§ 113. PREDESTINATION. 549
hand, he laid greater emphasis on the dogma itself, and assigned it a higher position in his theological system. He was, by his Stoic temper and as an admirer of Seneca, predisposed to predestinarianism, and found it in the teaching of Paul, his favorite apostle. But his chief interest in the doctrine was religious rather than metaphysical. He found in it the strongest support for his faith. He combined with it the certainty of salvation, Avhich is the privilege and comfort of every believer. In this important feature he differed from Augustin, who taught the Catholic view of the subjective uncertainty of salvation.^ Calvin made the certainty, Augustin the uncertainty, a stimulus to zeal and holiness.
Calvin was fully aware of the unpopularity of the doctrine. " Many," lie says, " consider nothing more unreasonable than that some of the common mass of mankind should be foreordained to salvation, and others to destruction. . . . When the human mind hears these things, its petulance breaks all restraint, and it discovers a serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet." But he thought it impossible to " come to a clear conviction of our salvation, till we are acquainted with God's eternal election, which illustrates his grace by this comparison, that he adopts not all promiscuously to the hope of salvation, but gives to some what he refuses to others." It is, therefore, not from the general love of God to all mankind, but from his particular favor to the elect that they, and they alone, are to derive their assurance of salvation and their only solid comfort. The reason of this preference can only be found in the inscrutable will of God, which is the supreme law of tlie universe. As to others, we must charitably assume that they are among the elect ; for there is no certain sign of reprobation except perseverance in impenitence until death.
Predestination, according to Calvin, is the eternal and
^ De Dono Persev., eh. XXXIII.
550 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLA:^D.
unchangeable decree of God by which he foreordained, for his own glory and the display of his attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation. " Predestination," he says, "we call the eternal decree of God, by which he has determined in himself the destiny of every man. For they are not all created in the same condition, but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the other of these ends, we say, he is predestinated either to life or to death." ^
This applies not only to individuals, but to whole nations. God has chosen the people of Israel as his own inheritance, and rejected the heathen ; he has loved Jacob with his posterity, and -hated Esau with his posterity. " The counsel of God, as far as concerns the elect, is founded on his gratuitous mercy, totally irrespective of human merit; but to those whom he devotes to condemnation the gate of life is closed by a just and irreprehensible, though incomprehensible judgment." 2 God's will is the supreme rule of justice,^ so that "• what he wills must be considered just for the very reason that he wills it. When you ask, therefore, why the Lord did so, the answer must be, Because he would. But if you go further and ask why he so determined, you are in search of something higher and greater than the will of God, which can never be found. Let human temerity, therefore, desist from seeking that which is not, lest it should fail of finding that which is. This will be a sufficient restraint to
1 " Prondestinationem vocamus (eternum Dei decretum, quo apud se constitutum hahuit, quid de unoquoque homine fieri vellet. Non enini pari conditione creantur omnes ; sed aliis vita ceterna, aliis damnatio externa praordinatur. Itaque, prout in alterutrum finem quisque conditus est, ita vel ad vitam, vel ad mortem prcedestinatum dicimus." Inst. III. ch. XXI. § 5 {Opera, vol. II. pp. 682, 683).
2 Ibid. III. ch. XXI. § 7.
^ " Summa justitite regula est Dei voluntas."