True virtue, or right moral action.
The next question is, what is true virtue, or right moral action?
By moral action is meant the act of mind in choosing, in distinction from intellectual and other acts of mind.
The Calvinists, both old and new school, teach that [pg 011] true virtue, or right moral action in man, is choosing to obey God's laws after regeneration takes place. Previous to regeneration, every choice is sin and has no moral goodness or rectitude. Thus truth, honesty, justice, self-denial for the good of others, obedience to parents, are all sin in an unregenerate mind, and true virtue in the regenerate mind.
The Antinomian Calvinist goes so far as to claim that every choice of a regenerate mind is right and holy, just as every choice of the unregenerate is sin. Thus the practice of the most hideous vices and crimes becomes virtue in the regenerate.
But all other Calvinists maintain that after regeneration we can and do sin, though previous to this change no truly virtuous act is ever performed.
The Arminians hold that true virtue consists in obeying God's laws, without reference to the question of regeneration. They do not hold, as do all Calvinists, that all the doings of the unregenerate are sinful, and thus have no promise or encouragement in the Bible as having an influence to secure regeneration.
Chapter IV. The Difficulties Involved in the Augustinian Theory.
The difficulties involved in the Augustinian theory of “the origin of evil,” result from these facts. Our only idea of a benevolent being is that wherever he has the power to produce either happiness or misery, [pg 012] he prefers to make happiness. Our only idea of a malevolent being is that wherever he has this power he prefers to make misery.