agents. But," he adds, •■since all have the same nat- ure, and are able to re-tain and to do what is good, and may, on the other hand, lose it and not do it. some are. even in the sight of men. anil much more in that of God, deservedly praised and others blamed." In support of this he introduces a gre-at variety of passages from Scripture. It appears, however, that the real difficulty attending the subject bad suggested itself to his mind, for he inquires in the seventy-third chapter why (lod had not from the beginning made man perfect, all things being possible to him. lie gives to this question a metaphysical and unsatisfactory answer, but it SO far satisfied himself as to convince him that there could not, on this ground, be any imputation justly cast on the- pc it. ciions of the Almighty, and that, consequently, a sufficient explanation of the origin of evil and of the justice of punishing it was to be found iu the nature of man as a free agent, or in the abuse of t bat liberty with which man had been endowed (see [renseus, iv,392; -Ins- time'. Trypho,c. I 10).
In the Western Church all the early theologians and teachers were equally unanimous. While the Uexan- drian theologians laid special stress on frei will, those of the West dwelt more on human depravity and on the necessity of grate. On the last-named point all agreed. It was conceded that it was conditioned by f,,, will. Unconditional predestination they all denied. This stage of Church doctrine is represented by Hilary of l'e.iiiers ami Ambrose of Milan, as well as by Tertullian c \dv. Marcion, ii. 6), who, much as he sometimes needed the doctrine of irresistible grace, would never bo much as adopt an unconditional election, much less an uncon- ditional reprobation. Tertullian bail also speculated upon the- moral condition of man. ami has recorded bis sentiments with respect to it. He explicitly ass, rrsthe
freedom of the w ill : lays down the position that, if this
!«• denied, there can be neither reward nor punishment :
and iu answer to an objection that since' free will has been productive "f such melancholy conseipioiices it would have been better that it had not been bestowed, he enters into a formal vindication of this part of our
constitution. Iu reply to another suggestion that (lod
PREDESTINATION
499
PREDESTINATION
•might have interposed to prevent the choice which was to be productive of sin and misery, he maintains that this could not have been done without destroying that admirable constitution by which alone the interests of virtue can be really promoted. He thus thought that sin was to be imputed wholly to man, and that it is perfectly consistent with the attributes of God, or rather illustrates these attributes, that there should be a sys- tem under which sin was possible, because without this possibility there could have been no accountable agents. From what has been stated on this subject, it seems un- questionable that the apostolic fathers did not at all enter upon the subject of the origin of evil; that the writers by whom they were succeeded were satisfied that, in the sense in which the term is now most com- monly used, there was no such thing as predestination ; that they uniformly represented the destiny of man as regulated by the use or abuse of his free will ; that, with the exception of Irenseus, they did not attempt to ex- plain why such a creature as man, who was to fall into sin, was created by a Being of infinite goodness ; that the sole objection to their doctrine seemed to them to be that prescience was incompatible with liberty, and that, when they answered this, they considered that noth- ing more was requisite for receiving, without hesitation, the view of man upon which they often and fondly dwelt, as a free and accountable agent, who might have held fast his integrity, and whose fall from that integ- rity was to be ascribed solely to himself, as it did not at all result from any appointment of the Supreme Being. So Hilar}' of Poitiers declares that the decree of elec- tion was not indiscretus, and emphatically asserts the harmonious connection between grace and free will, the powerlessness of the latter, and yet its importance as a condition of the operation of divine grace. "As the organs of the human body," he says (De Trinit. ii, 35), " cannot act without the addition of moving causes, so the human soul has indeed the capacity for knowing God, but if it does not receive through faith the gift of the Holy Spirit it will not attain to that knowledge. Yet the gift of Christ stands open to all, and that which all want is given to every one as far as he will accept it." " It is the greatest folly," he says in another passage (Psa. Ii, § '20), " not to perceive that we live in depen- dence on and through God, when we imagine that in things which men undertake and hope for they may venture to depend on their own strength. What we have, we have from God; on him must all our hope be placed." Accordingly he did not admit an unconditional predestination ; he did not find it in the passages in Bom. ix commonly adduced in favor of it respecting the elec- tion of Esau, but only a predestination conditioned by the divine foreknowledge of his determination of will; otherwise every man would be born under a necessity of sinning (Psa. Ivii, § 3). Neander, in portraying his system, says: "Hilary considered it very important to set forth distinctly that all the operations of divine grace are conditioned on man's free will, to repel every- thing which might serve to favor the notion of a nat- ural necessity, or of an unconditional divine, predes- tination" (ii, 502). So Ambrose, who lived a little later, and even Jerome, who exhibited such zeal in be- half of Augustinism, declares, without reservation, that divine election is based upon foreknowledge. True, Augustine cites two passages (De Dono Perseverantice, 19) from Ambrose as favoring his scheme, but all com- mentators upon this father assure us that these passages by no means give ground for attributing to him the Augustinian view of election. Ambrose carries the approximation to Augustine a step further. He says (Ajwl. David, ii, § 76) : " We have all sinned in the first man, and by the propagation of nature the propagation of guilt has also passed from one to all; in him human nature has sinned." A transfer of Adam's guilt may seem to be here expressed, but in other expressions it is disowned (Psa. xlviii, § 9). Ambrose admitted nei- ther irresistible grace nor unconditional predestination;