§ 152. THE AtJGUSTINIAI? SYSTEM. 821
the will is, strictl)^ speaking, self-willed) ; it is tlie necessary condition of guilt and pimisliment, of merit and reward. In this view no thinking man can deny freedom, without destroying tlie responsibility and the moral nature of man. An involuntary will is as bald a self-contradiction as an unintelligent intelligence.'
A second form of freedom is the Uberum arbitrium^ or freedom of choice. Here Augustine goes half-way with Pelagius ; especially in his earlier writings, in opposition to Manichseisra, which denied all freedom, and made evil a natura. necessity and an original substance. Like Pelagius he ascribes freedom of choice to the first man before the fall. God created man with the double capacity of sinning or not sinning, forbidding the ibrmer and commanding the latter. But Augus-
' Here belong especially the first chapters of the treatises, De gratia et libcro arbitrio (torn. x. fol. YlY-VSl), of the Opus imperf. contra Julianum, and Contra duas epistolas Pelagianorura. In this sense even the strictest adherents of the Augustin- Jan and Calvinistic system have always more or less explicitly conceded human freedom. Thus Cunningham, a Calvinist of the Free Church of Scotland, in his presentation of the Pelagian controversy (Hist. Theol. i. p. 326) : " Augustine certainly did not deny man's free will altogether, and in every sense of the word ; and the most zealous defenders of the doctrines of grace and of Calvinistic principles have admitted that there is a free will or free agency, in some sense, which man has, and which is necessary to his being responsible for his transgressions of God's law. It is laid down in our own [the Westminster] Confession, that ' God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor by any absolute necessity of nature determined to good or evil.' " Dr. Shedd, an American Presbyterian of the Old School, in his History of Christian Doctrine, ii. p. 66, where he, in Augustine's view, expresses his own, says : " The guilt of sin consists in its unforced wilfulness ; and this guilt is not in the least diminished by the fact that the will cannot overcome its own wilfulness. For this wicked wilfulness was not created in the will, but is the product of the will's act of apostasy. The present impotence to holiness is not an original and primitive impotence. By creation Adam had plenary power, not indeed to originate holiness, for no creature has this, but to preserve and perpetuate it. The present destitution of holiness, and impossibility of originating it, it) due therefore to the creature's apostatizing agency, and is a part of his condemnation." Also, p. 80 : " There is no author in the whole theological catalogue. wno IS more careful and earnest than Augustine, to assert that sin is se{/'-activity and that its source is in the voluntary nature of man. Sin, according to him, is not a substance, but an agency ; it is not the essence of any faculty in man, but onlj the action of a faculty." Neither Dr. Cunningham nor Dr. Shedd, however, takes any account of t'le different forms and degrees of freedom in the Augustiniar system.
823 TIIIED PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
tine differs from Pelagius in viewing Adam not as poised in entire indifference between good and evil, obedience and disobedience, but as having a positive constitutional tendency to the good, yet involving, at the same time, a possibility of sinning.' Besides, Augustine, in the interest of grace and of true freedom, disparages the freedom of choice, and limits it to tbe beginning, the transient state of probation. This relative indecision cannot be at all predicated of God or the angels, of the saints or of sinners. It is an imperfection of the will, which the actual choosing of the good or the evil more or less surmounts. Adam, with the help of divine grace, without which he might will the good, indeed, but could not persevere in it, should have raised himself to the true freedom, the moral necessity of good ; but by choosing the evil, he fell into the bondage of sin.'* Augustine, however, incidentally concedes, that the liberum arbitrium still so far exists even in fallen man, that he can choose, not indeed between sin and holiness, but between individual actions within the sphere of sinfulness and of justitia eivilis.'
' This important distinction is overlooked by Baur, in his Kirchengeschichto vom 4-6teii Jahrhundert, p. 143. It takes off the edge from his sharp criticism of the Augustinian system, in which he charges it with inconsistency in starting from the same idea of freedom as Pelagius and yet opposing it.
^ Comp. respecting this conception of freedom, the treatise, De libero arbitrio (in Opera, tom. i. f. 569 sqq.), which was begun a. d. 388, and finished a. d. 395, and belongs therefore to hia earliest writings ; also, De correptione et gratia (especially cap. 9-11), and the sixth book of the Opus imperf. c. Julianum. Also Contra duas cpistolas Pelag. 1. ii. c. 2 (tom. x. f. 432), where he opposes both the Manichaean deniiil of the liberum arbitrium and the Pelagian assertion of its continuance after the fall. " Mauichaji negant, homini bono ex libero arbitrio fuisse ini* tium mali ; Pclagiani dicunt, ctiam hominem malum sufficicntor habere liberum arbitrium ad faciendum prfeceptum bonum ; catholica [fides] utrosque redarguit, et illis diccns : Fecit Ueus hominem rectum, et istis dicens : Si vos Filius libcraveiit, vcre libcri eritis."
' Contra duas epist. Pelag. ii. c. 5 (or § 9, tom. x. f. 43G): "Peccato Adse arbitrium liberum de hominum natura periisse non dicimus, scd ad pcccandum valere in hominibus subditis diabolo, ad bene autem piequc vivcndum non valere, nisi ipsa voluntas hominis Dei gratia fuerit liberata, et ad omne bonum actionis, sermonig cogitationis adjuta." Also, De gratia et libero arbitrio, c. 15 (x. f. 734): "Scmpef est autem in nobis voluntas libera, scd non semper est bona. Aut enlm a justitia libera est. quando servit peccato, et tunc est mala ; aut a peccato libera est, quand« fcrvit justitias, et tunc est bona. Gratia vcro Dei semper eet bona." Dr. Baur, ii