that scheme of doctrine on predestination and grace, which
was taught by Calvin, the celebrated reformer, in the early part of the
sixteenth century. His opinions are largely opened in the third book of
his “Institutes:” “Predestination we call the eternal decree of God; by
which he hath determined in himself what he would have to become of
every individual of mankind. For they are not all created with similar
destiny; but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal
damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being _created for one or
other of these ends_, we say, he is predestinated, either to life, or to
death.” After having spoken of the election of the race of Abraham, and
then of particular branches of that race, he proceeds: “Though it is
sufficiently clear, that God, in his secret counsel, freely chooses whom
he will, and rejects others, his gratuitous election is but half
displayed till we come to particular individuals, to whom God not only
offers salvation, but _assigns_ it in such a manner that the certainty
of the effect is liable to no suspense or doubt.” He sums up the
chapter, in which he thus generally states the doctrine, in these words:
“In conformity, therefore, to the clear doctrine of the Scripture, we
assert, that, by an eternal and immutable counsel, God hath once for all
determined both whom he would admit to salvation, and whom he would
condemn to destruction. We affirm that this counsel, as far as concerns
the elect, is founded on his gratuitous mercy, totally irrespective of
human merit; but that to those whom he devotes to condemnation, the gate
of life is closed by a just and irreprehensible, but _incomprehensible_,
judgment. In the elect, we consider calling as an evidence of election;
and justification as another token of its manifestation, till they
arrive in glory, which constitutes its completion. As God seals his
elect by vocation and justification, so by _excluding_ the reprobate
from the knowledge of his name, and sanctification of his Spirit, he
affords another indication of the judgment that awaits them,” chap. 21,
book iii.
2. In the commencement of the following chapter he thus rejects the
notion that predestination is to be understood as resulting from God’s
foreknowledge of what would be the conduct of either the elect or the
reprobate: “It is a notion commonly entertained, that God, foreseeing
what would be the respective merits of every individual, makes a
correspondent distinction between different persons; that he adopts as
his children such as he foreknows will be deserving of his grace; and
devotes to the damnation of death others, whose dispositions he sees
will be inclined to wickedness and impiety. Thus they not only obscure
election by covering it with the veil of foreknowledge, but pretend that
it originates in another cause,” book iii, chap. 22. Consistently with
this, he a little farther on asserts, that election does not flow from
holiness, but holiness from election: “For when it is said, that the
faithful are elected that they should be holy, it is fully implied, that
the holiness they were in future to possess had its origin in election.”
He proceeds to quote the example of Jacob and Esau, as loved and hated
before they had done good or evil, to show that the only reason of
election and reprobation is to be placed in God’s “secret counsel.” He
will not allow the future wickedness of the reprobate to have been
considered in the decree of their rejection, any more than the
righteousness of the elect, as influencing their better fate: “‘God hath
mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.’ You
see how he (the Apostle) attributes _both_ to the _mere will_ of God.
If, therefore, we can assign no reason why he grants mercy to his people
but because such is his pleasure, neither shall we find any other cause
but _his will_ for the reprobation of others. For when God is said to
harden, or show mercy to whom he pleases, men are taught, by this
declaration, to seek _no cause beside his will_.” (_Ibid._) “Many,
indeed, as if they wished to avert odium from God, admit election in
such a way as to deny that any one is reprobated. But this is puerile
and absurd; because election itself could not exist, without being
opposed to reprobation;--whom God _passes by he therefore reprobates_;
and _from no other cause_ than his determination to exclude them from
the inheritance which he predestines for his children,” book iii, chap.
xxiii.
3. This is the scheme of predestination as exhibited by Calvin; and to
the objection taken from justice, he replies, “They” (the objectors)
“inquire by what right the Lord is angry with his creatures who had not
provoked him by any previous offence; for that to devote to destruction
whom he pleases, is more like the caprice of a tyrant, than the lawful
sentence of a judge. If such thoughts ever enter into the minds of pious
men, they will be sufficiently enabled to break their violence by this
one consideration, how exceedingly presumptuous it is, only to inquire
into the causes of the divine _will_; which is, in fact, and is justly
entitled to be, the _cause_ of every thing that exists. For if it has
any cause, then there must be something antecedent on which it depends,
which it is impious to suppose. For the will of God is the highest rule
of justice; so that what he wills must be considered just, for this very
reason, because he wills it.” Thus he assumes the very thing in dispute,
that God has willed the destruction of any part of the human race, “for
no other cause than because he _wills it_;” of which assumption there is
not only not a word of proof in Scripture; but, on the contrary, it
ascribes the death of him that dieth to his own will, and not to the
will of God. 2. He pretends that to assign any _cause_ to the divine
will is to suppose something antecedent to, something above God, and
therefore “impious;” as if we might not suppose something IN God to be
the rule of his will, not only without any impiety, but with truth and
piety; as, for instance, his perfect wisdom, holiness, justice, and
goodness; or, in other words, to believe the exercise of his will to
flow from the perfection of his whole nature; a much more honourable and
Scriptural view of the will of God than that which subjects it to no
rule, even though it should arise from the nature of God himself. 3.
When he calls the will of God, “the highest rule of justice,” beyond
which we cannot push our inquiries, he confounds the will of God, as a
rule of justice _to us_, and as a rule to himself. This will is our
rule; yet even then, because we know that it is the will of a perfect
being: but when Calvin represents _mere will_ as constituting God’s own
rule of justice, he shuts out knowledge, discrimination of the nature of
things, and holiness; which is saying something very different from that
great truth, that God cannot will any thing but what is perfectly just.
It is to say that blind will, will which has no respect to any thing but
itself, is God’s highest rule of justice; a position which, if presented
abstractedly, many Calvinists themselves would spurn. 4. He determines
the question by the authority of his own metaphysics, and totally
forgets that one _dictum_ of inspiration overturns his whole
theory,--God “_willeth_ all men to be saved;” a declaration, which in no
part of the sacred volume is opposed or limited by any contrary
declaration.
4. Calvin was not, however, content thus to leave the matter; but
resorts to an argument, in which he has been generally followed by those
who have adopted his system with some mitigations: “As we are all
corrupted by sin, we must necessarily be odious to God, and that not
from tyrannical cruelty, but in the most _equitable estimation_ of
justice. If all whom the Lord predestinates to death are, in their
natural condition, liable to the sentence of death, what injustice do
they complain of receiving from him?” To this Calvin very fairly states
the obvious rejoinder made in his day; and which the common sense of
mankind will always make,--“They object, Were they not by the decree of
God antecedently predestinated to that corruption which is now stated as
the _cause_ of their condemnation? When they perish in their corruption,
therefore, they only suffer the punishment of that misery into which, in
consequence of his predestination, Adam fell, and precipitated his
posterity with him.” The manner in which Calvin attempts to meet this
objection, shows how truly unanswerable it is upon his system. “I
confess,” says he, “indeed, that all the descendants of Adam fell, _by
the Divine will_, into that miserable condition in which they are now
involved; and this is what I asserted from the beginning, that we must
always return at last _to the sovereign determination of God’s will_;
the cause of which is hidden in himself. But it follows not, therefore,
that God is liable to this reproach; for we will answer them in the
language of Paul, ‘O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall
the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus’”
That is, in order to escape the pinch of the objection, he assumes that
St. Paul affirms that God has “formed” a part of the human race for
eternal misery; and that, by imposing silence upon them, he intended to
declare that this proceeding in God was just. Now the passage may be
proved from its context to have no respect to the eternal state of men
at all; but, if that were less obvious, it gives no answer to the
objection; and we are brought round again, as indeed he confesses, to
his former, and indeed only, argument, that the whole matter as he
states it, is to be referred back to the divine will; which will, though
perfectly arbitrary, is, as he contends, the highest rule of justice: “I
say, with Augustine, that the Lord created those whom he certainly
foreknew would fall into destruction; and that this was actually so,
because _he willed it_; but of his will, it belongs not to us to demand
the reason, which we are incapable of comprehending; nor is it
reasonable, that the divine will should be made the subject of
controversy with us, which is only another name for the highest rule of
justice.” Thus he shuts us out from pursuing the argument. But the
evasion proves the objection unanswerable. For if all is to be resolved
into the mere will of God as to the destruction of the reprobate; if
they were created for this purpose, as Calvin expressly affirms; if they
fell into their corruption in pursuance of God’s determination; if, as
he had said before, “God passes them by, and reprobates them, _from no
other_ cause than his determination to exclude them from the inheritance
of his children,” why refer to their natural corruption at all, and
their being odious to God in that state, since the same reason is given
for their corruption as for their reprobation?--not any fault of theirs;
but the mere will of God, “the reprobation hidden in his secret
counsel,” and that not grounded on the visible and tangible fact of
their demerit. Thus the election taught by Calvin is not the choice of
some persons to peculiar grace from the whole mass, equally deserving of
punishment; (though this is a sophism;) since, in that case, the decree
of reprobation would rest upon God’s foreknowledge of those passed by as
corrupt and guilty, which notion he rejects: “For since God foresees
future events only in consequence of _his decree that they shall
happen_, it is useless to contend about foreknowledge, while it is
evident that all things come to pass rather by _ordination and decree_.”
“It is a HORRIBLE DECREE, I confess; but no one can deny that God
foreknew the future fate of man before he created him; and that he did
foreknow it, because it was _appointed_ by his own decree.” Agreeably to
this, he repudiates the distinction between will and permission: “For
what reason shall we assign for his permitting it, but because it is his
will? It is _not probable_, however, that man procured his own
destruction by the mere _permission_, and without any _appointment_, of
God.”
5. With this doctrine he again attempts to reconcile the demerit of men:
“Their perdition depends on the divine predestination in such a manner,
that the _cause_ and _matter_ of it are found _in themselves_. For the
first man fell because the Lord had determined it should so happen. The
reason of this determination is unknown to us.--Man, therefore, falls
according to the _appointment_ of divine providence; but he falls by
_his own fault_. The Lord had a little before pronounced every thing
that he had made to be ‘very good.’ Whence, then, comes the depravity of
man to revolt from his God? Lest it should be thought to come from
creation, God approved and commended what had proceeded from himself. By
his own wickedness, therefore, man corrupted the nature he had received
pure from the Lord, and by his fall he drew all his posterity with him
to destruction.” It is in this way that Calvin attempts to avoid the
charge of making God the author of sin. But how God should not merely
_permit_ the defection of the first man, but _appoint_ it, and _will_
it, and that his will should be the “necessity of things,” (all which he
had before asserted,) and yet that Deity should not be the author of
that which he _appointed_, _willed_, and _imposed a necessity upon_,
would be rather a delicate inquiry. It is enough that Calvin rejects the
impious doctrine; and even though his principles directly lead to it,
since he has put in his disclaimer, he is entitled to be exempted from
the charge;--but the logical conclusion is inevitable.
6. In much the same manner he contends that the necessity of sinning is
laid upon the reprobate by the ordination of God, and yet denies God to
be the author of their sinful acts, since the corruption of men was
derived from Adam, by his own fault, and not from God. He exhorts us
“rather to contemplate the evident cause of condemnation, which is
nearer to us, in the corrupt nature of mankind, than search after a
hidden and altogether incomprehensible one, in the predestination of
God.” “For though, by the eternal providence of God, man was _created_
to that misery to which he is subject, yet the _ground_ of it he has
derived from himself, not God; since he is thus ruined, solely in
consequence of his having degenerated from the pure creation of God to
vicious and impure depravity.” Thus, almost in the same breath, he
affirms that men became reprobate from no other cause than “the will of
God,” and his “sovereign determination;” that men have no reason “to
expostulate with God, if they are predestinated to eternal death,
without _any demerit_ of their own, merely by his sovereign will;”--and
then, that the corrupt nature of mankind is the _evident_ and _nearer_
cause of condemnation; (which cause, however, was still a matter of
“appointment,” and “ordination,” not “permission;”) and that man is
“ruined solely in consequence of his having degenerated from the pure
state in which God created him.” These propositions manifestly fight
with each other; for if the reason of reprobation be laid in man’s
corruption, it cannot be laid in the mere will and sovereign
determination of God, unless we suppose him to be the author of sin. It
is this offensive doctrine only, which can reconcile them. For if God so
wills, and appoints, and necessitates the depravity of man, as to be the
author of it, then there is no inconsistency in saying that the ruin of
the reprobate is both from the mere will of God, and from the corruption
of their nature, which is but the result of that will. The one is then,
as Calvin states, the “evident and nearer cause,” the other the more
remote and hidden one; yet they have the same source, and are
substantially acts of the same will. But if it be denied that God is, in
any sense, the author of evil, and if sin is from man alone, then is the
“corruption of nature” the effect of an independent will; and if this
corruption be the “real source,” as he says, of men’s condemnation, then
the decree of reprobation rests not upon the sovereign will of God, as
its sole cause, which he affirms; but upon a cause dependent on the will
of the first man: but as this is denied, then the other must follow.
Calvin himself, indeed, contends for the perfect concurrence of these
proximate and remote causes, although in point of fact, to have been
perfectly consistent with himself, he ought rather to have called the
_mere will of God_ THE CAUSE of the decree of reprobation, and the
corruption of man THE MEANS by which it is carried into
effect:--language which he sanctions, and which many of his followers
have not scrupled to adopt.
7. So certainly does this opinion involve in it the consequences, that
in sin man is the instrument, and God the actor, that it cannot be
maintained, as stated by Calvin, without this conclusion. For as two
causes of reprobation are expressly laid down, they must be either
opposed to each other, or be consenting. If they are opposed, the scheme
is given up; if consenting, then are both reprobation and human
corruption the results of the same will, the same decree, and necessity.
It would be trifling to say that the decree does not influence; for if
so, it is no decree in Calvin’s sense, who understands the decree of
God, as the foregoing extracts and the whole third book of his
“Institutes” plainly show, as _appointing_ what shall be, and by that
appointment making it _necessary_. Otherwise, he could not reject the
distinction between will and permission, and avow the sentiment of St.
Augustine, “that the will of God is the necessity of things; and that
what he has willed will necessarily come to pass,” book iii, chap. 23,
sec. 8. So, in writing to Castellio, he makes the sin of Adam the result
of an act of God: “You say Adam fell by his free will. I except against
it. That he might not fall, he stood in need of that strength and
constancy with which God armeth all the elect, as long as he will keep
them blameless. Whom God has elected, he props up with an invincible
power unto perseverance. Why did he not afford this to Adam, if he would
have had him stand in his integrity?” And with this view of necessity,
as resulting from the decree of God, the immediate followers of Calvin
coincided; the end and the means, as to the elect, and as to the
reprobate, are equally fixed by the decree, and are both to be traced to
the _appointing_ and _ordaining_ will of God. On such a scheme it is
therefore worse than trifling to attempt to make out a case of justice
in favour of this assumed divine procedure, by alleging the corruption
and guilt of man: a point which, indeed, Calvin himself, in fact, gives
up when he says, “That the reprobate obey not the word of God, when made
known to them, is justly imputed to the wickedness and depravity of
their hearts, _provided it be at the same time stated_, that they are
abandoned to this depravity, because they have been raised up by a just
but _inscrutable_ judgment of God, to display his glory in their
condemnation.”
8. It was by availing themselves of the ineffectual struggles of Calvin
to give some colour of justice to his reprobating decree by fixing upon
the corruption of man as a cause of reprobation, that some of his
followers endeavoured, in the very teeth of his own express words, to
reduce his system to sublapsarianism. This was attempted by Amyraldus;
who was answered by Curcellæus, in his tract “_De Jure Dei in
Creaturas_.” This last writer, partly by several of the same passages we
have given above from Calvin’s Institutes, and by extracts from his
other writings, proves that Calvin did by no means consider man, as
fallen, to be the object of reprobation; but man not yet created; man as
to be created, and so reprobated, under no consideration in the divine
mind of his fall or actual guilt, except as _consequences_ of an eternal
preterition of the _persons_ of the reprobate, resolvable only into the
sovereign pleasure of God. The references he makes to men as corrupt,
and to their corrupt state as the proximate cause of their rejection,
are all manifestly used to parry off rather than to answer objections,
and somewhat to moderate and soften, as Curcellæus observes, the harsher
parts of his system. And, indeed, for what reason are we so often
brought back to that unfailing refuge of Calvin, “the presumption and
wickedness of replying against God?” For if reprobation be a matter of
human _desert_, it cannot be a mystery; if it be adequate punishment for
an adequate fault, there is no need to urge it upon us to bow with
submission to an unexplained sovereignty. We may add, there is no need
to speak of a remote or first cause of reprobation, if the _proximate_
cause will explain the whole case; and that Calvin’s continual reference
to God’s _secret counsel_, and _will_, and _inscrutable judgment_, could
have no aptness to his argument. Among English divines, Dr. Twisse has
sufficiently defended Calvin from the _charge_, as he esteems it, of
sublapsarianism; and, whatever merit Twisse’s own supralapsarian creed
may have, his argument on this point is unanswerable.
9. As it is not intended here to enter into this controversy, on which
multitudes of books have been written, and the leading authors are known
almost to every one, the above may be sufficient to convey a just notion
of Calvin’s own opinions. After these subjects had long agitated the
reformed churches, and given rise to several modifications of Calvin’s
original scheme, and to numerous writings in refutation of it, the synod
of Dort digested the whole into five articles from which arose the
celebrated controversy on the _five points_. These articles, as being
the standard of what is generally called strict Calvinism, are, in
substance, as follows:--
(1.) “_Of Predestination._ As all men have sinned in Adam, and have
become exposed to the curse and eternal death, God would have done no
injustice to any one, if he had determined to leave the whole human race
under sin and the curse, and to condemn them on account of sin;
according to those words of the Apostle, ‘All the world is become guilty
before God,’ Rom. iii, 19, 23; vi, 23. That some, _in time_, have faith
given them by God, and others have it not given, proceeds from his
eternal decree; for ‘known unto God are all his works from the
beginning,’ &c, Acts xv, 18; Eph. i, 11. According to which decree, he
graciously softens the hearts of the elect, however hard, and he bends
them to believe; but the non-elect he leaves, in his judgment, to their
own perversity and hardness. And here, especially, a deep
discrimination, at the same time both merciful and just; a
discrimination of men equally lost, opens itself to us; or that decree
of election and reprobation which is revealed in the word of God; which,
as perverse, impure, and unstable persons do wrest to their own
destruction, so it affords ineffable consolation to holy and pious
souls. But election is the immutable purpose of God; by which, before
the foundations of the world were laid, he chose, out of the whole human
race, fallen by their own fault from their primeval integrity into sin
and destruction, according to the most free _good pleasure_ of his own
will, and of _mere grace_, a certain number of men, neither better nor
worthier than others, but lying in the same misery with the rest, to
salvation in Christ; whom he had, even from eternity, constituted
Mediator and head of all the elect, and the foundation of salvation; and
therefore he decreed to give them unto him to be saved, and effectually
to call and draw them into communion with him, by his word and Spirit;
or he decreed himself to give unto them true faith, to justify, to
sanctify, and at length powerfully to glorify them, &c, Eph. i, 4–6;
Rom. viii, 30. This same election is not made from any _foreseen_ faith,
obedience of faith, holiness, or any other good quality and disposition,
as a _pre-requisite_ cause or condition in the man who should be
elected, &c. ‘He hath chosen us,’ not because we _were_, but ‘that we
_might_ be, holy,’ &c, Eph. i, 4; Rom. ix, 11–13; Acts xiii, 48.
Moreover, Holy Scripture doth illustrate and commend to us this eternal
and free grace of our election, in this more especially, that it doth
testify all men not to be elected; but that some are non-elect, or
_passed by_, in the eternal election of God, whom truly God, from most
free, just, irreprehensible, and immutable good pleasure, decreed to
leave in the _common misery_ into which they had, by _their own fault_,
cast themselves; and not to bestow on them living faith, and the grace
of conversion; but having been left in their own ways, and under just
judgment, at length, not only on account of their unbelief, but also of
all their other sins, to condemn and eternally punish them, to the
manifestation of his own justice. And this is the decree of
_reprobation_, which determines that God is, in no wise, the author of
sin, (which, to be thought of, is blasphemy,) but a tremendous,
incomprehensible, just judge, and avenger.“
(2.) “_Of the Death of Christ._” Passing over, for brevity’s sake, what
is said of the necessity of atonement, in order to pardon, and of Christ
having offered that atonement and satisfaction, it is added, “This death
of the Son of God is a single and most perfect sacrifice and
satisfaction for sins; of infinite value and price, abundantly
sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world; but because many who
are called by the Gospel do not repent, nor believe in Christ, but
perish in unbelief; this doth not arise from defect or insufficiency of
the sacrifice offered by Christ upon the cross, but from their own
fault. God willed that Christ, through the blood of the cross, should,
out of every people, tribe, nation, and language, _efficaciously_ redeem
all those, and those _only_, who were from eternity chosen to salvation,
and given to him by the Father; that he should confer on them the gift
of faith,” &c.
(3.) “_Of Man’s Corruption, &c._ All men are conceived in sin, and born
the children of wrath, indisposed (_inepti_) to all saving good,
propense to evil, dead in sin, and the slaves of sin; and without the
regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, they neither are willing nor able
to return to God, to correct their depraved nature, or to dispose
themselves to the correction of it.“
(4.) “_Of Grace and Free will._ But in like manner as, by the fall, man
does not cease to be man, endowed with intellect and will; neither hath
sin, which hath pervaded the whole human race, taken away the nature of
the human species, but it hath depraved and spiritually stained it; so
that even this divine grace of regeneration does not act upon men like
stocks and trees, nor take away the properties of his will; or violently
compel it, while unwilling; but it spiritually quickens, heals,
corrects, and sweetly, and at the same time powerfully, inclines it; so
that whereas before it was wholly governed by the rebellion and
resistance of the _flesh_, now prompt and sincere obedience of the
Spirit may begin to reign; in which the renewal of our spiritual will,
and our liberty, truly consist; in which manner, (or for which reason,)
unless the admirable Author of all good should work in us, there could
be no hope to man of rising from the fall by that _free will_, by which,
when standing, he fell into ruin.”
(5.) “_On Perseverance._ God, who is rich in mercy, from his immutable
purpose of election, does not wholly take away his Holy Spirit from his
own, even in lamentable falls; nor does he so permit them to glide down,
(_prolabi_,) that they should fall from the grace of adoption, and the
state of justification; or commit the ‘sin unto death,’ or against the
Holy Spirit; that, being deserted by him, they should cast themselves
headlong into eternal destruction. So that not by their own merits or
strength, but by the gratuitous mercy of God, they obtain it, that they
neither _totally fall_ from faith and grace, nor _finally continue_ in
their falls and perish.”
10. The controversy on these difficult subjects was not decided by the
decrees of the synod of Dort, which, it will be seen under that article,
were purposely drawn up in a politic and wary manner, so as to quadrate
with the opinions, and not to outrage the feelings, of any grade of
Calvinists. Prior to the convention of that celebrated assembly, the
doctrines of Calvin had been refined upon and incautiously carried out
to some of their legitimate consequences, in a manner almost without
precedent, except that of the Mohammedan doctors on the absolute fate
which holds a distinguished place in the Koran. Several of the brightest
and most acute wits in Europe occupied themselves in sublimating to the
height of extravagance the two kindred branches of predestination,--the
eternal and absolute election of certain men to everlasting glory, and
the reprobation of the rest of mankind to endless punishment, without
regard in the divine mind to the foreseen faith of one class or to the
foreseen unbelief of the other. This course was commenced by Beza, the
contemporary and successor of Calvin, who possessed neither his genius
nor his caution; and his writings contain several rash assertions on
these points, which, it is probable, would never have obtained the
approbation of his departed friend and instructer. Zanchius, with true
Italian astuteness, carried on this process of refinement in high style;
and his predestinarian _improvements_ were only equalled by those of
Piscator, Pareus, Keckerman, Hommius, Kimedontius, Polanus, Sturmius,
Danæus, Thysius, Donteklock, Bogerman, Gomar, Smoutius, Triglandius,
down to the minor tribe of Contra-Remonstrants, Damman, Maccovius, and
Sibrandus Lubbertus. Nor were the clever divines of our own country a
whit behind the foreigners in accomplishing this grand object; and the
theological reader, on seeing the names of Perkins, Whitaker, Abbot, and
Twisse, will instantly recognise men whose doctrinal vagaries were
familiar to all the Calvinists in Europe. No one can form an adequate
conception of the injury thus inflicted on the divine attributes of
wisdom, goodness, and mercy, as they have been revealed in the
Scriptures, unless he has read the immense mass of quotations from the
writings of these and other divines, which were presented to the notice
of the synod of Dort by the Remonstrants, especially in their _Rejection
of Errors_ under each of the five points in dispute; the proofs of which
were quoted from their respective authors, and the accuracy and
faithfulness of which were never called in question. Not only would the
minds of all sober Christians in these days be shocked when perusing the
monstrous sentiments propounded in those extracts, but even the
tolerably stiff Calvinists of Oliver Cromwell’s time felt themselves
scandalized by any allusion to them, and would not admit that their
opinions had the least affinity to such desecrating dogmas. Little more
than twenty years after the synod of Dort, that distinguished polemical
divine and accurate scholar, Dr. Thomas Pierce, published his able and
very interesting pamphlet, entitled, “A Correct Copy of Some Notes
concerning God’s Decrees;” in which, without naming the authors, he gave
ten extracts from celebrated Calvinistic treatises, to prove, that
“there are men of no small name who have told the world, that all the
evil of sin which is in man proceedeth from God only as the author, and
from man only as the instrument.” Four of these extracts will furnish
sufficient matter to every judicious mind for mournful reflections on
the strange obliquities to which the human understanding is
liable:--(1.) “A wicked man, by the just impulse of God, doeth that
which is not lawful for him to do.” (2.) “When God makes an angel or a
man a transgressor, he himself doth not transgress, because he doth not
break a law. The very same sin, namely, adultery or murder, inasmuch as
it is the work of God, the author, mover, and compeller, is not a crime;
but inasmuch as it is of man, it is a wickedness.” (3.) “God can will
that man shall not fall, by his will which is called _voluntas signi_;
and in the mean while he can ordain that the same man shall infallibly
and efficaciously fall, by his will which is called _voluntas
beneplaciti_. The former will of God is improperly called his will, for
it only signifieth what man ought to do by right; but the latter will is
properly called a will, because by that he decreed what should
inevitably come to pass.” (4.) “God’s will doth pass, not only into the
permission of the sin, but into the sin itself which is permitted. The
Dominicans,” the high predestinarian order in the church of Rome, “do
imperfectly and obscurely relate the truth whilst, beside God’s
concurrence to the making way for sin, they require nothing but the
negation of efficacious grace, when it is manifest that there is a
farther prostitution of sin required.” Of these four passages the first
is from Calvin himself, the second from Zuinglius, and the third and
fourth from Dr. Twisse. This pamphlet was the first in a smart
controversy, in which Doctor (afterward Bishop) Reynolds, Baxter,
Hickman, and Barlee, took part against Dr. Pierce, but in which those
eminent men virtually disclaimed all community of sentiment between
themselves and such high predestinarians. In their warmth, however, they
accused the Doctor of having “rifled the well-furnished cabinet of the
Batavian Remonstrant writings,” and of not having hesitated “to be
beholden to very thieves, namely, such roguish pamphlets as _Fur
Predestinatus_ and others are, rather than want materials for invectives
against Calvin, Beza, Twisse,” &c. In his reply, the Doctor says, “When
I published my papers on God’s decrees, I had never so much as seen that
well-furnished cabinet, the ‘_Acta Synodalia Remonstrantium_;’” and he
proves that he has copied none of his extracts from _Fur Predestinatus_.
As his opponents were “so unthankful for the lenity” which he had
displayed in giving “so _short_ a catalogue,” he added other
affirmations of a still more revolting import, if that were possible.
The four extracts which follow, will serve as a correct specimen of the
gross and unguarded assertions of some of those good men who were thus
exposed; the first two are from Zanchius, the other two from Piscator,
both of them men of renown in that age:--(1.) “Reprobates are compelled
with a necessity of sinning, and so of perishing, by this ordination of
God; and so compelled that they cannot choose but sin and perish.” (2.)
“God works all things in all men, not only in the godly, but also in the
ungodly.” (3.) “Judas could not but betray Christ, seeing that God’s
decrees are immutable; and whether a man bless or curse, he always doth
it necessarily in respect of God’s providence, and in so doing he doeth
always according to the will of God.” (4.) “It doth or at least may
appear from the word of God, that we neither can do more good than we
do, nor omit more evil than we omit; because God from eternity hath
precisely decreed that both [the good and the evil] should so be done.
It is fatally constituted when, and how, and how much, every one of us
ought to study and love piety, or not to love it.” In that newly
emancipated age, the ample discussion of these topics could not fail to
produce much good; and the result in the course of a few years was, that
a vast number of those who had implicitly followed the guidance of
Calvin, deserted his standard, and either went completely over to the
ranks of Arminius, or halted midway under the command of Baxter. From
that time to the middle of the eighteenth century, those dogmas which
are usually designated as ultra-Calvinian or Antinomian, received no
support except from such shallow divines as Dr. Crisp and his immediate
admirers. But when the Rev. John Wesley and his brother, as Arminians,
propounded the doctrines of the Gospel in as evangelical a manner, and
with as marked success, as any Calvinist, a number of those excellent
men, both in the church and among the Dissenters, who had been early
benefited by the ministry of the two brothers, thought, as many now do,
that it was impossible for any thing to be evangelical that was not
Calvinistic; and, apparently with the design of being at as great a
remove as possible from a reputed heresy, they became in principle real
Antinomians. In forming this conclusion, and in running to a supposed
opposite extreme, such persons seem to have forgotten that those truly
evangelical principles,--which in Germany and the neighbouring states
effected the reformation from Popery, which transformed sinners into
Christians and martyrs, and which, in the perverted state of society
that then obtained, but too painfully reminded the sainted sufferers of
the domestic, municipal, and national grievances and persecutions to
which the earliest confessors of the name of Christ were subjected,--had
been in beneficial operation long before Calvin’s doctrinal system was
brought to maturity, and when he was known only as the humble and
diligent pastor of the church of Geneva. And even after the publication
of his “Institutes,” which contained the peculiarities of his creed, he
had to wait many years, to labour hard, not always in the most
sanctified spirit, both from the pulpit and the press, and to endure
many personal mortifications, before he was able to obtrude his novel
dogmas on his own immediate connections, or to make any sensible
impression on the generally received theology of his learned
contemporaries. Such persons ought also to recollect, that, as Dr. Watts
justly observes, “some of the most rigid and narrow limitations of grace
to men are found chiefly in Calvin’s _Institutions_, which were written
in his youth. But his comments on Scripture were the labours of his
riper years and maturer judgment.”
11. His first tract on predestination was published in 1552; and the
first complete edition of his “Institutes” did not see the light till
the year 1558; but the change in Melancthon’s opinions, from the
fatality of Stoicism, to the universality of the Gospel, occurred at
least six years prior to 1535, when the second edition of his “Common
Places” was published, that contained his amended creed, and strong
cautions against the contrary doctrines. One of the most eloquent and
best informed writers of the present age has, in reference to this
subject, justly observed: “Both Luther and Melancthon, after their creed
became permanently settled at the diet of Augsburg, (A. D. 1530,) kept
one object constantly in view,--to inculcate only what was plain and
practical, and never to attempt philosophizing. They perceived, that
before the reformation the doctrine of divine foreknowledge had been
grossly misconceived and abused, although guarded by all the logic of
the schools; and they felt, that, after it, they had themselves at first
contributed to increase the evil, by grounding upon the same high
argument, although for a very different purpose, the position of an
infallible necessity. Thenceforward, therefore, they only taught a
predestination which the Christian religion explains, and the Christian
life exemplifies. Thus, while their adversaries philosophized upon a
predestination of individuals, preferred one before another by divine
regard because worthy of such a preference, they taught only that which
has been revealed with certainty,--the predestination of a peculiar
description of persons, of _a people zealous of good works_, of the
Christian church contemplated as an aggregate, not on account of its own
dignity, but on account of Christ its supreme Head, and _the author of
eternal salvation to all who obey him_. While restoring Scriptural
simplicity to the doctrine of predestination, perplexed and disfigured
by the vanity of the schools, they studiously and anxiously preserved
every trace of that universal benevolence by which Christianity is
particularly distinguished. ‘Let us,’ they said, ‘with both our hands,
or rather with all our heart, hold fast the true and pious maxim, that
God is not the author of sin, that he sits not in heaven writing Stoical
laws in the volumes of fate; but, endowed with a perfect freedom
himself, he communicates a liberty of action to his creatures; firmly
opposing the position of necessity as false, and pernicious to morals
and religion. God, we may be assured, is no cruel and merciless tyrant;
he does not hate and reject men, but loves them as a parent loves his
children.’ Universal grace, indeed, was at all times a favourite topic
with the Lutherans; nor would they admit of any predestination except
that of a beneficent Deity, who was _in Christ reconciling the world to
himself_; except a predestination conformable with that order of things
which he has established, and with the use or abuse of the means which
he has ordained. ‘The Almighty,’ they said, ‘has seriously willed and
decreed, from eternity, all men to be saved and to enjoy everlasting
felicity; let us not therefore indulge in evil suggestions, and separate
ourselves from his grace, which is as expanded as the space between
heaven and earth; let us not restrain the general promise, in which he
offers his favour to all without discrimination, nor confine it to those
who, affecting a peculiar garb, wish to be alone esteemed pious and
sanctified. If many perish, the fault is not to be imputed to the divine
will, but to human obstinacy, which despises that will, and disregards a
salvation destined for all men.’ ‘And because _many are called, but few
are chosen_, let us not,’ they added, ‘entertain an opinion highly
impious,--that God tenders his grace to many, but communicates it only
to a few; for should we not in the greatest degree detest a Deity by
whose arbitrary will we believed ourselves to be excluded from
salvation?’ Upon the important point likewise of the conditional
acceptance of the individual, their ideas were not more distinct than
their language was explicit. ‘If God chose,’ they argued, ‘certain
persons only in order to unite them to himself, and rejected the
remainder in all respects alike, would not such AN ELECTION WITHOUT
CAUSES seem tyrannical? Let us therefore be persuaded, that some cause
exists in us, as some difference is to be found between those who are,
and those who are not, accepted.’ Thus they conceived that,
predestinating his elect in Christ, or the Christian church, to eternal
salvation, he excludes none from that number by a partial adoption of
favourites, but calls all equally, and accepts of all who obey his
calling, or, in other words, who become true Christians by possessing
the qualifications which Christianity requires.--'He,' they stated, who
‘falls from grace, cannot but perish, completely losing remission of
sin, with the other benefits which Christ has purchased for him, and
acquiring in their stead divine wrath and death eternal.’ Melancthon,
who in his private correspondence expressly termed Calvin the Zeno of
his day, says, ‘Let us execrate the Stoical disputations which some
introduce, who imagine that the elect always retain the Holy Spirit,
even when they commit atrocious crimes,--a manifest and highly
reprehensible error; and let us not confirm in fools security and
blindness.’”
These quotations might be augmented by others from the earliest Lutheran
authors, more Arminian in their import than any which Arminius ever
wrote: but the preceding are sufficient to show, that, during upward of
thirty years, the Protestant church in Germany was nourished by
doctrines most manifestly at variance with the refinements afterward
promulgated by Calvin. Real conversions of sinners were never more
abundant than in that golden age; yet these were produced by the
blessing of God upon an evangelical agency that had scarcely any thing
in common with the Genevan dogmas. With these and similar facts before
him, therefore, no Calvinist can in common honesty claim for the
peculiarities of his creed, for those doctrines which distinguish it
from the Melancthonism of the Protestant churches of England and
Germany, the exclusive title of EVANGELICAL. Equally fallacious is the
ground on which he can prefer any such claim on account of the alleged
counsel and advice given by Calvin to our reformers while they were
engaged in the formation of our Articles and Liturgy. On no fact in the
ecclesiastical history of this country are our annalists more completely
at agreement than on this,--that Calvin’s name and writings were
scarcely known in England till the time when the persecution under Queen
Mary forced many of our best divines into banishment; and that, to the
great future disquietude of the church, several of these exiles on their
return imported a personal bias either in favour of his discipline or of
his dogmas. Anterior to that period he had received no such pressing
invitations from our reformers, and from the king himself, as Melancthon
had done, for his friendly theological aid in drawing up the doctrinal
and disciplinary formulæ of our national church. The man who asserts the
contrary to this, and who has the hardihood to deny the Melancthonian
origin of the Articles and Liturgy, discovers at once his want of
correct information on these subjects, and has never read the convincing
documents appended to the Archbishop of Cashel’s (Dr. Laurence’s) “Eight
Sermons,” being the Bampton Lectures for 1804, and entitled, “_An
Attempt to Illustrate those Articles of the Church of England which the
Calvinists improperly consider as Calvinistical_;” Todd’s treatise “_On
Original Sin, Free Will, &c, as maintained by certain Declarations of
our Reformers_;” Plaifere’s “_Appello Evangelium_;” nor even the
portable yet convincing pamphlets of Kipling and Winchester, the former
entitled “_The Articles not Calvinistic_;” the latter, “_A Dissertation
on the Seventeenth Article of the Church_.”
12. There is one fact connected with these assumed yet unfounded claims,
which has never yet been placed in its proper light, but which it may be
well briefly to notice in this place. Calvin himself, in 1535, wrote the
following truly Melancthonian paragraphs as part of his preface to the
New Testament in French: “This Mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ, was the
only, true, and eternal Son of God, whom the Father was about to send
into the world, that he might collect all men together from this horrid
dispersion and devastation. When, at length, that fulness of time
arrived, that day preordained by the Lord, he openly showed himself as
that Messiah who had for so many ages been the desire of all nations,
and hath most abundantly performed all those things which were necessary
for the redemption of all men. But this great blessing was not confined
solely within the boundaries of the land of Israel, since, on the
contrary, it was intended [_porrigendum_] to be held out for the
acceptance of the whole human race; because through Christ alone the
entire family of man was to be reconciled to God, as will be seen, and
most amply demonstrated, in these pages of the New Testament.” “To this
inheritance of our heavenly Father’s kingdom we are all called without
respect of persons,--whether we be men or women, high or low, masters or
servants, teachers or disciples, [_doctores_] divines or laics, Jews or
Greeks, Frenchmen or [_Romani_] Italians. From this inheritance no one
is excluded, if he only so receive Christ as he is offered by the Father
for the salvation of all men, and embrace him when received.” Great
research has been displayed by the Calvinists at different periods, in
endeavouring to discover, in the public formularies of the church, or in
the private productions of our reformers, some trace of affinity between
them and the writings of Calvin. Only two cases of such affinity have
yet been found; and, unfortunately for the validity of all pretensions
of this kind, neither of them contains a single peculiarity of
Calvinism, but, on the contrary, both are of the moderate and
_evangelical_ class of the Melancthonian school. One of the passages
thus discovered is here subjoined from Cranmer’s “_Defence of the True
and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament_,” &c; and bears all the marks of
verisimilitude to the second of the preceding paragraphs from Calvin,
though written fifteen years after it:--“Almighty God, without respect
of person, accepteth the oblation and sacrifice of priest and lay
person, of king and subject, of master and servant, of man and woman, of
young and old, yea, of English, French, Scot, Greek, Latin, Jew, and
Gentile; of every man according to his faithful and obedient heart unto
him, and that through the sacrifice propitiatory of Jesus Christ.” Had
either this or the other passage contained the least tinge of what is
now considered as belonging exclusively to the system of Calvin, the
English admirers of that great man would have had some grounds for the
assertions which have been too confidently made, because so easily
refuted.
13. Having given this summary of the sentiments of Calvin himself, and
of the ancient or strict Calvinists, it is proper to observe, that there
are, and always have been, many who generally embrace the Calvinistic
system, but object to some particular _parts_, and to the strong
language in which some of the propositions are expressed. These are
called _moderate_ or _modern_ Calvinists, who differ from Calvin, and
the synod of Dort, chiefly on two points,--the doctrine of reprobation,
and the extent of the death of Christ. The theory of Baxter has already
been noticed. This and all other mitigated schemes rest on two
principles, the sufficiency of the atonement for all mankind, and the
sufficiency of grace for those who do not believe. Still something more
is held to be necessary than this sufficiency of grace in order to
actual salvation; namely, an acceptance by man, which can only be made
under that degree of effectual supernatural aid which is dispensed only
to a certain number of persons, who are thus distinguished as the “elect
of God.” The main characteristic of all these theories, from the first
to the last, from the highest to the lowest, is, that a part of mankind
are shut out from the mercies of God, on some ground irrespective of
their refusal of a sincere offer to them of salvation through Christ,
made with a communicated power of embracing it. Some power they allow to
the reprobate, as natural power, and degrees of superadded moral power;
but in no case the power to believe unto salvation; and thus, as one
well observes, “When they have cut some fair trenches, as if they would
bring the water of life unto the dwellings of the reprobate, on a sudden
they open a sluice which carries it off again.” The whole labour of
these theories is to find out some plausible reason for the infliction
of punishment on them that perish, independent of the only cause
assigned by the word of God--their rejection of a mercy free for all,
and made attainable by all. See BAXTERIANISM.
14. After all, however, it is pleasant to find these indications of a
growing consciousness, on the part of modern predestinarians, that the
common notions and common language of mankind on these deep subjects are
not far from the truth. And though some too fastidious Arminians may
complain, that, in this desire to enlist the views and words of common
sense on the side of Calvinism, many of those by whom they are employed
attach to them a meaning very different from that which ordinary usage
warrants; yet even this tendency to approximate to right views should be
regarded as favourable to the progress of truth, and the evidently
improved feeling which has suggested such approximation ought to be met
in a conciliating spirit. But this is a fault which must always be an
appendage to such a system, however it may be modified; and does not
exclusively apply to its modern supporters. The following remarks by
Archbishop Laurence on the ambiguity of language not unfrequently
discernible in the writings of Calvin himself, are worthy of
consideration:--“In whatsoever sense he wished these words to be
understood, it must be admitted that he sometimes adapted the style of
others, who had a very different object in view, to his own peculiar
opinions. And hence, from the want of a due discrimination, the
sentiments of his contemporaries, opposite in their natural tendency,
are often improperly forced into the vortex of Calvinism. Systematizing
was his darling propensity, and the ambition of being distinguished as a
leader in reform his predominant passion: in the arrangements of the
former, he never felt a doubt, or found a difficulty; and in the
pursuits of the latter he displayed an equal degree of perseverance and
ardour. Thus, in the doctrine of the eucharist, it is well known that he
laboured to acquire celebrity, and conciliate followers, by maintaining
a kind of middle sacramental presence between the corporeal of the
Lutherans, and the mere spiritual of the Zuinglians; expressing himself
in language which, partly derived from one, and partly from the other,
verged toward neither extreme; but which, by his singular talent at
perspicuous combination, he applied, and not without success, to his own
particular purpose. Nor was he less solicitous to press into his service
a foreign phraseology upon the subject more immediately before me; a
subject on his theory of which he not a little prided himself, and
seemed contented to stake his reputation. He perceived that the
Lutherans, strongly reprobating every discussion upon the decrees of a
Deity unrevealed to us, founded predestination solely on a Scriptural
basis; contending for a divine will which is seriously, not
fictitiously, disposed to save all men, and predetermined to save all
who become and continue sincere Christians. Zuingle, indeed, had
reasoned from a different principle; and, although persuaded that God’s
mercies in Christ were liberally bestowed on all without distinction, on
infants who commit not actual crime, and on the Heathen as well as the
Christian world, he nevertheless was a necessitarian in the strictest
sense of the expression; referring events of every kind to an
uncontrollable and absolute predetermination. Zuingle, however, died in
1531, before the youth of Calvin permitted him to assume the character
of a reformer; who found Bullinger then at the head of the Zuinglian
church, not only applauding, but adopting, the moderation of
the Lutherans; and, to use the phrase of Turretin, plainly
_Melancthonizing_. But the doctrine alluded to, it may be imagined, was
of a species too limited and unphilosophical for one of his enterprising
turn of mind, who never met with an obstacle which he attempted not
instantly to surmount. Disregarding, therefore, the sober restrictions
of the times, he gave loose to the most unbounded speculation: yet,
anxious by all means to win over all to his opinion, he studiously
laboured to preserve, on some popular points, a verbal conformity with
the Lutherans. With them, in words, he taught the universality of God’s
good will; but it was a universality which he extended only to the
_offer_ of salvation; conceiving the reprobate to be precluded from the
reception of that offer by the secret decree of an immutable Deity. The
striking feature of _their_ system was an election in Christ, by which
they meant an election as Christians. This also, in words, he
inculcated: his idea, however, of an election in Christ was totally
different from theirs; for he held it to be the previous election of
certain favourites by an irrespective will of God, whom, and whom alone,
Christ was subsequently appointed to save. But his ingenuity was such,
in adapting the terms borrowed from another source to his own theory,
that some erroneously conceive them to have been thus originally used by
the Lutherans themselves. Hence, therefore, much confusion has arisen in
the attempt of properly discriminating between the various sentiments of
Protestants upon this question, at the period under consideration: all
have been regarded as formed upon the model which Calvin exhibited; at
least by writers who have contemplated him as the greatest reformer of
his age, but who have forgotten that, although they chose to esteem him
the greatest, they could not represent him as the first in point of
time; and that his title to preëminence, in the common estimation of his
contemporaries, was then far from being acknowledged.”
15. On one topic, however, Calvin and the older divines of that school
were very explicit. They tell us plainly, that they found all the
Christian fathers, both of the Greek and the Latin church down to the
age of St. Augustine, quite unmanageable for their purpose; and
therefore occasionally bestow upon them and their productions epithets
not the most courteous. Yet some modern writers, not possessing half the
splendid qualifications of those veterans in learning, make a gorgeous
display of the little that they know concerning antiquity; and wish to
lead their readers to suppose, that the whole stream of early
Christianity has flowed down only in their channel. Every one must have
remarked how much like Calvin all those fathers speak whose works are
quoted by Toplady in his “Historic Defence.” Nor can the two Milners, in
their “History of the Church,” entirely escape censure on this
account,--though both were excellent men, and better scholars than
Toplady. But from the manner in which they “show up” only those ancient
Christian authors, some of whose sentiments _seem_ to be nearly in
unison with their own, they induce the unlearned or half informed to
draw the erroneous conclusion,--that the peculiarities of Calvinism are
not the inventions of a comparatively recent æra, and that they have
always formed a prominent part of the profession of faith of every
Christian community since the days of the Apostles.
All men must admire the candid and liberal spirit which breathes in the
subjoined high but just eulogium on Calvin, from the pen of the same
amiable Archbishop: “Calvin himself was both a wise and a good man;
inferior to none of his contemporaries in general ability, and superior
to almost all in the art, as well as elegance, of composition, in the
perspicuity and arrangement of his ideas, the structure of his periods,
and the Latinity of his diction. Although attached to a theory, which he
found it difficult in the extreme to free from the suspicion of
blasphemy against God, as the author of sin, he certainly was no
blasphemer; but, on the contrary, adopted that very theory from an
anxiety not to commit, but, as he conceived, to avoid blasphemy,--that
of ascribing to human, what he deemed alone imputable to divine,
agency.”
was taught by Calvin, the celebrated reformer, in the early part of the
sixteenth century. His opinions are largely opened in the third book of
his “Institutes:” “Predestination we call the eternal decree of God; by
which he hath determined in himself what he would have to become of
every individual of mankind. For they are not all created with similar
destiny; but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal
damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being _created for one or
other of these ends_, we say, he is predestinated, either to life, or to
death.” After having spoken of the election of the race of Abraham, and
then of particular branches of that race, he proceeds: “Though it is
sufficiently clear, that God, in his secret counsel, freely chooses whom
he will, and rejects others, his gratuitous election is but half
displayed till we come to particular individuals, to whom God not only
offers salvation, but _assigns_ it in such a manner that the certainty
of the effect is liable to no suspense or doubt.” He sums up the
chapter, in which he thus generally states the doctrine, in these words:
“In conformity, therefore, to the clear doctrine of the Scripture, we
assert, that, by an eternal and immutable counsel, God hath once for all
determined both whom he would admit to salvation, and whom he would
condemn to destruction. We affirm that this counsel, as far as concerns
the elect, is founded on his gratuitous mercy, totally irrespective of
human merit; but that to those whom he devotes to condemnation, the gate
of life is closed by a just and irreprehensible, but _incomprehensible_,
judgment. In the elect, we consider calling as an evidence of election;
and justification as another token of its manifestation, till they
arrive in glory, which constitutes its completion. As God seals his
elect by vocation and justification, so by _excluding_ the reprobate
from the knowledge of his name, and sanctification of his Spirit, he
affords another indication of the judgment that awaits them,” chap. 21,
book iii.
2. In the commencement of the following chapter he thus rejects the
notion that predestination is to be understood as resulting from God’s
foreknowledge of what would be the conduct of either the elect or the
reprobate: “It is a notion commonly entertained, that God, foreseeing
what would be the respective merits of every individual, makes a
correspondent distinction between different persons; that he adopts as
his children such as he foreknows will be deserving of his grace; and
devotes to the damnation of death others, whose dispositions he sees
will be inclined to wickedness and impiety. Thus they not only obscure
election by covering it with the veil of foreknowledge, but pretend that
it originates in another cause,” book iii, chap. 22. Consistently with
this, he a little farther on asserts, that election does not flow from
holiness, but holiness from election: “For when it is said, that the
faithful are elected that they should be holy, it is fully implied, that
the holiness they were in future to possess had its origin in election.”
He proceeds to quote the example of Jacob and Esau, as loved and hated
before they had done good or evil, to show that the only reason of
election and reprobation is to be placed in God’s “secret counsel.” He
will not allow the future wickedness of the reprobate to have been
considered in the decree of their rejection, any more than the
righteousness of the elect, as influencing their better fate: “‘God hath
mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.’ You
see how he (the Apostle) attributes _both_ to the _mere will_ of God.
If, therefore, we can assign no reason why he grants mercy to his people
but because such is his pleasure, neither shall we find any other cause
but _his will_ for the reprobation of others. For when God is said to
harden, or show mercy to whom he pleases, men are taught, by this
declaration, to seek _no cause beside his will_.” (_Ibid._) “Many,
indeed, as if they wished to avert odium from God, admit election in
such a way as to deny that any one is reprobated. But this is puerile
and absurd; because election itself could not exist, without being
opposed to reprobation;--whom God _passes by he therefore reprobates_;
and _from no other cause_ than his determination to exclude them from
the inheritance which he predestines for his children,” book iii, chap.
xxiii.
3. This is the scheme of predestination as exhibited by Calvin; and to
the objection taken from justice, he replies, “They” (the objectors)
“inquire by what right the Lord is angry with his creatures who had not
provoked him by any previous offence; for that to devote to destruction
whom he pleases, is more like the caprice of a tyrant, than the lawful
sentence of a judge. If such thoughts ever enter into the minds of pious
men, they will be sufficiently enabled to break their violence by this
one consideration, how exceedingly presumptuous it is, only to inquire
into the causes of the divine _will_; which is, in fact, and is justly
entitled to be, the _cause_ of every thing that exists. For if it has
any cause, then there must be something antecedent on which it depends,
which it is impious to suppose. For the will of God is the highest rule
of justice; so that what he wills must be considered just, for this very
reason, because he wills it.” Thus he assumes the very thing in dispute,
that God has willed the destruction of any part of the human race, “for
no other cause than because he _wills it_;” of which assumption there is
not only not a word of proof in Scripture; but, on the contrary, it
ascribes the death of him that dieth to his own will, and not to the
will of God. 2. He pretends that to assign any _cause_ to the divine
will is to suppose something antecedent to, something above God, and
therefore “impious;” as if we might not suppose something IN God to be
the rule of his will, not only without any impiety, but with truth and
piety; as, for instance, his perfect wisdom, holiness, justice, and
goodness; or, in other words, to believe the exercise of his will to
flow from the perfection of his whole nature; a much more honourable and
Scriptural view of the will of God than that which subjects it to no
rule, even though it should arise from the nature of God himself. 3.
When he calls the will of God, “the highest rule of justice,” beyond
which we cannot push our inquiries, he confounds the will of God, as a
rule of justice _to us_, and as a rule to himself. This will is our
rule; yet even then, because we know that it is the will of a perfect
being: but when Calvin represents _mere will_ as constituting God’s own
rule of justice, he shuts out knowledge, discrimination of the nature of
things, and holiness; which is saying something very different from that
great truth, that God cannot will any thing but what is perfectly just.
It is to say that blind will, will which has no respect to any thing but
itself, is God’s highest rule of justice; a position which, if presented
abstractedly, many Calvinists themselves would spurn. 4. He determines
the question by the authority of his own metaphysics, and totally
forgets that one _dictum_ of inspiration overturns his whole
theory,--God “_willeth_ all men to be saved;” a declaration, which in no
part of the sacred volume is opposed or limited by any contrary
declaration.
4. Calvin was not, however, content thus to leave the matter; but
resorts to an argument, in which he has been generally followed by those
who have adopted his system with some mitigations: “As we are all
corrupted by sin, we must necessarily be odious to God, and that not
from tyrannical cruelty, but in the most _equitable estimation_ of
justice. If all whom the Lord predestinates to death are, in their
natural condition, liable to the sentence of death, what injustice do
they complain of receiving from him?” To this Calvin very fairly states
the obvious rejoinder made in his day; and which the common sense of
mankind will always make,--“They object, Were they not by the decree of
God antecedently predestinated to that corruption which is now stated as
the _cause_ of their condemnation? When they perish in their corruption,
therefore, they only suffer the punishment of that misery into which, in
consequence of his predestination, Adam fell, and precipitated his
posterity with him.” The manner in which Calvin attempts to meet this
objection, shows how truly unanswerable it is upon his system. “I
confess,” says he, “indeed, that all the descendants of Adam fell, _by
the Divine will_, into that miserable condition in which they are now
involved; and this is what I asserted from the beginning, that we must
always return at last _to the sovereign determination of God’s will_;
the cause of which is hidden in himself. But it follows not, therefore,
that God is liable to this reproach; for we will answer them in the
language of Paul, ‘O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall
the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus’”
That is, in order to escape the pinch of the objection, he assumes that
St. Paul affirms that God has “formed” a part of the human race for
eternal misery; and that, by imposing silence upon them, he intended to
declare that this proceeding in God was just. Now the passage may be
proved from its context to have no respect to the eternal state of men
at all; but, if that were less obvious, it gives no answer to the
objection; and we are brought round again, as indeed he confesses, to
his former, and indeed only, argument, that the whole matter as he
states it, is to be referred back to the divine will; which will, though
perfectly arbitrary, is, as he contends, the highest rule of justice: “I
say, with Augustine, that the Lord created those whom he certainly
foreknew would fall into destruction; and that this was actually so,
because _he willed it_; but of his will, it belongs not to us to demand
the reason, which we are incapable of comprehending; nor is it
reasonable, that the divine will should be made the subject of
controversy with us, which is only another name for the highest rule of
justice.” Thus he shuts us out from pursuing the argument. But the
evasion proves the objection unanswerable. For if all is to be resolved
into the mere will of God as to the destruction of the reprobate; if
they were created for this purpose, as Calvin expressly affirms; if they
fell into their corruption in pursuance of God’s determination; if, as
he had said before, “God passes them by, and reprobates them, _from no
other_ cause than his determination to exclude them from the inheritance
of his children,” why refer to their natural corruption at all, and
their being odious to God in that state, since the same reason is given
for their corruption as for their reprobation?--not any fault of theirs;
but the mere will of God, “the reprobation hidden in his secret
counsel,” and that not grounded on the visible and tangible fact of
their demerit. Thus the election taught by Calvin is not the choice of
some persons to peculiar grace from the whole mass, equally deserving of
punishment; (though this is a sophism;) since, in that case, the decree
of reprobation would rest upon God’s foreknowledge of those passed by as
corrupt and guilty, which notion he rejects: “For since God foresees
future events only in consequence of _his decree that they shall
happen_, it is useless to contend about foreknowledge, while it is
evident that all things come to pass rather by _ordination and decree_.”
“It is a HORRIBLE DECREE, I confess; but no one can deny that God
foreknew the future fate of man before he created him; and that he did
foreknow it, because it was _appointed_ by his own decree.” Agreeably to
this, he repudiates the distinction between will and permission: “For
what reason shall we assign for his permitting it, but because it is his
will? It is _not probable_, however, that man procured his own
destruction by the mere _permission_, and without any _appointment_, of
God.”
5. With this doctrine he again attempts to reconcile the demerit of men:
“Their perdition depends on the divine predestination in such a manner,
that the _cause_ and _matter_ of it are found _in themselves_. For the
first man fell because the Lord had determined it should so happen. The
reason of this determination is unknown to us.--Man, therefore, falls
according to the _appointment_ of divine providence; but he falls by
_his own fault_. The Lord had a little before pronounced every thing
that he had made to be ‘very good.’ Whence, then, comes the depravity of
man to revolt from his God? Lest it should be thought to come from
creation, God approved and commended what had proceeded from himself. By
his own wickedness, therefore, man corrupted the nature he had received
pure from the Lord, and by his fall he drew all his posterity with him
to destruction.” It is in this way that Calvin attempts to avoid the
charge of making God the author of sin. But how God should not merely
_permit_ the defection of the first man, but _appoint_ it, and _will_
it, and that his will should be the “necessity of things,” (all which he
had before asserted,) and yet that Deity should not be the author of
that which he _appointed_, _willed_, and _imposed a necessity upon_,
would be rather a delicate inquiry. It is enough that Calvin rejects the
impious doctrine; and even though his principles directly lead to it,
since he has put in his disclaimer, he is entitled to be exempted from
the charge;--but the logical conclusion is inevitable.
6. In much the same manner he contends that the necessity of sinning is
laid upon the reprobate by the ordination of God, and yet denies God to
be the author of their sinful acts, since the corruption of men was
derived from Adam, by his own fault, and not from God. He exhorts us
“rather to contemplate the evident cause of condemnation, which is
nearer to us, in the corrupt nature of mankind, than search after a
hidden and altogether incomprehensible one, in the predestination of
God.” “For though, by the eternal providence of God, man was _created_
to that misery to which he is subject, yet the _ground_ of it he has
derived from himself, not God; since he is thus ruined, solely in
consequence of his having degenerated from the pure creation of God to
vicious and impure depravity.” Thus, almost in the same breath, he
affirms that men became reprobate from no other cause than “the will of
God,” and his “sovereign determination;” that men have no reason “to
expostulate with God, if they are predestinated to eternal death,
without _any demerit_ of their own, merely by his sovereign will;”--and
then, that the corrupt nature of mankind is the _evident_ and _nearer_
cause of condemnation; (which cause, however, was still a matter of
“appointment,” and “ordination,” not “permission;”) and that man is
“ruined solely in consequence of his having degenerated from the pure
state in which God created him.” These propositions manifestly fight
with each other; for if the reason of reprobation be laid in man’s
corruption, it cannot be laid in the mere will and sovereign
determination of God, unless we suppose him to be the author of sin. It
is this offensive doctrine only, which can reconcile them. For if God so
wills, and appoints, and necessitates the depravity of man, as to be the
author of it, then there is no inconsistency in saying that the ruin of
the reprobate is both from the mere will of God, and from the corruption
of their nature, which is but the result of that will. The one is then,
as Calvin states, the “evident and nearer cause,” the other the more
remote and hidden one; yet they have the same source, and are
substantially acts of the same will. But if it be denied that God is, in
any sense, the author of evil, and if sin is from man alone, then is the
“corruption of nature” the effect of an independent will; and if this
corruption be the “real source,” as he says, of men’s condemnation, then
the decree of reprobation rests not upon the sovereign will of God, as
its sole cause, which he affirms; but upon a cause dependent on the will
of the first man: but as this is denied, then the other must follow.
Calvin himself, indeed, contends for the perfect concurrence of these
proximate and remote causes, although in point of fact, to have been
perfectly consistent with himself, he ought rather to have called the
_mere will of God_ THE CAUSE of the decree of reprobation, and the
corruption of man THE MEANS by which it is carried into
effect:--language which he sanctions, and which many of his followers
have not scrupled to adopt.
7. So certainly does this opinion involve in it the consequences, that
in sin man is the instrument, and God the actor, that it cannot be
maintained, as stated by Calvin, without this conclusion. For as two
causes of reprobation are expressly laid down, they must be either
opposed to each other, or be consenting. If they are opposed, the scheme
is given up; if consenting, then are both reprobation and human
corruption the results of the same will, the same decree, and necessity.
It would be trifling to say that the decree does not influence; for if
so, it is no decree in Calvin’s sense, who understands the decree of
God, as the foregoing extracts and the whole third book of his
“Institutes” plainly show, as _appointing_ what shall be, and by that
appointment making it _necessary_. Otherwise, he could not reject the
distinction between will and permission, and avow the sentiment of St.
Augustine, “that the will of God is the necessity of things; and that
what he has willed will necessarily come to pass,” book iii, chap. 23,
sec. 8. So, in writing to Castellio, he makes the sin of Adam the result
of an act of God: “You say Adam fell by his free will. I except against
it. That he might not fall, he stood in need of that strength and
constancy with which God armeth all the elect, as long as he will keep
them blameless. Whom God has elected, he props up with an invincible
power unto perseverance. Why did he not afford this to Adam, if he would
have had him stand in his integrity?” And with this view of necessity,
as resulting from the decree of God, the immediate followers of Calvin
coincided; the end and the means, as to the elect, and as to the
reprobate, are equally fixed by the decree, and are both to be traced to
the _appointing_ and _ordaining_ will of God. On such a scheme it is
therefore worse than trifling to attempt to make out a case of justice
in favour of this assumed divine procedure, by alleging the corruption
and guilt of man: a point which, indeed, Calvin himself, in fact, gives
up when he says, “That the reprobate obey not the word of God, when made
known to them, is justly imputed to the wickedness and depravity of
their hearts, _provided it be at the same time stated_, that they are
abandoned to this depravity, because they have been raised up by a just
but _inscrutable_ judgment of God, to display his glory in their
condemnation.”
8. It was by availing themselves of the ineffectual struggles of Calvin
to give some colour of justice to his reprobating decree by fixing upon
the corruption of man as a cause of reprobation, that some of his
followers endeavoured, in the very teeth of his own express words, to
reduce his system to sublapsarianism. This was attempted by Amyraldus;
who was answered by Curcellæus, in his tract “_De Jure Dei in
Creaturas_.” This last writer, partly by several of the same passages we
have given above from Calvin’s Institutes, and by extracts from his
other writings, proves that Calvin did by no means consider man, as
fallen, to be the object of reprobation; but man not yet created; man as
to be created, and so reprobated, under no consideration in the divine
mind of his fall or actual guilt, except as _consequences_ of an eternal
preterition of the _persons_ of the reprobate, resolvable only into the
sovereign pleasure of God. The references he makes to men as corrupt,
and to their corrupt state as the proximate cause of their rejection,
are all manifestly used to parry off rather than to answer objections,
and somewhat to moderate and soften, as Curcellæus observes, the harsher
parts of his system. And, indeed, for what reason are we so often
brought back to that unfailing refuge of Calvin, “the presumption and
wickedness of replying against God?” For if reprobation be a matter of
human _desert_, it cannot be a mystery; if it be adequate punishment for
an adequate fault, there is no need to urge it upon us to bow with
submission to an unexplained sovereignty. We may add, there is no need
to speak of a remote or first cause of reprobation, if the _proximate_
cause will explain the whole case; and that Calvin’s continual reference
to God’s _secret counsel_, and _will_, and _inscrutable judgment_, could
have no aptness to his argument. Among English divines, Dr. Twisse has
sufficiently defended Calvin from the _charge_, as he esteems it, of
sublapsarianism; and, whatever merit Twisse’s own supralapsarian creed
may have, his argument on this point is unanswerable.
9. As it is not intended here to enter into this controversy, on which
multitudes of books have been written, and the leading authors are known
almost to every one, the above may be sufficient to convey a just notion
of Calvin’s own opinions. After these subjects had long agitated the
reformed churches, and given rise to several modifications of Calvin’s
original scheme, and to numerous writings in refutation of it, the synod
of Dort digested the whole into five articles from which arose the
celebrated controversy on the _five points_. These articles, as being
the standard of what is generally called strict Calvinism, are, in
substance, as follows:--
(1.) “_Of Predestination._ As all men have sinned in Adam, and have
become exposed to the curse and eternal death, God would have done no
injustice to any one, if he had determined to leave the whole human race
under sin and the curse, and to condemn them on account of sin;
according to those words of the Apostle, ‘All the world is become guilty
before God,’ Rom. iii, 19, 23; vi, 23. That some, _in time_, have faith
given them by God, and others have it not given, proceeds from his
eternal decree; for ‘known unto God are all his works from the
beginning,’ &c, Acts xv, 18; Eph. i, 11. According to which decree, he
graciously softens the hearts of the elect, however hard, and he bends
them to believe; but the non-elect he leaves, in his judgment, to their
own perversity and hardness. And here, especially, a deep
discrimination, at the same time both merciful and just; a
discrimination of men equally lost, opens itself to us; or that decree
of election and reprobation which is revealed in the word of God; which,
as perverse, impure, and unstable persons do wrest to their own
destruction, so it affords ineffable consolation to holy and pious
souls. But election is the immutable purpose of God; by which, before
the foundations of the world were laid, he chose, out of the whole human
race, fallen by their own fault from their primeval integrity into sin
and destruction, according to the most free _good pleasure_ of his own
will, and of _mere grace_, a certain number of men, neither better nor
worthier than others, but lying in the same misery with the rest, to
salvation in Christ; whom he had, even from eternity, constituted
Mediator and head of all the elect, and the foundation of salvation; and
therefore he decreed to give them unto him to be saved, and effectually
to call and draw them into communion with him, by his word and Spirit;
or he decreed himself to give unto them true faith, to justify, to
sanctify, and at length powerfully to glorify them, &c, Eph. i, 4–6;
Rom. viii, 30. This same election is not made from any _foreseen_ faith,
obedience of faith, holiness, or any other good quality and disposition,
as a _pre-requisite_ cause or condition in the man who should be
elected, &c. ‘He hath chosen us,’ not because we _were_, but ‘that we
_might_ be, holy,’ &c, Eph. i, 4; Rom. ix, 11–13; Acts xiii, 48.
Moreover, Holy Scripture doth illustrate and commend to us this eternal
and free grace of our election, in this more especially, that it doth
testify all men not to be elected; but that some are non-elect, or
_passed by_, in the eternal election of God, whom truly God, from most
free, just, irreprehensible, and immutable good pleasure, decreed to
leave in the _common misery_ into which they had, by _their own fault_,
cast themselves; and not to bestow on them living faith, and the grace
of conversion; but having been left in their own ways, and under just
judgment, at length, not only on account of their unbelief, but also of
all their other sins, to condemn and eternally punish them, to the
manifestation of his own justice. And this is the decree of
_reprobation_, which determines that God is, in no wise, the author of
sin, (which, to be thought of, is blasphemy,) but a tremendous,
incomprehensible, just judge, and avenger.“
(2.) “_Of the Death of Christ._” Passing over, for brevity’s sake, what
is said of the necessity of atonement, in order to pardon, and of Christ
having offered that atonement and satisfaction, it is added, “This death
of the Son of God is a single and most perfect sacrifice and
satisfaction for sins; of infinite value and price, abundantly
sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world; but because many who
are called by the Gospel do not repent, nor believe in Christ, but
perish in unbelief; this doth not arise from defect or insufficiency of
the sacrifice offered by Christ upon the cross, but from their own
fault. God willed that Christ, through the blood of the cross, should,
out of every people, tribe, nation, and language, _efficaciously_ redeem
all those, and those _only_, who were from eternity chosen to salvation,
and given to him by the Father; that he should confer on them the gift
of faith,” &c.
(3.) “_Of Man’s Corruption, &c._ All men are conceived in sin, and born
the children of wrath, indisposed (_inepti_) to all saving good,
propense to evil, dead in sin, and the slaves of sin; and without the
regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, they neither are willing nor able
to return to God, to correct their depraved nature, or to dispose
themselves to the correction of it.“
(4.) “_Of Grace and Free will._ But in like manner as, by the fall, man
does not cease to be man, endowed with intellect and will; neither hath
sin, which hath pervaded the whole human race, taken away the nature of
the human species, but it hath depraved and spiritually stained it; so
that even this divine grace of regeneration does not act upon men like
stocks and trees, nor take away the properties of his will; or violently
compel it, while unwilling; but it spiritually quickens, heals,
corrects, and sweetly, and at the same time powerfully, inclines it; so
that whereas before it was wholly governed by the rebellion and
resistance of the _flesh_, now prompt and sincere obedience of the
Spirit may begin to reign; in which the renewal of our spiritual will,
and our liberty, truly consist; in which manner, (or for which reason,)
unless the admirable Author of all good should work in us, there could
be no hope to man of rising from the fall by that _free will_, by which,
when standing, he fell into ruin.”
(5.) “_On Perseverance._ God, who is rich in mercy, from his immutable
purpose of election, does not wholly take away his Holy Spirit from his
own, even in lamentable falls; nor does he so permit them to glide down,
(_prolabi_,) that they should fall from the grace of adoption, and the
state of justification; or commit the ‘sin unto death,’ or against the
Holy Spirit; that, being deserted by him, they should cast themselves
headlong into eternal destruction. So that not by their own merits or
strength, but by the gratuitous mercy of God, they obtain it, that they
neither _totally fall_ from faith and grace, nor _finally continue_ in
their falls and perish.”
10. The controversy on these difficult subjects was not decided by the
decrees of the synod of Dort, which, it will be seen under that article,
were purposely drawn up in a politic and wary manner, so as to quadrate
with the opinions, and not to outrage the feelings, of any grade of
Calvinists. Prior to the convention of that celebrated assembly, the
doctrines of Calvin had been refined upon and incautiously carried out
to some of their legitimate consequences, in a manner almost without
precedent, except that of the Mohammedan doctors on the absolute fate
which holds a distinguished place in the Koran. Several of the brightest
and most acute wits in Europe occupied themselves in sublimating to the
height of extravagance the two kindred branches of predestination,--the
eternal and absolute election of certain men to everlasting glory, and
the reprobation of the rest of mankind to endless punishment, without
regard in the divine mind to the foreseen faith of one class or to the
foreseen unbelief of the other. This course was commenced by Beza, the
contemporary and successor of Calvin, who possessed neither his genius
nor his caution; and his writings contain several rash assertions on
these points, which, it is probable, would never have obtained the
approbation of his departed friend and instructer. Zanchius, with true
Italian astuteness, carried on this process of refinement in high style;
and his predestinarian _improvements_ were only equalled by those of
Piscator, Pareus, Keckerman, Hommius, Kimedontius, Polanus, Sturmius,
Danæus, Thysius, Donteklock, Bogerman, Gomar, Smoutius, Triglandius,
down to the minor tribe of Contra-Remonstrants, Damman, Maccovius, and
Sibrandus Lubbertus. Nor were the clever divines of our own country a
whit behind the foreigners in accomplishing this grand object; and the
theological reader, on seeing the names of Perkins, Whitaker, Abbot, and
Twisse, will instantly recognise men whose doctrinal vagaries were
familiar to all the Calvinists in Europe. No one can form an adequate
conception of the injury thus inflicted on the divine attributes of
wisdom, goodness, and mercy, as they have been revealed in the
Scriptures, unless he has read the immense mass of quotations from the
writings of these and other divines, which were presented to the notice
of the synod of Dort by the Remonstrants, especially in their _Rejection
of Errors_ under each of the five points in dispute; the proofs of which
were quoted from their respective authors, and the accuracy and
faithfulness of which were never called in question. Not only would the
minds of all sober Christians in these days be shocked when perusing the
monstrous sentiments propounded in those extracts, but even the
tolerably stiff Calvinists of Oliver Cromwell’s time felt themselves
scandalized by any allusion to them, and would not admit that their
opinions had the least affinity to such desecrating dogmas. Little more
than twenty years after the synod of Dort, that distinguished polemical
divine and accurate scholar, Dr. Thomas Pierce, published his able and
very interesting pamphlet, entitled, “A Correct Copy of Some Notes
concerning God’s Decrees;” in which, without naming the authors, he gave
ten extracts from celebrated Calvinistic treatises, to prove, that
“there are men of no small name who have told the world, that all the
evil of sin which is in man proceedeth from God only as the author, and
from man only as the instrument.” Four of these extracts will furnish
sufficient matter to every judicious mind for mournful reflections on
the strange obliquities to which the human understanding is
liable:--(1.) “A wicked man, by the just impulse of God, doeth that
which is not lawful for him to do.” (2.) “When God makes an angel or a
man a transgressor, he himself doth not transgress, because he doth not
break a law. The very same sin, namely, adultery or murder, inasmuch as
it is the work of God, the author, mover, and compeller, is not a crime;
but inasmuch as it is of man, it is a wickedness.” (3.) “God can will
that man shall not fall, by his will which is called _voluntas signi_;
and in the mean while he can ordain that the same man shall infallibly
and efficaciously fall, by his will which is called _voluntas
beneplaciti_. The former will of God is improperly called his will, for
it only signifieth what man ought to do by right; but the latter will is
properly called a will, because by that he decreed what should
inevitably come to pass.” (4.) “God’s will doth pass, not only into the
permission of the sin, but into the sin itself which is permitted. The
Dominicans,” the high predestinarian order in the church of Rome, “do
imperfectly and obscurely relate the truth whilst, beside God’s
concurrence to the making way for sin, they require nothing but the
negation of efficacious grace, when it is manifest that there is a
farther prostitution of sin required.” Of these four passages the first
is from Calvin himself, the second from Zuinglius, and the third and
fourth from Dr. Twisse. This pamphlet was the first in a smart
controversy, in which Doctor (afterward Bishop) Reynolds, Baxter,
Hickman, and Barlee, took part against Dr. Pierce, but in which those
eminent men virtually disclaimed all community of sentiment between
themselves and such high predestinarians. In their warmth, however, they
accused the Doctor of having “rifled the well-furnished cabinet of the
Batavian Remonstrant writings,” and of not having hesitated “to be
beholden to very thieves, namely, such roguish pamphlets as _Fur
Predestinatus_ and others are, rather than want materials for invectives
against Calvin, Beza, Twisse,” &c. In his reply, the Doctor says, “When
I published my papers on God’s decrees, I had never so much as seen that
well-furnished cabinet, the ‘_Acta Synodalia Remonstrantium_;’” and he
proves that he has copied none of his extracts from _Fur Predestinatus_.
As his opponents were “so unthankful for the lenity” which he had
displayed in giving “so _short_ a catalogue,” he added other
affirmations of a still more revolting import, if that were possible.
The four extracts which follow, will serve as a correct specimen of the
gross and unguarded assertions of some of those good men who were thus
exposed; the first two are from Zanchius, the other two from Piscator,
both of them men of renown in that age:--(1.) “Reprobates are compelled
with a necessity of sinning, and so of perishing, by this ordination of
God; and so compelled that they cannot choose but sin and perish.” (2.)
“God works all things in all men, not only in the godly, but also in the
ungodly.” (3.) “Judas could not but betray Christ, seeing that God’s
decrees are immutable; and whether a man bless or curse, he always doth
it necessarily in respect of God’s providence, and in so doing he doeth
always according to the will of God.” (4.) “It doth or at least may
appear from the word of God, that we neither can do more good than we
do, nor omit more evil than we omit; because God from eternity hath
precisely decreed that both [the good and the evil] should so be done.
It is fatally constituted when, and how, and how much, every one of us
ought to study and love piety, or not to love it.” In that newly
emancipated age, the ample discussion of these topics could not fail to
produce much good; and the result in the course of a few years was, that
a vast number of those who had implicitly followed the guidance of
Calvin, deserted his standard, and either went completely over to the
ranks of Arminius, or halted midway under the command of Baxter. From
that time to the middle of the eighteenth century, those dogmas which
are usually designated as ultra-Calvinian or Antinomian, received no
support except from such shallow divines as Dr. Crisp and his immediate
admirers. But when the Rev. John Wesley and his brother, as Arminians,
propounded the doctrines of the Gospel in as evangelical a manner, and
with as marked success, as any Calvinist, a number of those excellent
men, both in the church and among the Dissenters, who had been early
benefited by the ministry of the two brothers, thought, as many now do,
that it was impossible for any thing to be evangelical that was not
Calvinistic; and, apparently with the design of being at as great a
remove as possible from a reputed heresy, they became in principle real
Antinomians. In forming this conclusion, and in running to a supposed
opposite extreme, such persons seem to have forgotten that those truly
evangelical principles,--which in Germany and the neighbouring states
effected the reformation from Popery, which transformed sinners into
Christians and martyrs, and which, in the perverted state of society
that then obtained, but too painfully reminded the sainted sufferers of
the domestic, municipal, and national grievances and persecutions to
which the earliest confessors of the name of Christ were subjected,--had
been in beneficial operation long before Calvin’s doctrinal system was
brought to maturity, and when he was known only as the humble and
diligent pastor of the church of Geneva. And even after the publication
of his “Institutes,” which contained the peculiarities of his creed, he
had to wait many years, to labour hard, not always in the most
sanctified spirit, both from the pulpit and the press, and to endure
many personal mortifications, before he was able to obtrude his novel
dogmas on his own immediate connections, or to make any sensible
impression on the generally received theology of his learned
contemporaries. Such persons ought also to recollect, that, as Dr. Watts
justly observes, “some of the most rigid and narrow limitations of grace
to men are found chiefly in Calvin’s _Institutions_, which were written
in his youth. But his comments on Scripture were the labours of his
riper years and maturer judgment.”
11. His first tract on predestination was published in 1552; and the
first complete edition of his “Institutes” did not see the light till
the year 1558; but the change in Melancthon’s opinions, from the
fatality of Stoicism, to the universality of the Gospel, occurred at
least six years prior to 1535, when the second edition of his “Common
Places” was published, that contained his amended creed, and strong
cautions against the contrary doctrines. One of the most eloquent and
best informed writers of the present age has, in reference to this
subject, justly observed: “Both Luther and Melancthon, after their creed
became permanently settled at the diet of Augsburg, (A. D. 1530,) kept
one object constantly in view,--to inculcate only what was plain and
practical, and never to attempt philosophizing. They perceived, that
before the reformation the doctrine of divine foreknowledge had been
grossly misconceived and abused, although guarded by all the logic of
the schools; and they felt, that, after it, they had themselves at first
contributed to increase the evil, by grounding upon the same high
argument, although for a very different purpose, the position of an
infallible necessity. Thenceforward, therefore, they only taught a
predestination which the Christian religion explains, and the Christian
life exemplifies. Thus, while their adversaries philosophized upon a
predestination of individuals, preferred one before another by divine
regard because worthy of such a preference, they taught only that which
has been revealed with certainty,--the predestination of a peculiar
description of persons, of _a people zealous of good works_, of the
Christian church contemplated as an aggregate, not on account of its own
dignity, but on account of Christ its supreme Head, and _the author of
eternal salvation to all who obey him_. While restoring Scriptural
simplicity to the doctrine of predestination, perplexed and disfigured
by the vanity of the schools, they studiously and anxiously preserved
every trace of that universal benevolence by which Christianity is
particularly distinguished. ‘Let us,’ they said, ‘with both our hands,
or rather with all our heart, hold fast the true and pious maxim, that
God is not the author of sin, that he sits not in heaven writing Stoical
laws in the volumes of fate; but, endowed with a perfect freedom
himself, he communicates a liberty of action to his creatures; firmly
opposing the position of necessity as false, and pernicious to morals
and religion. God, we may be assured, is no cruel and merciless tyrant;
he does not hate and reject men, but loves them as a parent loves his
children.’ Universal grace, indeed, was at all times a favourite topic
with the Lutherans; nor would they admit of any predestination except
that of a beneficent Deity, who was _in Christ reconciling the world to
himself_; except a predestination conformable with that order of things
which he has established, and with the use or abuse of the means which
he has ordained. ‘The Almighty,’ they said, ‘has seriously willed and
decreed, from eternity, all men to be saved and to enjoy everlasting
felicity; let us not therefore indulge in evil suggestions, and separate
ourselves from his grace, which is as expanded as the space between
heaven and earth; let us not restrain the general promise, in which he
offers his favour to all without discrimination, nor confine it to those
who, affecting a peculiar garb, wish to be alone esteemed pious and
sanctified. If many perish, the fault is not to be imputed to the divine
will, but to human obstinacy, which despises that will, and disregards a
salvation destined for all men.’ ‘And because _many are called, but few
are chosen_, let us not,’ they added, ‘entertain an opinion highly
impious,--that God tenders his grace to many, but communicates it only
to a few; for should we not in the greatest degree detest a Deity by
whose arbitrary will we believed ourselves to be excluded from
salvation?’ Upon the important point likewise of the conditional
acceptance of the individual, their ideas were not more distinct than
their language was explicit. ‘If God chose,’ they argued, ‘certain
persons only in order to unite them to himself, and rejected the
remainder in all respects alike, would not such AN ELECTION WITHOUT
CAUSES seem tyrannical? Let us therefore be persuaded, that some cause
exists in us, as some difference is to be found between those who are,
and those who are not, accepted.’ Thus they conceived that,
predestinating his elect in Christ, or the Christian church, to eternal
salvation, he excludes none from that number by a partial adoption of
favourites, but calls all equally, and accepts of all who obey his
calling, or, in other words, who become true Christians by possessing
the qualifications which Christianity requires.--'He,' they stated, who
‘falls from grace, cannot but perish, completely losing remission of
sin, with the other benefits which Christ has purchased for him, and
acquiring in their stead divine wrath and death eternal.’ Melancthon,
who in his private correspondence expressly termed Calvin the Zeno of
his day, says, ‘Let us execrate the Stoical disputations which some
introduce, who imagine that the elect always retain the Holy Spirit,
even when they commit atrocious crimes,--a manifest and highly
reprehensible error; and let us not confirm in fools security and
blindness.’”
These quotations might be augmented by others from the earliest Lutheran
authors, more Arminian in their import than any which Arminius ever
wrote: but the preceding are sufficient to show, that, during upward of
thirty years, the Protestant church in Germany was nourished by
doctrines most manifestly at variance with the refinements afterward
promulgated by Calvin. Real conversions of sinners were never more
abundant than in that golden age; yet these were produced by the
blessing of God upon an evangelical agency that had scarcely any thing
in common with the Genevan dogmas. With these and similar facts before
him, therefore, no Calvinist can in common honesty claim for the
peculiarities of his creed, for those doctrines which distinguish it
from the Melancthonism of the Protestant churches of England and
Germany, the exclusive title of EVANGELICAL. Equally fallacious is the
ground on which he can prefer any such claim on account of the alleged
counsel and advice given by Calvin to our reformers while they were
engaged in the formation of our Articles and Liturgy. On no fact in the
ecclesiastical history of this country are our annalists more completely
at agreement than on this,--that Calvin’s name and writings were
scarcely known in England till the time when the persecution under Queen
Mary forced many of our best divines into banishment; and that, to the
great future disquietude of the church, several of these exiles on their
return imported a personal bias either in favour of his discipline or of
his dogmas. Anterior to that period he had received no such pressing
invitations from our reformers, and from the king himself, as Melancthon
had done, for his friendly theological aid in drawing up the doctrinal
and disciplinary formulæ of our national church. The man who asserts the
contrary to this, and who has the hardihood to deny the Melancthonian
origin of the Articles and Liturgy, discovers at once his want of
correct information on these subjects, and has never read the convincing
documents appended to the Archbishop of Cashel’s (Dr. Laurence’s) “Eight
Sermons,” being the Bampton Lectures for 1804, and entitled, “_An
Attempt to Illustrate those Articles of the Church of England which the
Calvinists improperly consider as Calvinistical_;” Todd’s treatise “_On
Original Sin, Free Will, &c, as maintained by certain Declarations of
our Reformers_;” Plaifere’s “_Appello Evangelium_;” nor even the
portable yet convincing pamphlets of Kipling and Winchester, the former
entitled “_The Articles not Calvinistic_;” the latter, “_A Dissertation
on the Seventeenth Article of the Church_.”
12. There is one fact connected with these assumed yet unfounded claims,
which has never yet been placed in its proper light, but which it may be
well briefly to notice in this place. Calvin himself, in 1535, wrote the
following truly Melancthonian paragraphs as part of his preface to the
New Testament in French: “This Mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ, was the
only, true, and eternal Son of God, whom the Father was about to send
into the world, that he might collect all men together from this horrid
dispersion and devastation. When, at length, that fulness of time
arrived, that day preordained by the Lord, he openly showed himself as
that Messiah who had for so many ages been the desire of all nations,
and hath most abundantly performed all those things which were necessary
for the redemption of all men. But this great blessing was not confined
solely within the boundaries of the land of Israel, since, on the
contrary, it was intended [_porrigendum_] to be held out for the
acceptance of the whole human race; because through Christ alone the
entire family of man was to be reconciled to God, as will be seen, and
most amply demonstrated, in these pages of the New Testament.” “To this
inheritance of our heavenly Father’s kingdom we are all called without
respect of persons,--whether we be men or women, high or low, masters or
servants, teachers or disciples, [_doctores_] divines or laics, Jews or
Greeks, Frenchmen or [_Romani_] Italians. From this inheritance no one
is excluded, if he only so receive Christ as he is offered by the Father
for the salvation of all men, and embrace him when received.” Great
research has been displayed by the Calvinists at different periods, in
endeavouring to discover, in the public formularies of the church, or in
the private productions of our reformers, some trace of affinity between
them and the writings of Calvin. Only two cases of such affinity have
yet been found; and, unfortunately for the validity of all pretensions
of this kind, neither of them contains a single peculiarity of
Calvinism, but, on the contrary, both are of the moderate and
_evangelical_ class of the Melancthonian school. One of the passages
thus discovered is here subjoined from Cranmer’s “_Defence of the True
and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament_,” &c; and bears all the marks of
verisimilitude to the second of the preceding paragraphs from Calvin,
though written fifteen years after it:--“Almighty God, without respect
of person, accepteth the oblation and sacrifice of priest and lay
person, of king and subject, of master and servant, of man and woman, of
young and old, yea, of English, French, Scot, Greek, Latin, Jew, and
Gentile; of every man according to his faithful and obedient heart unto
him, and that through the sacrifice propitiatory of Jesus Christ.” Had
either this or the other passage contained the least tinge of what is
now considered as belonging exclusively to the system of Calvin, the
English admirers of that great man would have had some grounds for the
assertions which have been too confidently made, because so easily
refuted.
13. Having given this summary of the sentiments of Calvin himself, and
of the ancient or strict Calvinists, it is proper to observe, that there
are, and always have been, many who generally embrace the Calvinistic
system, but object to some particular _parts_, and to the strong
language in which some of the propositions are expressed. These are
called _moderate_ or _modern_ Calvinists, who differ from Calvin, and
the synod of Dort, chiefly on two points,--the doctrine of reprobation,
and the extent of the death of Christ. The theory of Baxter has already
been noticed. This and all other mitigated schemes rest on two
principles, the sufficiency of the atonement for all mankind, and the
sufficiency of grace for those who do not believe. Still something more
is held to be necessary than this sufficiency of grace in order to
actual salvation; namely, an acceptance by man, which can only be made
under that degree of effectual supernatural aid which is dispensed only
to a certain number of persons, who are thus distinguished as the “elect
of God.” The main characteristic of all these theories, from the first
to the last, from the highest to the lowest, is, that a part of mankind
are shut out from the mercies of God, on some ground irrespective of
their refusal of a sincere offer to them of salvation through Christ,
made with a communicated power of embracing it. Some power they allow to
the reprobate, as natural power, and degrees of superadded moral power;
but in no case the power to believe unto salvation; and thus, as one
well observes, “When they have cut some fair trenches, as if they would
bring the water of life unto the dwellings of the reprobate, on a sudden
they open a sluice which carries it off again.” The whole labour of
these theories is to find out some plausible reason for the infliction
of punishment on them that perish, independent of the only cause
assigned by the word of God--their rejection of a mercy free for all,
and made attainable by all. See BAXTERIANISM.
14. After all, however, it is pleasant to find these indications of a
growing consciousness, on the part of modern predestinarians, that the
common notions and common language of mankind on these deep subjects are
not far from the truth. And though some too fastidious Arminians may
complain, that, in this desire to enlist the views and words of common
sense on the side of Calvinism, many of those by whom they are employed
attach to them a meaning very different from that which ordinary usage
warrants; yet even this tendency to approximate to right views should be
regarded as favourable to the progress of truth, and the evidently
improved feeling which has suggested such approximation ought to be met
in a conciliating spirit. But this is a fault which must always be an
appendage to such a system, however it may be modified; and does not
exclusively apply to its modern supporters. The following remarks by
Archbishop Laurence on the ambiguity of language not unfrequently
discernible in the writings of Calvin himself, are worthy of
consideration:--“In whatsoever sense he wished these words to be
understood, it must be admitted that he sometimes adapted the style of
others, who had a very different object in view, to his own peculiar
opinions. And hence, from the want of a due discrimination, the
sentiments of his contemporaries, opposite in their natural tendency,
are often improperly forced into the vortex of Calvinism. Systematizing
was his darling propensity, and the ambition of being distinguished as a
leader in reform his predominant passion: in the arrangements of the
former, he never felt a doubt, or found a difficulty; and in the
pursuits of the latter he displayed an equal degree of perseverance and
ardour. Thus, in the doctrine of the eucharist, it is well known that he
laboured to acquire celebrity, and conciliate followers, by maintaining
a kind of middle sacramental presence between the corporeal of the
Lutherans, and the mere spiritual of the Zuinglians; expressing himself
in language which, partly derived from one, and partly from the other,
verged toward neither extreme; but which, by his singular talent at
perspicuous combination, he applied, and not without success, to his own
particular purpose. Nor was he less solicitous to press into his service
a foreign phraseology upon the subject more immediately before me; a
subject on his theory of which he not a little prided himself, and
seemed contented to stake his reputation. He perceived that the
Lutherans, strongly reprobating every discussion upon the decrees of a
Deity unrevealed to us, founded predestination solely on a Scriptural
basis; contending for a divine will which is seriously, not
fictitiously, disposed to save all men, and predetermined to save all
who become and continue sincere Christians. Zuingle, indeed, had
reasoned from a different principle; and, although persuaded that God’s
mercies in Christ were liberally bestowed on all without distinction, on
infants who commit not actual crime, and on the Heathen as well as the
Christian world, he nevertheless was a necessitarian in the strictest
sense of the expression; referring events of every kind to an
uncontrollable and absolute predetermination. Zuingle, however, died in
1531, before the youth of Calvin permitted him to assume the character
of a reformer; who found Bullinger then at the head of the Zuinglian
church, not only applauding, but adopting, the moderation of
the Lutherans; and, to use the phrase of Turretin, plainly
_Melancthonizing_. But the doctrine alluded to, it may be imagined, was
of a species too limited and unphilosophical for one of his enterprising
turn of mind, who never met with an obstacle which he attempted not
instantly to surmount. Disregarding, therefore, the sober restrictions
of the times, he gave loose to the most unbounded speculation: yet,
anxious by all means to win over all to his opinion, he studiously
laboured to preserve, on some popular points, a verbal conformity with
the Lutherans. With them, in words, he taught the universality of God’s
good will; but it was a universality which he extended only to the
_offer_ of salvation; conceiving the reprobate to be precluded from the
reception of that offer by the secret decree of an immutable Deity. The
striking feature of _their_ system was an election in Christ, by which
they meant an election as Christians. This also, in words, he
inculcated: his idea, however, of an election in Christ was totally
different from theirs; for he held it to be the previous election of
certain favourites by an irrespective will of God, whom, and whom alone,
Christ was subsequently appointed to save. But his ingenuity was such,
in adapting the terms borrowed from another source to his own theory,
that some erroneously conceive them to have been thus originally used by
the Lutherans themselves. Hence, therefore, much confusion has arisen in
the attempt of properly discriminating between the various sentiments of
Protestants upon this question, at the period under consideration: all
have been regarded as formed upon the model which Calvin exhibited; at
least by writers who have contemplated him as the greatest reformer of
his age, but who have forgotten that, although they chose to esteem him
the greatest, they could not represent him as the first in point of
time; and that his title to preëminence, in the common estimation of his
contemporaries, was then far from being acknowledged.”
15. On one topic, however, Calvin and the older divines of that school
were very explicit. They tell us plainly, that they found all the
Christian fathers, both of the Greek and the Latin church down to the
age of St. Augustine, quite unmanageable for their purpose; and
therefore occasionally bestow upon them and their productions epithets
not the most courteous. Yet some modern writers, not possessing half the
splendid qualifications of those veterans in learning, make a gorgeous
display of the little that they know concerning antiquity; and wish to
lead their readers to suppose, that the whole stream of early
Christianity has flowed down only in their channel. Every one must have
remarked how much like Calvin all those fathers speak whose works are
quoted by Toplady in his “Historic Defence.” Nor can the two Milners, in
their “History of the Church,” entirely escape censure on this
account,--though both were excellent men, and better scholars than
Toplady. But from the manner in which they “show up” only those ancient
Christian authors, some of whose sentiments _seem_ to be nearly in
unison with their own, they induce the unlearned or half informed to
draw the erroneous conclusion,--that the peculiarities of Calvinism are
not the inventions of a comparatively recent æra, and that they have
always formed a prominent part of the profession of faith of every
Christian community since the days of the Apostles.
All men must admire the candid and liberal spirit which breathes in the
subjoined high but just eulogium on Calvin, from the pen of the same
amiable Archbishop: “Calvin himself was both a wise and a good man;
inferior to none of his contemporaries in general ability, and superior
to almost all in the art, as well as elegance, of composition, in the
perspicuity and arrangement of his ideas, the structure of his periods,
and the Latinity of his diction. Although attached to a theory, which he
found it difficult in the extreme to free from the suspicion of
blasphemy against God, as the author of sin, he certainly was no
blasphemer; but, on the contrary, adopted that very theory from an
anxiety not to commit, but, as he conceived, to avoid blasphemy,--that
of ascribing to human, what he deemed alone imputable to divine,
agency.”