with them in the Church, since the mask will at length be torn off, and they will be cast out with disgrace. IX. The same reasoning applies to the exception lately cited, where Christ says, that “none of them is lost, but the son of perdition.”[552] Here is, indeed, some inaccuracy of expression, but the meaning is clear. For he was never reckoned among the sheep of Christ, as being really such, but only as he occupied the place of one. When the Lord declares he was chosen by himself with the other apostles, it only refers to the ministerial office. “Have not I chosen you twelve,” says he, “and one of you is a devil?”[553] That is, he had chosen him to the office of an apostle. But when he speaks of election to salvation, he excludes him from the number of the elect: “I speak not of you all; I know whom I have chosen.”[554] If any one confound the term _election_ in these passages, he will miserably embarrass himself; if he make a proper distinction, nothing is plainer. It is therefore a very erroneous and pernicious assertion of Gregory, that we are only conscious of our calling, but uncertain of our election; from which he exhorts all to fear and trembling, using also this argument, that though we know what we are to-day, yet we know not what we may be in future. But the context plainly shows the cause of his error on this point. For as he suspended election on the merit of works, this furnished abundant reason for discouragement to the minds of men: he could never establish them, for want of leading them from themselves to a confidence in the Divine goodness. Hence believers have some perception of what we stated at the beginning, that predestination, rightly considered, neither destroys nor weakens faith, but rather furnishes its best confirmation. Yet I will not deny, that the Spirit sometimes accommodates his language to the limited extent of our capacity, as when he says, “They shall not be in the assembly of my people, neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel.”[555] As though God were beginning to write in the book of life those whom he numbers among his people, whereas we know from the testimony of Christ, that the names of God’s children have been written in the book of life from the beginning.[556] But these expressions only signify the rejection of those who seemed to be the chief among the elect; as the Psalmist says, “Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous.”[557]