United States or Monaco ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
God has predestinated, mankind expects, great things from our race; and great things we feel in our souls. The rest of the nations must soon be in our rear. We are the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things, to break a new path in the New World that is ours. In our youth is our strength; in our inexperience, our wisdom.
Yet it is true that this reason for election is not the final reason, and that this very pre-vision is still a consequence of God's anterior decree. Faith likewise is a gift of God, who has predestinated the faith of the elect, for reasons lying in a superior decree which dispenses grace and circumstance in accordance with God's supreme wisdom.
The Sublapsarians believed that "God permitted the fall of Adam;" the Supralapsarians that "he predestinated it, with all its pernicious consequences, from all eternity, and that our first parents had no liberty from the beginning." In this, these sectarians disregarded the remark of St. Augustine: "Nefas est dicere Deum aliquid nisi bonum predestinare."
His plan evidently was to throw the stigma of heresy upon the incumbent, and to this end, when our preacher was one day laboring hard to show us exactly where foreordination ends and free moral agency begins, the ex-minister arose, excitedly declaring such talk to be rank Arminianism, and denounced it as misleading sinners to the belief that they could be saved even if they were not so predestinated in the eternal mind of an all-wise, all-loving Jehovah, who had foredoomed some to heaven and others to hell.
Sometimes, in spite of Sandy's confident predictions, no boat could be found, and then I must put on the Mackintosh trousers and wade out over my hips into the water, and circumambulate the pond, throwing the flies as far as possible toward the middle, and feeling my way carefully along the bottom with the long net-handle, while Sandy danced on the bank in an agony of apprehension lest his Predestinated Opportunity should step into a deep hole and be drowned.
He had wanted to be taken by the English fishermen, but another and younger man had stepped in before him. Now Sandy saw in me his Predestinated Opportunity, and had no idea of letting it post up the road that night to the next village. He cleared his throat respectfully and cut into the conversation.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly things in Christ; as he hath elected us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love: having predestinated us for his adopted children by Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, whereby he hath made us acceptable in that beloved one; in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; wherein he hath abounded towards us with all wisdom and intelligence, having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in himself; at the dispensation of the fulness of the appointed times to gather together under one head all things in Christ, whether they be things in heaven or things in earth, in him: in whom also we have obtained our inheritance, predestinated according to the purpose of him who effectually worketh all things according to the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first had hope in Christ.
That God of his mere good pleasure, abstracting from all other causes whatever, for the praise of his glorious grace to be manifested in time, has from all eternity predestinated a certain definite number of mankind sinners, in and through Jesus Christ, to eternal life, together with all the means leading thereunto.
``These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished.
Better get it in the neck after a good time than a poor one." And so forth. Their wit was not extreme, yet I should like Dr. MacBride to have heard it. One fellow put his natural soul pretty well into words, "If I happened to learn what they had predestinated me to do, I'd do the other thing, just to show 'em!" And Trampas? And the Virginian? They were out of it.
Word Of The Day