Cap. 6 Arg. 8 Secundo: Augustine—rebuke, original pravity, and grace infused not merely offered
Fourth, On Rebuke and Grace 5. Unbelievers and rebels argue: I would deserve rebuke if by my fault I lacked faith and obedience—if I could give or take it myself and would not, or if when God gave it I refused. But if the Lord himself prepares the will, why rebuke me? Chapter 6 Augustine answers: the first crookedness that disobeys God is from the human, who by his own evil will fell from the uprightness God first made in him. So rebuke the damnable root, that pain may birth a will to be regenerated—yet only if the one rebuked is a child of promise, so God works inwardly in him by hidden inspiration even to will. Epistle 105 is the same case. Pelagius asks: what have we done who live badly, if we never received the grace to live well? Augustine answers only that people who live badly of themselves cannot truly claim they have done no evil. A little later: let them blame themselves; they were made from the mass God justly condemned for one man's sin. In both places Augustine grants that God has denied his grace to some; that those not given it could not take it for themselves; and that original guilt and pravity are reason enough for God, of his will, to withhold Christ's grace from anyone. Note too: he does not picture saving grace as something merely offered to the human will, knocking to be let in, but as something poured in—healing and vivifying the will that receives it.
Latin
Quartum sumitur ex libro De corrept. et gratia, cap. 5, ubi increduli et rebelles hoc modo argutantur: Recte corriperer, si eam (id est, fidem et obedientiam) mea culpa non haberem; hoc est, si eam possem mihi dare vel sumere ipse, nec facerem; vel si dante Deo accipere noluissem: Verum cum ipsa voluntas a Domino praeparetur, cur me corripis? &c. Cap. 6. respondet Augustinus in hunc modum: Prima pravitas, qua Deo non obeditur, ab homine est, quia ex rectitudine, in qua eum Deus primitus fecit, sua mala voluntate decidens pravus effectus est. Corripiatur ergo origo damnabilis, ut ex dolore correptionis voluntas regenerationis oriatur; si tamen qui corripitur filius est promissionis, ut Deus in illo intrinsecus occulta inspiratione operetur et velle. Huic conjungo locum plane confimilem, ex Epistola 105. Ita objicit Pelagius: Quid nos fecimus qui male vivimus, quandoquidem gratiam unde bene viveremus non accepimus? Nihil aliud respondet Augustinus quam non posse eos veraciter dicere se nihil mali fecisse, qui de suo male vivunt. Et paulo post: Sibi hoc imputent, quia ex ea massa facti sunt, quam propter unius peccatum merito Deus justeque damnavit. Observandum est utroque in loco, concedere Augustinum, esse nonnullos quibus gratiam suam Deus negavit; porro, eos quibus non est data, non potuisse eam sibimetipsis sumere; denique, reatum et pravitatem originalem satis idoneam rationem esse, cur Deus gratiam Christi pro sua voluntate cuivis deneget. Denique illud quoque notandum, Augustinum non imaginari gratiam Christi salutiferam esse quiddam oblatum humanae voluntati, et pulsans ut intro mittatur, sed quiddam infusum et sanans ac vivificans voluntatem cui datur.