Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Augustinian Doctrine
CHAP. T.
nation in consequence
of foreseen virtue and holiness in
the individuals predestinated. A third modification, which
rests upon a distinction between individuals and the body,
and allowing predestination to be to final glory, applies it
to the Church as a whole, and not to individuals, is evi
dently only the second in another form. For, as no one
can mean to say that the whole of the visible Church is
predestinated to eternal glory, by the Church as a body
must be meant the truly virtuous and pious members of
the Church whom God predestinates
to glory in conse
quence of foreseeing this piety and virtue in them. Now,
had S. Augustine only held predestination
in this sense,
that God determined from all eternity to admit a certain
portion of mankind to certain religious privileges and to
reward the pious and virtuous with eternal glory, he would
or even believer in
only have held what no Christian,
natural religion, can deny. It is evident that Grod has
admitted a certain portion of mankind to certain religious
privileges to which He has not admitted others ; and, as
He has done this, it is certain that He has eternally de
creed to do it. And it is certain that God will finally
reward men according to their works ; and, as this will be
His act, and this the reason of it, it is certain He has
eternally decreed the one and foreseen the other. Such
a doctrine of predestination as this, then, is no more than
what everybody must hold. But the passages which have
been quoted contain very clearly a different doctrine of
predestination from this. And this difference will appear
the more decisively, the more we enter into the particulars
of S. s Augustine view.
In the first
place, we find S. Augustine always speak
ing of predestination as a mystery, a dark and perplexing
doctrine, contradictory to our natural ideas of the Divine
justice, and requiring the profoundest submission of human
reason in order to its acceptance. For example, he says,
in the text (John vi. : 45) Every one that hath heard and
hath learned of the Father cometh unto me.
Very far removed from our fleshly senses is that
school in which God is heard and teaches valde remota