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innate freedom” were often merciful, discreet, chaste, and temperate, he answered that these
so-called virtues were sins, because they did not spring from faith. He admits that the heathen
can perform certain acts which are in themselves good and from a lower point of view even
praiseworthy, but yet considers these deeds, as the deeds of unregenerate persons, to be sin,
because they do not spring from the motive of love to God or of faith, and do not answer to the
right purpose, the glory of God.[Cf. Polman, De Predestinatieleer van Augustinus, Thomas van
Aquino en Calvijn, pp. 77 f.; Shedd, History of Christian Doctrine II, pp. 75 f.] He denies that such
deeds are the fruit of any natural goodness in man.
3. THE VIEW THAT DEVELOPED DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.
During the Middle Ages the
Augustinian antithesis of sin and grace gave way to that of nature and grace. This was based on
another antithesis which played an important part in Roman Catholic theology, namely, that of
the natural and the supernatural. In the state of integrity man was endowed with the
supernatural gift of original righteousness, which served as a bridle to hold the lower nature in
check. As the result of the fall, man lost this supernatural gift, but his real nature remained or
was but slightly affected. A sinful bias developed, but this did not prohibit man from producing
much that was true, and good, and beautiful. However, without the infusion of the grace of
God, all this did not suffice to give one a claim to life eternal. In connection with the antithesis
of the natural and the supernatural, the Roman Catholic Church developed the distinction
between the moral virtues of humility, obedience, meekness, liberality, temperance, chastity,
and diligence in what is good, which men can gain for themselves by their own labors, and with
the timely aid of divine grace; and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which are
infused into man by sanctifying grace. Anabaptism and Socinianism suffer from the same
antithesis, but with the distinction that the former exalts grace at the expense of nature, while
the latter exalts nature at the expense of grace.
4. THE POSITION OF THE REFORMERS AND OF REFORMED THEOLOGY.
On this, as on some
other points of doctrine, Luther did not entirely escape the leaven of Roman Catholicism. While
he did return to the Augustinian antithesis of sin and grace, he drew a sharp distinction
between the lower earthly sphere and the higher spiritual sphere, and maintained that fallen
man is by nature capable of doing much that is good and praiseworthy in the lower or earthly
sphere, though he is utterly incapable of doing any spiritual good. With an appeal to Augustine
the Augsburg Confession teaches “that man’s will hath some liberty to work a civil
righteousness, and to choose such things as reason can reach unto; but that it hath no power to
work the righteousness of God.”[Art. XVIII.] The Article contains a quotation from Augustine, in
which many of the good works pertaining to the present life, which the natural man can do, are
named. Zwingli conceived of sin as pollution rather than as guilt, and consequently regarded
the grace of God as sanctifying, rather than as pardoning, grace. This sanctifying influence,