may will God works without us ; but when we will, and so will as to do, lie co-works with us ; yet, unless he either works that we may will, or co-works when we do will, Ave are utterly incapable of doing any thing in the good works of piety.' " These are but very slight specimens of the mode in which learned and ingenious men have tried to give a kind of symmetrical propor- tion to this father's doctrinal system. Several large treatises have been published with the same praise- worthy intention ; the pious authors of them either entirely forgetting, or having never read the rather latitudinarian indulgence of opinion which St. Au- gustine claims for himself in his 'Retractations.' If. however, an estimate may be formed of what this fa- ther intended in his various pacificatory doctrinal ex- planations from what he has actually admitted and ex- pressed, it may be safely affirmed that no systematic writer of theology seems so completely to have enter- ed into the best views of the bishop of Hippo, or so nearly reconciled the apparent discordances in them, as Armixius has done" (Watson, Theol. Dictionary, s. v.). The changes in Augustine's theology are de- scribed as follows by Neander {History of Dor/mas, ii, 847). "In his treatises de Lib. Arbitrio and de Vera Religione he supposes everything in man to be condi- tioned on free will. In his exposition of Rom. ix (A.D. 394) he expressly opposes the interpretation of that passage as implying predestination and the exclu- sion of free will. Man indeed, he says, could not merit divine grace by his works, for, in order to per- form works that are truly pious, he must have first a suitable state of heart, the inward justitia. But this source of goodness man has not from himself-; only the Holy Spirit can impart it to him in regeneration ; antecedently to this all men are in equal estrangement from God ; but it depends on themselves whether, by believing, they make themselves susceptible for the Holy Spirit or not. (Cap. 60. — Quod credimus nos- trum est ; quod autem bonum operamur illius qui cre- dentibus in se dat Spiritum Sanctum.) God has cho- sen faith. It is written, God works all in all men, but he does not believe all in all. Faith is man's concern. (Non quidem Deus elegit opera qua? ipse largitur quum dat Spiritum Sanctum ut per caritatem bona opere- mur; sed tamen elegit fidem.) From this point we can trace the gradual revolution in Augustine's mode of thinking to its later harsher form. Yet in his treatise De 83 diversis quwstionibus (written about A.D. 388), he says, in explaining Rom. ix, 18 (' Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth'). This will of God is not unrighteous, for it is conditioned by the most secret relations of congruity; all men, indeed, are corrupt, but yet there is a difference among them ; there is in sinners something antecedent by which they become deserving of justification or of hardening (Qusestio 68, § 4. — Venit enim de occultissimis meritis, quia et ipsi peccatores cum propter generale peccatum unam massam fecerint, non tamen nulla est inter illos di- versitas. Prajcedit ergo aliquid in peccatoribus quo, quamvis nondum sint justificati digni efficiantur jus- tificatione et item prascedit in aliis peccatoribus quo digni sunt obtusione). The calling of individuals and of whole nations belongs to those high and deep things which man does not understand if he is not spiritually minded. But it must be always main- tained that God does nothing unrighteous, and that there is no being who does not owe everything to God. The more Augustine advanced in a deeper perception of faith, the more he recognised it as a living principle, and not as a mere faith of authority, and he acquired a stronger conviction that faith presupposed a divine operation in the soul of man, and that the Bible re- ferred it to divine agency. He was now easily im- pelled to the other extreme, and to give a one-sided prominence to the divine factor in faith. Resignation to God became his ruling principle, and. looking back
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at his earlier life, he learned more and more to trace everything to his training by divine grace. He now allowed the conditioning element of free human sus- ceptibility to vanish altogether. That theodicy now appeared to him untenable, which made the attain- ment of faith by individuals or nations, or their re- maining strangers to the Gospel, dependent on their worthiness and the divine prescience ; in opposition to this view, he now sought for a foundation in the secret absolute decrees of God, according to which one was chosen and another not. This view was confirmed by the opinion prevalent in the North African Church, that outward baptism was essential to salvation. He now inquired how it was that one child received bap- tism and another not, and this seemed to confirm the unconditionality of the divine predestination. The alteration in his mode of thinking occupied perhaps a space of four years. In the diversce questiones ad Sim- plicianum, written about A.D. 397, this is shown most decidedly, as he himself says in his treatise de dono perseverantim that he had then arrived at the perception that even the beginning of faith was the gift of God. In that work (lib. i, questio 2) he derives all good in man from the divine agency ; from the words of Paul, 'What hast thou that thou hast not received ?' (1 Cor. iv, 7), he infers that nothing can come from man himself. 'How can it be explained,' he asks, 'that the Gospel reaches one man and not another? and that even the same dispensations act quite differently on different persons? It belongs to God to furnish the means which lead every man to believe; conse- quently, the reason of the difference can only be that, according to his own decree, it seems good to with- hold it from one and not from another. All men, in consequence of the first transgression, are exposed to perdition ; in this state there can be no higher move- ment, therefore none at all, in them toward conver- sion. But God, out of compassion, chooses some to ■whom he imparts divine grace, [/ratio, efficax, Avhich operates upon them in an irresistible manner, but yet in accordance with their rational nature, so that they cannot do otherwise than follow it. The rest he leaves to their merited perdition.' From the preceding re- marks it is clear that Augustine reached the stand- point fixed by his own experience; and we perceive how false it is that his system in this form was derived from his excessive opposition to Pelagianism, since it had been formed ten years before his conflict with it. We might rather affirm of Pelagius that he would not have developed his doctrine in its actual form had he not been opposed to Augustine."