Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. in. The Pelagian Controversy. 83
a judicial source nor can we reflect on the dreadful forms
;
of misery and the diseases, bodily and mental, which attach
to human nature, without being led instinctively to the
idea of some moral evil residing in that nature. It admits
perhaps of a doubt, whether the overwhelming nature of
present pain, whether as a sight or feeling, does not dis
order us as judges on such a question ; nor can we say for
certain that, supposing ourselves to be looking back from
the immense distance of a happy eternity upon the pains
of this mortal life, the greatest amount of these might not
appear so small in comparison with the happiness which
had succeeded them, 1
that they might be regarded, then,
as a simple preparation for and introduction to futurityr
and accounted for on that ground, superseding the judicial
one. The common spectacle of human misery, however,
has, in fact, impressed the religious portion of the world
in all ages, Christian or pagan, in the latter way ; and
the general feeling of mankind has connected it with some
deep though undefined root of sin in the human race.
Thus maintained and defended on the several grounds
of the power of the will, the nature of virtue and vice, and
the Divine justice, the Catholic doctrine of original sin
adopted, as an account of the existence of evil, a middle
ground between two extreme theories on either side, which
prevailed in the world. According to the Manichean theory,
evil was an original substance in nature, coeval with the
Divine. It was therefore an ineradicable, unconquerable
thing ; for though some triumph over the Gentes tenebrarum
was talked of, a part of the Divine nature was irrevocably
polluted in the contest. The practical meaning of this
that good and
theory was, that the world was a mixture ;
evil had gone on together in it from all eternity, and would
to all eternity continue to do so that ; things were what
they were, and that there was no altering them much
;
the view taken by practical worldly men, who cannot per
suade themselves to believe that there is such a thing as
1 Eo Awi yap VTTO xp.p\i.far<av
a 2
"Orav eat) fioipa W/MTTJ
Apeas o\ ov tyri\6v.
PINDAB. Olymp. 2.