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318 THE HISTORY OF HERESIES,
nant or not agreeable to any of the attributes of God is, in fact,
" He cannot himself" deny (II. Tim. ii, 13). St.
impossible, for
Anselm says (5) :
"
In Deo quantumlibet parvum inconveniens
scquitur impossibilitas." Besides, if that principle of our adver
saries themselves were true, that there is no middle love between
vicious cupidity and laudable charity, then the state of pure
nature, even in regard to the Divine Omnipotence, as they sup
pose, would be an impossibility, since it would, in fact, be repug
nant to God to produce a creature contrary to himself, with the
necessity of sinning, as, according to their supposition of possi
bility, this creature would be.
11. In fact, I think no truth can be more evident, than that
the state of pure nature is not an impossibility, a state in which
man would be created without Grace and without sin, and subject
to all the miseries of this life. I say this with all reverence for
the Augustinian school, which holds the contrary opinion.
There
are two very evident reasons for this doctrine : First Man
could very well have been created without any supernatural gift,
but merely with those qualities which are adapted to human
nature. Therefore, that Grace which was supernatural, and was
given to Adam, was not his due, for then, as St. Paul says (Rom.
xi, 6): "Grace is no more grace." Now, as man might be
created without Grace, God might also create him without sin in
fact, he could not create him with sin, for then he would be the
author of sin. Then he might likewise create him subject to
concupiscence, to disease, and to death, for these defects, as St.
Augustin explains, belong to man s very nature, and are a part
of his constitution. Concupiscence proceeds from the union of
the soul with the body, and, therefore, the soul is desirous of
that sensitive pleasure which the body likes. Diseases, and all
the other miseries of human life, proceed
from the influence of
natural causes, which, in a state of pure nature, would be just as
powerful as at present, and death naturally follows from the con
tinual disagreement of the elements of which the body is
composed.
12. The second reason is, that it is not repugnant to any of
the Divine attributes to create man without Grace and without
(5) St. Anselm, L 1, Cum Dcus homo, c. 1.