The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

IV. It may be innate and connate. 279
I. The first condition of the will of angels, and of Adam, was
concreate; it was holy and untempted.
II. Its second condition was that of the angels', tested in the nature of
things by the essential character of virtue, which, on one side, is the
negative of moral evil, the possibility of which evil is implied in the very
denial of it, and by moral freedom, which is not continuously possible
without choice. It is also the condition of Eve's will affected by the nature
of things within and without her, and by the will of the serpent. It is also
the condition of Adam's will tested by the nature of things, by the now
corrupted will of his wife, and through her by the will of the serpent. So far
as the fruit attracted Eve simply as pleasant to eat, and beautiful to look
upon, the attraction was purely natural, and morally indifferent. The
prohibitory command meant that the natural instincts, even of an unfallen
creature, are not sufficient for the evolution of the highest moral character,
but that to this character it is essential that there shall be the voluntary and
continuous conformity of the will of the creature to the will of the Creator.
Original righteousness is, per se, a condition of the will, and is antecedent
to the first act of will. How a will, whose original condition is holy, can
come to a sinful condition, as it involves an ultimate principle, cannot be
grasped by man, yet, whatever may furnish the occasion, the cause is the
will itself: “The cause of sin is the will of the wicked" (causa peccati est
voluntas malorum). "The perverted will (verkehrte Wille) worketh
sin...which will has turned itself from God to evil (zum Argen)." These
words imply that sin the act, is the result of sin the condition. The
condition of the will is the cause of the moral act as moral, and the
perverted condition of the will the cause of the moral acts being perverted,
that is, sinful. We reach the last point to which the mind of man can go,
when we assert that in the self-determining power of a finite holy will lies
the possibility of its becoming an unholy will. We may say that the finite is,
in the nature of things, liable to the possibility of sin, that the positive good
of freedom in the
279 Aug. Conf. Art. xix.