. As an adversary of Felagius, he denounced the
freedom of the human will; but it is obvious, after
a]', that his w;arfare, in reality, is not against the
perfect free agency, but against the self-sufficiency,
of man. It was much the fashion of that age to
question the necessity of a preventive grace. The
spiritual influences of God, it was imagined, were to
be earned by works positively meritorious, or by tem-
pers and dispositionsr, which might duly render d>e
man an object of Divine favour ; so that our nature
might, either be invested, as it were, with a strict
legal title to the benefit ; or, if not, at least, with a
sort of equitable claim to it, which the bountiful
goodness of the Deity would by no means resist.
Condignity was the term invented by the schools to
indicate the higher of these two moral conditions ;
the lower was denoted by the word amgruity. In the

8*



90 LIFE OF WICLIF.
one case, the man is actually worthy of the grace of
God ; in the other, he is fitly prepared for its reception.
These fancies were, both of them, repudiated and
condemned by Bradwardine ; as they are, at this day,
by our own Church. According to our theology, the
fittest preparation for the influences of the Spirit of
holiness, is a contrite acknowledgment of our own
vMworthiness. '* The meritorious dignity of doinff
well, we utterly renounce j"* for it invests man wito
the right to bargain with his Maker. The notion of
tcngruityme, as decidedly, reject; for, as Bmdwar-
dine observes, it represents the Holy One a« disposing
of his favours for a cheap and vile consideration.
