According to this abominable heresy, the sin of Adam and the spiritual ruin which it entailed upon his descendants are attributable solely to the will of God. God produces in the reprobate a “semblance of faith,” only to make them all the more deserving of damnation. In the beginning of the seventeenth century Arminius and a few other theologians of the Dutch Reformed Church, repelled by Calvin’s _decretum horribile_, ascribed the positive reprobation of the damned to original sin (_lapsus_). These writers, called Infralapsarians or Postlapsarians, were opposed by the strict school of Calvinist divines under the leadership of Gomarus. The great Calvinist Synod of Dordrecht (1618-1619) condemned the principles of Arminius, and subsequently his adherents were driven from Holland. The Catholic Church condemned Predestinarianism as early as 529 at the Second Council of Orange, which among other things declared: “We not only refuse to believe that some men are by divine power predestined to evil, but if there be any who hold such a wicked thing, we condemn them with utter detestation.”(653) The Tridentine Council defined against Calvin: “If any one saith that the grace of justification is attained to only by those who are predestined unto life, but that all others who are called, are called indeed, but receive not grace, as being by divine power predestined unto evil; let him be anathema.”(654) Calvinism, both supra- and infra-lapsarian, is easily refuted from Revelation and Tradition. a) It runs counter to all those texts of the Bible which assert the universality of God’s saving will,(655) the bestowal of sufficient grace on all sinners,(656) and the divine attribute of holiness.(657) Calvin endeavored to prove his blasphemous doctrine chiefly from the ninth chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.(658) His disciple Beza relied mainly on 1 Pet. II, 7 sq.: “But to them that believe not, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner: and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of scandal, to them who stumble at the word, neither do believe, whereunto also they are set,”(659) _i.e._, according to Beza, predestined not to believe.(660) But this interpretation is obviously wrong. For we know from Is. VIII, 14(661) and Matth. XXI, 44,(662) that those who fall on this stone are ground to powder as a punishment for the sin of unbelief.(663) b) The Fathers, especially those of the East, are unanimous in upholding the orthodox teaching of the Church. The only one whom adherents of Predestinarianism have dared to claim is St. Augustine.