COROLLARY XLVIII.
But just as reasons are at hand on account of which the antecedent will may be judged hypothetical, so reasons are not lacking on account of which it may be regarded as bound and joined with certain remedies. Certainly, God does not will that all men infected and corrupted by the primeval stain should be ordered to salvation and attain salvation whether they have a Redeemer or do not have one, whether they believe or do not believe, whether they express in themselves the image of the Firstborn or do not express it; but he wills that through the Redeemer, through faith, and through the other remedies which he established by his merciful benignity and which he offers to all, all should live in the order of salvation and attain the end proposed to this order. Christ signified this in words clearer than light1, saying: τοῦτο δέ ἐστι τὸ θέλημα τοῦ πέμψαντός με, ἵνα πᾶς ὁ θεωρῶν τὸν υἱὸν, καὶ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτόν, ἔχῃ ζωὴν αἰώνιον καὶ ἀναστήσω αὐτὸν ἐγὼ τῇ ἐσχάτῃ ἡμέρᾳ. “Now this is the will of him who sent me: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him, and who embraces him in mind and soul and, as the vindicator of his liberty and the perennial fountain of salvation, bears him before his eyes, loves him, and imitates him2, should have eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day”3.
Footnotes
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John VI.40. ↩
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How widely the force of the verb θεωρεῖν extends is shown at greater length by the scholiast on Euripides at Hecuba, v. 342, and Julius Pollux, Onomasticon, lib. IV, cap. I, § VIII. It is referred not so much to the sight of the eyes as to that of the mind. Therefore, to see is to know the Son of God inwardly and to comply with him most perfectly. Cf. Campegius Vitringa, Comm. in Isaiam, T. II, p. 827. ↩
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The Vulgate reads τοῦ πέμψαντός με πατρός, and rendered it “of my Father, who sent me.” ↩