78. Some gifted and well-intentioned authors, desiring to show the force of the reasons advocated by the two principal parties, in order to persuade them to a mutual tolerance, deem that the whole controversy is reduced to this essential point, namely: What was God's principal aim in making his decrees with regard to man? Did he make them solely in order to show forth his glory by manifesting his attributes, and forming, to that end, the great plan of creation and providence? Or has he had regard rather to the voluntary movements of intelligent substances which he designed to create, considering what they would will and do in the different circumstances and situations wherein he might place them, so as to form a fitting resolve thereupon? It appears to me that the two answers to this great question thus given as opposites to one another are easy to reconcile, and that in consequence the two parties would be agreed in principle, without any need of tolerance, if all were reduced to this point. In truth God, in designing to create the world, purposed solely to manifest and communicate his perfections in the way that was most efficacious, and most worthy of his greatness, his wisdom and his goodness. But that very purpose pledged him to consider all the actions of creatures while still in the state of pure possibility, that he might form the most fitting plan. He is like a great architect whose aim
in view is the satisfaction or the glory of having built a beautiful palace, and who considers all that is to enter into this construction: the form and the materials, the place, the situation, the means, the workmen, the expense, before he forms a complete resolve. For a wise person in laying his plans cannot separate the end from the means; he does not contemplate any end without knowing if there are means of attaining thereto.
79. I know not whether there are also perchance persons who imagine that, God being the absolute master of all things, one can thence infer that everything outside him is indifferent to him, that he considers himself alone, without concern for others, and that thus he has made some happy and others unhappy without any cause, without choice, without reason. But to teach so about God were to deprive him of wisdom and of goodness. We need only observe that he considers himself and neglects nothing of what he owes to himself, to conclude that he considers his creatures also, and that he uses them in the manner most consistent with order. For the more a great and good prince is mindful of his glory, the more he will think of making his subjects happy, even though he were the most absolute of all monarchs, and though his subjects were slaves from birth, bondsmen (in lawyers' parlance), people entirely in subjection to arbitrary power. Calvin himself and some others of the greatest defenders of the absolute decree rightly maintained that God had great and just reasons for his election and the dispensation of his grace, although these reasons be unknown to us in detail: and we must judge charitably that the most rigid predestinators have too much reason and too much piety to depart from this opinion.
80. There will therefore be no argument for debate on that point (as I hope) with people who are at all reasonable. But there will always be argument among those who are called Universalists and Particularists, according to what they teach of the grace and the will of God. Yet I am somewhat inclined to believe that the heated dispute between them on the will of God to save all men, and on that which depends upon it (when one keeps separate the doctrine de Auxiliis, or of the assistance of grace), rests rather in expressions than in things. For it is sufficient to consider that God, as well as every wise and beneficent mind, is inclined towards all possible good, and that this inclination is proportionate to the excellence of the good. Moreover, this results (if we take the matter
precisely and in itself) from an 'antecedent will', as it is termed, which, however, is not always followed by its complete effect, because this wise mind must have many other inclinations besides. Thus it is the result of all the inclinations together that makes his will complete and decretory, as I have already explained. One may therefore very well say with ancient writers that God wills to save all men according to his antecedent will, but not according to his consequent will, which never fails to be followed by its effect. And if those who deny this universal will do not allow that the antecedent inclination be called a will, they are only troubling themselves about a question of name.
81. 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. There is destination to good and destination to evil; and as evil is moral or physical, theologians of all parties agree that there is no destination to moral evil, that is to say, that none is destined to sin. As for the greatest physical evil, which is damnation, one can distinguish between destination and predestination: for predestination appears to contain within itself an absolute destination, which is anterior to the consideration of the good or evil actions of those whom it concerns. Thus one may say that the reprobate are destined to be condemned, because they are known to be impenitent. But it cannot so well be said that the reprobate are predestined to damnation: for there is no absolute reprobation, its foundation being final foreseen impenitence.
82. It is true that there are writers who maintain that God, wishing to manifest his mercy and his justice in accordance with reasons worthy of him, but unknown to us, chose the elect, and in consequence rejected the damned, prior to all thought of sin, even of Adam, that after this resolve he thought fit to permit sin in order to be able to exercise these two virtues, and that he has bestowed grace in Jesus Christ to some in order to save them, while he has refused it to others in order to be able to punish them. Hence these writers are named 'Supralapsarians', because the decree to punish precedes, according to them, the knowledge of the future existence of sin. But the opinion most common to-day amongst those who are called Reformed, and one that is favoured by the Synod of Dordrecht, is that of the 'Infralapsarians', corresponding somewhat to the conception of St. Augustine. For
he asserts that God having resolved to permit the sin of Adam and the corruption of the human race, for reasons just but hidden, his mercy made him choose some of the corrupt mass to be freely saved by the merit of Jesus Christ, and his justice made him resolve to punish the others by the damnation that they deserved. That is why, with the Schoolmen, only the saved were called Praedestinati and the damned were called Praesciti. It must be admitted that some Infralapsarians and others speak sometimes of predestination to damnation, following the example of Fulgentius and of St. Augustine himself: but that signifies the same as destination to them, and it avails nothing to wrangle about words. That pretext, notwithstanding, was in time past used for maltreating that Godescalc who caused a stir about the middle of the ninth century, and who took the name of Fulgentius to indicate that he followed that author.
83. As for the destination of the elect to eternal life, the Protestants, as well as those of the Roman Church, dispute much among themselves as to whether election is absolute or is founded on the prevision of final living faith. Those who are called Evangelicals, that is, those of the Augsburg Confession, hold the latter opinion: they believe that one need not go into the hidden causes of election while one may find a manifest cause of it shown in Holy Scripture, which is faith in Jesus Christ; and it appears to them that the prevision of the cause is also the cause of the prevision of the effect. Those who are called Reformed are of a different opinion: they admit that salvation comes from faith in Jesus Christ, but they observe that often the cause anterior to the effect in execution is posterior in intention, as when the cause is the means and the effect is the end. Thus the question is, whether faith or salvation is anterior in the intention of God, that is, whether God's design is rather to save man than to make him a believer.
84. Hence we see that the question between the Supralapsarians and the Infralapsarians in part, and again between them and the Evangelicals, comes back to a right conception of the order that is in God's decrees. Perhaps one might put an end to this dispute at once by saying that, properly speaking, all the decrees of God that are here concerned are simultaneous, not only in respect of time, as everyone agrees, but also in signo rationis, or in the order of nature. And indeed, the Formula of Concord, building upon some passages