Cap. 6 Arg. 4: Second and third inconveniences—preterition and prevenient grace in Paul
Second—and every orthodox writer shrinks from this—it would also follow that the reason for predestination and preterition must be found in people's different qualities or acts. For the reason of predestination, which is the preparation of grace, cannot differ from the reason of grace, which is the gift itself. So anyone who teaches that the reason grace is given or withheld must be sought in human dispositions or operations must of necessity seek the reason of predestination and preterition there too. Third, it would follow that God breaks the law he himself set when he as good as forces this grace on those who have put an obstacle in its way—which the Apostle himself most humbly confesses happened to Paul: caught in open sin and rushing against Christ, God mercifully called him to the knowledge and grace of Christ. Fulgentius puts it finely in On the Incarnation and Grace, chapter 18: how God's mercy goes before us, and what sort it finds when it does, the Teacher of the nations shows not in someone else but in himself, saying, I who was formerly a blasphemer, and so on (1 Timothy 1:13). The Father hints that every mortal is refractory until preventing grace has brought him under.
Latin
Secundo (quod omnes orthodoxi aversantur) sequeretur etiam praedestinationis & praeteritionis rationem ex hominum diversis qualitatibus, aut actibus esse assignandam. Ratio siquidem praedestinationis, quae est gratiae praeparatio, non potest diversa esse a ratione gratiae, quae est ipsa collatio. Qui igitur gratiae datae aut non datae rationem ab humanis dispositionibus aut operationibus petendam docet, idem praedestinationis & praeteritionis rationem inde petat est necesse. Tertio, sequeretur Deum legi a se positae contravenire, quando ponentibus obicem gratiae hanc gratiam quasi ingerit; quod Paulo factum ipse Apostolus humillime confitetur: quem in flagranti peccato deprehensum, & contra Christum ruentem, ad cognitionem & gratiam Christi Deus misericorditer vocavit. De quo praeclare Fulgentius, De Incarn. & Grat. cap. 18. In quo Dei misericordia nos praeveniat, vel praeveniens quales inveniat, non in quolibet alio, sed in se ipso nobis gentium Magister ostendit, dicens, Qui prius fui blasphemus, &c. Innuit scilicet Pater, omnes mortales esse refractarios, donec gratia praeveniens eos subjugaverit.