Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/71

Rh plied it. With them it is found compatible with a belief in the eternity of punishment; to John it means that since all things proceed from good, so in good they must all be one day absorbed. To this consummation he loves to apply the text, Ero mors tua, mors; morsus tunsero, inferne. To find the cause of sin in God s work he pronounces to be blasphemous. Sin, he repeats, has no cause because it has no real existence. How then does it arise? The answer is given in various forms which converge upon the central thought that sin is implied in the fact of man s free will. He takes the case of two men looking at a golden vase. There is no evil in the vase, but it may excite in the one feelings only of pleasure and admiration, in the other the passion of covetousness. The one receives the simple impression of a beautiful object; the other colours and deforms it by his own lawless desire. But this desire, this evil, is not indigenous to man s nature; it is the result of the irregular action of his reasonable and free will. The senses are deceived by that which appears to be good, by false good, and the infection spreads inwardly to the intellect itself. J Thus the inner man wherein naturally dwelleth truth and all good, which is the Word of God, the only-begotten Son of God, becomes corrupt and sins. But this process does not originate in evil. The bodily sense does not desire a thing because it is evil but because it has the show of goodness. No vice is found but is the shadow of some virtue. Pride for instance is a perversion