PREDESTINATION

(See Election ; see also Calvin ism and Arm in i an ism .) Of predestination and election our 17th Article thus speaks: “Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God , whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as ve els made to honour. Wherefore they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God , be called according to God’s purpose, by his Spirit working in due season; they through grace obey the calling; they be justified freely; they be made sons of God by adoption; they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ ; they walk religiously in good works; and at length, by God’s mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity. As the godly consideration of predestination and our election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ , mortifying the works of the flesh and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal salvation to be enjoyed through Christ , as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God : so, for curious and carnal persons lacking the Spirit of Christ , to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God’s predestination, is a most dangerous downfal, whereby the devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretch le ne of most unclean living, no le perilous than desperation. Furthermore, we must receive God’s promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that will of God is to be followed, which we have expre ly declared unto us in the Word of God .” Such is the barrier which the Church places between this solemn subject and irreverent inquiries; but the Scripture doctrine of predestination may be further stated without any forgetfulne of the spirit here inculcated. We are told indeed by the Church, that “the godly consideration of predestination and our election in Christ is full of sweet and unspeakable comfort to godly persons” (Art. xvii.); and it is certain that it can be full neither of profit nor of comfort, unle we meditate upon it. And if it be among the things “hard to be understood,” (2 Pet. iii. 16,) this is no reason why we should not try to understand it, and, by understanding, cease to be “unlearned and unstable,” and so take care that it shall not be wrested to our destruction. In the first chapter to the Ephesians, we find that there are certain persons whom God hath chosen in Christ , before the foundation of the world; having predestinated them unto the adoption of children of Jesus Christ to himself, not on account of their good works, but according to the good pleasure of his will. (Eph. i. 4, 5.) Again, in another Epistle, we are told that God hath “called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.” (2 Tim. i. 9.) These are persons whose names are said to have been written in heaven, in the book of life, called the Lamb’s book of life, (Rev. xx. 15; xxi. 27,) because the first among God’s elect is he who, being God as well as man, is the Lamb of God , slain from the foundation of the world (Rev. xiii. 8) as a propitiation for sins. (1 John ii. 2; iv. 10.) Thus, then, we see that there are persons who, in the words of St. Paul, are “ve els which God hath afore prepared unto glory.” (Rom. ix. 22–24.) And now comes the question, Who are those who are thus predestinated to the glories of the new heaven, the new earth, the new Jerusalem, which is to come down from above? (Rev. xxi. 2.) Let St. Paul give the answer: “Whom he did predestinate, them he also called” (Rom. viii. 30): called by the circumstances under which he providentially placed them, either by the appearance, in the first ages, of an apostle or an evangelist; or, as is the case with us, by the fact of our being born in a Christian land: “and whom he called, them he also justified;” receiving them, for Christ’s sake, as his own children in holy baptism, he justified, or, for the same Saviour’s sake, counted as holy, those who as yet were not actually so: “and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” He glorified them by regenerating them, and making them temples of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. vi. 11, 19); than which what greater glory can pertain to the sons of men? The foregoing pa age furnishes us with a description of Christians, of baptized persons; and consequently to Christians we are to refer those other pa ages which relate to God’s predestination: them God hath predestinated to glory. And as such, as God’s elect people, predestinated not merely to means of grace, for this were clearly inadequate, but to glory in the kingdom of glory, the inspired writers were wont to addre the multitude of the baptized. Thus the apostle addre es the Church of the The alonians, good and bad commingled, as “knowing” their “election of God .” (1 The . i. 4.) Thus St. Peter speaks of “the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,” as “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father ” (1 Pet. i. 2); and he speaks of them afterwards as “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people;” and St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, addre es the Hebrews, meaning those who had made profe ion of the Christian faith, as “holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling.” Such, then, is our ble ing, our privilege, our high hope as Christians. In the temple of the first Jerusalem there was a variety of chambers or mansions, employed for different purposes, though all relating directly or indirectly to the services of the sanctuary. In the new Jerusalem, which will itself be the temple of the universe, there will in like manner be “many mansions” or chambers: but if so, those mansions or chambers in the earthly Jerusalem having been intended for a variety of different offices, we may conclude that offices of different characters will exist in the new Jerusalem. It is very po ible that we are not only each of us predestined to heaven, but predestined also each to our own particular place in heaven, that our very mansion is fixed. We know that God has predestinated particular persons to particular offices here on earth, long before their birth: as, for example, in the case of Jeremiah, God saith, “Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee; and before thou camest forth of the womb, I sanctified thee, and ordained thee a prophet unto the nation.” And so with respect also to St. Paul, we are told that it “pleased God to separate him from his mother’s womb, that he might preach Christ among the heathen.” (Gal. i. 15, 16.) Nay, we find that this is really to be the case with respect to the next world, in some cases at least; for example, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory, the apostles shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. xix. 28): a particular office is allotted to them; to a particular office they are predestinated. When the mother of Zebedee’s children prayed that her children might sit, the one on the right hand, and the other on the left, in our Lord’s kingdom of glory, our Lord said, “to sit on my right hand and on my left, is not mine to give.” (Matt. xx. 23.) No. These places are designed for certain persons who are preparing, or shall be prepared, to fill the same. This is already fixed in the counsels of God . These places, therefore, are not mine to give. They are already given. Your place is also designated: prepare for it by doing your duty. We know that some of the saints are predestinated to a mysterious office, the nature of which we cannot understand, but they will judge angels. (1 Cor. vi. 2, 3.) And at the last day shall the King say unto them that are on his right hand, “Come, ye ble ed of my Father , inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (Matt. xxv. 34.) But this predestination to glory is, like our election, conditional. We shall not only be saved, but we shall occupy a predestined post of glory, if we escape condemnation at the day of judgment; not otherwise. The omi ion of all reference to the day of judgment is the vice of the Calvin is tic system. The man, condemned at the day of judgment, will find an addition to his pangs, by knowing the glory to which he had been predestined, had he not perverted his ways. But if our sins are then found blotted out by the blood of the Lamb , we know that a certain place in heaven is designed for us, for which we are shaped and prepared by the circumstances under which we are placed while on earth. (See Bishop Pearson’s 23 and 24 Lectiones “de Prædes tin at i one” in Archdeacon Churton’s edition of his minor Works .)