Mercy is the will to relieve another’s suffering. Justice is the will to give another person what he deserves. Sometimes, giving him what he deserves makes him miserable. Moreover, even apart from punishment, people do suffer. These facts make it difficult to see how mercy and justice can coexist. Yet according to the Tradition, they do. The claim is not merely that God is sometimes just and sometimes merciful – but that He is always both in every act at every time. How could this even be possible?

This chapter discusses the positive content of the Laudians’ position on predestination. Particular attention is paid to seven authors prepared to deal with this topic in extenso – Edward Kellett, Robert Shelford, Thomas Chown, Thomas Hoard, Robert Jackson, Edmund Reeve and Robert Skinner, not to mention the anonymous J. A. of Ailward. The latter attempted to attribute an essentially Arminian version of the theology of grace to the English church though the appropriation of what at the time was regarded as an essentially heretical work, which survived only in the refutation of it by the Edwardian protestant, and future puritan, Robert Crowley. This chapter concerns itself with the relation between divine foreknowledge and the double decree. These discussions were often conducted in terms of the divine attributes, chief amongst them divine mercy and justice. On this topic particular attention is given to the work of Thomas Jackson and Robert Shelford.

Chapter 11 examines Augustine’s biblical acceptance, articulation, and defense of the miserable resurrection of the damned to eternal death. While admitting the difficult, but candid words of God in Scripture about the eternality of hell, Augustine refuses to subvert the Christocentric standard of final judgment by merely human preferences and sentiments. Particularly in Book 21 of De ciuitate dei, Augustine argues not only for the possibility of the fleshly resurrection to eternal punishment, but also for its suitability. He recognizes that it is not only the denizens of the earthly city which protests against its own self-selected end, but also certain citizens of the pilgrim city of God whose hearts still bear marks of the earthly city’s love. For Augustine, the God of the resurrection will forever lavish his love, his justice, and perhaps even his mercy upon the resurrected damned, who have eternally and impenitently alienated themselves from him.