CHAPTER XXIII.03

VI. Impiety produces also a second objection, which directly tends, not so much to the crimination of God, as to the vindication of the sinner; though the sinner whom God condemns cannot be justified without the disgrace of the Judge. For this is their profane complaint, Why should God impute as a fault to man those things which were rendered necessary by his predestination? What should they do? Should they resist his decrees? This would be vain, for it would be impossible. Therefore they are not justly punished for those things of which God’s predestination is the principal cause. Here I shall refrain from the defence commonly resorted to by ecclesiastical writers, that the foreknowledge of God prevents not man from being considered as a sinner, since God foresees man’s evils, not his own. For then the cavil would not stop here; it would rather be urged, that still God might, if he would, have provided against the evils he foresaw, and that not having done this, he created man expressly to this end, that he might so conduct himself in the world; but if, by the Divine Providence, man was created in such a state as afterwards to do whatever he actually does, he ought not to be charged with guilt for things which he cannot avoid, and to which the will of God constrains him. Let us see, then, how this difficulty should be solved. In the first place, the declaration of Solomon ought to be universally admitted, that “the Lord hath made all things for himself; yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.”

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Observe; all things being at God’s disposal, and the decision of salvation or death belonging to him, he orders all things by his counsel and decree in such a manner, that some men are born devoted from the womb to certain death, that his name may be glorified in their destruction. If any one pleads, that no necessity was imposed on them by the providence of God, but rather that they were created by him in such a state in consequence of his foresight of their future depravity,—it will amount to nothing. The old writers used, indeed, to adopt this solution, though not without some degree of hesitation. But the schoolmen satisfy themselves with it, as though it admitted of no opposition. I will readily grant, indeed, that mere foreknowledge lays no necessity on the creatures, though this is not universally admitted; for there are some who maintain it to be the actual cause of what comes to pass. But Valla, a man otherwise not much versed in theology, appears to me to have discovered superior acuteness and judiciousness, by showing that this controversy is unnecessary, because both life and death are acts of God’s will, rather than of his foreknowledge. If God simply foresaw the fates of men, and did not also dispose and fix them by his determination, there would be room to agitate the question, whether his providence or foresight rendered them at all necessary. But since he foresees future events only in consequence of his decree, that they shall happen, it is useless to contend about foreknowledge, while it is evident that all things come to pass rather by ordination and decree.

VII. They say it is nowhere declared in express terms, that God decreed Adam should perish by his defection; as though the same God, whom the Scripture represents as doing whatever he pleases, created the noblest of his creatures without any determinate end. They maintain, that he was possessed of free choice, that he might be the author of his own fate, but that God decreed nothing more than to treat him according to his desert. If so weak a scheme as this be received, what will become of God’s omnipotence, by which he governs all things according to his secret counsel, independently of every person or thing besides? But whether they wish it or dread it, predestination exhibits itself in Adam’s posterity. For the loss of salvation by the whole race through the guilt of one parent, was an event that did not happen by nature. What prevents their acknowledging concerning one man, what they reluctantly grant concerning the whole species? Why should they lose their labour in sophistical evasions? The Scripture proclaims, that all men were, in the person of their father, sentenced to eternal death. This, not being attributable to nature, it is evident must have proceeded from the wonderful counsel of God. The perplexity and hesitation discovered at trifles by these pious defenders of the justice of God, and their facility in overcoming great difficulties, are truly absurd. I inquire again, how it came to pass that the fall of Adam, independent of any remedy, should involve so many nations with their infant children in eternal death, but because such was the will of God. Their tongues, so loquacious on every other point, must here be struck dumb. It is an awful decree, I confess; but no one can deny that God foreknew the future final fate of man before he created him, and that he did foreknow it because it was appointed by his own decree. If any one here attacks God’s foreknowledge, he rashly and inconsiderately stumbles. For what ground of accusation is there against the heavenly Judge for not being ignorant of futurity? If there is any just or plausible complaint, it lies against predestination. Nor should it be thought absurd to affirm, that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and the ruin of his posterity in him, but also arranged all by the determination of his own will. For as it belongs to his wisdom to foreknow every thing future, so it belongs to his power to rule and govern all things by his hand. And this question also, as well as others, is judiciously discussed by Augustine. “We most wholesomely confess, what we most rightly believe, that the God and Lord of all things, who created every thing very good, and foreknew that evil would arise out of good, and knew that it was more suitable to his almighty goodness to bring good out of evil than not to suffer evil to exist, ordained the life of angels and men in such a manner as to exhibit in it, first, what free-will was capable of doing, and afterwards, what could be effected by the blessings of his grace, and the sentence of his justice.”