Prescience.

If all transgressions here should have their pay,
What need there then be of a reckoning day?
If God should punish no sin here of men,
His providence who would not question then?

Predestination is the cause alone
Of many standing, but of fall to none.

When I shall sin, pardon my trespass here;
For once in hell, none knows remission there.

God pardons those who do through frailty sin,
But never those that persevere therein.

A man's transgressions God does then remit,
When man He makes a penitent for it.

Art thou not destin'd? then with haste go on
To make thy fair predestination:
If thou can'st change thy life, God then will please
To change, or call back, His past sentences.