CCLIX. Corollary LV

COROLLARY LV.

There follow the corollaries which we referred to the third and last class and which we judged could be called ἐριστικά, eristic. But among these none ought to be placed before those which fight more hostilely with the things established thus far. These are those in which the doctrine of the supralapsarians is contained. For it seemed good to the stricter Calvinists, upon whom the name of supralapsarians adhered from their proper dogma, that the entire human race ought to be divided into two orders. The one would comprehend those whom God, in order that he might manifest his power and disclose his supreme dominion, destined, without any forevision, to eternal felicity and to those means which cannot be separated from the attainment of salvation. But the other consists of those whom God, by the same form of a solely subjective decree¹, devoted unavoidably to eternal punishments and to their causes, such as sins. “For,” says Calvin², “all are not created in an equal condition, but eternal life is foreordained for some and eternal damnation for others. Therefore, according as each has been created for one or the other end, so we say that he has been predestined either to life or to death.” And again³: “You see how the Apostle refers both to the judgment of God alone. Therefore, if we cannot assign a reason why he deigns to receive his own unto mercy except because it so pleases him, neither shall we have anything other than his will in reprobating the others.” But—

—as Theodore Beza continues⁴—as soon as God destines to his hatred those whom he pleases, he so lays beneath them the causes of his future just hatred that the whole matter of hatred inheres in the very men destined to destruction, and consequently his justice in pursuing them with hatred and finally condemning them is eminent. But concerning this head of doctrine established and defended by the supralapsarians, there are as many witnesses as have committed to writing the controversies concerning predestination and reprobation which arose either among the Calvinists themselves or among Calvinists, Lutherans, Remonstrants, and Catholics⁵. Yet nothing could be devised by them, nothing brought forth into the light and public view, which the orthodox Fathers either disapproved with greater consensus or branded with more severe censures. For they condemned and pronounced most alien to the faith and Christian profession either: 1) that some are thought to have been created for the reason that they might perish; or 2) that some are judged to have been destined to the causes of destruction; or 3) that the cause of death and punishments is referred back to God⁶.