And God made humans also upright, with the same power of free choice, as animals of earth, yet worthy of heaven if they adhered to the author of their being, but, by the same token, destined, if they abandoned God, for a misery appropriate to their kind of nature. Now God foreknew that human beings would sin by breaking God’s law through their apostasy from God; and yet, as in the case of the angels, God did not deprive them of the power of free choice, foreseeing, at the same time, the good that he was to bring out of human evil. For out of this mortal progeny, so rightly and justly condemned, God by his grace is gathering a people so great that from them he may fill the place of the fallen angels and restore their number.

–Augustine, The City of God 22.1