have a cause anterior to itself, from which it
proceeds: and for the same reason that this cause is wanted
itself, another cause is wanted for it, and so another and
another in succession, till we arrive at some origin or first
cause of sin.
Divine will,
But this origin of sin cannot be in the
it must therefore be in the human; which
ultimate and original evil in the will is what is signified
by original sin.
This argument, then, for original sin, does not at all
depend on the amount of actual sin in the world, but would
be just as valid on the supposition of one sin, as on that of
universal ; original sin itself following from the simple fact
of actual, though its universality depends on the univer
sality of actual. And the validity of this argument depends
on the validity of the general argument of cause and effect,
or upon the truth of the axiom, that every event must have
a cause, an axiom which I discussed in the last chapter,
when I defined the degree and measure of truth which
belonged to it. It will be enough to say here of this
rationale of original sin, that it is a wholly philosophical,
as
distinguished from a scriptural one ; because, in repre
senting original sin as anterior to all actual sin, it repre
sents it as anterior to the sin of Adam, and as much the