66. Predestination is an offspring of the faith of the present Church because it is produced from a faith in instantaneous salvation from direct mercy, and from a belief in man's utter impotence and lack of free-will in spiritual affairs; concerning which, see below, n. 68. Predestination follows from these dogmas as one fiery serpent from another, or as one spider from another, as may be seen above. It follows also from the false notion that man is as it were inanimate in the act of conversion, that he is like a stock, and that afterwards he is unaware whether or not he is a stock made alive by grace. For it is said that God gives faith through the hearing of the Word when and where He wills, see n. 11(a); consequently of His good pleasure; likewise that election is solely from the grace of God, independently of any action by man, whether such activity proceeds from natural power or from grace Formula Concordiae, page 821; Appendix, page 182. The works which follow faith as evidences thereof appear on reflection like works of the flesh, while the spirit which performs them does not reveal their origin, but makes them to be, like faith, from grace and thus from good pleasure.
[2] From these considerations it is plain that the dogma of predestination has sprung from the faith of the present Church as a shoot from its root, and I can affirm that it has followed as the almost inevitable conclusion of such a faith. This dogma was first fashioned by the Predestinarians, then by Gottschalk, afterwards by Calvin and his followers, and was at last firmly established by the Synod of Dort, from whence it was conveyed by the Supra and Infra Lapsarians into their own church as the Palladium of religion; or, rather, as the head of Gorgon or Medusa engraved on the shield of Pallas.
[3] Now, what more detestable notion could have been hatched, and what more cruel idea of God believed, than that any part of the human race has been damned as the result of predestination? For it would be a horrible belief that the Lord, Who is Love itself and Mercy itself, willed that a great number of mankind should be born for hell, or that myriads of myriads should be born doomed to destruction; that is, born to be devils and satans; also that out of His Divine Wisdom, which is infinite, He has not and does not make any provision for those who live well and acknowledge God, whereby they might escape everlasting fire and torment; when yet the Lord is the Creator and Saviour of all, and He alone leads everyone, and wills no one's death. What, then, more monstrous could be believed or thought than that a host of nations and peoples, under His direction and oversight, should be delivered by predestination to the devil as his prey, to glut his insatiable appetite? Yet this idea is an offspring of the present Church, which the faith of the New Church abhors as monstrous.
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