§ 158. THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION. 851
§ 158. The Doct/r-tne of Predestinatiorv.
I. AcousTiNus : De praedestinatione sanctorum ad Prosperum et Hilariuni
(written a. d. 428 or 429 against the Semi-Pelagians) ; De dcno perseverantitB (written in tbe same year and against the same opponents) ; De gratia et libero arbitrio (written a. d. 426 or 427 ad Valentinum et Monachos Adrumetinos) ; De correptione et gratia (written to the same persons and in the same year).
II. CoR.v. Jansknius^ Augustinus. Lovan. 1640, tom. iii. Jao. Sikmonp
(Jesuit): Historia prcodestinatiana. Par. 1648 (and in his Opera, torn. iv. p. 271). Carl Beok : Die Augustinische, Calvinistische und Lutberische Lehre von der Predestination aus den Quellen dargestellt und mit besonderer Riicksicbt auf Schleiermacher's Erwiiblungslehre comparativ beurtheilt. " Studien und Kritiken," 1847. J. B. Mozlet: Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination. Lond. 1855.
Augustine did not stop with this doctrine of sin and grace. He pursued his anthropology and soteriology to their source in theology. His personal experience of the wonderful and undeserved grace of God, various passages of the Scriptures, especially the Epistle to the Romans, and the logical connection of thought, led him to the doctrine of the unconditional and eternal purpose of the omniscient and omnipotent God. In this he found the programme of the history of the fall and redemption of the human race. He ventured boldly, but reverentially, upon the brink of that abyss of speculation, Avhere all human knowledge is lost in mystery and in adoration.
Predestination, in general, is a necessary attribute of the divine will, a* foreknowledge is an attribute of the divine intelligence ; though, strictly speaking, we cannot predicate of God either a before or an after^ and with him all is eternal present. It is absolutely inconceivable that God created the world or man blindly, without a fixed plan, or that this plan can be disturbed or hindered in any way by his creatures. Besides, there prevails everywhere, even in the natural life of man, in the distribution of mental gifts and earthly blessings, and yet much more in the realm of grace, a higher guidance which is wholly independent of our will or act. AVho is not obliged, in his birth in this or that place, at this or that time,
852 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
under these or those circumstanees, in all the epochs of his existence, in all his opportunities of education, and above all in his regeneration and sanctification, to recognize and adoU the providence and the free grace of God? The further we are advanced in the Christian life, the less are we inclined to attribute anj merit to ourselves, and the more to thank God for all. The believer not only looks forward into eternal life, but also backward into the ante-mundane eternity, and finds in the eternal purpose of divine love the beginning and the firm anchorage of his salvation.'
So far we may say every reflecting Christian must believe in some sort of election by free grace ; and, in fact, the Holy Scriptures are full of it. But up to the time of Augustine the doctrine liad never been an object of any very profound inquiry, and had therefore never been accurately defined, but only very superficially and casually touched. The Greek fathers, and Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, and Pelagins, had only taught a conditional predestination, which they made dependent on the foreknowledge of the free acts of men. In this, as in his views of sin and grace, Augustine went far beyond the earlier divines, taught an unconditional election of grace, and restricted the purpose of redemption to a definite circle of the elect, who constitute the minority of the race.*
* Rom. viil 29 ; Eph. i. 4.
' Comp. the opinions of the pre-Augustinian fathers respecting grace, predestination, and the extent of redemption, as given in detail in Wiggers, 1. p. 440 fil He says, p. 448: "In reference to predestination, tlie fathers before Augustine were entirely at variance with him, and in agreement with Pelagius. They, like Pelagius, founded predestination upon prescience, upon the fore-knowledge of God, aa to who would make themselves worthy or unworthy of salvation. They assume, therefore, not the unconditional predestination of Augustine, but the conditionjJ predestination of the Pelagians. The Massihans had, therefore, a full right to affirm (Aug. Ep. 225), that Augustine's doctrine of predestination was opposed to the opinions of the fathers and the sense of the church (ecclesiastico sensui), and that no ecclesiastical author had ever yet explained the Epistle to the Romans a3 Augustine did, or in such a way as to derive from it a grace that had no respect to the merits of the elect. And it was only by a doubtful inference (De dono pers. 19) that Augustine endeavored to prove that Cyprian, Ambrose, and Gregory Nazian y,en had known and received his view of predestination, by appealing to the agreement between this doctrine and tli(;ir theory of grace." Pelagius says of predestina- Oon in his Commentary on Rom. viiL 29 and ix. 30 : " Quos prjevidit conformes esM