like water poured upon the plant from without. It is the secret working of Divine benevolence upon the soul within.1

Accordingly all through this present Treatise a sharp distinction is maintained between the outward and the inward in personal religion. Knowledge of what is right is set over against love of what is right. The intellectual awareness of an ideal is opposed to whole-hearted self-surrender to that ideal. The two words forinsecus and intrinsecus are thoroughly characteristic of the entire work. Instruction given from without is contrasted with control over the heart within. As Augustine says elsewhere, the sound of the words may fall upon the ear, but the real Teacher is within the listener's soul. And unless the real teacher is there, all outward instruction will be valueless. So Augustine understood Unction from the Holy One to mean the indwelling of the illuminating Holy Spirit within the heart.2

6

What Augustine feels intensely is that the Pelagian theory of Grace is mere intellectualism, which fails to appreciate man's moral feebleness. As he expresses it elsewhere, it does not follow by any means that the man who has the gift of knowledge whereby he has discovered what he ought to do, has also the Grace of love by which to do it.'3 The real distinction between knowing and doing, painfully selfevident though it is in mortal experience, was strangely overlooked in the Pelagian psychology.

Pelagius analysed our spiritual nature into capacity, will, and realization. The capacity was the natural endowment. The will was the moral consent. The realization was the action which results. Of these three he ascribed the first only to God, while the second and the third proceed entirely from ourselves.1 Augustine on the contrary maintained that God co-operates with man's will and with man's achievements. For this doctrine he appealed to the text 'it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do.'2

1 On the Grace of Christ, § 46.

2 Phil. ii. 13.

IV

It is not possible to give a systematic analysis of the Treatise, for the great writer does not appear to have framed it on any definite logical plan. Rather he writes out of the exuberance of thought, and is led on to further considerations, not so much because they flow as consequences on what he has written, but because his mind is full to overflowing. Hence there are numerous repetitions. Ideas are begun, relinquished, and resumed elsewhere. He is led to stray in various tempting directions; pulls himself up again in the consciousness that he is wandering far afield, and returns to something further which requires to be emphasized. This style of composition makes analysis difficult.

Nevertheless there are certain main ideas which become prominent as the work proceeds. It is therefore possible to divide the book into certain more or less obvious divisions, of which the following may be suggested as the chief:

DIVISION 1

To the Pelagian proposition Augustine opposes the Christian Doctrine of Grace' (§§ 4−8).

Augustine contends that while the natural endowments of man in mind and will are the indispensable pre-suppositions of moral excellence, they are insufficient of themselves to make men good. Obviously,

freewill is insufficient to enable a man to avoid sin and to do right, unless there is also added a knowledge of what is right. So far of course the Pelagian would agree.

Therefore to the natural abilities there must be added instruction in moral ideals. But, adds Augustine, instruction is insufficient to secure goodness. For instruction only gives a man information. It does not make him love. Of course instruction in the moral ideals is indispensable. We must know before we can do. But to know is one thing and to love is another. And unless a man delights in what he knows to be right and loves it, he will not yield himself to its obedience. Now this love of God (i.e. love towards God) is shed into our hearts not by our own freewill but by the Holy Spirit which is given us (Rom. v. 5).

And here Augustine introduces and interprets the text which gives the title to this Treatise :

'the letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life' (2 Cor. iii. 6). This is not to be understood merely as a distinction between a literal and a figurative interpretation. The letter' denotes the moral ideal. The 'Spirit' is the Holy Spirit of God. As an example of the way in which the letter or Commandment killeth, Augustine following S. Paul, quotes the words, 'Thou shalt not covet.' This is no figurative expression. It is to be interpreted literally. But this command is the letter which killeth ;' simply because, unless the Holy Spirit enables us to obey, the prohibition increases desire. For, says Augustine, I know not how it is but an object of

desire becomes more seductive when it is forbidden

(§ 6).

Hence then the necessity of Grace: that is, of moral power, divinely imparted, to kindle the affections, to enable us to love and delight in, and thereby to achieve, what we recognize to be our duty.

That is to say that human excellence is the product of co-operation between God and man (§ 7).

The letter of moral instruction, if it exists in the absence of the Holy Spirit's aid, kills because it makes sin known rather than avoided, and increased rather than diminished (§ 8). For what is now added is the consciousness of having actually transgressed our duty.

DIVISION 2

The Bearing of this Doctrine of Grace on human selfsufficiency (§§ 9-20).

The Christian doctrine, then, is that Grace is the remedy for human inability to fulfil the moral ideal. What had to be brought home to man was the consciousness of his moral weakness. This consciousness was created by the moral ideal which he knew but could not fulfil. And this consciousness of weakness should drive him to take refuge in the treasures of the Divine mercy: that is, in Grace (§ 9).

This is the teaching of S. Paul in his doctrine of the power of Christ. See, for example, Rom. vi. 3-10 (§ 10).

This Apostolic Christianity, this conception that grace precedes good works [that God does not justify the sinner because he is already true of heart, but