Cap. II: three causes of the election-from-foresight error (pride, ignorance, curiosity)
Why do Pelagians, Semipelagians, Scholastics, and so many others agree that election to grace and glory rests on something in our power to have or do? The causes of the error are plain. First: pride and self-love native to the race, which hates having every ground of boasting torn away. Second: thick ignorance of our corruption and of the will captive under sin's yoke. Third: put any cause of election in us, and the hard questions that otherwise force us up to an unsearchable height are easily waved off — and human curiosity hates that height. Once election tracks foresight of some human act, ask why one gets grace and another does not: because one disposed himself by free choice, the other did not. Why one perseveres and another not: because one wills to persevere, the other will not. Why this one was elect to glory before the world, that one not: God foresaw from eternity that one would admit offered grace, use it well, and stay in it by free choice to life's end — the other reject it at once, or at least shake it off before death.
Latin
Jam si quis quaerat unde hoc, quod tanto consensu Pelagiani, Semipelagiani, Scholastici, aliique multi electionem ad gratiam & gloriam inniti volunt alicui rei quod sit penes nos habere vel non habere, facere vel non facere, facile est hujus erroris causas designare. Prima est, innata humano generi superbia & philautia, quae aegerrime patitur omnem gloriandi causam eripi hominibus. Altera, crassa inscitia & ignorantia corruptionis nostrae, & voluntatis sub jugo peccati captivatae. Tertia, quia posita quacunque causa electionis in nobis, facile expediuntur omnes illae difficultates, quas alioqui cogemur ad altitudinem quandam inscrutabilem referre; quod curiositati humanae rationis valde adversatur. Nam posita electione juxta praescientiam alicujus operis humani, si quaeratur cur unus gratiam recipiat, alius non, illico occurrit: Quia unus se disposuit per liberum arbitrium, alius non. Si quaeratur cur unus perseveret in gratia, alius non perseveret, in promptu est responsio, Quia scilicet unus vult perseverare, alter non vult. Denique, si quaeratur cur hic ante constitutionem mundi electus fuerit ad gloriam, ille non fuerit, solvitur hic nodus facillime; Quia Deus praevidit ab aeterno unum admissurum oblatam gratiam, & bene illa usurum, & ad extremum usque vitae ex libero suo arbitrio in gratia permansurum, alterum aut repulsurum ab initio, aut saltem ante obitum excussurum.