Chapter 42.—The Adversaries Cannot Deny Predestination to Those Gifts of Grace Which They Themselves Acknowledge, and Their Exhortations are Not Hindered by This Predestination Nevertheless.

And what I said of chastity, can be said also of faith, of piety, of love, of perseverance, and, not to enumerate single virtues, it may be said with the utmost truthfulness of all the obedience with which God is obeyed. But those who place only the beginning of faith and perseverance to the end in such wise in our power as not to regard them as God’s gifts, nor to think that God works on our thoughts and wills so as that we may have and retain them, grant, nevertheless, that He gives other things,—since they are obtained from Him by the faith of the believer. Why are they not afraid that exhortation to these other things, and the preaching of these other things, should be hindered by the definition of predestination? Or, perchance, do they say that such things are not predestinated? Then they are not given by God, or He has not known that He would give them. Because, if they are both given, and He foreknew that He would give them, certainly He predestinated them. As, therefore, they themselves also exhort to chastity, charity, piety, and other things which they confess to be God’s gifts, and cannot deny that they are also foreknown by Him, and therefore predestinated; nor do they say that their exhortations are hindered by the preaching of God’s predestination, that is, by the preaching of God’s foreknowledge of those future gifts of His: so they may see that neither are their exhortations to faith or to perseverance hindered, even although those very things may be said, as is the truth, to be gifts of God, and that those things are foreknown, that is, predestinated to be given; but let them rather see that by this preaching of predestination only that most pernicious error is hindered and overthrown, whereby it is said that the grace of God is given according to our deservings, so that he who glories may glory not in the Lord, but in himself.

42. Quod autem dixi de castitate, hoc de fide, hoc de pietate, hoc de charitate, de perseverantia, et, ne pergam per singula, hoc de omni obedientia qua obeditur Deo, veracissime dici potest. Sed ii qui solum initium fidei et usque in finem perseverantiam sic in nostra constituunt potestate, ut Dei dona esse non putent, neque ad haec habenda atque retinenda Deum operari nostras cogitationes et voluntates, caetera vero ipsum dare concedunt, cum ab illo impetrantur credentis fide ; cur ad ipsa caetera exhortationem, eorumque caeterorum praedicationem definitione praedestinationis non metuunt impediri? An forte nec ipsa dicunt praedestinata? Ergo nec dantur a Deo, aut ea se daturum esse nescivit. Quod si et dantur, et ea se daturum esse praescivit; profecto praedestinavit. Sicut ergo ipsi quoque hortantur ad castitatem, charitatem, pietatem, et caetera quae Dei dona esse confitentur, eaque ab illo esse praecognita, ac per hoc praedestinata negare non possunt; nec dicunt exhortationes suas impediri praedicatione praedestinationis Dei, hoc est, praedicatione de his donis ejus futuris praescientiae Dei: sic videant nec ad fidem nec ad perseverantiam impediri exhortationes suas, si et ipsa, quod verum est, esse Dei dona, eaque praecognita, id est, ad donandum praedestinata esse dicantur; sed impediri potius atque subverti hac praedestinationis praedicatione illum tantummodo perniciosissimum errorem, quo dicitur, gratiam Dei secundum merita nostra dari; ut qui gloriatur, non in Domino, sed in se ipso glorietur.