§ 152. THE AITGUSTINIAN SYSTEM. 817
Yet his sjstem was not always precisely the same ; it became perfect only through personal conflict and practica, tests. Many of his earlier views — e. g., respecting the freedom of choice, and respecting faith as a work of man — he himself abandoned in his Eetraetations ; * and hence he is by no means to be taken as an infallible guide. He holds, moreover, the evangelical doctrines of sin and grace not in the Protestant sense, but, like his faithful disciples, the Jansenists, in connection with the sacramental and strict churchly system of Catholicism ; he taught the necessity of baptismal regeneration and the damnation of all unbaptized children, and identified justification in substance with sanctification, though he made sanctification throughout a work of free grace, and not of human merit. It remains the exclusive prerogative of the inspii'ed apoStles to stand above the circumstances of their time, and never, in combating one error, to fall into its opposite. Nevertheless, Augustine is the brightest star in the constellation of the churcli fathers, and difi'uses his light through the darkest periods of the middle ages, and among Catholics and Protestants alike, even to this day.*
His anthropology may be exhibited under the three stages | of the religious development of mankind, the status integritO/ j iis^ the status corrujptionis^ and the status redemtionis. '
I. The Primitive State of man, or the State of Innocence.
Augustine's conception of paradise is vastly higher than the Pelagian, and involves a far deeper fall and a far more
* Retract. 1. i. c. 9.
- Baur, 1. c. p. 32 f. : "From the time that Augustine directed the development of the Christian system to the two doctrines of sin and grace, this tendency always remained in the Occidental dogmatics the prevailing one, and so great and increasingly predominant in the course of time did the authority of Augustine become in the church, that even those who had departed from his genuine teachings, which many were unwilling to follow out with rigid consistency, yet believed themselves bound to appeal to his authority, which his writings easily gave them opportunity to do, since his system, as the result of periods of development so various, and antitheses so manifold, offers very different sides, from which it can be interpreted."
818 THIRD PFRIOD. A.D. 311-590.
glorious manifestation of redeeming grace. The first state of man resembles the state :>f tlie blessed in heaven, though it differs from that final state as the undeveloped germ from the perfect fruit. According to Augustine man came from the hand of his Maker, his genuine masterpiece, without the slightest fault. He possessed freedom, to do good ; reason, to know God ; and the grace of God. But by this grace Augustine (not happy in tlie choice of his term) means only the general 8upernatm*al assistance indispensable to a creature, that he may persevere in good.' The relation of man to God was that of joyful and perfect obedience. Tlie relation of the body to the soul was the same. The flesh did not yet lust against the spirit ; both were in perfect harmony, and tlie flesii was wholly subject to the spirit. "Tempted and assailed by no strife of himself against himself, Adam enjoyed in that place the blessedness of peace with himself." To this inward state, the outward corresponded. The paradise was not only spiritual, but also visible and material, without heat or cold, witliout weariness or excitement, without sickness, pains, or defects of any kind. The Augustinian, like the old Protestant, delineations of the perfection of Adam and the blissfulness of paradise often exceed the sober standard of Holy Scripture, and borrow their colors in part from the heavenly paradise of the future, which can never be lost."
' Grace, in this wider sense, as source of all good, Augustine makes independent of sin, and ascribes the possession of it even to the good angels. Comp. De cornipt. et grat. § 32 (torn. x. 'i'67, ^6S): "Dederat [Deus homini] adjutorium sine quo in ea [bona voluntatc] uon posset permauere ei vellet ; ut autcm vellet, in ejua libero reliquit arbitrio. Posset ergo perinanero si vellet : quia non doerat adjutonum per quod posset et sine quo non posset perseveranter bouum tencre quod vellet. ... Si autein hoc adjutorium vel anydo vel homini, cum primum facti sunt, defuispet, quoniam non taUs natura facta erat, ut sine divino adjutorio posset manere si vpllet, non utique sua culpa cecidissent: adjutorium quippe defuisset, sine (ino manere non possent." Wc see here plainly the germ of the scholastic and Homan Catholic doctrine of the justltia originalis, which was ascribed to the first man as a special endowment of divine grace or a supernatural accident, on the ground of the fatQiiiar distinction between the imago Dei (which belongs to the essence of man and consists in reason and free will) and the similitudo Dei (the actual conformity lo the divine will).
* Oomp. several passages in the Opus imperf. i. 71 ; iii. 147; vi. 9, 17; Conir* JuL v. 5 ; De civitatf^ Dei, xiii. 1 13, 1 1, 21 ; xiv. 10, where he depicts the beatitude