from which they cannot fall away, and so the predestinate, being now righteous and having twofold grace, are bound by a twofold bond.
But here the objection is made that, in view of the things said above, we ought to grant that at one and the same time the same person may be righteous and unrighteous, one of the faithful and an unbeliever, a true Christian and a heretic, in abounding grace and without grace[1] (not to use other such contradictory expressions), it follows that there is a manifest contradiction. In this objection it is said that it should be granted that the same person is at one and the same time both righteous and unrighteous; but it is inconsistent with the truth, that the same person is at one and the same time both righteous and unrighteous in respect to the same thing. Even as contraries cannot at one and the same time inhere in the same person in respect to the same thing, so the names given above are, on account of their ambiguity, not contrary one to the other, for, according to the Philosopher[2] only one thing can be opposed to one thing, and so the same man is righteous by virtue of predestinating grace and unrighteous by virtue of destructive vice, as was Peter in his denial of Christ and Paul in his persecution of him. For they were at that time not fallen away from the love of predestination. Consequently they were, in view of this love, in grace and therefore righteous; and because they were at that time in sin they were deprived of fluent temporal grace and therefore were unrighteous. And if the inference be drawn: therefore they were at that time not righteous and consequently were not righteous at all, the inference is drawn by denying the first consequence. For a consequence which is drawn by proceeding from a denial to a negation does not hold except with modification as follows in this proposition, namely:
