im resolve to
punish the others by the damnation that they deserved. That is why, with
the Schoolmen, only the saved were called _Praedestinati_ and the damned
were called _Praesciti_. It must be admitted that some Infralapsarians and
others speak sometimes of predestination to damnation, following the
example of Fulgentius and of St. Augustine himself: but that signifies the
same as destination to them, and it avails nothing to wrangle about words.
That pretext, notwithstanding, was in time past used for maltreating that
Godescalc who caused a stir about the middle of the ninth century, and who
took the name of Fulgentius to indicate that he followed that author.

83. As for the destination of the elect to eternal life, the Protestants,
as well as those of the Roman Church, dispute much among themselves as to
whether election is absolute or is founded on the prevision of final living
faith. Those who are called Evangelicals, that is, those of the Augsburg
Confession, hold the latter opinion: they believe that one need not go into
the hidden causes of election while one may find a manifest cause of it
shown in Holy Scripture, which is faith in Jesus Christ; and it appears to
them that the prevision of the cause is also the cause of the prevision of
the effect. Those who are called Reformed are of a different opinion: they
admit that salvation comes from faith in Jesus Christ, but they observe
that often the cause anterior to the effect in execution is posterior in
intention, as when the cause is the means and the effect is the end. Thus
the question is, whether faith or salvation is anterior in the intention of
God, that is, whether God's design is rather to save man than to make him a
believer.

84. Hence we see that the question between the Supralapsarians and the
Infralapsarians in part, and again between them and the Evangelicals, comes
back to a right conception of the order that is in God's decrees. Perhaps
one might put an end to this dispute at once by saying that, properly
speaking, all the decrees of God that are here concerned are simultaneous,
not only in respect of time, as everyone agrees, but also _in signo
rationis_, or in the order of nature. And indeed, the Formula of Concord,
building upon some passages of St. Augustine, comprised in the same [168]
Decree of Election salvation and the means that conduce to it. To
demonstrate this synchronism of destinations or of decrees with which we
are concerned,