Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Note II.
NOTE II. p. 7.
J ACKSON quotes a predestinarian statement, That Grod s
irresistible decree for the absolute election of some, and
the absolute reprobation of others, is immediately termi
nated to the individual natures, substances, or entities of
men, without any logical respect or reference to their
qualifications ; a position to which lie attaches the fol
lowing consequences: This principle being once granted,,
what breach of Grod s moral law is there whereon men
will not boldly adventure, either through desperation or
presumption, either openly or secretly ? For seeing God s
will, which in their divinity is the only cause why the one
sort are destinated to death, the other to life, is most
immutable and most irresistible, and seeing the indi
vidual entities or natures of men, unto which this irresis
tible decree is respectively terminated, are immutable,
let the one sort do what they can, pray for themselves,
and beseech others to pray for them, they shall be damned
because their entities or individual substances are unalter
able : let the other sort live as they list, they shall be
saved, because no corruption of manners, no change of
morality finds any mutability or change in their individual
natures or entities, unto which Grod s immutable decree is
immediately terminated. Whatsoever becomes of good
life or good manners, so the individual nature or entity
fail not, or be not annihilated, salvation is tied unto it by
a necessity more indissoluble than any chains of adamant/
-Vol. ix. p. 370.
This is perhaps a misinterpretation of the predestinarian
statement quoted. The Divine decree, it is true, is, ac
cording to that statement, terminated to the entities of
men, and has no respect to their qualifications, as the
cause or reason of such decree; but it may still have
respect to such qualifications as the effects of such decree.
But, whatever may be said of this particular statement,
such an interpretation of it, if meant for a representation
of the doctrine of predestination, is very incorrect.