Thesium de vita aeterna et eius haeredibus decades X

5. Therefore, some piously teach that Providence, being the producer and moderator of all things, because it both orders all causes and directs even individual effects to certain ends, deserves a name more excellent than that of Cause.
6. We acknowledge the simple providence of God, which nevertheless, by reason of the diverse effects (which are directed by it), seems to behave in diverse ways.
7. Its form, however, is the divine power always acting: The matter about which it acts is all Being: The end is that every thing may be directed to its own end.
8. Many effects are contingent and necessary from a different perspective. For if you look at the secondary and proximate causes, many things can be and are called contingent, which, if you look at providence, are necessary and are so called.
9. But to return to the hypothesis, regarding foreknowledge it is said: The Lord knows those who are His. 2 Tim. 2, verse 19. And the statements of Scripture concerning the Book of life, or of the living, mean the same thing; in which are inscribed the names of those who are fellow citizens of the Saints and members of the household of God.
10. That saying of Christ, however, "I never knew you," should be referred not to ignorance, but to the reprobation of hypocrites. For at His own time, those who are equivocally called children of the kingdom will be cast into outer darkness (Matt. 8, verse 12) and the wicked will be separated from the midst of the just. Matt. 13, verse 49.

1. Predestination is subordinated to foreknowledge. Rom. 8, verse 29.
2. Therefore, the Foreknown are not correctly opposed to the Predestined, for neither should foreknowledge be restricted to the reprobate alone, nor predestination to the elect alone.
3. The difference between Election and Predestination is that the former regards both the purpose of God and the opposite rejection: but the latter regards the execution of the purpose itself, that is, the progress of subordinated causes, and the ends of which one must be referred to men, the other to God.
4. We were chosen in Christ before the foundations of the world were laid. Eph. 1, verse 4.
5. We were also predestined in the same, so that through the adoption of sons He made us heirs of eternal life. The same chapter, verse 5.
6. Both, however, are accomplished according to the purpose of God (that is opposed to the works and merits of men. 2 Tim. 1, verse 9).