Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

ON THE CONSEQUENT SAVING WILL AND ON PREDESTINATION.

ARTICLE I.

Reprobation is to be attributed not to the antecedent, but to the consequent will of God.

There is no positive reprobation antecedent to the foreseeing of sin.

« From the very nature of God's saving will it follows that, 1° the doctrine of the heretics who are commonly called supralapsarians is plainly impious, and among these the doctrine of Calvin himself, by which they hold that God, antecedently to any foreseeing of evil merit, even of original sin itself, by an absolute decree destined to eternal ruin the men who perish, in order to manifest his justice in them; 2° likewise the doctrine of an absolute and antecedent decree of reprobation is to be condemned, considered together with the execution of this decree, as it was declared by the Calvinists in their synod of Dort and by the Jansenists. »

From what we have demonstrated in the preceding chapter concerning the antecedent will by which God wills the eternal salvation of all men, it follows closely and necessarily that there is no will in God by which he antecedently to the foreseeing of sin should will the eternal damnation of any man. Therefore the treatment of this will of the just and holy God, which, pertaining solely to the consequent will, is called reprobation, is immediately connected with what precedes. But the chief reason for prefacing in this chapter the doctrine of reprobation is for us the intimate bond between the true and genuine concept of reprobation and the declaration of the manner in which the consequent saving will of God, the particular one, stands, and predestination to eternal life: which declaration of predestination is the aim and the subject of this whole chapter. In this first article, therefore, we shall indicate and exclude false notions of reprobation, by which the doctrine of predestination itself is either wholly perverted or at least its declaration is presented less sincerely; and with the false notions excluded, a true concept of reprobation will follow of itself, on which nearly the whole declaration of predestination is sustained and governed.

I. First we shall sincerely set forth both the opinions of the supralapsarians and of the infralapsarians, and then, from the principles already laid down, we shall demonstrate the impiety of these same opinions.

1°. The heresy of Calvin on predestination and reprobation, as he explained it both elsewhere and most of all in Institution. l. III. cc.21-24., comes back to these heads. a) Some men are created for eternal life, others for eternal damnation: « therefore, he says, insofar as each is created for one or the other end, so we say that one is predestined either to life or to death » l. c. c. 21. n. 5. This predestination and ordination of God to eternal death, therefore, no less than to life, is contained in the very divine plan of creating man. Hence b) the ordination to death is not consequent upon sin, but rather the very sin of Adam and the ruin of the human race in him is an effect consequent upon and proceeding from that very antecedent predestination of many to eternal death. Calvin calls it a cold fancy that God did not, by the very plan by which he willed to create the first man, ordain him to sin, and did not by the same antecedent plan predestine the ruin of the human race and the eternal death of all who perish. « If such a cold fancy is accepted, he says, where will be that omnipotence of God which, according to his secret plan, which depends on nothing else, governs all things..... A horrible decree, I confess; yet no one will be able to deny that God foreknew what outcome man would have, before he founded him, and therefore foreknew, because he so ordained by his decree..... Nor ought it to seem absurd, what I say, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man and the ruin of his posterity in him, but also dispensed it by his own choice » c. 23. n. 7. Further, c) the execution of this decree is such that God, by his will, which is the necessity of things, antecedently to the elect grants the calling to faith and in it justification (the external declaration of righteousness); antecedently he denies all graces to the reprobate and hardens them into impiety. Faith and the other gifts, however, in the elect do not have the character of merit; but they are symbols and testimonies of the antecedent election: likewise in the reprobate unbelief and sins are signs of antecedent reprobation. « In the elect we establish the calling and justification as a testimony and symbol of the election to be manifested... thus, by excluding the reprobate either from knowledge of his name or from the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, he reveals to them, as it were by these marks, what judgment remains for them » c. 21. n. 7. « Those whom therefore he created for the shame of life and the destruction of death, that they might be instruments of his anger and examples of severity, these he now deprives of the faculty of hearing his word, now makes more blind and stupefied by its preaching » c. 24. n. 12. « Nor indeed is it probable in itself that man brought destruction upon himself by the permission of God alone, without any ordination..... I will not hesitate therefore, with Augustine (de Gen. ad litt. VI. 15.), simply to confess that the will of God is the necessity of things»¹ c. 23. n. 8.

Nevertheless Calvin not infrequently, in other places, where he treats of the cause of sins and of the death of men, considers their proximate cause, which according to him is the corruption of nature and the necessity of sinning introduced through original sin. This doctrine gave many Calvinists, who were ashamed of the impiety of their master, grounds for denying that Calvin was in the heresy of the antelapsarians, and it made it probable to some Catholics, such as Honoratus Tournely (De reprob. art. 2.), that he « at times passed over to the side of the postlapsarians. » But Calvin himself protests against this softening of his heresy in the most explicit words. « Since the reprobate do not obey the word of God once revealed to them, this is rightly imputed to the corruption of their heart; yet let it be added at the same time that they are given over to this corruption because, by a just but inscrutable judgment, they were raised up to have his glory illustrated by their damnation » c. 24. n. 14; cf. c. 23. n. 9. Thus the proximate cause of sins in the reprobate is assigned by Calvin to a nature corrupted and infected through the sin of Adam; but the supreme cause, which predestines both the sin of Adam and the depravity of the posterity, is God himself. What more impious doctrine, more repugnant to Scripture and to all revelation, or indeed to the very light of reason, by which we understand the divine attributes of holiness, goodness and justice, could be devised? See Petav. l. X. c. 6. sqq.

2°. We shall reduce the infralapsarian doctrines, as they were declared in the Synod of Dort by the Gomarists, or Counter-Remonstrants, against the Arminians, or Remonstrants, in the years 1618 and 1619, to a few heads, noting at the same time how far Jansenius, in his Augustinus P. III. de Grat. Christi l. IX. and X., agrees with them.

a) The decree of election and reprobation is referred to men who are all liable to damnation through the sin of Adam. So teach the canons of Dort, ch. I. art. 1-6. But concerning the decree antecedent to the very foreseeing of original sin they say nothing; for they neither dared to condemn the author of their sect, nor to approve him.

Jansenius, concerning the predestination and reprobation of angels and men in the state of innocence, seems to retain orthodox doctrine, if you remove his errors about the state of integral nature, in which grace would have been natural, and the consequent manner of speaking about predestination, which is almost Pelagian.

b) Further, the same Calvinists teach: from that condemned mass God did not only decree gratuitously to save some; but he also decreed to save them gratuitously, with no account taken of faith, obedience, or holiness as causes or conditions without which not (c. I. art. 8-10; Doctr. damn. art. 5.). God decreed by his mere just will to leave all the other men in the fall of Adam and in the state of damnation, and to pass them over in the communication of grace necessary for faith and conversion» c. I; Doctr. damn. art. 8.

Jansenius differs only in this, that he does not deny the merit of good works, nor does he deny that temporary faith and sanctification are granted to the reprobate. Nevertheless, not only predestination to grace (as all Catholics teach), and predestination to glory (which some Catholics hold), according to Jansenius were made by God by antecedent will and with no account taken of merits; but also the reprobation of all who perish, and indeed positive reprobation, insofar as it is exclusion from eternal life and condemnation to the punishment of loss, was made by antecedent decree; namely, God, having foreseen the ruin of human nature in Adam, decreed to leave all of them in the condemned mass, out of which they are not rescued either through the remission of original sin or through temporary justification. « Positive reprobation, says Jansenius, is to be understood in such a way that by this very fact he willed positively to exclude the others, passed over (in predestination), from eternal life... which surely is nothing other than to will to damn, insofar as exclusion from eternal life and from the kingdom of God is the most grievous damnation of a rational creature... Original sin is the cause of positive reprobation, by which, as unworthy, one is repelled from the benefit of eternal life, whether that little one or adult is, or is to be justified for a time, or will remain in iniquities for his whole life. For in order that someone be freed from the mass of perdition, so that he does not perish, and is not considered to be excluded by the divine decree of reprobation from actually attaining the kingdom of God, it is not enough to have received justice for a time... Although it is true that in many the original guilt is removed in baptism... nevertheless it remains stable and most true that, on account of that guilt to which man lay subject, God willed not to decree for him the total benefit of liberation, nor to free him from perdition in such a way that he actually escapes it » Ians. de Grat. Christi l.² X. cc. 2. 3; cf. l.³ IX. c. 9. See I. B. Faure ad Enchir. Aug. c. 55.

c) Concerning the execution, from which the very reason of predestination and reprobation can be understood, the Synod of Dort teaches the following. To save only the predestined God sent his Son; for these alone Christ died; to these alone and to all God gives grace to believe, which no one can resist: therefore to these alone and to all he gives justifying faith, which once received cannot be lost; for even though the faithful sin, they cannot fall from adoption and the grace of God (ch. I; Doctr. damn. art. 2. 6; ch. II. art. 8; ch. IV. art. 12. 14; ch. V. art. 4–7.). On the other hand the reprobate, just as in the eternal decree they have been excluded from all supernatural gifts, so in execution receive no sufficient grace, so that they might be able to believe and be converted; they have been left to a corrupt nature and to the law, delivered over to malediction, so that they obtain no saving grace (ch. I; Doctr. damn. art. 8; c. III. art. 5; c. V. art. 10).

Jansenius agrees that towards the reprobate there is no will of God that they be saved; but that God wills all and only the predestined to be saved, and that Christ died solely for the salvation of the predestined; accordingly, that in the present state of fallen nature no sufficient grace is given; that the reprobate, if they are justified for a time, cannot persevere, because the efficacious help is denied them, by which one perseveres; and that the help without which one cannot, and by which the just can persevere, is given in the present state to none: and further, that those deprived of efficacious grace necessarily sin, because in fallen nature sufficient grace is not given; and that this very necessity of sinning is one of the conditions and characters of the condemned mass, which was made through original sin.

It has pleased us to set out more distinctly the doctrine of the Synod of Dort, both because it was held by the Calvinists as a genuine declaration of their own dogma, and because some Catholic theologians have not judged it correctly. Among these, Petrus Gazzaniga T. II. dissert. VI. n. 242. writes: « The Synod (of Dort) was split into two parts, namely of the Arminians and of the Gomarists.... Those who, with Francis Gomarus, won a full victory over the Arminians in the synod, descended to the sound Thomist doctrine of predestination and reprobation, few clinging to rigid Calvinism. » See, on this opinion of Gazzaniga, the judgment of Georgius Albertinus O. P. (de Deo acroas. XVII. n. 4. 5; de Gratia acroas. XV. n. 15; ad Bannezian. et Lemosiens. theologos orat. 2. n. 39; epist. 1. ad Dominic. Pellegrini c. 3).

II. We have demonstrated above that the antecedent saving will of God is not only, with regard to human nature standing and integral, but also, in this order of fallen and restored nature, entirely universal: in this fundamental doctrine itself, however, it is included, and from it it follows, that the will of justice, in which the decree of reprobation and damnation is contained, can be nothing but consequent.

1°. Therefore, given these principles, the doctrine of the supralapsarians as well as of the infralapsarians is understood to be already evidently refuted. For in each opinion a) there are plainly denied the things which are taught expressly in Scripture and the Fathers concerning the will of God that all men be saved, and concerning the death of Christ for all men. b) Then, in each opinion, the damnation of all the reprobate is concluded, antecedently to the foreseeing of human actions, in such a way that by virtue of that antecedent reprobation there is denied either every supernatural gift and even, by name, the effects of the sacraments (among the Calvinists), or at least every grace ordained to salvation and conferring the possibility of salvation (among the Jansenists). c) Consequently, in each opinion the liberty of the will, whether to good or to evil, and therefore the entire moral order, is wholly subverted; and likewise, at least by the Calvinists, is subverted the most certain head of Christian doctrine, by which we profess that the merits of supernatural virtues are true, by which eternal life is rendered as wage and crown, and the true guilt of actual sins, which are not punished because they were free in the will of the first man, but insofar as they are free in the will of each sinner.

d) In each opinion there are taught things which, when set beside especially the divine precepts, promises, threats and attestations, plainly clash with the goodness, justice, truthfulness, wisdom and holiness of God. This impiety is wholly manifest in the doctrine of the supralapsarians: for « if God is believed to condemn a man who is undeserving and subject to no sin, he is not believed to be free from iniquity » S. Aug. ep. 186. n. 20; « nor will it be called just, if the guilty man is said not to have been found punishable but to have been made so; and the injustice will be greater, if God repays punishment to one fallen, whom he is said to have predestined to ruin while standing » S. Fulgent. ad Monim. l.⁴ I. c. 22.

But the opinion of the infralapsarians might seem to someone who does not look more deeply to differ little from the opinion of certain Catholic theologians, who ascribe to the antecedent will of God, with a foreseeing of merits, the predestination and reprobation which they call negative, as they say, or even a positive exclusion from eternal life; and they think this same opinion was that of St Augustine. Nevertheless, the difference between this opinion and the doctrine of the Calvinists and Jansenists is great; not so much in this, that Catholics call that antecedent reprobation negative, while heretics call it positive (for this is not clear enough in the explanations of all those Catholics): but the difference stands out far more clearly in that the heretics defend antecedent reprobation in such a way that α) they expressly exclude the saving will of God and the death of Christ for the salvation of the reprobate; that β) they exclude for the reprobate either all grace or at least sufficient grace and the possibility of attaining salvation; that γ) they deny all merely sufficient grace, and further introduce necessity both into good acts under efficacious grace and into evil ones under the dominion of concupiscence, and expressly affirm that God, under the threat of his wrath and of eternal punishment, commands the reprobate impossible things, and that in these things a man sins necessarily yet damnably. But all those Catholics, of whom we shall speak later, condemn these things and deny that they follow from their own principles. Catholics therefore freely defend their own opinion of antecedent negative reprobation; nor is it right to confuse it with the opinions of the heretics. This does not, however, prevent those who think it false from setting forth their reasons with the same freedom, and from asserting and vindicating the contrary opinion from all⁵, the theological principles available to them; as we shall endeavour to do below.

2°. The doctrine of the heretics is convicted of manifest impiety from the heads which we have touched on in passing; moreover, it has been explicitly refuted, and « what the Catholic understanding holds concerning those whom we believe to be predestined to destruction » (S. Fulg. 1. I. c. 28. ad Monim.) has been clearly declared in those ecclesiastical documents by which either the doctrine of Augustine was defended against the slanders and difficulties raised about this matter, or in the fifth and ninth centuries the predestinarian heresy was attacked and condemned. The Council of Orange II, can. 25., has: « We also believe according to the Catholic faith that, when grace has been received through baptism, all who are baptized (therefore also those who are reprobate in God's foreknowledge) are able, with Christ's help, and ought, if they wish to labour faithfully, to fulfil those things which pertain to the salvation of the soul. But that some are predestined to evil by divine power we not only do not believe; but also, if there are some who want to believe in so great an evil, with all detestation we say anathema to them. » The councils of Carisiac. cap. I. III; Valentin. III. can. III; Trident. sess. VI. can. XVII agree. Among the Fathers, above all, are to be read St Prosper in his responses to the chapters of the Gauls and to the Vincentian objections, and St Fulgentius throughout book I to Monimus, especially from ch. 19 onwards. « The strength of obedience, says Prosper (ad cap. 12. Gall.), God has not withdrawn from anyone because he did not predestine him; but he did not predestine him because he foresaw that he would fall away from that very obedience. » Prosper's opinion is perfectly clear in his reply to obiect. XII. Vincentianam. « They went out by their will, they fell by their will, and because they were foreknown as going to fall, they were not predestined; but they would have been predestined if they were going to return and remain in holiness: and thus God's predestination is for many the cause of standing, for no one the cause of falling. » Fulgentius argues to the same effect through almost the whole of the book cited. « No one was ever wicked, except insofar as he departed from God; nor did God predestine that he would depart, although divine knowledge foreknew that he would depart.... Therefore in the holy ones the Lord will bring to perfection what he gave freely that they might be good; but what he foreknew he would give, he predestined in the eternal disposition of goodness... Moreover, in the wicked he will punish what he did not give, so that they might be bad; nor did he predestine them to iniquity at all.... And because the persevering iniquity of an evil will ought not to remain unpunished, he predestined such to destruction, because he prepared for such the punishment of just penalty.... Behold to what the Lord predestined the wicked and impious... To the destruction which the wrath of the just judge rendered to sinners, not to destruction (that is, to sin), by which the iniquity of sinners provoked the wrath of God against themselves » l. c. cap. 25. 26. As far as Augustine is concerned, Fulgentius himself, c. 28. 29., shows that this was his same doctrine concerning the reprobation of adults on account of « the persevering iniquity of an evil will. » He quotes from Augustine's book II. c. 17. de pecc. merit. et remiss. this passage: « That what was hidden may be made known, and that what did not please may be made sweet, is of the grace of God, which helps human wills; if they are not helped by it, the cause is likewise in themselves and not in God, whether the predestined to be condemned are so on account of the iniquity of pride, or, against pride, to be judged and instructed, if they are children of mercy..... Therefore refer the cause of no human fault to God, for pride is the cause of all human vices. » In these words of Augustine, Fulgentius warns that the following things are to be carefully noted. « First, that when men are not helped by God, the cause is said to be in them, not in God; then, because on account of the iniquity of pride they are said to be predestined to be condemned, which pertains to judgment, not to depravation, which pertains to sin; thirdly also consider that he admonishes that the cause of no human fault is to be referred to God, because if any iniquity of a sinner is believed to be predestined by God, the cause of that iniquity would be placed in the divine predestination, which, how impious it is and how contrary to the Christian faith, I think no Christian can fail to see. »

Therefore, the doctrine of the holy Fathers having been sufficiently explained in the very conflict with the Pelagians and Semipelagians: a) God predestines no one to evil, by which someone merits destruction; and so he does not will that in any way, but only foreknows it. Nor does God withdraw strength from anyone, so that he falls; but on the contrary he wills of himself to help all; yet that many are not actually helped, the cause is in themselves. For if it were otherwise, if God predestined iniquity, he would himself be the cause of sin; and to think this is impious and contrary to the sense of all Christians and to the Christian faith. b) In respect of destruction there is no antecedent predestination, but only consequent to the foreseeing of « persevering iniquity; » for this predestination⁶ or reprobation is an act of justice willing to punish eternally, which can be nothing but consequent upon sin (August. c. Iul. III. n. 35; de lib. arb. III. n. 51.); and in the present restored order it is nothing except consequent upon persevering and final sin. Moreover, c) not to be predestined and to be reprobated are equivalent for the Fathers; hence also there is no one to whom predestination to eternal life is denied except consequently, because he is foreseen « as going to fall and not going to return. » Hence those who are reprobate through their own fault, if they were foreseen as finally going to return, so that they could and ought to return, would no longer be reprobate but predestined.

Yet this whole Christian doctrine condemns on every side the invention of the heretics, not only of the supralapsarians but also of the infralapsarians, especially if one considers the manner in which they imagined that the execution of predestination and reprobation takes place.

Scholion. To answer the arguments which the adversaries draw from Rom. IX., the near and the remote context of Paul's discourse must be considered. For from the very context and aim of the Apostle it is made clear that there he is not speaking directly of predestination to glory considered in itself, nor of reprobation from glory; but of the gratuitous calling to faith, and of predestination consequently to grace. What is said of the hatred of Esau cannot be taken either in the literal sense or in the typical sense as antecedent reprobation from eternal life. Nor can the hardening mentioned there, or what is introduced by the comparison with clay in the potter's hand, be so taken; for in these passages the discourse is about the grace of faith, which Paul shows to be conferred by God not as a debt but out of mercy. The remaining things, concerning the stirring up of Pharaoh and concerning the vessels of wrath, are manifestly to be understood as concerning the consequent will with regard to the foreseen sin, by which will God also makes good use of evil men for his own ends. We shall explain chapter IX of Romans in another place; meanwhile, to demonstrate what we have indicated, let the inferences of the Apostle at IX. 32. 33; X. 12. sq.; XI. 20. sq. be considered; let IX. 22 likewise be compared with II. 4. 5; 2. Pet. III. 15; Sap. XI. 24–XII. 18. and with 2. Tim. II. 20. 21.

Besides chapter IX of the Romans, the Calvinists used to object the testimony of 1. Pet. II. 8: « but to those who do not believe..... a stone of stumbling and a rock of scandal, to those who stumble at the word and do not believe, unto which also they were appointed »⁷ For they said, namely with their Theodore Beza, that the reprobate were placed by God himself for this purpose, that they should not believe. But the Venerable Bede, on this passage (Opp. T. V. p. 971.), saw the entirely opposite sense in the words of St Peter: namely, that those very persons who do not believe, and by their own fault strike against the word of the Gospel and fall, are placed by God that they may believe. « By exaggerating the folly, he added: nor do they believe, unto which also they were appointed; because men are placed in this, that is, made by nature (given elevation in the present order) so that they may believe God and obey his will, as Solomon attests, when he says: Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole of man. » Cornelius a Lapide, Alliolius and others have preferred this interpretation to the rest; but in fact, especially when the Greek text is inspected, it does not seem to be the genuine sense. In the commentary under the name of Didymus (Bibl. Max. PP. T. IV. p. 323.) the placing is explained as a placing by which they placed themselves in order not to believe. « It is a voluntary placing bearing the beginning of not believing... they were placed by themselves for not believing. » Almost the same comes back to the interpretation of Oecumenius on this passage (T. II. p. 496.), according to which God is said to permit unbelief by a will consequent upon the foreseeing of sins. « Unto which also they were appointed is not said as if they had been destined to this by God; for no cause of perdition is supplied by him who wills that all men be saved; but those who fitted themselves to be vessels of wrath (cf. Rom. IX. 22; 2. Tim. II. 20. 21.), unbelief followed them too; and into the order into which they prepared themselves, into this they were placed. And if man was created free, and no force is to be applied to free will, let no one rightly complain about him who assigns to man such a lot as man has won for himself by his own works. » Moreover, it should be noted that stumbling at the cornerstone is presented in the Scriptures as the punishment of unbelief: « and it shall be... for a stone of stumbling... and they shall be broken » Is. VIII. 14. 15; « and whoever falls upon that stone shall be broken; but upon whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder » Matth. XXI. 44. If therefore they are understood to be placed, on account of unbelief, to stumbling and to breaking on the stone, that is, on account of sin, to punishment, every difficulty disappears.

For the solution of the difficulties that arise from the teaching of St Augustine, as if original sin, antecedently to any other foreseeing, were the cause of reprobation for all the reprobate, even adults, both for those to whom it is remitted and for others in whom it remains unremitted, see the notes of I. B. Faure on Enchirid. Aug. c. 53, and the third note on c. 98. We shall treat of the opinion of St Augustine on predestination and reprobation at the proper places, with the care it deserves.

No antecedent negative reprobation from eternal life is to be admitted.

« Since the will of God, asserted so that all men be saved and none of them perish, seems not to be sufficiently reconcilable with negative reprobation from heavenly glory, which many theologians have thought must be ascribed to the antecedent will of God. »

First, in this thesis we shall set out the diverse opinions of Catholic theologians on what they call antecedent negative reprobation; then, from the teaching of the Scriptures on the antecedent will of God that all men be saved, and from the explanations of the Fathers, we shall demonstrate that no such antecedent reprobation can be admitted. Although in this matter, as in the connected questions on predestination, grace and free will, all Catholics acknowledge many things authentically defined by the Church, and in these matters of faith there is unanimous agreement of all; yet there are not a few matters which the Church, even when appealed to for her judgment, has not wished to define in either direction, and in these, with faith and charity preserved, there can be some diversity of opinions. Among these opinions, indeed, that must surely be followed which coheres with the revealed truths or with theologically certain principles and can be demonstrated as true from them; but opinions which can be clearly shown to contradict even a single theologically certain principle are to be set aside.

As for the sequence of the whole treatise, the objective order of things would seem to require that predestination be treated first and reprobation after it. But, as I said above, since it follows most clearly for us from the principles on the antecedent saving will already demonstrated what is to be thought about reprobation, and with the false concept of reprobation removed the true teaching on predestination is very easily demonstrated; therefore, in the inverted order, we first inquire in this thesis into reprobation, and demonstrate the falsity of the opinion which is necessarily connected with the teaching that predestination to glory is absolutely antecedent to the foreseeing of merits.

I. Theologians who hold that predestination to glory, that is, the absolute decree in the divine mind of conferring eternal glory on angels and men, belongs to the antecedent will prior to all foreseeing of free merits, do not all explain or defend this their opinion in the same way.

1°. There are some among them who think that just as the predestination of the angels was made and completed before the foreseeing of the good or evil use of free will, so also the predestination of men was made and completed absolutely antecedently and independently of the foreseeing of all created acts, even of original sin itself. If we now speak of the predestination of men alone, leaving aside the predestination of the angels and of Christ as man, about whose order others think otherwise, some of those theologians set up this order of the divine decrees. a) The first act of the divine will concerning men to be saved was love, by which God willed and intended to give them glory by an absolute and efficacious will. b) By that gratuitous and absolute decree God not only willed glory indefinitely for his elect; but he also prepared it for each one at a certain and defined degree, by the same act and in the same manner pre-ordaining that variety of mansions which Christ said are in the kingdom of his Father: for that whole elect city was chosen so that it might be one bride of Christ, who afterwards is prepared through grace just as she was chosen; and this is consonant with the perfection of that kingdom, in which nothing ought to be except by singular (antecedent) divine predefinition. Thus c) to those predestined to a certain degree of glory God then, by an absolute and efficacious will, predefines all meritorious acts with all their circumstances, so that the merits correspond exactly to the degree of glory predestined. d) So that these predefined good works and merits may come about in time, God at last prepares efficacious graces, with which (either middle knowledge or knowledge of simple intelligence, according to the different opinion of those theologians on the efficacy of grace) he infallibly foresees that those works and predefined merits are connected. See Suarez de Praedest. l. I. c. 8. sqq. et alibi; Didacum Alvarez de Auxil. disp. 37.

Indeed, besides this absolutely antecedent predestination, there is no other according to the opinion of all these authors; and by this absolute decree, before the foreseeing of any acts of creatures, all those to be saved are predestined. Hence it necessarily follows — and the authors themselves profess this as most true, and prove it from the very nature of predestination — that all the others who were to be created besides those antecedently elected were passed over, as they say, or not comprehended in predestination to eternal life, antecedently and independently of every foreseeing of sins, whether absolute or conditional, even of original sin itself. Indeed, they think the permission of sins, on account of which angels and men are positively reprobated and damned, is an effect certainly following necessarily from that absolutely antecedent negative reprobation. They do not call the reprobation negative in the sense that there is no positive act in God; for although some seem to conceive it as non-predestination, as a mere negation or absence of the act of predestining — a negation of this kind is also made with regard to men who are merely possible — yet the more sincere admit that it is a positive act, and that God positively wills that all those men not be predestined, or, as others speak more clearly, not be admitted to the heavenly kingdom, or be excluded from glory as from an undue benefit. But because reprobation, they say, can be taken as rejection from an undue good, or as rejection from a good and at the same time as condemnation to punishment, they call this second reprobation positive, which all Catholics acknowledge presupposes the foreseeing of fault; the former they have been pleased to call negative¹. Thus they say God conceives this *negative reprobation or exclusion from the undue good from himself, no fault of man being presupposed.

Let us hear one or another. « First conclusion: the eternal reprobation of God includes a positive act by which he willed not to admit certain persons to eternal life.... Second conclusion: if exclusion from the heavenly kingdom is considered insofar as it formally has the character of a pain of loss, it presupposes a fault... Third conclusion: the positive act by which God from eternity willed not to admit certain persons into his kingdom was not conditional, but absolute, antecedent in the order of reason to the foreknowledge of the future evil use of free will, on the hypothesis that the order of things would be set up in such a way.... The truth of this conclusion rests chiefly on that opinion which asserts that there is no cause on our side with respect to the whole of reprobation..... If therefore there is no cause of reprobation, then reprobation does not depend upon a foreseen evil use of free will, even as a condition sine qua non; then it implies an absolute act in God. » Thus Didac. Alvarez disput. 109. n. 5.

Suarez is somewhat more timid; for he wished to leave himself an open path for reconciling contradictories, namely for composing such an absolutely antecedent reprobation of all who perish with the sincere antecedent will of God that all these men be saved. But once the principle is admitted that the absolute predestination of all the saved to glory is completed antecedently and without regard to the foreseeing of the acts of creatures, Suarez himself and all the other followers of this opinion are at last compelled to cling to the same notion of reprobation. « I judge it more probable, he says, that God in that sign (where he predestined all the saved to glory before any foreseeing of merits) did not so choose the reprobate for glory as to have a positive act of will of not choosing them, or of willing not to choose them » Suarez de Praed. l. V. c. 4. n. 5. Nevertheless, shortly before, in chapter 3, he had proved at length that it is not consonant with sound theology to affirm that God, antecedently to the foreseeing of final sin, willed some « to be excluded from the heavenly kingdom » or « not to be admitted to the kingdom » (ib. n. 13.), because this is repugnant to the antecedent will that all men be saved. We are taught, therefore, that there is no antecedent will of not admitting some to the kingdom, because that is repugnant to the universal saving will; but there is a positive antecedent will of not choosing for the kingdom all those, angels and men, who have been and will be damned. The distinction would be easy to grasp between the antecedent will of not admitting to the kingdom, or of excluding from the kingdom as punishment and vengeance, and the antecedent will of not choosing for an undue good: for it could be said that the former is repugnant, because a punishing will presupposes a fault; whereas the latter is in itself by no means repugnant, because an undue good can be denied² with no fault presupposed. But when it is now established that all men are, by God's antecedent will, destined to the undue good of the heavenly kingdom, and that God, in the words of Chrysostom, wills antecedently with « intense desire » that all obtain this undue good; how, I ask, can a positive antecedent will of not choosing for this good consist together with this will of salvation? But how this antecedent will of not choosing some is at odds with the universal saving will will appear lower down, in the other part of the thesis; for now we are confined only to the historical exposition of opinions.

2°. There are among the defenders of predestination to glory before foreseen merits others who, as regards the predestination and reprobation of angels, indeed agree with those whose opinion we have so far set forth, but think that the predestination and reprobation of men must be explained a little differently. These, namely, say it was made consequently to the foreseeing of original sin, but antecedently and independently of the foreseeing of all other actions of the created order, and in particular of all supernatural acts. These theologians think that all men who are not saved, and therefore also those to whom original sin was to be remitted and was remitted, were in this way negatively reprobated as a punishment for original sin. So they teach, with others: Did. Ruiz de Praedest. disp. XIV. sqq.; Gonetus disp. V. a. 3. etc.

Indeed, this opinion can be refuted by special arguments, especially insofar as it speaks of the negation of predestination as a punishment of original sin that is remitted and has been remitted, since from the definition of the Council of Trent, session V: « there is nothing of damnation for those who are truly buried together with Christ through baptism into death. » Nevertheless, the same common principle suffices to demonstrate its falsity: that the will of God that all men be saved is not only universal antecedently to the foreseen original sin, but also consequently to it, in this present order of fallen nature, and restored by the merits of Christ the Redeemer; indeed, the Scriptures and the Fathers speak directly of the universal saving will only of this present order, and in relation to men fallen in the first parent, as has been clearly demonstrated above (th. XLVII. XLIX. sqq.). Hence in our disputation, to keep to brevity, we shall keep directly before our eyes negative reprobation from eternal salvation, insofar as it is ascribed to the absolute antecedent will with regard to every foreseeing of works and conditions, especially as Suarez, above the rest, has sought to soften it; for the arguments which militate against this milder opinion will apply all the more strongly against the other, harsher forms.

II. With these things premised, we now come to the demonstration of the incompatibility of that antecedent negative reprobation with the most certain teaching on the antecedent divine will, that all men be saved. We demonstrate the incompatibility from the very nature of that negative and antecedent reprobation by four arguments: because 1° the antecedent will of denying predestination is an antecedent will of not saving; 2° because from that antecedent will of God alone, independently of all acts of the creature, the attainment of salvation would be metaphysically repugnant; 3° because it posits in God a plan of leading a man to ruin against the manifest attestations of God himself; 4° because according to the doctrine of the Fathers, negative reprobation, just as positive, is not of the antecedent will of God but consequent upon the foreseeing of final sin.

1°. The first argument is entirely clear. For a) while by an absolute will, before any foreseeing of what the creatures would do, God predestines all and each of those to be saved to glory, and so completes the number of the predestined, at the same time, in the same sign, he conceives from himself and antecedently to every foreseeing of works concerning all the others who are to be created a positive absolute will of not electing them; this will of not electing seems most manifestly to be a will of not saving them. But a conditional will of saving is repugnant to an absolute antecedent will of not saving; therefore, with regard to all these who are antecedently not elected, there manifestly seems to be no antecedent conditional will of God that they be saved. The minor premise is evident; the major is granted even by Alvarez, Gonet and others. Hence those authors concede, indeed even contend, that there is no properly so-called antecedent and conditional will of salvation with regard to the angels and reprobate men, such as we proved in the preceding theses. They would wish, they say, God's salvation of all these as some good, were it not that by the actual salvation of all the greater beauty of the universe and the manifestation of divine justice in the reprobate and the splendour of mercy in the elect would be prevented; and this velleity³ they themselves call the antecedent will of the salvation of all; but because that beauty of the universe demands that not all be saved⁴, God, antecedently to the foreseeing of all works, by an absolute will, which they themselves call consequent (namely, consequent upon the requirement of the beauty of the universe), wills that not all, but only those who are actually saved, be saved. See above th. XLVII. n. II. But that God wills, by an antecedent will and under the condition of cooperation on the part of men, the salvation of all adults and of all infants under other conditions of secondary causes, and that this distinction of the saving will into antecedent and consequent, which these authors introduce, is contrary to the explanation of Scripture and the Fathers, has been set out most fully above.

Therefore, supposing the genuine sense of the antecedent will, that all men be saved, which Suarez confesses and defends with us, the major premise of our argument must be demonstrated against him: namely, that the antecedent will of not electing, or of not predestining, asserted by him is an antecedent will of not saving.

That antecedent will of not predestining is not only a will of not predestining absolutely before foreseen merits, so that God by an antecedent will wills predestination for men under the condition that they cooperate with the grace to be given; it is a will absolutely and simply of denying them predestination. For if God were said only to will to predestine some before foreseen merits, and in the others to order predestination to glory according to foreseen merits; this would be the opinion of Ambrose Catharinus, which Suarez and the other defenders of the same opinion certainly reject. Moreover, if that were the sense, the whole business of predestination to glory would not be settled in that sign antecedent to all foreseeing; likewise, from that negative reprobation there would not follow an infallible loss of salvation; and so, in the end, the actual attainment of salvation would not be repugnant to the same negative reprobation. But all these things are contrary to the principles of Suarez and his followers. Undoubtedly, therefore, that positive will of not electing is a will absolutely and in no way of electing to eternal salvation. But he who wills, by an antecedent and absolute will, that is, independently of all conditions, that another not be elected to some good, cannot at the same time will to confer that good on him under the condition that he himself does what he can and ought. Therefore that antecedent positive will 'of not electing to salvation is a positive will of absolutely not conferring salvation, or of not saving. And so, since the antecedent will of not saving is manifestly repugnant to the antecedent will of saving; the antecedent will that all be saved, such as the Scriptures and the holy Fathers proclaim, cannot consist with that antecedent will of negative reprobation.

b) The contradiction between the antecedent will of God that all be saved and that antecedent negative reprobation can be proved from the very words of Suarez. He himself asserts first that « the election of the predestined is to be understood by way of a singular predefinition, which God had from himself alone and from his mere good pleasure (before any foreseeing of merits), absolutely intending such an eternal kingdom consisting of such persons and members. » Then, lest he close off for himself every path to defending the universality of the saving will, he concludes against the principles of the whole system thus. « By the force of this election (before any foreseeing of merit) that number of the saved remains so certain, both formally (as to the number in itself) and materially (as to the determinate persons and the determinate degrees of each), that it cannot be diminished; yet it does not pertain to the efficacy of that will that it cannot be increased, because God from himself did not will positively to exclude all the others from the kingdom; and therefore together with that election God had a true will of saving others, not however absolute but under the condition, if it did not stand in their way » l. I. c. 12. n. 16. We accept the author's admission that God would not have a will of saving others if that number predestined antecedently could not be increased. But it is evident that that number can no more be increased than diminished. I prove this from the principles of Suarez himself. For in this very place he asserts that what is antecedently predefined is « such a kingdom consisting of such persons and members. » Now by his principles, the number of citizens belongs also to the predefined beauty of that kingdom, so that there are neither more nor fewer. For according to his doctrine the angels and men to be saved are predestined each in his own degree, and at the same sign, « from a reason often given, he says, that God intends the kingdom of the elect by way of one body or heavenly city; therefore he at the same time intends also all the members of which such a body consists; for from their multitude and variety the beauty of the whole body results » ibid. n. 4. Therefore it is false that God wills to add more members to this body predefined antecedently, if it does not stand in the way through the men themselves; and it is false that, besides those predestined by an antecedent will, God in that sign of reason wills to save still others, if it has not stood in the way through them. Indeed, from the express opinion of Suarez it was necessary that the whole number of the saved be concluded by antecedent predestination, and that no one enter it who was not elected by that antecedent predefinition. « In the state of glory, he says, the whole number of the saved will be from the direct and absolute intention of God; therefore it was necessary that God have this from himself (before foreseen merits) concerning all who were to be citizens in that kingdom........ and this is consonant with the perfection of that kingdom, in which nothing ought to be except by singular (antecedent) divine predefinition » ib. c. 8. n. 45. But if it was necessary that God have that antecedent absolute intention concerning all the citizens of that kingdom, and if nothing there ought to be except by such predefinition; then by this very predefinition the number is so closed that no one who is not so predestined, or negatively reprobated, can enter into that number; and so the number antecedently predefined can be neither diminished nor increased. In no way, therefore, can that antecedent negative reprobation be conceived without its being understood, by that very fact, that the number of the saved is so closed by God's antecedent will that it cannot be increased. This being supposed, Suarez himself is compelled to admit that the antecedent saving will is not universal. And indeed it is the same thing: not to will some men to be comprised in the closed number of the saved, which no other can now enter, and not to will to save all those not comprised. But it has been demonstrated by us, and Suarez himself demonstrates it admirably in book IV, that God by an antecedent sincere will of prosecution wills all men to be saved; therefore God, by his antecedent will, before any foreseeing, does not reprobate any man from eternal beatitude by that negative reprobation.

2°. God, by his antecedent will, sincerely wills all men to be saved under the condition that the men themselves (speaking of adults) cooperate; and by that same antecedent will he also wills that they cooperate and actually be saved. Therefore God, from himself, has no such absolute antecedent will with regard to any man, from which alone, antecedently and independently of every foreseeing of secondary causes, it would follow with metaphysical certainty that the man is not to be saved, and with which the actual attainment of salvation would be repugnant. But from that antecedent will of God of denying predestination alone, independently of all future acts of the man, it is metaphysically certain that the man is not to be saved, and with such an antecedent will of God the attainment of salvation is metaphysically repugnant. Therefore God, by the very fact that by an antecedent will he wills all men to be saved, has no such antecedent will of denying predestination with regard to any man at all. And if God from himself had such an antecedent will with regard to some man, by that very fact he would not will by his antecedent will that that man be saved.

In other words, we can say the same thing. It is indeed impossible to understand that God, from himself and abstracting from all secondary causes, absolutely wills something with which the salvation of a man is repugnant, and yet by his antecedent will wills that man's salvation. But negative reprobation is such an absolute antecedent will of God, from which alone, antecedently and independently of every foreseeing of secondary causes, it follows with metaphysical certainty that men so reprobated are not to be saved, and with which the attainment of salvation is repugnant. Therefore, by the very fact that the antecedent will of God to save all men is certain, there is no antecedent negative reprobation from eternal beatitude. The minor premise is manifestly proved both in itself and from the principles of Suarez himself and of his followers. Undoubtedly it is metaphysically repugnant that one not predestined be saved; and for those negatively reprobated, before any foreseeing of what they themselves will do, predestination, which is called before foreseen merits, is denied to them by the absolute will of God; and every predestination after foreseen merits is denied by these theologians; therefore, from that antecedent will of God alone denying predestination before the foreseeing of works, it is metaphysically repugnant that any of them be saved. The theologians whom we are attacking are themselves compelled to confess this. « I say, it is not in the power of man, with non-election by God, or with non-predestination, or, what is the same, with negative reprobation, actually to posit or to compose his own eternal salvation. » So Suarez, l. V. c. 8. n. 8.

Therefore, according to this opinion, God by his antecedent will wills that with which the attainment of salvation is repugnant, namely the denial of predestination with regard to all who are not predestined; therefore it follows from this doctrine that the antecedent saving will pertains only to the predestined. How false this is has been demonstrated; and these very theologians concede that it is false. Therefore no antecedent negative reprobation can be admitted, because the antecedent will of the salvation of all men must be admitted.

3°. These theologians teach that God, toward men to whom by his antecedent will he has denied predestination to glory, does not indeed exercise that special providence which belongs only to those antecedently predestined; yet they do not deny them sufficient graces by which they may avoid evil and do good; that they do not do good is their own fault. So indeed Suarez and his disciples teach; for Alvarez (disp. 113.) and others also think that sufficient graces are denied to many by the divine counsel before the foreseeing of free acts, and so by that will which we call antecedent. But whatever they say about sufficient graces, it seems most manifest that, the positive antecedent denial of election to glory being supposed, God must, for the sake of himself and his immutable destination, provide that none of these enter the number of the saved. Therefore, since that predestination and negative reprobation precede every decree concerning the distribution of graces, this distribution toward the non-elect must necessarily by God be made in such a way that it grants none of them any grace with which he foresees final perseverance will be joined. The very foreseeing, therefore, that a man would cooperate with some grace unto final perseverance would be, by virtue of that negative reprobation, for God a reason not only sufficient but necessary for denying that grace to all those men. Nor do those doctors shrink from this inevitable consequence. Let them speak for themselves. « Election to the end is the reason for giving efficacious or infallible means to it; therefore the negation (antecedent) of that election will be, in its own way, the reason for not giving congruous and infallible means for attaining that end; nor does a new difficulty remain in this » Suarez l. V. c. 7. n. 14. In the most crude words Gonet asserts, disp. V. n. 37. 38, that God first intends as the end exclusion from eternal glory, and then, as the means to obtain that proposed end, intends the negation of efficacious grace and the permission of sin never to be remitted⁵.

Yet such an antecedent will, in a good and merciful God who so often swears by himself that he does not wish the death of the sinner, and does not wish that anyone perish, seems unworthy, and cannot in any way be reconciled with the saving and active will by which he directs all his graces, so far as lies in him, so that all attain salvation. For what, I ask, do those divine exhortations mean, addressed to all men without exception and especially to sinners placed on the road to perdition, which seem to be the lamentations of God and are most truly the tears of the Son of God incarnate over the perdition of the reprobate? « Is it my will that the wicked should die, says the Lord God?.. make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit, and why will you die, house of Israel? For I do not wish the death of the dying » etc. Ezech. XVIII. 23. sq. « You have mercy on all, because you can do all things, and you overlook the sins of men for the sake of repentance; for you love all things that exist, and you hate none of the things you have made.. and you spare all, since they are yours, O Lord, who love souls. O how good and sweet is your spirit, O Lord, in all things! and therefore you correct by degrees those who go astray, and admonish and address them concerning the sins they commit, that, leaving their wickedness, they may believe in you, O Lord » (these words are said with reference to the destruction of the impious Canaanites and Egyptians) Sap. XI. 21. sq. « If you tormented the enemies of your servants, and those condemned to death, with such great care, giving time and place by which they might be changed from their malice » ib. XII. 10. 20. « The Lord does not delay (concerning the second coming and judgment).... but acts patiently for your sake, not wishing any to perish, but all to return to repentance » 2. Pet. III. 9; Rom. II. 4. « Now therefore judge between me and my vineyard; what more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done for it? Or, when I looked for it to bring forth grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes? » Is. V. 4. « How often I have wished to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not » Matth. XXIII. 37. « Seeing the city, he wept over it, saying: If you too had known, even on this your day, the things that are for your peace; but now they are hidden from your eyes » Luc. XIX. 42. Cf. above th. XLIX. n. II. But such precepts, promises, threats and protestations, with which all the sacred documents are full, if they were directed to men antecedently, though only negatively reprobated, would seem to have no sense worthy of a good, wise, infinitely truthful God, by the same or a similar reasoning as, in the preceding thesis, we said that the positive antecedent reprobation which the heretics maintain is at odds with the divine attributes. For those precepts, promises and threats admonish all men that God is of himself most ready to perfect and give salvation under the condition that they cooperate faithfully, and that God wills this very cooperation. But if antecedently, before the foreseeing of all that men can do, there has preceded in God the will that very many not be included in the number of the saved, absolutely predestined before any foreseeing of merits; God, as has been proved above, cannot at the same time will that these enter into the number of the saved: therefore to command, to beseech, and to stir up these wretched men with promises and threats, that they may do those things by which they would be adopted into the number antecedently and immutably concluded, I do not see how this is not repugnant. Nor do I see, nor do I think our opponents would see, what exception could be made against the argument which Lessius presses. « According to the common estimation of men, it seems equal that God wills you to perish, and does not wish you to be placed in the number of his elect, nor gives you congruous grace and perseverance; for from decrees of this kind damnation follows with equal infallibility: and if one of these decrees were to be undergone, anyone would think it a matter of indifference to him which is chosen, since both are conceived before the foreseeing of works » Lessius de Praedest. sect. 2. n. 13; cf. Tertull. cont. Marc. l. IV. c. 29.

4°. Whoever reads attentively the responses of Prosper of Aquitaine to the chapters of the Gauls, II, III, VII, XII (compared with the response to objection XII of Vincent), will easily perceive that in the fifth century some were disturbed by the teaching of St Augustine, among other things also because it seemed to them, from that teaching not rightly understood, to follow that men who perish were passed over in predestination before any foreseeing of works; and from this negation of predestination they further concluded that it followed that those not predestined perish necessarily and by the will of God. Prosper plainly agrees with the critics that that teaching is absurd, and that what they inferred would follow from it; but he denies that such an antecedent negation of predestination can be ascribed to Augustine except « by calumny and a prodigious lie »; and he affirms, in every way in which he can most effectively, that the fact that someone is not predestined is entirely consequent upon the foreseen final sin of that man, and in no way from an antecedent will of God, which God would conceive from himself, not provoked by the final faults of men.

It is strange how Suarez (de Praed. l. V. c. 5. n. 7.) could have affirmed that Prosper spoke not of the denial of predestination but of positive reprobation, that is, of the decree of damnation to eternal punishment; since both the detractors and Prosper himself, in those succinct four chapters, declare at least eighteen times that they are speaking of those « who are not predestined, » « who do not pertain to predestination, » « who are not set apart from eternal perdition, » « who are not distinguished by any predestination from the sons of perdition » etc., and not once do they name reprobation or damnation by any strange term. Nay, so that Suarez's solution may be wholly refuted, Augustine's detractors and St Prosper himself expressly distinguish the denial of predestination and reprobation to punishment. They never thought that a positive reprobation to eternal punishment, but the denial of predestination to eternal life, was ascribed in Augustine's teaching to the antecedent will of God. For they said that Augustine taught that certain persons are not predestined to eternal life by the antecedent will of God; hence, however, it further followed that these men are abandoned by God and permitted to sin, and thus consequently upon sins a sentence of reprobation to eternal punishment is passed. But Prosper constantly denies that such an antecedent denial of predestination is either given or asserted by St Augustine; and he affirms that, in the same way as positive damnation follows on account of foreseen sins, the denial of predestination from the foreseeing of sins also follows. « He foreknew them as about to fall by their own will, and on this account did not distinguish them from the sons of perdition by any predestination. For how would the election foreordained in Christ have them, whom just damnation was to have as they departed from Christ? » cap. VII. Here no one can deny that by those words « how would the election foreordained in Christ have them? » is signified negative reprobation, or non-election; moreover this clause is evidently parallel with the former: « are not distinguished by any predestination from the sons of perdition; » therefore this clause also signifies negative reprobation. But this denial of distinction or of election Prosper clearly states to be on account of the foreknown ruin; and he proves that this denial of election cannot but follow, because upon that foreseeing of final ruin there follows positive reprobation itself, that is, future just damnation.

Prosper therefore expressly distinguishes between negative and positive reprobation, as more recent writers call them; but he affirms that both bear the same relation to the foreknowledge of future sins: for just as God positively condemns on account of foreseen sins, so also, only consequently upon the foreseen ruin, he denies predestination, that is, negatively reprobates. Nor does Prosper declare this once or twice, but, as I said, many times in those few chapters: he declares it not only as his own view but as the teaching of Augustine, indeed as a doctrine which no Christian could contradict: that the negation of predestination is no other, nor can it be understood to be other, than consequent upon the foreseeing of final sin. « He who ends this life alienated from grace, what else but falls into perdition? Which, since it did not escape the foreknowledge of God, without doubt he never chose, never predestined, and never distinguished from eternal perdition as one to perish. » « That those who have fallen into these evils and failed without the correction of penance did not have the necessity of perishing from the fact that they are not predestined; but for this reason they are not predestined, because they were foreknown as going to be such through voluntary transgression. » « They were not abandoned by God so that they should abandon God; but they abandoned and were abandoned, and by their own will they were changed from good to evil; and on this account, although they were reborn and justified, by him who foreknew them to be such, they are not predestined. » « Therefore he did not withdraw from anyone the strength of obedience because he did not predestine him; but he did not predestine him, because he foresaw that he would depart from obedience itself. » « They went out by will, they fell by will; and because they were foreknown as going to fall, they are not predestined: but they would be predestined if they were going to return and remain in holiness. » Thus St Prosper, ll. cc.

Scholion. The theologians with whom we dispute in this thesis constitute the order of reprobation thus: that God, in the first sign (as it is commonly said), willed to deny predestination to glory to angels and men, and intended this non-election, or, as we have heard others say, this exclusion from the number of the predestined to glory, as an end, or, as Suarez softens it, as a non-election to the end; then, in another sign, as means to the end, or more gently as the negation of the means efficacious for the end, God willed the negation of efficacious grace or of congruous grace, which he foresaw would be joined, if it were granted, with perseverance and the attainment of glory. Hence all those theologians say that the negation of efficacious or congruous grace, and the permission of sin never to be remitted, are the effect of that antecedent negative reprobation from eternal life.

1°. In this thesis we treat solely of negative reprobation from eternal glory, and we say that it does not arise from the antecedent will of God as a foreseeing of final sin: we are by no means treating of reprobation from efficacious or congruous grace, as those theologians call it; except insofar as, by the very fact that we deny the order which they assert of antecedent reprobation from glory, we also exclude their doctrine by which they contend that reprobation from grace is the effect of antecedent reprobation from glory.

The special arguments of the opponents, by which they prove that there is no cause of negative reprobation in men, are referred (in Suarez and Gonet) to the text of Rom. IX.12.13. (of which we shall speak elsewhere), and to the often repeated saying of Augustine, that he does not know why God draws this one and does not draw that one. But these and similar things might perhaps prove that there is no cause in man of reprobation, as they call it, from efficacious or congruous grace, a question of quite a different kind; but they certainly in no way suggest an antecedent negative reprobation from glory, which would be without a cause on the part of men; nor do they suggest that this reprobation from glory is the cause of reprobation from efficacious grace. Indeed, that often repeated saying of Augustine supplies one of the arguments by which it can be demonstrated that the negation of predestination to glory, arising from the antecedent will of God and without any cause on the part of men, never entered the mind of that holy Doctor. For whoever, with these theologians, thinks that the negation of efficacious or congruous grace is the effect of an antecedent negative reprobation or non-election to glory, cannot say that he does not know why God draws this one and not that one, so that he may also arrive at what he is drawn to: for in the very antecedent non-election to life the cause is evident why God does not give, or rather why, without denying himself, he cannot give, the grace with which he foresees the attainment of salvation will be joined. They cannot find the inscrutable mystery in the different distribution of graces, but solely in the absolute antecedent negation of election to eternal life, where we have shown there to be a manifest contradiction with the antecedent will of the salvation of all men. Augustine, on the contrary, proceeds in the inverse order in all the passages in which he marvels at the depth of the inscrutable judgments of God. Thus, for example, in De Corrept. et grat. n. 16. 17., to the question why many of those who believe and are baptized and live according to God are nevertheless not among the number of the finally elect, he answers not, as our opponents do, that there is no cause of this non-election apart from the free will of God; but he says the cause is that God « knew that they would not have the perseverance which leads the elect to life, and knew that they would so stand that he foresaw they would fall. » In agreement with Augustine, St Prosper also answers concerning the twelfth chapter of the Gauls: « He did not on that account withdraw from anyone the strength of obedience, because he did not predestine him; but he did not predestine him, because he foresaw that he would depart from obedience itself. » But when it is further pressed why God does not give them the grace with which he foresees perseverance will be joined, and why he permits them to fall, Augustine does not assign, as our opponents do, an antecedent non-election or exclusion from predestination as the cause of this negation of efficacious grace and of the permission of sin; but he answers that he does not know this, because it belongs to the inscrutable judgments of God. « If someone asks me here why he did not give perseverance to those to whom he gave the love by which they lived as Christians for a while, I answer that I do not know. For I do not hear this arrogantly, but acknowledging my small measure, I hear the Apostle saying: O man, who are you to answer back to God? and: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God.... Why one receives this gift and another does not receive it, I think that you too do not know, and that both of us cannot penetrate the inscrutable judgments of God here. »

2°. What, in the end, is that negation of efficacious grace, or reprobation, as they call it, from efficacious or congruous grace, together with the preparation of sufficient grace? Nothing other than a will to confer grace that is necessary and often even abundant, which, however, is foreseen as going to be lost through the fault of man, the effect intended by the antecedent will of God; together with an unwillingness to confer another grace, which is foreseen as going to be efficacious. Just as grace is not rendered to human merits but is given freely, otherwise grace is no longer grace; so also, all the more, there can be no merit in man by which the first grace is granted to him, the grace with which the consent to be joined is foreseen, and not another which is foreseen as going to be lost through the fault of man. In this sense, therefore, no preceding cause on the part of man is required why, especially, the first grace, foreseen as efficacious, is not given to him. But it must well be noted that sufficient grace, prepared for all, remains through the fault of man, and against the good pleasure of God, inefficacious and without the effect to which it is ordained by God's antecedent will.

Likewise, if a comparison is made between a man to whom there is given a grace foreseen as efficacious, although another could be granted to him which is foreseen as going to be inefficacious through his fault; and another man to whom there is granted a grace indeed sufficient, but which, through that man's fault, is foreseen as going to be lost in its effect, although from the treasuries of divine omnipotence another could be granted to him which is foreseen as going to be efficacious: the reason for this must certainly be referred to the gratuitous, wise, merciful and just economy by which God acts in the distribution of his gifts. When therefore it is asked why God, who wills all men to be saved, confers these graces rather, although he foresees they will be inefficacious through the fault of man, and does not confer others, which, foreseen as going to be efficacious, he could confer according to the greatness of his omnipotence; we shall answer with Augustine that we do not know this, and it will be enough for us to have known that there is no injustice with God.

But when the defenders of antecedent reprobation from glory wish to evade, by this retort, with Gonet (disp. V. n. 58), the unavoidable argument that is drawn against them from the universal antecedent saving will, as if the same difficulty remained of reconciling the denial of congruous grace with the universal saving will, they seek empty byways indeed; for the disparity is evident. By the antecedent will of salvation God destines to all men the necessary graces, yet in diverse modes and degrees according to the counsel of his wisdom, willing that all may use the graces bestowed and be saved through them; yet not in such a way as if he had bound himself, as it were, to indulge the perversity of men, so that whenever he sees one grace to be rejected by them he should choose another to which they will consent. « He indeed acts (God), so as to heal all things; but he acts by his own judgment, nor does he take the order of healing from the sick man « S. August. de Natura et grat. c. 27. n. 31. For the antecedent saving will is not absolute. Why it is not absolute, although it could be, this (as I have said) belongs to the judgment of God, who preferred to do good out of evils rather than not to allow evils to exist at all. O man, who are you, that you should answer God! Do not ask why God, infinitely wise, good and just Lord of his gifts, did not choose that economy which men devise for themselves; but ask why men whom God wills to be saved and to be blessed for ever in the divine beatitude, yet themselves are unwilling, and prefer earth to heaven, the briefest and most wretched pleasures to eternal joys that surpass all understanding, and honours to be laughed at, or rather lamented, to heavenly glory?!

ARTICLE II.

On the predestination of the supernatural gifts, considered universally.

On the various sense in which predestination is taken in the manner of speaking of Scripture and of the Fathers.

« The counsel of the saving will, by which God has decreed from eternity to adorn man with supernatural benefits pertaining to salvation, namely faith, justification, and glorification, by the effect itself, is called, according to the doctrine of the Scriptures and of the Fathers, and especially of Augustine, predestination, election, purpose. Whence it is demonstrated that these names, and those twin to them, are to be understood not always in one sense, but according to the nature of the benefits, now in a fuller sense, now in a less full sense. »

Preliminary notions. 1°. Predestination (προορισμός, ὁρισμός) in a generic sense may be called every counsel of God by which in eternity he disposes and wills the existence of any of his external works. For such a counsel is truly a destination in the divine mind, and, both in duration and as cause, preceding the existence of the work itself through all eternity; and so it is predestination. Thus Ambrose, in Hexaem. l. II. c. 5. n. 21., calls the idea and creative will of this universe predestination, inasmuch as it precedes « the completion of the work; » and so Dionysius also calls the divine ideas, with the will added, practical « predefinitions » or « predestinations » προορισμούς.

2°. In a more restricted sense and in common usage predestination is said only of the disposition of God's works with a view to the eternal salvation of rational creatures. Nevertheless, by Augustine and the other Fathers who followed him, God is sometimes said to predestine even to perdition and to punishment for sins, because punishment is indeed a work of God, disposed from eternity with sins foreseen; but sins can in no way be said to be predestined, because they are not works of God: « those to be damned are predestined on account of the iniquity of pride » Aug. de pecc. mer. et remiss. l. II. n. 26. « The unbelief of those who do not believe the gospel is by no means generated by the predestination of God; for God is the author of good things, not of evil. Therefore the predestination of God is always in good, either pertaining to the retribution of justice or to the donation of grace » S. Prosper ad cap. XIV Gallor. « The Lord predestined the wicked and impious to perdition, which the wrath of the just judge rendered to sinners; not to that perdition by which the iniquity of sinners provoked the wrath of God upon themselves » S. Fulgent. ad Monim. l. I. c. 26. From these things it is most clear that the Fathers never had in mind that sense of the name predestination by which the particle prae would designate antecedence not only with respect to the existence of the divine work, but also with respect to every foreseeing of a human work.

Moreover, in the more frequent and by now common usage of the Fathers, the imposition of punishment and damnation is called reprobation; but the name predestination is reserved for the disposition of God's works leading to eternal life, and to eternal life itself. Indeed, since among these works some are per se and ontologically natural, and are only external gifts of grace presupposed to the supernatural gifts (benefits reckoned per se natural being creation itself, the time and place of birth, the condition and morals of parents, a good natural disposition, and many others), therefore, from the more solemn use and manner of disputing among Augustine, whom others at least for the most part follow, predestination is considered with respect to those supernatural goods alone that are ordered to eternal salvation, which, the general foundations of redemption, the institution of the Church and of the sacraments being presupposed (for the present state of fallen nature), are prepared for individual men.

Further, the graces to which predestination refers can still be considered first, as they are prevenient, abstracting from the effect for which they are given, whether that effect is obtained or the fault of man prevents it; then as graces conjoined with the effect. Indeed, in the former sense all graces could also be called predestined, for they are truly a gift of God disposed from eternity. But since graces not conjoined with the effect, although ordained to salvation by the antecedent will of God, do not in fact lead to salvation; and since Scripture itself expressly notes this difference in distinguishing the called and the elect (Matth. XX. 16.): hence predestination is said only of the grace which obtains its effect, and of the goods themselves that are conferred through grace.

3°. Chiefly here comes into consideration the definition of predestination often repeated by Augustine. It is said first that predestination is « the preparation of grace, » which, when it is given, has in time the effect of a good work. The work itself of faith, of justification, of the increase of justice, and of perseverance, is the work of God, whether the acts of faith, charity and of all the other virtues are considered, or the habits infused in us by God are regarded. Yet this ought not to be understood as if God made acts in us without us, or as if the habit of grace were infused into adults without preceding free dispositions. The acts themselves are said to be the work of God, and we are said to be « created in Christ Jesus unto good works » (ἐπὶ ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς, ad opera bona) Eph. II. 10, inasmuch as God by his grace makes us act. « To will and to work, God works in us; not because we do not will or do not act, but because without his help we neither will anything good nor act » Aug. de grat. Christi c. 25. « Scripture for the most part speaks in such a way that what a creature does by the gift of God, God is said to do.... what you do by his gift, he is said to do; because without him you would not do it, therefore God is said to do it, when you do it » id. in Ps. 58 n. 5. (cf. supra p. 429. 430.). Therefore not only the grace which is poured into us by God without us, but also the goods which we freely do through grace, are works of God; and accordingly the disposition of these works in the foreknowledge of God, according to the sense and manner of speaking of Augustine, is predestination.

From the diversity by which the term of predestination is a work of God, it is clear that the foreknowledge which Augustine requires for every predestination, and in which God is said to dispose his future works, is not always to be understood in one and the same way, but differently and differently, according as the term to be predisposed is either a work of God alone, with no cause supposed on the part of man; or a work of God to be done by us freely with the powers of grace superadded by God; or a work of God alone, yet with our free acts presupposed as dispositions or merits required according to the order of divine providence. Therefore it is in vain that theologians contend, appealing to Augustine, that this foreknowledge presupposed in predestination is, some say, the knowledge of simple intelligence, others say middle knowledge, others say the knowledge of vision; for, as I have said, it is diverse according to the diversity of the predestined work of God.

As is now already clear from what has been said, predestination can be considered either incomplete, with respect to each supernatural work predisposed in the divine counsel for the salvation of the rational creature; or complete, as it refers to the whole series of these works of God from the first calling to the beatitude and eternal glory. Hence there is, with Augustine, a twofold definition of predestination. Of the former, considered in the incomplete manner, it is said: « in his foreknowledge, which cannot be deceived or changed, to arrange his future works, this altogether, and nothing else, is to predestine. Just as he who foresaw that someone would be chaste, although he holds this uncertain, acts so that he may be chaste; so he whom he predestined to be chaste, although he holds this uncertain, does not therefore fail to act so that he may be chaste, since he hears that by the gift of God he is to be what he will be » de Dono persev. c. 17. n. 41. To predestination considered in the second way, and fully, belongs the definition: « this predestination of the Saints is nothing other than foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits of God, by which those who are set free are most certainly set free » ib. c. 14. n. 35. It is clear that Augustine regards in recto the gift or thing predestined, which is customarily called the term of predestination, and in obliquo the person who is predestined to the gift or to the term, and who is by some called the object of predestination. St Thomas, however, in the inverse order, considers in recto the object, in obliquo the term, when he defines predestination fully considered: « predestination is a certain reason for the ordering of some to eternal salvation, existing in the divine mind » 1. q. 23. a. 2.

4°. While we affirm that all supernatural gifts which in fact attain the effect for which they are given by God are said to be predestined, by this very fact we do not deny that theologians, and common usage, rightly speak of predestination and of the predestined simply only where the ultimate effect of eternal life, to which the others are ordered, is actually obtained. Nor, therefore, do we deny that supernatural gifts, in those alone who are predestined to glory, can rightly be called the effect of predestination, simply and absolutely so named; but in others they can be called effects of common providence. Yet we contend that in the Scriptures and according to the doctrine of Augustine predestination is frequently regarded only with respect to the proximate effect of faith, justification, and the increase of justice; and so is taken in a less full sense, without regard to the actual attainment of the ultimate term. With these preliminary notes, both for the present and for the following theses, we proceed to the demonstration.

I. He would err most of all, and in grasping the genuine sense would block its paths, who came to the reading of the Scriptures and the Fathers with a preconceived opinion that by the names recorded in the thesis the divine decree of eternal glory, considered in itself, is always, or at least for the most part, designated¹ in the way in which the theologians dispute about predestination to glory. Those words are indeed never used in the Scriptures of the antecedent and conditional will of God, which has no effect, but constantly of the efficacious will of God; yet quite frequently they are referred to supernatural benefits common to all Christians, or at least to Christians who are just. Thus the words predestination and predestined are plainly used at Eph. I. 5. 11; 1. Cor. II. 7. ²; propositum Rom. IX.11; Eph.

I. 11; 2. Tim. I. 9; election and the elect Rom. IX. 11; XI. 5. 7. 28; 1. Thess. I. 4; Rom. VIII. 33; XVI. 13; Coloss. III. 12; Tit. I. 1; 1. Pet. I. 1; the saved, in inchoate salvation, are all Christians, Act. II. 47; Rom. VIII. 24; Eph. II. 5. 8; 2. Tim. I. 9; Tit. III. 5. ³.

II. According to this manner of speaking of the Scriptures, the Fathers and Augustine in particular also employed the names predestination, election, and purpose, as can easily be shown by many testimonies, of which we shall select a few.

1°. That predestination according to Augustine is the eternal counsel of the divine will, not only that by which he decreed to confer glory itself upon men, but also that by which in his foreknowledge he prepared the beginning of faith and its increase, justification, and perseverance, is beyond controversy. But those theologians who wished to find predestination to glory everywhere before foreseen merits think that all these gifts are not called predestined by Augustine, unless in the divine decree they are so bound up with salvation that God, predestining antecedently to heavenly glory by an absolute will, then from this antecedent predestination to glory decides to confer those gifts as means to the predestined end. We affirm on the contrary that by Augustine all these (excepting perseverance) are often called predestined, even if they are not bound up with the attainment of eternal salvation. Much less, therefore, is it true that these same gifts are called predestined only insofar as they proceed from absolute antecedent predestination to eternal glory. This ought to be manifest to readers of Augustine's books de Praedestinatione Sanctorum, and de Dono (Bono) perseverantiae; Fulgentius, book I to Monimus, and the epilogue of the book de Incarnat. et gratia; Prosper's responses ad cap. Gall. XV. and ad Excerpt. Genuens. IX.

In the first place⁴ St Augustine generally defines that no grace is conferred in time, nor can be conferred, that is not answered by the eternal predestination of God. « Between grace and predestination, he says, there is only this difference: predestination is the preparation of grace, but grace is already the donation itself » Praedest. SS. c. 10. « Predestination of God, which is in the good, is the preparation of grace; but grace is the effect of predestination itself » ibid. In de Dono persever. c. 14. seqq. he enumerates the individual virtues, all of which he teaches are predestined by the very fact that they are gifts of God, and that God foreknew that he would give them; for by this double character, according to St Augustine's constant definition, the notion of predestination is completed. « What I said, he says, of chastity (that it is predestined), this of faith, this of piety, this of charity, of perseverance; and, not to go on through each one, this can most truly be said of all obedience by which one obeys God. But those (the Semipelagians) who place in our own power the beginning of faith and perseverance to the end, in such a way that they do not think these are gifts of God... the rest they concede that he gives, since they are obtained from him by the faith of the one believing... perhaps they do not say that these too are predestined? Therefore they are not given by God, or he did not know that he would give them. But if both they are given and he foreknew that he would give them, he has certainly predestined them » de Dono persev. c. 17. n. 42. The grace of faith and of justification of any Christian, insofar as it is considered in the foreknowledge and eternal will decreeing to confer these gifts in time, is called predestination of the Saints ⁵. « By this grace (that is, by a gift so gratuitous) every Christian is made at the beginning of his faith, by which grace that man was made Christ from his beginning... by the same Spirit the remission of sins is effected in us, by which Spirit it came about that that man had no sin. God certainly foreknew that he himself would bring this about; this, therefore, is the predestination of the Saints » de Praed. SS. n. 31.

Hence it is altogether evident that, according to Augustine's manner of speaking and thinking, predestination extends as widely as the variety of graces which are conferred on any men along with the proximate effect itself.

In the same way St Fulgentius also thinks and speaks. « All these things, that is, both the beginnings of our calling and the increases of justification and the rewards of glorification, God has always had in predestination, because in the calling, in the justification, and in the glorification of the Saints he foreknew that the works of his grace would be future » ad Monim. l. I. c. 11; cf. epilog. de Incarn. et grat.

Undoubtedly those predestined gifts are, in many but not in all, crowned by the gift of perseverance, which itself, just as it is given in time, so is predestined from eternity. Therefore, since Augustine, against the remnants of the Pelagians, keeps before his eyes chiefly the beginning of faith and perseverance in faith as gifts of God, and thus as predestined, some theologians have been led by such passages into the opinion that by Augustine only those gifts conjoined with perseverance, and consequently with eternal glory, are called predestined. To predestination considered in this way belongs that celebrated definition described above (from 1. de Dono persev. c. 14.), where, by including perseverance, predestination is said to be « the foreknowledge and preparation of God's benefits, by which those who are set free are most certainly set free. » In this way too he considers predestination throughout almost the whole book de Corrept. et grat., from chapter VI onwards. But the reason why grace and manifold gifts are called predestined, according to the doctrine of Augustine, is most certainly not placed in connexion with perseverance, much less in derivation from antecedent predestination to glory. For Augustine places the essence of predestination, as is evident from what has been said, solely in this: that the gift of God is supernatural, conferred in time by the effect itself, and prepared from eternity in divine foreknowledge; whence he also calls it the predestination of the Saints, by which faith is prepared and by which the remission of sins is prepared, « of any Christian whatever, » with no account taken of perseverance and of predestination to glory (Praed. SS. n. 31.).

2°. That election is most frequently understood by Augustine as election to the grace of faith and justification will be clear, even from reading the chapters 17-19 of de Praed. SS. alone, where he repeats nothing more often than that they become elect by the calling to faith, and all to whom faith is given are called elect. « We understand the calling by which they become elect, not those who are chosen because they believed; but those who are chosen, that they may believe⁶. » « He chose us in him before the foundation of the world. Which, surely, if it was said for this reason, because God foreknew that they would believe, not because he himself would make the believers; against that foreknowledge the Son of God speaks: You did not choose me. » « He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish. Not therefore because we were going to be, but that we might be. Surely it is certain, surely it is manifest: for this is why we were going to be such, because he himself, predestining, chose that we should be such through his grace » etc. So also in Io. tract. 86. n. 2. « You did not choose me, but I chose you. This is that ineffable grace... For we had not already believed in him, that he should choose us; for if he chose believers (as the Semipelagians said), he chose the elect ⁷... They are not elect because they were good; those who were not good, unless they had been elect... What therefore shall we say when hearing, You did not choose me? Unless because we were evil, and we are elect, that we might be good through the grace of him who chooses us. » The sentences quoted are clear in themselves; but here again we willingly concede that with Augustine election is indeed in other places also referred to the gift of perseverance, or even to glory; as in the very book cited, de Praed. SS., in the closing sentences of chapter XVI, and elsewhere.

3°. As to the last point, concerning the expressions taken from the Apostle Paul, where it is called a calling according to purpose, a calling without repentance; not only Jansenius but also not a few Catholic theologians hold that by Augustine no gifts are said to be predestined unless those which are conferred according to purpose; purpose, they say, in Augustine is always to be understood of predestination to glory; whence they conclude that all gifts are called predestined only insofar as they proceed from purpose, that is, according to their interpretation, from the antecedent efficacious will and from absolute predestination to glory. But truly this whole interpretation seems to be accommodated to a preconceived system, and not deduced from the sentiments and contexts of Augustine himself.

Most certainly purpose and predestination are said to be synonyms in Augustine. And therefore, just as predestination (from what has been demonstrated), so also purpose signifies God's eternal merciful will of conferring supernatural gifts in time; which will is not merely antecedent and conditional, destined to lack its effect, but is an efficacious will, that is, one which actually effects its term. Therefore what we have said of predestination holds equally of these other formulas; for in the Augustinian manner of speaking, purpose and calling without repentance extend as widely as the manifold supernatural gifts which are offered to men not only through prevenient grace, but are conferred by the effect itself. This is most evident from 1. de Praed. SS. c.16. n. 32. compared with c. 15. n. 31. There Augustine speaks of predestination and calling, that we may believe and that we may be members of Christ, conformed to Christ through the justice which is from faith; of predestination, I say, and of the calling of all those who believe and who are justified in Christ; not only of those, however, who are predestined also to perseverance and to glory. And he says that all believers are called according to purpose; and therefore by the name called according to purpose he does not distinguish those predestined to glory from others not predestined to glory; but rather he distinguishes all believers and the justified, as called according to purpose, from those who, when called, were unwilling to believe. « God calls the predestined many of his sons, he says, that he may make them members of his only predestined Son; not by that calling by which those were called who were unwilling to come to the wedding; for by that calling the Jews too were called... When they were called, says the Apostle (that Christ is the power of God), that he might show that those (others, for whom Christ is a scandal and foolishness) were not called, knowing that there is a certain definite calling of those who are called according to purpose... He said therefore: but from him who calls, not by any calling, but by that calling by which one is made to believe » Praed. SS. n. 32. To whom, I ask, is it not evident that calling according to purpose here means an efficacious calling? Likewise, from the fact that Paul gives thanks to God for the faith of all the Thessalonians, Augustine concludes that faith is the gift of God not only of the predestined but of all believers, from the calling according to purpose. « God therefore, the holy Doctor infers, works in the hearts of men by that calling according to his purpose, of which we have spoken much, so that they do not hear the gospel in vain, but, having heard it, are converted and believe » ibid. n. 39. He had called this same efficacious calling of all believers, a little earlier, a calling without repentance. « Not because we have believed, but that we may believe, are we called; and by that calling which is without repentance, it is altogether done and carried through, that we may believe » ib. n. 38.

In vain would the passages of Augustine be objected, where purpose and gift without repentance are referred also to perseverance and, inclusively, to glory. De Dono persev. cc. 7. 13. 14. 17; de Corrept. et grat. passim, especially cc. 10–13. For no one denies that purpose, as we have said of the names predestination and election, also pertains to these chief gifts of perseverance and of the eternal crown. It is worth noting, however, that in the books of Augustine against the Pelagians and the Massilians, predestination and purpose are never referred to glory considered per se and separately, without being included at the same time with predestination and purpose of the conferring of grace and of merits.

That one thing we affirm in the thesis, and by the testimonies adduced have clearly demonstrated: that the names predestination, election, divine purpose are used by Augustine also of the counsel of conferring any supernatural gifts whatever, per se and not by reason of perseverance and of predestined glory; and thus it is false that other gifts are said by Augustine to be predestined only insofar as they are decreed and conferred from antecedent predestination to glory. See Tricassin. de Praedestinat. p. 847. sqq.; 417. sqq.; I.B. Faure ad Enchirid. c.98. nota 2°.

The gifts of God have in predestination the order which they have in execution.

« Concerning the order in which the gifts of God succeed one another in preparation and in predestination, it can be laid down in general from the doctrine of the Fathers that the benefits of God stand in predestination in the same relation to foreseen merit as these same benefits, in their collation and in their very donation, stand to acquired merit: therefore those gifts of God which are conferred in time by sheer gratuity are in the same way predestined from eternity, independently of the foreseeing of any merit; but those which in execution are rewarded for preceding merits, these too are decreed in eternal predestination not without the presupposed foreseeing of those same merits.

Just as every operation ad extra is, so also predestination in God is the divine intellect itself and the divine will itself, with a connotation of the terms to which it is referred, that is, of the effects which are in the creature. When therefore it is asked whether there is, or what is, the meritorious cause of predestination, there cannot be question of a meritorious cause of the divine act in itself, which in reality is the very essence of God (cf. supra p. 306–311.); but the question is of merit quoad effectus, that is, with respect to the effects which are connoted under the name of predestination. But by the very fact that someone merits the effect connoted by predestination, he also merits that God should will this effect; or he merits not indeed the divine will, but that the divine will should be referred to such a good to be conferred upon him.¹ Thus Christ the Saviour, meriting grace for us, undoubtedly merited that God should will to confer grace upon us; and the foreseen merit of Christ is the meritorious cause that God willed to give us grace from eternity, which he confers in time, and so predestined grace for us. This is what St Thomas says, 1. q. 23. a. 5: « There was no one of such insane mind as to say that merits are the cause of predestination on the part of the predestining act; but the question is whether predestination has some cause on the part of the effect. And this is to ask whether God predestined (behold, a respect of the divine will) to give the effect of predestination (grace and glory) to someone on account of some merits. » With these things supposed, we demonstrate the thesis.

Without any doubt God, from eternity, prepared those gifts which he confers in time without any preceding merits to be conferred in this way, that is, from no foreseen merits. Whoever, therefore, would universally deny that grace is predestined by God gratuitously and without any foreseen merits of ours would by that very fact teach that grace is rendered to human merits, and so is not grace but wages. Hence it is clear why, and in what sense, Augustine, chiefly in the books de Praedest. SS. and de Dono persev., finally brought the controversy against the Pelagians and Semipelagians back to the question of gratuitous predestination.

But what we affirm in the thesis is not settled by this alone. For we say not only that from a gratuitous collation in time there is necessarily inferred a gratuitous preparation in eternity; but also, in the reverse order, we affirm that from gratuitous preparation, according to the doctrine of the Fathers, one rightly concludes to a gratuitous donation in time; and therefore also that all the benefits which in time are conferred upon antecedent merits were predestined from eternity on the basis of those same foreseen merits, so that God does not confer his gifts in time, whether from merits or wholly gratuitously, in any other order than that in which he predestined them from eternity. We shall establish this chiefly from the doctrine of Augustine himself, since opponents are usually moved almost only by it; the agreement of the other Fathers with this principle will be demonstrated below, where we shall treat of predestination to glory, and it is in itself so clear that it cannot be called into doubt.

1°. According to Augustine, the predestination of any gifts whatever, and their collation, or their very execution already under way, differ only as one act of the divine will considered in eternity with a connotation of the future work of grace, and the same act with a connotation of the same work of grace which is now being effected in the present. But it is evident that the same work lies under the divine will from eternity in no other order than when the work itself is now effected and begins to exist. Therefore Augustine, and whoever holds the same idea of predestination as Augustine sets forth in his books, necessarily holds that the order of predestination and of execution is not inverted but plainly one and the same.

The major premise of this argument is easily demonstrated from the very definitions of Augustine described in the preceding thesis. « Between grace, moreover, he says, and predestination there is only this difference: that predestination is the preparation of grace, whereas grace is already the donation itself... For the predestination of God which is in good is, as I have said, the preparation of grace; but grace is the effect of predestination itself. » Praedest. SS. n. 19. Augustine here distinguishes three things: the divine act with a connotation of the collation of grace as future; this is predestination. Next, the divine act with a connotation of collation in the present; this is donation, and the present beneficence, or the grace of God effecting inherent grace and the gift in the soul. Lastly, this very gift, which is the effect of predestination and of donation. Similar definitions occur throughout both books de Praedest. SS. and de Dono persev. Now, if according to Augustine predestination and donation itself differ only by the connotation of future and present in one and the same effect, then, surely, where the donation does not give the present effect except on account of merit, predestination too does not will the same effect except on account of foreseen merit; for predestination and donation are one effective will referred to one and the same effect, so that, according to the doctrine of Augustine, the distinction holds solely on the side of the time at which the effect exists; not on the side of the mode and order in which God wills the effect. This opinion of the holy Doctor was expressed by St Fulgentius, ad Monim. l. I. c. 7. « Both (the beginning and the progress of justice) God prepared by predestining them in that unchangeable will, in which he so disposed the future effect of renewing man, that his will cannot be new in the new work. »

2°. Both Augustine and the Massilians agree that God confers in time, without any preceding merit, those things which he predestined without any foreseen merit; and, conversely, that those things which he confers in time on account of any merit he predestined only with that merit foreseen. The Massilians taught that the beginning of faith is from our own powers, and agreed that the remaining virtues are afterwards given by God, faith obtaining them. From this doctrine Augustine chiefly concludes that even those very erring men, by the sole fact that they say the remaining virtues are gifts of God, concede that these virtues are predestined by God; nor does he require anything else from the adversaries than that they confess the beginning of faith also to be given by God, with no antecedent obtaining on the part of the unbelievers themselves; this admitted, he says, the entire doctrine of predestination is preached. Hence this evident argument arises: those adversaries contended that in execution some merit of faith from the powers of nature precedes, to which grace is repaid; whence they inferred, as if necessarily following, that in predestination too, in the same order, the foreseen merit of faith precedes, and the predestination of the other gifts, which are repaid to merits, follows. Yet Augustine agrees that it is rightly preached by them that the order of predestination of those following virtues is such, namely that they are predestined on account of the foreseen merit of faith, provided they also concede that the faith which obtains them is a gift of God. Therefore Augustine manifestly agrees that what is given in execution on account of merit, that the same thing is predestined from the same foreseen merit. Indeed, the doctrine of the Massilians, as Prosper and Hilary testify in their letters to Augustine, was this: « Those who are going to believe (by the powers of their nature), God foreknew before the foundation of the world, and predestined them to his kingdom, whom... he foresaw would depart with a good end. » « They contend that foreknowledge and predestination, or purpose, avail for this: that he foreknew, or predestined, or purposed to choose those who were going to believe. » Augustine, in the books de Praed. SS. and de Dono persev., by which he answers the difficulties of the Massilians, does nothing other than demonstrate that faith and perseverance in faith are equally a gift of God as the remaining virtues; so that, just as the adversaries cannot deny that these are predestined by God, faith obtaining them, so the predestination of faith itself, with no merit preceding, cannot be denied, nor that of perseverance, which we could merit by supplication. « Still, he says, those brothers are in a fog about the predestination of the saints.... But they have come to confess that men's wills are prevented by the grace of God, and agree that no one is able to begin or to complete any good work by himself. Retaining therefore those things, to which they have come, they distinguish themselves greatly from the error of the Pelagians » Praed. SS. n. 2. He concludes the whole book in these words: « they confess also that the beginning of faith, like continence, patience, justice, piety, and the rest, about which there is no contention with these, is a gift of God. » The difference, therefore, between the Catholic doctrine of Augustine and the error of the Massilians is this: that the latter contended that the remaining virtues and the kingdom of heaven itself are given by God with faith preceding, which is from the powers of nature, and therefore also that the graces and gifts are predestined from the natural foreknowledge of this faith; Augustine, on the contrary, taught that faith itself, by which they are obtained, is a gift of God, as is supernatural grace; and therefore he agreed that faith itself is predestined and given with no foreseen merits, and the rest with the preceding supernatural merit of faith, so that « there should be no contention about these things. »

In exactly the same way as Augustine declares what in the opinion of the Massilians is to be approved and what is to be disapproved, he also partly approves and partly retracts as erroneous his own opinion, which he held before taking up the episcopate. The opinion was this: « God predestines no one except him whom he foreknew would believe and would follow his calling, whom also he calls elect..... In those whom God has chosen, not works but faith begins the merit » Aug. Propos. in ep. Rom. n. 55. 62. He therefore thought, as the Massilians later did, that in execution faith precedes from the natural powers of free will, and that grace is repaid to this faith; and that this order itself was, without controversy, the order in predestination. Indeed he by no means disapproves the opinion of the identity of order in predestination and in execution, when he retracts his own doctrine (Retract. 1. I. c. 23. n. 3.); but he merely warns that it must be added that faith itself is a gift of God, and therefore predestined by God. « I said most truly, but that the merit of faith itself is also a gift of God, nor did I think it needed to be asked, nor did I say so.»

3°. Finally, Augustine declares in express words that the gifts of God are predestined in the same order in which they are conferred in execution itself. « It is agreed that God prepared some gifts to be given even to those not praying, as the beginning of faith, and others prepared only for those praying, such as perseverance to the end » de Dono persev. n. 39. Here you see that the preparation stands in the same relation as execution does; for, as he says in de Praed. SS. n. 12, « the first faith is given, from which the rest are obtained, which are properly called works. » Read ep. 194. al. 105. ad Sixtum n. 9. sqq. But concerning the gift of faith itself: « if there are some not yet called, he says, let us pray that they be called; for perhaps they are so predestined, that they may be granted by our prayers, and receive that same grace by which they will to be, and become elect » de Dono persev. n. 60.

The clearest passage is in 1. I. ad Simplic. q. 2. n. 6, which opponents have often tried to evade, by one answer after another devised, but have never been able to obscure its light. « Election, however, does not precede justification, but justification election; for no one is chosen unless already distinguished from him who is rejected. » Certainly in execution election to the reward follows justification and merits, as is most certain by faith. Now hear, however, what the holy Doctor infers from this concerning the order of predestination. « Hence what has been said, that God chose us before the foundation of the world, I do not see how it is said except by foreknowledge. » That is, by the very fact that election to the reward in execution follows merits and on account of merits, election to the reward in eternal predestination can in no way be understood except consequently upon the foreknowledge of merits. Hence he further concludes that what is said at Rom. IX. 11: « not from works but from him who calls, so that according to the election the purpose of God might remain, » cannot be understood of election and predestination to the reward; but must necessarily be understood of election to grace, which in execution, and therefore also in predestination, precedes all merit. « But here, at Rom. IX. 11, when he says: not from works but from him who calls, etc., the Apostle wished to be understood not as an election of merits, which come after justification by grace, but by the liberality of the gifts of God. » Yet let the praises be recalled with which Augustine himself commends this work, written at the beginning of his episcopate, for its doctrine of predestination and grace: Praed. SS. c.4; Don. persev. c. 21; Retract. II. c. 1. Wherefore it is altogether surprising how Bellarmine could have been content with this answer: « St Augustine, when he wrote the books to Simplicianus, was still young, and had not found much in this most difficult question, which afterwards he investigated and discovered with greater diligence » (Bellarm. de Grat. et lib. arb. 1. II. c. 15.).

4°. They agree with Augustine, who have most profited from his doctrine. Thus St Fulgentius, ad Monim. 1. I. c. 8., after saying that grace is given gratuitously to the unworthy, by which the impious man is illumined to be justified, and that grace is given also to the worthy in the reward of eternal recompense, adds: « Moreover, God as he has always had these things in predestination, so he makes them through grace, as he had predestined. » Cf. ibid. c. 12. and de Veritat. praedest. 1. III. c. 5. St Thomas, to say nothing of others, has summed up this opinion about predestination in a few words, with the clarity that is his custom; it will therefore be worth our while to hear him. « Concerning the order of foreknowledge and predestination, some say that the foreknowledge of good and evil merits is the reason of predestination and reprobation, so that it is understood that God predestines some because he foreknows that they will act well and will believe in Christ.... And this indeed would be rightly said, if predestination regarded only eternal life, which is given to merits. But under predestination falls every saving benefit which is divinely prepared for man from eternity. Hence by the same reason he prepared for us from eternity all the benefits which he confers upon us in time². Hence to posit that some merit on our part is presupposed, whose foreknowledge is the reason of predestination, is nothing other than to posit that grace is given from our merits. » St Thomas, ad Rom. VIII. lect. 6. ed. de Rubeis T. VI. p. 123.

Many things are worthy of attention in this doctrine of Aquinas, which is repeated also in other places, about which discussion will recur elsewhere. a) He declares that predestination extends as far as the saving benefits conferred in time extend. b) It is most manifest from this passage that predestination is understood by St Thomas of all benefits, as they are regarded taken as a whole, and not the predestination of this or that benefit, e.g. of glory considered in itself, whenever he teaches that predestination has no relation to foreseen merits. For thus far, he says, it is necessary to acknowledge predestination as gratuitous, insofar as grace is to be believed gratuitous; and if moreover some merits were the reason of the whole effect of predestination, it would necessarily follow that such merits are outside and before the whole series of God's supernatural gifts and of the effects of predestination, and consequently are natural merits, which savours of the Pelagians. Cf. 1. q. 23. a. 5. If on the other hand c) one single effect of predestination is considered in itself, which is conferred in execution on account of merits, such as eternal glory; then « it is rationally said, » that predestination to this effect³ is from foreseen supernatural merits, by that very fact that in execution « it is given to merits.» *d)*The foundation of the whole of this doctrine with the Angelic Doctor is that « God, by the same reason, prepared for us from eternity all the benefits which he confers on us in time. » Because, namely, by the same reason by which he confers benefits in time, he prepared those from eternity; therefore it is rationally said that he predestined glory from foreseen merits, but first grace cannot be said to have been predestined from foreseen merits without falling into the Semipelagian error.

See the doctrine established in this thesis also in Vasquez, in 1. P. disp. 82. c. 5; disp. 89 c. 9; de Valentia, in 1. q. 23. disp. I. punct. 4. §. 1. 6; Lessium, de Praed. sect. 1. n. 4; sect. 2. n. 29; Philippum Gamachaeum, in 1. q. 23. c. 6. conclus. 2. prob. 3; Tricassin. de Praedest. p. 36. 81. 200. etc.

Predestination of grace, and predestination considered completely according to all its effects taken together, is not from the foreseeing of merit.¹

This thesis is deduced from what precedes, as a corollary; and, the Catholic doctrine of the gratuitous gift of grace being presupposed, it cannot be called into doubt, as is easily proved by declaring the sense of the statement.

1°. When it is denied that any merit of the whole of predestination is on the part of the predestined, it is said that for all the effects to which predestination refers, taken together, no merit can precede, from whose foreseeing the subsequent predestined gifts were, and on which therefore that whole series of gifts depends. For that merit would have to be outside the series of predestined effects; for if it were itself in this series, surely, since it cannot be the meritorious cause of itself, it would no longer be the meritorious cause of the whole series. But outside the series of predestined effects, as predestination is understood by Augustine and the other Fathers according to the doctrine of Scripture, as a preparation of supernatural gifts leading to salvation, there can be no supernatural merit whatever. Therefore it would have to be affirmed that merit is something acquired by natural powers, to which first supernatural grace is rendered. But this is the very error that Augustine first attacked in the Massilians, and that the Church afterwards often condemned in the definitions of the Council of Orange and the decrees of the Popes. For those erring men thought that free power of salvation would be denied to us, unless merit, which depends solely on our natural powers, could begin the way of salvation; therefore they attacked this account of predestination. And because in turn Augustine saw that, with this gratuitous predestination denied, grace such as is preached in the Scriptures would be denied, namely grace that is not the wage of natural works, therefore the holy Doctor insisted most diligently on this predestination. « For either, he says, predestination must be preached, as holy Scripture evidently speaks of it... or it must be confessed that the grace of God is given according to our merits, which savours of the Pelagians » de Don. persever. n. 41. For this reason he says he was compelled to the declaration of predestination. « For what compelled the passages of Scripture, by which predestination is commended, to be defended more copiously² and more clearly in this our labour, except that the Pelagians say that the grace of God is given according to our merits » ibid. n. 53; cf. n. 42. Finally he says that this gratuitous predestination pertains entirely to revealed faith, because its preaching is nothing other than the preaching of gratuitous grace. « I know that no one could dispute against that predestination which we defend according to the holy Scriptures, except by erring. Yet I think that the holy Cyprian and Ambrose.... ought to suffice for them, that they should believe and preach the gratuitous grace of God in all things, and in all things » ibid. n. 48.

2°. As predestination purely gratuitous is preached with respect to the first grace, so the reason of that gratuity extends to the whole series, insofar as every subsequent merit is founded on grace. « Whoever, therefore, have been distinguished from that original damnation by this largess of divine grace (considered as a complete distinction); there is no doubt that the gospel is procured for them to be heard, and when they hear they believe, and in faith which works through love they persevere to the end.... truly they also are elect by election, as has been said, of grace, not of their preceding merits, because grace is to them every merit » de Corrept. et grat. n. 13.

Yet merit, which is acquired through grace and by grace, is certainly not denied to be true merit. Therefore, with the first supernatural grace already supposed, a man can obtain by congruous merit further and more abundant graces, which would not be granted without an antecedent impetration; and for that very reason they are predestined only under the foresight of the merit of impetration. When therefore predestination to grace is called gratuitous, this is to be understood for the same reason for which the conferring of grace is gratuitous. Grace, namely, is predestined from no foreseen merit of nature, and so the predestination of the first grace precedes every merit whatsoever; yet manifold graces can be, and are, predestined from foreseen supernatural merits, and the justification of adults is never predestined except from foreseen supernatural congruous dispositions. « Nor is the remission of sins itself without some merit, if faith obtains it. For there is no lack of merit in faith, by which that man said: God, be propitious to me, a sinner.... It remains, therefore, that we attribute to faith itself (and to the beginning of faith), whence all righteousness takes its beginning... not to the human free choice which these men extol, nor to any preceding merits... but that we confess it to be the gratuitous gift of God, if we think of true grace, that is, without merits... Wherefore let no one exalt himself even on the merit of his own prayer; for even if help is given to the one praying, to conquer desires and to love the eternal goods and God himself, it is faith that prays, which is given to one not praying... Hence eternal life itself, which indeed will be had in the end without end, and which is therefore rendered to preceding merits, yet because the very merits by which it is rendered are not prepared by us through our own sufficiency, but are wrought in us through grace, even eternal life itself is called grace (Rom. VI. 23.); for no other reason than that it is given gratis, and not therefore because it is not given to merits³, but because the merits themselves by which it is given are also given » August. ad Sixt.ep.194. n.9.10. « The good will of man precedes many gifts of God (by which it asks and wills to receive divine grace), but not all; and those which it does not precede, it itself is among them... For why are we admonished to pray for our enemies (unbelievers), who in any case are unwilling to live piously, unless that God may work in them even the willing (the beginning of good will); and likewise why are we admonished to ask, that we may receive, unless that by him may be done what we will (the further progress of grace), by whom it has been done that we will? » Enchir. c. 32. See also ep. 186. n. 10. ad Paulinum; in Io. tract. III. n. 9. etc.

Hence, according to the principles demonstrated in the preceding thesis, further graces, when in their execution they are conferred on account of supernatural merits, whether condign, congruous, or of impetration, must in the same way be judged to have been prepared and predestined only on the supposition of the foreseeing of these antecedent supernatural goods. Hence, as for example Augustine says: « this gift of God (of perseverance) can be merited by supplication; » so too he infers: « it is clear that God gives some things even to those not praying, such as the beginning of faith; others he has prepared only for those praying, such as perseverance to the end » (of adults) de Don. persev. n. 10. 39.

St Thomas has clearly set out this order of gratuitous predestination, which varies with the diversity of the gratuitous gifts. « Our operation stands in different relation to the twofold effect of predestination (grace and glory): for a meritorious work informed by (sanctifying) grace is the meritorious cause of glory; but a good (supernatural) work preceding (sanctifying) grace is not the meritorious cause of that grace, but only a certain disposition. Hence it is plain that predestination, as a divine act in itself, has no cause; but it has a reason on the part of the effect, according to which it is called rational and just... It is to be understood that predestination with respect to the ultimate effect has the character of distributive justice, namely with respect to glory: and therefore we can say that God gives glory to this one and not to that one, because this one has merited and that one has not; and likewise he wills that this one should have it and not that one, because this one is worthy and that one is not⁴. But with respect to the first effect, namely grace, has (predestination) the character of liberality rather than justice, because grace is given gratis and is not rendered for merits (namely not for condign merits, if the discussion is of the first sanctifying grace; for no merits at all, if it concerns the first actual grace).

Hence, on the part of the recipient, no cause can be assigned why he is worthy of grace; there is only a certain disposition (toward sanctifying grace)... In the understanding (therefore) of predestination the consequent will is included, which regards works⁵, not as a cause of the will (taken in itself), but as the meritorious cause of glory and as the preparation for grace » St Thomas, 1. dist. 41. a. 3.

Likewise St Bonaventure first distinguishes in predestination the substantial act itself, which is the divine essence, and the connoted effect to be conferred outside God. « When it is asked whether the eternal purpose or election in God has a motive reason, this is not understood with respect to the divine will or its act, which is God; but with respect to the ordering of the thing willed to his will. » Bonaventure puts the same distinction in other words, between the eternal act and the temporal connotatum. « Some name signifies purely eternal, as the name God; but some name signifies eternal by connoting the temporal.... as when one says: God preserves this thing; to preserve signifies the essence by connoting an effect in act; therefore it begins and ceases to preserve. » When therefore Bonaventure says that eternal does not fall under merit, it must be understood of what is purely eternal, that is, of the substantial act itself, and not of the act together with its connoted term or relation to what is outside. With these things premised, one understands the response of the Seraphic Doctor to the question « whether predestination or reprobation have a meritorious cause in us? » The response is this. « In predestination three things are understood: the first is the eternal purpose (substantial act), the second is temporal gratification (the prior term), and the third is eternal glory (the other term). Similarly in reprobation three things are understood, namely eternal hatred (substantial act), temporal hardening, and eternal damnation (the signified terms). As to the first and the last the same is to be judged; for the last, namely punishment and glory, simply fall under merit. The first, however, namely the purpose, precisely because it is eternal (namely insofar as it is purely eternal and the divine essence, abstraction made from the connoted terms; otherwise it would be absurd both generally and specifically with respect to eternal hatred), cannot have merit. But as to the middle, which is gratification and hardening, it is to be judged differently; for hardening simply falls under demerit or evil merit, but gratification neither simply under merit nor simply outside it. For there is merit of congruity, of worthiness, and of condignity. Merit of congruity is when the sinner (by the help of actual grace) does what is in him and for himself; merit of worthiness, when the just man acts for another; merit of condignity, when the just man acts for himself. Therefore it must be answered to the question whether predestination and reprobation fall under merit, that, speaking simply as to the principal signification (as to the divine act in itself), neither falls under merit; but as to the connoted term, reprobation falls under merit simply, predestination however in a certain respect » (simply and by condign merit as to glory, by congruous merit as to gratification or sanctifying grace, given however the actual grace, which the first cannot be except purely gratuitous) 1. dist. 41. q. 1. See also ibidem q. 2.

Thus it is clear that both St Thomas and St Bonaventure teach that all the gifts following the first grace are predestined for the same reason, from foreseen congruous or condign merits, just as they are conferred in time; and from the manner in which the gifts stand in the very conferring, they conclude to the order in which the same gifts are disposed in predestination.

3°. As regards meriting or obtaining predestination for another, it must first of all be certain and settled that the merits of Christ the Redeemer are the meritorious cause of all the effects of predestination, and therefore of the predestination of all the predestined men, Eph. I. 4-11; 2. Tim. I. 9. etc. Given this universal meritorious cause, some can obtain manifold graces for others, and contribute something toward obtaining them as instruments and co-workers of God. Graces, moreover, which are given on account of the impetration or the cooperation of others, are predestined in the same way. « If some are not yet called (so that they would follow), let us pray for them that they may be called. For perhaps they have been predestined in such a way that they are granted to our prayers, and receive the same grace by which they will and become elect » Aug. de Dono persev. n. 60.

Here, however, this can be considered in a twofold way. The first is that the series of effects of predestination be reckoned only in the graces and gifts intrinsic to the predestined man. In this way nothing hinders one man from obtaining for another the first effect of the whole series. So St Thomas seems to have spoken, 1. dist. 41. a. 4: « The effect of predestination has help in the way by which it also has its cause... as someone by praying for another merits for him (by impetration) the first grace, or also by persuading him to good; whence it is said, 1. Cor. III. 9: For we are God's co-workers... For if Stephen had not prayed for his persecutors, perhaps Paul would not have been saved; just as if someone did not perform meritorious works, he would not receive the crown which has been predestined for him. Nor, however, can predestination be frustrated, because it is foreknown by God that this one will be saved by such a cause and in such an order. » In the same way, to the objection drawn from the eternity of predestination, the Angelic Doctor replies: « predestination presupposes foreknowledge of future things; and therefore, just as God predestines the salvation of some man to be accomplished through the prayers of others, so also he predestined the work of the Incarnation for the remission of sin » 3. q. 1. a. 3. ad 4.

In another way predestination can be viewed more broadly: given the universal cause of the merits of Christ, all the graces ordained to his salvation, even those extrinsic to the predestined man, are reckoned into one series of predestination. Thus it is plain that even the prayers of Stephen, for example, lie under the predestination of Paul as an effect. St Thomas follows this way, 1. q. 23. a. 8; and de verit. q. 6. a. 6. But as Gregory of Valentia observes (on this passage, punct. 4, §. 1, « sexto certum est » etc.), the difference lies only in the manner of considering and speaking.

4°. It should be noted that in the thesis, according to the doctrine of the Scriptures and the Fathers, the discussion concerns the meritorious cause, when we say that there is no cause of the whole predestination on the part of the predestined. Hence the difficulty drawn from this is excluded, namely that grace has no effect unless man cooperates freely. For this cooperation does not have the character of merit to which that grace is attributed, whose fruit is the cooperation itself.

Moreover, from this liberty of accepting grace in vain or not accepting it in vain, it does follow that it was in the free power of him who resisted accepted grace to cooperate with it and to obtain further graces, and by using them rightly to attain justification and to persevere in righteousness through grace; and so he would have been predestined. Conversely, it follows that he who persevered to the end could also, by resisting grace with his evil will, not have persevered, and so not have been predestined. But it does not follow that the effect of predestination lies in the power of a bare free will left to its natural powers, nor is it in any way in man's power to begin the way of salvation, since grace necessarily precedes every beginning which would come from us, and itself confers the very power of beginning the way of salvation. Hence the first effect of predestination in no way has the character on the part of the predestined man himself: for the first effect is not the consent itself, which indeed belongs to free will elevated by grace; but the first effect predestined by God is the prevenient grace itself, under which the future consent is foreseen.

« For although a man may ascribe to himself (not from natural powers, but to himself furnished already with the powers of grace) that he obeys the one calling him, no one can ascribe to himself that he has been called » Aug. Expos. inch. in Rom. n. 7. On the contrary, the reason and cause why grace, once granted and resisted by man, does not belong to the order of predestination, but to common providence only, lies in the free will of the man who resists. I have said that the reason lies in the free will of man why this grace, granted, does not belong to the order of predestination; yet it cannot be said that it depends on the free will of man that God should bestow another calling and prevenient grace, especially the first, which he foresees will be efficacious, if the man is unwilling to use the grace offered and given.

When therefore it is asked whether predestination lies in the free power of man, the sense can be twofold. The first, which the words themselves suggest and which theologians are accustomed to adopt, is this: whether it lies in the free power of man, left to his natural powers, to do something so that he may be predestined? which is the same as asking whether man can merit the first grace by the powers of free will? In this sense the Semipelagians answered affirmatively; all Catholics answer in the negative; indeed, Augustine located the whole weight of his disputation on predestination in this one point, namely in the necessity and the gratuity of grace. « Let them see that by this preaching of predestination that one most pernicious error alone is overthrown, by which it is said that the grace of God is given according to our merits » de Dono persev. n. 42.

The other sense, which the faithful for the most part understand by that question, is this: whether, given prevenient grace, it lies in the power of man to attain justification and to persevere in it to the end by cooperating with grace, and so to be predestined? In this sense, that it is in man's power to complete his predestination — not by natural powers but by a thing made ready through grace, and restored to liberty for supernatural operations — cannot be denied without contradicting the most certain principles in theology. St Peter admonishes, 2. Pet. I. 10: « Labour the more to make your calling and election sure (βεβαιαν firmam) » (which calling and election, namely, is already begun through the grace of faith). In the Council of Arausicanum II, can. 15, it is declared: « We believe also, according to the Catholic faith, that, grace having been received through baptism, all the baptized, with Christ helping and cooperating, can and ought to fulfil those things that pertain to salvation, if they are willing to labour faithfully. But that some are predestined by divine power to evil we not only do not believe, but also, if there are some who wish to believe so great an evil, we say to them, with all detestation, anathema. »

The Council of Trent, where it condemns the heresy teaching that the commandments of God are impossible to observe even for the just, adds the reason: « For God does not forsake those once justified by his grace, unless they first be forsaken by them; » and a little after, treating of the gift of perseverance: « God, unless they themselves fail that grace, as he began the good work, so will he complete it, working in them both to will and to accomplish » Sess. VI. cc. 11. 13. This second passage manifestly shows the false interpretation of those who explain that former saying, « God does not forsake, unless he is first forsaken, » with Gonet (de Reprob. disp. V. n. 54.), as though it only denied desertion by the withdrawal of habitual grace⁶. The teaching of St Augustine is brought back to the same sense. « All the less will they free themselves (from damnation) who are going to say: we have not received perseverance... since it can be said: man, in what you have heard and held, you would persevere, if you willed » de Correpl. et grat. n. 11.

« Let us understand by the right hand (Ps. 120. 5.) the power that God has given you, so that, if you will, by God's gift you may be at the right hand. For all the wicked will be at the left, and all the sons of good will be at the right, to whom it will be said: come, blessed of my Father..... But that you may be at the right hand, you have received the power, of which John says: he gave them power to become sons of God. Whence have you received this power? By believing, he says, in his name. If therefore you believe, the power itself has been given you, that you may be among the sons of God; but to be among the sons of God, this is to belong at the right hand.... But what avails the very power that man has received, unless the Lord protect?... He, therefore, who does not allow us to be tempted above what we can bear (1 Cor. X. 13.), although we are already faithful, God protects us » Id. in Ps. 120. n. 11. « Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated... Esau are all the carnal, Jacob all the spiritual; the lesser are the elect, the greater are those rejected. Does he wish to be chosen? Let him become the lesser » Id. in Ps. 136. n. 18; cf. in Ps. 46. n. 6.

The saying which is at times ascribed to Augustine, although it does not occur in these words in him, has a basis in such sayings: « if you are not predestined, make yourself predestined. » Many theologians are wont to censure it, because they think it can have no other sense than either this: if you have not yet received grace, do something by your own powers by which you may receive grace; or this other: if you are not going to cooperate with grace, nevertheless cooperate. The former certainly cannot be said; the other, they say, is absurd. But Catholics who use that saying attribute to it no other sense than this: through the grace of God, which is not lacking to you, do those things, foreseen by which you will be predestined. If you are a sinner, return to justice; if you are just, remain in holiness and do not sin any more. In accord with this sense there follows that sentence from the explicit teaching of St Prosper, in his replies to the Capitula « calumniantium Gallorum », to the Excerpta Genuensium, and to the Obiectiones Vincentianas: « They did not have the necessity of perishing because they were not predestined; but they are not predestined because they were foreknown as going to be such through voluntary prevarication... For they were not abandoned by God so that they would abandon God; but they abandoned, and were abandoned, and by their own will were changed from good to evil: and on this account... they were not predestined by him who foreknew them such » ad cap. III. Gall. Likewise: « because they were foreknown as going to fall, they were not predestined; but they would have been predestined, if they were going to return and remain in holiness » ad Obiect. Vincent. XII.

Potest ergo dici: he who is reprobate in the foreknowledge of God can cooperate with grace in such a way that God's will to confer grace on him would be predestination; and by that very fact, in the foreknowledge of God, he would not be reprobate but predestined. Likewise, he who is predestined in the foreknowledge of God can finally sin in such a way that God's will to confer grace on him would not be predestination; and so in the foreknowledge of God he would no longer be predestined but reprobate. In other words: the predestined man, not indeed in the composite sense, but nevertheless in the divided sense, can be damned; and the division depends on free will, by which he can finally sin: the reprobate, not indeed in the composite sense, but in the divided sense, can be saved; and the division depends not on free will according to its natural powers, but on one instructed and elevated by the helps of grace. This, however, does not signify a power of changing predestination or reprobation: but it signifies a power, through the help of grace, of doing that, given which reprobation would never have been; and a power of committing the sin, given which predestination would never have been completed. Yet once predestination has been completed, consequently upon the foreseen free acts of grace, or conversely once reprobation has been supposed, consequently upon the foreseen final sin, predestination and damnation certainly cannot be joined together, nor conversely reprobation and salvation; but this impossibility is not antecedent but consequent, inasmuch as we cannot at the same time cooperate and not cooperate, sin finally and not sin. St Thomas objects to himself: « since the effect of predestination is fulfilled by the motions of free will, which are meritorious works, » it seems that predestination has no certainty. » In his reply, supposing as certain that the effect is fulfilled by the motions of free will, he declares the ground of certainty: « a contingent future, that the motion of free will, although it is not determined in its cause, is nevertheless determined in its being, insofar as it is actual (that is, a second free act is something determined in itself); and so it is subject to the certainty of foreknowledge » 1. dist. 40. q. 3. ad 4. Likewise: « this predestined one can be considered either as in himself or as related to divine knowledge: and so in one way (as in himself) it is attributed to him that he can be damned; in another way not » (namely as, with all his supposed acts, he is subject to divine knowledge) Quodlib. XII. a. 3. ad 2. (See above thesis XLIV.).

That saying, therefore: « if you are not predestined, make yourself predestined, » has some sense not discordant from sound doctrine; it is nonetheless ambiguous and therefore in need of explanation. Cf. de Valentia in 1. q. 23. punct. 4. §. 8; Lessium de Praed. sect. 6. n. 154. sqq.; Maeratium disp. 38. ad finem.

A corollary following from all that has been said, of the highest importance not only for theoretical doctrine but much more for practical life. In the order of execution we can indeed by our own evil will fall away from the good will of God, and so the sins are ours; but we can neither will nor accomplish anything saving except through grace offered and given to the unworthy by the sole mercy of God, who works in us so that we both will freely and accomplish the good on the way of salvation. « Men make their own will, not God's, when they do what displeases God; but when they so act as to do what they will, that they serve the divine will, although they act willingly (freely) in what they do, it is nonetheless his will, by whom what they will is prepared and commanded » Conc.

Araus. can. 23. Now indeed, just as among all Catholics these principles are certain and settled in the order of execution: so also in the order of predestination, in exactly the same way, that someone is not predestined and by that very fact reprobate, is the fault of man; that someone is predestined, whether to a saving work or completely to the whole series of gifts up to eternal life, is the grace of God, who, with no preceding evil merits but with preceding good merits⁷, predestines in his foreknowledge both first grace and subsequent graces, which he foresees will be joined with their effect in the free operation of man; and in these graces the great gift of perseverance; and eternal life itself, as grace for grace⁸: «and so the predestination of God is a cause of standing for many (all the predestined); it is a cause of falling for no one » S. Prosper ad Obiect. Vincent. XII.

Just as in the order of execution the difficulty arises, « that when free will is defended, the grace of God seems to be denied; but when the grace of God is asserted, free will is thought to be taken away » (Aug. de grat. Christi c. 47.), so in exactly the same way there is the same reason between predestination and foreseen free merit. Therefore, just as in the order of execution the whole saving good and no evil is to be referred to the grace of God — not, however, in such a way that either God's antecedent will to give all men truly sufficient grace, or man's liberty, is taken away — so in exactly the same way in the order of predestination the whole saving good and no evil must be referred to the predestination of God — not, however, in such a way that God's antecedent will to save all men, or man's liberty to attain salvation through the grace of God, is denied or twisted into an alien sense. Those who defend predestination absolute before all foreseeing of works on the part of the created will keep before their eyes almost only the former truth, and they defend it indeed laudably; but they can very hardly reconcile the other with that former one. Both points pertain to the very foundations of Christian doctrine and life: namely, on the one hand, our total dependence in the way of salvation on the grace and mercy of God; on the other, the universality of the antecedent will that all men be saved, and the universality of the redemption and restoration of all men to the possibility of salvation. The holy Fathers reconcile the one truth with the other; but it is not right to defend the one in such a way that the other is denied or called into question.

ARTICLE III.

On predestination to glory considered by itself and separately.

The predestination of adults to glory, considered in itself, belongs to the consequent will, which foresees supernatural merits.

« If the predestination of adults to glory is considered by itself and separately, it is gathered from the Scriptures, and it is persuaded by the explicit teaching of those Fathers who have written most clearly about this predestination to glory, that it ought to be attributed not to God's antecedent will, but to the consequent will that foresees the merits of grace. »

The truth stated in this thesis is already contained in what has been demonstrated so far, and by name in the fundamental principle which we demonstrated in thesis LVII. Nevertheless, on account of the gravity of the matter, and because the whole controversy about predestination is conveniently reduced to this form, namely to the question of the order between predestination to glory and between the foresight and predestination of supernatural merits, we shall prove by special arguments that predestination to glory does not precede but follows the foreseeing of the merits of grace.

I. In the Scriptures there are several heads of doctrine with which the antecedent predestination of all who are to be saved, prior to the foreseeing of the supernatural merits required in them for attaining salvation, seems not to be reconcilable. On the contrary, it follows from the same heads of doctrine that God did not will to confer eternal salvation, which he confers in time on account of supernatural merits, even from eternity by an absolute will, except from foreseen merits.

For, first, by the antecedent will, which precedes the foreseeing of merits, God, as the Scriptures teach, wills that all men be saved. But antecedent predestination and absolute will of salvation of all those who are actually saved, and without which no one is saved, cannot be reconciled with this will. For if antecedent predestination is posited, which refers to all and only those actually to be saved, there must necessarily be affirmed at the same time antecedent reprobation negative from eternal salvation, that is, the denial of predestination of all other men; which will of denying predestination God has — not from foreseen evil merits, but from his mere good pleasure — so constituted that, from this bare denial of predestination, before any supposition of sins, it is metaphysically repugnant for any of all those men to obtain salvation. But the antecedent will, that these others also should all be saved and none of them perish, such as the Scriptures, both taken in themselves and understood according to the interpretation of the Fathers, most explicitly teach to be in God, cannot consist with that antecedent will of the actually saved.

I ask, then, whether God, in that moment in which, before all foreseeing of merits, he predestined all his elect, truly willed that those not so predestined should also attain salvation under the condition, provided that they merit salvation by faithfully cooperating with grace? Did he will to confer on them graces truly sufficient, and did he will to confer these graces, so far as lies in him, by a true will, that they might cooperate and be saved? If it is said that he did not so will that they be saved under the condition and that none perish, then it is denied that God wills, by antecedent will, that all men be saved, as is preached in the Scriptures and by the Fathers. If, according to the doctrine of the Scriptures and the Fathers, this conditional will of salvation of all men is granted: surely those not included in the number of the antecedently predestined can enter. And God, so far as lies in him, wills that they enter the number of the saved; nor is it certain, in any way from the denial of that predestination, but only consequently upon the foreseeing of final sins, that they are not to be saved; nor can the heavenly city, with its foreseen completed predestination and its absolutely closed number of the saved, be understood except consequently upon the foreseeing of works. Therefore these very ones not included in antecedent predestination, in that antecedent moment all can be, and some of them, consequently upon the foreseeing of merits, will in fact be predestined to eternal life. For how, with no foreseeing of works yet supposed, is it established that out of so many thousands of thousands no one will cooperate, if all can cooperate, and if God wills that they cooperate with the grace to be given to all? Thus at last one would have to come to the opinion of Ambrose Catharinus¹ and of certain other theologians teaching that some are predestined to eternal life by antecedent, others by consequent will of God; against those theologians the argument drawn from the universality of the saving will certainly does not hold, nor do we now attack them.

But those with whom our dispute lies either expressly affirm, or are convinced by the very nature of their system necessarily to affirm, that the number of the saved is absolutely closed by antecedent predestination; and therefore they must affirm that God does not will that anyone else enter that number. But it is evidently repugnant to this will that God, in the same moment, should will that others also be in the number of the saved, provided they themselves do not fail; and that to this end he should give them the necessary graces with a sincere will, that they cooperate and enter that blessed number. I say it is repugnant; for by the very fact that the number of the saved is already determined and closed beforehand in each and every person, God does not will that anyone else enter that number. To say, therefore, that God, by antecedent will, by which he has already closed the number so that it is not to be increased, nevertheless wills that the same number be increased by all those whom he has not included in that number, is an evident contradiction. This argument alone suffices to demonstrate the thesis proposed, and it shines with such light that it can in no way be obscured, unless by a perverse interpretation of the saving will, as was done by Diego Alvarez and Gonet (disp. V. a. 2. n. 58.), or by mutually conflicting assertions, into which it has been shown above that Suarez fell. For the demonstration of the present thesis, therefore, the preceding theses, especially XLIX. L. LV. LVII., are to be kept before the eyes.

2°. In the Scriptures a) God promises and proposes eternal life to be attained by all indiscriminately, as a crown on condition that they have striven lawfully; as a prize on condition that they have run to the goal (1. Cor. IX. 24-27; 2. Tim. IV. 8; 1. Pet. V. 4; Apoc. II. 7. 26; III. 5.); as an inheritance, which is at the same time a reward promised only on condition that they suffer with Christ, that they may also be glorified together (Rom. VIII. 17; Matth. V. 12.); and these are proposed and promised by way of exhortation, so that all may strive, run, suffer, and so hasten to the crown, to the prize, to the glorification together, and not otherwise than under this condition laid up or destined from eternity². It is therefore clear that God has toward all men a conditional will of conferring eternal life, namely if they themselves render what is required of them; which will is not absolute, except insofar as the condition is supposed fulfilled.

Therefore b) election to eternal life is presented in the Scriptures as suspended and uncertain, until the condition of good works, without which there would be no election, is supposed to be fulfilled. For in truth it is uncertain as regards us, because our future free acts are still undetermined for us, and we can determine ourselves either way: to good through the grace of God, to evil through bare free will; and the Scriptures speak according to this indetermination (cf. as above p. 451. nota). But to God our election is indeed certain in the unchangeable foreknowledge, who sees future things as present, and to whom « future things are already made » (above thesis XXXII. XLIII. n. III). « Rather be eager to make your calling and election sure through good works » 2. Pet. I. 10. « Hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown » Ap. III. 11. « Behold therefore... the goodness of God toward you, if you continue in his goodness; otherwise you also will be cut off; but they also, if they do not continue in unbelief, will be grafted in » Rom. XI. 22. 23. Cf. 1. Cor. IX. 27; Heb. cc. III. et IV; X. 35-39. Therefore again, election and predestination to eternal life are not absolute, but only consequent upon the foreseeing of final good works.

c) The final sentence of the judge of the predestined and the reprobate must be weighed more carefully. « Come.... possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and you gave me to eat » etc. Matth. XXV. 34. sqq. In this sentence of the judge good works are clearly presented as the motive on account of which the elect are given « to possess prepared for them the kingdom from the foundation of the world, » and without which, as it is not to be possessed by them, so it would not have been prepared for them from eternity.

Adversaries are all here compelled to take refuge in an interpretation for which they can give no other reason than that they already hold the preparation of the kingdom to be before foreseen merits. They say, namely, that the meritorious cause subjoined in the judge's sentence, for I was hungry etc., refers only to the direct sentence, possess the kingdom; but it in no way pertains to what is added in the predicate, prepared from the foundation of the world. But first of all, if ever the words of Scripture are to be taken in their obvious sense, this certainly must necessarily be kept in the sentence of the judge. Those who recall the manner in which the punishment of fire can and must be proved from these same words will readily concede that it is not free from danger to neglect this fundamental rule. Now, when a double act related to the same object (here the conferral and the preparation of the kingdom) is enunciated in one complex sentence, and a reason is then subjoined to this sentence, it cannot be denied that in its obvious sense this reason is referred to each act to which it is subjoined. Especially it cannot be affirmed, without distorting the plain and obvious sense, that the subjoined reason pertains only to what is more remote in the context, and in no way to what is nearer and immediately preceding — as our adversaries, without any foundation, are compelled to interpret these words of Christ the judge in deference to their opinion: « possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and you gave me to eat » etc. Our interpretation is confirmed by comparison with the other sentence of the judge upon the reprobate, v. 41, where the motive of damnation in execution is no less referred to the preparation of punishment, as all Catholics must confess: « depart from me into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels³; for I was hungry, and you gave me no food » etc. Finally, the thing itself shows that what is put forward as the motive of a prepared reward must be understood no less as the reason of absolute preparation than of retribution in the execution itself. When in execution the conferral of the reward is on account of merit, as on account of that motive for conferring it, the preparation of the reward in the antecedent intention, before the foreseeing of merit, cannot be other than conditional; but a reward absolutely prepared can only be consequent upon the foreseeing of merit. For certainly he who declares that he will confer the prepared reward, as judge by an act of justice, only on account of merit, by that very fact also declares that the antecedent preparation was conditional, if there was merit; but not absolute except consequently upon the supposition of merit. Thus the meritorious cause, once stated, is no less the reason and motive of absolute preparation than of conferral and just possession in such sentences: receive the crown prepared for you, because you have merited it by lawful contest; receive the prize prepared for you, because you have won the race.

Hence St Paul explicitly calls the crown of eternal life the crown of righteousness, no less insofar as it is laid up or prepared than insofar as it is rendered in execution. He signifies, therefore, that the act of preparation or predestination of eternal life is an act of justice which presupposes merits, no less than the rendering and conferral of eternal life on account of merits is an act of justice; with only this difference, that the preparation is eternal and therefore consequent upon the merits lying before eternal foreknowledge not in time but in order, whereas the conferral takes place in time, and is consequent in its very existence upon the existence of the merits. « I have fought the good fight... henceforth is laid up for me the crown of righteousness (λοιπὸν ἀπόκειταί μοι ὁ τῆς δικαιοσύνης στέφανος⁴), which the Lord, the righteous judge, will render to me in that day » 2. Tim. IV. 7. 8.

From all these things we conclude that in the sentence of the judge (Matth. 1. c.) the causal proposition « for I was hungry » etc., by which merit is certainly stated as the motive for conferring the kingdom, coheres with the preceding clause: « possess (κληρονομήσατε) prepared for you the kingdom from the foundation of the world, » so that the cause is rendered no less of the eternal preparation than of the execution in time. The Scriptures therefore teach that eternal life, from the foundation of the world — that is, by the eternal counsel of God — is prepared and predestined consequently upon and on account of merits, which lie under the eternal foreknowledge of God, just as in time it is given and conferred on account of merits acquired.

The doctrine, therefore, which we defend is deduced from the Scriptures by the plain and obvious sense of the words and their context. If, however, there are things in the same Scriptures which at first sight seem to be opposed to this doctrine, they are in passages which we can admit to be obscure and difficult; but there is nothing clear and evident in them which states that eternal life, considered in itself, is predestined in the way the adversaries want. Moreover, when the scope and context of the passages are more carefully examined, it appears at least most clearly, however much obscurity may otherwise be supposed, that in them the discourse is not about predestination of eternal life before foreseen supernatural merits, but about predestination of grace, or of grace and glory together, before any human and natural merit; concerning this sense of the Scriptures there will be a place to speak elsewhere.

II. The interpretation and the most lucid teaching of the Fathers wholly demonstrate the sense which we gather from the Scriptures. One may confidently appeal to the Fathers, both Greek and Latin, who wrote on this matter at least up to the time of St Augustine. For by common consensus, both in affirming predestination to eternal life consequent upon foreseen merits, and in denying the same predestination before foreseen merits, they manifestly maintain and vindicate the opinion we defend, in all the passages, and they are many, where they speak not « briefly and in passing, » as sometimes concerning the necessity and gratuity of grace (cf. Aug. de Praed. SS. n. 27.), but clearly and explicitly concerning this predestination to glory considered by itself. That Augustine and his disciples treat predestination not in this sense, but rather defend predestination without any foreseen merits as the doctrine of the Scriptures « more laboriously and diligently », is most certain, and the more prudent of the adversaries themselves could not deny it.

The explicit opinions of many of the Fathers are recited by Lessius de Praedest. sect. 2; Petavius de Deo 1. IX. c. 3; c. 16. n. 1. 2; 1. X. c. 1; de Incarnat. 1. XIII. c. 1. 6; Tricassinus de Praedest. sect. 4. p. 10, sqq.; p. 71. sqq.; Carolus Du Plessis d'Argentree in Commentario historico de Praedest. et Reprobat. (is also found in Appendice T. III. Opp. Martini Grandin Paris 1710.); Claudius Frassen in Scoto Academico T. I, who in this chapter reduced the lengthy work of Tricassinus to a compendium. See also Maffei Hist. theol. l. X. §. 2. n. 2; Kilber (Theologia Wirceburg. T. II.) de Praedest. art. 3. etc.

St Irenaeus, l. IV. cc. 39. 40. (al. c. 76.), first, against the Gnostic fiction of a twofold or threefold nature of men — some good, some evil, some intermediate — teaches that man becomes good through the grace of God, with which he himself cooperates freely, and becomes evil by resisting the grace of God. « If you are a work of God, await the hand of your craftsman... offer him your heart soft and pliable, and keep the form in which the craftsman formed you.... But if, hardened, you reject his art and become ungrateful toward him... you have lost both his art and your life... Therefore the art of God is not lacking... but he who does not obtain it is the cause of his own imperfection... nor will God compel him who is unwilling to hold his art. » Now by these two orders of men not only will different dwellings be assigned in the judgment according to the diversity of merits, but God also, in his foreknowledge of the good and the evil, predestined those dwellings. For Irenaeus continues at once: « But God, foreknowing all things, has prepared fitting dwellings for both, » namely of light or of darkness.

I shall say nothing of Origen, since perhaps his authority is held in contempt on this question. Moreover, he evidently agrees with the other Fathers in many places as to predestination to later graces and to glory (concerning predestination to the first grace he speaks scarcely more difficultly than some other Fathers, and it can be explained in a Catholic sense). See, for example, the commentary on Rom. I., both as it is in the translation of Rufinus and as those who copied it into the Philocalia (c. 25) described it. Gregory Nazianzen and Basil, who therefore themselves also by their own authority uphold the same doctrine (Opp. Origenis ed. de la Rue T. IV. p. 462. 463.).

Epiphanius, Haeres. LXIX. n. 58., explains with the other Fathers in this sense Matth. XX. 23: « It is not mine to give you; but if you labour, it will be prepared for you by my Father. » Cyril of Alexandria (Thesaur. T. V. P. I. p. 243.) interprets this passage of Matthew by the same opinion even more clearly. « It is not mine to give you; not because he could not confer it, but because the rewards must correspond in proportion to the labours of those who contend. » He then compares God with the presiding official of the games, who proposes prizes to all who will be victors, and concludes: « thus the Saviour judged it unfair to confer promptly the highest honour on those who ask... for it is more fitting that it be granted to those for whom the foreknowledge of the Father has prepared this on account of the excellence of their virtues. »

Chrysostom discusses this eternal predestination according to foreseen merits frequently and explicitly, so as to leave no room for doubt. Among other things he explains thus the sentence of the judge, Matth. XXV. 34: « Possess as your own inheritance, as paternal and yours, owed to you from of old; for before you existed, these things were prepared for you and predisposed, because I foreknew that you would be such » Homil. 79. al. 80. n. 2. in Matth. He teaches the same thing on purpose and most clearly in other places. « In charity he predestined us: not from labours and right actions does this come about, but from (God's) charity, neither from charity alone but also from our virtue; for if from charity alone, all would have to be saved⁵. But if again from our virtue alone, his coming and all things administered through him (the economy of grace) would have been in vain. But neither from charity alone nor from our virtue, but from both » in Ephes. hom. I. n. 2. See also in Rom. hom. XV. XVI. etc. The other Greek Fathers agree with Chrysostom: Theodoret, Oecumenius, Theophylact. This is the commentary of Theodoret on Rom. VIII. 29. 30: « For whom he foreknew and predestined... He did not predestine simply; but, since he had foreknown, he predestined... Whose purpose⁶⁷ he foreknew, these he predestined from the beginning, and those predestined he also called. » Among the Latins the first to be heard is St Hilary, In Ps. 64. n. 5: « Many are called, but few are chosen... Thus election is not a thing of indiscriminate judgment, but a discrimination made by a choice of merit. Blessed therefore is the one whom God has chosen, blessed on account of this, because he is worthy of election. But we ought to know for what this blessed one was chosen, namely for what follows: he shall dwell in your tabernacles. »

Ambrose (de fide, l. V. n. 83.) explains the words of Christ, Matt. XX. 23, in the same way as Epiphanius and Cyril: « For whom it is prepared: that (Christ) might show that the Father also is not wont to confer rewards on account of petitions, but on account of merits… Whence the Apostle also says: whom he foreknew and predestined (Rom. VIII. 29.); for he did not predestine before he foreknew, but those whose merits he foreknew, their rewards he predestined. »

On this other passage, Rom. VIII. 29, the author of the commentary on the Epistles of Paul, which is printed among the works of St Ambrose along with several other Fathers, expressed the same opinion. «Those whom he foreknew would be devoted to him, these he chose to lay hold of the promised rewards.»

How certain this matter was to St Jerome beyond all controversy, one will understand even by reading his reply alone to question 10 of Hedibia, letter 120, where the holy Doctor, explaining the difficult texts from Rom. IX, declares that everything the Apostle says about the election between Jacob and Esau, and about the vessels of mercy and of contumely, is to be understood of election by preceding causes on the part of men, in election just as in execution. « He does not save irrationally and without the truth of judgment, but by preceding causes, because some did not receive the Son of God, while others (aided by grace) were willing of their own accord to receive him… From this it is shown that not nations are chosen, but the wills of men. »

As for Augustine's own disciples, the things to be recalled first are those we adduced above from St Prosper, th. LV. n. II. 4°. Most eloquently St Fulgentius distinguishes the gratuitous predestination of grace from the predestination to glory, which, considered in itself, proceeds from the merits of grace and is therefore according to justice. « To this predestination belong both the gratuitous justification of the Redeemer and the just recompense of the judge; to this predestination belongs the mercy which Paul obtained, that he might be faithful; and the crown of justice which the Lord, the just judge, will render to him on that day, and not to Paul only, but to all who love his coming… to whom, by mercy he prepared the gratuitous gift of justification, so by justice he prepared the eternal⁸ reward of justification » de Veritat. Praedestin. c. 5. He expresses the preparation of the reward through justice in the same way in another place, I. I. c. 24, to Monimus: « Therefore God, about to show what he had foreseen was to be repaid and what was to be given⁹, predestined to punishment those whom he foreknew would depart by the vice of an evil will; and he predestined to the kingdom those whom he foreknew would return by the aid of prevenient mercy, and who would remain in him by the aid of subsequent mercy. » See Alticotium, Summa Augustiniana T. VI. quaest. 2. a. 4. n. 12. sqq.

You will find the theologians who defend the opinion demonstrated so far—not indeed all of them, but a long enough series, drawn from various schools—in Card. Toletum, in 1. q. 23. a. 5. conclus. 2; in Vasquez, 1. P. disp. 89. c. 2; in Lessium, de Praedest. sect. 2. n. 8; after them in Peter of the Counts of the Order of St Augustine, de Praedestin. et Reprobat. disp. III. a. 9; and in Cardinal Sfondrati at the end of his work: « The Knot of Predestination Untied. » To these, many others could be added from the older authors and very many from the more recent, so that the demands of those who seek the authority of the Schools are fully satisfied. The more learned and prudent among the adversaries themselves, who most fiercely defend predestination before foreseen merits, having gathered reasons from every side, are nonetheless compelled to admit that our opinion is « truly probable » (see Suarez, Opusc. de Auxil. 1. III. c. 16. n. 8.).

To take a specimen of the opinion of the Scholastics, let Toledo be heard, l. c. After he has, to prove predestination to glory « on account of foreseen good (merits) » (a rather unfortunate selection, I confess)¹⁰ brought forward the testimonies of the Fathers, he proceeds to examine the opinions of the older Scholastics. « You will say: the Scholastics all adhere to Augustine.¹¹ Attend, for the love of God, lest you be deceived. St Thomas and Scotus¹² and Durandus are of this opinion; the common opinion is against it, as many do not notice. First of all, this opinion (predestination after foreseen merits) is that of Alexander of Hales, I. q. 28; of Albert the Great; of Henry, in Summ. q. 4. a. 9; q. 5. a. 5; quodlibet 4. q. 18; and of Bonaventure, 1. dist. 41. q. 2., who says that predestination is on account of works, although it is uncertain to men on account of which works our God does this. The same Gabriel, d. 41. q. 1., who holds that some predestination is by the will of God alone, as of the Blessed Virgin and the Apostles, and of others on account of good works. The same Ockham with the school of the Nominalists; the same Thomas Argentinas, d. 41. q. 1. See for yourself whether these do not make a common opinion with the others, whom I had no leisure to see. In their name I shall recite the words of Albert, who speaks thus (1. dist. 40. a. 11; cf. Summ. P. I. Tract. XVI. q. 63. m.2.): There are two things in predestination: the foreknowledge of those to be saved, and the will to save so many. This will of God regards something in our work, since he wills that as many be saved as will use well the grace to be given by him, and no more; and if more were to use that grace well, then from eternity he would have willed more. Thus Albert. » It has pleased me to recite these very words of Toledo, whose warning—that no one should think the opinion defended by him and by us was less frequent among the older theologians—was perhaps more necessary as the sixteenth century was declining; but for some it will not be useless even in our own age.

Arguments which are brought against the doctrine demonstrated so far are examined.

Arguments which are commonly put forward either to refute the doctrine of predestination to glory proved above, or to persuade the contrary opinion—that predestination to glory precedes foreseen merits—deduced from the testimonies of Scripture and the Fathers or from the order necessarily holding between means and end, are by no means to the point.

Since here we are dealing with a doctrine which is freely disputed in Catholic schools on both sides, it is rightly demanded that the arguments for the opinion we think true be considered not only in themselves and absolutely, but also comparatively with the arguments of the adverse party. Thus far, indeed, we have deduced the truth of our opinion from all the sources of theology; it remains, therefore, that we examine more carefully those things which are thought by some to weaken our proof and to favour the contrary opinion. This we shall endeavour fully to accomplish in the subsequent series of theses; in the present thesis, however, we shall first reject the direct attacks which the adversaries oppose to our arguments; then we shall show that the reasons by which they are wont to persuade predestination to glory before foreseen merits, considered in general, are of little efficacy.

I. As regards the direct attacks on our proof: 1°, the argument by far the chief, and by itself alone sufficient for demonstrating predestination to glory from the consequent will which foresees the merit of the supernatural, I say, the argument drawn from the antecedent will of God, that all men without exception be saved, cannot be refuted or attacked by any probable reason. For no attack can be mounted unless either by interpreting the antecedent will for the salvation of all men in a sense which we have demonstrated to be manifestly false (th. XLVII. sqq.), and whose assertion amounts to a denial of the saving will, such as we have shown is preached in Scripture and by the Fathers; or by asserting at once, in manifest contradiction, that the antecedent positive will does not comprehend innumerable men among those to be saved, and yet that the antecedent will is that all of them be among those to be saved. Concerning this matter we have said enough at th. LV.

2°. As for the remaining testimonies of Scripture and the Fathers adduced in the preceding thesis, Suarez and Gonet, together with the others, have one single answer: namely, that in all of them the discourse concerns not the order of predestination but the order of execution, in which latter they do concede that foreseen and predestined merits precede, as means to the end, the attainment of predestined glory¹. For they imagine, namely, in the divine mind² a twofold order of counsels: one they call the order of intention, by which God, as a wise provider, first wills the end, that is, the eternal beatitude of all who are to be saved; then the proximate means to the end, which are good works and merits; then the more remote means, which are the efficacious graces; and by this order they say that absolute predestination to eternal life was made before the foresight of merits. Predestination having now been made, they think that in our manner of understanding God proceeds, in his eternal counsel, to dispose its execution, where God wills first to apply the more remote means, then the proximate ones, and lastly wills the end; and so the order of execution, in the divine mind itself, is reversed when compared with the order of intention. Whence they say that all the testimonies of Scripture and the Fathers adduced are not to be understood of the order of intention, and therefore not of predestination, but of the other order, that of execution. By this art of interpretation, they thought, the clearest testimonies could be evaded.

a) But that double order in the divine mind, as these theologians conceive it, is fictitious, and was devised not to find the genuine sense of the holy Fathers but to escape the weight of their authority. In none of the testimonies of the Fathers that can be brought forward is there found any trace of this twofold order in the divine counsels; no one before these theologians, driven into a corner, ever thought of it. For what, I ask, is the order of efficacious intention in God and the order of execution? Intention in God is intellect and will together with a connotation of an object outwards. But if this very intention is efficacious, it is in God active execution, or an efficient act. Execution, however, passive, is not in God but in things. Therefore, while we conceive God as absolutely intending, or efficaciously willing, e.g., first the end, then the proximate means, lastly the more remote means, which are for the end and on account of the end: by this very intention active execution is wholly absolute; and without anything else being understood in the divine mind, by this very fact there will begin in time passive execution, that is, the existence of things. The order of this existence in time will certainly be inverted whenever, in intention, the absolute will for the end to be effected through means precedes; nor is it necessary, in God, after he has efficaciously willed the existence of the end and the existence of the means which are for the end and on account of the end, absurdly to imagine a new series of volitions by which, in inverted order, he again wills the existence of those same means for the end and the existence of the end. Certainly the Fathers did not distinguish predestining intention and active execution in the divine mind otherwise than according to the connotation of the term, as it is still future in itself or is now being effected in time (cf. th. LVII.).

b) Setting aside the other arguments, it is enough to read the testimonies of the Fathers, some of which we described above, to see that the hypothesis is absurd: namely, that those holy Doctors admitted predestination to glory to precede the foreseeing of merits, and said that only in execution (however one understands it) is the will of conferring glory consequent upon merits. For the Fathers deny that there is any predestination to eternal rewards except consequent upon the foreseeing of merits; see e.g. Ambrose and Theodoret, ll. cc. But if they had been of the opinion which the adversaries feign, they could in no way have denied that there is some predestination before the foreseeing of merits. Moreover, the Fathers in the same contexts affirm that predestination of reward is in the same way not before but after foreseen merits, just as reprobation, or predestination to punishment, is consequent upon foreseen sins. But not only in the order of execution but also in the order of predestination, punishment is predestined consequent upon foreseen sins. Therefore the Fathers thought the same about predestination of reward consequent upon foreseen merits. See e.g. Irenaeus and Fulgentius, ll. cc. In sum, if predestination to glory after foreseen merits is not expressed in the opinions of those Fathers, there are no words in any language by which it could be expressed.

II. The arguments by which the adversaries try to persuade themselves and others of their opinion—that predestination to glory precedes foreseen merits—are drawn, 1°, from testimonies of Scripture, chiefly from Rom. IX, and—what is truly astonishing—from Eph. I. 11. sq.; Matth. XXIV. 22. 24; Luc. XII. 32; Act. XIII. 48; and then from the doctrine of Augustine in the books against the Semipelagians, who deny that the beginning of faith and perseverance in faith are gifts of God, and that they are therefore predestined.

But indeed, a) neither from Scripture nor from any ancient Doctor do they bring forward, or can they bring forward, any opinion in which it is said that eternal life, considered in itself and apart, is predestined for all who are to be saved before foreseen works and supernatural merits. On the contrary, many of the Fathers teach clearly and expressly that the rewards of eternal life are predestined by God for those whose merits he foresaw, and are not predestined except with merits foreseen.

b) All the texts which the adversaries bring forward they consider torn from their contexts, with no account taken of the aim of the author and of the doctrine in other places. For if the aim and context of ch. IX of Romans are considered, then although many things in it seem difficult and obscure, two things are altogether evident. First, the discourse there is not about predestination to eternal life considered apart from predestination of grace, nor in any way about the order between the one and the other; but the discourse is about the gratuitous calling and the grace of faith and of adoption as sons and heirs of the New Testament. Then, directly there, the discourse is not about gratuitous predestination, but about the gratuitous conferring and bestowal to which predestination corresponds. Therefore, whoever would say that by those words, v. 11–13.³ indicate predestination to glory apart from regard to supernatural works, would of necessity have to affirm also the bestowal of glory without regard to supernatural merits, which is repugnant to Catholic dogma. Then the Fathers Origen, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Oecumenius, Theophylact, Jerome (ep. ad Hedib.), Ambrosiaster, etc., explain the whole of ch. IX of Romans in such a way as to exclude, by many and express arguments, the sense brought in by the adversaries.

In the other texts which are cited, plain inspection shows that there is no mention of predestination to glory considered apart from predestination to grace; and consequently there is also no trace of the doctrine of the adversaries about the order between predestination to glory and to grace. In Eph. I. 1-13 and in the parallel passages, the Apostle first speaks expressly of all the faithful, at least of all the just, from among Jews and Gentiles (vv. 12 and 13); moreover, he declares the term election and predestination to be not glory but grace and holiness: « he chose us that we should be (εἰς τὸ εἶναι ἡμᾶς⁴) holy and immaculate » etc. According to the adversaries' interpretation, therefore, we would have it revealed that at least all the just faithful at the apostolic time, and, considering the destination of Scripture for the Church of all ages, all the justified faithful without exception are predestined to glory. By this art of interpretation one would arrive, with Calvin, at denying all supernatural gifts to those who are not predestined to eternal glory, and at constituting the invisible Church from all and only the predestined.

c) As for Augustine, his whole discussion was concerning predestination of grace, or of grace and glory together, with human merits excluded as coming from the powers of nature. But whenever he has mentioned predestination to glory considered in itself, fully agreeing with the other Fathers he has signified that the reward of eternal life is also predestined in the same order in which it is given to the merits of grace (th. LVII.). But what is brought forward from the Scriptures and from the doctrine of St Augustine and also of St Thomas requires a fuller explanation, which we reserve for the following theses.

2°. Let there be considered the proofs which they repeat from the intrinsic reason of predestination itself.

a) The argument which the advocates of the adverse opinion consider the weightiest, and on which, if they are willing to tell the truth, they almost solely rely, is not drawn from Scripture and the Fathers but from the intrinsic natures of things; namely, from the order, as they themselves put it, of means to end. Indeed, this reason either proves that predestination to glory, with merits supposed and foreseen, not only has not been made but could not have been made by God; or, as it seems to us, it proves absolutely nothing. « The fundamental reason of our conclusion, Gonet says (disp. II. n. 26.), is drawn from St Thomas in the passages cited⁵, and it can be briefly put thus. He who wills in an orderly manner wills the end before the means to the end. But God wills in an orderly manner. Therefore he wills the end before the means to it. But glory is the end, and merits are the means leading to it. Therefore he wills glory before merits, and consequently election to glory cannot be from the foreseeing of merits. This reason is founded on this principle, which Aristotle hands down, namely that the end is willed first by the agent before the means to it. » To this his « fundamental » argument, no less unstable than the common and obvious one, a theologian applauds with a triumphal ode: « It is wonderful how much this argument torments the adversaries; so that, to free themselves from it, they turn on every side. »

Nevertheless, this is answered easily, without any strain on our part and without turning to one side, though with some retort. End and means are not of one kind only but of many. Someone can intend an end to be attained by means to be used by his own operation alone, without regard to the will or cooperation of another. In this way, if almighty and infinitely wise God wills an end, the absolute intention of the end is always conceived as prior in reason, and from it, consequently, the intention of the means⁶. Then someone can set an end before another to be attained through free meritorious cooperation⁷ (the help offered and given by himself being nonetheless presupposed), and to be given by himself in reward for merit. In this way, if the discussion concerns man, it is not only not necessary but even impossible that an absolute intention of the end should precede the supposition of merit. If God formally sets such an end before a free creature, to be attained as the reward of merits, it certainly appears more fitting to the order of things (whatever be the absolute possibility) that the reward not be set by absolute intention except with a free merit supposed; quite evidently such an absolute intention of reward is not necessary antecedently to the supposition and foreseeing of merit. Hence this argument drawn from the order of means to end either proves the contrary, if it proves anything, and can be turned back upon its authors; or it proves nothing at all. Indeed this retort is not to be declined. He who most orderly wills an end for another formally as a reward for free merits, does not will this end for him by absolute intention except with merits supposed. But God most orderly wills the end of eternal glory for adults formally as a reward for free merits (supernatural). Therefore God does not will the end of eternal glory for adults by absolute intention except with merits supposed (and therefore foreseen) (supernatural). Cf. Lessium sect. 5. n. 84. If the order we have supposed is denied to be necessary in itself in the divine intention, much more evidently the inverse order is not necessary, that God should first will the reward by absolute will and then the merits. But if this order is not necessary, then from that principle considered in itself, however common it be by the authority of Aristotle, nothing is proved, because it does not pertain to the matter. Hence, since from the nature of things God can at least as well predestine his elect to the reward of eternal life with merits supposed and foreseen as by an antecedent will before the foreseeing of merits, nothing remains but that we gather the divine intention from those things which he himself was pleased to make known to us about his merciful and saving will toward the human race. Now, from the word of God and from the works of God in the order of grace it is most certain that God, by his antecedent will, wills all men to be saved and no one to perish, and therefore offers and gives to all (so far as lies in him) the necessary help, so that all can be saved, with intention, command, threats and entreaties, that they may use these helps and be saved; and therefore he wills, by antecedent will, to refuse predestination to glory to no one, but only consequently upon foreseen evil merit. By this very fact it is evident that the distinction between the whole number of the predestined, and therefore of those actually to be saved, and the whole number of the reprobate and those to be damned, has not been made antecedently but consequently upon the foreseen good merits acquired through grace and the evil merits contracted by free will.

These things make clear the answer to the « fundamental reason » of the opinion we are opposing. They say: the intention of the end precedes the choice of the means, nor can there be an efficacious will for the means unless from an antecedent efficacious will for the end, since each person is moved to will the means by an efficacious will for the end. But the eternal glory of the blessed is the end which God intends; their merits are the means to the end. Therefore in God an efficacious will precedes, by which he wills eternal glory for all who are to be saved, and from this will there follows the will for merits. I reply: I distinguish the major premise: the intention of an end which someone proposes to attain for himself by necessary means—that is, independently of every other free will—precedes the choice of means: I concede M; the intention of an end which someone proposes to attain freely for another, as wage and reward, precedes the choice of the means by which he wishes to help the other to the free attainment of the end proposed to him: I subdistinguish: a conditional intention of the end precedes: I concede M; an absolute intention precedes: I deny M. Likewise, I distinguish the minor: eternal glory is an end which God intends to attain for himself by necessary means: I deny the minor; which God intends—that is, proposes to be attained and wills for another: I subdistinguish: which he wills for another as a reward to be freely attained by him, and therefore wills under a condition: I concede the minor; which he wills absolutely for another: again I subdistinguish: which he wills absolutely consequent upon the foreseeing of the condition fulfilled: I concede; which he wills absolutely antecedent to this foreseeing: I deny. To the addition « merits are means to the end, » the reply is: they are free means, which God commands men to use freely in order to attain the reward, and to which he helps by his graces: I concede; they are means which he himself employs independently of the free will of men: I deny. Let the examples set forth by St Paul and by Christ our Lord himself be recalled: how the president of the games sets a crown and a prize before those who contend and run, and how the householder sets a wage before the servants hired to tend the vineyard.

b) Another argument for the contrary opinion can be drawn from the special love of God toward his elect. No one can without error deny God's special love and providence toward the predestined, which is not common to those who are not to be saved. But this special love cannot be understood in predestination, except insofar as God, from an antecedent efficacious intention of eternal salvation, chooses for them efficacious graces, and through these merits and the gift of final perseverance. Indeed this is itself predestination to glory antecedently to foreseen merits.

This argument gives occasion to guard against a false interpretation of our doctrine. The special love of God toward the predestined⁸, which is not common to the reprobate, can be understood in several ways. First, the greater and lesser love of God is not properly said of the act in itself as more or less intense, since the act is the divine substance itself under the aspect of love, which is infinite in itself; but greater and lesser love is said by reason of the connoted term, that is, by reason of the goods that God wills, and of the manner in which he wills to confer them on creatures. This being laid down, we distinguish antecedent love and consequent love.

Now consequent love, that is, love as it is regarded completely in relation to the actual conferring of grace, merits and glory, which foresees merits and thus extends to the whole series of effects of predestination, is undoubtedly altogether special toward the predestined and not common to the reprobate. From the universal and conditional will of salvation God decrees and distributes graces, without which salvation cannot be obtained; therefore the special love is to be considered, in how it stands toward the predestined in the conferring of graces. We say that consequent love, that is, as all the gifts actually conferred are regarded, is special toward the predestined. For if a grace which has its effect is always morally a greater benefit than another grace which (through the fault of man) remains ineffective, how much more special a benefit must be reckoned the graces connected with final perseverance itself? This perseverance is in itself a gratuitous gift, insofar as it can be merited or obtained not by condign merit but only by suppliant congruous merit, and is absolutely gratuitous in the first grace, from which its obtaining can begin. Therefore, to the predestined, to whom alone and to all of whom this great gift is given, it is given from grace, yet not without regard to their free cooperation (if we speak of adults) under grace and through grace; to those to whom it is not given, the cause is not in the antecedent will of God but in themselves.

Chiefly the adversaries demand a declaration of special antecedent love. Antecedent love, as it is referred to glory considered in itself, is the will to confer glory not absolutely but under the condition of merits. That this is universal, and not particular toward the predestined such that other reprobates would be excluded from it, we have sufficiently demonstrated. Nevertheless we concede and affirm that God, antecedently and also by will, wills for some, before others, by a special love, a higher degree of glory (provided they did not fail in the graces to be given to them). Yet this greater antecedent love and the wider conditional will is not equal toward all who are predestined by the consequent divine will; nor through it is any distinction yet made between the predestined and the non-predestined. Such special love toward some, however, is inferred from singular gifts, by which they are anticipated from infancy or later without any merit and are led in marvellous ways to a sublime holiness, to which others cannot attain (See Lessium sect. 5. n. 96; sect. 6. n. 150. 151.).

When, however, the question is about special antecedent love of God toward all the predestined, first we deny that the reason and norm of the distribution of graces is the antecedent absolute predestination to glory; for if this were supposed, it would follow that for the non-predestined, on account of an antecedent negative reprobation, graces which will not have effect would be chosen deliberately, and by that very fact the most certain doctrine of the universality of the antecedent saving will could no longer be defended. Nevertheless, in the distribution of graces we maintain a special love and antecedent providence toward the predestined. God decrees from eternity and confers in time all his graces with an antecedent will and with an « intense desire, » that the good work to which grace is ordered be done freely by man. But while God, knowing that man, if such grace were given, would resist it by his own fault, nevertheless wills to give this grace and not another that would have effect—which indeed, according to the extent of his omnipotence, would not be lacking to him—that antecedent divine will for a good work remains ineffective through the fault of man, and the will of permitting resistance succeeds. On the other hand, while God confers grace with knowledge going before that man, if that grace were given, would cooperate, the antecedent will passes into an absolute intention of the good work. Therefore, in the conferring of grace which he sees will be efficacious if it were given, the love toward man is greater and special, consequent upon the knowledge of conditionals, but antecedent to the existence of the good work and to the knowledge of vision. If now you look at the whole series of efficacious graces up to final perseverance, by which predestination is completed, and at the same time consider that God could have conferred other graces, and in another order, which he knew would be ineffective through man's fault: you will easily understand how special is God's love and providence, even antecedent (with knowledge of conditionals going before), toward all his elect. On the other hand, that God's providence in the graces which he actually confers on the reprobate does not have the character of predestination and of this special love, this happens through their own fault, although indeed another order of graces and providence would not be lacking to the Omnipotent, in which they too would consent and come to justification and persevere, and so would have been predestined. But questions are not to be raised about possible orders; rather divine providence must be considered according to the present order, in which « the predestination of God is for many a cause of standing, for no one a cause of falling. »

Neither the question of St Prosper in ep. ad Augustinum n. 8., nor the reply of St Augustine, can be understood as concerning predestination to glory before or after foreseen merits, which are through truly gratuitous grace.

« We do not think it probable that St Prosper, in ep. ad August. n. 8., asked about the doctrine of the earlier Fathers concerning predestination to glory after foreseen merits in the sense in which Catholics defend it; and it is evidently false that Augustine, in his reply in de Praedest. SS. n. 27., refused as to this doctrine the authority of the holy Fathers. For Prosper's question must be understood according to Semipelagian principles, and « a question difficult to solve », in which, Augustine says, the older Fathers were only incidentally engaged, so that there is no need to search through their little works, pertains plainly to something other than predestination to glory before or after foreseen supernatural merits. »

Let it first be observed, in the doctrine of the Fathers who wrote before the Pelagian heresy arose, that on each of the two heads, grace and predestination, something is stated wholly expressly and clearly, and very often inculcated on purpose, while something else is rather implicit and presupposed or mentioned in passing. As we have seen enough in thesis LIX, they teach clearly and explicitly by negations that predestination to eternal life is not made « simply, but because God had foreknown men's merits, he predestined them »; that God « did not predestine before he foreknew merits; but whose merits he foreknew, their rewards he predestined »; that « election is not without preceding causes and without the truth of judgment »; that « election is not of an indiscriminate judgment, but from a choice of merit »; that it is « not from the sole charity of God but also from our virtue, because if it were from the sole charity, all would have to be saved. » The Fathers next teach by affirming that « dwellings are prepared for the pious as well as for the impious according to foreknowledge of future things »; that « the kingdom was prepared by the Father consequent upon labours, prepared by the Father's foreknowledge on account of the excellence of virtues »; that « the kingdom was once prepared for the just, because God foreknew they would be such »; that « those whom he foreknew to be devoted to him, these he chose for the promised rewards. »

It is, however, implicit in these and many other passages of those Fathers, and often presupposed or less distinctly expressed, that the beginning of a good and saving will, which is the root and principle of the merits by which eternal life is predestined, is itself also a gift of God and from grace; and therefore that eternal life is predestined on foreseen merit, which merit is itself the grace of God. Whence it follows that predestination to glory, in its root (in the first grace, I say), cannot have a meritorious cause on the part of the predestined men, and so is truly, yet not purely, gratuitous. This principle of predestination of grace, from no human merits, and predestination to eternal life, indeed from merits but from merits obtained¹ through grace, was most fully defended and made clear in the Pelagian controversy. Hence what the older Fathers said, «those whose merits God foreknew, their rewards he predestined,» is seen to be explained more distinctly by the Fathers who followed, in accordance with the doctrine of Augustine and of the Catholic Church, in this sense: «he predestined to the kingdom those whom he foreknew would return to him by the aid of preventing mercy» etc. S. Fulgent. ad Monim. I. 24. The Semipelagians, on the contrary, although they did not simply deny the merits of grace from which predestination to life comes, nevertheless attributed the very beginning of a good will, the will to believe, and perseverance in faith, not to the grace and gift of God but to human merit, by foreseeing which God predestined us to the graces of works and to eternal life. In this way, what the older Fathers in their explicit doctrine of predestination from foreseen merits either presupposed or expressed less distinctly², those erring men altogether denied, and they tried to establish their error from the opinions of the Fathers. Hence St Augustine's whole disputation on predestination against the Semipelagians bears on this one point: to demonstrate that predestination is entirely gratuitous in its first root, and independent of human or natural merits.

Having thus set forth beforehand the manner of preaching before the Pelagian controversy and the error of the Semipelagians, the way is cleared to understand both Prosper's question and Augustine's reply, which we are discussing. Prosper's question in his letter n. 8. was this: « Please also show us, bearing patiently our foolishness, how this is to be resolved: that on reviewing the earlier opinions on this matter there is found an almost universal agreement and one view, by which they received the purpose and predestination of God according to foreknowledge, so that for this reason God made some vessels of honour and others of dishonour, because he foresaw the end of each, and foreknew in what will and action he would be under the very help of grace. » Many understand these words in this way: that one asks what is to be thought of the earlier Fathers, who almost all taught predestination after foreseen supernatural merits in the sense in which predestination is now disputed. From these, others (like Alticotius) affirm that the question was Prosper's own, not the difficulty of the Massilians; whence they find no reply to it in Augustine's books. Others do not hesitate to assert that the question is indeed the same that is now called in controversy among Catholics, but proposed from the opinion of the Semipelagians; and Augustine's reply is found in the book de Praedest. SS. n. 27., in these words: « Why then is there need that we search the little works of those who, before this (Pelagian) heresy arose, had no necessity to engage in this difficult question to solve? » Augustine would therefore have judged that the earlier Fathers, who affirmed in passing predestination to glory after foreseen supernatural merits while the question was not yet sufficiently refined, were not to be heard; but predestination to glory before the foreseeing of any merits is to be defended. See Suarez, l. I. c. 8. n. 38; Gonet, disp. II. n. 15. 24; Cercia, Apparat. ad Tract. de Grat. lect. 10. p. 162.

We are not now asking in general what Augustine thought of predestination to glory considered in itself; but we affirm two things: first, that Augustine's reply, l. c., cannot be referred to the doctrine of the earlier Fathers concerning predestination to glory, whatever sense of Prosper's question is supposed; second, that this question itself was not proposed in the sense which those theologians suppose.

I. What we affirm of Augustine, first, is evident from the very look of the words. For the question is not about predestination to glory; rather, in the most eloquent words of the Holy Doctor, the question is of gratuitous grace; and in it he thinks there is no need to dispute with the Pelagians and Semipelagians about each opinion of the older Fathers, because the Fathers had either often presupposed it or touched upon it in passing, and so all the more obscurely. « Certainly, if I were to bring forward, he says, a defence of this opinion from the writers of the divine Scriptures who were before us, which now we are urged to defend more carefully and copiously against the new error of the Pelagians, namely that the grace of God is not given according to our merits, and that it is given freely to whom it is given, because it is neither of the one willing nor of the one running, but of God who shows mercy… if then I were to draw a defence of this opinion from the divine oracles and from the Catholic writers who preceded us, surely these brethren, for whom we now act, would acquiesce; for this you have signified in your letters. Why then is there need that we search the little works of those who, before this heresy arose, had no necessity to engage in this difficult question to solve, which without doubt they would have done if they had been compelled to reply to such men? Whence it came about that what they thought about the grace of God they touched upon briefly and in passing in certain places of their writings » de Praedest. SS. n. 27.

2°. The reason why Augustine was unwilling to be drawn into a discussion of each opinion of the Fathers cannot be that they «touched briefly and in passing» on the doctrine of predestination to glory before any merits whatever were foreseen. For the Fathers older than Augustine set out the doctrine of predestination after the foreseeing³ of supernatural merits frequently, explicitly, and most clearly; but the doctrine our adversaries hold they touched on neither briefly nor at length, except to refute it. On the contrary, it is most true that the Fathers, especially the Greeks, most well known to Cassian, once a hearer of Chrysostom, and to the other Massilians, touched briefly and in passing on the doctrine of preventing grace, which goes before every beginning that would be from us, and sometimes even presupposed it. From this it came about that those holy Fathers, and Chrysostom by name, were not rarely charged with calumny, even by more recent writers, as though they were forerunners of Semipelagianism.

3°. Augustine indeed could, and wished, to declare and defend «more diligently and laboriously» what the earlier Fathers had taught more obscurely and more simply (de Dono persever. n. 53.); but he never shrank more from teaching things contradictory to his predecessors, and nothing was more at heart for him than to keep agreement with them, to bring it forward and demonstrate it everywhere, as is clear to readers even of these two books, de Praed. SS. et de Dono persev. Cf. Maffei Hist. theol. l. X. §. II. n. 2. But if the sense of the answer in this place were the one the adversaries say, he would no longer be «diligentius et operosius defending» what the Fathers had said «briefly and in passing», as he professes to be doing; he would instead contradict their plain opinions. It is therefore most certain⁴, that this is not the sense of Augustine's words. Hence if the question of Prosper means this: what (grace being supposed gratuitous and preventing every human and natural beginning on the way of salvation) is to be thought of predestination to glory considered in itself, after foreseen merits obtained through gratuitous grace, as «there is found an equal and one opinion of almost all the earlier ones;» if, I say, this is the sense of the question, the answer to it is certainly not found in this place, in de Praed. SS. n. 27, where the adversaries seek it; but it would have to be found, wholly consonant with the earlier Fathers, in other works of Augustine written long ago, to whose reading he also commends in these books: ad Simplic. l. II. q. 2. n. 6. 22; de Gratia et lib. arbit. n. 14. 15; ep. 194. ad Sixt. n. 19. etc.

II. What then is the sense of Prosper's question? First note that he proposes something to be resolved, that is, a difficulty to be solved along with the other objections of the Massilians. « How this also is to be resolved, … you should show. » Therefore, without doubt, the sense of the Semipelagians lies hidden under the words of Prosper. Note further that the whole of this eighth number, where the words are quoted, is nothing other than a recapitulation and summary of what he had set out in the whole letter. Let us see, then, how the doctrine of the Massilians on predestination is expressed in the preceding part, so that from these we may understand the sense of the words which are in question. He had set out the opinion of the Massilians on predestination at n. 3 thus: « But those who are going to believe, and those who, in that faith which henceforth is to be aided by grace, will persevere, God foreknew before the constitution of the world, and predestined to his kingdom those whom he foresaw would be freely called, would be worthy of election, and would depart from this life with a good end… » And they affirm that those things which are brought forward from the letter of the Apostle Paul writing to the Romans for the manifestation of the divine grace going before the merits of the elect are not understood by any ecclesiastical writer in the way that they are now understood (by Augustine and the other conquerors of the Pelagians).

Therefore, the Massilians, according to the testimony of Prosper, say a) that faith, or the will to believe, and the remaining in the faith and perseverance, are foreknown by God, but are not predestined; that is, that faith and perseverance⁵ in the faith are from the natural powers of free will. Prosper declares this still more distinctly in what follows. «As regards the liberty of the will, they say that eternal life is laid hold of by those who believed of their own accord and received the help of grace by the merit of belief... they want the obedience to be prior to grace, so that the beginning of salvation is to be believed to stand from him who is saved, not from him who saves; and the will of man should procure for itself the help of divine grace, not that grace should subject the human will to itself» (that is, not that grace should precede and the will follow). The same things are set out clearly in the letter of Hilary, and in Augustine's reply in both books, de Praedest. SS. et de Dono persev.

b) Therefore they do not say « freely called » in the sense that nothing of merit precedes the calling itself to the fullness of faith. For they teach that even the external calling through the preaching of the gospel is according to the foreseeing of « merits of belief » (Prosper's letter n. 5.). But they call the calling gratuitous, because there does not precede it either holiness or such merit as would make men worthy of the calling; which in our way of speaking would be said to precede by merit of congruity, but not by merit of condignity.

Their same sense is gathered also from the letter of Hilary, who says that the testimonies of Scripture are explained by them thus: « that from them they receive that grace to be commended by which each man is helped after the will; or they refer them to the very calling, which is granted to the unworthy » n. 7. For « grace (gratuitous) is not denied, if such a will is said to precede as merely seeks a physician, but not one which is itself already capable of anything » ib. n. 2.

c) Therefore, according to their opinion, God predestined to eternal life those whom he foresaw would first believe by their own powers, and thereafter, through the help of grace, would be worthy of election, and would depart in that merit which cannot be had without the help of grace.

d) They sought the defence of this their error from the fact that the older Fathers had less distinctly insisted on the grace which goes before every merit, a grace which Augustine was compelled to vindicate more copiously and diligently against the Pelagians; whence they themselves thought that the testimonies of Scripture which Augustine brought forward « for the manifestation of divine grace going before every merit of the elect, were understood by none of the ecclesiastical writers in this way. »

Since this is the doctrine of the Massilians, set out by Prosper and Hilary in their letters to Augustine, it is now easily plain that the same meaning underlies the difficulty which Prosper proposes to be resolved at n. 8. «That also how it is to be resolved... you should show, that... there is found an equal and one opinion of almost all the earlier ones (according to the assertion of the Massilians), by which they accepted the purpose and predestination of God according to foreknowledge... because he foresaw the end of each one (the end which each justified man attains in the state of grace by persevering with the powers of nature implanted in him, whence God is said to have foreseen that end only, and not also to bestow it), and under the aid of grace foreknew in what will and action he would be.» For a good will and action sufficient for salvation, in the opinion of the Massilians too, is only through the aid of grace; which fact, as Augustine speaks in Praed. SS. n. 2, greatly distinguishes them from the error of the Pelagians. Yet they thought that this good will and good action was preceded by another good will, which is not from grace, and which at least merits congruously grace for good working. In this way, Augustine adds at ib. n. 3, «one does not depart from that opinion... that the grace of God is given according to our merits, if it does not pertain to the grace of God that we have begun to believe⁶, but rather that which is added to us for this reason, that we may believe more fully and more perfectly; and so we first give the beginning of our faith to God, that it may be repaid to us, and its completion.»

If this is the sense of the difficulty, it is plain that the two whole books of Augustine, de Praedest. SS. and de Dono persev., are nothing other than a response to each part of this very difficulty; it is plain also that, especially in the words described above from n. 27 de Praed. SS., a reply is made to the same; and it is plain that Augustine rightly there refuses an examination of the individual opinions of the earlier Fathers in the doctrine of grace, « because they touched upon what they thought concerning the grace of God, briefly and in passing in certain places of their writings. »

St Augustine, against the Pelagians and their remnants, never taught predestination to glory before foreseen supernatural merits, but gratuitous predestination of grace, in order to exclude natural merits.

As regards Augustine's doctrine of predestination, it is certain that the holy Doctor, against the Pelagians and their remnants, never raised the question of the order between predestination of grace and predestination to glory; nor did he ever otherwise assert predestination to be gratuitous, and the very conferring of gifts; and so he demanded only this, that both the giving and the predestination, whether of grace or of grace and glory together, be admitted as gratuitous, with natural and human merits excluded.

What we say in this thesis is evident from the general character of the controversy about predestination with the Pelagians and their remnants; from the reason by which Augustine shows the preaching of predestination to be necessary; from the manner in which he shows that it has always been believed in the Church; and from those things whose profession he alone demands from the Pelagians and Semipelagians.

1°. The dispute between Augustine and the Pelagians and Semipelagians was altogether one and the same concerning the bestowal and the predestination of God's benefits, so that gratuity and the exclusion of merits are not otherwise in predestination than in the bestowal itself. Augustine requires two things for the reason of predestination: the first, which he defends more carefully and laboriously against the heretics, that the term of predestination be a supernatural gift of God; the second, which, once the first is granted, is evident in itself, that this gift be understood as prepared in the eternal foreknowledge of God. Now I ask: in what did the holy Doctor place the reason of gift, so that something may be said to be predestined by God? He does not require that the gift be not given as a recompense, prepared or bestowed for any merits; but he requires that the merit to which the recompense is rendered be through grace, and that, if some merit of impetration precedes this very grace, that merit again be through another grace, until one comes to the first grace, which is rendered to no merit, but wholly from pure gratuitous mercy. For unless this were so, man would already begin the way of salvation by some work which was not a supernatural gift of God, and therefore would not be predestined; and this, and no other, is the error which Augustine intends to exclude by the preaching of predestination. For although the Semipelagians would confess that the good works which follow are done through grace, which a human and natural merit has obtained, and that these works, just as they are bestowed by God through grace, are also predestined; this is nevertheless not the true grace which is given gratis, and therefore the genuine character of gift, which is required in the term of predestination, as it must be professed by Catholics, is lacking for no other reason than that the first grace is denied to be given gratis, and the inception on the way of salvation is ascribed to the powers of nature and to natural merit. Read and re-read the books of Augustine de Corrept. et grat.; de Praedest. Sanctorum; de Dono perseverantiae, in which he chiefly urges and explains the reason of predestination; and compare the other books against the Pelagians together, and you will find no other description of predestination in him besides this one, the denial of which he says the Pelagians and Semipelagians err in, the defence of which he has undertaken for the protection of the sincere preaching of grace, and the profession of which he affirms the Church of God has never not had from the Apostles onward, and whose faith he therefore most insistently demands from those who err. But in all this doctrine there is no trace of controversy about the order in which predestination to good works through truly gratuitous grace, and predestination to eternal life, considered apart, which is rendered to those works, succeed one another. If anyone, however, by deduction from this Augustinian notion of predestination should wish to inquire into the order between the predestination of reward and the predestination of merit, it ought to be said that Augustine, from his own principles, understood the preparation in foreknowledge, or the predestination to life, as consequent upon the preparation of grace and of merits, by the very fact that he teaches that the gift of eternal life is the recompense given consequently upon supernatural merits. See th. LVII. LVIII. At least this one thing which we now affirm is evident: that the doctrine of predestination defended by Augustine to exclude the error of the Pelagians and Semipelagians is not an assertion of predestination to glory considered in itself before foreseen supernatural merits.

2°. We can consider more distinctly this general character of the whole controversy about predestination against the Pelagians and their remnants in the doctrine of Augustine, so that what we proposed to demonstrate in the thesis may appear the more clearly.

Augustine plainly repeats and inculcates that he defends that reason of predestination which must necessarily be admitted by all who confess that grace is given gratuitously and is not rendered to merits, and without which it necessarily follows that the beginning of saving merit is from us and not from grace. « For, he says, either predestination is to be preached as Scripture plainly speaks of it... or it must be confessed that grace is given according to our merits, which the Pelagians savour » de Dono persev. n. 41. Namely, as the holy Doctor often demonstrates, if faith is said with the Massilians to precede grace, then by that very fact grace would be rendered to the merit of faith, which would be from us. Therefore, to exclude this error, he says that predestination is preached by him. « If both (the beginning of faith and perseverance) are a gift of God, and God foreknew that he would give these his gifts, predestination is to be preached, so that the true grace of God, that is, which is not given according to our merits, may be defended by an invincible bulwark » Ibid. n. 54.

The Massilians understood very well that the predestination preached by Augustine comes down in the end to this: that grace is believed to precede every beginning that is from our own powers. Hence, from their prejudgement that there is no liberty on the way of salvation unless we can at least begin it by our own powers, they say « that the grace which precedes the merits of the elect has never been so understood by any of the ecclesiastical writers » (above th. LXI. n. II.), and that by this preaching of predestination all exhortations to virtue are excluded. Augustine replies to this last point: « let them see... that by this preaching of predestination that most pernicious error alone is overthrown, by which it is said that the grace of God is given according to our merits » Ibid. n. 42. The Genuenses, in Excerpt. VIII., raised a difficulty against the Augustinian definition (from l. de Don. Persev. n. 35.), by which predestination is said to be « the foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits of God, by which those who are freed are most certainly freed. » St Prosper replies, declaring the reason and sense of the definition in this way: « those who resist these things are most manifestly shown to hold that faith is not a gift of God, and that grace does not precede free will, but follows it, and that grace is given according to our merits. »

Now, to defend this whole doctrine of gratuitous grace, to which Augustine himself and his disciple Prosper declare that the preaching of predestination alone pertains and is necessary, it is indeed both useful and necessary to confess that predestination to grace, and to grace and glory together, is not from foreseen natural merits; but who does not see that to assert this gratuity of grace nothing pertains to predestination to glory with no supernatural merits foreseen and presupposed? Unless perhaps with the Protestants we shall also think it necessary to assert the gratuitous bestowal of glory without merits!

3°. Augustine proves that the ancient teachers of the word of God, Cyprian, Ambrose and Gregory Nazianzen, taught the same predestination which he himself defends more fully against the new heretics. But from what does he prove this? By this single argument, that « the aforesaid most excellent teachers preached the true grace of God as it is to be preached, that is, the grace which no human merits precede. » « Moreover, he says, if these (good thoughts, good will, faith, perseverance, of which he had spoken immediately before) they knew God to give in such a way that they were not ignorant that he had foreknown that he would give them, and could not not know to whom he would give them, beyond doubt they knew the predestination which, preached through the Apostles, we defend against the new heretics more laboriously and carefully » de Dono persev. n. 50.

When the querulous Massilians objected that « without this definition of predestination the Catholic faith was defended for so many years, both against others and especially against the Pelagians, by so many books of Catholics and of Augustine himself preceding, » how does Augustine prove that he had already long defended the same predestination? By this one argument again, that in the preceding books he had already preached « the grace by which God frees us from our evil errors and morals, not preceded by any good merits of ours; which, he says, I began to understand more fully in that dispute which I wrote to the bishop Simplicianus of blessed memory, of the Church of Milan, at the beginning of my episcopate, when I knew and asserted that even the beginning of faith is a gift of God » Don. persev. n. 52. 53.

In the same way Augustine demonstrates that this doctrine of predestination (asserted by himself) has always been in the faith of the Church, because the Church, praying that unbelievers may believe and the faithful may persevere, has always professed that faith and perseverance and the other saving goods are gifts of God. « Let him therefore say that the Church at some time did not have in her faith the truth of this predestination and of this grace, which now is defended with more careful attention against the new heretics; let him, I say, say this, who dares to say that at some time she did not pray for these things, or did not pray truly, whether that unbelievers should believe or that the faithful should persevere. For if she always prayed for these goods, she always believed them to be gifts of God, nor was it ever lawful to deny that they were foreknown by him. And THROUGH THIS the Church of Christ has never not had the faith of this predestination, which against the new heretics is now defended with new solicitude » de Dono persev. n. 65.

Whoever therefore teaches that faith, good works, and perseverance are not from us and from our natural powers, but are gifts of God through his grace, which is not rendered as a reward for human, that is natural, merits but is freely given, and at the same time confesses that God foreknew these from eternity in the manner in which he confers them in time, he teaches that predestination which Augustine defended. But how, I ask, is it contained in these things that God, with no foreseen grace and no supernatural works done through grace presupposed, predestined all who are to be saved first to glory?¹ How is it not evident that Augustine was solely concerned with the gratuitous gift, and therefore with the gratuitous predestination of grace, with human merits excluded? How, from the fact that the Fathers prior to Augustine confessed the necessity of grace for all saving works, and that the Church always prayed that unbelievers be brought to faith and the faithful persevere in faith and good works, could that absolutely antecedent predestination to glory of the more recent ones have come into the mind of the holy Doctor? Indeed, how, if he had thought about the order between predestination to glory considered in itself and the predestination of grace and of saving works, would he not rather have understood from the very older Fathers and from the prayers of the Church an order entirely reversed?

4°. The Pelagians taught that eternal life is rendered as a reward for human merits, and partly through the powers² of free will; hence also that eternal life is predestined after and on account of natural merits. The Semipelagians taught that the order of execution is this: that the beginning on the way of salvation precedes from the natural powers of the will; by this natural merit grace for saving works is obtained, and by the force of free will eternal life is at last rendered to those who persevere, as the reward of saving works. Hence they held that, in the same order, grace is predestined after and on account of the foreseen initial merit of nature; and eternal life is predestined after and on account of foreseen merit, which, from its immediate principle, is indeed supernatural, but has its first root and foundation in natural merit.

In this doctrine there are three quite distinct and different things. a) Between good works and eternal life there is a nexus of antecedent merit and subsequent reward; and according to the Massilians there is also a nexus among the merits themselves, so that one merit precedes, by which grace is obtained for another. b) This nexus is not only in the order of execution, but also in the order of predestination; for God does not predestine the reward of eternal life except consequently upon foreseen merits. c) These merits, at least simply, are not gifts of God through grace; for they depend, either in themselves and simply according to the Pelagians, or initially and as to perseverance in faith according to the Semipelagians, on the natural powers of the will alone; therefore good works, or at least the beginning and foundation of good works (as St Prosper speaks in Excerpt. VIII. Genuens.), are not predestined but only foreknown.

It is clear that someone may wholly repudiate the heresy set forth in the third place, and think about the gratuitous gift of grace in a manner wholly according to the Catholic faith, and nevertheless affirm what is said in the first and second places; although, that heresy being repudiated, the sense of these assertions will be different. Therefore, if Augustine judged that there is error not only in the third, but also in the two prior ones considered in themselves and absolutely, it was not enough for him to demand the rejection of the third member; he was necessarily bound to require the opposite faith also as to the first and the second.

But a) as to the first, Augustine, indeed all Catholics, concede and teach that eternal life is given to merits which are, of course, supernatural. Hence he corrects the Pelagian opinion by this single consideration: « When the Pelagians say... that eternal life is rendered to our preceding merits, it must be answered to them. For if they understood our merits so as also to know that they are gifts of God, this opinion would not have to be rejected » de Grat. et lib. arb. n. 15. Indeed, since it is certain that eternal life is the crown and the reward for merits, Augustine teaches in several places that it cannot be called gratuitous grace in any other sense, except because the merits themselves are obtained through grace (ep. 194. ad Sixt.; ep. 186. n. 10. ad Paulin.; de Corrept. et grat. c. 13; de Grat. et lib. arb. cc. 8. 9.). « This question, therefore (he says, de Grat. et lib. arb. c. 8.) seems to me in no way able to be resolved, unless it is understood that even our good works, by which eternal life is rendered, pertain to the grace of God. » Augustine declares distinctly the nexus of the good use of prior grace with the conferral of subsequent grace, and likewise the nexus of merits with the crown of eternal life, in the passages described above, th. LVIII. n. 2.

b) Augustine entirely agrees that the order of dependence of gifts upon one another, as they are conferred in time, is the same in predestination, and he asks of the Semipelagians nothing other than that they confess the beginning of a good work and perseverance also to be gifts of grace, and therefore predestined gifts. You have these things demonstrated in th. LVII. Certainly, what Augustine demands, whether of the Pelagians or of the Semipelagians, is this one thing: that they confess merits to be from grace and through grace, which is not given to human merits. « If Pelagius should consent that even the will itself and its action are divinely aided, and aided in such a way that without that help we do nothing well either willing or acting, and that this is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, no controversy, as I think, will remain between us about the help of the grace of God » de Grat. Christi n. 52. To the Semipelagian Vitalis, Augustine in ep. 217. al. 107. n. 16. proposes twelve chapters as a full expression of Catholic doctrine against the Pelagian and Semipelagian heresy: « to you holding these, he says, no contention at all about this question remains with us. » But you will find in those chapters too no trace of the doctrine of predestination to glory before foreseen supernatural merits. Whatever in them can be referred to predestination is reduced to these two sentences: « we know that the grace of God is given neither to the little ones nor to the greater according to our merits; » « we know that for those who are unwilling to believe, we who already believe act with right faith when we pray that they may believe. »

So also, in the plenary Council of Carthage held in the year 418, « in the authorities of the Apostolic See » appended to the letter of Pope Celestine to the bishops of Gaul, and in the Second Council of Orange, and in the other documents against the Pelagians and Semipelagians, the sum of the whole definition is laid down in the doctrine concerning original sin, concerning the necessity of grace for every saving good, concerning the necessity of grace also for the beginning of faith and for saving invocation, and consequently concerning the gratuity of that same grace. Everything in the canons of Orange that pertains to the doctrine of predestination is traced back to these. Canon XII: « God loves us such as we are to become by his gift, not such as we are by our merit; » Canon XXV: « We not only do not believe that some have been predestined by divine power to evil, but also, if there are those who wish to believe so great an evil, we say to them, with all detestation, anathema. » « The authorities of the Apostolic See » in the letter of Celestine, after the necessity and gratuity of grace has been set forth, are concluded with those most well-known words: « the deeper and more difficult parts of the questions that arise, which those who have resisted the heretics have treated more fully, as we do not dare to despise them, so we do not need to affirm them »³.

From all these things it is manifest that the predestination which Augustine « defends with new solicitude against the new heretics, » « whose faith the Church of Christ has never not had, » « which Scripture speaks of plainly, » « by whose preaching alone that most pernicious error is overthrown, that the grace of God is given according to our merits, » and whose profession, finally, he alone demanded from the enemies of grace — predestination, I say, as preached by Augustine, pertains to nothing other than that the grace of God be vindicated, from which is the beginning of every good merit, and which grace is therefore given, and predestined, gratuitously and not for merits; and therefore that, with natural merits excluded, the merits by which eternal life is given and predestined are understood to be supernatural, acquired through grace, both each one in itself, and as to the beginning on the way of salvation, and as to perseverance. But in this doctrine there is contained neither explicitly nor implicitly the assertion of predestination to the crown of eternal life considered apart, before and without foreseen supernatural merits; indeed there are contained principles from which it is quite plainly gathered that the crown of glory, just as it is given to merits acquired through grace, is so also predestined to the same merits foreseen (Cf. th. LVIII.).

On the private opinion of St Augustine concerning predestination to glory.

« No arguments are at hand suitable for persuading that St Augustine held and taught, at least in his own private opinion, that all who are to be saved are predestined to heavenly glory by the antecedent will of God, prior to the foreseeing of supernatural merits. »

Although from what has been demonstrated, the predestination which Augustine defends against the Pelagians and Semipelagians with the greatest zeal, and from the denial of which he affirms that it follows that grace is given according to our human and natural merits, is most certainly not predestination to glory considered in itself before foreseen supernatural merits; and although it is therefore not permitted, with the Jansenists, as impudently as foolishly, to reckon among the Semipelagian errors the opinion of the Catholic theologians and of the ancient Fathers that predestination to glory follows the foreseeing of the merits of grace: nevertheless it can be doubted, and it has been brought into controversy among Catholic doctors, what was the very opinion of Augustine about predestination to glory considered in the way we have said. For it may perhaps have come about that the holy Doctor, against the Pelagians and their remnants, defended as a revealed dogma of faith indeed the independence of predestination from natural merits, as has been demonstrated in the preceding thesis; yet at the same time, in vindicating this Catholic dogma, he used such a form of argument and such modes of speaking, from which it appears that he judged predestination itself to glory to precede the foreseeing of any merits whatsoever, even supernatural ones. On this hypothesis admitted, Augustine would have defended the Apostolic doctrine of gratuitous predestination and conferral of grace with a quite different authority and reason from that of the private opinion just described; and therefore nothing would be surprising in his having demanded profession of the Apostolic doctrine only from his adversaries, and never profession of that private opinion of his. Many theologians hold that in this matter Augustine dissents from the Greek and Latin Fathers, even those older than himself, if these are understood as we have shown they must be understood, and this is evident from their own words. Others of no less authority wholly maintain that predestination to glory, from the consequent will of God, consequent upon the foresight of the merits of grace, was never called into doubt by Augustine.

They prove this by arguments, among the rest, Peter de Comitibus, Ord. S. Augustini, de Praed. et Reprob. disp. 3. a. 4. sqq.; and, in reading the works of Augustine, the most practised Carolus Ioseph Tricassinus, Ord. Capuc., who, setting other questions aside, devoted all his talent and diligence to this one thing: to attain and explain the genuine opinion of Augustine on the doctrine of grace and predestination. There may also be read Vasquez, in 1. P. disp. 89. c. 6–8; Valencia, in 1. q. 23. punct. 4. §. 5; Stapleton, in Rom. IX. (Antidota Apostolica T. II.); Lessius, de Praed. sect. 2. et 4; Alticotius, Summa Aug. T. VI. a. 3. et 4; Kilber (Theol. Wirceb. T. II.). Cf. Maffei, Hist. theol. l. X.

I wonder why the theologians in this dispute have been unwilling to follow the same principles which have been ratified and fixed in other similar hermeneutical questions. If Augustine sometimes speaks more obscurely, then according to principles declared by us elsewhere (Tract. de Tradit.), it must be considered whether, given his purpose, the context, the state of the question and his own manner of speaking, and a comparison of various passages having been instituted, he cannot be reconciled with the common opinion of the preceding Fathers, whose doctrine he professes everywhere to follow; and therefore ambiguous expressions which admit a twofold sense would always have to be interpreted not against but in accordance with the doctrine of the other Fathers. If, however, the dissent were manifest, so that it could not be prudently reconciled, then indeed I would not hesitate, with Pighius, Catharinus, Osorius, Camerarius, Maldonatus (de Praedest. q. 4.)¹, Toletus in 1. q. 23. a. 5. conclus. 2°, and Petavius (l. X. coll. IX.), to depart respectfully from Augustine, since this could be nothing other than his private opinion, and, according to the whole character of the dispute, could have been proposed by that most holy author only as an opinion (cf. th. LXII.).

For the rest, leaving to others their own individual interpretations, it seems to me most clear on all sides that it was never in the mind of Augustine, any more than of the other Fathers, that there is any other reason of predestination to glory than with supernatural merits presupposed and foreseen. There are arguments of two kinds: positive, from testimonies proving our opinion, and negative, from the weakness of the reasons for the opposing opinion.

I. The doctrine of Augustine, whenever it considers predestination to glory in itself and apart from the predestination of grace, becomes known from the following.

1°. It is a principle established with Augustine that gifts which are conferred by God in time on account of merits are in the same way predestined in eternity on account of foreseen merits. Augustine brought the gratuitous predestination of gifts into the dispute solely in order to show that their bestowal is equally gratuitous; he therefore judged predestination to be gratuitous in the same sense as bestowal. But it is certain by faith, and Augustine everywhere inculcates, that eternal life, as the crown of justice, is rendered to supernatural merits as grace for grace; therefore it is certain that in Augustine it is predestined in the same way (th. LVII.).

Moreover, it is established that the Massilians, and Augustine himself before his episcopate, held this order of bestowal and predestination: that the kingdom of heaven is conferred on merits; that merits are acquired through the grace of God; that grace is obtained through faith; and finally that faith is procured from the powers of nature and not through the grace of God. Hence, concerning predestination, they judged in exactly the same way: beyond controversy the kingdom is predestined on the basis of the merits of works, and these are predestined on the basis of the obtaining of faith; but faith, since it is not a supernatural gift of God but comes from the natural powers of free will, does not belong to divine predestination. Now indeed Augustine, as bishop and champion of Catholic doctrine against the Pelagians and Semipelagians, not only permits this order of predestination but holds it as most certain, provided the error about the beginning on the way of salvation is corrected, and faith itself and the beginning of faith are believed to be a gift of grace, which is given and predestined not for merits but gratuitously (See the demonstration in th. LVII. LVIII. LXII.).

2°. Augustine teaches in express words that, by the very fact that in execution the election to the recompense is made from merits, eternal election, or predestination to that same recompense, cannot in any way be understood except as made from the foreseeing of merits. Therefore he says that in those passages of Scripture where there is talk of an eternal election which is not from works (as Rom. IX. 11.), it must necessarily be understood as the election to those gifts which are also conferred in execution with no preceding merits; of which kind, certainly, eternal life is not for adults, but the calling to faith and other manifold graces are. See th. LVII. n. 3°.

Hence, as Chrysostom teaches, predestination is « neither from charity alone nor from our virtue, but from both; » and as Fulgentius says, « grace is prepared through mercy and the reward is predestined through justice » (above th. LIX.): so Augustine fully agrees in the same doctrine. « Those whom the Lord willed, these he chose; he chose, however, as the Apostle says (Rom. XI. 4.), both according to his grace and according to their justice » Aug. serm. 100. n. 3. As Epiphanius, Cyril, Ambrose, etc. explain that saying of Matt. XX. 23, « for whom it has been prepared by my Father, » of the preparation of the kingdom for labours, virtues and merits (above l. c.), so Augustine too interprets it in the same sense in Ps. 126. n. 5. « For others it has been prepared by my Father (the humble, not the proud)... and be you others, and it is prepared for you. » As other Fathers teach by common opinion that rewards are not predestined except in the foreknowledge of merits (above l. c.), so Augustine agrees in the same doctrine. « Because (the purpose of God) remains that he justifies believers, therefore he finds works which he now chooses for the kingdom of heaven..... Whence, what is said (Eph. I. 4.), because he chose us, God, before the foundation of the world, I do not see how it is said except with foreknowledge » ad Simplic. l. I. q. 2. n. 6.

3°. The same is proved from the manner in which Augustine judged the number of those predestined to glory: considered formally as a number, it is indeed antecedently determined; but which men are inserted into that blessed number, or, as it is commonly said, the number considered materially, depends on the foreseen merits of individuals. Hence he also teaches that the consummation of the present economy will come sooner or later by divine counsel, according as the cooperation of men has been more or less diligent in completing the predestined number of the Saints. Behold the most eloquent words of Augustine in that very book De Corrept. et grat., in which the adversaries seemed especially to have found predestination to glory before foreseen merits. « It is certain, he says, that the number of the elect is neither to be increased nor diminished, although John the Baptist also signifies, where he says: bring forth therefore fruit worthy of repentance... for God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham (Matth. III. 8.), so as to show that those are to be cut off if they bear no fruit, so that the number which was promised to Abraham may not fail; yet more openly in the Apocalypse (III. 11.) it is said: hold fast what you have, that no one take your crown. For if no other is to receive it unless this one shall have lost it; the number is certain ». De Corrept. et gr. n. 39. He explains the same sense more clearly in the little book De Bono viduitatis², written in the year 414, when the dispute against the Pelagians was already raging (cf. ib. n. 21.). He exhorts widows, n. 28: « Let not the complaint of vain men.... break you from this zeal, who say: how will the human race subsist if all are continent? As if this age were delayed³ for any other reason than that the predestined number of those Saints might be filled up; and with that filled quickly, the end of the age would certainly not be deferred. » Again in the book which he wrote already as bishop, De Bono coniug. n. 10: « Would that all wished this (to be continent), provided only in charity from a pure heart and a good conscience and unfeigned faith; the City of God would be completed much more quickly, and the end of the age would be hastened. »

4°. The most faithful interpreters of Augustine, St Prosper and St Fulgentius, say that it is false that, according to the mind of Augustine, predestination to eternal life is denied to anyone by the antecedent will of God, with the foreseeing of ruin and impenitence; and consequently they also teach that God « has predestined to the kingdom those whom he foreknew would return to him by the help of preventing mercy and would remain in him by the help of subsequent mercy. » See the testimonies above, th. LV. n. II. 4°; th. LIX.

II. The worth of the arguments by which the opposite opinion is attributed to Augustine is to be examined, and their inefficacy demonstrated.

1°. We shall set out the method of demonstration which must necessarily be used by whoever wishes to prove that Augustine teaches predestination not only of grace, or of grace and glory together, but of glory considered in itself, with no foreseen supernatural merits presupposed; for this alone is the true state of the question. Accordingly the adversaries will accomplish nothing unless they demonstrate: a) that in the testimonies brought forward from Augustine there is question not of the predestination of the grace of faith, of good works and of perseverance, but of the predestination of glory; b) that there is no discussion, taken as a whole, of the entire series of effects of predestination from first grace to glory; for that predestination taken as a whole depends on some merit, only the Semipelagians can affirm (th. LVII.); but they must demonstrate that between predestination to glory considered in itself and predestination of grace there is, according to the mind of Augustine, this order: that predestination to glory, antecedent and absolute, is the principle and norm of the predestination of merits and of graces. c) They must show that works supernatural in the Catholic sense are excluded by Augustine from predestination to glory, and not only works which are either natural in themselves or in their beginning depend on natural merit, such as the Semipelagians admitted. Yet these things must be demonstrated from the clear words of Augustine, because the holy Doctor, given the character of the controversy with the Pelagians and Semipelagians, always understands predestination as predestination of grace, or of grace and glory together; but he excludes works taken in the sense of the heretics, that is, those which depend, either immediately or mediately, on the natural powers of free will alone (th. LXII.). Hence a presumption never avails, but in each passage a demonstration is needed, if you wish to persuade that Augustine somewhere speaks of predestination to glory apart, and excludes from it the foreseeing of the merits of grace; for presumption always militates on the opposite side, by the very fact that the character of the whole controversy and the whole intention and contention of the holy Doctor regarded solely the gratuity of grace and the exclusion of natural merits. « Hear and understand: not from works is said (Eph. II. 9.) as though they were yours, existing from yourself for yourself, but as those in whom God has formed you, that is, has shaped and created... not that creation by which men were made, but that of which he spoke who was already a man: create in me a clean heart, O God... Thus, dearly beloved, if our good life is nothing other than the grace of God, then without doubt eternal life too, which is rendered to a good life, is the grace of God, and is itself also given gratuitously, because that to which it is given was given gratuitously. But he to whom it is given is grace only; while that which is given to him, since it is his reward, is grace for grace, as recompense for justice » de Grat. et lib. arbit. n. 20. Finally, d) it is not enough to set forth the doctrine of Augustine that, the predestination from first grace to the crown being supposed, the execution and the very bestowal of efficacious calling, justification, perseverance and eternal life follow infallibly in time. For who would deny this, except one who denied the infallibility of divine foreknowledge and predestination? Above all, it is not sufficient to have shown that according to Augustine all the predestined persevere infallibly; for those who do not persevere certainly were not predestined: « therefore they are not predestined, because they were foreknown to be such as would fall away by voluntary transgression » S. Prosper ad Obiect. III. Gallorum. But for something to be established, it must be shown that God wills, on account of an antecedent absolute predestination to glory, to give faith, good works and perseverance. Whoever could persuade that this is affirmed by Augustine would also have shown that he contradicts himself. For to the question why God gives the grace of faith to one and not to another, gives the gift of perseverance to one and not to another — when yet, considering his will in the scope of omnipotence, he could give to all, and considering the dignity of the recipients no merit precedes the first grace, and, with the gifts of grace set aside, all are unworthy — to this question, I say, Augustine never gives any answer other than that he does not know (cont. Iulian. l. IV. c. 8; de Corrept. et grat. c. 8; de Dono persev. cc. 9. 11. 13. etc.). But it is a manifest contradiction to teach that the cause why perseverance is given to one and not to another is the antecedent predestination to glory or the denial of it, and at the same time, whenever an opportunity offers, to assert that one knows not the cause why it is given or not given. Whoever holds this opinion of an absolute antecedent predestination to glory, from which the predestination and distribution of grace follows, ought to profess that he knows very well the cause which Augustine says he does not know; but that he does not know why God predestines this one antecedently to life and not that one, which Augustine, if predestination to glory is considered apart, never says he does not know, but rather has sufficiently declared that he knows very well. See above p. 559.560.

Now indeed, in all the testimonies which have been brought forward, or can be brought forward, by the authors of an interpretation opposed to ours, Augustine treats of the predestination of grace, or of the whole series of predestined effects taken together from first grace to glory; and he always understands the gratuity of predestination to be altogether the same as that of the bestowal and execution itself, in opposition to the Pelagian error and especially the Semipelagian, and so to the exclusion of merits which are natural either in themselves or in their beginning.

2°. The arguments of certain theologians, judged from the principles declared so far, are seen at once to be beside the point, so there would be no need to speak of them. Thus Gonetus (disp. II. §. 5.), promising that he wishes « to inquire into the mind and doctrine of this holy Doctor more laboriously and to investigate more diligently, » offers one argument and three testimonies. The argument is this: the Massilians, as witnessed by Prosper and Hilary in their letters to Augustine, defended the opinion about predestination after foreseen merits, and disapproved Augustine's opinion about predestination. Augustine nevertheless inculcates his opposed doctrine against the Massilians in the books de Praed. SS. and de Dono persev. See the reply above, th. LXI. LXII. We shall speak shortly of the express testimonies usually adduced from Augustine; but those which Gonetus cites, namely the most efficacious, can be disposed of here at once. The first testimony, from l.⁴ de Corrept. et gr. c. 6: « We must understand the apostles to have been chosen through mercy, Judas through judgment; so he chose those to obtain his kingdom, and that one to shed his blood. » The second testimony, from l.⁵ de Grat. et lib. arbit. c. 9: « when the Apostle could have said: the wage of justice is eternal life, he preferred to say: but the grace of God is eternal life (Rom. VI. 23.), so that we might understand from this that God leads us to eternal life not for our merits, but through his mercy. » The matter is clear in itself, and if he had gone a little further in citing the words of Augustine, even a blind man would have seen that the question here is not so much of predestination as of execution, in which supernatural merits are affirmed and only natural merits denied; for St Augustine goes on: « is not a crown rendered for good works? But because he himself works the good works in the good... lest, by attributing to himself what they do well, they be lifted up from good works as if they were their own. » The third and last testimony Gonetus cites as from Augustine is from c. 28 of the « Soliloquies of the soul to God, » in which there is talk of the whole series of predestination, to which indeed no merits are presupposed. But it is not necessary to report the words, since the question for us is the opinion of Augustine, not that of the anonymous author who wrote these Soliloquies, certainly not earlier than the thirteenth century, after the chapter « Damnamus » of the Fourth Lateran Council (Later. IV.) was published in the year 1215. (cf. Soliloq. c. 32.)

Setting these very trivial matters aside, we shall rather answer the double argument which is usually drawn from the doctrine of Augustine about the « damned mass, » and from his appeal to the gratuitous predestination of little children. As to this last, Augustine never brings in the example of little children in order to show the manner of predestination of adults to glory considered in itself. Whenever he uses this example, he treats directly of the gratuitous conferral of the grace of baptism and, through it, of the kingdom of heaven, with no preceding merits of the children; and from this he concludes to the gratuitous calling and conferral of grace for adults. He therefore speaks of the order of execution, where it is certain that eternal life is attributed to adults as the crown of justice for supernatural merits; and therefore the example of infants cannot hold, and Augustine adduces it only to declare the gratuity of grace, both in the conferral and, by that very fact, also in predestination. « For from the mouth of infants and sucklings God perfects his praise, so that what we see in these, whose deliverance no good merits of theirs precede, and in those whose condemnation only the original sin they share with all precedes, we should by no means hesitate to say that this happens also in adults; that is, not thinking that grace is given to anyone according to their merits, or that anyone is punished except for their merits » Don. persev. n. 25. Augustine speaks constantly to the same effect in ep. 186. n. 12; de pecc. merit. et remiss. l. I. n. 29. 30; contr. duas epp. Pelagian. l. II. n. 11. sqq.; contr. Iul. l. IV. n. 45; de Don. persev. n. 21. 27. 28.; Op. Imperfect. l. I. n. 38.

To the second argument it is enough to set forth the doctrine of Augustine on « discretion from the damned mass, » so that it may be understood that there the question is always treated in the same way, both as to the conferral and the predestination of grace, or of grace and glory together, and as to the whole series of graces taken together, from the first beginning to perseverance and glory. Mass, or sometimes damned lump (that is, the guilty of damnation), is what Augustine calls all who are infected by sin, whether original or personal (the name taken from Rom. IX. 21.). Hence it is repugnant that anyone be freed from this mass except by undue mercy; for he cannot be freed except through grace, which is the principle of all merit on the way of salvation. There is, moreover, a twofold discretion considered from that mass of damnation: one temporary, of those who again relapse into it by their sins; the other complete, of those who persevere to the end. « They had been called, and, following the one calling, were justified from the impious and renewed through the laver of regeneration.... These things are true: in accordance with all these things they were from us; yet in accordance with another certain discretion they were not from us; for if they had been from us, they would surely have remained with us » Don. persev. n. 21. Now I ask: what has this doctrine, most certain among all Catholics, that no one is delivered from the state of sin and the liability to damnation except by undue mercy and the grace of God, in common with predestination to glory before foreseen supernatural merits? And that, if the whole series of God's benefits in the predestined is considered, neither the beginning nor the progress and perseverance can, with the Pelagians and Semipelagians, be placed in human merits, since not a good but an evil merit precedes, and the subsequent merits themselves are gifts of God through grace? « For who discerns us from that mass of perdition and corruption, except he who came to seek and to save what was lost?... For who discerns you? Where if a man says: my faith, my will, my good work; the answer is given to him: for what have you that you have not received? And if you have received, why do you glory, as if you had not received? Indeed all this is so, not that man may not glory, but that he who glories may glory in the Lord.... Not because good works are frustrated, since God renders to each according to his works.... but because the works are from grace, not grace from works.... nor would faith itself be in us, unless God distributed to each the measure of faith » Aug. ep. 186. ad Paulin. n. 4; cf. ep. 196. n. 21. 22; Enchirid. c. 99. etc.

3°. We do not intend to examine each testimony which is usually or can be brought forward from Augustine. But so that from the principles set out so far⁶ the easiest method of grasping the true interpretation may be understood, it pleases us to make a trial, as an example, on the famous testimony from l.⁷ de Corrept. et gratia c. 7. n. 13, which is usually considered the clearest of all for the opposing side, and the most difficult in ours. « Whoever therefore are set apart from that original damnation by this largess of divine grace, there is no doubt that the gospel is procured for them to be heard, and when they hear they believe, and persevere to the end in faith which works through love; and if at any time they stray, they are corrected and amended; and some of them, even if they are not corrected by men, return to the way which they had left; and some, having received grace at whatever age, are taken away from the perils of this life by the swiftness of death. For God works all these things in them, who has made them vessels of mercy, who also chose them in his Son before the foundation of the world by the election of grace; but if it is by grace, it is no longer from works, otherwise grace is no longer grace. For they were not so called as not to be elect; on which account it is said: many are called, but few are chosen: but since they are called according to purpose, they indeed are also elect by the election, as has been said, of grace, not of their preceding merits, because grace is to them every merit. »

Now, according to the rules described above, the sense of this testimony is to be examined, which, as I said, seems to favour the adversaries more clearly than the rest. First of all, in the whole context the glory considered in itself and apart is never considered; whence also there is no mention of any order between the predestination to glory and the predestination of grace (cf. rules a. b.). But the whole series of predestination is considered in the eternal foreknowledge and preparation of God: « who have been distinguished by the largess of grace; » « he chose them before the foundation of the world. » Further, just as the effects are foreknown and prepared from eternity⁸, so they infallibly follow in temporal execution: « there is no doubt that the gospel is procured to be heard by them, etc. » (cf. rule d.). What is the order in that distinction, taken as a whole through the largess of grace — whether God predestines antecedently to the crown and consequently to merits, or rather in the inverse order — Augustine in the words cited does not declare; but if this is sought from his principles found elsewhere, it appears what is to be said, from the things demonstrated at the beginning of this thesis, and it appears most clearly from what follows in this very passage which we are interpreting. For to the question why some who have lived well for a while are not elect, he does not answer: because election to glory was made by antecedent will, and therefore he does not know this; but he answers that they are not among the elect for this reason, that « God knew they would not have perseverance, and foreknew that they would fall. » To the opposite question, why God did not give them perseverance, when by absolutely willing it he could indeed have done so, he does not answer that he did not antecedently predestine them to life; but if this, he says, is asked of me, « I answer that I do not know » (cf. rule d.). Moreover, this election, considered fully, that is from election to first grace up to election to perseverance and glory, indeed has no antecedent works, which could be only natural; for supernatural works, as is expressly declared, are themselves within the series of predestined effects: « by the election of grace not of their own preceding merits, because grace is to them every merit. » But this exclusion of natural works, on which predestination and bestowal would depend at least initially, is the principal aim of this whole passage (cf. rule c.). In the same plain way, the principles laid down can and ought to be applied to solve the difficulties which are usually raised from other texts of St Augustine (See Tricassinus, in the work on Predestination).

How difficult it is to demonstrate that the doctrine of predestination to glory before the foreseen merits of grace is according to the opinions of Augustine, the great Petavius is an example. Through several chapters continuously he wove and unwove this web, in book IX, de Deo, c. 6 sqq. Already at the very beginning of c. 6, n. 1, he does not sufficiently distinguish these two things: first, that God predestines glory to certain men, namely to all who are to be saved, by an antecedent will which foresees merits, and by which predestination posited he at length predestines to the same merits and efficacious graces; second, that God « was led on account of merits to decree glory with no merits leading him. » The former, about which alone there can be dispute among Catholics, Petavius in no way demonstrated to be according to the opinion of Augustine; the latter no one would deny except absurdly⁹. For who would imagine that God was led, to decree the conferral of glory on account of merits, by certain other merits of those who are to be saved? It could only be said that God, led by the merits of Christ the Redeemer, decreed glory on account of the merits of those to be saved; but of that merit of Christ there is no question here. Suarez (l. I. c. 8. n. 26.) and others are not immune from this confusion of two different questions, as if this — that God, led by no merits, decreed glory as the recompense of our merits — were already predestination before foreseen merits. Indeed the contrary is plainly to be inferred; for he who, moved by no merits but by his own mere good pleasure, wills to give the crown under the condition of a lawful contest, by that very fact does not absolutely predestine the crown except on the supposition of a lawful contest. Moreover Petavius, as one repentant of the fact from chapter 12 onward, himself concedes and maintains that Augustine designates not glory considered in itself but grace together with glory as the term of predestination, where he denies that it was made from any merits of those predestined. And at last he plainly confesses: « we think it more true, according to the opinion of Augustine, that God decreed glory not precisely and absolutely, but as a reward, and depending on merits which he foreknew would certainly be future, and ordained with them » l. IX. c. 15. n. 1. But that Augustine, when the whole series of predestined effects is considered, very often taught against the Pelagians and Semipelagians that this depends on no merit, no one among us doubts; but from this it follows that the holy Doctor judged that glory considered in itself was predestined by antecedent will foreseeing merits, we deny; and Petavius himself at last seems to deny this, when he concedes that he agrees less with Augustine, « who think that glory is decreed by God absolutely, that is, connected and woven with no series of merits » l. c.

On the opinion of St Thomas concerning predestination to glory considered in itself and apart.

« Although predestination, as considered completely, is the reason of transmission to the end of eternal life, and according to St Thomas, indeed according to Catholic doctrine, can presuppose no antecedent merits: yet from the very doctrine of St Thomas it is deduced that predestination to glory considered in itself and apart is from the consequent will of God, which presupposes supernatural merits foreseen as the reason of predestination to the glory of eternal life. »

This our thesis, like the preceding one, is in itself hermeneutical; yet it will contribute very much not only to the history of theology, but also to illuminating doctrine itself. Although, in defending the sense of St Thomas which we have indicated, we have most weighty authors, among whom I name Gregory of Valencia, in 1. q. 23. punct. 4. §. 5; Gamachaeum, a very distinguished theologian of old Sorbonne, in h. l. S. Th. c. 7; Peter de Comitibus Augustiniensem, de Praed. et Reprob. disp. 3. a. 8: we shall nevertheless take the manner and norm of our interpretation from nothing other than the writings of the Angelic Doctor himself. Following very nearly the same method as in drawing out the true sense of Augustine, we shall propose here first the clear doctrine of the author, on which our interpretation of the more obscure passages rests; then we shall examine singly those opinions of the Angelic Doctor from which a contrary doctrine could seem to follow.

I. The most clear doctrine, subject to no ambiguity, in the writings of the holy Doctor is this.

1. St Thomas never understood predestination simpliciter, as it is called, as predestination to glory considered in itself, but constantly as the predestination of all effects taken together, from the first grace to complete salvation; as he himself plainly declares. Taken in this complete sense, he considers predestination throughout question 23 of Part I, as is clear above all from the definition itself: « the plan (in the divine mind) for bringing the rational creature to the end of eternal life is called predestination » (a. 1; cf. a. 2). He expresses the same very clearly in explicit words: « predestination implies a relation to grace as cause to effect » (a. 2, ad 4); « predestination includes the will of conferring grace and glory » (a. 4); « under the order of predestination falls whatever promotes a man to salvation » (a. 8; cf. a. 3, ad 2, and all of a. 5). In the same way St Thomas treats of predestination considered in its completeness in De veritate q. 6; contr. gent. 1. III. c. 163; 1. dist. 40. et 41. In this sense of predestination, at any rate, St Thomas denies, and all Catholics deny, that there is any meritorious cause on our part.

But at 2., whenever the Angelic Doctor considers predestination to glory per se and in comparison with predestination to grace, he affirms each time that glory is predestined as a reward and crown consequent upon foreseen merits; and he not only sets forth this doctrine but also proves it by arguments in his commentary on Romans VIII, in the words which we have described at th. LVII. n. 4. A parallel passage is found in Eph. I. lect. 1. (p. 92. ed. de Rubeis). « It must be understood that effects are the reason of the divine will on the side of what is willed (understand this according to what has been said at pp. 572–575): namely, the prior effect is the reason of the later; but nevertheless when one comes to the first effect, no further reason can be assigned for that effect, except the divine will... Therefore in this way no reason whatever of predestination can be assigned on the side of the creature, but only on the side of God. For the effects of predestination are two, namely grace and glory. Of the effects which are ordered to glory, indeed a reason can be assigned on the side of what is willed, namely grace; for example, he crowned Peter because he had competed lawfully, and this because he was strengthened in grace: but for grace, which is the first effect, no reason can be assigned on the part of man which would be the reason of predestination, because this would be to posit that the principle of a good work is in man from himself and not through grace, which is the Pelagian heresy. »

Thus St Thomas says: a) by the very fact that the reason of some effect can be assigned in execution, the same can also be assigned in predestination. For from the fact that in execution Peter is crowned on account of his lawful contest, he proves also in predestination that one effect is the reason of another. Therefore, again, as we have shown (th.LVII.1.c.), St Thomas teaches that the order of predestination and of execution is the same with respect to the antecedence and subsequence of merit and reward; and accordingly, just as glory is given on account of merits acquired, so men are predestined on account of merits foreseen. b) If predestination is considered with respect to the individual effects, the Angelic Doctor teaches that a prior effect is the reason of a later one: grace is the reason of merit, merit the reason of reward; but of the first effect no reason can be given on the part of man. c) The only reason why no reason is given for the first effect is this: when predestination is viewed as a whole in its complex, together in respect of grace and glory, no reason on the part of man can be asserted, unless one says that grace is given on account of our natural merits (see th. LVIII.). Therefore, of predestination viewed as a whole in its complex there is no reason but the merciful will of God; the predestination to glory considered separately has a reason also on the side of what is willed, namely its reason is the supernatural merits foreseen.

3°. Although the first effect of predestination, that is, the first grace, cannot be the reason or meritorious cause on the part of man, namely why he receives it; nevertheless, according to the doctrine of the Angelic Doctor, it is by man's fault that he does not receive the effect of predestination; and accordingly, in all adult reprobates, that they are not predestined is their own fault. For God wills all men to be saved, and from this will he wills to give grace to all, so that they may be predestined and saved; but those who finally resist offered grace, all of these and only these are reprobate. Hence the distinction between the predestined and the reprobate is not made by the antecedent will, by which God wills all men to be predestined and saved, but by the consequent will, which foresees the good merit of those who cooperate with grace, and the evil merit of those who resist grace. Let St Thomas be heard. «Since a man cannot be directed to the last end except by the help of divine grace, without which no one can have those things which are necessary for tending to the last end, such as faith, hope, love, perseverance, it may seem to someone that it is not imputed to a man if he lacks the aforesaid, especially since he cannot merit the help of divine grace, nor be converted to God unless God converts him; for no one is blamed for what depends on another. But if this be granted, several inconveniences follow, which is manifest....... For the solution of this doubt it must be considered that although a man by a movement of free will (bare) can neither merit nor acquire divine grace; yet he can prevent himself from receiving it... For God, as far as in him lies, is ready to give grace to all; for he wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, as it is said in 1 Tim. II. 4. But those alone are deprived of grace who put an impediment to grace in themselves; just as when the sun lights the world, it is imputed as a fault to one who closes his eyes, if from this some evil follows, although he cannot see unless he is anticipated by the light of the sun» S. Th. cont. gent. III. c.159. Cf. in Io. VI. 1. V. ed. de Rubeis T. III. p. 572. See th. LVIII. n. 4.

4. In plain words St Thomas declares that predestination includes the foresight of works, insofar as they dispose to sanctifying grace, and insofar as they merit heavenly glory; and therefore that predestination includes the consequent will. He asks, 1. dist. 41. q. 1. a. 3: « whether the foreknowledge of merits is a cause of predestination »? In his answer he first explains that the sense of the question is not whether the divine knowledge and will, considered in themselves, have a cause; but « whether the effect of the divine will, or what is willed, proceeds from some cause which God foreknew from eternity, which cause of what is willed is called a certain reason of the will on the side of the effect »? Then he proceeds to the solution of the difficulty. « Our operation is related differently to the twofold effect of predestination (grace and glory), because a meritorious work informed by grace is the meritorious cause of glory; but a good work preceding grace is not its meritorious cause, but only a certain disposition. Whence it is evident that predestination (the divine act in itself) has no cause, but has a reason on the side of the effect, according to which it is said to be rational and just. » In accordance with these things, the same passage, ad 5, says: « in the understanding of predestination is included the consequent will, which regards works, not as a cause of the will (as it is in itself), but as the meritorious cause of glory and as the preparation for grace » (above th. LVIII. n. 2). Therefore, just as St Thomas teaches without any doubt in many places that by the antecedent will God wills all men to be saved in view of foreseen works (cf. pp. 472. 473.), a doctrine which indeed cannot stand together with predestination to glory absolutely antecedent (th. LIX.), so he also declares expressly that predestination pertains to the consequent will, which regards works as the meritorious cause of glory. But lest the Angelic Doctor be said to have corrected himself in his later works, he teaches exactly the same in the Summa 1. q. 23. a. 5: « Nothing prevents some effect of predestination from being the cause and reason of another, the latter indeed of the former according to the reason of final cause, the former of the latter according to the reason of meritorious cause: as if we say that God preordained that he would give someone glory from merits, and that he preordained that he would give someone grace, so that he might merit glory. » Where you should notice the greatest difference, in that he speaks of the preordination of glory from merits, and of the preordination of grace, so that a man might merit glory; for he does not say that God preordained grace from an absolute intention of glory; but that glory was set before men so that they might merit it, and from this conditional intention God predestined grace for them.

II. In the texts cited, St Thomas speaks distinctly of predestination to glory considered per se and apart in comparison with predestination to grace, and he teaches most explicitly and clearly that the former follows upon the foreseen merits of grace. Nevertheless there are not lacking some passages in the writings of the holy Doctor which, if considered by themselves, may seem to conflict with this, unless his constant manner, in agreement with St Augustine, of considering predestination to grace, or predestination complete as to grace and glory together, is kept before the eyes. We shall first inquire into the true sense of those passages which Gonet (disp. II. §. 6.) adduces to demonstrate his opinion concerning predestination absolutely antecedent. Then we shall examine certain other heads of doctrine which occur in St Thomas and seem to oppose our interpretation.

1. The testimonies adduced by Gonet, if read in their context, present no difficulty whatever, although he himself affirms that in them St Thomas taught gratuitous predestination to glory so expressly, « that to doubt his mind is, as it were, to be blind in the middle of light. »

1st Testimony adduced by Gonet, from 1. q. 23. a. 5. ad 3., to which the rest are reduced, we shall explain a little more carefully. The words of St Thomas are: « why he chose these for glory and rejected those, has no reason except the divine will. » But if these words, as they are objected apart from the context, were taken of the will of God antecedently predestining to glory per se and apart from the predestination of grace and of merits; they would contain an intolerable doctrine, by which, with Calvin, it would be said that positive reprobation to eternal punishment, just as much as predestination to glory, has no reason on the side of the reprobate but arises from the antecedent will of God. I say that positive reprobation to punishment must be understood in St Thomas; for he declares this expressly in this very place: « God willed to represent his goodness in men, as regards some whom he reprobates, by way of justice by punishing. » This one thing alone is enough, so that, setting aside the context, we may most certainly conclude that the sense supposed in the objection cannot be the sense of this passage. In the context, however, this whole article 5 not only does not teach predestination to glory considered per se with no supernatural merits presupposed, but expressly teaches the contrary. He declares: a) « just as God has made us saved, so he has predestined us to be saved, » that is, in the same manner and order in which in execution salvation is not from our works, so the predestination of salvation is not from works. Hence b) « the effect of predestination can be considered in two ways: in one way in particular, and thus nothing prevents some effect of predestination from being the cause and reason of another.... as if we say that God predestined that he would give someone glory from merits... and grace so that he might merit glory. In another way the effect of predestination can be considered in common, and thus it is impossible that the whole effect of predestination should have some cause on our part; because whatever is in man ordering him to salvation is all comprehended under the effect of predestination, even the preparation for grace. » In this second way the Saint considers predestination here, as always elsewhere, in common with respect to all its effects, so as to exclude every merit lying outside predestined grace as its cause: namely the merits of the Origenists in the pre-existence of souls, the natural merits of the Pelagians, and the merits of the Semipelagians, which were feigned to merit grace conditionally, as future (above p. 456.). c) Just as St Thomas considers predestination in all the graces by which God brings man to eternal life, so in reprobation he considers two things on God's side: reprobation formally so called, namely the destination to eternal punishment, and the permission of sins, not indeed as a means ordained by God for bringing man to ruin, but insofar as God could absolutely bring it about that sins should not come to be¹; and if sins did not come to be, reprobation formally so called would not follow. « Just as predestination includes the will of conferring grace and glory, so reprobation includes the will of permitting someone to fall into fault, and of inflicting the penalty of damnation for the fault » ibid. a. 3. Reprobation is therefore wholly of the consequent will; for God, by the antecedent will, wills all men to be saved². Predestination presupposes the conditional antecedent will that all be saved; but it includes the absolute consequent will, by which God wills not only the preventing grace but the free effect of grace, namely good merit and perseverance in good, and on account of merit the crown of glory: « in the understanding of predestination is included the consequent will which regards works... as the meritorious cause of glory and as the preparation for grace » (the preparation for justifying grace, through free consent under actual grace) 1. dist. 41. q. 1. a. 3. ad 5; « predestination cannot be frustrated, because it is foreknown by God that this man will be saved by such a cause and in such an order » ib. a. 4; « predestination presupposes the foreknowledge of future things, and so, as God decreed the salvation of a certain man to be brought about through the prayers of others » etc. 3. q. 1. a. 3. ad 4; « predestination includes the consequent will, which regards in some way what is on our part; not indeed as inclining the divine will to will³, but as that to whose production the divine will orders grace (he predestines grace that we may work well, and that through good works we may merit glory), or even (in the predestination of further graces and of glory itself) as that which in some way disposes to grace and merits glory » verit. q. 6. a. 2. ad 2.

These things being supposed as clear and indubitable, St Thomas asks two things in the reply to 1. q. 23. a. 5. ad 3., from which words torn out of context are cited by Gonet: a) to what end God generally orders reprobation itself, by the consequent will to be sure, and with the failure of man to reach the end which God intends for all men by the antecedent will? He replies: just as God orders predestination to the manifestation of his goodness by way of mercy in sparing, so he orders reprobation to the manifestation of his goodness by way of justice in punishing. The difference, however, is that in predestination the absolute consequent will has the same object as the conditional antecedent will; in reprobation the absolute consequent will of damnation has an object other than the conditional antecedent will, which wills all men to be saved. He asks b) comparatively, what is the reason why God predestines this sinful man (considering predestination in its whole course from the first grace to glory), and reprobates another who is equally unworthy of grace; when he could reprobate the former by justice and predestine the latter by mercy. Here he replies according to the doctrine of the Apostle and the constant explanation of Augustine: not that there is no reason of reprobation (for that is most false); but that, since both are equally unworthy of grace and deserving of reprobation, antecedently to grace there is no reason on the part of men, but it lies in the sole will of God, merciful toward the one and just toward the other, that he is pleased to show mercy to one rather than to another, and to require from one rather than from another what is owed to him according to justice⁴. These things hold, and are said by St Thomas, in exactly the same way about execution and about predestination. This is the only sense of the words in the context which Gonet abuses. « God willed to represent his goodness in men, as to some whom he predestines (by the predestination of grace and glory), by way of mercy in sparing, and as to some whom he reprobates, by way of justice in punishing (sins being supposed). And this is the reason why God chooses some (by the election of grace to the crown of glory) and reprobates some (by the consequent will). And the Apostle assigns this cause in Rom. IX. 22, saying: willing to show wrath, that is, the vengeance of justice (therefore by the consequent will, on account of sin), and to make known his power, he endured, that is, permitted with much patience, the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction (to which they fitted themselves), so that he might show the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he prepared unto glory (through grace unto the glory both of holiness and of eternal blessedness); and 2 Tim. II. 20: in a great house there are vessels... some indeed unto honour, but some unto dishonour⁵. But why, comparatively, he chooses these for glory ⁶ and rejects those (while both are still considered antecedently to all grace, and both in sin equally unworthy of grace and deserving of reprobation), has no reason except the divine will; whence Augustine says (in Io. tract. XXVI. n. 2): why he draws this one and does not draw that one (behold drawing through grace, and that in the order of execution), do not judge, if you do not wish to err »⁷ St Thomas, 1. q. 23. a. 5. ad 3.

In these words, therefore, a) there is no question of predestination to glory considered per se, but of predestination complete in glory and in the honour of both grace and blessedness. b) There is question, just as of reprobation, so of predestination pertaining to the consequent will, « which regards that which is on our part, as that which in some way disposes to grace (of justification) and merits glory. » c) Considering sinners before grace, there is on their part no reason of predestination, although there is a reason of reprobation; and therefore, comparatively, why one is rather predestined and another reprobated, there is no reason in them (considered before grace), but in the sole merciful will of God toward the one and the just will toward the other. All these things certainly prove that the predestination of grace, like the gift itself, is wholly gratuitous; but they pertain nothing to the order between the predestination of grace and the predestination of glory, which the holy Doctor declares in the body of the article to be this: « that God has predestined to give someone glory from merits, and to give someone grace so that he might merit glory. » (so as to compare the merits by which glory is predestined).

The remaining objections raised by Gonet are to be dealt with briefly.

2nd Testimony: « That God wills to give someone grace and glory proceeds from sheer liberality » S. Th. verit. q. 6. a. 2. Reply: if it is taught here that glory considered apart is predestined with no supernatural merits foreseen, the sense will be that glory is not even given in execution as a reward and crown for supernatural merits, which would be the heresy of the Protestants. St Thomas teaches with Augustine, indeed with the Apostle Paul and with the whole Church, that grace is given freely, and that glory is given as grace for grace; and therefore grace and glory taken together are given from the pure liberality of God. See above p. 583. sq. and elsewhere passim.

3rd Testimony: « The foreknowledge of merits, whether one's own or others', is not the cause of predestination » S. Th. verit. q. 6. a. 6. Reply: predestination, as a divine act in itself or as the divine essence, has no cause; by reason of the connoted effect, if predestination is taken in its completeness, as St Thomas is accustomed to take it and expressly declares in the same place, it has no reason on the part of the merits either of the predestined person himself or of others, because these very merits are effects of predestination considered complete and in the whole complex of its effects; but it has the divine goodness alone as its reason. Cf. th. LVIII.

4th Testimony: « It cannot be that merits following grace are the reason for showing mercy or for predestining, but only the will of God⁸, according to which he mercifully frees some » S. Th. in Rom. IX. lect. 3. (ed. de Rubeis T.VI. p.136.). Response: The reason of predestination to grace and of liberation from sin (whether it is considered separately or in connection with the predestination of all subsequent effects) cannot be called merits foreseen and future through grace « except according to the reason of final cause, » as St Thomas speaks, 1. q. 23. a. 5. ad 1. The assertion of such merits as meritorious cause, by which grace is predestined and given, belongs to the remnants of the Pelagians (see above p.456.). That the Angelic Doctor, l.c., speaks in this sense of the predestination of grace, is evident from the words themselves and from the context: « in another way it can be understood that someone may be called worthy of mercy not on account of any merits preceding grace, but on account of subsequent merits; as when we say that God gives someone grace and from eternity proposes to give it to him whom he foreknew would use it well (for donation and predestination, with respect to merit or gratuitous gift, in St Thomas always stand in the same way)... but it seems that this too cannot fittingly be said; for it is manifest that nothing can be posited as the reason of predestination, which is an effect of predestination... Moreover it is manifest, that every benefit of God which he confers on man for salvation is an effect of divine predestination. » Thus, with predestination considered in its entirety, the Angelic Doctor finally appends the words cited from Gonet. But what bearing has this doctrine, indubitable among all Catholics, on the order between the predestination to glory and the predestination to grace? Nothing at all, except insofar as the holy Doctor here too takes it as most certain. That everything which in execution is given for merits is in the same way also predestined from eternity on account of foreseen merits.

5th Testimony: « The Apostle sets forth the voluntary predestination of God (Eph. I. 11.), of which predestination the reason is not our merits but the mere will of God, on account of which he adds, according to his purpose » S. Th. in Eph. lect. IV. (T. VII. p. 98.). Reply: Arguments of this kind, which can certainly be piled up into infinity with ease, presuppose dull readers and readers wholly ignorant of the state of the question. Of what predestination does the Apostle speak in the text illustrated by St Thomas? Evidently of the calling to faith and grace, and of the predestination corresponding to this calling. The Angelic Doctor explains the calling in the order of execution, which precedes all merits, and the predestination corresponding to this calling, and therefore the predestination of the first grace, although in his own manner he understands the whole series of effects of predestination from the first grace to glory. That no antecedent merits are presupposed in predestination so considered, since none are presupposed in the order of execution, is a point which, as we have often said already, no Catholic denies. The words of St Thomas are these: « That part is divided into three: for first the Apostle sets forth the gratuitous calling; second, the voluntary predestination of God ... third, the end of both... He says therefore that this grace has abounded in us, and that in Christ all things have been restored ... not by our merits but by divine election ... But his grace depends on the divine will alone ... because God ... does not call through internal grace from anyone's merits. Then when he says: predestined according to the purpose of his will, he sets forth the voluntary predestination of God, of which it is said in Rom. VIII. 30: whom he predestined, these he also called. The reason of this predestination (that we be called, or which at least includes the first calling itself) is not our merits, but the mere will of God... Lastly he touches on the end of both, namely of predestination and of calling, that... through us who believe in Christ the glory of God may be praised ... The praise of the glory of God is when many are brought to the faith, just as the glory of a physician is when he brings many to health and cures them. » That the predestination to glory should be understood here in abstraction from the predestination to calling and to grace, and that it should be said to precede the merits of grace, is not only false but ridiculous. You have the order between the merits of grace and the predestination to glory considered apart most lucidly set forth by St Thomas in lecture I on this Epistle to the Ephesians (T. VII. p. 92.), the place which we described above.

2. A twofold chapter of doctrine remains to be reconciled with the foregoing, namely the doctrine of the Angelic Doctor concerning the certainty of predestination, and concerning the order between love, election, and predestination.

a) St Thomas teaches, de verit. q. 6. a. 3, that in predestination two certainties must be considered: the certainty of foreknowledge, and the certainty, that is, the objective infallibility, of the order of predestination itself in itself. He explains this infallibility of the order in such a way that, although free will considered under each single grace may fail, the infallibility of the order of predestination arises from the multitude and variety of the graces succeeding one another. Whence this argument could be constructed. To all the predestined God selects an order of graces, to which infallibility of attaining salvation is intrinsic. But the selection of such an order of graces presupposes the antecedent absolute will of their salvation. Therefore the absolute will of the salvation of all who are to be saved, or predestination to glory, is prior, and from this will there follows the selection of the infallible order of graces.

We take the explanation of this doctrine 1. c. de verit. from St Thomas himself. He teaches elsewhere: « Divine providence with respect to the good itself, which comes through the attainment of grace and glory, together with foreknowledge of the outcome, is called predestination; divine providence with respect to the opposed evil, together with foreknowledge of the defect, is called reprobation. And because the good is subject to providence as caused and ordained, therefore it is said that predestination is the cause of grace and glory, to which it is ordained. But because evil is not subject to providence as intended or caused, but only as foreknown and ordained (by the consequent will), therefore reprobation is only foreknowledge of fault and not its cause; but of the punishment, by which the fault is ordered (the right order being preserved), it is both foreknowledge and cause » S. Th. 1. dist. 40. q. 4. a. 1.

a) Therefore, first, the difference must be understood between the order of the merciful election of one and the just reprobation of the other. In predestination, not only foreknowledge is to be considered, « as if it were said that God orders the predestined person to salvation just as any other, but with this, that he knows of the predestined person that he will not fail of salvation; for by saying so it would not be said that the predestined person differs from the non-predestined in respect of order, but only in respect of foreknowledge of the outcome: and thus foreknowledge would be the cause of predestination (even to grace), nor would predestination be by the election of the predestinating, which is contrary to the authority of Scripture and to the sayings of the Saints » de verit. 1. c. Clearly it is not enough to say: God foresees the outcome of salvation; but it is necessary to say that God works our salvation by the predestination of grace. God, on his side, indeed by the antecedent will destines every grace to this end, that it may have its effect; but if a man resists grace, that antecedent intention of God does not pass into the absolute will of the effect. But the graces under which he sees a man freely about to consent, these he predestines from the already absolute will of the effect, and through such graces orders the man to salvation. Even for one to whom grace is destined, under which through his own fault and against the antecedent will of God he is not going to consent and is not going to attain salvation, God could, according to the greatness of his omnipotence, destine another order of graces in which he would be saved; nevertheless he permits his failure. Conversely, for another to whom he predestines grace under which he sees him about to consent and attain salvation, he could, without « iniquity of the punisher », destine another order in which he sees that the man, through his own fault, would not cooperate and would not be saved, although he could and ought to cooperate and be saved. If therefore the order of graces pertaining to complete predestination, in which is contained the very effect, free consent, justification, merits, perseverance, and at length salvation, is compared with the order of graces lacking the effect (although this is through the fault of man, and not by God's will but only by his permission of failure of salvation), it is easily understood as the merciful « election of the predestinating » (Cf. supra p. 619. 620.).

3) Infallibility of order is then rightly distinguished from certainty of foreknowledge. For it is objective truth that a man, if such grace were given, would consent, although he could not consent; and that under grace, while it is actually given, he consents infallibly yet freely, is not brought about by God's knowledge, but is presupposed to knowledge as its object (above p. 409. sqq.). There is therefore in the predestined order of graces an objective infallibility, not indeed from the intrinsic nature and entity of the individual graces (for St Thomas there most plainly excludes this): but because, as regards the graces themselves which precede, it is objectively true that, if they were given, they would have their effect, and, while they are given, they will have it; and because, the whole series of predestination being already presupposed, it includes the very effect of a good work through grace, and perseverance in good, or, if a fall intervenes, return by penance and finally final perseverance. We think this is to be understood in the way St Thomas speaks of the infallibility of order from the multitude and variety of graces⁹. « Besides the certainty of foreknowledge (such as is also in that which « is not intended or caused by God but only foreknown »), the very order of predestination has infallible certainty, and yet the proximate cause of salvation is not ordered to it necessarily but contingently, namely free will (through grace and under grace). This can be considered in this way. For we find a compossible order with respect to another in two ways. In one way, insofar as one single cause produces its effect from the order of divine providence; in another way, when from the concurrence of many causes which are contingent and able to fail (such as graces here are) one effect is reached, each of which God orders to the attainment of the effect in place of that which fails, or lest another fail; as we see... the perpetuity of the species is preserved by divine providence so governing that not all fail when one fails; and in this way it is in predestination. For free will (under grace) can fail of salvation; yet in the one whom God predestines (where therefore the whole series of graces, predestined according to the objective infallibility declared a little before, is already presupposed), so many other aids are prepared (contained in the predestined series), that either he does not fall, or if he falls, that he rises again, such as exhortations and the suffrages of prayers, the gift of grace, and other things of this kind, by which God helps man toward salvation (in execution, which always corresponds to the order of predestination)¹⁰. If therefore we consider salvation with respect to the proximate cause, namely free will, it does not have certainty but contingency; but with respect to the first cause, which is predestination (which in the divine mind, with respect to the use of free will in the series of graces, is already presupposed and is complete), it has certainty.

These things having been set forth, the reply to the objection is clear. St Thomas here, as always elsewhere, considers predestination in the complex of grace and glory, and does not treat of the order of prior and posterior between the two benefits predestined. To the argument in form the reply is: God selects an order of graces to which infallibility is intrinsic. I distinguish the major, infallibility is intrinsic to the order of graces, insofar as the future effect of free consent through grace is regarded, and insofar as consent itself and the whole series of effects with perseverance are considered in complete predestination, I grant the major; infallibility is intrinsic from the very entity of preventing grace and without respect to free will, I deny the major. Then the minor is to be denied, both in itself, as is clear from what has been said at pp. 614–617, and according to the doctrine of St Thomas, who recognises no other order except that from the antecedent and conditional will of salvation grace is predestined, so that man may merit the crown; and from foreseen merits, by the consequent absolute will, the crown of eternal life itself is predestined.

b) A greater difficulty may seem to arise in reconciling those passages in which St Thomas compares love, election, and predestination with one another. For according to the doctrine of the Angelic Doctor, love, by which God efficaciously wills salvation for some as an end, and election, by which he wills salvation for these before others whom he reprobates, are said to be prior in the consideration of the mind to predestination, which is the reason of the order of graces toward the end of eternal life. Whence it seems to be taught that God wills salvation absolutely first as an end, and from this antecedent will wills graces and merits as means to the end. See 1. q. 23. a. 4; de verit. q. 6. a. 1; 1. dist. 41. q. 1. aa. 1. 2.

The genuine interpretation of these articles depends on determining the true sense in which St Thomas understood love and election. If election is understood as election to glory considered per se, and is said to be from the antecedent will; and predestination, on the other hand, is said to be the ordering of means to glory as to an end absolutely appointed, the sense would be that which our opponents want. But then, I ask, how does such an order not conflict with the doctrine, clearly set forth by the Angelic Doctor, as we have seen, of « predestination to glory from merits, » and of predestination from the « consequent will, which regards works as the meritorious cause of glory »? If on the contrary love and election, just as much as predestination, have for their object, according to St Thomas, the conferring of grace and glory; and if election, insofar as it is to glory, is attributed not to the antecedent but to the consequent saving will, then that whole comparison does not stand in the way of the doctrine of predestination to glory from foreseen merits, but rather confirms it.

Yet, c) election in those very articles is said by St Thomas expressly to be not only to glory, but to grace together with glory. « God gives certain goods to some which he does not give to others; and thus in the conferring of grace and glory election is considered » 1. q. 23. a. 4. ad1. « Divine election makes the difference of grace, as the (divine) disposition makes the difference of nature » 1. dist. 41. q. 1. a. 2. ad 2. In this way, then, the holy Doctor must be understood to speak of salvation begun through grace and consummated through glory, taken as a complex, when he says: « God wills their salvation, to which election and love pertain » 1. q. 23. a. 4. 0. Now love, that is, God's will of communicating good, is related to the same goods to which election pertains; therefore to grace and glory: for election adds over love only this, that God by love wills a good to someone without comparison with others, by election wills this good to some before others, as the Angelic Doctor explains in the same place.

d) From the express doctrine of St Thomas, election, especially as it is included in election to glory, pertains to the consequent will of God, not to the antecedent; for by the antecedent will (before any foresight of consent or dissent, of good or evil merit), according to St Thomas, God does not elect some before others, but wills all to be saved. To this objection: « election implies a certain discrimination, but God wills all men to be saved; therefore predestination is without election, » the Angelic Doctor replies, 1. q. 23. a. 4. ad 3: « it must be said that God wills all to be saved antecedently, which is not to will simply (so that it would be the effect itself), but in a certain respect (conditionally), not, however, consequently, which is to will simply. » He therefore affirms: God by the antecedent will wills all to be saved, which is not yet election; and he wills some to be saved before others by the consequent will, which itself is election. Again: « if election is taken as it is in the purpose of God himself, so it is eternal, because from eternity he willed to separate the good from the evil unto glory » 1. dist. 41. q. 1. a. 2. Indeed, if election to glory, formally considered, presupposes a distinction between the good and the evil, it pertains to the consequent will (cf. Augustin. supra p. 579.)¹¹

Since these things are so, these three, love, election, predestination, in St Thomas are not distinguished from one another by the fact that one belongs to the antecedent will and another to the consequent; but they are alike all of the consequent will, and they are not distinguished by reason of the terms to which they are referred (cf. Suarez de Praed. 1. I. c. 11). For the term of all three, complete, is the whole series of God's benefits from the first grace, joined with its effect, to complete salvation; and the term considered incompletely is either grace or glory. The distinction lies only in the formal concept: love is formally the will of communicating those supernatural benefits; election is the same will with an added notion, that this communication is referred to one before another; predestination is love itself and election, with the added formal notion of ordering to the end with the infallible certainty of its outcome. Whence it is clear how, according to the doctrine of St Thomas in the same places, love in its formal concept is prior by reason to election, and election by reason to predestination. For the concept of predestination includes election and love, and adds a certain note to them; just as election includes love with a certain added note. But lest we be deceived by this notion of prior and posterior, it must be retained that those three stand in this order when they are referred to the same term, that is, when all three are considered either before the whole series of benefits as a complex, or before grace, or before glory. For if election, for example, were considered before glory only, and predestination before grace, then indeed predestination would precede election.

The declaration of St Bonaventure, in 1. dist. 40. a. 3. q. 2. ad 2., can be compared regarding the concept and mutual relation of purpose, election and predestination. « It is to be noted that in God purpose, predestination and election are the same in reality; yet they differ in the manner of understanding... Purpose signifies a firm conception of the will, predestination with the conception signifies a pre-ordination, and election a certain discernment. According to this, therefore, it is evident that purpose is prior in the manner of understanding, and then election (and then predestination); because it must be understood that something is separated from evil or from malice before it is directed to the end, and so the diversity and the order are evident. »

These things having been laid down, the answer to the argument drawn from this doctrine of St Thomas, which can be framed in the following way, is clear. According to St Thomas, 1. q. 23. a. 4. and the other places cited, election precedes predestination. But election according to St Thomas is the absolute will of the end, by which God wills eternal salvation for some before others; predestination is the reason of the order to that end, which order is through efficacious graces and merits. Therefore, according to St Thomas, the absolute will of eternal salvation, or election to glory considered per se, precedes the ordering to the end, and accordingly also the foreseeing of graces and merits, which are the means to the end. The answer: I distinguish the major, election, if it is understood as the absolute will of glory considered per se and apart, according to St Thomas precedes predestination; if predestination is understood as predestination considered incompletely as to grace and merits, I deny the major. Election considered completely as an absolute consequent will, by which God wills the supernatural benefits of grace together with glory for some before others, precedes predestination of the same benefits; I subdistinguish the major, the notion of election is prior, because it is less full or fixed, containing fewer notes, I concede the major; it precedes as an act with respect to its own term, distinct in reason, from which it is understood that predestination follows as an act with respect to another term, distinct in reason, I deny the major. Moreover, as to what is said: election is the absolute will of eternal salvation and predestination is the will of graces and merits, I distinguish the minor, election, adequately considered according to St Thomas, is the will of glory apart, and predestination is of grace and merits, so that the whole series of supernatural benefits is not included in election, I deny the minor. Election and predestination can be considered inadequately in that manner in which it is said, I subdistinguish the minor, and then election is never taught by St Thomas to precede predestination, I deny the minor; and then election to glory, by the clear doctrine of St Thomas taught in other places, ought to be called consequent upon the predestination of graces and merits, I concede the minor.