THE ASSERTION AND DENIAL OF THE WILL. 525
Christianity — which Augustine, with the consent of the leaders of the Church, defended against the platitudes of the Pelagians, and which it was the principal aim of Luther's endeavour to purify from error and re-establish, as he expressly declares in his book, "De Servo Arbitrio," — the doctrine that the will is not free, but originally subject to the inclination to evil. Therefore according to this doctrine the deeds of the will are always sinful and imperfect, and can never fully satisfy justice; and, finally, these works can never save us, but faith alone, a faith which itself does not spring from resolution and free will, but from the work of grace, without our co-operation, comes to us as from without.
Not only the dogmas referred to before, but also this last genuine evangelical dogma belongs to those which at the present day an ignorant and dull opinion rejects as absurd or hides. For, in spite of Augustine and Luther, it adheres to the vulgar Pelagianism, which the rationalism of the day really is, and treats as antiquated those deeply significant dogmas which are peculiar and essential to Christianity in the strictest sense; while, on the other hand, it holds fast and regards as the principal matter only the dogma that originates in Judaism, and has been retained from it, and is merely historically connected with Christianity.[1] We, however,
- ↑ How truly this is the case may be seen from the fact that all the contradictions and inconceivabilities contained in the Christian dogmatics, consistently systematised by Augustine, which have led to the Pelagian insipidity which is opposed to them, vanish as soon as we abstract from the fundamental Jewish dogma, and recognise that man is not the work of another, but of his own will. Then all is at once clear and correct: then there is no need of freedom in the operari, for it lies in the esse; and there also lies the sin as original sin. The work of grace is, however, our own. To the rationalistic point of view of the day, on the contrary, many doctrines of the Augustinian dogmatics, founded on the New Testament, appear quite untenable, and indeed revolting; for example, predestination. Accordingly Christianity proper is rejected, and a return is made to crude Judaism. But the miscalculation or the original weakness of Christian dogmatics lies — where it is never sought — precisely in that which is withdrawn from all investigation as established and certain. Take this away and the whole of dogmatics is rational; for this dogma destroys theology as it does all the other sciences. If any one studies the Augustinian
