The Works Of James Arminius Vol 3

Predestination, therefore, is an act of the divine good-pleasure, by which God, from eternity, prepared the plenitude of His blessings, in Christ, for those, who should be heirs of salvation, to the praise of His glorious grace. The word eujokia or good-pleasure, is here used, correctly, according to the Scriptural sense, for the particle eu+ refers to the favourable and benevolent inclination of God towards its object, not to the precise and determinate will of God in reference to any of His own purposes, as the word good-pleasure is used by the school-men, when they distinguish the will of God into his revealed will and the will of His good-pleasure. Prepared in Christ.] No blessings are prepared in Christ for men, except those which are adapted to sinners. Christ himself; the saviour of men, is called Jesus only because "He shall save His people from their sins," (Matt. i.21). No one is blessed in Christ, if he is not a believer;

"So then, they, which be of faith, are blessed with faithful Abraham" (Gal. iii.9.)

For those who should be heirs of salvation]. Salvation itself; and the inheritance of eternal life, are comprehended in the fullness of those blessings, which God has prepared in Christ. Therefore those, for whom that fullness was prepared, should have been otherwise described. For there is an absurdity in the statement, -- "predestination is an act, by which God has prepared salvation for those who shall be heirs of salvation." For they are made heirs of salvation according to which, the inheritance, comprehended in the fullness of those blessings, was prepared. Persons, as one part of the material or object of predestination, are not to be described by the divine things, which were prepared for them in that predestination, and which constitute the other part of the material or object of predestination. The persons are more correctly described by Sohnius, thus: "Predestination unto life, or election, is that by which God decreed, from eternity, to justify and to accept unto eternal life, believers, or the faithful, to whom he decreed to teach faith." To the praise of His glorious grace]. The Scriptures recognize the grace of God as the cause and end of predestination, only as mercy is united with it, and as it is exercised towards sinners and the miserable.