This is the moral use St. Paul makes of the doctrine of predestination. And it is to do egregious violence to his general teaching to suggest that he entertained the idea of persons created with an opposite predestination--to eternal misery. St. Paul is dealing here only with what God has already shown of His purpose in the actual vocation of some. Ultimately {320} he assures us all men share the divine purpose for good[22]. But, on the other hand, he never suggests that they may not resist it, or allows us to say that so far as concerns themselves they may not defeat it. [1] iii. 17-19; v. 29. [2] xxiv. 5-7. [3] i.e. Messiah, son of David, son of Pherez (Ruth iv. 18). [4] _Bereshith Rabbah_, xii. 5. [5] Isa. lxv. 17, lxvi. 22; cf. 2 Pet. iii. 13; Rev. xxi. 1; Acts iii. 21. [6] _Book of Enoch_, xlv. 4, 5. [7] St. Paul's word 'creation' (verses 30-22) is used in St. Paul's sense in Wisd. xvi. 34, xix. 6. [8] 2 Pet. i. 16-19. [9] Cf. Latham, _Service of Angels_ (Cambridge, 1894). [10] Eph. ii. 5. [11] Rom. viii. 24. [12] 1 Cor. xv. 2; 2 Cor. ii. 15. (The present tense in both cases.) [13] Rom. v. 9, 10; xiii. 11: cf. 1 Tim. iv. 16; 2 Tim. iv. 18. [14] Andrew Murray's _With Christ in the School of Prayer_ (Nisbet 1891), p. 71. [15] 2 Cor. xii. 8: cf. Phil. i. 22, 'What I shall choose I wot not.' [16] Verse 34. [17] Not 'the saints' in the Greek. [18] 1 Tim. ii. 1. [19] Rom. xi. 32; 1 Tim. ii. 4. [20] Amos iii. 2: cf. Ps. i. 6; Hos. xiii. 5; Matt. vii. 23. [21] Cf. Hort on 1 Pet. pp. 19, 80. [22] See especially Rom. xi. 29-33. {321} DIVISION III. § 10. CHAPTER VIII. 31-39. _Christian assurance._