Scotus Academicus, Tomus secundus: De Deo Intelligente et Volente

The word predestination is formed from the particle prae and the verb destino. The particle prae signifies either the antecedence of the act of the foreseeing intellect to the act of the ordering will; or the antecedence of the ordering of the decree of the divine will destining men to eternal glory antecedently to the prevision of merits; or, finally, more rightly and more truly, the antecedence of eternity to time, that is, of the eternal destination of God to the thing destined in time. — The verb destino, likewise, has a threefold signification; for it signifies either the same as "I designate," as it is said of our first parents, Ecclesiastici 17. He destined for them the lot of truth; that is, He imposed upon them the office of preaching the truth: or the same as "I determine" and "I decree"; thus 2. ad Cor. 9. Each one as he has destined in his heart: or, finally, the same as "I send" or "I direct"; thus 1. Machab. cap. 1. some of the people destined and sent to the King. St. Thomas 1. par. q. 23. uses destination in the two former ways, and contends that to predestine is the same as to designate or to transmit someone into eternal life. — Our Alexander of Hales, however, whom almost all theologians follow, uses destination in the third way, so that Predestination signifies the same as the statute, decree, or purpose of the divine will, by which God from eternity determined and decreed within Himself to give to certain creatures endowed with reason grace in the present, and glory in the future. And in truth, if the matter be attentively weighed, it will be evident that in the present matter destination is to be taken in this way. For the transmission into eternal life is either only the temporal effect and execution of Predestination, or at least it presupposes the purpose of the divine will, by which God determined within Himself that some are to be transmitted to eternal life before they are in fact transmitted. Hence the Church of Lyons, in the book De tenenda Scriptura sacrae traditione, around the middle, explaining those words of Ezechiel. 24. The Lord God of hosts has decreed, and who can make it void? says: What else is "He decreed" but "He predestined, pre-defined, determined, prefixed, preordained"? From which it is manifestly understood what it is to be predestined, namely, to be pre-defined, determined, prefixed, preordained. It is therefore established what is the true and genuine signification of the word Predestination. Now let us weigh the matter itself.

A twofold difficulty is proposed in the present Question. The first is whether God truly determines and orders some creature to a certain supernatural, blessed and perpetual end. The second is whether that same divine ordination is so necessary that without it a rational creature cannot attain the aforesaid end, so that this may be perceived more evidently.

Note 1. Predestination is taken in three ways. First, insofar as it signifies any predetermination, or eternal preordination, of any thing whatsoever to be effected by God at a fixed difference of time, in which sense St. Augustine, lib. De Praedest. Sanctorum, says: By His predestination God foreknew those things which He Himself was going to do. Second, it is sometimes used for the destination of rational creatures to an eternal and unchangeable state, whether good or evil; thus St. Augustine, in the Enchiridion, cap. 100, uses the word Predestination to signify the eternal lot of the saints and of the reprobate: God, he says, using even evils well, as supremely good, for the damnation of those whom He justly predestined to punishment, and for the salvation of those whom He kindly predestined to grace. With him agrees Honorius of Autun, saying: Predestination is nothing else than God's preparation, according to the merits of each one, either for glory or for eternal punishment. And likewise the Council of Valence, cap. 3: We confidently profess the Predestination of the elect to life, and the Predestination of the impious to death. These two former significations, however, are less proper and foreign to the present mystery. Therefore, more strictly and more fittingly, Predestination signifies the eternal destination, or transmission, of a rational creature to perpetual happiness, which St. Augustine thus defines, lib. De Bono perseverantiae, c. 14: The predestination of the saints, he says, is nothing else than the foreknowledge and preparation of God's benefits, by which most certainly are freed whosoever are freed. Hence

Note 2. Predestination can be distinguished as twofold, namely incomplete and complete. The first is to grace and the supernatural means conducing to the attainment of eternal happiness, which can again be distinguished in as many ways as the grace preordained and destined is itself manifold; the second, however, is to glory, the possession of which is man's complete salvation. St. Paul points to both of these: the first indeed in Ephesians, cap. 1, where he calls all the faithful Ephesians to whom he was writing elect and predestined by God: He chose us, he says, in Him, that is, in Christ, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and immaculate in His sight in charity, who predestined us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ. Not that the Apostle truly judged that all the Ephesians would infallibly attain eternal glory, but that all were ordered and predestined to sanctifying grace. The second, however, he hands on in Rom. 8, saying: Whom He foreknew He also predestined; and whom He predestined, them He also called, etc. St. Anselm likewise teaches both predestinations in the aforesaid words on Ephesians: God, he says, preordained that in the time of grace He would separate some from those who were to be lost, and make them just and immaculate. He also preordained that He would lead those same ones to eternity. Of these predestinations He fulfills the one here, when He makes them saints; the other He will complete in the future by giving immortality and beatitude. Concerning both of these predestinations we ask whether it is to be admitted.

Note 3. Predestination has had various opponents of its existence; for, leaving aside all those assailants of divine Providence, as well as the atheists, or politicians, who, denying the immortality of the soul, likewise deny predestination to glory, of whom it is said in Wisdom 2 that they knew not the mysteries of God, nor hoped for the wages of justice, nor esteemed the honor of holy souls: there were also not wanting among the faithful and Catholics those who denied even predestination in God, because they judged it to be a certain fatal necessity which would extinguish created freedom and close the way to every merit, as may be gathered from St. Augustine, 2. De Bono perseverantiae, cap. 11: and also from the holy Prosper, in his response to the objections of the Gauls, cap. 1, where he says: He who preaches fate under the name of Predestination is no more to be approved than he who, under the name of fate, defames the certainty of predestination. For the opinion of fate is vain and conceived of falsehood: but the faith of Predestination is united to the authority of many holy Scriptures, as will be proved

First conclusion. — Divine Predestination, by which some rational creatures are destined and ordered by God to beatitude from eternity, is truly to be admitted. This is of faith, and it is proved by various texts of Sacred Scripture: Matth. 25. Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you, etc. Rom. 8. Whom He foreknew and predestined, etc. Ephesians 1. He predestined us unto the adoption of the children of God. Acts 13. As many as were ordained to life everlasting believed, and elsewhere passim. All the sacred Doctors abundantly affirm this same truth by their testimonies, as will appear in the course of this disputation. Therefore:

Proof 2. By theological reason: According to St. Augustine, lib. De Praedest. Sanctorum, cap. 17, Predestination is the divine will of giving grace and glory, which God truly predestined to confer in time: but God does nothing in time which He did not decree from eternity to do: therefore God decreed from eternity to give grace and glory to some, and so He predestined some. — Then, whenever someone cannot attain his end by the strength of his nature, and yet does attain it, it is necessary that he be transmitted to that end by another: but eternal Beatitude is an end which those who attain it cannot reach by the strength of their nature: therefore it is necessary that God transmit them to it, just as an arrow, which cannot direct itself, needs an archer that it may be sent and directed at the target. This similitude points to the present mystery not obscurely; for the Royal Prophet, speaking of the elect, says: As arrows in the hand of the mighty, so the children of the outcasts. That is, the children of the Apostles, who were shaken out and struck everywhere on earth. Hence Gennadius, Epist. de Praedest., says that it is indeed from eternity: Although, he says, it takes place in time, because God sends man to his destined term, just as the archer shoots an arrow at the target. With him agrees St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 23. art. 1.¹ where, concluding the necessity of predestination, he says: To that which a thing cannot reach by the power of its own nature, it must be transmitted by another, just as an arrow is sent by the archer to the mark. But this actual transmission supposes Predestination, that is, the decree of transmitting the rational creature into eternal life: therefore, etc. — Finally, it belongs to the Provider of the Universe, says Durandus, in 1. dist. 40. q. 1., to confer on some of the Universe remedies, or aids, by which they may attain the best end, which is within the universe of beings itself; otherwise that end would be possible to creatures in vain: but the best end, which is within the universe of beings, is eternal life: therefore it belongs to God to confer on some of the Universe aids by which they may attain eternal life. Hence, since the reason for the donation of the means, pre-existing in God, is called Predestination, it follows that it is to be admitted.

You will say 1. God does not predestine creatures devoid of reason, nor order them per se to their natural end: therefore neither ought He to predestine and order those endowed with reason to a supernatural end. — I deny the consequence. And the reason for the disparity is manifest, since creatures considered in the order of nature have from their constitution whatever is necessary, so that by their native powers they can attain an end not exceeding the limits, perfections and grasp of their nature. But it is otherwise with creatures endowed with reason in relation to glory and eternal beatitude, which, since it far exceeds their natural power of operating, they can neither be directed to it, nor attain it without supernatural aid, and therefore it is necessary that they be directed and helped by God.

You will insist. Rational creatures are not of a worse condition than brute animals and all other things devoid of reason: but these attain their adequate, quieting and satiating end without any divinely implanted aid, but of themselves and per se: therefore much more will rational creatures be ordered per se and of themselves to eternal glory, which is their adequate and quieting end, and consequently they will not need God's ordination and predestination. — I deny the consequence. For a twofold end of rational creatures is distinguished. One natural, and that either corporeal, which is obtained through the correct and perfect operation of the senses, or spiritual, which is obtained through the contemplation of truth and delight in the best. The supernatural, which is the very eternal and delightful possession of God. For the attainment of the former, man's natural powers indeed suffice: but for the possession of the latter they wholly fail, since it is of an order exceeding the powers of nature. The second Conclusion will resolve the other objections.

Second conclusion. — Predestination is so necessary for salvation that no one can be saved without it. This is against Catharinus, who, lib. 2. De Praedestinatione, cap. ultimo, distinguishes two kinds of those who are saved, of which the foremost — namely, the blessed Virgin, the Apostles, etc. — are indeed predestined by God; but others are saved without any special predestination of God, and for their salvation he affirms that the general supernatural providence of God and the antecedent will of saving all men suffice. Against him not only do the other Scholastic Doctors hold, but the holy Fathers also cry out, especially Augustine, who, libr. 2. De Bono Perseverantiae, cap. 9, expressly affirms that no one is to be saved unless he has been predestined. That very thing he excellently proves lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, cap. 17, from the words of the Apostle in Rom. 8, where, when he had said that they are the elect out of the world, but before the constitution of the world, by that calling by which God fulfilled what He predestined, he adds:

for whom He predestined, them He also called, namely with that calling according to His purpose; therefore not others, but those whom He predestined He also called, and not others; but those whom He thus called He also justified, and not others; but those whom He predestined He justified and glorified, with that end, of course, which has no end.

By these words St. Augustine openly teaches that only he will be glorified who has been predestined. With him agrees the holy Fulgentius, De Fide ad Petrum, cap. 35, saying:

hold most firmly and doubt in no way that all whom God, by gratuitous goodness, made vessels of mercy before the constitution of the world were predestined by God unto the adoption of the children of God, and that none of those whom God predestined to the Kingdoms of Heaven can perish, nor can any of those whom He did not predestine to life be saved by any means.

Therefore from his mind it is clear that predestination is so necessary that without it no one can be saved.

This same Conclusion can be proved by exactly the same arguments by which the preceding one was established; but beyond this it is confirmed by these reasons. First, if for the salvation of the blessed the general supernatural providence of God alone sufficed, by which God decreed to grant to individual men sufficient means, it would follow that on the part of God no distinction is made between the predestined and the reprobate; but the whole discernment between the two would arise from the part of free choice and the proper will of him who is saved: but the consequence is false: therefore so is the antecedent. The major is clear; for if God does not discern the predestined from the reprobate by some special act of His divine will, it is evident that their discernment must be sought from elsewhere, and consequently from the part of the will alone of him who is saved. The minor likewise is clear from the Apostle, 1. ad Corinth. 4, saying: Who discerns you, etc. — Then, if the Predestined had only general and sufficient aids, and God were not specially affected toward them by a consequent act of His will, it is evident that they would not be chosen by God above the rest, but rather they themselves would choose God: but that is repugnant to Christ saying to the Predestined, John 15: You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. — Finally, from the same opinion it would follow that God has no special love toward the elect, nor bears particular care for them: but this is repugnant to the words of Christ the Lord, John 10: My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall not perish forever, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.

You will say 1. The necessity of Predestination destroys all vigilance and care for procuring and securing salvation, and it instills in ignorant and wicked men this most harmful opinion: either I am predestined, or I am not. If I am, I shall undoubtedly be saved, and so no solicitude about procuring salvation ought to remain for me. If I am not, all cares will be utterly vain and the labors for obtaining salvation empty, since only the predestined can be saved: therefore the necessity of predestination does not seem to be asserted, nor preached. The holy Augustine confirms the antecedent, libr. De Praedestinatione, cap. 15, with the example of a monk:

There was, he says, a certain man in our Monastery who, when the brethren reproved him because he did some things that ought not to be done and did not do things that ought to be done, replied: whatever I am now, such I shall be as God foreknew that I would be. He indeed spoke truly, and yet he did not profit in good; but he so far profited in evil that, having abandoned the fellowship of the Monastery, he became a dog returned to his own vomit, etc.

I deny the antecedent. For so far is it from being the case that the necessity of predestination instills and strengthens the aforesaid opinion, that rather it wholly dissolves and empties it, since God does not predestine the elect to glory without works, but to be obtained through good works. For just as He did not decree to grant an end except through suitable means — health, say, through medicine, victory through a noble and strenuous fight, knowledge through assiduity in studies, the abundant fruits of the harvest through agriculture — so too He foresaw and established that eternal salvation is to be attained through good works. Wherefore the holy Peter had admonished, 2. c. 1: Brethren, labor the more, that by good works you may make your calling and election sure.... for so an entrance shall be ministered to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Add that the salvation of someone is so predestined by God that whatever promotes him to salvation falls also under the order of predestination: for, says St. Gregory, lib. 3. Dialogorum, cap. 13., the very predestination of the reward is so disposed by the Almighty that the elect arrive at it through labor, inasmuch as by asking they may merit to receive what the omnipotent God disposes to give them. Hence it appears that the necessity of predestination is not therefore to be kept silent, because the wicked and unlearned seize from it an occasion for a looser life; rather, says St. Augustine, lib. laudato, cap. 20.:

Just as Piety is to be preached, that God may be rightly worshiped by him who has ears to hear; Chastity is to be preached, that nothing unlawful may be perpetrated with the genital members by him who has ears to hear; Charity is to be preached, that God and neighbor may be loved by him who has ears to hear: so is the Predestination of God's benefits to be preached, that he who has ears to hear may glory not in himself, but in the Lord.

You will say 2. If Predestination were necessary for salvation, it would follow that the reprobate could in no way be saved, and consequently that his own damnation would not be imputable to him: but the consequence seems absurd: therefore so is the antecedent. The consequence of the major is clear, for since the decree of predestination is altogether invariable, it plainly stands that the reprobate cannot be predestined, nor consequently saved. — The Doctor distinguishes the major in 1. dist. 39. That the reprobate could not be saved by consequent potency and in the composite and formal sense, that is, insofar as he is formally reprobate, he concedes: that he could not be saved by antecedent potency and in the divided sense, insofar as in the first sign of eternity he who is reprobate on account of foreseen evil works could have become predestined, because he was foreseen as able, from his freedom, to perform good works by reason of which he could be predestined, he denies. These things will be explained more fully below.

Note 1. From the Doctor in 1. dist. 40. n. 1. That predestination, taken properly, denotes an act of the divine will, namely the ordering of election, through the divine will, of some intellectual or rational creature to grace and glory; although it could be taken for the act of the intellect accompanying that election. For, as St. Bonaventure observes in the same place, qu. 2, since the causality of grace and glory is attributed properly to the will, as efficient; to knowledge, as disposing; and to power, as executing; therefore, although predestination imports those three things, nevertheless it is principally in the genus of will, and for this reason predestination is defined by Aug. through those three: First, through that which regards power, in the book De Fide, cap. 35.: Predestination is the gratuitous preparation of the gift: Second, through that which regards knowledge, in the book De bono perseverantiae, cap. 14.: Predestination is the foreknowledge of the benefits of God, by which whosoever are freed are most certainly freed; Third, through that which regards the will, and most properly, in lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum: Predestination, he says, is the purpose of having mercy, etc. Whence the Apostle, ad Ephesios 1.: Predestination according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

Note 2. From our Alexander of Hales, q. 28. art. 1., in the will of the one predestining three acts are found, namely Love, Election and Predestination, which acts are occupied not only with glory, but also with grace: For grace, he says, is first given, afterwards it is had, and thence someone uses it: Predestination, however, regards the conferral of grace, whence it is called the preparation of grace: Love regards grace possessed, for good is the reason of love: since, therefore, God loves someone, some good seems to be in him, by reason of which God loves him; whence it is called grace making one pleasing: Election, indeed, connotes the use of grace; for election is the acceptance of one over another among two goods proposed: whence he concludes another distinction among Predestination, Love, Election, Calling and Justification: that Predestination is simpliciter eternal, because it signifies the eternal approbation of God with respect to good: Love and Election, however, are both temporal and eternal, because they express the same approbation; but they do not determine it, namely whether it is with respect to good from eternity, or only from time: Calling and Justification, however, determine the divine approbation with respect to the good that is conferred in time.

Note 3. A twofold Predestination can be distinguished, one indeed in intention, the other in execution. The former efficaciously and immediately regards the glory to be given to men and to be attained as an end through means. The latter, indeed, immediately regards grace and supernatural helps as means necessary for attaining glory. I said immediately, for it is certain that Predestination, considered in either way, tends in reality to glory and grace; but according to our mode of understanding, intention immediately regards glory, and execution grace. Hence the Authors dispute among themselves which of these comprises the formal notion of predestination. Some, with Ockham, in 1. dist. 40. q. 1., contend that it is to be placed in the will alone of conferring glory; some, with Durandus, in the same place, dist. 41. quaest. 2., maintain that it is to be established in the will alone of conferring grace: the rest, however, more correctly with the Doctor, judge that Predestination in its formal concept involves both wills, of conferring grace and glory at once, which, that it may appear more plainly, let it be

First conclusion. — Predestination, formally taken, regards grace and glory at once. This is the teaching of the Doctor, as will appear in the following Conclusion.

That it regards grace is proved from the Apostle, ad Rom. 8., where he plainly indicates that Predestination is concerned not only with glory, but also with the means, which are calling and justification: Whom, he says, he predestined, them he also called, etc. And ad Ephesios 1.: He predestined us unto the adoption of the children of God: but adoption is made through sanctifying grace: therefore, etc. Saint Augustine plainly taught this in the places already cited above, especially in the Enchiridion, cap. 100, and De praedestinatione Sanctorum, cap. 10, and also in lib. De bono perseverantiae cap. 14., where he says: that Predestination is the preparation of grace and of the benefits of God.

That Predestination also formally regards glory, Sacred Scripture plainly testifies. Thus Actorum 13. it is said: As many as were preordained to eternal life believed. And Rom. 9.: That he might show the riches of his glory upon the vessels of mercy, which he prepared unto glory. St. Augustine also testifies, not only in 16. De Civitate Dei, cap. 1., where he says: that the City of God is the predestination to the kingdom of Heaven; but also in the book De bono perseverantiae, cap. 14., affirming that Predestination is the preparation of the benefits of God, by which whosoever are freed are most certainly freed. No one, however, is perfectly freed from all misery, until he has attained glory. Whence the Council of Trent, Session 6., cap. 12. and Canon 17., calls Predestination to life, that is, eternal and blessed. Hence Fulgentius rightly concludes, lib. 1. Ad Monimum, cap. 8.: Therefore, he says, God always had in predestination all things, both the beginnings of calling and the increases of justification and the rewards of glorification.

Both parts are proved at once: Predestination is that divine preordination by which the predestined one is directed and sent unto eternal life: but a perfect mission and direction regards not only the end, but also the means: therefore God, in predestining, regards not only glory, but also grace.

You will say. As often as St. Augustine describes Predestination, so often he mentions election alone, not indeed to glory, but to grace. Whence modern Doctors distinguish three things in Predestination, namely the conferral of gifts and grace; the conditional foreknowledge by which God foresees that these and those are to be led to eternal life, if such things are conferred upon them; and the will, or purpose, of conferring those very gifts, in which they chiefly place the essence of predestination: therefore Predestination formally regards grace alone. — I answer. That Saint Augustine indeed asserts that Predestination is the preparation of grace and of divine benefits, not that he truly judged that the adequate formal notion of Predestination is to be placed in the preparation of grace alone. For no one assumes and prepares means, except with the intention of attaining the end; but he mentioned grace rather than glory for this reason, because he was dealing against the Pelagians, who indeed admitted Predestination to glory, but not to grace. For they judged that glory was to be attained through moral works and by the powers of nature. Whence Augustine himself, in lib. De Vocatione Sanctorum, says: Predestination is the preparation of grace in the present and of glory in the future.

Second conclusion. — Predestination is rightly described by the Doctor in 1. dist. 40. n. 2. as the election of an intellectual or rational creature to grace and glory. Or, as he himself says in 3. dist. 7. qu. 3., Predestination is the preordination of someone to glory principally, and to other things in order to glory. The truth of these descriptions is established from the preceding Conclusion; therefore it needs only explanation. First, therefore, Predestination is called Preordination and Election. For the predestined are chosen and preordained by God from eternity and are separated from the Reprobate. Second, there is added rational and intellectual creature. For only a creature endowed with reason is the object and subject of divine Predestination, as will be established below. Finally, there is added to grace and glory; for Predestination formally regards both, as was said above.

You will say 1. Predestination regards only those to be beatified and the just, but election and preordination also regard the impious and the reprobate: therefore Predestination is incongruously called election and preordination. The minor is clear, Ioannis 6.: Have not I chosen you twelve, says Christ, and one of you is a devil? Nor does it avail to say that this is to be understood of temporal election, for temporal election is a sign of eternal election: therefore either both agree, or the sign is false. — Saint Bonaventure answers, in 1. dist. 40. art. 3. qu. 2. that a threefold election can be distinguished: For there is, he says, an election according to the affection of love, and according to the effect of final gratification, and according to the state of prelation. The first is eternal, and is the same as predestination. The second is temporal, and an infallible sign of the first. The third is likewise temporal, and is neither an effect nor a sign of eternal election; for many who are preferred are evil and reprobate, and would that there were not more evil than good. To the minor he says that Christ speaks of the election of prelation, which regards not only the upright, but also the wicked, and therefore it is not a certain sign of eternal election.

You will say 2. If there were no reprobate, there would be Predestination, but not election; for election signifies the acceptance of one over another: therefore election and predestination sound the same. — The Seraphic Doctor answers in the same place. That purpose, Predestination and Election do not differ according to reality, but only according to the notion of understanding: For purpose, he says, simpliciter denotes the will of doing something; for he is said to purpose who firmly wills to do something: Election, indeed, and Predestination add beyond the conception of the will; but differently, because Predestination adds order and direction to the end, namely, election adds discretion, or separation from its supposit. Whence purpose denotes the firm conception of the will, Predestination with conception denotes preordination, and Election a certain discretion by which the Predestined are distinguished from the Reprobate. Hence, according to our concept, purpose precedes, election follows, and finally predestination. Whence, in form: If there were no evil, there would be no Election: according to the notion of understanding, I concede: according to the truth of the matter, I deny: for one and the same entitative act of the divine will is at once purpose, election and predestination; and it is only conceived as diverse according to the diversity of our concept and of the connoted terms.

The sense of the Question is whether divine Predestination is an immanent or transient act; eternal or temporal; free or necessary, for the understanding of which

Note 1. Of the divine acts, some are purely immanent, others purely transient, and others immanent as to entity, but connoting secondary objects and terminated to them; the purely immanent acts are the divine intellection and volition, by which God knows and loves Himself. The purely transient acts are those which are poured back into creatures, such as creation, justification, and the like: but the acts immanent with termination to secondary objects are acts indeed proceeding from the divine intellect and will, which nevertheless cannot be understood by us without a respect to secondary objects, such as are foreknowledge, predestination, etc.

Note 2. The eternity of Predestination can be regarded in two ways; first indeed by inquiring whether it is an eternal act elicited by the divine will or intellect; secondly, whether Predestination was so made in the very first instant and sign of eternity, that it nevertheless coexists with the individual parts of time, so that it is neither past nor future, but only present. That this may be perceived more evidently, it must further be observed that a threefold instant can be distinguished, namely the pure instant of eternity, the pure instant of time, and a certain instant mixed from both, in which are explained certain past, present, or future actions, connoting indeed the instant of eternity, but inasmuch as that instant coexists with the various parts of time.

Note 3. As far as the present undertaking is concerned, a twofold necessity can be distinguished, namely absolute and respective; the first is that by which something is said to be necessarily such or such in itself and from its constitutive principles; thus existence is necessary for God, and it is necessary that man be a rational animal, etc. For if he were not such, he would not be a man. The second is that by which something is said to be necessary in order to another; and that either simpliciter, so that the one cannot be obtained without the other; or secundum quid, when something can indeed be obtained without the other, but not with so great facility.

First conclusion. — Predestination is an immanent act in God with termination to secondary objects.

Proof. Every act of the divine intellect and of the divine will connoting a respect of reason ad extra is an immanent act in the manner just explained; but predestination is such; both because, as has been proved, it is truly an act of the divine will; and because predestination does not signify in God something belonging to Him by way of a first and essential act, but by way of a final and vital act, just as are intellection and knowledge, volition and election, as is evident from the very signification of the word and the opinion of all. Finally, because predestination expresses something free in God; but whatever is denominated free in God belongs to Him by way of an immanent act; therefore Predestination is truly an immanent act.

You will say. Predestination is formally in the predestined; therefore it is not an immanent act in God. The consequence is evident, for what is formally created is not in God immanently and intrinsically, but only denominatively and extrinsically. The antecedent is proved; Predestination is formally in him who is denominated predestined; but only the creature is denominated predestined; therefore in it alone is Predestination formally. — I deny the antecedent and also the major of that proof; for the creature is indeed denominated predestined not formally, as if predestination were a form inhering in it; but effectively, on account namely of the various effects which Predestination works in it; whence Predestination is formally only in God, and formally denominates Him as predestining. Hence the word predestination is taken rather actively than passively: that is, it signifies the predestiner more than the predestined.

Second conclusion. — Predestination is an eternal act, which is measured by the mixed instant, inasmuch as the instant of eternity coexists with the various parts of time. This Conclusion has two parts, namely that Predestination is an eternal act and that it is measured by the mixed instant.

The first part is proved. First indeed from Sacred Scripture, ad Ephesios 1. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy, etc. Here the particle "before" denotes the antecedence of time and consequently eternity. Election likewise signifies predestination; for the Apostle adds: who predestined us, namely then when He chose us; and below: Predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will; so likewise in primae ad Corint. 2. the Incarnate Wisdom is said: Predestined before the ages for our glory: all of which texts of Sacred Scripture the holy Fathers, as many as dispute about Predestination, interpret concerning its eternity.

It is proved likewise by reason. No formal denomination belongs to God in time, whose thing itself does not formally belong to Him from eternity: but God is in time formally and really denominated predestining: therefore Predestination truly belongs to Him from eternity. The major is evident; for God is altogether immutable, not only as to entity, but also as to intrinsic operation. The minor also is evident: for God is truly in time denominated predestining.

You will say. Predestination is a part of Providence: but Providence is not eternal, but temporal: for Providence is posterior to creation, because it consults for things already created; but creation is temporal: therefore Predestination too is temporal. — I distinguish the minor. Providence is temporal according to execution and the actual ordering of things to their ends, I concede: according to the destination and act of the divine will, by which God provides for created things from eternity, or determines within Himself that He will provide for them in time, I deny: for above we said that Providence is a divine and eternal purpose, by which God decreed within Himself that He would order created things through suitable means to their ends according to the varying difference of time. Add that even if Providence were temporal, nevertheless predestination would be eternal; for the particle "pre" signifies the antecedence of time, and so eternity, and abstracts from the actual existence of the things which are predestined, and consequently from the temporal duration of things: and so it is not temporal, but eternal.

You will say 2. What imports and signifies an order to something temporal is also temporal: but predestination is such, for it signifies the transmission and ordering of the predestined to grace and glory to be conferred in time: therefore it is temporal. — I distinguish the major. What imports only an actual order to a thing existing only in act is temporal, I concede: to a thing future and about to come into existence in time, I deny. Predestination, however, does indeed express from eternity an order to a thing future in time, but not actually existing; and so it is no less eternal than the other acts of the divine intellect and of the divine will, namely foreknowledge, decree, election, which regard creatures that are to come into existence in time.

You will say 3. Predestination is the preparation of the means for salvation: but that preparation is temporal: therefore predestination too is temporal. — I answer. There is a twofold preparation, one internal in the mind of the Governor or Provider, who conceives in his mind some work to be undertaken and prepares the means necessary to perfect it; the other external, by which he in fact selects the means for completing the work, just as an artisan selects stones, wood, etc. to build a house. The former can be eternal in the mind of the eternal artisan: the latter, however, is only temporal: but predestination according to its formal concept is only an internal preparation; according to execution, however, it also imports an external preparation. Whence it can be said to be at once eternal and temporal: eternal indeed formally and considered in itself; temporal, however, only denominatively and according to execution, that is, the actual application of grace and glory.

The second part is proved. God does not predestine in the instant of time only, because predestination is eternal, nor in the pure instant of eternity, because only acts ad intra are measured by that instant: therefore it is necessary that Predestination take place in the mixed instant, which is indeed eternal, but corresponding to the various differences of past, present, and future time: for God is said by one and simple and indivisible act of His will to have at once predestined, to predestine, and to be about to predestine, for the reason that that very eternal act of Predestination, one and most simple, since it is eternal, involves and embraces the various differences of time. Which things will again appear more evidently in what follows.

Third conclusion. — The act of divine Predestination is not only free, but also contingent, although it is also necessary, not indeed with absolute necessity, but respective. This Conclusion involves four parts, of which the two former are proved together by the Subtle Doctor in q. ultima Prologi and in 1. dist. 8. q. ultima, where he teaches that every act of the divine will regarding creatures is contingent and indifferent with the indifference of contradiction. He subjoins the reason of this truth, because God predestines most freely, and with so great indifference that He could have not predestined if He had so willed: which St. Paul openly indicates in ad Ephesios 1, saying: Predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will. With which words he signifies the free will of God most of all in predestining; and indeed truly, for the freedom of the divine will is most of all discerned in Predestination; because not only was it free for Him to predestine or not to predestine; but also according to His free will He predestined this one rather than that one. Hence the act of predestination is sometimes called by the Apostle good will, purpose, election, counsel of the will, and other similar things, which indicate that act to be altogether indifferent, free and at the same time contingent. I say free and at the same time contingent, so that the act of divine predestination may be distinguished from those purely immanent acts of the divine will which are indeed free, yet not contingent, but absolutely necessary, such as are, v. g., the act of love by which God loves Himself and the act of spiration by which the Father and the Son produce the Holy Spirit: Predestination, however, is not of this sort; for although it is free, nevertheless it is contingent.

The third and fourth parts are also evident: the third indeed, because it was not absolutely necessary for God to predestine anyone, but as we have just said He orders creatures to eternal glory according to the will and good pleasure of His divine will. The fourth likewise, for it was necessary, ex hypothesi, that God, having willed to confer the gifts of grace and glory on certain intellectual creatures, should decree this conferral and ordering from eternity: this decree, however, is called predestination, and so it is necessary with a respective necessity; namely in order to grace and glory which are its effects. Hence St. Augustine in lib. De Bono Perseverantiae, cap. 11. affirms that Predestination is as necessary as is the very foreknowledge of God.

The meaning of the question is whether only the rational creature, angelic as well as human, can properly be predestined.

Note 1. Something can be said to be predestined in two ways, namely either to entity and existence, or to a perfection consequent upon its being. In the former way, whatever things are decreed by God so that they at some time exist and are produced can be called predestined, because they are decreed and destined by God before they are made; for which reason St. Augustine, lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum cap. 10., says: By predestination God knew what He Himself was about to do. Whence it comes about that all creatures can be called predestined, but in a broader and improper use of the name of predestination; for more truly and more correctly they could be called predetermined and decreed than predestined. In the latter way, those things are called predestined which are preordained to something else as to a certain perfective term of themselves; thus men and Angels are called predestined because they are ordered to grace and glory, by which the angelic and human nature alike are most fully perfected.

Note 2. It is certain that Predestination does not regard the divine Persons or Properties: for these belong to God not freely, but altogether necessarily; not through free will, but through essence and nature. But those things which are predestined depend upon the free will of God. Whence St. Augustine, tractatu 185. in Ioannem, excellently declares in what manner the Son of God is said to be at once predestined and not predestined: Rightly, he says, is He said not to be Predestined according to that which He is, the Word of God, God with God; for why would He be predestined, since He already was what He was, without beginning, without end, everlasting? That is, since from eternity and from His own nature He is blessed, He could not be destined by free election to that same beatitude: yet He is said to be predestined inasmuch as He is the incarnate Word and by reason of the hypostatic union with human nature, to which He was destined from eternity: whence he adds in the same place: Whoever denies that the Son of God is predestined denies this same Son of Man. Only the difficulty, therefore, remains concerning the created intellectual nature, angelic and human.

Note 3. Our Alexander of Hales, 1. p. q. 28. memb. 1. art. 1., holds that the blessed Angels were not destined to eternal glory by predestination properly so called: for in that same place he distinguishes a twofold Predestination, one common, by which is meant the foreknowledge of God's benefits and the preordination of someone to glory; the other special, which is called the purpose of mercy, and the preparation of grace in the present and of glory in the future:

But since, he says, in the blessed Angels there was no misery, therefore neither is the purpose of mercy said with respect to them: nor did grace in them precede glory: but the human state was twofold, namely before sin and after sin, inasmuch as before sin it is called predestination, the preparation of grace in the present, etc., but after sin it is called the purpose of mercy.

But whether these things accord with the truth, the single Conclusion will resolve.

Single conclusion. — The sole and entire intellectual nature, angelic as well as human, is the object of predestination properly so called. This Conclusion has two parts; of which

The first is proved. Divine predestination is a free and contingent act by which something is ordered to possess grace in the present and glory in the future: but this act can have nothing else for its object than the created intellectual nature: therefore this is truly the object of divine predestination. The major is evident from what has been said. The minor is also established as to its first part from the second Note, in which it is evident that nothing divine has the character of the predestined, and so whatever is called predestined must necessarily be created. It is established also as to the second part; for that nature alone can be ordered to grace and glory which can use grace itself and enjoy glory; but only the intellectual nature can accomplish these, for the use of grace is made chiefly through the operations of the intellect and the will, as is also the very fruition of glory, which necessarily presupposes the beatific vision and formally consists in love: therefore, etc.

You will say. That creature can be predestined which can be elevated to some supernatural end; but any creature, even one devoid of reason, can be elevated to some supernatural end and effect; thus baptismal water is ordered to washing away original sin and to conferring sanctifying grace, and that from eternity: for God from eternity decreed and ordered all the Sacraments, and destined their efficacy and effects: therefore not only the intellectual creature is the object of predestination. — I deny the major. For not every eternal ordering of a creature to a supernatural effect ought to be reckoned the predestination of that thing, because such an ordering to a supernatural effect is not made as to the ultimate end of that thing; indeed the thing itself is ordered to that supernatural end as a means serving man to attain his ultimate end, to which he is destined from eternity and in which chiefly is placed the formal notion of predestination: for this expresses an efficacious ordering of the thing, by which it is said to be predestined to attain its ultimate end, and therefore it is proper to the intellectual creature alone.

The second part is also proved. Every nature that is capable of the use of grace and the fruition of glory is the object of predestination: but such is every intellectual nature, angelic as well as human, as is evident: therefore truly every intellectual nature can be the object of divine predestination.

You will say. Predestination is the purpose of mercy, according to St. Augustine cited by Alexander of Hales: therefore it presupposes misery: but the blessed Angels never experienced any misery, because they committed no sin: therefore God had no purpose of mercy toward them, nor consequently any predestination; and so they cannot be called the object of divine predestination. — I answer 1. The aforesaid definition of predestination is not found in St. Augustine, and therefore it is not to be made much of. Secondly, I answer that a twofold predestination can be distinguished, one indeed ordering to good; the other raising up from evil and freeing from misery. The first falls upon the Angels, and also upon Christ and the Most Blessed Virgin, in whom there never was any misery of sin. The second, however, regards all who are freed from sin before they are destined to beatitude.

You will ask. Whether the intellectual nature, setting aside its personality, can be the proximate object of Predestination?

The Doctor affirms in 3. dist. 7. n. 2. and proves it by the example of the human nature assumed by the divine Word, which, setting aside its personality, was ordered not only to the hypostatic union, but also to the fullness of all graces and to supereminent glory:

For just as, he says, God can love every other good besides Himself, not only the supposit, but the nature; so also can He preordain and prechoose for it from Himself the good befitting it; and so He can prechoose for this nature the good befitting it, and so He can prechoose for it that union in order to glory, and not for the person.

It can be confirmed; for the rational soul in Christ, setting aside its own personality, enjoys God: therefore it is predestined to such fruition, and so a nature separated from personality can be the object of predestination. Then again, grace and glory are habits and effects of the will depending upon its potencies: therefore since such potencies and the nature from which they flow can exist without their own personality, God will be able to predestine the nature itself and the will itself to supernatural habits, and also to grace and glory.

You will say. The use of grace and the fruition of glory, as we have just said, are accomplished through acts of the intellect and the will; but actions belong to supposits: therefore since a nature, setting aside its personality, cannot operate, nor consequently use grace and enjoy glory, so neither will it be able to be predestined. — I distinguish the minor. Actions belong to supposits denominatively, I concede, that is, they denominate the supposits in which they are received in the way in which accidents are wont to denominate not only the principle from which they are made, but also the subject in which they are received; for which reason the whole man is said to see, although vision is formed only by the eye: actions belong to supposits elicitive; that is, they are elicited and proceed from the supposits as from their operative and productive principles, I deny. The Doctor nevertheless notes and warns that these things are said of others besides Christ only as possible, not in fact:

For it is true, he says, that in all others besides this one, predestination regards the person, because in no other did God preordain the good of the nature except by preordaining the good of the person; and the reason of this is that no nature is predestinable unless it is personated with a created personality, except this one; and therefore in no other way can good be preordained to it, except to this one.

Note 1. Concerning the certainty of Predestination there have been various errors of the heretics. For from it the Praedestinatians introduced a certain fatal necessity, by which human liberty was altogether overthrown and the way to good works was closed off, since each person's lot, good or evil, had been fixed by an irrevocable decree from eternity: which opinion, that the Massilian presbyters might avoid it, they fell into another no less erroneous one, affirming that the lot of men still fluctuates uncertainly, and that nothing concerning their predestination or reprobation had been defined from eternity: For if they are so predestined, they say (as St. Hilary reports, in his Letter to St. Augustine) to either part, that none can pass over from some to others; to what purpose does so great an urgency of outward correction pertain?.... That is, they likewise do not accept this, that there be a definite number of those to be chosen and of those to be rejected. Calvin, moreover, having entered upon a still worse path, contends in book 3. of the Instit., cap. 24. § 8. that every one of the faithful can and ought to believe with certain faith that he himself is predestined. That we may drive away all these mists of error with the torch of truth, three things especially are to be resolved in the present Question. 1. Whether divine Predestination is so certain and invariable that none of the predestined perishes. 2. Whether God has known a certain number of the predestined individually and has so defined it that none can be added to it. 3. Whether this number is so known to God alone that it is open to no mortal, neither in common nor in particular. That these may be made more evident

Note 2. The certainty of knowledge, of which especially there is speech here, is the firm adherence of the intellect to some proposition or object on account of an infallible motive. This motive, however, in God is nothing other than the divine Essence itself, which, since it is the sea of all entity and perfection, also embraces and represents every being to the divine Intellect; and this either antecedently to every decree of the divine Will, in which way it exhibits things purely possible, or with a prior and presupposed absolute or conditional decree; just as it represents creatures absolutely or conditionally future, as we have taught together with the Doctor, Disput. De Scientia Dei.

Note 3. Future things can become known to us in a threefold way, namely either through demonstration, in the way that Astrologers detect a future eclipse from the certain period of the celestial orbs and their unvarying motion; or through revelation, just as all the Prophets detected and announced things to come from afar when God disclosed them: or finally through certain signs by which one may conjecture the outcomes of things and, as it were, look into them through certain thin rays sent forth. Whether, however, any of us can forefeel by some of these ways that he is to be numbered in the happy lot of the predestined, we shall resolve here: but first let there be

First conclusion. — The Predestination of the elect is so certain and infallible that none of them can perish. This is of faith, and various texts of Sacred Scripture confirm it: Thus John 6. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me. And again in the same place: This is the will of the Father, that I should not lose anything of all that he has given me. And cap. 10. My sheep hear my voice.... and they follow me.... and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand; whence St. Paul, to Rom. 8. Those whom he predestined, he says, these he also glorified, making absolutely no exception between the predestined and the glorified.

The holy Fathers confirm the same thing, especially Augustine in many places, but above all in lib. De correptione et gratia, c. 7. where he says of the elect: If any of these perishes, God is deceived, but none of them perishes, because God is not deceived: if any of these perishes, God is overcome by a human fault: but none of them perishes, because God is overcome by nothing. He has similar things in many places. With him agrees St. Fulgentius in lib. De fide ad Petrum, cap. 35.

Firmly believe, he says, and in no way doubt that all whom God made vessels of mercy by gratuitous goodness, before the constitution of the world, were predestined by God unto the adoption of the sons of God, and that none of those whom God predestined to the kingdom can perish, nor can any of those whom he did not predestine to life be saved by any means.

The reason of this truth is also manifest from the very definition of predestination, in which St. Augustine says in lib. De bono perseverantiae, cap. 14. It is the preparation and foreknowledge of the benefits of God, by which whosoever are freed are most certainly freed: but they are not most certainly freed if any of them could perish: therefore it is necessary that as many as are predestined infallibly obtain eternal life. — Then, most perspicaciously and certainly God knows the things which are future, and has all things in view: therefore he likewise knows who are to depart from sanctifying grace, and who in mortal sin; and so he certainly knows who are to be eternally blessed and who to be damned. — Finally, if one predestined could become reprobate, this would be either at the same and the same time, or at a different one. Not the first; otherwise he would be at once predestined and not predestined, which implies a contradiction. Not the second either; otherwise God would be changed, for he would begin to be reprobating, whereas before he had existed as predestinating.

You will say. One predestined can sin mortally, and soon afterwards die by a sudden and unforeseen accident: therefore he can also be damned.

I deny the consequence. For, as St. Augustine speaks in lib. 5. contra Iulianum, cap. 3., although the Predestined sin mortally, nevertheless none of them can end his life without penance:

From that number of the elect, he says, and also of the predestined, even those who led a most wicked life are brought by God's goodness to penance, by whose power they are not withdrawn from this life in the very perpetration of their crimes; that it may be shown both to themselves and to their other co-heirs, from how deep an evil the grace of God can liberate. None of these perishes, in whatever age he dies. For far be it that one predestined to life be permitted to end this life without the Sacrament of the Mediator.

You will say 2. St. Peter in the second Epist., c. 1. warns: Strive, brothers, to make your calling and election sure through good works; therefore he supposes that Predestination is not certain and infallible. — I deny the consequence. For he does not speak there of the calling of predestination to glory, but of the calling to faith and justice, whose reception and conservation rests with man's free choice; for anyone can, according to his liberty, consent to grace calling him to faith, or dissent; he can likewise keep the faith and justification received together with the very help of grace, and cast away both through sin; and so he is rightly warned to make this twofold calling certain and stable through good works. Or I distinguish. The faithful are warned to make their election certain with respect to God — as if it were uncertain and indeterminate with respect to divine knowledge, I deny: with respect to themselves, namely that they themselves may have some certainty or confidence through their good works that they are of the number of the predestined, I concede: for since it is certain that no one working justly perishes; each one can trust that he is to be counted among the predestined for as long as he lives piously and justly.

You will insist. He who is not predestined can in reality be predestined; therefore not only with respect to us, but also with respect to God predestination is uncertain. The antecedent is proved from that well-worn and common saying, if you are not predestined, see that you become predestined; which seems to be taken from St. Augustine, tract. 26. in Ioann. where, explaining those words no one can come to me unless the Father, who sent me, draws him, he says: do not wish to judge why he draws that one and does not draw that one, if you do not wish to err: accept and understand once, you are not yet drawn; pray that you may be drawn. — I distinguish the antecedent. He who is not predestined incompletely and according to the eternal designation, by which those persevering in grace are destined to obtain glory infallibly, can be newly so destined, I deny: he who is not yet predestined completely and according to the temporal execution of predestination can be predestined, I concede. — To that common saying I say, that it is not to be understood as though someone could be a cause to himself of being predestined, for he cannot prepare for himself the means and benefits by which he is most certainly freed; but that he can be the cause of cooperation and of the use of the means, without which cooperation predestination would not be complete. For although the election and predestination to glory is eternal on the part of God, nevertheless it is not complete from eternity, but to be completed it requires a condition on our part, which to fulfill or not to fulfill is in our power; and accordingly it is also in our power to bring it about that our predestination is completed, as we will prove more fully below. St. Augustine himself approves this manner of speaking in lib. De Articulis sibi falso impositis, art. 12. Because those foreknown, he says, were to fall, they are not predestined: they would, however, be predestined if they were to return, and to remain in holiness and truth. By which words he seems to trace the defect of predestination back to the defect of cooperation; namely in the manner shortly expressed. — To the words of Augustine I answer that he is not to be understood of the predestination by which the Elect are sent and, as it were, drawn to eternal life; but of that efficacious and excellent grace by which hardened sinners of every sort are sometimes stirred up and raised from the mire of sins to the splendor of innocence.

You will say finally. All the Scholastic Doctors, especially the Subtle Doctor in 1. dist. 40. q. unica: affirm that one predestined can be damned; therefore in reality predestination is not certain and infallible. — The Doctor distinguishes the antecedent. That one predestined can be damned in the divided sense, so that he whom God predestined could have not predestined, because he predestined him freely and contingently, he concedes; in the compounded sense, that is, he who is predestined de facto can become reprobate and be damned, he denies: For, he says, a created will cannot impede the ordination of the divine will; it would impede it, however, if the purpose of the divine will stood and the opposite came about through a created will: this, however, is impossible.

You will insist. Whatever God could ever do, he can also do now: but from what has been conceded, God could from eternity not predestine Peter, v. gr.: therefore he can also now not predestine him, and so his predestination is not certain. — I distinguish the major. Whatever God could ever do in the divided sense, he can also now do in the divided sense, that is, if he is not yet determined, I concede: whatever he could do in the first sign of eternity and before every decree, he can also now do in the compounded sense and consequently to a decree posited and formed about a thing to be done or not to be done, I deny; thus antecedently to the positing of the decree about creating the world he was able not to decree the fabric of the world, but once such a decree was posited, he could no longer decree that the world was not to be made; otherwise he would be mutable. The same is to be said by way of comparison about predestination.

Second conclusion. — The number of the predestined is so fixed and determinately known by God that nothing can be added to it or taken away from it. This follows from the preceding one and

It is gathered from Sacred Scripture, Luke 10. Rejoice that your names are written in the book of life: but what is written in that book is determined and cannot be erased, as will be established when treating of the book of life. Likewise John 10. Christ compares himself to the good Shepherd, who knows his sheep and calls them by name; whence the Apostle, 2. to Timothy 2. The Lord knows who are his: hence Apoc. 7. the Predestined are said to be sealed, I heard the number of the sealed, etc. by which it is signified that the predestined are known by God distinctly and definitely. St. Augustine expressly proves this very thing in lib. De Correptione et Gratia cap. 13. I speak of these, he says, who are predestined to the kingdom of God, whose number is so certain that neither is anyone added to them, nor is anyone diminished from them: so also St. Prosper, in the second

On the Calling of the Gentiles, cap. 33. The foreknowledge of God cannot be deceived, he says, it loses nothing of the fullness of the members of the Body of Christ, and the sum foreknown cannot be diminished by any loss.

Reason itself persuades the same: if any of the Predestined could be reprobated and any of the Reprobate predestined, it would follow that divine foreknowledge is fallible and the divine decree mutable: but both are false: therefore also that from which it follows. The minor is evident, for if any of the predestined were to fall away, his fall would either have been foreseen by God, or not: if not, therefore the foreknowledge which would not perceive a future thing would be defective and imperfect: if so, therefore he would have been falsely foreseen and predestined; since indeed he was not to be saved.

You will say. Some predestined person can fall away, and another be substituted in his place: therefore their number is not determined nor distinctly known by God. The consequence is evident. The antecedent is proved from that text of Apoc. 3. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may take your crown. From which St. Augustine in lib. On Correction and Grace cap. 13. infers that another is not to receive it unless you have lost it. With him agree the Gloss and Alexander of Hales on this passage: If anyone slips, he says, another will enter in through mercy, just as through the pride of the Jews the Gentility entered in: whence it is read of Blessed Francis that a certain brother saw in Heaven an empty seat, and it was answered to him, that seat belonged to one of the fallen, and is now kept for the humble Francis. It is likewise confirmed from that text of Job 34. He will crush many and innumerable and will make others stand in their place. — I answer 1. With St. Thomas 1. p. qu. 23. art. 6. ad 1. a crown can be taken in two ways. First, for eternal glory, which the Apostle calls the crown of justice promised to those lawfully striving even to the end: Second, for the merit of grace, by which each one merits a new increase. The former crown can neither be lost by the predestined, nor received by another: For he who will have persevered to the end, this one will be saved. The latter, however, can both be lost and received by another; for he who abuses grace conceded is stripped of the graces prepared and to be conceded to himself, that another may be given them, as Christ testifies most openly, both in the Oracles and in the Parables. In the Oracles indeed, thus speaking to the Jews in Matth. 21. he says: The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits; signifying the Gentiles substituted into the lot of the faithless and rebellious Jews. In the Parables, however, the most famous of which is that of the useless servant hiding and burying the talent in the earth: for the Lord commands in the same place cap. 25. Take the talent from him and give it to him who has ten talents; for to everyone who has will be given and he will abound: but from him who does not have, even what he seems to have will be taken away from him. And cast the useless servant into the outer darkness. By which it openly appears that graces prepared are taken away from the ungrateful and supplied to the faithful and watchful.

Third conclusion. — No one can know with certainty, apart from revelation, that he is to be counted among the predestined, but only conjecturally and by means of certain signs. Both parts are defined as of the faith at the Council of Trent, sess. 6, Can. 16: If anyone shall say that he will certainly have that great gift of perseverance with absolute and infallible certainty, unless he has learned this by special revelation, let him be anathema. Sacred Scripture proves the same thing. Ecclesiastes 9: Man does not know whether he is worthy of hatred or of love, but all things are kept uncertain for the future: whence the Apostle warns, 1 Corinthians 10: He who thinks himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall: and Rom. 11: Do not be high-minded, but fear: and Philippians 2: Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Hence Apocalypse 5: the book of predestination is said to be sealed with seven seals, and no one opens it except the Lamb alone.

The Church itself clearly proves this in prayer: O God, to whom alone is known the number of the Elect who are to be placed in heavenly happiness: The holy Fathers likewise prove it: Augustine, lib. On Rebuke and Grace, cap. 13: Who, he says, from the multitude of the Faithful, as long as one lives in this mortality, would presume that he is among the number of the Predestined? For it is necessary that this be hidden in this place, where elation must be so guarded against that even the Apostle, lest he be exalted, was buffeted through Satan's angel: and on Ps. 68: Many believe themselves to be written in the book of life, who are nevertheless deceived. Saint Jerome on chapter 9 of Ecclesiastes: the just cannot know whether they are loved by God, but fluctuate in uncertainty; they will know in the future, when they have departed from this life. Finally, St. Bernard, Sermon 1 on Septuagesima: Who shall declare this generation? Who can say: I am of the Elect? I am of the number of the children: while Scripture cries out that man does not know whether he is worthy of love or of hatred?

Reason likewise persuades the same thing. No one can know those things which depend on the mere will of God, unless God himself has revealed them; for, as the Apostle says, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God: but our predestination depends on the gratuitous will of God, which destines us to eternal glory and supplies the necessary means, as has already been proved: therefore, setting aside God's revelation, no one can know whether he is to be enrolled among the predestined. — Next, no one can be certain of his predestination unless he is equally certain that he will persevere in sanctifying grace to the last period of life; for he who perseveres to the end will be saved: but from the cited oracle of the Council of Trent it is established that, setting aside a special revelation of God, no one can have infallible certainty about his perseverance; therefore, etc. — Finally, if anyone could be certain without revelation of his future salvation, it would be above all through a demonstration a priori, or a posteriori, that is, either through the cause or through the effect; but in neither way can predestination become known certainly and infallibly. Not indeed through the cause, because the divine will is not manifest to us: nor through the effects either; for there is no holiness so firm that it cannot fail; whence St. Bernard wisely warns, Sermon 30 on various topics: nowhere is there security, brothers, neither in Heaven, nor in Paradise, much less in the world: for in Heaven the Angel fell in the presence of the Divinity; Adam in Paradise from the place of delight; Judas in the world from the school of the Savior. Therefore, etc.

You will say. St. Paul in Rom. 8 says: I am certain that neither death, nor life, nor principalities, etc. will be able to separate us from the charity of God; therefore the holy Apostle was certain and secure both of his own predestination and of that of the faithful. — I answer 1. That even if these things were true, the Apostle would nonetheless have received that certainty from no other source than the revelation of God, since this infallible certainty could not be evident to him from any other source, as has been proved. Secondly I say that the Latin interpreter wrote certain for I trust, as St. Jerome also renders it, as if to say: I hope and am persuaded; otherwise he would manifestly contradict himself, since he openly teaches in other places that one must always fear and that he does not wish to judge anyone: Thus 1 Cor. 4: Do not judge before the time and again nor do I judge myself; and cap. 9: I chastise my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps, having preached to others, I myself become a reprobate.

You will ask 1. Whether, how many, and what are the signs of predestination?

I answer first. With St. Bernard, Sermon 2 on the octave of Easter: that God truly supplies certain signs to the Elect by which one may conjecture that he is to be enrolled among the predestined:

For when, he says, would God abandon his Elect without a testimony? Or indeed what consolation could there be for those fluctuating between hope and fear with anxious solicitude, if they merited no testimony at all of their election? But if, as is certain, certainty is wholly denied to us, will not those signs of this election which we can perhaps find be all the more delightful? For what rest can our spirit have while it as yet holds no testimony of its predestination? By this word, surely, consolation is ministered to the Elect and excuse is withdrawn from the Reprobate: for once the signs of life are known, whoever neglects them is manifestly convicted of receiving his soul in vain and of holding the desirable land as nothing.

I answer second. That various signs of predestination are assigned by the holy Fathers, but especially six, which may be gathered from the same St. Bernard: the first three he himself indicates in the cited place, where, having said that there are three who give testimony in Heaven to the holy Angels about their predestination, namely the Father by forming, the Word by preserving, and the Holy Spirit by sanctifying them: he adds that there are likewise three on earth, namely spirit, water, and blood, which supply to us the signs of predestination, so that by spirit he understands the exercise of all spiritual works; by water, the shower of tears washing away sins; and by blood, the martyrdom of unceasing mortification; or, as he himself says, to have testimony from blood and water and spirit is to be continent from sins, to do worthy fruits of penance, to do the works of life. That these three, moreover, are genuine signs of predestination is clearly evident: first indeed, from prompt and unceasing penance, for as the Royal Psalmist says: By this I know that you have willed me, because my enemy will not rejoice over me. As if he said: it seems certain to me that it is an indication of my predestination that, as soon as I sinned, you instilled in me the penance by which I might drive out the enemies of salvation exulting over me. — Mortification likewise, as Paul says to the Galatians 5: Those who are of Christ have crucified their flesh with its vices and concupiscences: whence Bernard well notes on the Canticles: No one can pass from delights to delights, from which he infers: But if some are not in the labor of men in this life, they will surely be in the labor of demons in the next. — Finally, the unceasing exercise of virtue; since: The just will go from virtue to virtue, until the God of gods is seen in Sion. — To these I add that, since God has predestined us to be made conformable to the image of his Son, namely his most sacred humanity, which through its death and passion left us an example, that we should follow his footsteps; we may augur that we shall rise with him into eternal life, if we shadow forth his death in ourselves: For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, says the Apostle to the Romans 6, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: therefore, since Christ himself had three testimonies by which it is established that he truly underwent death for us; namely 1. the Spirit, because bowing his head he gave up the spirit. 2. the water, which flowed from his side pierced by the lance; and the Blood, which flowed from his sacred body even to the last drop: so too we shall have certain omens of eternal life to come, if we send forth the spirit of sin; for sin, even if physically considered it is nothing and a bare privation; nevertheless, morally taken, it could be said to consist of body and spirit; the Apostle saying in the cited place: Our old man has been crucified together with him, that the body of sin may be destroyed. The body, I say, of sin is the very exterior sinful action which must be restrained: the heart of sin is the very affection by which crimes are perpetrated; the spirit, however, is that very habit of sinning by which it happens that sin lives long and reigns in our mortal body. Therefore, so that one may have certain indications of his predestination, the body of sin must be destroyed by the blood of mortification: Always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, says the Apostle, that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh: the heart of sin must be torn out by the tears of sincere penance: Putting away all malice, and all guile, and dissimulations, etc., says St. Peter in the first Epist., cap. 2, so that there may be in us charity from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned, says Paul to Timot. 1. Finally, the spirit of sin must be sent forth: For we have not received the spirit of this world, but the spirit that is of God, 1 Cor. 2. But the Spirit itself gives testimony to our spirit that we are sons of God; and if sons, heirs also, etc., Rom. 8. — The fourth sign of predestination St. Bernard himself gathers, serm. 1 on Septuagesima, from those words of Christ the Lord: He who is of God hears the words of God, which he thus weighs:

Certainly we do not have certainty whether we are of the number of the Elect, but the confidence of hope consoles us lest we be utterly tormented by the anxiety of this doubt: for this reason certain signs and manifest indications of salvation have been given, so that it may be indubitable that he is of the number of the Elect in whom those signs have remained. Moreover, among those things which provide confidence and matter for hope, that one is the greatest of which we have now begun to speak: he who is of God hears the words of God.

— The fifth sign is constant fear and frequent thought of the tremendous judgments of God; for as Ecclesiasticus 7 rightly warns: In all your works remember your last end and you will never sin: whence Tertullian, lib. De cultu foeminarum, cap. 2, says that fear is the foundation of salvation; for by fearing we will be without harm, by being cautious we will be safe; with the divine spirit filling the sails, salvation navigates safe, if cautious; secure, if watchful. With him Peter of Celle agrees, book De Panibus, cap. 14.

Like a keeper, he says, over innumerable treasures, this fear is placed in the last rank of the charisms to preserve the incorruptible graces. Piety is a precious gem, but it is easily stolen away by impiety unless it is guarded by fear. Let us keep the good and beautiful handmaids of the graces, but under the custody of the most diligent pedagogue, namely Fear.

Whence St. Bernard, sermon 54 on the Canticles, weighing those words of Proverbs 28: Blessed is the man who is always fearful, says: In truth I have learned that nothing is equally efficacious for meriting, retaining, and recovering grace, as if at all times you are found before God not to be high-minded, but to fear: fear, therefore, when grace has smiled, fear when it has departed, fear when it returns anew, and this is to be always fearful; let these three fears succeed one another in turn in the mind, according as grace is felt either to deign to be present, or offended to withdraw, or appeased to return again. When it is present, fear lest you do not work worthily from it, for this is what the Apostle warns, saying: see that you do not receive the grace of God in vain... Fear grace withdrawn as one about to fall soon. Fear and tremble before God, whom you feel to be angry with you, fear because your guard has left you..... Now if grace, propitiated anew, has returned, then there is so much the more to be feared, lest it happen that you suffer a relapse, according to that saying in the Gospel: Behold, you are made whole; go and sin no more, lest something worse happen to you. You hear that to relapse is worse than to fall in; accordingly, as the danger grows stronger, let fear also grow stronger. Blessed are you if you have filled your heart with that threefold fear, and fear indeed for grace received, more for grace lost, far more for grace recovered. — The sixth and most powerful indication of predestination is the highest affection and singular devotion toward the most sacred Virgin; for this, says Bernard, is the school of sinners, this is my greatest confidence, this is the whole ground of my hope. And deservedly indeed; for, as St. Anselm adds, just as it is impossible that those from whom she averts the eyes of her mercy should be saved, so it is necessary that those to whom she turns her eyes, pleading for them, should be justified and glorified: whence the Church attributes to her that saying of Proverbs 8: He who finds me will find life and will draw salvation from the Lord.

You will ask 2. Whether the number of the Predestined is greater, or smaller, than the number of the Reprobate?

I answer 1. That if a comparison is instituted among men taken in general, who have lived from the beginning of the world and will live until its end, the lot of the predestined falls far short of the number of the reprobate: for before the coming of Christ the Lord, the worship of God was rare, and the knowledge of him was rare, since: God is known only in Judea; but all the gods of the Gentiles are demons. Indeed, even after the Gospel was preached, there are far more Gentiles, Turks, Jews, and all other infidels than Christians; and among Christians there are more heretics and schismatics than faithful Catholics: therefore, since he who does not believe is already judged, it is openly evident that the number of the Predestined is far smaller than that of the Reprobate: hence the Angel rightly says to Esdras, lib. 4, cap. 8: God made this world for many, but the future one for few: which book, although it is not canonical, nevertheless has great authority; he adds, however: Many indeed have been created, but few will be saved, which Christ openly confirms in Matthew 7: Narrow is the way which leads to life, and few are they who enter through it.

I answer 2. That if a comparison is made only among the Faithful, both infants before the use of reason and adults departing from this life, it is more likely that there will be more Predestined than Reprobate; for it is established that innumerable infants, reborn by the baptismal wave, depart from this life: it is likewise established that among adults, more end their last life with the signs of salutary penance, as well as with the due reception of the Sacraments, by whose power and efficacy there is no doubt that they are justified; and so neither should there be any doubt that, men being compared in this way, the Predestined are more numerous than the Reprobate.

I answer 3. That if a comparison is made among only the faithful adults departing from this life, it seems more probable that there will be more Reprobate than Predestined; as St. Augustine openly teaches, lib. 3 Contra Cresconium, cap. 66, and lib. 4, cap. 13, thus expounding the parable of the wheat and the chaff: The good, and rare, Christians, he says, who are many in themselves, are few in comparison with the evil; just as many grains with which great barns are filled are few in comparison with the chaff. Gregory, hom. 19 on the Gospels, and others thus expound that saying of Matthew 20: Many are called, but few are chosen. But most openly of all, Chrysostom, homil. 4 to the people: How many, he says, do you think there are in this city who will be saved? Of so many thousands, not even a hundred who will be saved can be counted; nay, I even doubt these: for how great is the malice in the young! how great the torpor in the old! etc.

The same thing is proved: First, from the figures by which God wished to delineate that truth in Sacred Scripture: for just as all perished in the waters of the flood, except Noe and his family, or as it is said in 1 Peter 3: Few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water: so after the conflagration of the whole world and the flood of fire, few Predestined will be found who will be saved; just as of the six hundred thousand warriors who went out of Egypt, none except Josue and Caleb entered the land of promise; so of so many faithful departing from this world as from Egypt, few will enter the heavenly land of promise and homeland. — Second, from comparisons; for in Genesis 22 God, speaking to Abraham, says: Like the stars of heaven and like the sand of the sea, so will your seed be; where by the stars of heaven St. Augustine, lib. 13 contra Faustum, understands the Elect, and by the sand of the sea the Reprobate: from which he infers that, just as the number of sands far exceeds the number of stars, so the number of the Reprobate will be far greater than the number of the Elect. Then in Isaiah 17 and 24 the number of the Elect is compared to the very few ears of corn which fall from the reapers, and to the rarest olives which remain on the tree after the olives have been shaken off, and to the very few grains of grapes which remain in the vineyard when the vintage is finished: which words Jerome, weighing them there, says:

So great will be the paucity of the Saints, of whom the Lord speaks in the Gospel, many called and few chosen, that their paucity is compared to the rarest olives, which, when they have been shaken off and harvested, hardly a few remain at the top of the branches: and just as when the vintage is finished, the poor, compelled by want, are wont to go around the empty vines and gather a few grains of grapes.

— Thirdly and finally, the same thing is evident from the oracles, and above all Luke 13, where, to one asking: Lord, are there few who are saved?, speaking to the Apostles, he answers three things worthy of note: First, strive, he says, to enter: as if he said: if the Apostles, who had left all things and had followed Christ the Lord, must still strive and exert themselves with their utmost strength in order to enter heaven through the narrow gate: what then will become of those Christians who do no violence to their own impulses and affections, but wholly indulge their inclination? Secondly he adds: Through the narrow gate, which, namely, those swollen with pride, distended with luxury, and laden with avarice and riches cannot pass through. By these affections worldly men are most of all held; for: Whatever is in the world is either the concupiscence of the flesh, or the concupiscence of the eyes, or the pride of life. Thirdly, finally, he adds: for I say to you, many will seek to enter and will not enter: Alas! what then will become of those who scarcely, or at least rarely, think seriously of their salvation?

The present Question is entangled in so many and such great rough places of difficulties that St. Augustine justly called it, in Epist. 1., most difficult and intelligible to few; the reason for this difficulty he gives in lib. De gratia Christi cap. 4: This question, in which free choice, the will and the grace of God are disputed, is so difficult to discern, that when free choice is defended, the grace of God seems to be denied; when, however, the grace of God is asserted, free choice is thought to be taken away. Hence in lib. 2. De peccatorum meritis et remissione cap. 18. he affirms that he is so hemmed in by these middle perplexities that he hardly finds wherefrom to extricate himself: Reason itself, he says, most vehemently distresses any one of us who seeks, lest we so defend grace that we seem to take away free choice. Again: lest we so take away free choice that by proud impiety we seem ungrateful to the grace of God. Nevertheless, since the resolution of the present Question contributes most greatly to overthrowing the false opinion of the heretics concerning the fatality and absolute necessity of divine Predestination, and also to calming the agitations of mind of certain devout persons, which ignorance of the present resolution stirs up: therefore one must strive with all one's might to establish this concord of divine Predestination with human freedom, which, that it may be done more clearly

Note 1. Four things especially concur to complete and fully, entirely form predestination. The first is divine foreknowledge, by which God from eternity clearly and openly beholds whatever is to come to be, not only in every circumstance of time, but even through eternity itself, and that by one indivisible, simple and unvaried gaze of His divine intellect; and so He knows how many men, and which, can be created, with what helps they are to be advanced to eternal beatitude, and which will use the divine helps well or badly even unto death. The second is the very act of the divine will, by which God from eternity decreed that He would create these and not those possible men in such and such a circumstance of time, and would supply them such suitable means, by which they could attain eternal life, if they willed; and that finally He would bestow eternal glory on those who will use these means well. The third is the preparation and gift of grace, which is made in us without us: For God makes the unjust just, without any merit of their preceding will, says St. Augustine, lib. De Bono perseverantiae capite 24. Finally, the fourth is man's free choice itself, concurring with grace itself exciting or sanctifying, to establish man's salvation and to merit eternal glory; for as St. Augustine says, Serm. 15. De verbis Apostoli: without your will there will not be in you the justice of God; He who made you without you does not justify you without you.

Note 2. Concerning the resolution of the present Question, there are three maximally opposed opinions. Of these, the First detracts too much from free choice: the Second grants too much to it: the Third weighs both on an equal scale and reconciles them. The first indeed was that of the Praedestinatians, who affirmed that through the infallible certainty and invariable firmness of predestination all freedom is taken away from men, and the human choice is so closed off, that it is no longer in the power of the predestined man to deviate from his salvation. This impious opinion, long since extinct, Calvin raised up again from the dead, lib. 3. Institutionum, affirming that the Predestined and the Reprobate are so destined and bound from eternity to good or to evil, that they can in no way recoil from it, but are held necessarily to assent to it or to resist it; this inevitable necessity he partly traces back to the infallibility of foreknowledge and of the divine decree, partly to the efficacy of grace, as will appear in the following Article. — The Pelagians and the Semipelagians embraced another wholly opposite opinion; the former indeed affirming that predestination is nothing other than that general will of God, by which God decreed from eternity that men, endowed with free choice and capable by the proper powers of nature of embracing good or rejecting evil, would be illumined by the light of faith and the preaching of the Gospel, and that the law would be proposed to them; those who are foreseen as going to keep it will certainly obtain eternal life, but otherwise they will incur eternal damnation. The Semipelagians, however, contended that divine Predestination supposes in God a general will of conferring the grace of regeneration, and also eternal glory, on all those who by their own natural powers would want to attain these goods by praying, knocking and seeking; so that God specially chose for glory those whom He foreknew would use well, by their own freedom, the goods and gifts of nature, by which they could attain the goods and gifts of grace. — The third opinion, however, holding the middle between this Scylla and Charybdis, contends that the infallibility of predestination in no way extinguishes man's free choice, although it requires the concurrence of grace in all things and affirms the infallibility of the decree and of foreknowledge; which opinion, that we may defend it

Note 3. Freedom is customarily defined, a power which, with all things required for acting being posited, can act or not act. Hence a twofold indifference is required in it: one indeed on the part of the object, which can be proposed by the intellect under a different notion as lovable or hateful; and this is called objective, or radical, indifference, because the root of freedom is the intellect itself proposing the object with indifference: the other on the part of the will, which of itself is indifferent not only to either act of love or of hatred, but also to the election or suspension of either act; and this is called indifference as to specification and as to exercise. — Again, the Thomists distinguish another twofold indifference: one which they call versatile, vague, indeterminate, potential and in actu primo, which consists in potentia or faculty by which the will can will to choose, or not choose, and determine itself to loving, or not loving, this or that object, the divine motion and the application of that will to act not yet being considered. The other actual, exercised and attempered, which, they say, is the actual election itself and determination of the will through the divine motion, which they therefore call premotion, or predetermination; not that, they say, the particle pre designates a priority of duration or of time; but only a priority of nature, or of causality and dependence, by which that is said to be prior, on which another depends as on a cause, which is also called priority of the instant, not in which, but from which. In this latter indifference indeed they will that the essence of freedom be formally placed, which they say is not harmed, but perfected, by the predetermining decree itself and by premotion itself: and so both are rightly reconciled in this way; whether these things are true, will be discussed below.

Therefore three things are to be resolved in this Question: First, whether divine Predestination truly obstructs created freedom. Second, whether the Thomists set forth a legitimate concord of both. Third, how in the end both truly ought to be reconciled.

First conclusion. — The certainty of divine Predestination does not obstruct human freedom. This is common among Catholics, and it is proved: If the certainty of divine Predestination were to take anything away from man's choice, it would do so most of all either by reason of the eternal foreknowledge of God, by which God foresees all things with a certain and unvaried gaze; or by reason of the immovable and invariably standing eternal decree of God, by which He also determined that the predestined man would infallibly consent to grace calling him, and would end his life in sanctifying grace; or finally by reason of the exciting grace, which in time He is to give to the predestined man, to which he will not be able to resist: but from neither side can this be inferred: therefore, etc. The major is established from the first note. The minor, however, has already been sufficiently proved as to the first part in the Disputation on the Knowledge of God, where we demonstrated that divine Foreknowledge does not offend freedom. And again it is confirmed: divine Foreknowledge also bears upon sinful actions: but it brings no necessity upon the will to sin, as is established from St. Augustine lib. 3. De vera Innocentia cap. 379.

God, he says, compels no one to sin; yet He foresees those who will sin by their own will. Why, then, does the just one not punish those things which, foreseeing, He does not compel? For just as no one by his memory compels the deeds that have passed; so God by His foreknowledge does not compel the deeds that are to come: and just as a man remembers some things which he does, yet did not do all the things which he remembers: so God foreknows all things of which He Himself is the author; yet He is not the author of all the things which He foreknows; of those, however, of which He is not the evil author, He is the just avenger: therefore neither does He impose any necessity upon the will, so that it operate justly and uprightly.

It is confirmed 2. From the fact that God in fact knows and sees me speaking, I speak no less freely: therefore from the fact that He foresees that I shall speak, I shall speak no less freely. The consequence is evident; because all things are most present to God from eternity: For not, says St. Augustine lib. 11. De Civitat. cap. 20.¹ after our manner does He look ahead to what is future, or behold what is present, or look back upon what is past; nor, as he adds in lib. De Praedestinatione et gratia capite 3., remembering, is He rolled back into the past, nor, hoping, does He proceed into the future; or as he writes in Sermone 2. in Ps. 101., There is not there 'was' and 'will be', because both what He made is not, and what will be is not yet: but whatever is there is nothing other than 'is'; or finally as he says lib. 1. Confessionum, c. 6.² Your years are one day: and your day is not daily, but today; because your today does not yield to tomorrow, nor succeed yesterday: therefore since God has all things present, and all things which are to be,

have already been accomplished for God; it plainly stands that just as one who sees a craftsman working at some work is not said to preclude his free working, nor to determine him to operating necessarily, so neither does foreknowledge impose necessity upon the things known, especially since, as we have already proved more than enough, things are not for this reason future, because God foresaw them, but rather God certainly foresaw them because they are future.

It is confirmed 3. So far is it from being the case that divine foreknowledge harms human freedom, that rather it presupposes and perfects it; for as St. Augustine himself speaks, lib. 3. De libero arbitrio cap. 3.: Since God is prescient of our will, that will of which He is prescient will itself be: therefore He will also be prescient of the power; not therefore through His foreknowledge is power taken away from me, which for that reason will be present to me more certainly, because He whose foreknowledge is not deceived foreknew that it would be present to me.

The same minor is evident as to the second part: namely, that the eternal decree of moving the predestined man to consent to exciting grace does not obstruct man's free choice. The reason for this our Alexander of Hales sets forth in the first part, q. 26. memb. 6. art. 2. And the Seraphic Bonaventure in 1. distinctione 12. art. 2. quaest. 1. And the Subtle Doctor in distinctione 41, quaestione unica, namely that God from eternity decrees nothing to be accomplished by the predestined man in time without the foreseen and pre-known determination of his will: therefore when He decrees, in that preparation and gift of grace, the future consent of the predestined man, He does not predetermine that consent without the free cooperation of his will: or as St. Bonaventure speaks: Predestination is not the cause of salvation except by including merit, and so by saving free choice. For predestination imports two things, both the notion of foreknowledge and the notion of cause. Insofar as it expresses the notion of cause, it does not necessarily posit the effect, because it is not a necessitating cause, but one through the will: and again it is not the whole cause, but with another contingent cause, namely with free choice: and the rule is, that whenever an effect depends on a necessary and variable cause, the necessary is denominated from the variable as from the particular, because the denomination is from the particular cause; moreover, the effect which depends on a contingent cause is also contingent. Hence these will appear more evidently from what will be said in the following Article, treating of the causes and the mode of predestination.

Finally, the same minor is evident as to the third part, namely, that exciting grace brings no necessity upon freedom: for the Council of Trent openly defined this, sess. 6. canone 4., saying:

If anyone shall say that man's free choice cooperates in nothing by assenting to God exciting and calling, whereby it disposes and prepares itself to obtain the grace of justification; and that it cannot dissent, if it will, but like some inanimate thing does nothing at all and behaves merely passively, let him be anathema.

This will appear more fully in the treatise on Grace, where we shall prove that exciting grace produces consent, not by compelling and necessitating the will, but by gently alluring and moving it; nevertheless — It is confirmed: If grace and predestination necessarily determined the will of the predestined man to consent, it would follow that he could never sin and fall away from grace: but the consequence is false: therefore so is the antecedent. The Calvinists admit the major: whence the minor is proved: the will of the predestined man, as long as it acts among the living, is always indifferent to sinning or not sinning, and so can fall away from grace: whence the Apostle warns: Let him who stands take heed lest he fall; indeed Christ Himself exhorts the Apostles: Walk while you have the light of Grace, lest perchance the darkness of sin overtake you. — Next; it is established by experience that even the most eminent of the Predestined have fallen into the gravest sins; as is evident concerning David, Peter, Paul, Magdalene, Augustine and the rest: therefore the consequence is that neither predestination, nor exciting or sanctifying grace, induces an impossibility of sinning. — Finally, perseverance and assiduous continuance in the state of sanctifying grace is not per se required for the attainment of eternal glory; for it suffices for this, that the predestined man persevere for some time in grace and end his life with it: therefore, etc.

You will say 1. He who is truly predestined does not sin, nor can he sin: therefore predestination brings necessity upon the will and induces an impossibility of sinning. The antecedent is proved from that passage of the first Epistle of John, cap. 3.: Whoever is born of God does not commit sin: because His seed abides in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God, which context indeed is understood of the predestined, as almost all of its Interpreters affirm: therefore, etc.

I deny the antecedent. To its proof I say; First, that St. Jerome in lib. 2. contra Iovinianum asserts that that impossibility of sinning is to be understood in the composite sense, so that the predestined man, as long as he subsists in the state of grace and of the adoption of the sons of God, does not sin, nor can he sin, because there is no agreement of Christ with Belial, nor any concord of the darkness of sin with the light of grace. — Second, St. Augustine in lib. De peccatorum meritis cap. 8. explains this impeccability in a formal sense, so that the faculty of sinning does not come from divine filiation itself, but from the versatile, weak and free human will:

We perfect, he says, because we are not yet saved, therefore not yet fully renewed, not yet even sons of God, but sons of the world; we perfect therefore the renewal, and the just life, through that by which we are sons of God, and by this we cannot sin at all, until even that by which we are still sons of the world is wholly transmuted in us: for by this we can still sin, and so it comes about that he who is born of God does not sin, and if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us; let that therefore be brought to completion by which we are sons of the flesh and of the world, and let that be perfected by which we are sons of God and renewed by the Spirit.

— Third, St. Bernard interprets that impossibility of sinning of the ease with which the predestined rise again from sins:

For neither can we here, he says in the book De Gratia, et libero arbitrio cap. 9., be entirely without sin and misery; yet with grace helping, we can be neither overcome by sin, nor by misery; although however Scripture speaks, that everything born of God does not sin, but this is said of those predestined to life: not that they do not sin at all, but that sin is not imputed to them, which is either punished by condign penance; or is hidden in Charity, for Charity covers a multitude of sins.

— Finally I say, that this impeccability is to be taken for the greatest difficulty, so that the predestined man, having considered and examined all those benefits with which he is most abundantly heaped and enriched by God, cannot be led to offend Him; in almost that sense in which the most holy Patriarch Joseph, having weighed with attentive mind all the goods with which he had been gifted by his Lord, said in Genesis 39.: How then can I do this evil, and sin against my God? Therefore, whichever of these solutions you accept, it does not follow that predestination induces necessity and forecloses human freedom.

You will say. Every cause which is necessary in itself, and necessarily posits its effect, also simpliciter induces necessity in the effect: but predestination in respect of salvation is such: therefore, etc. The minor is evident: for predestination, since it is an internal act of God, is altogether necessary; for nothing intrinsic to God, a supremely necessary being, can be contingent. Moreover it also necessarily brings about the effect; for it necessarily follows: if Peter is predestined, he will be saved: therefore, etc.

I distinguish the major. Every cause which is necessary both as to entity and as to operation, and which necessarily posits its effect with an absolute and antecedent necessity, excluding every free determination of the will, induces necessity in the effect, I concede: every cause which is indeed necessary as to entity, but not as to extrinsic operation, and which necessarily posits its effect with only a consequent necessity and from a presupposed free determination of the will, produces its effect with a necessity excluding freedom, I deny. To the minor I say, that predestination is indeed necessary as to entity, but contingent and free as to its termination; likewise it is necessary only with a consequent necessity and from the presupposed divine decree, as well as from the foreseen free determination of man; and so it does not obstruct freedom.

Second conclusion. — Human freedom is not rightly reconciled by the Thomists with the infallible certainty of divine Predestination through the predetermining decree.

Proof 1. Through that by which the indifference of the will is destroyed and dissolved, human freedom does not agree with predestination: but through that premoving and predetermining decree the indifference of the will is dissolved and destroyed: therefore, etc. The major is evident, for it is certain that the freedom of the will is placed in indifference, as was said in the 3rd Note. The minor is proved: the indifference of the will is dissolved through that by which the will is absolutely determined and bound to one: but by the premoving and predetermining decree the will is so determined to one act, or to one object, that it cannot elicit the opposite act, or tend toward another object: therefore, etc.

The Thomists reply. By the predetermining decree, indeed, the vague and potential indifference is dissolved; but not the exercised and attempered indifference through the motion and determination of the first cause, under which the will indeed retains the potency for dissenting, although it cannot compose or conjoin actual dissent with it.

On the contrary. It is of the notion of a free and indifferent will, that with all things prerequired for acting being posited, the will can act or not act, consent or dissent: therefore, whatever motion is posited, either the will can refuse consent, or it does not remain formally free.

The Thomists distinguish the minor. That it belongs to the notion of a free will that, all prerequisites on the part of the potency being in place, it can act or not act, they concede; but that this holds with the prerequisites on the part of the application of the potency and of the second act, they deny. Thus in the opinion of the Thomists, the prerequisites for acting are of a twofold kind: for some belong to the part of the potency and of the first act, such as habits, operative virtues, and sufficient helps; and since these constitute only the habitual principle of operation, they can be indifferently combined with action or with non-action. Others belong to the part of the application of the potency, and are related as reducing the first act to the second; and these, they say, since they constitute the actual principle of operation, cannot be separated from it, nor combined with its negation. Hence when it is said that that is free which, all the prerequisites for acting being in place, can act, if by the word "prerequisites" are understood those things which are prerequired on the part of the potency and of the first act, they concede; if those things are meant which are prerequired only on the part of the application of the potency, they deny. For once these are in place, the free agent cannot act or not act; but it in fact acts, while nonetheless retaining the potency for not acting, that is, for not continuing the action which it elicits; hence it is a contradiction that it combine the negation of the action with those prerequisites; otherwise it would at once act and not act.

Against, first. With this reply the Thomists speak contradictions, things not coherent with their own principles; for they teach that predetermination precedes the second act with a priority of nature and of causality: therefore it would not be the second act itself, that is, the actual application and action of the will: for it is a contradiction that the same thing, in respect of the same thing, be at once first and second, cause and effect. Next: that predetermination, in their view, is the principle of freedom, that is, of free operation: but a principle has the notion of a first act in respect of that of which it is the principle: therefore predetermination too has the notion of a first act in respect of free operation, and so does not coincide with the second act. Finally: whatever belongs to the operative order, not as an action, nor as a pure condition for acting, must belong to it as a power of acting, and consequently must have the notion of a first act: but predetermination belongs to the operative order: not indeed as an action, since it is determinative and applicative of the potency to action and operation; nor as a pure condition for acting, because it, they say, truly influences together with the potency into the action: therefore it is necessary that it have the notion of a power of acting, and consequently that it hold itself on the part of the first act; and so the Thomists incongruously reduce this predetermination to the second act.

Against, second. It belongs to the notion of a free agent that, the prerequisites for acting being in place on the part of the act, it can act: therefore also that it can not act. The Thomists concede the antecedent; but they deny the consequence, which I prove as follows. First indeed, from the common usage of the authors, who, when they affirm that to be a free agent which can act and not act, take both in the same way and in the same respect: therefore if a free agent, the prerequisites for acting being in place on the part of the act and in the composite sense, can act, it must also, in the same way, be able not to act. Next, when it is said that a free agent can act or not act, that both, namely to be able to act and to be able not to act, is understood either in the composite sense or in the divided sense: if the first, we have what was intended; for to be able not to act in the composite sense is to bring it about that for the same instant of time the prerequisites can exist together, and yet the action can not exist: if the second, then that definition of a free agent will have this sense: a free agent is that which has the power of acting for the time at which the prerequisites for acting are present; and at the same time has also the power of not acting, but for the time preceding the positing of the prerequisites; which not only appears ridiculous and manifestly contrary to the definition of a free agent, but also by this every distinction between a free agent and a necessary one is dissolved; for there is no agent so necessary of which the same thing may not be affirmed, namely that its power of acting, by which together with the prerequisites it puts the action, is equally a power of not acting for the time at which the prerequisites will not be present; for fire has the power of burning the straw for the time at which it is joined to it, but it cannot burn it for the time immediately preceding the application of the tow to the fire.

Against, third. A free agent is sometimes bound not to put its action, with all the prerequisites for acting in place: therefore it must be able to do this. The consequence is clear; for God does not command impossibilities, or, as it is commonly said, no one is bound to the impossible. The antecedent is proved: when someone sins, he is bound to combine the negation of the sin with the prerequisites for acting, so that in the very instant in which those prerequisites are present on the part of the act — e.g., the moving object, the pressing temptation, and the passion exciting the will to consent to the sinful act — he is bound to deny his consent; for if he were not bound to this then, he would not sin in that same instant; therefore man is bound to combine the negation of the sin with the prerequisites on the part of the act for sinning, and consequently, those prerequisites being in place even on the part of the act, man can act or not act, consent or dissent, in that very instant in which those prerequisites are supposed to be in place.

The Thomists distinguish. That it can consent or dissent in the same material instant in which those prerequisites are supposed to be in place, they concede; in the same formal instant, they deny. By material instant they call the thing's duration itself; by formal, the measure of the duration itself; so that, they say, just as the just man can sin in the same instant in which he is in grace — yet not formally and reduplicatively insofar as he is in grace, or inasmuch as grace occupies and measures that instant, because sin and grace cannot be together; and just as he who elicits an act of love can, in the same instant, materially not love, because he loves freely, yet not in the same instant formally; for it is a contradiction that the same instant measure the coexistence of love and non-love at once; otherwise the same thing could at once be and not be, and contradictories be verified of the same thing at once; the same, they say, is by parity to be said of the premotion to the act of love, which is in the same instant of time and of duration with it, and precedes it only with a priority of nature and of causality: for although the will, in the same instant in which it is premoved to the act of love, can put a dissent, that is, a lack of love; yet it cannot in fact dissent, that is, not love, in the composite sense, because it cannot put non-love, the premotion to loving being in place.

Against. Not only in the same instant taken materially, but even taken formally, can the free agent not put the action, even with the motion in place; therefore the replication is of no avail. The antecedent is proved: truly the free agent will be able not to combine the action with the premotion in the same formal instant, if truly it can dissent from and resist the premotion itself: but this it can. It is proved: first indeed from the Council of Trent, Session 6, Canon 4.³ where anathema is pronounced upon him who has said, The free choice of man, moved and excited by God, cannot dissent if it wills. For what, I ask, is it to dissent other than to put a dissent? And it belongs to the notion of dissent that it be put for the same instant for which one is moved and incited to consent: for no one is said to dissent before he is moved, nor after he was moved and obeyed the motion: therefore to be able to dissent is to be able to put a dissent for the same instant in which the motion itself is. Therefore since this is put in a formal instant, the dissent too will be able to be put in the same formal instant in which that is put. — Next: St. Augustine confirms and teaches the same thing, above all in lib. De Spir. et Litt. cap. 34., where, after he had said that God moves and excites our will extrinsically through the Law and the preaching of the Gospel, and intrinsically through the exciting grace, he adds: In these ways, therefore, when God acts with the rational soul so that it may believe in him — for it cannot believe by any free choice whatsoever, if there is no persuasion or calling to which it may believe: certainly God works in men even the very willing to believe, and in all things his mercy prevents us; for to consent to the calling of God, or to dissent from it, as I have said, belongs properly to the will; and in the same book cap. 31., after he had said at the beginning of the chapter: Faith is in our power; since when it wills, it believes, and when it believes, it believes willingly; he concludes: See now whether anyone believes if he is unwilling, or does not believe if he is willing? And in lib. 3. De Libero arbitrio cap. 1. The movement by which the will is turned this way or that, unless it were voluntary and in our power, man would be neither to be praised, when it is turned to higher things, nor to be blamed, when it is turned to lower things — as it were a certain hinge of the will, etc. He judges, therefore, that the divine motion is in our power, so that we can accept it or reject it. He has many things similar to these scattered about, which it would be long to write out.

— Finally: a free agent has a dominative power over its acts, for as St. Augustine says in lib. 3. De Libero arbitrio cap. 3.

Our will would not even be a will, unless it were in our power. Moreover, because it is in our power, it is free for us; for that is not free which we do not have in our power, or which can fail to be, though we have it; but it would not have such a power unless, with any extrinsic thing whatsoever being posited, it could put its act, or not put it.

Therefore, in order that the free will preserve this dominative power, it is necessary that, even with the divine premotion posited, the will be able to put the act or not put it. It is confirmed: and at the same time our premises are strengthened and reinforced: the determination of the will must be voluntary and free: therefore it must suppose nothing prior to its operation by which it would be terminated toward it with a priority of nature: all concede the antecedent. The consequence is proved: nothing can formally be voluntary and free, except what either supposes an act of the will, or is itself the act of the will: therefore if the determination of the will is free and voluntary, it must not presuppose something prior to its operation, such that, once it is posited, it could not put the action or not put it. It is confirmed from St. Anselm, lib. 2. Cur Deus homo c. 18., where he distinguishes a twofold necessity, one antecedent, which takes away freedom, the other consequent, which does not harm freedom: This, he says, is the preceding necessity, which is the cause that the thing is, and the following necessity, which the thing makes. The preceding and efficient necessity is when the Heaven is said to revolve, because it is necessary that it revolve; the following one, however, effects nothing, but is so when I say that you speak of necessity, because you speak; not that anything compels you to speak; for the violence of the natural condition compels the Heaven to revolve, but no necessity makes you speak; but wherever there is a preceding necessity, there is also a following one, etc. By these words St. Anselm openly acknowledges that the necessity which makes the thing be, and which is the cause that the thing is, is a preceding necessity and hostile to freedom; but that necessity which follows from predetermination and premotion makes the action of the will be, for it is its cause, and is prior to it with a priority of nature, as the Thomists affirm: therefore they must equally concede that that premotion brings in a preceding necessity hostile to freedom. — Nor does it avail to reply that predetermination does not harm freedom, because it does not determine the will after the manner of nature, but after the manner of a free cause; nor does it impede, but effects the determination and cooperation of free choice; for St. Anselm openly affirms that every preceding necessity is hostile to freedom, in whatever way it determines the will. Add that that premotion could not freely determine the will, if it so directed it into one thing that it is not in its freedom to tend to another, or not to tend.

They object 1. That the Doctor, in 1. dist. 19. qu. 6. num. 15., says that it is not simpliciter contrary to the nature of the will that it be determined by a superior cause; that is, that it is not contrary to its nature to do the opposite: as it would be contrary to its nature to be determined by a habit, or by an inferior nature: therefore the Doctor judges that the will can be determined by God without prejudice to its freedom: therefore, freedom being safe, it will also be able to be predetermined.

I deny the consequence. For as his most learned commentator observes in the same place, the Doctor does not say that the will remains simpliciter free even when it is determined by a superior cause; for he affirms the opposite in the same place, number 12., saying that the will of the Blessed does not remain proximately free to sin, on account of an extrinsic cause, namely, the will of God preventing that will, so that it always continues the act of fruition, and so can never reduce to act its remote potency of not enjoying or of sinning: since indeed a second cause, prevented by a superior cause acting for one opposite, can never with proximate potency go out into the other opposite. But the Doctor only contends that the will can indeed be determined by a superior cause, but not by any inferior cause. — Or I say that the Doctor is to be understood of objective determination, not however formal or efficient. For in the present case a threefold determination can be distinguished: one indeed objective, which is made through the most excellent object, attracting the will to itself and morally drawing it with supreme and wondrous sweetness; in which manner the Blessed are determined by the beatific object. Another formal, which is made through something intrinsic inclining the will to the act; such is the determination which is made through the habits of virtues or of vices. Finally, another efficient, which is made through an efficient cause influencing the will itself, so as to determine and apply it to operating; in which manner the Thomists judge our will to be predetermined by God: therefore nothing favors them; rather the Subtle Doctor militates directly against them.

They object 2. Since God is the first free being and such by essence, and has supreme dominion over our wills, he contains in himself, in the most eminent and most perfect manner, every free determination of them, which is freedom by participation: therefore he can cause and effect it without detriment to freedom, so that the human will, insofar as it is a secondary free being and a secondary determining one, determines itself to its free acts. The consequence is clear; for an efficient cause can produce the effects which it precontains virtually or eminently. — It is confirmed: the divine dominion is so supreme and perfect that whatever created power and dominion can do, God can also do, and much more, and in a more perfect manner: but the created will, by reason of the dominion which it has over its free acts, can, freedom being safe, determine and apply itself to eliciting its free acts: therefore a fortiori God will be able to accomplish this.

I distinguish the antecedent. That God, as the supreme free being, contains virtually and eminently the free operations of our will, to be caused by him through a simultaneous concurrence and after the manner of a general and independent cause, I concede; through physical premotion and predetermination, I deny. Similarly I distinguish the consequent: that he can cause the determination of our will through something prior and antecedent, with a priority of nature and of causality, to that active determination of our will, I deny; through something concomitant and concurring with the will itself determining itself, I concede: for God does not have such an absolute and despotic dominion over our wills that he turns them, even resisting, this way or that; for thus he would also necessitate them, which is repugnant to the nature of the will itself, intrinsically free, and also to the divine ordination: since indeed Ecclesiasticus 15.: God from the beginning constituted man, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. And I have set before you fire and water: stretch forth your hand to whichever you will.

To the confirmation. The major could be denied: for if God could do whatever created power and free dominion can do, it would follow that he himself could sin and swerve from the true good; for the created will can do this by its own power and freedom. But I distinguish it: God can do whatever created power can do in the notion of a moving and cooperating cause, I concede; in the notion of a precurrent and predetermining cause, I deny: and the minor being conceded, the consequent is likewise to be distinguished.

You will insist. But God truly and absolutely can predetermine our wills and prevent their determination: therefore there is no solution. The antecedent is proved from St. Augustine, lib. De correptione et gratia c. 14., where, after he had proved in various ways that God bends the wills of men wherever he pleases through his most omnipotent will, as he shows by various examples, above all by the example of the Jewish people electing and establishing Saul and David as kings by God's ordination; he finally concludes: If therefore, when God wills to constitute kings on earth, he has the wills of men more in his power than they have their own, who else makes it that the correction be wholesome, and that a correction be made in the corrected heart, so that he be constituted in the heavenly kingdom? Therefore, etc.

I deny the antecedent. And as to its proof I say that that was not the opinion of St. Augustine there; for Augustine only contends there that God, at his pleasure and from his infinite authority and wisdom, orders even the wills of men that resist him to a fitting end, as he himself indicates there; for after he had said: To will or not to will is so in the power of the one willing or unwilling, that it neither impedes the divine will, nor overcomes its power, he adds: for of those who do what he does not will, he himself does what he wills. So that from this St. Augustine may demonstrate that men, even when harassed by wicked and most depraved men, ought to act patiently and bravely, since nothing happens to them beyond the divine will, which, since it rejoices in supreme command over men, also brings it about that their wicked strivings of will redound even to his own glory and to the salvation of men. — Or I say that Augustine is to be understood thus when he says that of those who do what he does not will, he does what he wills: that is, as to those who resist his will inviting them to the correction of their morals, of which he speaks there, he subjects them to his punishing will, condemning them to the eternal fire; hence he thus does with them what he wills. This, in other words, St. Thomas explains 1. p. q. 19. art. 9.

It is impossible, he says, that the divine will not attain its effect; hence what seems to recede from the divine will according to one order falls back into it according to another: just as the sinner who, as far as in him lies, recedes from the divine will by sinning according to one order, falls into the order of the divine will while he is punished through its justice.

Thus, therefore, St. Augustine can be understood to mean that no choice resists God willing to save: because namely, if he does not carry out his will by saving him whom he invites to salvation, he carries it out by punishing him who does not will to be saved. This is confirmed from the same Augustine; for he had said earlier:

Let men therefore think that they are corrected when they sin, and neither argue from the correction itself against grace, nor from grace against correction: because both a just punishment is owed to sins, and to that itself, namely the just punishment, belongs the just correction which is applied medicinally, even if the health of the sick one is uncertain; so that if he who is corrected belongs to the number of the predestined, the correction may be for him a wholesome medicine; but if he does not belong, the correction may be a penal torment.

You will say 3. Inferior things are perfected through subordination and conjunction to superior things; as is evident in the Moon, which is illuminated and perfected through its conjunction to the Sun; in rivers, which grow and increase while they flow back into the Ocean; and in intellectual creatures, which are sanctified and beatified through love and conjunction to God: but through the predetermining decree and the efficacious motion, our will is subordinated and conjoined to God as the first free being, the font and principle of all created freedom; namely, of the infinite efficacy of the divine will. Therefore so far is human freedom from being harmed through premotion and predetermination, that rather it is preserved and perfected.

I distinguish the major. That inferior things are perfected through a real and physical conjunction to superior things, I deny; through a certain imitation and adumbration of them, I concede. As to the minor I say that the created will is conjoined to God as the first free being not through a prior motion and physical determination of God; but through an imitation of the divine freedom, of which created freedom is a certain participation; so that, just as the divine freedom consists in this, that God so determines himself that he cannot be determined by any extrinsic agent: whence St. Thomas, in 2. dist. 25 q. 1. art. 1. ad 1., proves that there is free choice in God: Because the determination of his own act is not from another for him, but from himself: so it will belong to the notion of created freedom that the will so determines itself that it cannot be predetermined by any other, nor efficaciously premoved. The Thomists object many other things, but we have already satisfied them sufficiently in the Physics.

Third conclusion. — The free choice of man can rightly be reconciled with the infallible certainty of divine Predestination, by affirming that it is made through a decree presupposing the divine foreknowledge of man's future cooperation and final perseverance in grace. This is evident per se, and is proved: By that does human freedom easily agree with the certainty of Predestination, through which the choice of man stands safe and intact: but it is so made through the aforesaid decree: therefore, etc. The minor is proved: for through that decree presupposing foreknowledge, God from eternity decreed nothing to be infallibly future from the human will, except its free determination and cooperation having been foreknown and foreseen: but through this the choice of man stands free, and is not prevented, nor in any way constrained: therefore, etc.

St. Anselm expressly defends and affirms this same truth in lib. De concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis Dei cum libero arbitrio cap. 2., where, after he had said: Some things are plainly foreknown as future through free choice without any repugnance; whence also evident truth and reason teach that some future things are likewise predestined through free choice without inconvenience; he adds: Although it is necessary that those things which are foreknown and those which are predestined come to be, some foreknown and predestined things nevertheless do not come about from the necessity which precedes the thing and makes it, but from that which follows the thing; and below:

Just as foreknowledge, which is not deceived, foreknows nothing except the true; but it will be either necessary or spontaneous; so Predestination, which is not changed, predestines nothing except as it is in foreknowledge. And just as what is foreknown, although it is immutable in eternity, yet in time can be changed before it comes to be; so it is in all things concerning Predestination. It is evident, therefore, from these things which have been said, if they are well considered, that neither does Predestination exclude free choice, nor does free choice oppose Predestination.

These things will appear more evidently and will be confirmed in the following Section, where we shall demonstrate that Predestination is made in view of and from the prevision of good works.