PREDELLA 



PRE-EXISTENOE 



387 



Predella (Ital.), the step or ledge sometimes 

 seen at the back of an altar ; also the frieze 

 or band of pictures along the bottom of an altar- 

 piece. 



Predestination, the eternal decree of God, 

 whereby ' the elect ' are foreordained to salvation. 

 The correlative decree, whereby others are held to 

 be foreordained to perdition, is commonly distin- 

 guished by the other term Reprobation. The 

 theory of predestination had its origin in the 

 attempts of theological system to define the rela- 

 tions of the human and the divine will, and to 

 reconcile the phenomena of human freedom with 

 the belief in divine omnipotence. God's absolute 

 will is represented by it as determining the eternal 

 destiny of man, not according to the foreknown 

 character of those whose fate is so determined, but 

 according to God's own mere choice. They who 

 are thus foreordained to eternal life are led to 

 believe and live by the ' irresistible grace ' of the 

 Holy Spirit. In human salvation, therefore, God's 

 will is everything, man's nothing. The principal 

 scripture passage is Rom. viii. 29, 30. It was in 

 the discussions between Pelagius and Augustine 

 that the predestinarian view of the divine 'decree' 

 was first fully evolved ; and since their time 

 opinion in the church has run in two great currents 

 the one perpetuating the influence of Pelagius, 

 who regarded that decree as subordinated to the 

 divine foreknowledge of human character ; the 

 other that of Augustine, who maintained the 

 absolutism of that decree, and its independence of 

 all prior human conditions. Pelagius recognised a 

 possibility of good in human nature; Augustine 

 denied any such possibility apart from the influ- 

 ences of divine grace. The one held that the 

 choice of salvation lay in man's will; the other 

 that man's will had no active freedom or power of 

 choice since the fall. In 529 the system or Augus- 

 tine was established by the Council of Arausio 

 (Orange) as the rule of* orthodoxy in the Western 

 Church ; but the reaction against the strictly logi- 

 cal nature of hU dogma has been perpetually mani- 

 fested by representatives of the more humane, 

 though perhaps less logical doctrine of Pelagins, 

 in every period of the church. Gottschalk, a Ger- 

 man monk of the 9th century, carried the doctrine 

 to its most extreme development. The Thomists 

 (see AQUINAS), as predestinarians, opposed the 

 Scotists, though Thomists insisted that God willed 

 the salvation of all and has provided the means. 

 The reformers Luther, Zwingfi, and Calvin were 

 Augustinians, though the Lutheran doctrine as for- 

 mulated by Melanchthon is plainly different from 

 that of Calvin and the Reformed Church. Some 

 Jesuits are Congruists or modified Thomists; others 

 admit that predestination to grace, but deny that 

 predestination to glory, is irrespective of merit. 

 Jansenism was a revival of AugiistinianiHin. Ar- 

 minius and the Synod of Dort mark a new period 

 of the controversy. With such opposite represen- 

 tatives as Laud and Hales, a large part of the 

 Church of England ' bade John Calvin good-night." 

 The followers of Wesley and Whitefield differed 

 on this great doctrine. Even the Presbyterian 

 churches, or large sections of them, have modified 

 their high predestinarian doctrine in at least the 

 statement of it. The common Augustinian doctrine 

 of the Calvinistic symbolical books is called 'infra- 

 lapsariantsm ;' moderate Calvinists or 'snb-lap- 

 sarians' hold that the fall of man (lapsus) was 

 foreseen but not decreed by God (thus trying to 

 avoid ascribing to God the origin of sin ) ; while 

 extreme predestinarians or ' supra-lapsarians ' affirm 

 that God not only foresaw and permitted, but 

 decreed the fall of man, overruling it for good. 

 Jonathan Edwards (q.v.) is a modern representa- 

 tive of rigid Calvinism. Catholics hold that the 



question is one rather of metaphysics than oi 

 faith. 



See the article WILL and works there quoted, and the 

 articles on Augustine, Pelagius, Calvin, Jansen, &c. ; the 

 theological handbooks of dogmatics; Luthardt, Yam 

 Freien Witten (1863); Forbes, Predestination and Free- 

 will (1878); Canon Mozley, Treatise on the Auyustinian 

 Doctrine of Predestination ( 1878 ). 



Predioables. This is a term in the scholastic 

 logic connected with the scheme of classification. 

 There were five designations employed in classify- 

 ing objects on a systematic plan : geniis, species, 

 difference (differentia), property (proprium), and 

 accident (accidens). The first two Genus and 

 Species name the higher and lower classes of the 

 things classified ; a Genus comprehends several 

 Species. The other three designations Difference, 

 Property, Accident express the attributes that 

 the classification turns upon. The Difference is 

 what distinguishes one species from the other 

 species of the same genus ; as, for example, the 

 peculiarities wherein the cat differs from the tiger, 

 lion, and other species of the genus felts. The 

 Property expresses a distinction that is not ulti- 

 mate, but a consequence of some other peculiarity. 

 Thus, ' the use- of tools ' is a property of man, and 

 not a difference, for it flows from other assignable 

 attributes of his iKxlily and mental organisation, 

 or from the specific differences that characterise 

 him. The Accident is something not bound up 

 with the nature of the species, but chancing to be 

 present in it. Thus, the high value of gold is r.n 

 Accident; gold would be gold though it were plenty 

 and cheap. See CATEGORIES, GENERALISATION. 



Pre-emption. In the United States, under 

 the Pre-emi)tion Act of 1841, an actual settler on 

 the public lands enjoys the right, in preference to 

 any one else, of purchasing at a fixed price the land 

 on which he has settled, to the extent of not more 

 than 160 acres. In the case of ' offered ' lands the 

 settler must file his ' declaratory statement ' within 

 thirty days after entry, and within a year proof 

 must be made of settlement and cultivation, and 

 the land thereupon paid for, at 81 "25 per acre if 

 outside the limits of a railroad grant, or $2'50 if 

 uitliin such limits. If the tract settled on is ' un- 

 olfered,' an approved plan of the township must 

 first be received at the district land office ; the 

 statement must then be filed within three months, 

 and final proof and payment be made within thirty 

 months thereafter. Title to land is thus obtained 

 much sooner (possibly within six months) than 

 under the homestead laws (see HOMESTEAD) ; but 

 a homestead settler may at any time after six 

 months purchase the land under the pre-emption 

 laws ; as, on the other hand, the holder of a pre- 

 emption claim may convert it into a homestead. 



Pre-established Harmony. See LEIB- 

 NITZ. 



Pre-existence, DOCTRINE OF. The notion 

 that human souls were in existence before the 

 generation of the bodies with which they are 

 united in this world was anciently, and is still, 

 widely spread throughout the East. The Greek 

 philosophers, too, especially those who held the 

 doctrine of transmigration, as the Pythagoreans, 

 Empedoeles, and even Plato if with him trans- 

 migration is not simply a symbolical myth were 

 familiar with the conception. Plato taught that 

 all human souls had existed from the very begin- 

 ning, still and silent, in the realm of potentiality, 

 and Origen introduced the theory into Christian 

 theology. The dogma of the assumption of the 

 divine and human nature in Christ offers a grave 

 difficulty in the relations between the two natures 

 in pre-existence. Yet the belief continued to sur- 

 vive, and we find it in Scotus Erigena, in the 



