[7] (Banner of Truth, 2006) 122.
[1] Rev. Travis Fentiman, MDiv., is a probationer in the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) and resides in Vermont, USA with his dear bride and three children. Charles F. Johnson received a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from the University of Illinois.
[2] The edition we have used, which is online at Google Books, is Samuele Rhetorforte, Examen Arminianismi, Conscriptum & discipulis dictatum, ed. Matthia Netheno (Ultrajecti: Ex Officina Antonii Smytegelt, Bibli., 1668).
[3] According to Guy M. Richard, The Supremacy of God in the Theology of Samuel Rutherford (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2009) 20-21. See all of chapter 1 for a much more detailed historical introduction to the Examination. Richard’s published dissertation survey’s the first half of the content of the Examination, specifically on prolegomena, God and soteriology.
[4] Only his catechism and some of his letters and sermons coming earlier.
[5] Meaning ‘universal’, as Scriptural theology is the most universal Christian theology, recognized by all people in all times that love the Word of God as it stands pure.
[6] Ch. 10, ‘Whether the Covenant of Grace is eternal?’ & Ch. 14, “Whether we ought to be certain about our election?” from Robert McCurley, ‘Samuel Rutherford: a Translation,’ The Master’s Trumpet, vol. 6 (Winter, 2018), 39-43.
[7] (Banner of Truth, 2006) 122.
[8] “After the death of Jacobus Arminius (d. 1609), a group of his Dutch Protestant followers, led by Simon Episcopius (1583-1643), submitted a remonstrance in 1610, outhning their objections to Calvinist doctrine under five articles. In 1618, the Synod of Dordrecht refuted these errors and confirmed the biblical truths codified in the Belgic Confession and Heidelberg Catechism.” McCurley, “Rutherford: A Translation,” 40.
[9] Vorstius (1569-1622) was a German-Dutch, Remonstrant theologian, and successor to Jacobus Arminius in the theology chair at Leiden.
[10] p. 421
[11] The whole of this chapter has been translated by Guy M. Richard in The Confessional Presbyterian, vol. 4 (2008) 270-276.
[12] The Latin Scripture quotations which Rutherford used, according to Rev. McCurley, were from the broadly popular translation amongst protestants of the Old Testament by Immanuel Tremellius’ (1510-1580) and the likewise popular translation of the New Testament by Theodore Beza (1519-1605). McCurley, “Rutherford: A Translation,” 41-42.
[13] These summary subheadings are not original, but have been supplied by the translators.
[14] Rutherford had previously argued that all human inventions are not lawful in worship because they are not from the authority of Scripture, “as it is written”. 2 Tim. 3:16-17 is the topical text for this section. ‘They’ refers to the Arminians. ‘This argument’ refers essentially to the Regulative Principle of Worship, though it was not known by that name at the time of Rutherford.
[15] A spiritually symbolic white robe originally used in Romanism during the Middle Ages, specifically in the worship of the mass, which some protestant communities retained under the notion of it being indifferent.
[16] This is similar to the common philosophy of worship today that holds that what Scripture obliges to is to be done in worship, though other religiously significant things are also done in worship (as worship to God) which one is thought to have liberty for (God being pleased with such voluntary worship); yet such things are said not to be bound on persons’ consciences as necessary. Therefore such things are allowed and cannot be harmful when done to edification.
[17] adiaphori
[18] Jeroboam set up the calf worship as another option for the people, and encouraged it (1 Kings 12:28-29), but it is never said that he mandated the people to worship the calves; rather, the people did so of their own accord (1 Kings 12:30). Even when Jeroboam ‘ordained’ his own devised feast, it is clear that he ordered special sacrifices by the for the occasion through the newly made priests, but the passage is silent as to any compulsion upon the people to come to this feast (1 Kings 12:32-33).
[19] Jeroboam’s chief concern was political; and he wanted to preserve the worship of YHWH and Israel’s religion, only in a distinctive way suited to his interests.
[20] The main difference between the Regulative Principle of Worship as commonly understood today and the Regulative Principle of Worship as commonly held by the Scottish and English puritans of the Post-Reformation era is that the former holds that a general and loose warrant is all that is needed for authorized worship from God’s Word, whereas the latter held that a close, particular and necessary warrant is all that could warrant something to be authorized worship from God’s Word. For instance, it is common to hear that musical instruments are authorized for Christian worship because they are commanded to be used in the Psalms. However, the minor proposition, namely that everything commanded in the Psalms are to be used in Christian worship, is missing. If that premise held true it would mean that incense, vestments, sacrifices, the sprinkling of blood with hyssop, and the use of a tabernacle and temple in Christian worship were also lawful. If such a syllogism could yet be made valid for musical instruments in Christian worship, as Rutherford says, we desire to hear it. The same goes for many other things that people find in the Bible and thus would place in worship, such as creeds, responsive readings, choirs, vestments, crosses, religious imagery in the place of worship, man-composed worship songs, unison prayers, processionals, drama, dancing, offerings, holy days apart from the Lord’s Day, using the steps of a stage as an altar, etc. We find other things in the Bible and the Psalms as well, such as persons sleeping, going to war, eating, working, and yet Scriptural principles about worship clearly exclude these things from being worship to God in any immediate and direct sense. Rutherford’s following argument, that the worship of the Devil would be therefore lawful, was likely intended to be extreme for the sake of argument, yet the general argument applies broadly to much of the contemporary, traditional and liturgical worship in reformed churches today.
[21] A logical syllogism is composed of a major proposition, a minor proposition and a conclusion. The major proposition is a general truth. The minor proposition is more detailed to the specifics. Taken together the conclusion ought to follow as necessary.
[22] The erroneous syllogism hinges on an ambiguity in the major proposition, namely, whether the command is from God in his Word, or whether, because the Word is from God, any worship in the Word is therefore lawful.
[23] A legendary animal that was half-goat and half-deer.
[24] It is often put forward in our day that it is allowable for many things with a religious significance to be used in worship (which are not particularly warranted in the Word) as there are natural human reasons for them as long as they are used for edification and are done decently and fittingly.
[25] modo, or ‘form’. Contemporary thought on the Regulative Principle of Worship which holds that while the elements of worship are regulated, yet the form they may take is left open, has missed that the Scottish and English puritans, in deriving their worship from God’s Word, did not allow (any more than Scripture does) complete liberty with respect to the ‘form’ or ‘mode’ of worship. Many reformed pastors believe that they are allowed great discretion and liberty in choosing the forms of things in a worship liturgy (such things not being particularly warranted in God’s Word).
[26] Rutherford is making the very important distinction that the Word does not simply bind certain material actions, but it may bind moral aspects of certain actions, whereas the other aspects of those actions may be indifferent and variable. For instance, in worship, Christ has bound that a cup be used in the Lord’s Supper (as this is spiritually significant according to the Word). However, the size of the cup, the material it is made of, the shape of it, and other factors, are left indifferent as long as a suitable cup fulfilling the other morally required aspects of the Lord’s Supper is used. To give a few more examples, God’s word morally regulates the content of worship song, whereas it does not so strictly regulate the content of prayer or preaching. Scripture tells to sing praise to God. That moral obligation is fulfilled if one (1) sings, (2) praise (in consistency with further teachings of Scripture) (3) to God, though the tune, meter (or lack thereof), speed, circumstances and other factors may be variable (though these things ought to be in harmony with the light of nature as suited to the Psalms and the singing thereof).
[27] Rutherford is deriving the Regulative Principle of Worship from the sufficiency of Scripture as a standard for all moral and spiritual actions, which all protestant communities at the Reformation held to, contra Rome. The necessary connection, which he assumes, and which makes the syllogism valid, is that all actions of worship are moral and spiritual. Therefore, by 2 Tim. 3:16 (which Rutherford uses as the main text for this section), worship actions are regulated by Scripture. The reason why we have significant liberty in the Christian life to do this or that, is because, in living unto God and fulfilling his moral law, there is much that is left unto our choice as indifferent in our daily lives, we thus being able to pick between such indifferent actions while fulfilling that which is moral. In worship, the regulations are drawn much closer by Scripture, and hence one’s liberty is much more limited, only holding with respect to truly indifferent and circumstantial matters.
[28] Rutherford goes on to prove the propositions of this syllogism in some detail before answering numerous objections to it for the rest of the section.
[29] Rutherford here names only the ordinary elements of worship which would shortly thereafter be codified in the list found in Westminster Confession (WCF), 21.3-5. Rutherford did not believe that a call to worship was an element of worship: “And as touching things of prudence, they are things properly mixed, as… how the worship shall be ordered, whether you should begin the worship with a word of prayer, or a word of praising, or a word of exhorting to stir up for the duty of the day is a matter of prudence; and because God hath not laid the band of a precept on us, to begin with either of the three; therefore it would seem that though the things themselves be moral, and must be warranted by a Word of God; yet the order is not moral, but prudential, and so cannot fall under a command of the Church; for to me it is hard that men and the Church should lay on a tie or bond of a precept where God hath laid on no such bond;” Samuel Rutherford, The Divine Right of Church-Government and Excommunication… (London: John Field for Christopher Meredith, 1646) 6. The traditional Scottish understanding and practice in that era was that the call to worship was a human exhortation by the pastor, normally being the sentence, “Let us worship God.” That this was also the understanding of Westminster, see ‘Of the Assembling of the Congregation…’ in Westminster’s Directory for the Publick Worship of God. Rutherford also did not believe that the benediction was a distinct element of worship. Rather, he considered it to be a prayer: “Blessing of the Church at their dismission is nothing but a prayer of the whole Church (the minister being [the] mouth) who blesses all…” Samuel Rutherford, The due right of presbyteries… (London: E. Griffin, for Richard Whittaker, and Andrew Crook, 1644) part 2, 322. That this is also the view evidenced in numerous places in the Westminster standards, see Travis Fentiman, ‘The Benediction is a Special Prayer, per Scripture and Westminster,’ https://reformedbooksonline.com/the-benediction-is-a-prayer-per-scripture-and-westminster/ Accessed 7-16-2019.
[30] The term ‘ceremonies’ may not seem widely applicable by some to modern worship (and especially reformed worship). However, the extensive applicability of the issues surrounding ‘ceremonies’ to our modern day is seen in how they were defined by the puritans, namely in that ‘ceremonies’ included all aspects about worship which: (1) had a religious significance not particularly authorized by God’s Word, (2) had any use in worship that went beyond their natural, indifferent, civil use, and, (3) even if a religious significance was denied to them, they included all actions and things which had a positive appointment or significance not inherent to those actions or things. When all of these are removed from worship, one is simply left with the unadorned, simple, bare and bold, spiritual worship that God has left to us in his Word, that He alone might have the glory, untouched by the wisdom of man (Ex. 20:25).
[31] If Christ’s humanity may be worshipped, then Heb. 1:6 may be true and yet Christ not be divine, as per the Arians and Socinians. As the Arians and Socinians have ill motives, their trying to take something away is good grounds for it being true.
[32] Because there is only, and can only be, one kind of religious worship, which must be the fullest and highest degree of worshipping the divinity (there being no lesser ground for religious worship). This is in contradistinction to other civil or social kinds of ‘worship’ mentioned in Scripture, such as the honoring of kings, which, when lawfully done, is not a religious worship.
[33] Who does not have the mediatorial glory.
[34] futuritio, by futurition, a thing being made to come to pass.
[35] If God intended that persons might have perfect obedience, the death of Christ would be unnecessary, and hence a waste.
[36] The Arminians were saying that as the reprobate does not bring forth obedience, nor are such works so fitting and akin to his corrupt nature, that God’s revealed will must not be one simply of approval and moral satisfaction, as the reformed held. Thus, the revealed will, alternately, must therefore intend the reprobate’s salvation.
[37] Seria, or ‘serious’, ‘grave’.
[38] homini convenientem ac salutarem
[39] Affectus, or (in order of frequency of usage) ‘affection’, ‘desire’, ‘goodwill’
[40] in Deo, this is very theologically specific language.
[41] The singular of ‘will’ is here important: Rutherford is distinguishing two aspects within, and made known from, the one will God; he is not here asserting two wills in God.
[42] ‘Will’ is being deliberately kept singular with attendant verbal participles (as it is in the Latin) in the translation following despite the less than pleasing English, in order to show that the diversity in the effecting and permitting is not a diversity in the will of God itself, but that this diversity is only manifested from the singular will of God in its actions directed towards the variegated creation (ad extra). That is, God’s singular will produces the variety of effecting and permitting. This variety in effecting and permitting is necessarily how God’s one, infinite, will is made known to, distributed to and comprehended by finite creatures, as the finite cannot comprehend the infinite.
[43] Gregory of Valencia (c. 1550-1603) was a Spanish, Romanist scholar and theological professor.
[44] A work against the puritan William Perkins who had written extensively on predestination. See An Examination of Rev. James Aminius, D.D., of a Treatise, Concerning the Order and Mode of Predestination and the Amplitude of Divine Grace, by Rev. William Perkins, D.D.…. in James Arminius, The Writings of James Arminius, vol. 3, tr. James Nichols & W.R. Bagnall (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1977) 279-525.
[45] This verb is in the passive voice, whereas the last use of the verb, about making good things, is in the active voice. ‘To work unto his glory’ is also in the active voice. That is to say that evil things are necessarily brought about to be through the creatures differently than how God directly causes good things in his creatures; yet these evil things, passively being allowed to come into existence, are then actively governed by God unto his glory.
[46] The fathers of the Roman Catholic Council of Trent.
[47] otiose, or ‘unengaged’
[48] Rutherford goes on for five pages, in eighteen points, proving this thesis.
[49] impellit
[50] Sin is being understood as a privation, or an abstract non-entity, something missing from the action, while the action itself remains.
[51] To consider an action wholly according to its main abstract quality would be like considering snow to be simply whiteness.
[52] This might be most clearly seen in a work that is indifferent or good in itself, but is done from a fleshly heart which exercises the work for ill. The work of in and of itself is good, though due to the intent of the person that did it, is tainted with evil in relation to that person.
[53] Else both God and the creature could not exist at the same time.
[54] That is, sin cannot be an actual privation of God, his existence or essence.
[55] As the chief and highest good would not be the chief and highest good if anything is taken away from it, if sin had come from God. Hence God cannot sin or be the author of sin.
[56] Contingent things. Yet God is absolute and not contingent, as everything in creation is; therefore nothing that exists in creation can be contrary to God at the most basic level.
[57] If there is a relative opposition between things, then one is at the expense of the other. For instance, in Manicheanism, good and evil are said to necessarily exist in a relative opposition to each other; one cannot be absolute as long as the other exists; the existence of one takes away from the independent sovereignty of the other. God, however, is absolute.
[58] “The cause efficiens, the efficient cause, or productive, effective cause, which is the agent productive of the motion or mutation in any sequence of causes and effects;” Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985) 61.
[59] abstrahit, or ‘separate’, ‘detached’, ‘unconnected’.
[60] The traditional causes in Aristotelian metaphysics, which were widely used in their own way by the Reformed scholastics: the material cause, formal cause, efficient cause and final cause.
[61] If God were on the same plane as men, but higher, this would be problematic, if God acted contrary to and against law. However, as God is the unmoved, moving First Cause of all things, He and his actions are at a different level than anything in creation; hence, He is not bound, according to Rutherford, by the natural law He has imposed on the creatures.
[62] tenetur dare
[63] Rom. 9:22-23, “What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory.” Note that God is not said to take pleasure in sin in anyway. Rather, it is true that by the will of God’s good-pleasure (that of decree) He permissively wills sin to exist under his hatred only insofar as it is useful unto his higher ends, which are truly good.
[64] Marcus Cato the elder (234-149 B.C.) was a Roman soldier, senator and historian known for his opposition to Hellenization.
[65] If permission is wholly an absence of God willing anything positively, as the Arminians held, then nothing follows upon it. Sin, on their paradigm, would then either come from man’s autonomy, or not. The reformed notion that God’s permission has an effective positive aspect to it (in addition to a passive, negative aspect), necessarily entails that something follows upon it. Yet sin may not positively come from God, nor come from his will by a necessary causation, lest God be the author of sin. The reformed made a distinction that the event decreed would certainly come about infallibly, but may happen, as sin does, through a free creaturely cause, not by necessity (cf. WCF 5.2).
[66] WCF 16.3, “Their ability to do good works is not at all of themselves, but wholly from the spirit of Christ. And… there is required an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit to work in them to will and to do of his good pleasure…”
[67] Reformed infralapsarians often pose this same objection to supralapsarians.
[68] This appears to be an Arminian assumption based on their system which posits an antecedent good-will of God which may be overturned. Rutherford does not grant the assumption. As the sense of the paragraph is not entirely clear to the translators, here is the Latin: “Object. Reprobatio necessario sequitur ex non-electione, ideoque Deus hic idem facit ac si ad mille annos ut vivat, alicui imperet, interim tamen decem tantum dies vim vitae conservatricem ipsi continuet. Resp. Hoc idem argumentum a Paulo proponitur in persona carnalium hominum, Rom. 9:14. Potest enim Deus jure succensere ei, qui vim vitae conservatricem ad decem dies tantum servet, & deinde ultro abjiciat, etsi ipse Deus ex libera sua voluntate eam vim abstrhat.”
[69] prima causa
[70] or ‘by the act of existing and looking upon it.’ Either way the idea is that a judge is in some way a cause of sin in that his looking upon it with moral condemnation makes it to be, or confirms it to be sinful.
[71] This is explained in the following point.
[72] It appears from Rutherford’s answer below that he accepts the premise that God’s end, as He so decreed it and as it is revealed in Scripture (Rom. 9:22-23), could not be reached without sin. Rutherford’s response is to show that these things are in consistency with the blessedness of God.
[73] This passive voice is significant: God does not actively make these offensive things, but rather they are allowed to be made through the creature.
[74] Rutherford is essentially saying that the existence of sin, along with God’s decree and providence in bringing it about, does not touch or alter God’s blessed aseity (his needing no other). Hence the aseity of God, God’s eternal blessedness and the existence of sin are consistent with each other.
[75] Rutherford appears to be saying that sin is contrary to God’s nature in that, given God’s revealed will being willed as it is, God, by his holiness and immutability (attributes of his nature), cannot will an action of the creature tainted with sin, to be righteous and approved. Thus, sin opposes the nature of God conditionally: on the condition of sin existing (which God freely chose), and God’s revealed will being what it is, God, by his nature, is limited by sin in that He cannot approve of sin. However, Rutherford notes, God is still able to will (by his revealed will) such righteous actions tainted by human sin without approving of the evil of that human action. The translators, however, are not entirely sure of the interpretation of the last half of point 2. Another translation is: “…insofar as it conflicts with the immutability and holiness of God; for instance: if He wills equity and justice, by such an act He has thus prohibited iniquity; which iniquity, nonetheless, God is able, in an absolute respect, to command [logically] before that volition of equity and justice." The Latin reads: “…quatenus pugnat cum immutabilitate & sanctitate Dei, velle tanquam aequum & justum, talem actum quem ipse vetuit, ut iniquum, quem tamen absolute ante illam volitionem ut aequum & justum mandare poterat.”
[76] ‘by accident’ in the Aristotelian sense, in that the attributed quality is not inherent and necessary to the thing itself, but is an adjunct contingent upon another factor, which may or may not be present in all cases.
[77] preconium
[78] actu primo
[79] beneficium, or ‘kindness’
[80] Every act unto good, even from someone with a good nature, requires a concurring and free act of God’s Spirit in order for its accomplishment, cite WCF and Scripture.
[81] An innate, originating and enduring disposition which produces repeated action.
[82] If one was an artist and had used a dark color on a canvass, which paint was still wet, he might turn it to yellow, a lighter color, in preparation for turning it white.
[83] This may also mean ‘species’, as in ‘kind’ or ‘type’. The appropriate ambiguity may have been intended.
[84] If God had sovereignly ordered the steps of the means to fall out that way.
[85] Ambitus, ‘walking about’, that is, they are coextensive in their designs and objects.
[86] If the congruent call of God in the gospel, according to the Jesuits (the reformed deny the concept altogether), does not stem from an eternal decree of God, but something less (the efficacy of it being conditional and based on the creature), then it is not Christ doing the saving.
[87] Early Church father (c.390-c.463)
[88] Minime could also be translated as ‘only minimally’. Rutherford, at least in later writings, took the hypothetical necessity view of the atonement of Christ, that God could have saved persons apart from any atonement at all, though it was hypothetically necessary for Christ to assume human flesh and die as a substitute as that would bring the most glory to God. On such a view, it would seem that devils could be saved, hypothetically, with or without an atonement made in their nature.
[89] The Latin is Christum pro se esse mortuum, ‘Christ to be dead for him’. The Marrow Men of the early-1700’s Scottish Church theologically distinguished between the phrase ‘Christ died for you’ (in the event of the cross) and ‘Christ is dead for you’ (as presented and offered to you in the atonement), and claimed that reformed theologians before them made this same distinction. Rutherford confirms here (along with other passages in the Examination) some recent scholarship that the older writers held these phrases to be the same, the English equivalent of them probably coming from the Latin.
[90] Johannes A. Corvinus (1582-1650), an Arminian writer.
[91] Luis de Molina (1536-1600), a Jesuit writer.
[92] Sufficiens, is actually a verb, a participle: ‘sufficing’. Note the change in tense from past tense previously to present tense.
[93] Sic; Rutherford not infrequently changes pronouns, in this case going from the elect as a category of people to each elect person individually appropriating the promises to himself or herself.
[94] Or ‘command’. The obliging command assumes a certain right given to take of the offer.
[95] The referent of the implicit pronoun is not clear. Hence the phrase could also mean by right of Christ assuming a common nature; either meaning essentially points to the same thing.
[96] It is not entirely clear to the translators what Rutherford means by this. Rutherford elsewhere says, in reference to the reprobate, that original sin was expiated on the cross only for the elect. However, as all sins stem from original sin as their source, and Christ paid this mother-transgression, the root of all others, on the cross (albeit only for the elect), it appears that Rutherford sees that in Christ paying for sin, though it was not for the reprobate, yet the sin imputed to Christ and Christ’s payment of it has a potential applicability for the reprobate by the nature of it.
[97] Or ‘by right of the imposing of the command of God’, jure mandati dei jubentis.
[98] This section was translated by Rev. Robert D. McCurley.
[99] aeternitas foederis: literally, “the eternity of the covenant.”
[100] Literally: “the covenanters” or “the covenanted ones.”
[101] Rutherford went on in his later writings to develop the distinction between the Covenant of
Redemption (pactum salutis) and the Covenant of Grace and to establish the idea that the former
undergirds and supports the latter. See The Covenant of Life Opened (Edinburgh: Andrew Anderson,
1655). See also D. Patrick Ramsey, ‘Samuel Rutheford’s Contribution to Covenant Theology’, in Matthew
Vogan (ed.), Samuel Rutherford: An Introduction to His Theology (Edinburgh: Scottish Reformation
Society, 2012), 139-166.
[102] luere, or ‘atoning’, ‘expiating’
[103] Which are not earned by, or imputed to the creature by any act of theirs. This argument stems from Paul’s argument in Rom. 5:12-21.
[104] This argument is built on, and intended against, the premises of the Arminian system: the Arminians posited that punishment upon people due to Adam’s sin was mitigated by Christ’s universally atoning death. Therefore God was not unjust and cruel in punishing persons according to Adam’s sin. However, Rutherford notes, God could have not sent his Son, and then God would have punished Adam’s posterity, justly.
[105] Rutherford is playing up the problems in the Arminian paradigm. While the reformed held that the administration of the Covenant was certain from eternity, in that it was God’s eternal will so to perform, yet they did not hold that the Covenant was necessary of God to administer (rather it came about by God’s free will, which could have been otherwise). Whereas the Arminians thought it necessary from an antecedent will in God for God to be constrained to administer such a covenant of salvation to lost man. Though this Covenant, according to them, was necessary from eternity, and included all men in it (contra the reformed), yet it was capable of saving none and actually, of itself, saved none.
[106] Note that this is different than the case of Adam, who had the Law of the Covenant of Works audibly told to him.
[107] In some respect, though not by way of legal bondage.
[108] That is, this curse is a general curse to those under the Law who break any law, which general curse does not come upon them by breaking any particular law.
[109] As a will can’t will against itself. In such a case it is not a willing at all, or it is a contradiction in terms, which unwills the will: that is, makes it nothing. The reformed orthodox, though, did have an ethical category for the common, practical case of a person’s will being partially coerced by another agent: this makes the volition of the person’s will not entirely free. For that reason the willing is less the person’s own; therefore the person is less culpable for the act or less deserving of praise.
[110] The argument is using a premise that the Arminians would agree with. The will has power to act, and in acting it infallibly (without fail) directs itself to its choice (as it has power to do), and, in the very willing and choosing of the thing, makes that choice infallibly. This is all to say that the will has the power to make choices; hence, in making such choices that it has power to make, it remains, by definition, completely free. Rutherford is not necessarily disagreeing with this premise, and may be affirming it; he simply argues that if the will has power to infallibly direct itself and remain free, how much more can God infallibly direct the will while maintaining its full freedom? There is another interpretation of Rutherford’s third point: As ‘produced’ is creata, it is possible that Rutherford is arguing from God infallibly creating the will to God being able to predestine the will. However, it is not entirely clear from this context exactly how God’s infallibly creating the will bends the will infallibly in subsequent acts of the will; hence this interpretation has not been preferred.
[111] The substitution of a something closely related for the thing meant.
[112] The Law requires more than believing; therefore believing does not completely fulfill the Law.
[113] Literally: “without which: nothing”. That is, the presence of something is so essential to another thing, that without it, that thing does not exist.
[114] λὐτρον
[115] Or ‘begotten’.
[116] Translation from John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. H. Beveridge, vol 2 (Edinburgh, UK: T. & T. Clark, 1863).
[117] Tractatus de Gratia et Libero Arbitrio (A Tract on Grace and Free Choice), Ch. 14, section 51 in Sancti Bernardi, Abbatis Primi, Claraevallensis, Opera Genuina, Juxta Editionem Monachorum Sancti Benedicti, Tomus Secundus, Complectens Vi Opuscula, et Sermones de Tempore et de Sanctis (Parisiis: Apud Gauthier Fratrem et Soc., Bibliopolas, 1836)
[118] Martinum Bucerum, Disputata Ratisbonae, in altero colloquio, Anno [ML]XLVI. Et Collocutorum Augustanae Confessionis Responsa, quae ibi coeperant, completa, De Justificatione, et locis doctrinae Euangelicae omnibus, quos doctrina de Iustificatione complectitur... (1548) 569.
[119] Girolamo Zanchi, De Natura Dei, Seu de Divinis Attributis, Libri V… (Neustadii Palatinorum: Wilhelmi Harnisii, 1598).
[120] condigne
[121] Thersites heautontimorumenos hoc est, Remonstrantium hyperaspistes, catechesi, et litvrgiæ Germanicæ, Gallicæ, & Belgicæ denuo insultans, retusus... (Ultrajecti: Abrahami ab Herwiick & Hermanni Ribbii, 1635)
[122] 2 Tim. 4:7-8
[123] Heb. 12:1
[124] volunt, ‘they will’, a pun on their theological system.
[125] Eph. 6:12-13
[126] The difference, per Rutherford previous to this section, is that self-conscious hypocrites, being inwardly and deliberately insincere, do not taste of these good things mentioned in Heb. 6:4-6, whereas those with temporal faith, having some sincerity therein, do taste of the good things to come.
[127] A pledge of eternal life.
[128] Animadversiones in synodalia scripta Remonstrantivm, Quoad Articulum Primum Sub præsidio D.D. Gvlielmi Amesii, Disp. XXVIII in Academia Franekerana propugnatæ à Studiosis Theologiæ... (Vldericus Balck, 1629)
[129] The writer to the Hebrews was likely writing to Jewish Christians who had Jews as their adversaries.
[130] As is mentioned in Heb. 10:32-34; 13:3. Heb. 10:32-34 comes right after a warning against apostasy in v. 29, which, in conjunction with Heb. 6:4-6, seems to imply that it is likely that those who apostatized due to persecuting pressures then turned against their former Christian brothers in a like opposition. Such persecuting of Christians, due to Christ’s mystical union with them, is a persecution of Christ Himself (Acts 9:4). It can only be wondered whether some of those early Christians written to in Hebrews would shortly be crucified at the instigation of the Jews (Jn. 15:20-21).
[131] This section was translated by Rev. Robert D. McCurley. For his introduction and original footnotes, see the original.
[132] Nicolaas Grevinckhoven (d. 1632) was a Dutch Arminian minister and a proponent of the Remonstrant party.
[133] William Ames (1576-1633) was an Orthodox Reformed theologian from England who labored in Holland. Rutherford’s reference is found on p. 138 of Dissertatio theologica de duabus quaestionibus hoc tempore controversis, quarum prima est De reconciliatione per mortem Christi impetrata omnibus ac singulis hominibus: altera, De electione ex fide prævisa. Sermone primùm inchoata, posteà vero scripto continuata, inter Guilielmum Amesium et Nicolaum Grevinchovium. Non qualem ille eam edidit cum suo, quod agnoscit, auctario; sed genuina illa atque integra: cui accessit ejusdem Grevinchovij responsio ad Amesii instantias (Roterodami Batavorum: Mathias Sebastiani, 1615).
[134] Deliberate pun.
[135] tutrici, a female guardian or tutor of children.
[136] It appears that the Arminians, in seeking to allow the most antinomian persons to be saved, taught that if a Christian apostatizes, but still knows the truth, though he does not assent to it or live by it, may be saved. If he is saved, it means that he had the gift of perseverance. Apparently, the way that such antinomian apostates may be saved, and be recipients of the indefectible gift of perseverance, is that in their falling away from revealed truth, they are no longer bound to obey it.
[137] And not before the dread of man.
[138] As confessed in the Apostle’s Creed. The teachings of the Creed were held by Rutherford, in chapter one, to be of the essentials of the Christian faith.
[139] afflatus, this could be translated as ‘inspiration’ except that afflatus has an emphasis, in this context, on the content of what is immediately breathed out, and in that inspiro is also used throughout this section. The two Latin words have been kept distinct in their English translations.
[140] Or ‘exegeted’, exigendierant.
[141] The difference is that the canon of Scripture is the inspired, confirmed rule by which all else, including the teachings of prophets, are judged (Isa. 8:20). The words of a prophet do not hold this place (1 Cor. 4:6), but, though inspired, yet must be judged in accordance with the canon of Scripture, even if those words came into the canon at that time, or later.
[142] Simon Episcopius (1583-1643), a leading Arminian at the Synod of Dort (1618-1619), complained that the small numbers of Arminian delegates at the Synod was due to undue prelimiting factors. Frederick Calder, Memoirs of Simon Episcopius, the Celebrated Pupil of Arminius, and Subsequently Doctor of Divinity, and Professor of Theology in the University of Leyden (London: Hayward and Moore, 1838) 310-312.
[143] parti, or ‘part’. This Latin term could not be translated uniformly through the passage; more nuances occur in the Latin than what show up in the English.
[144] Rutherford is gratuitously emphasizing certain things which the Remonstrants disagreed with. The Arminians held that the Church does not have an exercise of discipline that may coerce the conscience of a person; rather the person is able to receive such teaching and advice, and make his own judgment. Rutherford, to the contrary, taught that Church discipline is coercive, spiritually, in that the person’s conscience is bound by, and should forcefully moved by, the Word of God rightly administered through Church discipline.
[145] materiae primae
[146] If a delegate may vote down a fundamental article, then he has more authority than that fundamental article. Such an authority in voting only gives one the authority to vote as an infidel would, and, in fact, gives infidels the right to vote.
[147] This may be Wolfgang Franz (1564-1628), a Lutheran professor of theology at Wittenberg (1605-1628).
[148] As the Arminians held, though they still practiced infant baptism.
[149] Some Articles Diligently Weighed by Examination (1620)
[150] ‘perceives and grasps’ is one word in the Latin: percipit.
[151] exhibitionem
[152] Rutherford uses the plural as the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper not only involves the static bread and wine, but also the rituals of the Lord consecrating the elements through prayer, the breaking of the bread, the pouring out of the wine, giving this to the people and the people sharing it amongst themselves.
[153] ‘portrayed’, ‘offered’, ‘given’.
[154] The whole of this chapter has been translated by Guy M. Richard in The Confessional Presbyterian, vol. 4 (2008) 270-276. This here is an independent translation.
[155] Insofar as the magistrate has jurisdictional governance over the outward man as it relates to civil peace and natural truth, including acts of speech and public discourse. So the magistrate is able to enjoin doctors and pastors to faithfully perform their offices (2 Kings 23:1-4; 1 Chron. 13:2-3; 2 Chron. 19:8-11). WCF, 20.4, “And for their publishing of such opinions, or maintaining of such practices, as are contrary to the light of nature, or to the known principles of Christianity, whether concerning faith, worship, or conversation; or to the power of godliness; or such erroneous opinions or practices, as either in their own nature, or in the manner of publishing or maintaining them, are destructive to the external peace and order which Christ hath established in the church; they may lawfully be called to account,[q] and proceeded against by the censures of the church, and by the power of the civil magistrate. (Dt. 13:6-12; Rom. 13:3,4 with 2 Jn 10,11; Ezra 7:23,25-28; Rev. 17:12,16,17; Neh. 13:15,17,21,22,25,30; 2 Kings 23:5,6,9,20,21; 2 Chron. 34:33; 2 Chron. 15:12,13,16; Dan. 3:29; 1 Tim. 2:2; Isa. 49:23; Zech. 13:2,3)”
[156] secundario, or ‘following’
[157] power to take away.
[158] WCF, 20.2, “God alone is lord of the conscience (James 4:12; Rom. 14:4);”
[159] or ‘convict’
[160] The assumed premise, that the magistrate has jurisdiction about, and ought to punish, every public sin, is not widely believed today, though Reformed Orthodoxy taught it from Rom. 13:1-5 as basic to the office of the magistrate and to politics.
[161] profitentes may also connote ‘public’. An open professor, willing to openly and publicly receive a given status, nearly always has a public profession.
[162] inter, or ‘between’, probably signifying a lapse of time.
[163] While the apostles in these New Testament examples did not directly inflict a physical punishment on the offenders themselves (a civil power), yet they gave their word and sanction to these extraordinary physical punishments that God immediately inflicted upon the offenders. If a physical punishment from God be fitting for the persons’ spiritual sins, then such a punishment is fitting from the civil magistrate, who acts in the stead of God and bears the regular authority to inflict such corporal punishments.
[164] A direct and intentional attack upon God our Father by blasphemy and cursing (one only being able to reach Him with one’s words) is akin to striking one’s father and wishing him dead.
[165] The Socinians tended to be skeptical of much Scriptural and orthodox teaching. While this was also true to some extent of the Arminians, they also especially found unbelievers suffering in Hell for eternity incompatible with the love of God (which viewpoint Rutherford critiques later in the chapter). Hence, these were likely motivating factors as to why both groups wavered on the eternity of the soul.