e not fallen upon the soul in vain. The free-will
coalesces with the renovated intelligence and sensibility, and the man
"has root in himself." The blossom gradually yields to the fruit, and the
germ of true holiness is formed in the soul. This consists in the
voluntary exercise of the mind, in obedience to the knowledge and the love
of God, and in the permanent habit formed by the repetition of such
exercises. Hence, in the great theandric work of regeneration, we see the
part which is performed by God, and the part which proceeds from man.

This shows an absolute dependence of the soul upon the agency of God. For
without knowledge the mind can no more perform its duty than the eye can
see without light; and without a feeling of love to God, it is as
impossible for it to render a spiritual obedience, as it would be for a
bird to fly in a vacuum. Yet this dependence, absolute as it is, does not
impair the free-agency of man. For divine grace supplies, and must supply,
the indispensable conditions of holiness; but it does not produce holiness
itself. It does not produce holiness itself, because, as we have seen, a
necessary holiness is a contradiction in terms.

Is it not evident, then, that those who assert the impossibility of a
divine influence, on the ground that it would destroy the free-agency of
man, have proceeded on a wonderful confusion of the phenomena of the human
mind? Is it not evident that they have confounded those states of the
intelligence and the sensibility, which are marked over with the
characteristics of necessity, with those states of the will which
inevitably suggest the ideas of freedom and accountability? But, strange
as it may seem, the philosophers who thus shut the influence of the Divine
Being out of the spiritual world, because they cannot reconcile it with
the moral agency of man, do not always deny the influence of created
beings over the mind. On the contrary, it is no uncommon thing to see
philosophers and theologians, who begin by denying the influence of the
Divine Spirit upon the human mind, in order to save the freedom of the
latter, end by subjecting it to the most absolute dominion of facts; and
circumstances, and motives.

Section III.

The Augustinian Platform, or view of the relation between the divine
agency and the human.

The doctrine of Augustine, like that of Pelagius, was developed from the
individual experience and consciousnes