let us attend to the subject itself. A difficult question was raised—Whether it was a just procedure in God to favour with his grace certain particular persons. This Paul could have decided by a single word, if he had pleaded the consideration of works. Why, then, does he not do this, but rather continue his discourse involved in the same difficulty? Why, but from necessity? for the Holy Spirit, who spoke by his mouth, never laboured under the malady of forgetfulness. Without any evasion or circumlocution, therefore, he answers, that God favours his elect because he will, and has mercy because he will. For this oracle, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy,”[484] is equivalent to a declaration, that God is excited to mercy by no other motive than his own will to be merciful. The observation of Augustine therefore remains true, “that the grace of God does not find men fit to be elected, but makes them so.” IX. We shall not dwell upon the sophistry of Thomas Aquinas, “that the foreknowledge of merits is not the cause of predestination in regard to the act of him who predestinates; but that with regard to us, it may in some sense be so called, according to the particular consideration of predestination; as when God is said to predestinate glory for man according to merits, because he decreed to give him grace by which glory is merited.” For since the Lord allows us to contemplate nothing in election but his mere goodness, the desire of any one to see any thing more is a preposterous disposition. But if we were inclined to a contention of subtilty, we should be at no loss to refute this petty sophism of Aquinas. He contends that glory is in a certain sense predestinated for the elect according to their merits, because God predestinates to them the grace by which glory is merited. What if I, on the contrary, reply, that predestination to grace is subordinate to election to life, and attendant upon it? that grace is predestinated to those to whom the possession of glory has been already assigned; because it pleases the Lord to conduct his children from election to justification? For hence it will follow, that predestination to glory is rather the cause of predestination to grace, than the contrary. But let us dismiss these controversies; they are unnecessary with those who think they have wisdom enough in the word of God. For it was truly remarked by an ancient ecclesiastical writer, That they who ascribe God’s election to merits, are wiser than they ought to be.