It is reported that he declared that he did not know whether predestination was blue or green.
Now the existence of the ether has the same importance to scientific thought that predestination has to theological or capitalism to economic thought.
Sinners without penitence, just men without charity, a God without power over the wills of men, a predestination without mystery.
Sinners purified without penitence, just men sanctified without charity, all Christians without the grace of Jesus Christ, God without power over the will of men, a predestination without mystery, a redemption without certainty.
These show that he took part in all the great controversies on predestination and Arminianism which then so agitated and harassed all Europe.
In 1634 he published his Traite de la predestination, in which he tried to mitigate the harsh features ofpredestination by his ``Universalismus hypotheticus.
Preaching or printing matter concerning the controversy of free will versus predestination was forbidden.
He stressed the old idea of predestination in the salvation of souls, which had in the past been accepted by nearly all English Christian leaders, thinkers, and teachers, but not stressed.
It can only be finished by the cross on which we were engendered in Christ, and the mystery of our predestination is accomplished.
His three books, On the Truth of Predestination and Grace, addressed to John the Archimandrite, and Venerius, deacon of Constantinople, are another fruit of the leisure which his exile gave him.
The knotty question of predestination came up and could not be settled.
The commercial spirit, the interests of trade, were winning men from the discussion of predestination and the sacred decrees of God.
Jansenius was a French Jesuit who carried the doctrine of predestination to the extreme, asserting that God commands things that are impossible, and that Christ did not die for all.
Baius took it into his head to sustain a number of propositions touchingpredestination to the prejudice of the doctrine of free will.
Augustine does not commonly speak of predestination of the wicked, i.
The Augustinian doctrines ofpredestination and grace could not stand the test of the appeal to antiquity.
This point has a bearing in connection with the controversy on predestination in the ninth century, in which Gottschalk reasserted the theory of a double predestination.
As a rule he speaks of predestination in connection with the saints, those who are saved.
For a discussion of the position of Augustine respectingPredestination and his other doctrines as connected with it, see J.
His grandfather a water-drinker, his father dying early, present circumstances to us arguing predestination to an illustrious heirship and career.
They will be all over the country exclaiming on predestination and marriages made in heaven.
That God had indeed made an eternal decree, but only on the conditional terms that all who believe in Christ shall be saved, while all who refuse to believe must perish; so that predestination is only conditional.
Toplady says "that God foreknows futurities, because by His predestination He hath rendered their futurition certain and inevitable.
According to this view, God permitted the first man to fall into transgression without absolutely predetermining his fall; or, that the decree of predestination regards man as fallen by an abuse of that freedom which Adam had.
But if it be needed for him to settle the prior question of his predestination and election, then is his case hopeless, and he must, in so far as he is in earnest, be plunged in black despair.
And as to the doctrines of predestination and election, He has unfolded them in His Word to comfort His saints, not to perplex poor sinners.
Calvin, however, prefixed a Latin preface, remarkable for delivering positions very opposite to those tremendous doctrines of absolute predestination which, in his theological despotism, he afterwards assumed.
Predestination we call the eternal decree of God: he had it determined with himself what he willed to become of every man.
The elect entered into life with the seal of predestinationon their birth, redeemed, to be justified, to be sanctified, and finally to be glorified.
For every man hath greater assurance that God is good and just, than he can have of any subtle speculations aboutpredestination and the decrees of God.
The system of predestination supposes that God, in his eternal secrets, has resolved that some men should be elected, and, being thus his favorites, receive special grace.
That is to say, he would have been educated to believe both in predestination and in freedom, without any {42} special attempt to reconcile the two.
And the New Testament is full of assurances that a predestination to a low vocation in this world may be a predestination to high glory in eternity, if the humble calling is faithfully followed.
I shall soon baptize him, and another old man of his age; and it seems to me a certain proof of their predestination that God should have kept them so long, and now have inspired in them so ardent a desire to be saved.
Not the least affecting among them were those where there was manifested the eternal predestination which has mercifully provided for many at the hour of death the resource of baptism.
He declares in his treatise onpredestination that God had just causes for damning some men, but causes unknown to us.
He believes that the theological doctrine of [89] predestination is of this nature, and in philosophy that of the composition of the Continuum.
But there is a question more serious in regard to predestination to eternal life and to all other destination by God, to wit, whether this destination is absolute or respective.
As for predestination to salvation, it includes also, according to St. Augustine, the ordinance of the means that shall lead to salvation.
First: Predestination except to heaven is contrary to divine love and its infiniteness.
In what follows it will be seen that laws of tolerance are also laws of divine providence, that every man can be reformed and regenerated, and that no other predestination is possible.
Fourth: That any of mankind are condemned by predestination is a cruel heresy.
One can see from these points that divine providence is none other than predestination to heaven and cannot be altered into anything else.
Second: Predestinationother than to heaven is contrary to divine wisdom, which is infinite.
Predestination other than to heaven is contrary to divine wisdom and its infiniteness.
Predestination except to heaven is contrary to divine love and its infiniteness.
That any of mankind are condemned by predestination is a cruel heresy.
That it may be apparent how damaging the belief is in predestination as this is commonly understood, these four arguments are to be taken up and confirmed.
To say that there is any predestination except to heaven is therefore to say that divine love cannot provide means to salvation, when yet the means exist for all, as was shown above, and these are of divine providence which is boundless.
It may be seen from all this that predestination except to heaven is contrary to divine love.
When she had made an end of her verses, she considered her affair and said within herself, "By Allah, all these things have betided by the predestination of Almighty Allah and His decree and this upon the forehead was written in lines.
It is absurd to say that the predestination of God takes away the liberty of man.
Yet this universal predestinationin no degree interferes with the liberty of man.
What influence do the merits of a man exert on his predestination to grace and glory?
What influence do the merits of a man exert on his predestination to the initial grace of vocation?
This does not, however, mean that a man is unable to change God’s hypothetical decree of predestination with regard to himself into an absolute one.
Perhaps the worst feature of the theory of absolute predestination is the fact that it involves the absolute reprobation of those not predestined to glory.
Rightly does the Council of Trent call predestination a “hidden mystery.
But many theologians hold that Esau was saved, and, besides, the Apostle is not dealing with predestination to glory, but with Jacob’s vocation to be the progenitor of the Messias.
Under these circumstances the Patristic argument for the theory of absolute predestination evidently lacks convincingness.
Their arguments may be sketched as follows: a) In innumerable passages of Sacred Scripture predestination to eternal happiness is represented as a work of pure mercy, nay, even as an arbitrary act of God.
Here, we are told, predestination to eternal life is given as the motive why many believed.
