Chapter 54. Concerning a Newly Devised Doctrine of Predestination, taught by some new and late Divines.
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Chapter 54. Concerning a Newly Devised Doctrine of Predestination, taught by some new and late Divines.
Certain new Divines of our age have recently erected a new doctrine of Predestination, in which, fearing they might make God both unjust and unmerciful in the distribution of the causes of salvation and damnation, they turn them upside down. This may appear by their description in the following table.
A Frame of the Doctrine of Predestination out of the writings of some recent divines in Germany.
God's eternal decree, by which He decreed:
To create mankind 2. To give a law to His creature, with conditions both of life and death 3. After giving the law, to permit the fall
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To redeem all mankind in Christ; so that election is made universal in this place.
To call all mankind so redeemed, in time; here is a universal vocation.
Predestination or special election, by which God purposed with Himself, upon His mere mercy, to bestow faith upon certain of Adam's posterity who are called; and to justify and glorify them freely, not by faith or foreseen works.
Incredulity and rebellion are foreknown, by which the rest of Adam's posterity refuse the grace offered in the Gospel. The decree of Reprobation, by which God, for their foreknown rebellion, decreed to condemn them to destruction.
The manifestation of God's Glory But their doctrine has some foul errors and defects, which I will briefly touch on, as I am able.
The 1st Error.
That there is a certain universal or general election, by which God — without any restraint or exception of persons — has decreed to redeem by Christ, and to reconcile to Himself, all mankind wholly, fallen in Adam; indeed, every single person, Reprobate as well as Elect.
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The Confutation.
The very name of Election fully confutes this. For none can be said to be elected, if it is so that God would have all men elected in Christ. For he that elects, or makes a choice, cannot be said to take all. Nor can he that accepts all, be said to make a choice of only some.
Objection: Election is nothing else but dilection, or love. But this we know, that God loves all His creatures; therefore He elects all His creatures.
Answer: 1st. I deny that to elect is to love; rather, it is to ordain and appoint to love. Rom 9.13. 2nd. God does love all His creatures, yet not all equally, but every one in its place.
Furthermore, this position flatly repugns [conflicts with] the plainest passages of holy Scripture. Tit 2.14,
Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purge us to be a peculiar [special or unique] people for himself. Joh 10.15, I give my life for the sheep.
Exception: All men are the sheep of Christ.
Answer: John adds, And my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life; neither shall they perish.
Eph 5.23: Christ is the head of the Church, and the Saviour of his body. Verse 25, Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it. Redemption and remission of sins is the inheritance of the saints and of those who are made heirs of the Kingdom of Christ, Col 1.13.
Again, look for whom Christ is an Advocate, and to them only is he a Redeemer; for redemption and intercession are parts of Christ's priesthood. The one is as general and large as the other, and so they are surely united and fastened together, such that one cannot be without the other. But Christ is only an Advocate of the faithful. In his solemn prayer in John
17, he first prays for his own; namely, his disciples, elected not only to Apostleship, but also to eternal life.
And then, in verse 20, he likewise prays for those who
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would believe in him by their word. Now, against these, he opposes the world, for which he does not pray that it may obtain eternal life. And Romans 8.33-34, Who shall accuse God's elect? Christ sits at the right hand of the Father, and makes intercession for us. Furthermore, the members of Christ's Church are called the Redeemed of the Lord, Psa 107.2. Therefore this privilege is not given to all alike.
Exception: This universal reconciliation is not in respect to man, but to God himself, who made it for all, and offers it to all.
Answer: If Christ became a reconciliation for all men's sins before God, and indeed also satisfied for them all, it must follow that all those sins are quite blotted out of His remembrance. For the actual blotting out of sins inseparably depends upon reconciliation for sins. And satisfaction necessarily infers the very real and general abolishment of the guilt and punishment of sin, by God.
Objection 1: Christ took upon himself man's nature; therefore he redeemed man's nature generally.
Answer: 1st. This does not follow, unless we said that Christ redeemed his own humanity, which cannot in any way be possible. 2nd. Every woman partakes the human nature of every man; yet every man is not every woman's husband; but he is hers alone with whom he is made one flesh by the covenant in matrimony.
Likewise, by his incarnation (ensarkwsh ensarkoseh) Christ took upon himself man's nature, which is common to all Adam's progeny; yet He is the husband of his Church alone; this is by another more particular conjunction: namely, the bond of the Spirit and of faith.
And by this bond, the Church has become flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, Eph 5.23. And therefore, she alone may justly claim title to the death of Christ, and all His merits.
Objection 2: Christ's redemption is as general as Adam's fall; and therefore it pertains to all Adam's posterity.
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Answer: Adam was a type of Christ, and Christ a counter-type to Adam. Adam was the root of all his successors, or all who would come from him; and from this first Adam, sin and death were derived. Again,
Christ is also a root, but of the elect only — those who believe; from Him and to them, proceed righteousness and life eternal. He cannot be said to be the root of all and every single man, because all do not drink and receive His righteousness and life; nor are they actually made righteous by Him. Rom 1.17-19.
Objection 2a: The benefit of Christ's death redounded to all.
Answer: It did, to all who believe. For just as Adam destroyed all those who were born of him, so Christ justifies and saves all those who are born anew by Him, and no others.
Objection 2b: If Adam's sin destroyed all, and Christ's merit does not save all, then Adam's sin is more forcible to condemn, than Christ's mercy is to save.
Answer: We must not esteem the mercy of Christ by the number of men who receive mercy (for if so, then I would indeed grant that just as Adam's fall made all unjust, so the mercy of Christ and his redemption would actually justify all). We must measure it by the efficacy and dignity of it, rather than by the number on whom it is bestowed. For it was an easier thing to destroy all by sin, than to save but one by grace. Man being but mere man, could destroy all; but to save even one, none could do it except one who was both God and man.
Objection 3: There are many places in Scripture which affirm that the benefit of Christ's death pertains to all. Rom 11.32, God has shut up all under sin, that He might have mercy upon all. 1Tim 2.4, God would have all men to be saved. 2Pet 3.9, God would not have any perish, but all come to repentance.
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Answer: 1st, You must understand all who believe, as it is in Mat 11.28, All who are weary and heavy-laden; or Joh 3.16, All who believe; Gal 3.22, The Scripture had confined all under sin, that the promise by the faith of Jesus, should be given to those who believe. Act 10.43, All who believe [will receive remission of sins]. And surely there is a generality of those who believe, as well as of the whole world.
2nd. We may understand "all" to mean some of all sorts, not every single person of all sorts. So it is in Rev
5.9. Christ is said to have redeemed some out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation. And Gal
3.28, There is neither Jew nor Grecian, neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Mat 4.23, Christ is said to have healed every disease; that is, every kind of disease. And Augustine has a fit rule to this purpose. "All" is often used for "many," as it is in Rom 5.18-19.
In his Manual to Laur. chap. 103, Augustine says, "It is thus said, God would have all to be saved, not because there was no man He would have damned, and therefore he would not do miracles among them, who would (as he says) have repented if he had done miracles — but that, by all men we should understand all sorts of men, however distinguished, whether Kings, private persons, etc."
And in his book, de Corrept. & Gratia, chap. 14, "It is said, 'He would have all to be saved;' we must understand it as, 'all those who are predestined to be saved,' because among them are all sorts of men; as he said to the Pharisees, 'You tithe every herb.'
3rd. These two things — to be willing to save man, and that man should come to the saving knowledge of the truth (1Tim 2.4) — are inseparably united together.
But the second, we see, does not agree to all and every single person; and therefore the first cannot.
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Objection 4: In many places of Scripture, Christ is said to redeem the world, as in 1Joh 2.2, He is a propitiation for the sins of the whole world.
Answer: This word world signifies, 1. The frame of heaven and earth; 2. All men, both good and bad together; 3. The company of unbelievers and malignant haters of Christ; 4. The congregation of the Elect, dispersed over the face of the whole earth, and to be gathered out of it. — It is in this fourth sense, that we must understand those passages mentioned above.
Abraham is called the heir of the world, Rom 4.13; that is, of many nations, Gen 17.4-5.
Objection 5: God does not will the death of a sinner, but rather that he repent and live, Eze 18.23.
Answer: Augustine answers this question in his 1st book to Simplicius, 2nd question:
You must distinguish between man as he is born man, and man as he is a sinner. For God is not delighted with the destruction of man, as he is man, but as he is a sinner. Nor does He will simply the death of anyone as a sinner, or as it is the ruin and destruction of His creature. But, by the detestation and revenge of sin with eternal death, His glory is exceedingly advanced.
God therefore wills the death of a sinner, only as it is a punishment; that is, as it is a means to declare and set out His divine justice. And therefore it is an untruth for a man to say that God would have none condemned.
For once men are condemned, it must either be with God's will, or without it. If it is without it, then the will of God must suffer violence, which it is great impiety to affirm. If it is with His will, God must change His sentence previously set down, but we must not presume to say so.
Objection 6: God is the Father of all, Mal 2.10.
Answer: This verse is meant about God's Church, outside of which all men standing in that corrupt estate by Adam, are the children of wrath and of the devil,
Eph 2.2; Joh 8.44.
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Objection 7: If God did elect some, and reject others, He must be (προσωπολήπτης prosopoleptes) a respecter of persons. Act 10.34
Answer: 1st. One is said, then, to accept or have respect to persons, when by something inherent in the person, he is moved to do this or that for him. Now, as for God, He elected some upon His mere pleasure, and rejected others eternally, not moved or urged to it by anything whatsoever, outside of Himself. 2nd. He is debtor to none, but may by good right, do with His creatures what seems good to Him in His own eyes.
3rd. It is one thing for God to accept persons, and another to make a choice of men. If we did not grant this, it would follow that God must be deemed blameworthy, because He did not make all His creatures most glorious Angels.
Objection 8: If God decreed to reject certain men, then He hated his creature.
Answer: God decreed to reject His creature and workmanship, not because He hated it, but because He appointed it to hatred. And it is one thing to hate, and another to appoint it to hatred. And indeed, God does not actually hate anything except for sin. That saying of Augustine to Simplicius is fit for this purpose:
When God makes the wicked, whom He does not justify, vessels of wrath, He does not do it to hate what He made. For in making them vessels, they have their use; namely, that by their pains to which they were ordained, the vessels of honour might reap profit. God therefore does not hate them, in that they are men, or vessels; neither does He hate anything that He made in them by creation, or ordination. For God hates nothing which He has made. But in as much as He made them vessels of destruction, He did it to instruct others. As for their impiety, which He never made — that He hates utterly. Therefore, a judge hates theft in a man, but he does not hate the man's punishment, that he is sent to work in the mines. For the thief does the first, and the judge the latter. So too God, though He makes vessels
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of perdition out of the company of those who perish, He does not therefore hate what He does; that is, condemning those who perish in their due punishment for sin.
Objection 9: The reprobates are said in many places in Scripture, to be redeemed by Christ, such as 2Pet
2.1.
Answer: 1st. We must not understand such places to mean all reprobates, but those who are in the church for a time. 2nd. They are said to be redeemed, justified, and sanctified, both in their own judgments, and the Churches also, in as much as they make an external profession of faith. But this is a judgment of charity, not of certainty.
Objection 10. God might be thought cruel if He had ordained most of the world to destruction.
Answer: God could well enough have decreed that all men should have been utterly rejected; and yet He would not have been a whit crueller or unjust. Reason
1. He sentenced all and every one of those foul and wicked spirits who fell from Him, to eternal torments.
Reason 2. He also decreed, as is apparent by the event, that men should live by the slaughter of beasts; and yet God is not therefore cruel against them. And surely God is no more bound to man, than He is to the brute beasts.
Exception: God appointed all to be saved, with this caveat and condition: If they believe.
Answer: This is absurd to affirm. For 1. By this means the decree of God would depend on the will of man, when contrarily, God's decree limits and orders all inferior causes. 2. It quite takes away the certainty of God's decree, because a conditional proposition affirms nothing as actually being so, or it does not certainly affirm anything.
Objection: If the merit of Christ did not extend itself as far as the fall of Adam, then the head of the Serpent is not broken, nor is Satan's kingdom abolished by Christ.
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Answer: This bruising of the serpent's head is seen only in those who are at enmity with the Serpent; namely, in those who truly believe. Compare Gen 3.15 with Rom
16.20.
To conclude, what they say is not true; namely, that this opinion about a universal and effectual redemption of every single man, is a notable remedy to comfort afflicted consciences. For I appeal to the judgment of all men, whether there is in this manner of consolation, any great comfort to the afflicted conscience:
Christ died for all men.
You are a man.
Therefore Christ died for you.
The 2nd Error.
God foreknew the fall of Adam, but He not foreordain it by His eternal decree; and therefore his fall was outside the agent permission of God.
The Confutation.
It is false. For I. there is not the least thing in nature that does not come to pass by the decree and will of God, Mat 10.30.
This is why those who affirm that God only foreknew this or that, either quite overturn the providence of God, or at least imagine that it is a very idle providence. II. The act of Herod and Pilate in delivering Christ to be crucified, against their own consciences, may seem to be as heinous as Adam's fall; and yet they are said to have done that which the hand of the Lord had fore-ordained to be done, Act 4.28.
Again, the fall of Adam came by God's active, or rather operative permission. This was in two ways: I. In as much as the fall was an action: for in God alone we live, we move, and have our being. II. In as much as his fall was but a bare trial of his loyalty to God, by which God would test both the power and the will of His creature.
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The 3rd Error.
God, because He foresaw the disobedience of some, or that they would contemn [despise] the Gospel, decreed their destruction and condemnation.
The Confutation.
We utterly deny that the foreseeing of the contempt of grace in anyone, was the first and principal cause of the decree of reprobation. Reasons:
In Romans 1, Paul derives the common condemnation of the Gentiles from this: namely, that they withheld the truth in unrighteousness — that is, they were condemned because they wittingly extinguished that light of nature by their wicked doings, which they had of the knowledge of God, and would not obey their consciences, inwardly checking them for it.
II. If that faith foreseen is not the cause of the decree of Election, then it cannot be that the lack of faith foreseen should be the cause of the decree of reprobation; rather, as faith follows election in the order of causes, so must incredulity follow reprobation.
For there is like reasoning or proportion in these contraries.
III. Many infants depart this life, being out of the true Church, and before they have any use of reason.
And again, there are many who, despite living long, yet being either idiots and fools, or born deaf, they cannot come to the true use of reason. In all of this, it is not credible that they should be suspected of any contempt of the Gospel which they could not learn.
IV. Esau was hated by God for no other cause than it so pleased Him, Rom 9.13.
V. If this opinion were to be true, then it would follow that men should be condemned for nothing else but incredulity, which is not so, Joh 3.36.
Christ, speaking of unbelief, does not say that the wrath of God
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came upon man for that, but remains on him. And why should we daily ask pardon for our sins, if nothing but incredulity or unbelief condemned us? No, even if there were never any contempt of the Gospel, that corruption of original sin would still be sufficient to condemn men.
VI. Also, that admiration which Paul has — Rom 9.20, O man, who are you that disputes with God? — plainly shows that the cause of the decree of God in rejecting some is unsearchable; and that it does not at all depend on any foreseen contempt towards the grace of God offered in the Gospel. For if it were otherwise, we might easily give a reason for God's decree.
Augustine, in epistle 105, says very well, Who created the reprobates if not God? And why, if not because it pleased Him? But why did it please Him? O man, who are you that disputes with God?
Some divines, perceiving that this is a hard sentence, go about mitigating it in this way:
The matter or object of predestination, is a reasonable creature; and that is not simply or absolutely considered, but partly as it fell, and partly as of itself it was subject to fall. And thereupon, God, preordaining men from everlasting, considered them not simply as He was to make them men, but as they were the sort of men who might fall into sin, be redeemed back by Christ, and afterward be called to the light of the Gospel. The efficient or first moving cause, was not any foreknown cause, either this or that, but the mere will of God. For He disposes all things not of and by His foreknowledge, but rather according to it.
But these things, even though they may seem to be subtle devises, yet they are not altogether true.
Reasons:
I. The potter, when he purposes to make some vessel, does not consider the clay, and regard some inherent quality in it to make it a vessel. Rather, he makes it of such and such a form, for this or that use, of his own free-will and pleasure.
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II. Rom 9.21, Has not the potter the power to make from the same lump, one vessel to honour, and another to dishonour? In this passage, we may not understand the term lump to mean all mankind corrupted and fallen, and so to be redeemed in Christ. For then Paul would not have said that God made vessels of wrath, but rather that He forsook them after they were made.
III.
This seems preposterous: that God first foreknew mankind, created, fallen, and redeemed in Christ; and that afterward, he ordained those who were so foreknown, to life or to death. For the end is the first thing in the intention of the agent. Nor will a most skilful workman first prepare means by which he may be helped to do something, before he has set down in his mind all the ends — both those that are nearest, and those that are furthest. Now, we know this: that man's creation, and his fall in Adam, are but means to execute
God's predestination; and therefore, they are subordinate to it. But the end of God's decree, is the manifestation of His glory in saving some, and condemning others.
Therefore, we may not once imagine that God first consulted the means by which He determined to execute His decree, and then deliberated about the election and reprobation of man.
The 4th Error.
God's calling to the knowledge of the Gospel is universal, indeed of all men and every single person, without exception.
The Confutation.
This is a very unreasonable position. Reasons:
I. God would not have all men called. Mat 20.16
Many are called but few chosen. He does not say all are called, but many. Christ in his Disciples' first embassage [commission], charges them not to preach to the Gentiles of his coming. Mat 10.5 And to the Canaanite woman, Mat 16.26, he says, It is not lawful
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to give that which is holy to dogs. Mat 13.11, It is not given to everyone to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. Rom 16.25, The mystery of the Gospel
(whether it is meant of Christ or the calling of the Gentiles) was kept secret from the beginning of the world.
II. There are many millions of men who have not so as heard of Christ. Act 14.16, God in times past suffered all the Gentiles to walk in their own ways.
III. Most of the world has ever been outside of the Covenant. Eph 2.12, You were, I say, at that time without Christ, and were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, and had no hope, and were without God in the world. Verse 19, But now you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but citizens with the Saints.
Objection 1: They are said to be ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι (apellotrioomenoi), not simply alienated, but abalienated [estranged or shut out] from God. Now, how could they be abalienated, unless they or their predecessors had been in the Covenant?
Answer: The Gentiles are not said to be abalienated from the Covenant, but from the common-wealth of Israel. This is because God had then, by certain laws, rites, and ceremonies, utterly severed and distinguished the people of the Jews from all other nations. Exo 19.5
Objection 2: This general calling is not to be understood simply of the ministry of the word, but of the will of God, delivered shortly after the fall in His unwritten word, but afterward in His written word. And all men ought to know this, though many do not, through their own fault.
Answer: But the Scriptures were committed to the custody of the Church of God, and everyone was not credited with them. Rom 3.2, To the Jews were, of credit, committed the oracles of God. 1Tim 3.15, The Church is the pillar and ground of truth. Psa 147.19-20,
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He showed his words to Jacob, and His statutes and laws to the House of Israel. He has not dealt so with every nation; therefore they have not known His laws.
Psa 76.1, The Lord is famous in Judea, and in Israel his name is great.
Objection 3: The Covenant of Grace was made with Adam and Eve, and in them all mankind was received into the Church and covenant, and also called to the knowledge of God.
Answer: 1st. This reason lacks even common sense and reason — to say that in giving His promise in the days of Adam and Noah, God in them called all mankind that would come after.
2nd. Adam, before his fall, did indeed receive that grace both for himself and also for others; and in the fall he lost it both for himself and for all others. But after the fall, he received the promise for himself alone, and not for the whole world. Otherwise, the first Adam would have been not only a living creature, but a quickening spirit, which is proper to the second Adam,
1Cor 15.45.
The Conclusion.
If we were to grant that this doctrine is true, then we must allow these absurdities in divinity, which follow: I. That God would have all and each man saved; and yet, with this, He would have some ordained to hatred and perdition. Or else, in regard to God, all men are elected and redeemed; but in regard to the event
[i.e., of sin and judgment], many perish. II. The guilt of Adam's sin, then, must not be imputed to any single one of his posterity, because God, having mercy on all generally in Christ, took into the covenant of reconciliation all mankind. Now, if but the guiltiness of Adam's fall is taken away, the punishment immediately ceases to be a punishment; and corruption itself is little by little abolished in all men.