CCLVI. Corollary LII

COROLLARY LII.

Reprobation is opposed diametrically to election, and no otherwise than election can be employed and understood in a manifold sense. And it can in truth be understood: either 1) of a reprobation by which God, according to his own judgment, consigns some to the causes of damnation; or 2) of a reprobation by which God of himself so neglects and spurns some that he does not will the state of restoration and the faculty of salvation intimately bound with it to be common to them; or 3) of a reprobation by which he determines that to some he will dispense only those graces which he foresaw would be joined with final impenitence, and deny all those which he understood would be adequate for conjunction with final justice; or finally, 4) of a reprobation which follows the foreknowledge of benignity contemned even unto the end and mercy spurned.

Moreover, lest I dissemble anything, and lest I be deservedly accused of betraying the truth, it is necessary that I confirm with the greatest gravity of words that I can that Christian tradition is of such a kind that one could reconcile anything with it more readily than believe and say that even one man is reprobated for the reason that God either consigned him to sins and to the causes of damnation, or excluded him from the benefits of the restored state, or ensnared him as if by a certain artifice and deprived him of graces suited to obtaining salvation. For there is none of these things which the Fathers of the West and East do not disapprove, condemn, and execrate¹—

—They execrate the first when they remove as far as possible from God the will of sin and perdition²; they execrate the second when they pronounce the state of restoration universal³; and they execrate the third when they recount and almost depict the paternal industries and maternal arts by which God seeks even the most lost in order that he may heal them, and aids them in order that he may save them⁴.

It remains, therefore, that only that manner of reprobation be admitted which we enumerated in the fourth and last place and which is situated in this: that all and only those are believed to have been rejected and condemned from eternity whom God foresaw from eternity would be ungrateful for his benefits and proud contemners of his mercy. But a reprobation of this kind: 1) is a decree according to foreknowledge; 2) is hypothetical; 3) is referred to God the judge; and 4) is comprehended within the compass of the consequent will.