FIRST GENEVAN CONFESSION (1536)³⁴

X. All our Good by the Grace of God. And finally that all the praise and glory may be rendered to God (as is due), and that we may be able to have true peace and quiet in our consciences, we acknowledge and confess that we receive all the blessings now recited from the mercy of God alone, without any consideration of our worthiness or the merit of our works, to which is due no return except eternal confusion; that, nevertheless, our Lord, having received us in His goodness into communion with His Son Jesus, has works which make us pleasant and acceptable with faith - not at all because they merit it, but only because, not imputing to us the imperfection that is in them, He sees in them nothing except what proceeds from His Spirit.

GENEVAN CONFESSION (1537)³⁵

The Apprehension of Christ by Faith. As the merciful Father offers us His Son in the Word of the gospel, so we embrace Him by faith and recognize Him as given to us. Without doubt the Word of the gospel calls all into participation of Christ, but multitudes, blinded and hardened by unbelief, reject this singular grace. Believers only, therefore, enjoy Christ, and they receive Him as sent to them, and do not reject Him as given to them: and follow Him as called by Him.

Election and Predestination. In such a difference it is necessary to consider the great secret of the counsel of God: for the seed of God’s Word takes root and fructifies in those alone whom the Lord, by His eternal election, has predestined to be His children and heirs of the heavenly kingdom. To all others, who are reprobated by the same counsel of God before the constitution of the world, the clear and evident publication of truth can be nothing else but the savor of death unto death. Now the reason why the Lord shows mercy towards the ones and exercises the rigor of His judgment towards the others must be left to be known by Him alone; the which He has willed should be concealed from us and not without very good reason. For neither would the rudeness of our minds permit us to endure so much clarity, nor our littleness permit us to understand so much wisdom. And in fact all who seek to raise themselves to it and are unwilling to repress the temerity of their spirits, experience the truth of what Solomon says (Prov. xxv.) - that he who would search into God’s majesty will be oppressed by His glory. Let us only be assured of this - that the dispensation of the Lord, although it is concealed from us, is nevertheless holy and just: for had He willed to destroy the whole human race He had the right to do it, and in those whom it withdraws from perdition, we can contemplate nothing but His sovereign goodness. Therefore, let us recognize the elect to be vessels of His mercy (as they truly are), and the reprobates to be vessels of His wrath, which nevertheless is only just. Let us take from the one and the other alike ground and matter for the proclamation of His glory. And on the other hand also let us not, in order to confirm the certitude of our faith, seek (as many are accustomed to do) to penetrate into the heavens and to search out what God has from eternity determined to do concerning us (which cogitation can only agitate us with miserable anxiety and perturbation): but let us be content with the testimony by which He has sufficiently and amply confirmed this certitude to us. For as in Christ all those are chosen who have been foreordained to life before the foundations of the world were laid, so He is presented to us as the seal of our election if we receive and embrace Him by faith. For what is it that we seek in election except that we may participate in eternal life? And this we have in Christ: for from the beginning He has the life, and He is proposed to us for life, to the end that all who believe in Him shall have eternal life. Since then in possessing Christ by faith we possess also life in Him we have no need to search further into the counsel of God; for Christ is not only a mirror in which the will of God is represented to us, but also a pledge by which it is as it were sealed and confirmed to us.

GENEVAN CATECHISM (1545)³⁶

Q. But why do you call God [in the Apostles’ Creed] Creator, when to preserve and conserve the creatures in their condition is much more grand than once to have created them?

A. It is certainly not intended by this particular that God has so once created His works that afterwards He has laid aside care for them. But rather it is so to be understood as that the world, as it was once created by Him, so now is conserved by Him; and that neither the world nor anything else stands except so far as it is sustained by His power and, as it were, His hand. Moreover, since He thus has all things in His hands, He is constituted thereby the Supreme Governor and Lord of all. Therefore, from His being the Creator of heaven and earth, it is proper to gather that He it is alone who, in His wisdom, kindness, power, rules the whole course and order of nature; who is the author at once of drought, of hail and other storms, and as well of the calm; who in His goodness fertilizes the earth and again makes it barren by withdrawing His hand; from whom proceed both health and sickness; to whose empire, in fine, all things are subject and whose nod they obey.

Q. What are we to think, however, of the godless and of devils - shall we say that they, too, are subject to Him?

A. Though He does not govern them by His Spirit, He nevertheless coerces them by His power as by a bit, so that they are not even able to move, except so far as He permits to them. He makes them also the ministers of His will, so that they are compelled, unwillingly and against their counsel, to execute what has seemed good to Him.

Q. What good do you derive from the knowledge of this?

A. Very much. For it would go ill with us if anything was permitted to the devils and godless men apart from the will of God; and therefore we should never be of peaceful minds if we thought ourselves exposed to their license. But we may rest in peace now. that we know that they are governed by the will of God and are held as it were in bounds, so as to be capable of nothing except by His permission: especially since God Himself undertakes to be our Tutor and the Captain of our salvation… .

Q. What is the Church?

A. The body and society of believers whom God has predestinated to eternal life.

Q. Is it necessary to believe this head [of the Creed]?

A. Assuredly: unless we wish to make Christ’s death otiose and to bring to naught all that has been heretofore set forth. For the one issue of it all is that there may be a Church… .

Q. Well, then, in what sense do you call the Church holy?

A. Because, to wit, whomsoever God has elected, them He justifies and builds up in holiness and innocence of life; by which His glory shines forth in them (Rom. viii. 30). And it is this that Paul means when he admonishes us that Christ has sanctified the Church which He has redeemed so that it may be glorious and free from every spot (Eph. v. 25)… .

Q. But may not this Church be otherwise known than simply believed in by faith?

A. There is certainly also a visible Church of God, which is marked out for us by certain notes and signs; but here we properly treat of the congregation of those whom He has adopted unto salvation by His hidden election. And that is not constantly perceptible to the eyes nor recognizable by signs.

CONSENSUS TIGURINUS (1549)³⁷

XVI. [Not all who participate in a sacrament partake also in the reality.] Moreover, we sedulously teach that God does not exert His power promiscuously in all who receive the sacraments, but only in the elect. For just as He enlightens unto faith no others than those whom He has foreordained to life, so by the hidden power of His Spirit He brings it about that the elect receive what is offered in the sacraments.

[Calvin’s Exposition of the Heads of the Consensus]

What we say about its not being all promiscuously, but only the elect to whom has come the inner and efficacious operation of the Spirit, that profit by the sacraments, is too clear to need a long discussion. For if any one wishes the effect to be common to all, apart from the passages of Scripture which refute that view, experience itself sets it aside. Therefore, as the external voice in itself by no means penetrates the heart of man, but out of many auditors only those come to Christ who are drawn inwardly by the Father: according to the saying of Isaiah, that no others believed his preaching except those to whom the grace of the Lord is revealed: so it lies in the free and gracious will of the same God to give to whom He will to profit by the use of signs. But we do not in so speaking mean that anything of the nature of the sacraments is changed, but that their integrity remains to them. For Augustine, when he restricted the effects of the Holy Supper to the body of the Church, that is, to the predestinated who are already in part justified, and now being justified and yet to be glorified, did not evacuate or diminish its power, considered in itself alone, with respect to the reprobate; but only denied that the fruit of it is equally common to all. But since there is no obstacle in the way of the reception of Christ by the reprobates except their own unbelief, the whole fault also resides in them. In fine, the representation of the sign is unavailing to no one, except him who wilfully and malignantly deprives himself. For it is very true that each receives from the signs only so much fruit as the vessel of his faith will hold. And we justly repudiate that Sorbonnic invention that the sacraments of the new law profit all who do not interpose the obstacle of a mortal sin. For it, is clearly an insipid superstition to attribute to them a virtue which the merely external use of them conveys, like a canal, into the soul. And if faith must needs intervene as a means, no sane man will deny that the same God who takes away our weakness by His succor, also gives the faith which, borne up by suitable supports, mounts to Christ and becomes possessed of His favors. And beyond all controversy this certainly must needs be - that as it does not suffice for the sun to shine and to send down its rays from heaven unless first eyes are given us to enjoy its light, so the Lord will vainly shine in His eternal signs unless He makes us seeing. Yea, as the heat of the sun, which in the living and breathing body gives life, in the corpse begets a foul odor, so the sacraments, when the spirit of faith is not present, are certain to breathe a mortifying rather than a vitalizing odor… .

CONSENSUS GENEVENSIS (1552)³⁸

The consent of the pastors of the Church of Geneva concerning the eternal Predestination of God, by which He has chosen from men some to salvation and has left others to their own destruction: likewise concerning the Providence by which He governs human things: set forth by John Calvin [Title].

The free election of God, by which He adopts to Himself out of the lost and condemned race of men whom He will, has been taught by us here not less reverently and soberly than sincerely and without dissimulation, and has been peacefully received by the people [p. 218]… . And the subject is worthy of receiving the most studious attention of the children of God, that they may not be ignorant of the origin of their heavenly birth. For there are some who would foolishly blot out the election of God because the Gospel is called the power of God to every one that believes. And yet it should have come into their mind whence faith arises. The Scriptures certainly everywhere proclaim that God gives His Son those who were His own; that He calls those whom He had chosen; and that it is those whom He has adopted to Himself as sons that He regenerates by His Spirit: in fine, that those who believe are the men whom He has taught inwardly, and to whom His power has been revealed. Wherefore whoever holds that faith is the earnest and pledge of free adoption will confess that it flows from the eternal fountain of divine election. Nevertheless it is not from the secret counsel of God that the knowledge of salvation is to be sought by us. Life is set before us in Christ, who not only reveals Himself, but offers Himself to be enjoyed, in the Gospel. Upon this mirror let the gaze of faith be fixed; and let it not desire to penetrate whither access is not open [p. 219]… . As to the providence of God by which the world is ruled, this ought to be settled and confessed among all the godly - that there is no reason why men should ascribe to God a share in their sins or involve Him in any way with them in bearing the blame: but whereas the Scriptures teach that the reprobate are also instruments of God’s wrath, whom He partly makes teachers of patience to the faithful, and partly inflicts such punishments on as they deserve, this profane trifler contends that nothing is done righteously by God unless the reason for it lies plainly before our eyes. For taking away all discrimination between remote and proximate causes, he will not suffer the afflictions laid on holy Job to be thought the work of God, lest He should be made equally guilty with the devil and with the Chaldean and Sabæan plunderers [p. 220]. [“Dedicatory Address to the Syndics and Senate of Geneva”]

… Albert Pighius has endeavored … in the same book to establish the free will of man and to overturn the secret counsel of God by which He elects some to salvation and destines others to eternal destruction [p. 221]… . Both [Pighius and Georgius] imagine that it is placed within our freedom for each of us to introduce himself into the grace of adoption: and that it does not depend on the counsel of God who are elect or reprobate, but each determines by his own will either fortune for himself: that some believe the Gospel, others remain unbelieving - that this discrimination does not arise out of the free election of God, or out of His secret counsel, but only out of the individual will of each… . [Pighius] further pronounces all those to think unworthily concerning God, and to attribute to Him a rigor alien to His justice and goodness, who teach that some are positively and absolutely (præcise et absolute) elected, others destinated to destruction [p. 222]… . It is the figment of Georgius that there has been no predestination to salvation of this or that one, but God has determined a time in which He would save the whole world… . Thus he slips away confidently, as if it were plainly established by no Scriptural passage that some have been elected by God to salvation with the preterition of the rest [pp. 222 f.]… . What is thought by us the “Institutes” sufficiently fully testify, though I should add nothing further. At the outset I would beg my readers to bear in mind what I there suggest: That this subject is not, as it wrongly seems to some, a wordy and thorny speculation which fruitlessly wearies the mind, but a discussion solid and eminently adapted to the advancement of godliness, because it admirably builds up faith, and trains us to humility, and rouses us to admiration of the immense goodness of God toward us and excites us to its praise. For there is no means better adapted to build up faith than hearing that that election which the Spirit of God seals upon our hearts stands in the eternal and immutable good pleasure of God, and cannot therefore be the prey of any earthly storms, of any Satanic assaults, of any vacillation of the flesh. For our salvation is at length made sure to us when we find its cause in the bosom of God. For thus in apprehending by faith the life manifested in Christ it is permitted to see far off, under the guidance of the same faith, from what fountain that life proceeded. Our assurance of salvation is founded in Christ, and rests on the promises of the Gospel. But this is no weak support, when now we hear that that we believe in Christ is a Divine gift to us; because we were both ordained before the beginning of the world to faith and elected to the inheritance of eternal life. Hence that inexpugnable security - because the Father who gave us to His Son as a peculiar possession is stronger than all and will not suffer us to be plucked out of His hand [p.223] … . Let those clamor who will: we shall ever set forth the praise of the doctrine we teach of the free election of God, because except through it believers will never sufficiently understand how great the goodness of God has been towards them when they were effectually called to salvation… . If we are not ashamed of the Gospel, what is openly set forth in it we must needs confess - that, to wit, God by His eternal good pleasure, which hangs on no other cause, destined to salvation those whom it seemed good to Himself, with the rejection of the rest, and that those whom He blessed with this gratuitous adoption He illuminates by His Spirit that they may receive the life offered in Christ; while the rest are so willingly unbelievers that they remain in darkness, destitute of the light of faith [p. 224]… . But in a matter so difficult and recondite nothing is better than to be soberly discreet. Who denies it? But it is likewise to be looked to that it shall be the best kind of sobriety… . Is this a Christian simplicity - to avoid as noxious what God makes known? Of this, they say, we may be ignorant without loss. As if our heavenly Teacher were not the best judge of what and how much it were well to know [p. 226]… .

And that none might attribute it to faith that one is preferred to another he [Augustine] affirms that those are not chosen who have believed: but rather that they may believe… . Again, in another place (“Ad Bonif.,” ep. 106): “Who created the reprobate except God? And why except because He would? Why did He will it? Who art thou, O man, who repliest against God?” … But as, in tracing the beginning of election from the free will of God, he establishes reprobation in His mere will, so he teaches that the surety of our salvation also is founded in nothing else [p. 228]… .

The salvation of believers hangs on the eternal election of God, of which no cause can be adduced except His gratuitous good pleasure… . There is certainly a mutual relation between the elect and reprobate, so that election … cannot stand unless we confess that God segregated definite men, whoever it seemed good to Him, from others. And this is expressed by the word Predestinating… . But to make faith the cause of election is altogether absurd … “Paul asserts [says Augustine] that it is the fruit of divine election and its effect that we begin to be holy. They then act very preposterously who subordinate election to faith.” … And Paul again confesses that God was moved by nothing extrinsic, but Himself was to Himself the author and cause, when He chose those as yet not created to confer on them afterward faith: “According to His purpose,” says he, “who worketh all things according to the counsel of His will” [p. 231]… . Now, when He pronounces that He will cast out none from their number, but rather life is kept in security for all, until He shall raise them up at the last day, who does not see that final (as it is commonly called) perseverance is similarly ascribed to the election of God? It can happen that some fall away from faith; but those who have been given to Him by the Father, Christ asserts to be beyond the danger of destruction… . Neither should it be lightly passed by that he makes God more powerful than all adversaries whatever, that our certainty of salvation may not be less than our reverence for the power of God. Hence, amidst such violent assaults, such various dangers, so many tempests and storms, the perpetuity of our condition stands nevertheless in this - that God will constantly preserve by the power of His arm what He has decreed in Himself concerning our salvation [p. 235] …

[Pighius’] last admonition is, That nothing be admitted alien to God’s infinite goodness, and by which odium rather than love would be awakened towards Him. And so he drives with full sail against God, if from their creation He destines any to destruction. Nevertheless, even if this whole doctrine should be suppressed, occasion would nevertheless never be lacking to the reprobate for either holding God in hatred or assailing Him with their sacrileges… . Now let those who can bear to be taught in God’s school not refuse to hear with me what Paul declares plainly and with no ambiguities. He places before us the two sons of Isaac who, though both were begotten in the sacred house, almost the very temple of God, were nevertheless separated to dissimilar lots by God’s oracle. The cause of this discrimination, which might otherwise have been sought in the deserts of each, he assigns to the hidden counsel of God, “That the purpose of God might stand.” We hear it established by God that of the two twins He should elect one only… . Since Paul commends grace for this very thing, that by the rejection of the other, one was chosen, certainly what Pighius has fabricated of a universal grace falls. Paul does not simply teach that in order that election might stand Jacob was appointed heir of life, but that his brother was rejected and the right of primogeniture conferred on him. It does not escape me here what some other dogs bark out, what also the ignorant mutter - that the passages cited by Paul do not treat either of eternal life or of eternal destruction. If these men, however, held the true principles of theology which ought to be trite to all Christians, they would have spoken a little more modestly… . The objection is that this is to be referred to the land of Canaan; and it is of this that Malachi spoke. And this would be worth listening to if God were fattening the Jews in the land of Canaan like pigs in a sty. But the meaning of the prophet is very different. For God had promised that land to Abraham as an outer symbol of a better inheritance… . In a word [the prophet] holds the land of Canaan as the sacred habitation of God [pp. 237 f.] … Add that if God foresees anything in His elect, by which He discriminates them from the reprobate, Paul’s argument would have been meaningless, that it was when the brothers were not yet born that it was said, of Him that calleth and not of works, The older shall serve the younger… . And since Paul assumes as confessed what is incredible to these good theologians, “that,” namely, “all are equally unworthy, the corruption of nature is alike in all,” he serenely concludes thence that it is by His own free counsel that God elects whomsoever He has elected, and not those whom He foresaw would be obedient children to Him. In a word, Paul is considering what the nature of man would be without God’s election; these men are dreaming of God’s foresight of what would never have been in man until He made it [p. 239]… . If Pighius commends the patience of God, I assert: Nevertheless in the meanwhile this remains settled - that the reprobate are separated out by the counsel of God for this end - that He may show forth His power in them. And that that is not at all different from the meaning of Paul is apparent from his next illation: “Whom He will He hardens.” … Yet the Scripture is looking especially at the beginning of the thing with which it is dealing so as to ascribe it to God only [pp. 241 f.]… . It is to be held, therefore, that the meaning of Paul (Rom. ix. 21) is: That God the Maker of men forms out of the same lump that is taken in hand to honor or to dishonor, according to His will; since He has elected some, not yet born, gratuitously to life, leaving others to their own destruction, seeing that all are obnoxious to it by nature. For while Pighius denies any relation of the election of grace with hatred of the reprobate, I confess this really to exist, so that to the free love in which the elect are embraced, there corresponds in equal and common relation a just severity toward the reprobate (in causa pari et communi) [p. 245]… . In what sense the Hebrews speak of “vessels” or “instruments,” no one who is moderately instructed in the Scriptures will be ignorant. When we hear of “instruments,” then God must needs go before as the head and author of the whole, then His hand is the director. But why are they called vessels of wrath, except because He exercises toward them the just severity from which He abstains with reference to others? And why were they made vessels of wrath? Paul answers, In order that God might show His wrath and power in them. He says, “Prepared for destruction”; whence and how, except from their first origin and by nature? - since certainly the nature of the whole human race was vitiated in the person of Adam: not that the higher counsel of God did not precede: but because from this fountain flowed the curse of God and the destruction of the human race. For it is testified that God prepared the vessels of mercy for glory. If this is special to the elect, it is certain that the rest were fitted for destruction, because to be left to their own nature was to be devoted to certain destruction. For the nonsense of some, “That they were fitted by their own proper wickedness,” is so absurd as not to deserve notice. It is certainly true that the reprobate procure to themselves the wrath of God by their depravity, and collect it on their heads with daily acceleration. But that here a discrimination which proceeds from the hidden judgment of God is dealt with by Paul is confessed. He says also, “The riches of God’s grace are manifested,” while on the other hand “vessels of wrath” rush to destruction. Here certainly we do not hear of what Pighius prates of - “That grace is equal to all”; but that the goodness of God is better illustrated, because He endures vessels of wrath and suffers them to come to their own end… . Neither otherwise can that inviolable covenant of God stand, “I am a jealous God, showing mercy to a thousand generations; a severe avenger to the third and fourth generation,” than by the Lord’s decreeing by His own will to whom He will grant His grace and whom He wills to remain devoted to eternal death … Here certainly a distinction is made among men: and it is not made on the ground of the merits of each, but on the ground of the covenant made with the fathers [p. 246] … . The truth of that saying of Augustine (“De prædest. sanct.,” i. 2) is apparent, “Those are converted whom He Himself has wished to be converted, and these He not only from unwilling makes willing, but also from wolves sheep, from persecutors martyrs, reforming them by His mighty grace.” If man’s wickedness be set in opposition, it would be more mighty than the grace of God … if the affirmation should not be true, “He will have mercy on whom He has mercy.” And Paul’s interpretation leaves no doubt. For after saying (Rom. xi. 7) that the election of God was fixed, he adds, “The rest were blinded, that the prophecy might be fulfilled.” I concede that the blinding was voluntary and I ascribe it gladly to their own fault (Augustine, “De bono persev.,” 12). But I hear who they are that Paul excepts, - to wit, those whom it seemed good to the Lord to choose. Why, however, did He choose these rather than those? … He accuses them, to be sure, as they deserve. But it is wrong and foolish for any to infer from this that the origin of their hardening lies in their own wickedness, as if there were no more occult cause of this very wickedness, viz., the corruption of nature; and as if, again, they did not remain sunk in this corruption for no other reason than because in the hidden counsel of God before they were born they were not destroyed as reprobates! [pp. 247 f.] … This is the sum: If we admit the Spirit of God who spoke by the Apostles to be the interpreter of the Prophet, the hidden and incomprehensible judgment of God is to be adored in its blinding the greater part of men, lest “seeing they should see.” Let there be a cessation here of all the reasonings that can come into our minds. For if we stick fast in man, this certainly will be first: That the Lord gives freely to those that seek: and the rest languish in their need, the remedy for which they do not ask. But unless what Augustine says comes to our aid - that it is due to the Divine goodness not only that it is opened to those that knock, but also that we knock and seek - it is not yet sufficiently known to us what the need is under which we labor. And if we come to the matter of help - experience evinces that that power of the Spirit by which is brought about what needs to be brought about is not free to all. Let no one deceive himself with empty flatteries. Those who come to Christ were already God’s sons in His heart while they were yet in themselves enemies: and it was because they were foreordained to life that they were given to Christ [p. 249]… . It is not at all remarkable that Pighius should mix up everything so indiscriminately (to use his own word) in the judgments of God, when he does not discriminate between proximate and remote causes. Let men look around, hither, thither, they yet do not discover how to transfer the fault of their destruction: because its proximate cause resides in themselves. Even though they complain that the wound is inflicted on them from without, the interior apprehension of their mind will still hold them convinced that the evil had its origin in the voluntary defection of the first man… . If nothing then forbids either the first origin of ruin to have begun from Adam, or each of us to discern its proximate cause in himself, what stands in the way of the secret counsel of God, by which the fall of man was foreordained, being afar off adored by our faith with proper sobriety: while yet we behold as appears more closely the whole human race bound in the person of Adam to the guilt of eternal death and thus subjected to death? [pp. 252 f.] … [Pighius] assaults that appearance of repugnancy (as it is called) in our opinion: that inasmuch as God decreed in Himself, before Adam’s creation, what should happen to him and his posterity, the destruction of the reprobate ought not to be imputed to sin; because it would be absurd to make the effect prior to its own cause. But I affirm both of those things which Pighius attacks to be true. For so far as the dissidence between these two opinions which he pretends is concerned, there certainly is none. We say that man was created in such a state that he cannot complain of his Maker. God foresaw Adam’s fall, and assuredly it was not against His will that He suffered him to fall. What is gained by tergiversation here? Yet Pighius makes denial: “because the before-conceived counsel concerning the salvation of all remains stable.” As if no solution was at hand: salvation was not destined for all, otherwise than if they should stand in their first condition. For no sane person will concede that there was a simple and absolute decree of God that all should attain to salvation. For it was sufficient for the just damnation of man that, when he was placed in the way of salvation, he voluntarily fell from it. Yet it could not be otherwise. What then? Is he thereby freed from fault, though the seat of it all was his own will? … The same also [as Augustine teaches] we too teach: that as we are all together lost in Adam, it is by the just judgment of God that those who perish, perish; and yet at the same time we confess that whatever loss befell Adam was divinely ordained [pp. 253 f.]… So again the promises which incite all to salvation do not show simply and absolutely what God has determined in His hidden counsel, but what He is prepared to do for all who have been brought to faith and repentance. But thus a double will is attributed to God, who is so little variable that not even the least shadow is cast upon Him. What would it be but to mock men, Pighius asks, if God professes to will what He does not will? But if these two things be read in conjunction, as they ought to be, “I desire that the sinner should be converted and live” - that calumny is easily done away. God demands conversion of us: and whenever He finds it, the promised reward of life is bestowed. Therefore God is said to desire life along with repentance: and it is because He desires it that He invites all to it by His Word. But that does not conflict with His hidden counsel, by which He has decreed to convert only His elect. Neither is it right to think Him variable, because He, as Legislator, publishes to all the external doctrine of life. In this prior mode He calls all to life: but in that other mode He leads whom He will, as a father regenerating by His spirit, His children alone [pp. 256 f.]… . Neither, assuredly, do I send men off to the hidden election of God that they may look open-mouthed for salvation thence: but I exhort them to flee straight to Christ in whom the salvation is set forth for us which otherwise would have lain hidden in God. For whosoever does not walk in the lowly path of faith - to him the election of God is nothing but a deadly labyrinth. Therefore that the remission of our sins may be assured to us, that our consciousness may rest in confidence of eternal life, that we may boldly call upon God as Father, our beginning is not at all to be made from God’s determination concerning us before the creation of the world; but from the revelation of His fatherly love to us in Christ and Christ’s daily preaching to us by the Gospel. There is nothing higher to be sought by us than that we should be God’s children. But the mirror of free adoption, in which alone we attain so great a good - its pledge and earnest - is the Son, who came forth to us from the Father’s bosom, in order that He might ingraft us into His body and so make us heirs of the heavenly kingdom [p. 261]… . This then is the way in which God governs His own; this the manner in which He completes the work of His grace in them. But for why He takes them by the hand, there is another higher cause: it is His eternal purpose by which He has destined them to life [p. 262]… . But as Christ will recompense to the elect the reward of righteousness, so I by no means deny that what will then be visited on the reprobate will be the penalties of their own impiety and iniquities. Neither will it be possible to elicit from our doctrine that God by His eternal counsel chose to life whom it seemed good to Him and left the others to destruction; any such thing as that there are no penalties established for evil works and no reward set for good. We shall all stand before the tribunal of Christ, that each may receive according to what he has done in his body, whether good or bad. But whence comes the righteousness and holiness which shall then receive the crown, except from the regeneration unto newness of life which God works in them by His-Spirit? And whence the gift of regeneration but from free adoption? … But the fault of our damnation resides so in ourselves that it is improper to bring alien colors to obliterate it… . How preposterously Pighius takes away the remote by throwing forward the proximate cause! [p. 263]… . The Sorbonnic Sophists prate of an ordinate will of God and another absolute one. This blasphemy, from which pious ears justly recoil, would seem plausible to Pighius and his like. But I contend on the contrary that there is so little anything inordinate in God, that there rather flows from Him whatever there is of order in the heavens and the earth. Though then we do carry forward the will of God to the supremest degree, so that it is superior to all reason, far be it from us to imagine that He wills anything except with the highest reason: we believe in all simplicity that He has in His own right so much power that it behooves us to be content with His nod alone. … [But] did ever this monstrosity come into my mind, that God had no reason for His counsel? As I hold God to be the Ruler of the whole world, who governs and directs all things by His incomprehensible and wonderful counsel, how can any one gather from my words that He is carried hither and thither by chance, or does what He does in blind rashness? … The Lord has, as the reason for all His works, His own glory [pp. 264 f.] … There is another objection of the same nature: I deny that the elect are distinguished from the reprobate through any respect to their own deserts, since the grace of God makes, not finds, them worthy of adoption, as Augustine often says. Elsewhere I deny that any injustice is done to the reprobate, since they deserve to perish. Here Pighius tumultuously vaunts himself with outspread wings: I do not, it seems, understand myself or remember what I have already said. I am so far from thinking it necessary to expend many words in my defense that it irks me to advert to it even briefly. That God prefers some to others and chooses some while passing by others - this discrimination does not hang on the worthiness or unworthiness of men. Therefore it is wrong to say that those are reprobated who are worthy of eternal destruction. Although, however, in the former case there is no comparison made between the persons, and the reward of life is not afforded to worthiness, in the second case, on the contrary, the same condition is not determined for all. Add that Augustine, when he had somewhere written: “That salvation fails for no one who is worthy of it”; afterwards, in his “Retractationes,” so modifies this as to exclude works and to refer acceptable worthiness to the free vocation of God. But Pighius insists “That if it be true, as I teach, that those who perish are destined to death by the eternal decree of God, the reason of which is not apparent, then they are made, are not found, worthy of destruction.” I reply that there are three things here to be considered: first, that the eternal predestination of God by which, before Adam fell, He decreed what was to be, with reference to the whole human race and with reference to each and every man, was fixed and determined; next, that Adam himself was sentenced to death on account of the desert of his fall; last, that the whole of his progeny was so condemned in his fallen and lost person, that God grants the honor of adoption to those whom He freely chooses from among them. No one of these have I imagined or fabricated. Neither is it my present concern to prove any of them - this I seem to myself already to have done. I need only relieve myself of Pighius’ calumny, who proudly triumphs over me as ten times over vanquished - as if these things could not be conciliated in any way whatever. Whenever predestination is discussed I have always taught and teach still to-day, that the start must be taken from this - that all the reprobate are justly left in death, since they died and were condemned in Adam; that they justly perish, because they are by nature children of wrath; and therefore no one can have against God any ground of complaint of too much rigor, since they bear their guilt included in themselves. And, when we come to speak of the first man, that he, though he was created perfect, fell of his own accord; and thence it has come about that by his own fault destruction has fallen on him and his; although, of course, Adam did not fall and destroy himself and his posterity without the knowledge and thus the ordination of God, yet that in no respect operates either for alleviating his fault or for implicating God in the crime. For we must always consider that he of his own accord deprived himself of the rectitude which he had received from God, that of his own accord he gave himself into servitude to sin and Satan, that of his own accord he precipitated himself into destruction. The sole excuse alleged is that he could not escape what was decreed by God. But a voluntary transgression is enough and more than enough for guilt. And neither is the secret counsel of God, but the unobstructed will of man, the proper and genuine cause of sin. The silly complaint of Medea is justly derided in the old poet… . When she is conscious of her perfidy and barbarous cruelty, when the shame of her impurity smites her, she absurdly turns to occasions far remote… . But as to God’s having knowingly and willingly suffered man to fall, the reason may be hidden, it cannot be uujust… . I so say that He ordained it as not to allow that He was the proper author of it [pp. 266-268]… . After Paul had taught that out of the lost mass God chose and reprobated whom it seemed good to Him, he so little set forth why and how He did it that he rather in the greatest awe broke forth into that cry: “O, the height!” (Rom. xi. 33) … Although meanwhile I do not in the least disapprove of what Augustine says in the twelfth book of his “De genesi ad literam” (A, c. 4 to c. 8), when he is adjusting all to fear and reverence toward God; yet the other part, that God chooses whom He will out of the condemned seed of Adam, and reprobates whom He will, as it is far better fitted to exercise faith, so is it more likely to produce better fruit [p. 269]… . Assuredly as the stupidity and ingratitude of men who withdraw themselves from the help of God can never be sufficiently condemned, so is it an intolerable insult to Christ to say that the elect are saved by Him provided that they take good care of themselves: throwing thus an ambiguity over Christ’s protection, which He affirms is inexpugnable to the devil and all the machinations of hell… . If, then, eternal life is certain to all the elect, if no one can pluck them away, if they can be snatched away by no violence and by no assault, if their salvation stands in the invincible might of God, with what face does Pighius dare to break this fixed certitude? [p. 272] … If Pighius asks what is the source of my knowledge of my election - Christ is to me equal to a thousand witnesses; for when we find ourselves in His body, our salvation rests in a secure and quiet position as if it were already placed in heaven [p. 273].

[Georgius] thinks that he argues acutely when he says (Rom. viii. 32): “Christ is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. It is therefore necessary for those who would remove the reprobate from participation in Christ to place them outside of the world.” Let us not now avail ourselves of the common solution - that “Christ suffered sufficiently for all, efficaciously for the elect alone.” This great absurdity, by which the monk has obtained the plaudits of his companions, has no weight at all with me. Throughout what regions of the world soever the elect may be dispersed, John extends to them the expiation of Christ, completed by His death. There is nothing in this inconsistent with reprobates being mingled in the world with the elect. There is also no place for controversy with respect to Christ’s having come to expiate the sins of the whole world (John v. 15). But at once this solution meets us: “That whosoever believeth in Him may not perish, but have eternal life.” For assuredly what we are now discussing is not what is the nature of Christ’s power, or what its inherent value; but to whom He offers Himself to be enjoyed. And if possession stands in faith and faith flows from the Spirit of adoption, it follows that he only is enrolled in the number of God’s children who is to be a sharer in Christ. Neither indeed does John the Evangelist set forth anything else as the office of Christ than by His death to gather together into one the children of God. Whence we conclude, that though a reconciliation is offered by Him for all, nevertheless the benefit of being gathered into the company of life belongs to the elect. But when I say that it is offered for all, I do not mean that that ambassage by which God reconciles the world to Himself (as Paul witnesses, II Cor, v. 18) extends to all: it is not even sealed, as is imagined, indifferently in the hearts of those to whom it does extend [P. 285]… .

For we do not fancy that the elect under the continuous direction of the Spirit keep a straight course: nay, we say that they often slip, wander, fall and are almost separated from the way of salvation. But because the protection of God by which they are defended is the most powerful of all things, it is impossible for them to fall into utter ruin… . We must confess that only those whom God illuminates by His Spirit believe; we must confess in fine that election only is the mother of faith [p. 289].

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When I have said that the providence of God is to be considered together with its means, this is the sense: If any one has carried aid to those in extremity of need, this is not a human deliverance, but a divine one through the hand of man. The sun rises daily, but it is God that sends light on the world. The earth produces its fruits, but it is God that supplies the bread and into the bread instills strength for our nourishment. In a word, since the lower causes are accustomed, like a veil, to hide God from our sight, we should penetrate with the eye of faith higher, so as to discern the hand of God operating in His instruments [p. 298]… . In the first place, we must perceive how the will of God is the cause of all things that take place in the world, while yet God is not the author of the evil things. I will not say with Augustine what I nevertheless freely allow was truly said by him, that there is in sin or in evil nothing positive. For this is a subtlety which to many is not satisfying. I assume for myself, however, another principle: That things done by men wrongly and unrighteously are right and righteous works of God [p. 299]… . That God directs by His counsel things which seem especially fortuitous, the Scriptures plainly testify when they say, “The lot is cast into the lap, but the determination of the events comes from God” (Prov. xvi: 33). Similarly, if a branch broken from a tree or an axe slipping unintentionally from the hand of a man shall smite the head of a passer-by, Moses testifies (Deut. xix. 5) that God has done it purposely, because He wished the man to be killed… . But because the Stoic necessity appears to be established after this fashion, the doctrine is odious to many, even though they do not dare to condemn it as false. This was an ancient calumny, by which Augustine complains (Lib. 2 of “Ad Bonif.,” c. 5) that he was unjustly burdened: it ought now to be obsolete. It is certainly highly unworthy of men of probity and ingenuousness, who are adequately instructed. What the notion of the Stoics was is well known. They wove their fate out of the Gordian knot of causes, in which, since they involved God Himself, they invented “golden chains,” as the fables put it, by which they bound God and so subjected Him to the lower causes… . Let us leave the Stoics, then, to their fate; for us the free will of God is the governor of all things. But to take contingency out of the world is clearly absurd. I omit the distinctions that are employed in the schools. What I set forth will in my judgment be simple and not at all strained, and also suited for the usage of life. What God has determined is in such a manner of necessity to come to pass that, nevertheless, it is not absolutely (præcise) and in its own nature (suapte natura) a necessity. I have a familiar illustration in the bones of Christ. That Christ assumed a body in all things like to ours the Scriptures testify. Accordingly no sane person will hesitate to confess that His bones were breakable. But it appears to me another and separate question, Whether any bone of His could be broken. For that all should remain whole and uninjured must necessarily be because it was so determined in the fixed decree of God. I am not speaking thus, certainly, because I object to the received forms of speech, concerning necessitas secundum quid and necessitas absoluta, or concerning necessitas consequentis and consequentiæ; but only that no subtleties may stand in the way of my readers - even the least cultivated ones - recognizing the truth of what I say. If, then, we consider the nature of Christ’s bones, they were breakable; but if, on the other hand, that decree of God which was manifested in its own time, they are no more subject to breaking than the angels are to human sorrows. Accordingly, then, as it is proper for us to consider the divinely determined order of nature, I by no means reject contingency as respects our perception. And we must keep in memory what I have already laid down, that when God exercises His power through means and lower causes, it is not to be separated from them. It is a drunken notion to say that God has decreed what shall be, and therefore it is superfluous to interpose our care and effort. On the contrary, since He prescribes to us what to do and wills that we shall be the instruments of His power, let us not deem it lawful for us to separate what He has joined together… . Therefore, so far as concerns the future, since the issues of things are as yet hidden from us, each one ought to be as intent on his duty as if nothing had been determined in any direction. Or to speak more properly, each of us ought so to hope for success in all that he undertakes at the command of God, that in the matters of which he is ignorant he conciliates contingency with the sure providence of God… . In a word, as the providence of God rightly understood does not tie our hands, so it not only does not impede prayer, but rather establishes it… . There is no exhortation more conducive to patience than our knowledge that nothing comes to pass fortuitously, but that that which has seemed good to God has taken place. Meanwhile, it does not follow that the fault of adverse things is not borne by our ignorance, or rashness, or thoughtlessness, or some other vice [pp. 299 f.]… . The sum, however, comes to this: Although men wanton like beasts untamed and coerced by no bonds; they are, nevertheless, governed by a secret bit, so that they cannot move even a finger except for the accomplishment rather of God’s than of their own work [p. 301]… . And what Satan works is affirmed by the Scriptures to be the work of God in another aspect, inasmuch, that is, as God, by holding him bound to obedience to His providence, turns him whither He will, and thus applies his activity to His own uses [p. 302]. Considering these things honestly and soberly, there will be no doubt but that the supreme and especial cause of all things is the will of God… . We should keep in mind indeed what I have before said: that God does nothing without the best reason: though since His will is the surest rule of righteousness, it ought to be to us, so to speak, the chief reason of all reasons… . That Sorbonnic doctrine, accordingly, in which the Papal theologians take such pride, which attributes potentia absoluta to God, I detest. For it would be easier to tear away the sun’s light from its heat, or its own heat from the fire, than to separate God’s power from His righteousness [p. 305]… .

Since then it is from a righteous cause, though one unknown to us, that there proceed from the Lord the things that men perpetrate in their wickedness - although His will is the first cause of all things, I deny nevertheless that He is the author of sin. Assuredly that diversity of causes which I have posited is not to be permitted to fall into forgetfulness - that there is a proximate and also a remote cause - that we may understand how great the difference is between the signal providence of God and turbulent impetuses of men. It is indeed to load us with a base and ungenerous calumny to argue that God is made the author of sin if His will is the cause of all that is done. For when a man acts unrighteously under the incitement of ambition or avarice or lust or any other depraved affection, though God works by a righteous though hidden judgment through his hand, the name of sin cannot square with Him. Sin in man is constituted by perfidy, cruelty, pride, intemperance, envy, blind self-love, or some such depraved desire. Nothing of this kind is found in God. Shimei assaults his king with monstrous petulance. The sin is clear. God uses such a minister for the just humiliation of David, and thus castigates him with such a rod. Who will accuse Him of sin? The Arabs and Sabaeans make prey of the substance of others. The crime of robbery is manifest. By their violence God exercises the patience of His servant. Let there emerge from the affair the heroic confession, “Blessed be the name of the Lord,” rather than profane revilings be heard. In fine, God’s way of working in the sins of men is such that, when we come to Him, every spot is wiped away by His eternal purity [p. 307]… . There is no reason, therefore, why any one should drag God into participation in the sin, whenever any conjunction is apparent between His secret counsel and the open vice of men. Let there come to our minds continually that saying of Augustine: “Accordingly the works of God are great, exquisite in all His will, so that in a marvelous and ineffable fashion that is not done apart from His will which yet is done against His will, since it would not be done if He did not permit it: and He does not permit it unwillingly but willingly.” And from this too is refuted (“Enchir, ad Laur.,” c. 100) the ignorance or else the wickedness of those who deny that the nature of God would be simple, if another will be attributed to Him besides that which is revealed by Him in the Law. Some also ask in derision, If there be any will in God which is not revealed in the Law by what name shall it be called? But those must be without understanding to whom the numerous Scriptural references which proclaim with marveling the profound abyss of God’s judgments signify nothing… . The Scriptures are full of such examples. Shall we, therefore, impute the fault of the sins to God, or fabricate in Him a double will, so that He is at odds with Himself? But as I have already shown that He wills the same thing along with the wicked and profane but after a different manner; so we must now hold that He wills in the same manner things that are different in kind… . For the will by which He prescribes what shall be done and by which He avenges transgressions of His law is one and simple [pp. 308 f.].

CALVIN’S ARTICLES ON PREDESTINATION³⁹

Before the first man was created God, by an eternal decree, determined what He willed should come to pass with reference to the whole human race.

By this hidden decree of God it was decided that Adam should fall from the perfect state of his nature and should draw all his posterity into the guilt of eternal death.

On the same decree hangs the discrimination between the elect and the reprobate: for some He has adopted to Himself to salvation; others He has destined to eternal destruction.

Although the reprobate are vessels of the just vengeance of God, and again the elect are vessels of mercy, nevertheless no other cause of the discrimination is to be sought in God than His mere will, which is the supreme rule of righteousness.

Although it is by faith that the elect obtain the grace of adoption, election nevertheless does not hang on faith, but is prior to it in time and in order.

Inasmuch as the origination and perseverance of faith flow from the gratuitous election of God, so none others are truly illuminated unto faith, neither are any others endued with the Spirit of regeneration except those whom God has chosen: but the reprobate must needs remain in their blindness or fall away from faith, if perchance there be any in them.

Although we are chosen in Christ, nevertheless that the Lord considers us among His own is prior in order to His making us members of Christ.

Although the will of God is the supreme and first cause of all things and God holds the devil and all the impious subject to His will, God nevertheless cannot be called the cause of sin, nor the author of evil, neither is He open to any blame.

Although God is truly hostile to sin and condemns all iniquity in men, because it is offensive to Him, nevertheless it is not merely by His bare permission, but by His will and secret decree that all things that are done by men are governed.

Although the devil and reprobates are God’s servants and instruments to carry out His secret decisions, nevertheless in an incomprehensible manner God so works in them and through them as to contract no stain from their vice, because their malice is used in a just and righteous way for a good end, although the manner of it is often hidden from us.

They act ignorantly and calumniously who say that God is made the author of sin, if all things come to pass by His will and ordinance; because they make no distinction between the open depravity of men and the hidden appointments of God.

GENEVAN STUDENTS’ CONFESSION (1559)⁴⁰

I confess also that God created not only the visible world, that is, the heavens and the earth and all that in them is, but also the invisible spirits, some of whom have continued in their obedience, while others by their own fault have fallen into perdition: and that the perseverance which was in the angels came from the gratuitous election of God, who continued His love and goodness to them, giving them unchangeable constancy to persist ever in good. Accordingly I detest the error of the Manichees who imagined that the devil was evil by nature, and even had his origin and principle of himself.

I confess that God has so created the world as at the same time to be its perpetual Governor: so that nothing takes place or can occur except by His counsel and providence. And although the devil and wicked men labor to throw everything into confusion, as do even the faithful by their sins, they cannot pervert the right order. I acknowledge that God, nevertheless, being the supreme Prince and Lord of all, turns the evil to good and disposes and directs all things, whatever they be, by a secret curb in a marvelous fashion, which it behooves us to adore in all humility, since we cannot comprehend it… .

I confess that we are made sharers in Jesus Christ and all His benefits by faith in the Gospel, when we are assured of a right certitude of the promises which are contained in it: and as this surpasses all our powers, that we are not able to attain it except by the Spirit of God; and so, that it is a special gift, which is not communicated except to the elect, who have been predestinated before the creation of the world to the inheritance of salvation, without any regard to their worthiness or virtue.

CONFESSION FOR THE CHURCH AT PARIS (1557)⁴¹

We believe that it is of the mercy of God alone that the elect are delivered from the common perdition into which all men are plunged: and first of all that Jesus Christ, without whom we are all lost, has been given to us as a redeemer, to bring us righteousness and salvation… . We believe that it is by faith only that we are made sharers in this righteousness, and also that we are illuminated unto faith by the secret grace of the Holy Spirit [seeing that we are elect in Jesus Christ],⁴² so that it is a free and special gift which God grants to those whom it seems good to Him, and that not only to introduce them into the right path, but also to cause them to continue in it to the end.

CONFESSION FOR THE FRENCH CHURCHES, TO BE PRESENTED TO THE EMPEROR (1562)⁴³

Thence [from original sin], we conclude that the source and origin of our salvation is the pure mercy of God: for He cannot find in us any worthiness by which He might be led to love us. We also, being evil trees, are not able to bring forth good fruit, and thus we are not able to prevent God in acquisition or to merit favor in His sight: but He looks on us in pity to show us mercy and has no other occasion to exercise His compassion on us except our miseries. Accordingly we hold that this kindness which He displays toward us proceeds solely from His having chosen us before the creation of the world, and we seek no reason for His having so done outside of Himself and His good pleasure. And here is our first foundation, that we are acceptable to God because it has pleased Him to adopt us as His children before we were born, and thus He has by a singular privilege withdrawn us from the common curse into which all men are plunged.

But as the counsel of God is inaccessible, we confess that to obtain salvation we must needs come to the means which God has ordained: we are not of the number of those fantastics who, under the shadow of the eternal predestination of God, take no account of walking in the right path to the life that is promised us; but above all things we hold that to be the avowed children of God, and to have the right certitude, we must needs believe in Jesus Christ, because it is in Him alone that we must needs seek the whole substance of our salvation.

THE FRENCH CONFESSION (1559)⁴⁴

VIII. We believe that not only did He create all things, but that He governs and directs them, disposing and ordering, according to His will, all that which comes to pass in the world - not that He is the author of evil or that the guilt of it can be imputed to Him, seeing that His will is the sovereign and infallible rule of all right and justice; but He has admirable means of so making use of devils and sinners that He knows how to turn to good the evil that they do, and of which they bear the blame. And thus, while we confess that nothing takes place without the providence of God, we humbly bow before the secrets that are hidden from us without inquiring beyond our measure; but rather applying to our benefit what is revealed to us in Holy Scripture for our peace and safety: inasmuch as God, who has all things subject to Him, watches over us with a paternal care, so that not a hair of our head shall fall without His will. And yet He holds the devils and all our enemies in restraint so that they can do us no injury without His leave… .

XII. We believe that out of this universal corruption and condemnation wherein all men are plunged God withdraws those whom, in His eternal and immutable counsel, He has chosen, of His own goodness and mercy alone, in our Lord Jesus Christ, without respect to their works, leaving the rest in this same corruption and condemnation to manifest in them His justice, as in the former He makes the riches of His mercy to shine forth. For the ones are not better than the others until God distinguishes them according to His immutable counsel, which He has determined in Christ Jesus before the creation of the world; neither is it possible for anyone to obtain that good for himself by his own strength, seeing that by nature we cannot have a single good motion, of either feeling or thought, until God has prevented us and disposed us to it.

THE BELGIC CONFESSION (1561)⁴⁵

Art. XIII. We believe that this good God, after He had created all things, did not abandon them to chance or fortune, but directs and governs them in such manner, according to His holy will, that nothing happens in this world without His appointment; although nevertheless God is not the author of nor chargeable with the evil that occurs: for His power and goodness are so great and incomprehensible that He ordains and executes His work well and righteously even when the devil and wicked men act unrighteously. And as to what He does surpassing human understanding, we will not curiously inquire into it farther than our capacity will admit of, but in all humility and reverence adore the righteous judgments of God which are hidden from us, contenting ourselves that we are disciples of Christ, to learn only when He reveals to us by His Word and not transgressing these limits. This doctrine affords us an unspeakable consolation, since we are taught by it that nothing can befall us by chance, but by the ordinance of our good heavenly Father, who watches in our behalf with a paternal care, holding all His creatures subject to Him; so that not a hair of our head (for they are all numbered) nor even a sparrow can fall to the ground without the will of our Father. In whom we trust, knowing that He holds the devils in restraint, and all our enemies, and that they cannot injure us without His permission and good will.

Art. XVI. We believe that, the whole race of Adam being thus precipitated into perdition and ruin, by the sin of the first man, God hath manifested Himself such an one as He is, that is to say merciful and righteous: merciful in delivering and saving from this perdition those whom in His eternal and immutable counsel He has elected and chosen by His pure goodness, in Jesus Christ our Lord, without any regard to their works; righteous in leaving the rest in their ruin and fall wherein they have precipitated themselves [⁴⁶ Thus He declares Himself a merciful and clement God to those whom He saves, since He owed them nothing; as likewise He declares Himself a righteous judge by the manifestation of His just severity towards the rest. Nor does He do the latter any injustice. For that He saves some is not because they are better than the rest, for all were sunk into certain ruin, and God distinguishes and frees them according to His eternal and immutable counsel which was established in Jesus Christ before the world was created. No one, then, according to this judgment, can attain to this glory of himself, since of ourselves we are not capable of thinking any good thing, unless God precedes us by His grace and mere goodness, so corrupt is our nature.]

CONFESSION OF THE ENGLISH CONGREGATION AT GENEVA (1558)⁴⁷

I believe and confesse my Lord God eternal, infinite, unmeasurable, incomprehensible and invisible … who by his Almightie power and wisdome hath not onlie of nothing created Heaven, Earth, and all thinges therein conteined … but also by his Fatherly Providence governeth, mainteineth and preserveth the same, according to the purpose of his will… . I believe also and confesse Jesus Christ … who giving us that by grace which was his by nature, made us through faith the children of God … who … will come in the same visible forme in the which hee ascended, with an unspeakable Majestie, power and companie, to separate the lambes from the goates, the elect from the reprobate; so that none, whether he be alive then, or dead before, shall escape his judgement … yet notwithstanding it is not sufficient to believe that God is Omnipotent and mercifull, that Christ hath made satisfaction, or that the Holy Ghoste hath this power and effect, except we do apply the same benefits to our selves, who are Gods elect. I believe therefore and confesse one holy Church … which Church is not seene to mans eye, but only knowne to God, who of the lost sonnes of Adam hath ordeined some as vessels of wrath to damnation; and hath chosen others as vessels of his mercy to bee saved, the which also in due time hee calleth to integrity of life and Godly conversation, to make them a glorious Church to himselfe … with full assurance that although this roote of sinne lie hid in us, yet to the elect it shall not bee imputed… .

THE SCOTCH CONFESSION (1560)⁴⁸

Art. I. We confesse and acknawledge ane onelie God, to whom onelie we must cleave, whom onelie we must serve, whom onelie we must worship, and in whom onelie we put our trust… . Be whom we confesse and beleve all thingis in hevin and eirth, aswel Visible as Invisible, to have been created, to be reteined in their being, and to be ruled and guyded be his inscrutable Providence, to sik end, as his Eternall Wisdome, Gudnes, and Justice hes appoynted them, to the manifestatioun of his awin glorie … Art. III… . deith everlasting hes had, and sall have power and dominioun over all that have not been, ar not, or sal not be regenerate from above: quhilk regeneratioun is wrocht be the power of the holie Gost, working in the hartes of the elect of God, ane assured faith in the promise of God, reveiled to us in his word, be quhilk faith we apprehend Christ Jesus, with the graces and benefites promised in him… . Art. VII. We acknawledge and confesse, that this maist wonderous conjunction betwixt the God-head and the man-head in Christ Jesus, did proceed from the eternall and immutable decree of God, from quhilk al our salvatioun springs and depends. Art. VIII. For that same eternall God and Father, who of meere grace elected us in Christ Jesus his Sonne, befoir the foundatioun of the warld was laide, appointed him to be our Head, our Brother, our Pastor, and great Bischop of our sauls … And for this cause, ar we not affrayed to cal God our Father, not sa meikle because he hes created us, quhilk we have common with the reprobate; as for that, that he hes given to us his onely Sonne, to be our brother, and given unto us grace, to acknawledge and imbrace him for our onlie Mediatour, as before is said… . Art. XIII… . the cause of gude warkis, we confesse to be not our free wil, bot the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, who dwelling in our hearts be trewe faith, bringis furth sik warkis, as God hes prepared for us to walke in … For how soone that ever the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, quhilk Gods elect children receive be trew faith, taks possession in the heart of ony man, so soone dois he regenerate and renew the same man… . Art. XVI. As we beleve in ane God, Father, Sonne, and haly Ghaist; sa do we maist constantly beleeve, that from the beginning there hes bene, and now is, and to the end of the warld sall be, ane Kirk, that is to say, ane company and multitude of men chosen of God, who richtly worship and imbrace him be trew faith in Christ Jesus, quha is the only head of the same Kirk, quhilk alswa is the bodie and spouse of Christ Jesus, quhilk Kirk is catholike, that is, universal, because it conteinis the Elect of all ages, of all realmes, nations, and tongues … This Kirk is invisible, knawen onelie to God, quha alane knawis whome he hes chosen; and comprehends as weill (as said is) the Elect that be departed, commonlie calld the Kirk Triumphant, and they that zit live and fecht against sinne and Sathan as sall live hereafter. Art. XVII. The Elect departed are in peace and rest fra their labours … they are delivered fra all feare and torment, and all temptatioun, to quhilk we and all Goddis Elect are subject in this life, and therfore do beare the name of the Kirk Militant: As contrariwise, the reprobate and unfaithfull departed have anguish, torment, and paine, that cannot be expressed… . Art. XXV. Albeit that the Worde of God trewly preached, and the Sacraments richtlie ministred, and Discipline executed according to the Worde of God, be the certaine and infallible Signes of the trew Kirk, we meane not that everie particular persoun joyned with sik company, be ane elect member of Christ Jesus: For we acknawledge and confesse, that Dornell, Cockell, and Caffe may be sawen, grow, and in great aboundance lie in the middis of the Wheit, that is, the Reprobate may be joyned in the societie of the Elect, and may externally use with them the benefites of the worde and Sacraments… . Bot sik as continew in weil doing to the end, bauldely professing the Lord Jesus, we constantly beleve, that they sall receive glorie, honor, and immortality, to reigne for ever in life everlasting with Christ Jesus, to whose glorified body all his Elect sall be made lyke, when he sall appeir againe in judgement… .

CRAIG’S CATECHISM (1581)⁴⁹

Q. What is the Church which we confess here?

A. The whole company of Gods elect called and sanctified.

Q. Why is the Church onely knowne to us by Faith?

A. Because it containeth onely God’s elect, which are onely knowne to himselfe.

Q. When and how may we know them?

A. When we see the fruites of election and holines in them… .

Q. Out of what fountaine doth this our stabilitie flow?

A. Out of God’s eternall and constant election in Christ.

Q. By what way commeth this election to us?

A. By His effectuall calling in due time.

Q. What worketh this effectuall calling in us?

A. The obedience of faith. …

Q. May not this scale bee abolished through sinne?

A. No, for these giftes are without repentaunce.

Q. But many fall shamefullie from God.

A. The spirit of adoption raiseth all the chosen againe.

Q. But many are never raised againe?

A. These were never the chosen of God… .

Q. Where should we begin our triall?

A. At the fruites of faith and repentance. Because they are best knowne to our selves and others.

Q. What if we begin at election?

A. Then we shall wander in darkenes …

THE ENGLISH ARTICLES (1553)⁵⁰

XVII. Of Predestination and Election

Predestination to life, is the euerlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundacions of the worlde were laied) he hath constantlie decreed by his owne judgemente secrete to vs, to deliuer from curse, and damnation those whom he hath chosen⁵¹ out of mankinde, and to bring them to euerlasting saluation by Christ, as vesselles made to honour: whereupon,⁵² soche as haue so excellent a benefite of GOD geuen unto theim⁵³ be called, according to Goddes purpose, by his spirite, woorking in due seasone, thei through grace obeie the calling, thei be justified frely, thei be made sonnes⁵⁴ by adoptione, thei bee made like the image of Goddes⁵⁵ oneley begotten sonne Jesu Christe, thei walke religiouslie in goode woorkes, and at length by Goddes mercie, thei atteine to euerlasting felicitie.

As the Godlie consideration of predestination, and our election in Christe is ful of swete, pleasaunte, and vnspeakable coumfort to godlie persones, and soche as feele in themselues the woorking of the spirite of Christe, mortifying the workes of the flesh, and their earthlie membres, and drawing vp their minde to high and heauenly thinges, aswel because it doeth greatly stablish and confirme their faith of eternal saluation to be enioied through Christe, as because it doeth feruentlie kindle their loue towardes Godde: So for curious, and carnall persones lacking the Spirite of Christ, to haue continuallie before their yies the sentence of Goddes predestination, is a moste daungerous dounefall, whereby the Deuill maie⁵⁶ thrust them either into desperation, or into a rechielesnesse of most vncleane liuing, no lesse perilous then desperation.

Furthermore [although the Decrees of predestination are vnknowne unto us, yeat]⁵⁷ we must receiue Goddes promises, in soche wise as thei bee generallie set foorth to vs in holie Scripture, and in our doinges that wille of Godde is to be folowed, whiche we haue expresselie declared vnto us in the woorde of Godde.

THE LAMBETH ARTICLES (1595)⁵⁸

1. God from eternity hath predestinated some unto life, and reprobated some unto death.

2. The moving or efficient cause of predestination unto life is not the foresight of faith, or of perseverance, or of good works, or of anything that is in the persons predestinated, but the will of God’s good pleasure alone.

3. There is a predefined and certain number of the predestinated, which can neither be increased nor diminished.

4. Those who are not predestinated to salvation shall necessarily be condemned for their sins.

5. A true, lively and justifying faith, and the sanctifying Spirit of God is not extinguished, falleth not away, vanisheth not in the elect, either finally or totally.

6. A man truly believing, that is endowed with justifying faith, is certain with the assurance of faith, of the forgiveness of his sins and his everlasting salvation by Christ.

7. Saving grace is not given, is not communicated, is not granted to all men, whereby they may be saved if they will.

8. No one can come unto Christ unless it be given unto him and unless the Father draw him. And all men are not drawn by the Father that they may come unto the Son.

9. It is not placed within the will and power of every man to be saved.

THE IRISH ARTICLES (1615)⁵⁹

Of God’s Eternal Decree and Predestination

11. God from all eternity did, by his unchangeable counsel, ordain whatsoever in time should come to pass; yet so, as thereby no violence is offered to the wills of the reasonable creatures, and neither the liberty nor the contingency of the second causes is taken away, but established rather.

12. By the same eternal counsel God hath predestinated some unto life, and reprobated some unto death: of both which there is a certain number, known only to God, which can neither be increased nor diminished.

13. Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God whereby, before the foundations of the world were laid, he hath constantly decreed in his secret counsel to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ unto everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honor.

14. The cause moving God to predestinate unto life, is not the foreseeing of faith, or perseverance, or good works, or of anything which is in the person predestinated, but only the good pleasure of God himself. For all things being ordained for the manifestation of his glory, and his glory being to appear both in the works of his mercy and of his justice, it seemed good to his heavenly wisdom to choose out a certain number toward whom he would extend his undeserved mercy, leaving the rest to be spectacles of his justice.

15. Such as are predestinated unto life be called according unto God’s purpose (his spirit working in due season), and through grace they obey the calling, they be justified freely; they be made sons of God by adoption; they be made like the image of his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ; they walk religiously in good works; and at length, by God’s mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity. But such as are not predestinated to salvation shall finally be condemned for their sins.

16. The godlike consideration of predestination and our election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh and their earthly members, and drawing up their minds to high and heavenly things: as well because it doth greatly confirm and establish their faith of eternal salvation, to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love toward God; and, on the contrary side, for curious and carnal persons lacking the spirit of Christ to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God’s predestination is very dangerous.

17. We must receive God’s promises in such wise as they be generally set forth unto us in holy Scripture; and in our doings that will of God is to be followed which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.

WESTMINSTER CONFESSION (1647)

III. Of God’s Eternal Decree

1. God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

2. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions; yet hath He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.

3. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.

4. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished.

5. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto; and all to the praise of His glorious grace.

6. As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath He, by the eternal and most free purpose of His will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore they who are elected being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ by His Spirit working in due season; are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by His power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

7. The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice.

8. The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men attending the will of God revealed in His Word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God; and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation, to all that sincerely obey the gospel.

WESTMINSTER LARGER CATECHISM (1647)

12. God’s decrees are the wise, free, and holy acts of the counsel of His will, whereby, from all eternity, He hath, for His own glory, unchangeably foreordained whatsoever comes to pass in time, especially concerning angels and men.

13. God, by an eternal and immutable decree, out of His mere love, for the praise of His glorious grace, to be manifested in due time, hath elected some angels to glory; and in Christ hath chosen some men to eternal life, and the means thereof: and also, according to His sovereign power, and the unsearchable counsel of His own will (whereby He extendeth or withholdeth favor as He pleaseth), hath passed by, and foreordained the rest to dishonor and wrath, to be for their sin inflicted, to the praise of the glory of His justice.

14. God executeth His decrees in the works of creation and providence; according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of His own will.

WESTMINSTER SHORTER CATECHISM (1648)

7. The decrees of God are His eternal purpose according to the counsel of His will, whereby, for His own glory, He hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.

8. God … out of His mere good pleasure from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life.

CANONS OF DORT (1618-1619)⁶⁰

First Head of Doctrine: Of Divine Predestination

1. As all men have sinned in Adam, lie under the curse, and are obnoxious to eternal death, God would have done no injustice by leaving them all to perish, and delivering them over to condemnation on account of sin, according to the words of the Apostle (Rom. iii. 19), “that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God”; (ver. 23) “for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”; and (vi. 23) “for the wages of sin is death.”

2. But “in this the love of God was manifested, that He sent His only begotten Son into the world,” “that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (I John iv. 9; John iii. 16).

3. And that men may be brought to believe, God mercifully sends the messengers of these most joyful tidings to whom He will, and at what time He pleaseth; by whose ministry men are called to repentance and faith in Christ crucified. “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent?” (Rom. x. 14, 15).

4. The wrath of God abideth upon those who believe not this gospel; but such as receive it, and embrace Jesus the Saviour by a true and living faith, are by Him delivered from the wrath of God and from destruction, and have the gift of eternal life conferred upon them.

5. The cause or guilt of this unbelief, as well as of all other sins, is nowise in God, but in man himself: whereas faith in Jesus Christ, and salvation through Him is the free gift of God, as it is written, “By grace ye are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Eph. ii. 8); and, “Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him,” etc. (Phil. i. 29).

6. That some receive the gift of faith from God, and others do not receive it, proceeds from God’s eternal decree. “For known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world” (Acts xv. 18; Eph. i. 11). According to which decree He graciously softens the hearts of the elect, however obstinate, and inclines them to believe; while He leaves the non-elect in His just judgment to their own wickedness and obduracy. And herein is especially displayed the profound, the merciful, and at the same time the righteous discrimination between men, equally involved in ruin; or that decree of election and reprobation, revealed in the Word of God, which, though men of perverse, impure, and unstable minds wrest it to their own destruction, yet to holy and pious souls affords unspeakable consolation.

7. Election is the unchangeable purpose of God, whereby, before the foundation of the world, He hath, out of mere grace, according to the sovereign good pleasure of His own will, chosen, from the whole human race, which had fallen through their own fault, from their primitive state of rectitude, into sin and destruction, a certain number of persons to redemption in Christ, whom He from eternity appointed the Mediator and head of the elect, and the foundation of salvation.

This elect number, though by nature neither better nor more deserving than others, but with them involved in one common misery, God hath decreed to give to Christ to be saved by Him, and effectually to call and draw them to His communion by His Word and Spirit; to bestow upon them true faith, justification, and sanctification; and having powerfully preserved them in the fellowship of His Son, finally to glorify them for the demonstration of His mercy, and for the praise of the riches of His glorious grace: as it is written, “According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved” (Eph. i. 4-6). And elsewhere, “Whom He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified” (Rom. viii. 30).

8. There are not various decrees of election, but one and the same decree respecting all those who shall be saved both under the Old and New Testament; since the Scripture declares the good pleasure, purpose, and counsel of the divine will to be one, according to which He hath chosen us from eternity, both to grace and to glory, to salvation and the way of salvation, which He hath ordained that we should walk therein.

9. This election was not founded upon foreseen faith, and the obedience of faith, holiness, or any other good quality or disposition in man, as the prerequisite, cause, or condition on which it depended; but men are chosen to faith and to the obedience of faith, holiness, etc. Therefore election is the fountain of every saving good; from which proceed faith, holiness, and the other gifts of salvation, and finally eternal life itself, as its fruits and effects, according to that of the Apostle: “He hath chosen us [not because we were, but] that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love” (Eph. i. 4).

10. The good pleasure of God is the sole cause of this gracious election; which doth not consist herein that God, foreseeing all possible qualities of human actions, elected certain of these as a condition of salvation, but that He was pleased out of the common mass of sinners to adopt some certain persons as a peculiar people to Himself, as it is written, “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil,” etc., “it was said [namely, to Rebecca] the elder shall serve the younger; as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Rom. ix. 11-13); and, “As many as were ordained to eternal life believed” (Acts xiii. 48).

11. And as God Himself is most wise, unchangeable, omniscient, and omnipotent, so the election made by Him can neither be interrupted nor changed, recalled nor annulled; neither can the elect be cast away, nor their number diminished.

12. The elect, in due time, though in various degrees and in different measures, attain the assurance of this their eternal and unchangeable election, not by inquisitively prying into the secret and deep things of God, but by observing in themselves, with a spiritual joy and holy pleasure, the infallible fruits of election pointed out in the Word of God; such as a true faith in Christ, filial fear, a godly sorrow for sin, a hungering and thirsting after righteousness, etc.

13. The sense and certainty of this election afford to the children of God additional matter for daily humiliation before Him, for adoring the depth of His mercies, and rendering grateful returns of ardent love to Him who first manifested so great love toward them. The consideration of this doctrine of election is so far from encouraging remissness in the observance of the divine commands or from sinking men into carnal security, that these, in the just judgment of God, are the usual effects of rash presumption or of idle and wanton trifling with the grace of election, in those who refuse to walk in the ways of the elect.

14. As the doctrine of divine election by the most wise counsel of God was declared by the Prophets, by Christ Himself, and by the Apostles, and is clearly revealed in the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament, so it is still to be published in due time and place in the Church of God, for which it was peculiarly designed, provided it be done with reverence, in the spirit of discretion and piety, for the glory of God’s most holy name, and for enlivening and comforting His people, without vainly attempting to investigate the secret ways of the Most High.

15. What peculiarly tends to illustrate and recommend to us the eternal and unmerited grace of election is the express testimony of sacred Scripture, that not all, but some only, are elected, while others are passed by in the eternal decree; whom God, out of His sovereign, most just, irreprehensible and unchangeable good pleasure, hath decreed to leave in the common misery into which they have wilfully plunged themselves, and not to bestow upon them saving faith and the grace of conversion; but permitting them in His just judgment to follow their own way; at last, for the declaration of His justice, to condemn and punish them forever, not only on account of their unbelief, but also for all their other sins. And this is the decree of reprobation which by no means makes God the author of sin (the very thought of which is blasphemy), but declares Him to be an awful, irreprehensible, and righteous judge and avenger.

16. Those who do not yet experience a lively faith in Christ, an assured confidence of soul, peace of conscience, an earnest endeavor after filial obedience, and glorying in God through Christ, efficaciously wrought in them, and do nevertheless persist in the use of the means which God hath appointed for working these graces in us, ought not to be alarmed at the mention of reprobation, nor to rank themselves among the reprobate, but diligently to persevere in the use of means, and with ardent desires devoutly and humbly to wait for a season of richer grace. Much less cause have they to be terrified by the doctrine of reprobation, who, though they seriously desire to be turned to God, to please Him only, and to be delivered from the body of death, cannot yet reach that measure of holiness and faith to which they aspire; since a merciful God has promised that He will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed. But this doctrine is justly terrible to those who, regardless of God and the Saviour Jesus Christ, have wholly given themselves up to the cares of the world and the pleasures of the flesh, so long as they are not seriously converted to God.

17. Since we are to judge of the will of God from His Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but in virtue of the covenant of grace, in which they together with the parents are comprehended, godly parents have no reason to doubt of the election and salvation of their children whom it pleases God to call out of this life in their infancy.

18. To those who murmur at the free grace of election, and just severity of reprobation, we answer with the Apostle: “Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?” (Rom. ix. 20); and quote the language of our Saviour: “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” (Matt. xx. 15). And therefore with holy adoration of these mysteries, we exclaim, in the words of the Apostle: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counselor? or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things: to whom be glory forever. Amen.” (Rom. xi. 33-36).

Rejection of the Errors

By which the Belgian Churches have for some time been troubled. Having set forth the orthodox doctrine of Election and Reprobation, the Synod rejects the errors of those -

1. Who teach, “that the will of God concerning the salvation of those who shall believe and who shall persevere in faith and the obedience of faith, is the whole and entire decree of election to salvation, and that there is nothing else revealed in the Word of God concerning this decree.” For these impose on the simple-minded, and manifestly contradict the Holy Scriptures, which testify that God not only wills to save those who shall believe, but also has from eternity chosen some designated individuals to whom in distinction from the rest He will in time give faith and perseverance; as it is written, “I manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest me” (John xvii. 6); again, “And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed” (Acts xiii. 48); and, “He chose us before the foundations of the world were laid, that we should be holy,” etc. (Eph. i. 4).

2. Who teach, “That God’s election to eternal life is various (multiplex); one general and indefinite, the other particular and definite; and the latter again either incomplete, revocable, nonperemptory, or conditioned, or else complete, irrevocable, peremptory, or absolute.” Again, “That the one election is to faith, the other to salvation; so that the election to justifying faith can exist without a peremptory election to salvation.” For this is a fancy of the human mind excogitated aside of the Scriptures, corrupting the doctrine of election and dissolving that golden chain of salvation: “Whom He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified” (Rom. viii. 30).

3. Who teach, “That the good pleasure and purpose of God, of which the Scriptures make mention in the doctrine of election, does not consist in this - That God has chosen certain particular individuals in distinction from others, but in this - That out of all possible conditions (among which are the works of the law), or out of the whole order of things, God has chosen the act of faith, ignoble though it be in itself, and the imperfect obedience of faith, to be the condition of salvation; and has determined graciously to take it for perfect obedience and to account it worthy of the reward of eternal life.” For by this pernicious error the good pleasure of God and the merit of Christ are set aside, and men are called away from the verity of gratuitous justification and the simplicity of the Scriptures to useless questionings; and the saying of the Apostle is falsified, “God called us with a holy calling; not according to our works but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal” (II Tim. i. 9).

4. Who teach, “That in the election to faith it is presupposed as a condition that a man shall rightly use the light of nature, that he shall be upright, childlike, humble, with a disposition to eternal life, seeing that election measurably depends on these things.” For they savor of Pelagius and openly charge the Apostle with falsehood when he writes: “We once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest: but God, being rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, quickened us together with Christ, by whose grace ye are saved, and raised us up with Him, and made us sit with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus: for by grace have ye been saved through faith (and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God), not of works that no man should glory” (Eph. ii. 3-9).

5. Who teach, “That incomplete and non-peremptory election of particular persons to salvation takes place out of foreseen faith, repentance, holiness, and piety in its beginnings and in its earlier stages; while complete and peremptory election is out of final perseverance in foreseen faith, repentance, holiness, and piety: and that this is the gracious and evangelical worthiness, on account of which he who is elected is more worthy than he who is not elected; and that accordingly faith, the obedience of faith, holiness, piety, and perseverance are not the fruits or effects of an immutable election to glory, but conditions and indispensable causes, absolutely prerequisite in those to be elected, and foreseen as if actually present.” Because this is repugnant to the whole of Scripture, which continually presses upon our ears and hearts such sayings as these: “Election is not of works, but of Him that calleth ” (Rom. ix. 11); “As many as were ordained to eternal life believed” (Acts xiii. 48); “He chose us in Himself that we might be holy” (Eph. i. 4); “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you” (John xv. 16); “If of grace, it is no longer of works” (Rom. xi. 6); “Herein is love, not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us and sent His Son” (I John iv. 10).

6. Who teach, “That it is not every election to salvation that is immutable, but, no decree of God standing in the way, some of the elect can perish and do eternally perish.” By which crass error, they alike make God mutable and subvert the consolation of the saints derived from the constancy of their election, and contradict the Holy Scriptures, which say: “It is not possible for the elect to be led astray” (Matt. xxiv. 24); “Christ does not lose those given Him by the Father” (John vi. 39); “God also glorifies those whom He has predestinated, called and justified” (Rom. viii. 30).

7. Who teach, “That there is in this life no fruit, no sense, no certitude of immutable election except out of a mutable and contingent condition.” For besides the absurdity of speaking of an uncertain certitude, the experience of the saints stands opposed to this; for they exult with the Apostle in the sense of their election, and celebrate this gift of God, rejoicing with the disciples according to Christ’s admonition, that “their names are written in heaven” (Luke x. 20): and in fine oppose their sense of election to the fiery darts of diabolic temptations, asking, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” (Rom. viii. 33).

8. Who teach, “That God has not out of His mere will decreed to leave anyone in the fall of Adam and in the common state of sin and damnation, or to pass anyone by in the communication of the grace necessary for faith and conversion.” For this declaration stands, “He hath mercy on whom He will; and whom He will He hardeneth” (Rom. ix. 18); and this, “To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given” (Matt. xiii. 11); again, “I glorify Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and hast revealed them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in Thy sight” (Matt. xi. 25-26).

9. Who teach, “That the reason why God sends the gospel to this rather than to that nation, is not the mere and sole good pleasure of God but because the one nation is better and more worthy than the other to whom the gospel is not communicated.” For Moses contradicts, thus addressing the people of Israel: “Behold, unto the Lord thy God belongeth the heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that therein is; only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and He chose their seed after them, even you, above all peoples, as at this day” (Deut. x. 14, 15); and Christ: “Woe to you Chorazin, woe to you Bethsaida, because if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which have been done in you, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes” (Matt. xi. 21).

Conclusion

And this is the perspicuous, simple, and ingenuous declaration of the orthodox doctrine … and the rejection of the errors, with which the Belgic Churches have for some time been troubled. This doctrine the Synod judges to be drawn from the Word of God, and to be agreeable to the confession of the Reformed Churches. Whence it clearly appears that some, whom such conduct by no means became, have violated all truth, equity, and charity, in wishing to persuade the public: “That the doctrine of the Reformed Churches concerning predestination, and the points annexed to it, by its own genius and necessary tendency, leads off the minds of men from all piety and religion; that it is an opiate administered by the flesh and the devil; and the stronghold of Satan where he lies in wait for all, and from which he wounds multitudes, and mortally strikes through many with the darts both of despair and security; that it makes God the author of sin, unjust, tyrannical, hypocritical; that it is nothing more than an interpolated Stoicism, Manicheism, Libertinism, Turcism; that it renders men carnally secure, since they are persuaded by it that nothing can hinder the salvation of the elect, let them live as they please; and therefore that they may safely perpetrate every species of the most atrocious crimes; and that, if the reprobate should even perform truly all the works of the saints, their obedience would not in the least contribute to their salvation; that the same doctrine teaches that God, by a mere arbitrary act of His will, without the least respect or view to any sin, has predestinated the greatest part of the world to eternal damnation, and has created them for this very purpose: that in the same manner in which election is the fountain and cause of faith and good works, reprobation is the cause of unbelief and impiety; that many children of the faithful are torn, guiltless, from their mothers’ breasts and tyrannically plunged into hell: so that neither baptism nor the prayers of the Church at their baptism can at all profit them”; and many other things of the same kind which the Reformed Churches not only do not acknowledge, but even detest with their whole soul.

FORMULA CONSENSUS HELVETICA (1675)⁶¹

IV. God, before the foundations of the world were laid, formed in Christ Jesus, our Lord, πρόθεσιν αἰώνιον, an eternal purpose (Eph. iii. 11), in which, from the mere good pleasure of His will, without any foresight of the merit of works or of faith, to the praise of His glorious grace He elected a certain and definite number of men lying in the same mass of corruption and in common blood and therefore corrupted by sin, to be led in time to salvation by Christ, the sole Surety and Mediator, and through His merit, by the mighty power of the regenerating Holy Spirit, to be called efficaciously, regenerated, and gifted with faith and repentance. And thus, determining to illustrate His glory, God decreed, first, to create man perfect, then to permit his fall, and finally to have mercy on some from the fallen, and therefore to elect these, but to leave the rest in the corrupt mass and finally to devote them to eternal destruction.

V. Moreover, in that gracious decree of divine election Christ Himself also is included, not as the meritorious cause or the foundation preceding election itself, but as Himself also foreknown before the foundations of the world were laid as ἐκλεκτός, elect (I Pet. ii. 4, 6), and therefore primarily the chosen mediator for its execution and our first-born brother, whose precious merit God willed to use for conferring on us salvation with the preservation of His justice. For the Holy Scriptures not only testify that election was made according to the mere good pleasure of the divine counsel and will (Matt. xi. 26; Eph. i. 5, 9); but also derive the destination and gift of Christ, our Mediator, from the zealous love of God the Father to the world of the elect.

VI. Wherefore we cannot give our suffrages to the opinion of those who teach that God, moved by φιλανθρωπία, or a sort of peculiar love for the lapsed human race, to a “previous election,” intended by a certain conditioned will, velleity, or first mercy, the salvation of all and each, on a condition certainly, namely that they believe; appointed Christ as Mediator for all and each of the lapsed; and finally elected some, considered not simply as sinners in the first Adam but as redeemed in the second Adam - that is, appointed that the saving gift of faith should be bestowed upon them in time; and that in this latter act alone “election properly so called” is completed. For these and all similar things are no ordinary deflections from the ὑποτυπώσει of sound words concerning divine election. The Scriptures certainly restrict the purpose of God to show mercy to men - not assuredly to all and each - but to the elect alone; with the exclusion of the reprobate by name - as in the case of Esau, whom God pursued with an eternal hatred (Rom. ix. 11). The same Holy Scriptures bear witness that the counsel and will of God do not change, but stand immovably, and that God in the heavens does what He wishes (Isa. xlvii. 10; Ps. cxv. 3). Assuredly God is far removed from all human imperfection such as manifests itself in inefficacious affections and desires, rashness, repentance and change of counsel. The appointment also of Christ as Mediator proceeds from one and the same election, equally with the salvation of those that were given to Him for a possession and an ἀναφαίρετος inheritance, and does not underlie it as its basis.

XIII. As Christ was elected from eternity as the Head, Prince and Owner of all those who are saved in time by His grace: so also was He made in time the Surety of the New Covenant for those only who were given to Him by eternal election as a people of possession, His seed and inheritance. Certainly it was for the elect alone that by the determinate counsel of the Father and His own intention He encountered a dreadful death, these only that He restored to the bosom of the paternal grace, these only that He reconciled to the offended God the Father, and freed from the curse of the law. For our Jesus saves His people from sins (Matt. i. 21), giving His life as the redemption price for His many sheep (Matt. xx. 24, 28; cf. John x. 15), who listen to His voice (John x. 27, 28), and for these alone also, as a divinely called priest, does He intercede, the world being set aside (John xvii. 9; Isa. lxvi. 22). Accordingly in the death of Christ the elect only, who in time are made new creatures, and for whom He was substituted in His death as a piacular victim, are regarded as having died with Him, and as justified from sin (II Cor. v. 17): and the will of Christ who dies so παναρμονικῶς agrees and amicably conspires with the counsel of the Father, who gives none others but the elect to be redeemed by Him, as well as with the operation of the Holy Spirit who sanctifies and seals to a vital hope of eternal life none others but the elect, that the equal περιφορία of the Father’s electing, the Son’s redeeming, and the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying is manifest.

III We cannot allow ourselves space to draw out in detail the harmony of the Reformed creeds in their doctrine of predestination; or even to exhibit with any fullness the combined faithfulness and discretion which characterizes them in dealing with this high mystery, which their authors felt to lie at the root of their whole system of faith, as of the whole course of the divine activities. He who will read over the series of documents, however cursorily, cannot fail to observe these things for himself. We permit ourselves, in concluding, only a few summary remarks.

1. We observe, then, that the fact of Absolute Predestination is the common presupposition of the whole body of Reformed creeds. There are a very few of them, to be sure, chiefly early brief declarations of the primary Protestant program, which lack direct allusion to it. These are such as the Sixty-seven Articles of Zurich (1523), the Ten Bernese Theses (1528), the Tetrapolitan Confession (1530), the First Helvetic (1536) and First Bohemian (1535) and the Polish or Sendomir (1570) Confessions. Even in their cases, however, the fact of predestination is often felt to lie very close in the background (as, for example, in the instances of the Sixty-seven Articles - of which the Bernese Theses are little more than an excerpt - and the Tetrapolitan Confession): and the omission of mention of it is always apparently the result of the special nature and purpose of the formulary. There are certain others of the Reformed Confessions in which predestination is adverted to, as it were, only incidentally - no separate paragraph being consecrated to its statement and formal development. This is the case with such documents as Zwingli’s “Fidei ratio” (1530) and “Expositio christianae fidei” (1531), the Genevan Catechism (1545), the Consensus Tigurinus (1549), the short creeds prepared by Calvin for the Students of Geneva (1559), the Church of Paris (1557) and the French Churches (1562), as well as the Confession of the English Exiles in Geneva (1558) and the Heidelberg Catechism ( 1563), to which may be added the Second Bohemian Confession (1575). The circumstance that the majority of these formularies come directly from the hand of Zwingli or Calvin himself, while the Confession of the English Exiles was written by Knox, and the Heidelberg Catechism reflects the teachings of Calvin’s pupil and defender, Ursinus, already makes it clear that the lack in them of a separate treatment of predestination is due to no underestimation of the doctrine itself. This is further borne out by the circumstance that the doctrine, though adverted to only incidentally, is dealt with in these formularies with firmness and clearness and altogether in the spirit of the most advanced Reformed teaching. It seems only an accident of their form, therefore, to be explained ordinarily⁶² from the practical end held in view in their composition, leading to emphasis being laid especially on the subjective side of religious truth, that a more formal treatment of predestination was not given in these formularies also. The separation off of the topic for distinct formal assertion and treatment is found first in the First Basle or Mühlhausen Confession (1534), after which the Genevan Confession of 1537 soon follows; in the more elaborate later Confessions it is regular.

It is worth noting, however, that, in accordance with the prevailing soteriological interest in which the Confessions were composed, the treatment of General Predestination or the Decree of God is much less usual and full than that of Special Predestination or Election and Reprobation. Not rarely allusion to it fails altogether, and when it is adverted to its adduction is often purely incidental, in connection, say, with the doctrine of Providence: as a rule it is only in the more developed and extended creeds that it is set forth explicitly or with any fullness. The Westminster Shorter Catechism is perhaps unique in giving the preference to a statement of General Predestination (Q. 8) and stating Special Predestination only incidentally (Q. 20). How General Predestination is commonly dealt with may be observed by noting its treatment in Zwingli’s “Fidei ratio” (1530), the Hungarian Confession (1557), the Second Helvetic Confession (1562), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Sigismund’s Confession (1614); and among the Calvinian creeds, especially of course in the Genevan Consent, which devotes a long separate discussion to Providence (1552), but along with it also Calvin’s Articles (15-), the Genevan Students’ Confession (1559), the Confession of the English Exiles (1558), the Gallican Confession (1559), and the Belgic (1561) and the Scotch Confessions (1560), and especially the Irish Articles (1615), from which the Westminster Confession directly derives. It will be observed, in glancing over the treatment in these documents, that, on the one side, especial care is taken to guard against the supposition that God, by virtue of His universal decree, is therefore chargeable with the authorship of or moral responsibilty for sin; and, on the other, the strongest stress is laid upon the confidence which the child of God may cherish in all the untoward circumstances of life that everything that occurs is yet but the outworking of a Father’s purpose and will always conduce to good to those who are His. Even in dealing with God’s General Predestination, therefore, though before all, of course, the motive is to do justice to the very idea of God as the Personal Author and Governor of all, and to the Scriptural revelation concerning the universal reach of His purpose, yet the practical interests of the ethical construction of sin and of the comfort of the saints largely condition and control the presentation of the doctrine. Thus it happens that the fact of General Predestination is commonly presupposed or incidentally alluded to rather than the doctrine fully expounded.

2. It is to be observed, next, that the whole body of these Confessions are remarkably at one in their doctrine as to the nature of Predestination. Little space is occupied, it is true, with guarding the doctrine of General Predestination from the perversion of either the coarse suspension of it on foresight or the more subtle entanglement of it with a scientia media - though Zwingli’s “Fidei ratio” (1530) already strikes a clear note here. As General Predestination is itself largely dealt with only by presupposition and allusion, so are naturally all questions concerning its nature. With reference to Special or Soteriological Predestination, however, the case is different. Its absoluteness and independence of all foreseen grounds or conditions are copiously and emphatically asserted; the matter is treated not only positively but negatively; every conceivable ground in the creature for the decree is mentioned in detail and expressly excluded. There is no variation in this matter from Zwingli to the Swiss Form of Consent. To all alike the Divine Predestination as applied to the destiny of man is an eternal, absolute, independent, most free, immutable purpose of God, for which no cause can be assigned except His gratuitous good pleasure; and in which no change can be imagined, just because it is the purpose of the immutable God. Therefore these Confessions are also at one in proclaiming the particularity of the election of God. According to them all, it deals, not with a variable class, but with specific individuals which are particularly and unchangeably designed. This is the clear assertion not only of what may be looked upon as the stricter Calvinistic formularies, but also of those which were laboring most heavily in the Unionistic currents. It is not merely the Swiss Form of Consent which declares that God “elected a certain and definite number,” or the Lambeth and Irish Articles and Canons of Dort which assert that predestination has predefined a certain number, known only to God indeed, but capable neither of increase nor diminution: the Second Helvetic Confession (1562) also with equal conviction affirms that God knows who are His; the theologians at the Leipzig Colloquy insist that both the number and names of His elect are known to God; the authors of the Declaration of Thorn assert that the number of the elect is certain with God.

Nor is there any difference among these Confessions in their conception of election as in its very nature - as indeed it is ex vi termini - an act specifically of discrimination. To one and all alike the elect are a body of individuals, particularly and individually set upon by the inscrutable love of God, and by this act of free and independent choice separated from others who are thus passed by in the electing grace, and accordingly left unchosen, unelected, and therefore unblessed by the series of acts of divine grace which follow upon election and give it effect. In other words, for all these creeds alike discrimination constitutes the very essence of Soteriological Predestination. That is to say, it is a prædestinatio gemina that they teach: and that again is to say that they are at one in the conception of the necessary implication in the sovereignty of election, of a sovereign preterition as well.

It is true enough, no doubt, that they do not all explicitly define the doctrine of sovereign preterition. We have seen that there are some of them which do not give more than a merely incidental treatment or even a mere reference to predestination at large; and others even which do not directly allude to it at all: while yet it is clear that the doctrine of predestination is a fundamental postulate of them all. Similarly, among those in which predestination is alluded to or even somewhat fully set forth, there are some which do not allude to its darker side of reprobation, or, if they allude to it, pass it by with a mere allusion. There is, for example, no explicit reference to reprobation in the following Confessions, to wit: Zwingli’s Exposition of the Christian Faith (1531), the First Basle Confession (1534), the Genevan Catechism (1545), Calvin’s creeds composed for the Genevan Students (1559), the Church at Paris (1557) and the French Churches (1562), the English Articles (1553), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), and the Second Bohemian Confession (1575). It will be noted at once that some of these come from the hand of Zwingli or Calvin himself, neither of whom certainly had any desire to minimize the importance of conceiving predestination as distinctively an act of discrimination; and further, that in no one of them is election itself treated otherwise than by incidental allusion, except in the English Articles (1553) and the First Basle Confession (1534) - in the latter of which a single sentence only is given to it. Clearly the omission of allusion to reprobation is not to be interpreted in such instances as arguing any chariness as to the doctrine: it may rather be supposed to be omitted just because it is so fully presupposed. To these creeds are to be added certain others in which reprobation, though alluded to, receives no direct treatment, and is thus, while clearly presupposed, yet left without definition and guarding. These are Zwingli’s “Fidei ratio” (1530), the Scotch Confession (1560), and the Second Helvetic Confession (1562). These belong, with respect to the doctrine of reprobation, in a class similar to that occupied with reference to the general doctrine of predestination by the creeds which allude to it without expounding it: and it is to be noted that the authors of these creeds - Zwingli, Knox, and Bullinger, in his later years when under the influence of Peter Martyr - cannot be suspected of any hesitation concerning the truth or importance of the prædestinatio gemina. Obviously the omission fully to define it is to be sought in these cases, therefore, not in doubt as to the doctrine, much less in denial of it, but, on the one hand, in such confidence in the implication of preterition in the very idea of election as seemed to render its separate statement unnecessary, and, on the other, in such engrossment with the practical aspects of the gracious side of the doctrine as led to passing lightly over all that is not immediately utilizable by the simplest Christian consciousness.

There is, therefore, a grave overstatement involved in, for example, Dr. Schaff’s representation that “the Thirty-nine Articles, the Heidelberg Catechism, and other German Reformed Confessions, indorse merely the positive part of the free election of believers, and are wisely silent concerning the decree of reprobation, leaving it to theological science and private opinion”:⁶³ and much more in the heightened form which he gives this representation later,⁶⁴ when he says that “the most authoritative” of the Reformed Creeds, “as the Helvetic Confession of Bullinger, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Brandenburg Confessions (also the Scotch Confession of 1560) teach only the positive and comforting part of predestination, and ignore or deny a separate decree of reprobation; thus taking the ground practically that all that are saved are saved by the free grace of God, while all that are lost are lost by their own guilt.” Of denial of the doctrine there can be no question here: it was certainly not denied by the authors of the documents which omit to mention it or mention it only allusively; men such as Zwingli, Calvin, Knox, Ursinus, Bullinger (at the close of his life) not only held but strenuously defended it. Of “ignoring” it, in any proper sense of that word, there can be no more question. Only in the case of the Brandenburg Confessions (which are assuredly as far as possible from ignoring it) can we speak even of an attempt to soften the statement of the doctrine: and the attempt in that case proceeded only by focusing attention on “positive reprobation” (concerning which some things are denied which no one of the Reformed wished to affirm of it) and withdrawing it from “negative reprobation” (of which some of the things denied of “positive reprobation” are affirmed by the Reformed system) - with the effect of betraying to the informed reader a wish to distract attention from controverted points rather than to deny any item of the Reformed faith. It is plausible only with reference to the English Articles to talk of a purposed ignoring: and even there doubtless only plausible. The broad fact is simply that the doctrine of reprobation fails to receive explicit treatment in a few of the Reformed creeds, just as predestination itself does; and that this simple omission to treat it is best explicable in the one case as in the other from the scope and special object of the creeds in question, and from the confidence of their writers in the necessary implication of the omitted doctrine in what is said. Similarly it is left unnoted in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, after the most explicit insistence on it in the Confession of Faith and the Larger Catechism - for no other reason, of course, than the different specific objects and audiences held in view in the several cases.

Certainly reprobation is treated as an essential part of the doctrine of predestination in all the Reformed creeds in which it is dealt with at all. These include not merely certain of Calvin’s own compositions - the Genevan Confession (1537), the Genevan Consensus (1552), Calvin’s Articles (15-), the Gallican Confession (1559); and certain others that may be thought to derive in a special way from him - the Confession of the English Exiles (1558), the Belgic Confession (1561), the Lambeth (1595) and Irish Ariticles (1615), the Canons of Dort (1618) and the Swiss Form of Consent (1675); but even such creeds as the Hungarian (1557) and the Brandenburg Confessions, Sigismund’s (1614), the Leipzig Colloquy (1631) and the Declaration of Thorn (1645) which, with all their effort to soften the expression of the doctrine in its harder-looking features, do not dream of denying, ignoring, or doubting that it is, as the obverse of election, an essential element of the doctrine of predestination. In all these documents reprobation is treated as involved in the very definition of predestination as a soteriological decree, or in the doctrine of “election” itself as a selection out of a mass. It is not treated with equal detail, however, in them all. It is especially to the Genevan Confession (1537), the Genevan Consensus (1552), the Articles of Calvin (15-), the Gallican and Belgic Confessions (1559 and 1561), the Lambeth and Irish Articles (1595 and 1615), the Westminster Confession (1646), the Canons of Dort (1618), and the Swiss Form of Consent (1675) - together with the softened Brandenburg Confessions - that we must go to find its full exposition. There is, nevertheless, no reason, and indeed no room, to fancy that those documents which speak less fully of the doctrine, or do not even allude to it, occupy any other attitude towards it than the common Reformed attitude, revealed in the Confessions in which it is explicitly mentioned or fully developed. It is rather to be presumed that the common doctrine is presupposed when it does not come to explicit mention: and every indication in the creeds themselves bears this presumption out.

This constancy of the testimony of the Reformed Confessions to the prædestinatio gemina - that is, to the reality of a sovereign preterition by the side of and forming the foil of sovereign election - may well seem to be remarkable in the face of the universal condemnation it provoked from the controversialists of other communions. From the publication of the Form of Concord the confessional Lutheran doctrine involved the denial of a predestination to death: and Lutheran controversialists were not backward in assaulting the Reformed doctrine as in its very essence horrible. In Anglican circles, along another pathway, essentially the same result was reached: and even the best of the adherents of the new Anglicanism adopted as their own Hooker’s construction of an absolute will in God for salvation but “an occasioned will” for destruction, and made it the reproach of Calvinists that they taught “one irrespective predestination” to death as to life. No doubt individual theologians were more or less affected by the very iteration and violence of these assaults; and there arose inevitably Lutheranizers and Anglicanizers among the teachers of the Reformed Churches. The peculiarities of the Brandenburg Confessions, for example, no doubt find their explanation in the sharpness of the conflict on German ground. But doubtless the explanation of the constancy of the Reformed testimony to the prædestinatio gemina is also in part to be traced to the very sharpness of this conflict. The denial of sovereign preterition was thereby clearly branded as a Lutheran error or as quasi-Augustinian Anglicanism. For the preservation of the Reformed doctrine its affirmation was clearly exhibited to be essential. Thus it became more and more impossible to omit it; and after the rise of the Remonstrant controversy, quite impossible. It was therefore that even the Brandenburg Confessions assert reprobation as an integral part of the doctrine of predestination, and only strive to save appearances by obscuring the distinction between negative and positive reprobation and making denials with reference to “reprobation” which apply only to the former. It was therefore, also, that in the effort to save the Calvinism of the British Churches, the prædestinatio bipartita was thrown up into high relief in the Lambeth and Irish Articles and the Westminster formularies. Hard experience had made Calvin’s judgment, that without preterition election itself cannot stand, the deep conviction of the whole Reformed Church: and whether at Dort or Zurich, London or Dublin, the essence of the Calvinistic contention was found in the free discrimination among men which was attributed to God: in the confession that He chooses not all but some men to life and destines the rest, therefore, to destruction. The Confession of the English Exiles at Geneva (1558) is unique in stating this act of discrimination so as to throw the predestination to death in the foreground: “God of the lost sons of Adam hath ordained some as vessels of wrath to damnation; and hath chosen others as vessels of His mercy to be saved.” But this is indicatory only of the clearness with which discrimination was grasped as the core of the matter. The rest follow the opposite and more natural form of statement, but are no less intent on tracing to God the actual distinction in destiny which Scripture and observation alike forced on the recognition of every thoughtful student whether of the Book or of mankind.

3. We must not fail next to observe in passing, though we shall not dwell upon it, the unanimity of these Confessions in construing the decree of God as a unit; that is to say, in recognizing the election to salvation as involving a predestination of all the means thereof, and correspondingly the act of preterition as involving the foreordination of all that is consequent thereto. Sometimes the unity of the decree is asserted in so many words; it is affirmed that it was in the “same decree” by which men were segregated to salvation that the means by which they should be made partakers of this salvation were ordained for them. At other times the matter is treated only by enunciating the natural sequence of things; ordination to an end implying ordination of the means to that end. But without exception the destination of men to salvation and the destination to them of the means thereto are treated as inseparably united.

4. It is, however, of more immediate interest to observe the attitude of the Reformed Confessions with respect to the object of Predestination. Here we are met by a greater apparent diversity than obtains in the other matters that have attracted our attention. Of the three great parties that grew up among the Reformed with reference to the object of predestination (in the sense of Soteriological Predestination) - the Supralapsarian, Infralapsarian, and Salmurian, conceiving the object of predestination respectively as unfallen, fallen, and redeemed mankind - the first and third receive no support from the Confessions. Yet all the Confessions are not Infralapsarian: nor is their attitude precisely the same towards Supralapsarianism and Salmurianism. Some of them are explicitly Infralapsarian, and none exclude, much less polemically oppose, Infralapsarianism. None of them are explicitly Supralapsarian: many, however, leave the question between Supra- and Infralapsarianism entirely to one side, and thus open the way equally to both; and none are polemically directed against Supralapsarianism. Not only are none explicitly Salmurian, on the other hand, but those prepared after the rise of Salmurianism firmly close the door to it, while earlier ones certainly do not open it, and leave room for it, if at all, only uncertainly and by doubtful inference from chance expressions which have no direct reference to the point in controversy and are flexible to other constructions.

The explicitly Infralapsarian Confessions include the Genevan Consent (1552), the Hungarian Confession (1557), that of the English Exiles at Geneva (1558), the Gallican (1559) and Belgic (1561) Confessions, the Canons of Dort (1618) and the Swiss Form of Consent (1675), together with the Articles framed at the Leipzig Colloquy (1631). These explicitly declare that the discrimination which God made among men was made in massa corrupta: it is for them certain that it was out of the lost race of man that God chose some to eternal life, leaving the rest to the just recompense of their sins. By their side we may perhaps place some others, such as the Genevan Confession of 1537 and the creeds prepared by Calvin for the Genevan Students (1559), the Church at Paris (1557) and the French Churches (1562), the Confession of Sigismund (1614) and the Declaration of Thorn (1645), and perhaps also, though with less confidence, the Second Helvetic Confession (1562) and the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), as Confessions which, while not clearly implying Infralapsarianism, yet seem more or less to speak out of an underlying but not expressed Infralapsarian consciousness: this is, however, a matter of mere tone and manner, and is of course much too subtle to insist upon. In such formularies, on the other hand, as Zwingli’s “Fidei ratio” (1530), the First Basle or Mühlhausen Confession (1534), the Genevan Catechism (1545), the Zurich Consent (1549), the English (1553), Lambeth (1595) and Irish (1615) Articles, and the Scotch Confession (1560), the lines are so drawn that it is impossible to discover that there is advantage given to either party to the debate over the other: in the case of the Westminster Confession, which shares this peculiarity with them, we know that this was the result of a settled policy, and it may have been the same in some of the others also (as in Calvin’s Articles, in view of Beza’s views known to him, and in the Lambeth and Irish Articles). In view of these facts, it is hardly possible to speak of the Reformed creeds at large as distinctly Infralapsarian, though Dr. Schaff’s language affirming that “all the Reformed Confessions … keep within the limits of infralapsarianism”⁶⁵ may, so far, be adopted as well-chosen and expressive of the true state of the case. Some Reformed Confessions explicitly define Infralapsarianism: none assert anything which is not consonant with Infralapsarianism. On the other hand, nothing is affirmed in the majority of the Confessions inconsistent with Supralapsarianism either; and this majority includes several of the most widely accepted documents. The Westminster Confession in its careful avoidance of raising the distinction throws itself, therefore, into a class with the majority of its companion Confessions, inclusive of the Heidelberg Catechism and the Second Helvetic Confession, which are certainly the most widely accepted of Continental formularies, and of the entire British tradition. It is a noteworthy fact that it is particularly the Genevan creeds and those formed under the Genevan influence which are explicitly Infralapsarian; while it is along the line of German Reformed and British influence that the distinction is avoided, or at least not adverted to. This is probably in part due to the prosecution of the debate between the parties, with most vigor among the French-speaking Calvinists and in Holland. But the effect is to throw the Westminster Confession at this point into companionship with the documents which have been often treated as presenting the “milder” Calvinism, but which would certainly be more properly described as at this point setting forth rather a more generic Calvinism. It is certainly a remarkable instance of the irresponsibility of polemics to hear, as we have recently been forced often to hear, adduced as a mark of hyper-Calvinism a feature of the Westminster method of dealing with predestination which it shares with the Second Helvetic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, the Confession of Sigismund and the Declaration of Thorn, the Thirty-nine Articles and the early Scotch Confession.

We restrain ourselves, however, from entering here into a comparison of the Westminster Confession with its sister documents and illustrating from them its especial type of Calvinistic teaching. It has been, to be sure, one of the chief ends we have had in view, in calling attention just at this time to the doctrine of Predestination as expressed in the Reformed creeds, to further an intelligent estimate of the teaching of the Westminster Standards on this great topic, by throwing upon it the light of its historical enunciation in the Reformed Churches. But we must rest content for the present with the general results that the whole body of Reformed creeds, including the Westminster Standards, are remarkably at one in their conceptions of this high mystery; and that the Westminster Standards in their exposition of its elements receive the support of the entire body of the Reformed creeds at every salient point. To facilitate a rough estimate of the nature and amount of the support it thus receives from them, we have marked by footnote references to the Westminster Confession the passages in them which present especially close parallels with the sections in the chapter in that formulary which deals with the decree of God. Later, we hope to return to the matter. For the present it may safely be left to the general impression which the mere reading over of the documents will inevitably make.

Footnotes

1. Of course the term is here used of the Augustinian doctrine of grace, and not of the ecclesiastical system which finds its roots also in him. ↩

2. Cf. E. F. Karl Müller, “Symbolik,” 1896, p. 75. What are called the formal and material principles of Protestantism belong only to developed Protestantism. The sole doctrine that from the beginning was common to all the Reformers, and that really constituted the formative principle of Protestantism, was that of predestination. It is really this that Möhler, no less than Schweizer, sees, when he seeks to trace back the contrast between Romanism and Protestantism to the emphasis on the freedom of the human will on the one side and on the sole activity of God on the other. ↩

3. “Tractatus de Deo uno,” § 411, in his ” Prælectiones theologicæ,” i. 1861, p. 342. Yet, one remembers Gottschalk and Jansen. ↩

4. “Institutes,” III. xxi. 5. ↩

5. “Creeds of Christendom,” i. 1877, p. 451. ↩

6. We should carefully note here the testimony to the necessary implication of the doctrine of “double predestination” in the evangelical system (in the doctrines of original sin and of the confinement of redemption to this life); and as well to the religious root of the doctrine - a matter of fact which Dr. Schaff repeatedly recognizes, as e.g. p. 454. It has become customary in some quarters, however, to represent it as rather a speculative than a religious doctrine. Thus Gooszen discriminates Calvinism properly so called from what he deems the milder teachings of Bullinger and the Heidelberg Catechism as the intellectualistic-speculative tendency from the soteriological-Biblical tendency: and Calvin is treated in many quarters as the reintroducer of nominalistic speculation into Protestant thought. Nothing could be more mistaken. “This,” says Müller (as cited, p. 481, note 39), pointedly, “is not the language of nominalism but of faith.” ↩

7. Article xi. ↩

8. This result is reached as early as Hutter (1610), in whose “Compendium” it is baldly taught that God has elected men respectu prævisæ fidei. ↩

9. Cf. Schweizer, “Die Glaubenslehre der evangelisch-reformirten Kirche,” § 15 (i. 1844, p. 84). So of the relation of creeds and theologians in general, Dean Stanley, Contemporary Review, xxiv. 1874, p. 499. The Canons of Dort, the Westminster Confession, and the Formula Consensus Helvetica form exceptions in this regard. ↩

10. A separate paragraph, not article: it appears as a distinct paragraph under the general caption “Of God.” The Latin translation in ordinary use erects it into a separate “Disputation” - the Third. ↩

11. “Comparative View of the Doctrines and Confessions of the Various Communities of Christendom” (E.T.), 1873, p. 168. ↩

12. Op. cit., p. 407. ↩

13. The only other exception is, indeed, the “Consensus Genevensis,” which is in form a polemic defense by Calvin of his doctrine of predestination against the assaults of Pighius and Georgius Siculus. In it we read (Niemeyer, “Collectio confessionum in ecclesiis reformatis publicatarum,” 1840, p. 263): “If neither original sin suffices for Pighius for the condemnation of man, nor any place is given to the secret judgment of God, what will he do with regard to infant children who have been taken from this life before they could perform any such work (of charity), on account of their age? The circumstance of birth and death was certainly the same for infants who died at Sodom and at Jerusalem, nor was there any difference in their works; why will Christ at the last day segregate from some that stand at His right hand, others at His left? Who does not adore here the wonderful judgment of God, which has brought it about that some should be born at Jerusalem whence they might soon pass to a better life, while it separated others to be born at Sodom the gate of hell?” (Cf. p. 287.) ↩

14. The Augustinianism of Augustine is of course a different matter from that of the Romish “Augustinians.” The prædestinatio duplex and the distinction between the two wills in God are both explicitly taught by Augustine. If it had been to Augustine himself that the Thoruniensian divines were appealing, their finesse here would have been unnecessary. ↩

15. “Zwingli’s little book [“On Providence”] … is so full of hard paradoxes that it is as far as possible removed from that moderation which I have employed.” - Calvin to Bullinger, in “Opera Calvini,” ed. Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, xiv. 1875, col. 253. ↩

16. Scheibe, “Calvins Prädestinationslehre,” 1897. ↩

17. See Herzog-Hauck, “Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche,” ed. 3, iii. 1897, pp. 545-546, where the development, or perhaps we would better say, the librations of Bullinger’s doctrine are briefly sketched. Even in the “Decades,” however, Bullinger clearly defines predestination as duplex, or, as it is more accurately phrased, gemina (Parker Society edition, iv. 1851, pp. 185-186 (serm. iv.); cf. pp. 33-34 (serm. i.). ↩

18. Cf. an interesting instance of its influence in that direction in the letter of Bartholomew Traheron to Bullinger, “Zurich Letters,” First Series, i. p. 325, cf. 327 (cf. Schaff, “Creeds of Christendom,” i. 1877, pp. 630, 631). ↩

19. Saumurii, 1646, pp. 6, 7. ↩

20. Henry Boynton Smith, in “Faith and Philosophy,” 1877, pp. 103, 147, 283. The passages in which those expressions occur are worth reading as models of the justly fervent praise which the Westminster Standards evoke from competent readers. ↩

21. Translated from the text in Niemeyer, “Collectio confessionum in ecclesiis reformatis publicatarum,” 1840, pp. 18 ff. ↩

22. Published by Bullinger, after Zwingli’s death. Translated from the text in Niemeyer, p. 58. ↩

23. Translated from the text in Niemeyer, pp. 746f. ↩

24. From the text in Niemeyer, pp. 789, 793 f., 796. ↩

25. Niemeyer, pp. 828, 836. ↩

26. Niemeyer, pp. 79-80; 87-89. ↩

27. Niemeyer, p. 117, cf. 107. ↩

28. Niemeyer, pp. 542, 547, 549. The title in Niemeyer reads: “The true Confession derived from the Word of God and set forth and published with one consent, in the Synod of Czenger: I. On the one and only God … IX. On respect of persons in God because He saves some and hardens others.” ↩

29. Niemeyer, pp. 474 f., 477 ff., 481 ff., 489 f.; Schaff, “Creeds of Christendom,” iii. 1878, pp. 244 f., 247 ff., 252 ff., 260 ff. ↩

30. Schaff, at the questions noted (iii. pp. 307 ff.). The English translation of the (German) Reformed Church of the United States is used, except in the extract from Q. 54, which is translated afresh from the German, in order to bring out the strength of the language, which is perhaps somewhat obscured in the above-mentioned translation. ↩

31. Not a Reformed creed, but represents the milder “Lutheranism in opposition to the Flacian party” (Schaff). See Schaff, i. pp. 563 f. ↩

32. From the texts in Niemeyer: pp. 650-651, 664-666, 673-677. ↩

33. This Lutheran statement is inserted here for purposes of comparison: Niemeyer, pp. 666 f. ↩

34. Probably composed by Farel, though possibly with the help of Calvin (“Opera Calvini,” ed. Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, ix. 1870, col. 698). There is no article on predestination: but all the glory of salvation is ascribed to God. ↩

35. From the French text (“Opera Calvini,” xxii. 1880, coll. 46 f.). ↩

36. From the text in Niemeyer: pp. 128 f., 135 f. ↩

37. From the text in Niemeyer: pp. 195, 209f. ↩

38. The Consensus Genevensis is written, not in compressed form, but in a diffuse and argumentative style and occupies nearly one hundred octavo pages in Niemeyer’s “Collectio confessionum” (pp. 218-310). Nothing will be attempted here beyond presenting a few extracts, which it is hoped will give the substance of its teaching. ↩

39. From the text in “Opera Calvini,” ed. Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, ix. 1870, coll. 713 f. The date is not known. ↩

40. “Opera Calvini,” ix. coll. 721-726. ↩

41. “Opera Calvini,” ix. coll. 716 f. ↩

42. This clause is omitted in Bonnet’s text (“Lettres de Calvin,” ii. 1854, p. 154). ↩

43. “Opera Calvini,” ix. coll. 756 f. ↩

44. From the text in Niemeyer: pp. 316, 317 f. ↩

45. From the text in Niemeyer: pp. 367 f., 370 f. ↩

46. The remainder (in square brackets) is not found in the French, nor in the Latin of 1612: it is printed by Niemeyer from the Latin version of Festus Hommius, made in 1618. ↩

47. From the text in Dunlop, “A Collection of Confessions of Faith,” ii. 1722, pp. 3-9. ↩

48. From the text in Schaff, iii. 1878, pp. 439 ff. ↩

49. From Bonar’s “Catechisms of the Scottish Reformation,” 1866, pp. 207, 253-255. ↩

50. Taken from Hardwick’s “History of the Articles of Religion,” ed. 3, 1876, pp. 310ff. ↩

51. “in Christ” subsequently added (1563, 1571). ↩

52. “Wherefore” later. ↩

53. Altered later into: “they which be indued with so excellent a benefite of God.” ↩

54. “of God” added later. ↩

55. Later: “his.” ↩

56. Later: “doth.” ↩

57. Subsequently omitted (1563, 1571). ↩

58. From the Latin text in Hardwick, p. 363. ↩

59. Text in Schaff, Hardwick, and others. ↩

60. This translation is that of the (Dutch) Reformed Church in America as given by Schaff, except in the “Rejection of Errors,” which is from the Latin text given by Schaff : iii. pp. 581 ff., 556 ff., and 576. ↩

61. From the text in Niemeyer, pp. 731-734, with the aid of the English translation given by A. A. Hodge, in his “Outlines of Theology,” appendix. ↩

62. In the case of the Zurich Consent (1549), of course, its scope did not allow more than an incidental allusion. ↩

63. “Creeds of Christendom,” i. 1877, p. 454. ↩

64. P. 635. ↩

65. As cited, p. 635: “Even,” he specifies, “the Canons of Dort, the Westminster Confession, and the Helvetic Consensus Formula.” ↩