Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

CHAP. v. of Predestination. 137
been his opponent s ground of objection, he would have
answered him much more decisively by referring him to
the broad and evident fact of the inequality in the Divine
dispensing of means of grace involved in the very existence
of Christianity, not to say in the very order of God s natural
providence.
But the general admission of mystery, darkness, and
apparent contrariety to justice which S. Augustine makes
with respect to predestination, is only a preliminary, how
ever decisive an answer, to such an interpretation of his
doctrine as would reduce it to the qualified doctrine of
predestination above referred to. The qualified doctrine
drew distinctions, according as it wanted them, between
individuals and the body as the subjects of predestination,
between the means of grace and final happiness as the gift
in it, and between foreseen merits and arbitrary choice as
the reason and ground of it. But none of these distinc
tions appear in the Augustinian statements of the doctrine,
which quite plainly and simultaneously assign to predes
tination individuals as its subjects, final glory as its gift,
and a sovereign and inscrutable choice on the part of God,
as distinguished from foreseen merits in the predestinated
person, as its reason and ground.
He applies, in the first place, predestination to indi
viduals, speaking of the subjects of it as these and
those (illi, isti), and many (multi, plurimi}. The
question put by the objector to the doctrine, and met by
him with the answer of God s inscrutable will, is, Why
God liberates this man rather than that cur istum potius
quam ilium liberet. ! And the predestinated are considered
as amounting to a certain definite number of persons. I
speak, he says, e of those who are predestinated to the
kingdom of God, of whom the number is so certain that
no one can be added to them or taken from them. 2
It is evident, in the next place, that S. Augustine is
speaking of the predestination of these individuals to final
as he
glory, and not to means of grace only ; asserting,
does, that by predestination every one is infallibly saved
1 Prsed. Sanct. c. viii.
2 De Corr. et Grat. c. xiii.