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St. Augustine wrote this work in the closing years of a life busied with three great controversies--Manichaeism, Donatism, Pelagianism, the last ending with the Contra Julianum and the Opus imperfectum contra Julianum.
Chapter 4 (. . .) Of the number of the elect and predestined, even those who have led the very worst kind of life are led to repentance through the goodness of God, through whose patience they were not taken from this life in the commission of crimes; in order to show them and their co-heirs the depth of evil from which the grace of God delivers man. Not one of. them perishes, regardless of his age at death; never be it said that a man predestined to life would be permitted to end his life without the sacrament of the Mediator. Because of these men, our Lord says: 'This is the will of him who sent me, the Father, that I should lose nothing of what he has given me.'11 The other mortals, not of this number, who are of the same mass as these, but have been made vessels of wrath, are born for their advantage. God creates none of them rashly or fortuitously, and He also knows what good may be made from them, since He works good in the very gift of human nature in them, and through them He adorns the order of the present world. He leads none of them to the wholesome and spiritual repentance by which a man in Christ is reconciled to God, whether His patience in their regard be more generous or not unequal. Therefore, though all men, of the same mass of perdition and condemnation, unrepentant according to the hardness of their heart, treasure up wrath to themselves on the day of wrath when each will be repaid according to his works, God through His merciful goodness leads some of them to repentance, and according to his judgment does not lead others. Our Lord says He has the power to lead and draw men: 'No men can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him.'12 (. . .) 11 John 6.59.12 John 6.44.
Predestination is a protestant heresy.