We can see, therefore, that Irenæus could not have believed that the salvation of the elect was accomplished by the mere will of God concerning the individuals, either in opposition to their own will or by constraining their wills; although he asserted very fully the necessity of divine grace to cause our freewill to take a right direction(379).
And yet he was a believer in divine _predestination_. He believed that some were predestined to have the gift of incorruptibility imparted to them, (which we have seen to mean the Divine Spirit, by which we become the adopted children of God,) and thus to have life in the sight of God, whereas they were originally in a state of death(380). But he no where implies that they could not lose this gift, but the contrary(381). So again he teaches that God intentionally delivers some men over to unbelief without a trial. But who are they? Those who, he foresees, will not believe(382). He was of opinion that there is a predestined _number_ of those who shall be saved eternally, and that when that number is completed, the end of the world will come(383): the very idea embodied in our burial service(384). But he no where hints that the _individuals_ were predestined, as well as the number, or that those who were predestined to have the gift of immortality, were all in the number of those who should be saved eternally: so that the more we examine, the more clear does it become that he would have been opposed to _Calvinistic_ predestination.
Who, then, are those who are predestined to the gift of immortality? The manner in which he speaks of _election_ will enable us to answer this question. In explaining the parable of the vineyard let out to husbandmen, he says,(385) that, after the first set of husbandmen had been cast out, the vineyard was "no longer fenced in, but opened to all the world, and the tower of _the election_ exalted every where, beautiful to look on; for," said he, "_the Church_ is every where distinctly visible, and every where is there a winepress dug, and every where are those who receive the Spirit." Here we find election commensurate with the visible Church (indeed he knows no other): and so he proceeds further on(386) to speak of "the Word of God, who _elected_ the patriarchs _and us_;" just as in the passage before cited(387) he had said, "_We_ who were not as yet were predestined to be;" that is, spiritually, through redemption. And so in another place he speaks of the Church as "the congregation of God; which God, that is the Son, has himself collected by himself(388);" and in another passage, "the wages of Christ are men collected out of various and differing nations into one company of faith(389)."