passions, the desire to suffer with Christ, and zeal for the salvation of others. • * * * * * Since I am a Christian, God has predestined me to grace-but has He predestined me also to glory? I do not know; and during my lifetime I shall never know with complete certainty. But I can trust the Mercy of God, who does not desire the etemal death of a sinner. I can never, by myseJf, merit predestination to glory, but I can, and should, pray for it. And, as trustful prayer can obtain the grace of perseverance, I trust that mine will not be rejected when I pray that I may one day be received into the Kingdom of God. But I must back my prayer by earnest effort. I resolve often to. spur myseJf on to acts of trust: "Jesus, I trust Theel" 14. IS THERE SUCH A THING AS REPROBATION? "Depart from me, acmr.red onu, into the everla1tingfire" (Matt. 2.s : 41). Between predestination and reprobation there is so profound a difference that it is impossible to apply the same concepts to them. For the fact that God predestines His elect before foreseeing their merits does not necessarily mean that He rejects others before foreseeing their sins. Nor may we suppose that reprobation is the result of God's will, which-as we have said-desires the salvation of all men. Hence the Church condemned the teaching of Calvin, who maintained that "those whom God has previously predestined to hell, He so directs that they fall into sin, that He may not condemn them without fault of their own" (In.rt. 1, 3, c. 2.4, n. 12.). Let us see, then, what rejection or reprobation is, and what the Church teaches concerning it. !.-Reprobation is the exclusion from heaven, for ever, of certain people, on account of their sins. St. Thomas Aquinas says that "as predestination is a part of Providence", and "as men are ordained to eternal life through the providence of God, it likewise is part of that providence to permit some to fall away from that end" (I. q. 2.3, a. 3). Reprobation may be either antecedent-before the foreseeing 49
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