§ 156. ANSWERS TO PELAGIAN OBJECTIONS. 887
Himself, in a very special sense (and without reference to bap tisni) ascribes a right to the kingdom of heaven ?
8. Tiie testimony of Scripture and of the church is cou' firmed by experience. The inclination to evil awakes with the awaking of consciousness and voluntary activity. Even the suckling gives signs of self-will, spite, and disobedience. As moral development advances, the man feels this disposition to be really bad, and worthy of punishment, not a mere limitation or defect. Thus we find even the child subject to sufifering, to siclfness, and to death. It is contrary to the pure idea cf God, that this condition should have been the original one. God must have created man faultless and inclined towards good. The conviction that human nature is not as it should be, in foct pervades all mankind. Augustine, in one place, cites a passage of the third book of Cicero's Republic ' " ]^ature has dealt with man not as a real mother, but as a step-mother, sending him into tl)e world with a naked, frail, and feeble body, and with a soul anxious to avoid burdens, bowed down under all manner of apprehensions, averse to effort, and inclined to sensuality. Yet can we not mistake a certain divine fire of the spirit, which glimmers on in the heart as it were under ashes." Cicero laid the blame of this on creative nature. " He thus saw clearly the fact, but not the cause, for he had no conception of original sin, because he had no knowledge of the Holy Scriptures."
§ 156. Answers to PeLagian Objections.
To these positive arguments must be added the direct answers to the objections brought against the Augustinian theory, sometimes with great acuteness, by the Pelagians, and especially by Julian of Eclanum, in the dialectic course of the controversy.
Julian sums up his argument against Augustine in five points, intended to disprove original sin from premises conceded by Augustine himself: If man is the creature of God, he must come from the hands of God good; if marriage is in itself good, it cannot generate evil; if baptism remits all sinp
838 THIKD PERIOD A.D. 311-590.
ftiid regenerates, the children of the baptized cannot inherit Bin; if God is righteous, he cannot condemn childien for tho sins of others ; if human nature is capable of perfect righteousness, it cannot be inherently defective.'
We notice particularly the first four of these points ; the fifth is substantially included in the first.
1. If original sin propagates itself in generation, if there ia H trcidux jpeccati and a malum naturdle^ then sin is substantial, and we are found in the Manichgean error, except that we make God, who is the Father of children, the author of sin, while Manichseism refers sin to the devil, as the father of human nature.*
This imputation was urged repeatedly and emphatically by the sharp and clear-sighted Julian. But according to Augustine all nature is, and ever remains, in itself good, so far as it is nature (in the sense of creature) ; evil is only conniption of nature, vice cleaving to it. Manichaeus makes evil a substance, Augustine, only an accident ; the former views it as a positive and eternal principle, the latter derives it from the creature, and attributes to it a merely negative or privative existence ; the one affirms it to be a necessity of nature, the other, a free act; the former locates it in matter, in the body, the latter, in the will.' Augustine retorted on tlie Pelagians the charge of Manichaiism, for their locating the carnal lust of man in his original nature itself, and so precluding its cure. But in their view the concupiscentia carnis was not what it was to Augustine, but an innocent natural impulse, which becomes sin only when indulged to excess.
' Contra Julicuaum rdagiamim, 1. ii. c. 9 (§ 31, torn. x. f. 545 sq.).
' Comp. as against this the 2d book De nuptiis ct concup. ; Contra Jul. 1. i. and iL, and the Opus imperf., in the introduction, and lib. iv. cap. 38.
' " Non est ulla substantia vel natura, sed vitium." De nupt, et concup. 1. il o. 34 (§ 57, X. f. 332). "Non ortum est malum nisi in bono; nee tamen summo et immutabili, quod est natura Dei, sed facto de nihilo per sapientiam Dei." Ibid. lib. K. c. 29 (or § 50, torn. x. f. 327). Comp. particularly also Contra duas epist. I'elag. li. c. 2, where he sharply discriminates his doctrine alike from Manich;eism and Pelagianism. These passages were overlooked by Bauk and Milman, who think that there is good foundation for the charge of Manichaeism agaijist Augustine's doctrine of sin. GiUBON (eh. xxxiii.) derived the orthodoxy of Augustine from the Uanicbacan school !