First Objection
that he was able to will well and ill." The cause of this desertion was that Adam and his posterity might know that they could fall by themselves, but that they could not stand much less rise again, and therefore that they should wholly depend on God's mercy. Here also it must be remembered that between this desertion and Adam's sin, there came also Adam's will, whereby he being left to his own strength did by and by perceive the very same, his conscience telling.
And yet for all that he willed his own fall by the free motion of his will.
The second desertion is a privation and losing of the gifts, wherewith the mind is adorned, and a delivering into the power of Satan, that he may seduce men and more and more lead them into sin. This is a desertion of punishment (defatio paenae), and therefore it follows sin. And of this desertion and not of the former is the rule to be understood: a Deo desertis Deum priores deservunt; those which are forsaken of God do themselves first forsake God.
And this is our doctrine of predestination, which favors neither of the errors of the Manicheans, Stoics, Pelagians, nor of Epicurism, but is
(as I am persuaded) agreeable to the truth and orthodoxal. But yet it is oppugned by sundry criminations or false accusations, which I will strive with all my strength to overthrow, and that briefly.
First Objection The first crimination is that we teach that certain men, and those but few, are elected. Answer. "Certain men," we say. For all the elect are known to God, and their number can neither be increased nor diminished. "Few," we do not say, but after a prescript and certain