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Augustine of Hippo, A Treatise On the Predestination of the Saints. — A Treatise on the Gift of Perseverance
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by Aurelius Augustin, Bishop of Hippo
Chapter 1 [I.]—Of the Nature of the Perseverance Here Discoursed of.
Chapter 3.—God is Besought for It, Because It is His Gift.
Chapter 4.—Three Leading Points of the Pelagian Doctrine.
Chapter 5.—The Second Petition in the Lord’s Prayer.
Chapter 6 [III.]—The Third Petition. How Heaven and Earth are Understood in the Lord’s Prayer.
Chapter 7 [IV.]—The Fourth Petition.
Chapter 9.—When Perseverance is Granted to a Person, He Cannot But Persevere.
Chapter 10 [VI.]—The Gift of Perseverance Can Be Obtained by Prayer.
Chapter 11.—Effect of Prayer for Perseverance.
Chapter 12.—Of His Own Will a Man Forsakes God, So that He is Deservedly Forsaken of Him.
Chapter 13 [VII.]—Temptation the Condition of Man.
Chapter 14.—It is God’s Grace Both that Man Comes to Him, and that Man Does Not Depart from Him.
Chapter 15.—Why God Willed that He Should Be Asked for that Which He Might Give Without Prayer.
Chapter 16 [VIII.]—Why is Not Grace Given According to Merit?
Chapter 18.—But Why Should One Be Punished More Than Another?
Chapter 19.—Why Does God Mingle Those Who Will Persevere with Those Who Will Not?
Chapter 20.—Ambrose on God’s Control Over Men’s Thoughts.
Chapter 21 [IX.]—Instances of the Unsearchable Judgments of God.
Chapter 25 [XI.]—God’s Ways, Both in Mercy and Judgment, Past Finding Out.
Chapter 27.—Reference to the “Retractations.”
Chapter 28 [XII.]—God’s Goodness and Righteousness Shown in All.
Chapter 30.—Augustin Claims the Right to Grow in Knowledge.
Chapter 32 [XIII.]—The Inscrutability of God’s Free Purposes.
Chapter 33.—God Gives Both Initiatory and Persevering Grace According to His Own Will.
Chapter 34 [XIV.]—The Doctrine of Predestination Not Opposed to the Advantage of Preaching.
Chapter 35.—What Predestination is.
Chapter 37.—Ears to Hear are a Willingness to Obey.
Chapter 39 [XVI]—Prayer and Exhortation.
Chapter 40.—When the Truth Must Be Spoken, When Kept Back.
Chapter 41.—Predestination Defined as Only God’s Disposing of Events in His Foreknowledge.
Chapter 43.—Further Development of the Foregoing Argument.
Chapter 44.—Exhortation to Wisdom, Though Wisdom is God’s Gift.
Chapter 45.—Exhortation to Other Gifts of God in Like Manner.
Chapter 46.—A Man Who Does Not Persevere Fails by His Own Fault.
Chapter 47.—Predestination is Sometimes Signified Under the Name of Foreknowledge.
Chapter 48 [XIX.]—Practice of Cyprian and Ambrose.
Chapter 49.—Further References to Cyprian and Ambrose.
Chapter 50.—Obedience Not Discouraged by Preaching God’s Gifts.
Chapter 51 [XX.]—Predestination Must Be Preached.
Chapter 52.—Previous Writings Anticipatively Refuted the Pelagian Heresy.
Chapter 53.—Augustin’s “Confessions.”
Chapter 54 [XXI.]—Beginning and End of Faith is of God.
Chapter 55.—Testimony of His Previous Writings and Letters.
Chapter 56.—God Gives Means as Well as End.
Chapter 57 [XXII.]—How Predestination Must Be Preached So as Not to Give Offence.
Chapter 58.—The Doctrine to Be Applied with Discrimination.
Chapter 59.—Offence to Be Avoided.
Chapter 60.—The Application to the Church in General.
Chapter 61.—Use of the Third Person Rather Than the Second.
Chapter 62.—Prayer to Be Inculcated, Nevertheless.
Chapter 63 [XXIII.]—The Testimony of the Whole Church in Her Prayers.
Chapter 64.—In What Sense the Holy Spirit Solicits for Us, Crying, Abba, Father.
Chapter 65.—The Church’s Prayers Imply the Church’s Faith.
Chapter 66 [XXIV.]—Recapitulation and Exhortation.
Chapter 67.—The Most Eminent Instance of Predestination is Christ Jesus.
Chapter 66 [XXIV.]—Recapitulation and Exhortation.
But what more shall I say? I think that I have taught sufficiently, or rather more than sufficiently, that both the beginning of faith in the Lord, and continuance in the Lord unto the end, are God’s gifts. And other good things which pertain to a good life, whereby God is rightly worshipped, even they themselves on whose behalf I am writing this treatise concede to be God’s gifts. Further, they cannot deny that God has foreknown all His gifts, and the people on whom He was going to bestow them. As, therefore, other things must be preached so that he who preaches them may be heard with obedience, so predestination must be preached so that he who hears these things with obedience may glory not in man, and therefore not in himself, but in the Lord; for this also is God’s precept, and to hear this precept with obedience—to wit, that he who glories should glory in the Lord154 1 Cor. i. 31.—in like manner as the rest, is God’s gift. And he who has not this gift,—I shrink not from saying it,—whatever others he has, has them in vain. That the Pelagians may have this we pray, and that our own brethren may have it more abundantly. Let us not, therefore, be prompt in arguments and indolent in prayers. Let us pray, dearly beloved, let us pray that the God of grace may give even to our enemies, and especially to our brethren and lovers, to understand and confess that after that great and unspeakable ruin wherein we have all fallen in one, no one is delivered save by God’s grace, and that grace is not repaid according to the merits of the receivers as if it were due, but is given freely as true grace, with no merits preceding.
CAPUT XXIV.
66. Sed quid plura? Satis docuisse me existimo, vel potius plus quam satis, dona Dei esse, et incipere in Dominum credere, et usque in finem in Domino permanere. Caetera vero bona ad vitam piam, qua Deus recte colitur, pertinentia, etiam ipsi propter quos haec agimus, Dei dona esse concedunt. Omnia porro dona sua, et quibus ea fuerat largiturus, Deum praescisse negare non possunt. Sicut ergo caetera praedicanda sunt, ut qui ea praedicat, obedienter audiatur; ita praedestinatio praedicanda est, ut qui obedienter haec audit, non in homine, ac per hoc nec in se ipso, sed in Domino glorietur: quia et hoc Dei praeceptum est; et hoc praeceptum obedienter audire, id est, ut qui gloriatur, in Domino glorietur (I Cor. I, 31), similiter ut caetera, Dei donum est. Quod donum qui non habet, non dubito dicere, alia quaecumque habet, inaniter habet. Hoc Pelagiani, optamus, ut habeant; isti autem nostri ut plenius habeant. Non itaque simus in disputationibus prompti, et in orationibus pigri. Oremus, dilectissimi, oremus, ut Deus gratiae det etiam inimicis nostris, maximeque fratribus et dilectoribus nostris, intelligere et confiteri, post ingentem et ineffabilem ruinam, qua in uno omnes cecidimus, neminem nisi gratia Dei liberari; eamque non secundum merita accipientium tanquam debitam reddi, sed tanquam veram gratiam nullis meritis praecedentibus gratis dari.