On Judgment Before the Time

St. Jerome  ca. 347-420

While the householder slept the enemy sowed tares among the wheat, and when the servants proposed to go and root them up the master forbade them, reserving for himself the separation of the chaff and the grain. There are vessels of wrath and of mercy which the Apostle speaks of in the house of God. The day then will come when the storehouses of the Church shall be opened and the Lord will bring forth the vessels of wrath; and, as they depart, the saints will say,  They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us (1Jn. 2:19). No one can take to himself the prerogative of Christ, no one before the Day of Judgment can pass judgment upon men. If the Church is already cleansed, what shall we reserve for the Lord? There is a way which seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death (Prov. 14:12). When our judgment is so prone to error, upon whose opinion can we rely? (Dialogue with a Luciferian 22)