a defect, because the power of A'ision does not belonrr to stones. Blindness is a defect in an animal, but not sin. The absence of love to God in a rational creature is sin, because it is the absence of something which belongs to such a creature, and whicli he ought to have. In the true Augustinian sense, therefore, sin is negation only as it is the privation of moral good, — the privat'to boni, or as it was afterwards generally expressed, a want of conformity to the lavv or standard of good.
Augustine's Reasons for making Sin a Negation.
In thus making sin negation, Augustine had principally two ends in view. (1.) To show that sin is not necessary. If it were something existing of itself, or something created by the power of God, it was beyond the power of man. He was its victim, not its author. (2.) He desired to show that it was not due to the divine efficiency. According to his theory of God's relation fo the world, not onlv all that is, every substance, is created and upheld by God, but all activity or ])ower, all energy by which positive efiPects are produced, is the energy of God. If sin, therefore, Avas anything in itself, anything more than a defect, or a want of conformity to a rule, God must be its author. He, therefore, took such a view of the psychological nature of sin, that it did not require an efficient^ but as he often said only a deficient cause. If a man, to use the old Augustinian illustration, strike the cords of an untuned harp, he is the cause of the sound but not of the discord. "So God is the cause of the sinner's activity but not of the discordance between his acts and the laws of eternal truth and right.^
The Moral Element of His Doctrine.
The true Augustinian doctrine of sin was that which the illus- trious father drew from his own religious experience, as guided and determined by the Spirit of God. He was, (1.) Conscious of sin. He recognized himself as guilty and polluted, as amenable to the justice of God and offensive to his holiness. (2.) He felt himself to be thus guilty and polluted not only because of deliberate acts of transgression, but also for his affections, feelings, and emotions. This sense of sin attached not onlv to these positive and consciously active states of mind, but also to the mere absence of right affections, to hardness of heart, to the want of love, humility, faith, and other Christian virtues, or to their feebleness and inconstancy. (3.) Ho
1 See, on Augustine's theory, Miiller, Lehre von der Sunde, vol. i. pp. 338-349. Rittet'i Getchichte der Ckristlichen Pkihsqphie, vol. ii. pp. 337-425.
160 . PART II. Ch. \rill. — Sm.
I'ecognized the fact that he had always been a sinner. As far back as consciousness extended it was the consciousness of sin. (4.) He was deeply convinced that he had no power to change his moral nature or to make himself holy ; that whatever liberty he possessed, however free he was in sinning, or (after regeneration) in holy acting, he had not the liberty of ability which Pelagians claimed as an essential prerogative of humanity. (5.) It was involved in this consciousness of sin as including guilt or just liability to punishment, as well as pollution, that it could not be a necessary evil, but must have its origin in the free act of man, auc be therefore voluntary. Voluntary: (a.) In having its origin in an act of the will ; (5.) In having its seat in the will ; (c.) In consisting in the determination of the will to evil : the word will being here, as by Augustine generally, taken in its widest sense for everything in man that does not fall under the category of the understanding. (6.) What consciousness taught him to be true with regard to himself he saw to be true in regard to others. All men showed themselves to be sinners. They all gave evidence of sinfulness as soon as they gave evidence of reason. They all apj)eared not only as transgressors of the law of God, but as spiritu- ally dead, devoid of all evidence of spiritual life. They were the willing slaves of sin, entirely unable to deliver themselves from their bondage to corruption. No man had ever given proof of possessing the power of self-regeneration. All who gave evidence of being regenerated, with one voice ascribed the work not to themselves, bnt to the grace of God. From these facts of con- sciousness and experience Augustine drew the inevitable conclu- sion, (1.) That if men are saved it cannot be by their own merit, but solely through the undeserved love of God. (2.) That the regeneration of the soul must be the exclusive and supernatural work of the Holy Ghost ; that the sinner could neither effect the work nor cooperate in its production. In other words, that grace is certainly efficacious or irresistible. (3.) That salvation is of grace or of the sovereign mercy of God, (a.) In that God might justly have left men to perish in their apostasy without any pro- vision for their redemption. (6.) In that men, being destitute of the power of doing anything holy or meritorious, their justification cannot be by works, but must be a matter of favour. (<?.) In that it depends not on the will of the ])ersons saved, but on the good pleas- ure of God, who are to be made partakers of the redemption of Christ. In other words, election to eternal life must be founded on the sovereign pleasure of God, and not on the foresight of good