β) St. Augustine aroused suspicion in the camp of the Semipelagians by his general teaching on predestination and more particularly by his interpretation of 1 Tim. II, 4. The great Bishop of Hippo interprets this Pauline text in no less than four different ways. In his treatise _De Spiritu et Litera_ he describes the divine _voluntas salvifica_ as strictly universal in the physical sense.(484) In his _Enchiridion_ he restricts it to the predestined.(485) In his _Contra Iulianum_ he says: “No one is saved unless God so wills.”(486) In his work _De Correptione et Gratia_: “God wills all men to be saved, because He makes us to will this, just as He sent the spirit of His Son [into our hearts], crying: Abba, Father, that is, making us to cry, Abba, Father.”(487) How did St. Augustine come to interpret this simple text in so many different ways? Some think he chose this method to overwhelm the Pelagians and Semipelagians with Scriptural proofs. But this polemical motive can hardly have induced him to becloud an obvious text and invent interpretations which never occurred to any other ecclesiastical writer before or after his time. The conundrum can only be solved by the assumption that Augustine believed in a plurality of literal senses in the Bible and held that over and above (or notwithstanding) the _sensus obvius_ every exegete is free to read as much truth into any given passage as possible, and that such interpretation lay within the scope of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost quite as much as the _sensus obvius_. In his _Confessions_(488) he actually argues in favor of a _pluralitas sensuum_. He was keen enough to perceive, however, that if a Scriptural text is interpreted in different ways, the several constructions put upon it must not be contradictory. As he was undoubtedly aware of the distinction between _voluntas antecedens_ and _consequens_,(489) his different interpretations of 1 Tim. II, 4 can be reconciled by assuming that he conceived God’s _voluntas salvifica_ as _antecedens_ in so far as it is universal, and as _consequens_ in so far as it is particular. St. Thomas solves the difficulty in a similar manner: “The words of the Apostle, ‘God will have all men to be saved, etc.,’ can be understood in three ways: First, by a restricted application, in which case they would mean, as Augustine says, ‘God wills all men to be saved that are saved, not because there is no man whom he does not wish to be saved, but because there is no man saved whose salvation He does not will.’ Secondly, they can be understood as applying to every class of individuals, not of every individual of each class; in which case they mean that ‘God wills some men of every class and condition to be saved, males and females, Jews and Gentiles, great and small, but not all of every condition.’ Thirdly, according to the Damascene, they are understood of the antecedent will of God, not of the consequent will. The distinction