Another feature of Stoicism which has exerted great influence on the Church of Christ is its fatalism. This has been developed into a system of Christian doctrine, which we shall designate sufficiently, when we call it Calvinism; though it existed, in a considerable degree, before Calvin; and though, in the system, the necessitarian element is a variable quantity. The Supralapsarians carry their belief so far as to hold that GOD decreed man’s fall into sin, with all the dreadful consequences. Others, with less of this fatalism in their faith, restrict the decrees of the Almighty to the disposal of man after the fall. St Augustin was considerably influenced by doctrines bearing a resemblance to certain phases of Calvinism: but he argued stoutly for man’s freedom of will. He was essentially a Latin in his scholarship, and did not draw his information from the Hebrew and Greek. His views were tinged with the fatalism of the Stoical philosophy which had widely influenced those with whom he came in contact in early life. With these views he came to the perusal of the Epistle to the Romans, and thought he read there a confirmation of them. Respecting the 9th chapter of that Epistle, Dodwell says[68], “St Paul, being bred a Pharisee, spake there and is to be interpreted according to the doctrine of the Pharisees[69] concerning fate, which they had borrowed from the Stoics.” St Augustin and Prosper and Fulgentius understood St Paul to mean almost the same predestination that the Stoic belief would imply. Yet they did not contradict and explain away other parts of Scripture, nor utterly ignore reason and common sense. The same difficulty met them that had occurred to the Stoic Chrysippus. How was this absolute predestination to be reconciled with human freedom? Cicero tells us (_De Fato_, VII. 11) that Chrysippus laboured painfully to show how all things were ordered by fate, and yet that there was something in ourselves; and tried to reconcile the inconsistencies of the system by saying that while fate predisposed, the human will determined. So, naturally the reasoning would occur that, if GOD has predestined us to be saved, there is no need for striving; if he has not, there is no use in any effort we can make. St Augustin, however, does not seem to set before men such absolute fatalism as this; at least, he strongly impresses on us the fact, that GOD is willing to receive every sinner coming to Him; and gives us our choice of good and evil. The Jansenists adopted and upheld similar views to these on predestination. So did Luther and Beza. Calvin advanced more decidedly necessitarian views, and many of his followers to the present day have set out with eternal fate as the foundation of their creed, and have interpreted all other doctrines so as to harmonize with this. The essential tenet of Calvin was that GOD, from no other motive than His good pleasure and freewill, has predestinated from all