Predisposition

“ Surely one needs be no great philosopher to see that all which is wanting to give authority to the argument from prophecy, is, That we have reason to admit the delivery of a prediction—that we have reason to admit the completion of it—and that we have reason to think the agreement between the prediction and the event not fortuitous. ”

“ For it everywhere proves the growth of predication to have been the same in the race as we have found it to be in the individual. Therefore, as in the latter case, so in the former, I now ask—Will any opponent venture to affirm that pre-conceptual ideation is indicative of judgment? Or, which is the same thing, will he venture to deny that there is an all-important distinction between predication as receptual and predication as conceptual? ”

“ Those who will persevere, will persevere, and God foresees; and as to the proof from predestination, that is, that he who predestines the end necessarily predestines the adequate means, I can more readily imagine logical consequences adverse to the sense of responsibility than Christian consequences, such as an individual may apply for his own edification. ”

“ We must have learned to predict the past, so to speak, before we can predict the future; because the first use of the observed relations among fulfilled facts is to teach us by the anterior succession what the future succession will be. ”

“ It must be allowed that a predication, or proposition, is intended to mark some portion of the order either of our sensations or of our ideas, i.e., some part of the coexistences or sequences which take place either in our minds, or in what we term the external world. ”

“ First, then, there are certain respects in which I fully agree with recent pragmatism. I agree that every opinion expresses an attitude of the will, a preparedness for action, a determination to guide a plan of action in accordance with an idea. Whoever asserts anything about the way out of the woods, or about the cause and possible cure of a toothache, defines a course of action in accordance with some purpose, and amongst other things predicts the {146} possible outcome of that course of action. ”

“ I abhor the doctrine of predestination, a doctrine, upon the supposition of which, if one could possibly suppose it for a moment, (call it election, reprobation, or what you please, for all comes to the same thing,) one might say to our adversary, the devil, “Thou fool, why dost thou roar about any longer? Thy lying in wait for souls is as needless and useless as our preaching. Hearest thou not, that God hath taken thy work out of thy hands; and that he doeth it much more effectually? Thou, with all thy principalities and powers, canst only so assault that we may resist thee ”

“ Through the will, therefore, and only through the will, is the future embraced in the present; though the will alone is the conception of the future, as such, made possible, and the will not only embraces, but also determines the future. ”

“ To prove, in short, that our science, and our knowledge of the particular case, render us competent to predict the future, we must show that they would have enabled us to predict the present and the past. ”

“ For example, if you are convinced at this moment that it is night, do not change your opinion, if that seems best to you, but abide by it and say that you ought to abide by your decisions! Do you not wish to make your beginning and your foundation firm, that is, to consider whether your decision is sound or unsound, and only after you have done that proceed to rear thereon the structure of your determination and your firm resolve? ”

“ Are we simply separating and contrasting two sides of everybody’s opinion? To which one replies that we are not discussing what we know and believe about the relations of past, present, and future, or of the relation of cause and effect to each other in time. [11] We all know the present depends for its causes on the past, and the future depends for its causes upon the present. ”

“ In the development of time into causation, persistence becomes state and change becomes event. In the development of judgment into conception, consciousness becomes recollection and choice becomes inference. ”

“ Were we cursed with prevision, could we know how, when the idle trifle of the present hour shall have been forged into a link of the past, it will stretch out and bind captive the whole future in its bonds, we should be paralysed, hopeless, powerless, old ere we were young! ”

“ And we seem unable to clear ourselves from the old dilemma, If you predicate what is different, you ascribe to the subject what it is not; and if you predicate what is not different, you say nothing at all. ”

“ PREDESTINATION. Synonyms:
Predestination is a previous determination or decision, which, in the divine action, reaches on from eternity. Fate is heathen, an irresistible, irrational power determining all events with no manifest connection with reason or righteousness; necessity is philosophical, a blind something in the nature of things binding the slightest action or motion in the chain of inevitable, eternal sequence; foreordination and predestination are Christian, denoting the rational and righteous order or decree of the supreme [283] and all-wise God. ”

“ Of course there would have to be "preparations". (If you have "to prepare" to be a hairdresser, it stands to reason you would have to ready yourself for this.) Confronting, facts you can die only once. ”

“ And with respect to God, predestination is that efficient determination which he has maintained from eternity, respecting the control, direction, and destiny of the laws, events, and creatures of the universe.—That God hath a predetermination of this kind, there can be no doubt ”

“ Thou hadst asked about fate, predestination and ... Thou hadst asked about fate, predestination and will. Fate and predestination consist in the necessary and indispensable relationships which exist in the realities of things. These relationships have been placed in the realities of existent beings through the power of creation and every incident is a consequence of the necessary relationship. For example, God hath created a relation between the sun and the terrestrial globe that the rays of the sun should shine and the soil should yield. ”

“ O my soul, prepare provision in abundance, prepare not little, while thou art yet alive, and while thy hand has yet strength, because the journey is too great for thee. And say not: ‘I shall prepare provision to-morrow’; for the day has declined, and thou knowest not what the next day may bring forth. Know likewise that yesterday shall never come back, and that whatever thou hast done therein is weighed, numbered, and counted. ”

“ How can I dare to form a scheme, when I am aware that the chance of success must be so strong against me? But if you will tell me that there can be a gleam of hope, I will obey any commands that you can put upon me in any way that you may point out. ”

“ If we have believed in it, we stand prepared. If we have conceived our plan of action in purity of heart, we shall be guided to discern the means which may serve us. You will know speedily what it is that has prompted you to move. ”

“ We see that every prediction was literally fulfilled, and when we take a scrutinizing retrospect, we discover that every command, every promise and every threatening, have been so plainly set forth by the inspiration of Heaven, that all those who heard, evidently understood at the time, so that ignorance can never be plead by them in bar of Justice. ”

“ For to what end is the prediction delivered in obscure and enigmatic terms, if the purpose of the inspirer was that the subject of the prediction should be immediately, and in all its circumstances, precisely apprehended? Why, then, is any distinction made between Prophecy, and History? The mode of writing clearly demonstrates, that something, 226 for a time at least, was meant to be concealed from us: and then, if men will attempt, out of season, to penetrate this mystery, what wonder if mistake be the fruit of their presumption? ”

“ If we regard the fulfilment of our purpose as contingent upon any circumstances, past, present, or future, we are not making use of first cause; we have descended to the level of secondary causation, which is the region of doubts, fears, and limitations, all of which we are impressing upon the universal subjective mind with the inevitable result that it will build up corresponding external conditions. ”

“ The conviction, arising from experience, that the future is determined by the present and correspondingly the present by the past, is often phrased differently by saying that the present causally determines the future. ”

“ In judgment we divide the object of a perception into a subject, from which we as yet exclude a predicate; then into such predicate; and, finally, into the third mental representation, that of the copula by which the predicate is united again with the subject. ”

“ At other times, without such a distinct "act of will", and without any observable change in the attractiveness of either alternative, we simply find, after awhile, that a decision has emerged, and that we now know what we are going to do. ”

“ He spoke this scornfully, yet not without a sort of curiosity, and a wish to receive an answer; for the desire of prying into futurity frequently has some influence even on the minds of those who disavow all belief in the possibility of such predictions. ”

“ 22 During many ages, the prediction, as it is usual, contributed to its own accomplishment. ”

“ The present is determined by our past actions, and the future by the present. ”

“ The purpose of such an advent must be to communicate blessings which the world could not otherwise attain. How numerous are the external evidences which the world could not otherwise attain. How numerous are the external evidences which the world exhibits, in proof that now is the time of it! ”

“ No matter whether we live to see them fulfilled or fall to sleep before they are fulfilled, we must live prepared for the events that will take place preparatory to the coming of the Son of man.
I ask the people what they are willing to do? "All we want to know is what we should do." ”

“ It is an imperfect and partial preparation in this respect, which so often renders the manner awkward and embarrassed, and the discourse obscure and perplexed.11 But when the preparation is faithful, the speaker feels at home; being under no anxiety respecting the ideas or the order of their succession, he has the more ready control of his person, his eye, and his hand, and the more fearlessly gives up his mind to its own action and casts himself upon the current. Uneasiness and constraint are the inevitable attendants of unfaithful preparation, and they are fatal to success. ”

“ Every object has its appointed number of attributes, neither more nor less. To every question, whether it is this or that, there is, for any one who is thoroughly acquainted with it, a decisive Yes possible, or a decisive No,—so that there is an end of all doubt or hesitation on the subject. ”

“ The first consists in relating the cause of events either to a superior will which directs from on high the course of things, and which is God; or to a human will momentarily placed in such a manner as to act upon events by its own free will, like God. ”

“ For preaching is not a profession; but a work of divine appointment, to be rightly discharged only by him who receives a commission from God, and fulfils it as under his eye, and in dependence upon his promise, Lo, I am with you alway.”
PREDESTINATION, according to some, is a judgment, or decree of God, by which he has resolved, from all eternity, to save a certain number of persons, hence named elect. Others define it, a decree to give faith in Jesus Christ to a certain number of men, and to leave the rest to their own malice and hardness of heart. ”

“ The Theory of Hypothetical Predestination post Praevisa Merita.—Predestination, like God's will to save all men, is based on a hypothetical decree. Those only are predestined to eternal happiness who shall merit it as a reward. ”

“ Let the earth keep silence before him, and do you give all diligence to make your calling and election, sure.—Get some solid evidence of your predestination to eternal life, so as to render it unquestionable, and your labour shall not be in vain in the Lord. ”

“ In every case the practical aim of knowledge is prediction, and we have good reasons to regard as the defining characteristics of knowledge those properties of it which make prediction possible. „Savoir pour prévoir. ”

“ If they have a case to decide, they begin by acquiring the most vivid and distinct perception of it, and we see before our eyes the rise and progress of the whole affair, and all the changes it undergoes. ”

“ Should this person predict events so improbable and so beyond all human intelligence as to be equivalent to an equal interruption of experience as to the laws of mind, as time developed the fulfillment of these predictions, the same belief would be induced in the authority of the person thus supernaturally endowed. ”

“ But it must be acknowledged that a predestinarian scheme, leading the cogitation upward to dwell upon "the heavenly things before the foundation of the world," opens a vista of contemplation and poetical framework, with which none other in the whole cycle of human thought can compare. ”

“ Let some one call you, if possible, at the time which you have determined before God that you will rise; or procure, what is still better, an alarum, by which you may regulate almost to a minute the time when you wish to rise. ”

“ THE PREDICATE OBJECTIVE 487. Verbs of choosing, calling, naming, making, and thinking may take two objects referring to the same person or thing.
The first of these is the direct object, and the second, which completes the sense of the predicate, is called a predicate objective (§ 104) .
The predicate objective is often called the complementary object or the objective attribute.
The people have elected Chamberlain governor. Peter calls Richard my shadow. The court has appointed you the child’s guardian. John thinks himself a hero. 488. An adjective may serve as a predicate objective. ”

“ But whatsoever things are bound by the prophetic order of the fates, whatsoever are shadowed in the secrets of the divine plan, whatsoever are foreseen and fixed in the course of the destinies, no change of what is transient shall cancel these things. ”