Calvinism

Calvinism

A system of religion, introduced by John Calvin , the French reformer, in opposition to Catholic teaching, the distinctive doctrines of which, in addition to his Presbyterian idea of the church, are as follows:

Man, as a result of Adam ‘s fall, has no freedom of will, but is an absolute slave of God;

God has predestined each one of us, some to hell, and some to heaven from eternity absolutely independently of our own efforts;

the elect cannot be lost.

Calvin ‘s doctrines, which were based on the assumption that God, being Infinite, is alone a real agent, and creatures are solely His instruments, are set forth in his “Institutes.” His followers split into two sects: the Supralapsarians (Latin: supra lapsum, before the fall) who together with Calvin regarded God’s decree of reprobation as absolute, and unconditioned by the Fall; the Infralapsarians, or Sublapsarians (Latin: infra, or sub, after), regarded God’s positive condemnation as consequent to and conditioned by the Fall.

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Calvinism

No better account of this remarkable (though now largely obsolete) system has been drawn out than Möhler’s in his “Symbolism or Doctrinal Differences.” The “Institutes of the Christian Religion,” in which Calvin depicted his own mind, were never superseded by creed or formulary, though the writer subscribed, in 1540, at Worms to the Confession of Augsburg, i.e. the second revised edition. To take his bearings in theology we must remember that he succeeded Luther in point of time and was committed to a struggle with Zwingli’s disciples at Zurich and elsewhere, known as Sacramentarians, but who tended more and more towards a Christianity without mysteries. In 1549 he and Farel entered with Bullinger into a moderate view as regarded the Eucharist, the “Consensus Tigurinus,” or compact of Zurich, which Bucer also accepted. Another compact, of the “pastors of Geneva ” strengthened his hands, in 1552, on the subjects of predestination, against Jerome Bolsec, whom he refuted and cast into prison. Bolsec finally returned to the Catholic Church. In 1553 a controversy between the German Lutherans about the Lord’s Supper led Calvin to declare his agreement with Melanchthon (the Philippists), but Melanchthon kept silence. Further complications ensued when Beza, softening the real doctrine of Geneva, drew nearer still to the Lutheran belief on this head. Bullinger and Peter Martyr cried down Beza’s unauthorized glosses; but Calvin supported his favourite. Nevertheless, that “declaration” was dropped by Beza when, in company with Farel, he put together a “Confession of the French Church,” and fell back on the creed of Augsburg issued in 1530, while not assenting to its 10th article. The Eucharist was to be more than a sign; Christ was truly present in it, and was received by Faith (compare the English Prayer Book, which reproduces his conception). Beyond these, on the whole, abortive efforts toward a common understanding, Calvin never went. His individual genius demanded its own expression; and he is always like himself, unlike any other. The many creeds fell into olivion; but the “Institutes” were recognized more and more as the sum of Reformed Theology. It was said after 1560, by the Jesuit St. Peter Canisius, that Calvin appeared to be taking Luther’s place even among Germans. Three currents have ever since held their course in this development of Protestantism: the mystic, derived from Wittenberg; the logical-orthodox, from Geneva; and the heterodox-rationalist, from Zurich (Zwingli), this last being greatly increased, thanks to the Unitarians of Italy, Ochino, Fausto, and Lelio Socino. To the modern world, however, Calvin stands peculiarly for the Reformation, his doctrine is supposed to contain the essence of the Gospel; and multitudes who reject Christianity mean merely the creed of Geneva.

Why does this happen? Because, we answer, Calvin gave himself out as following closely in the steps of St. Paul and St. Augustine. The Catholic teaching at Trent he judged to be Semi-Pelagian, a stigma which his disciples fix especially on the Jesuit schools, above all, on Molina. Hence the curious situation arises, that, while the Catholic consent of the East and West finds little or no acknowledgement as an historical fact among assailants of religion, the views which a single Reformer enunciated are taken as though representing the New Testament. In other words, a highly refined individual system, not traceable as a whole to any previous age, supplants the public teaching of centuries. Calvin, who hated Scholasticism, comes before us, as Luther had already done, in the shape of a Scholastic. His “pure doctrine” is gained by appealing, not to tradition, the “deposit” of faith, but to argument in abstract terms exercised upon Scripture. He is neither a critic nor a historian; he takes the Bible as something given; and he manipulates the Apostles’ Creed in accordance with his own ideas. The “Institutes” are not a history of dogma, but a treatise, only not to be called an essay because of its peremptory tone. Calvin annihilates the entire space, with all its developments, which lies between the death of St. John and the sixteenth century. He does, indeed, quote St. Augustine, but he leaves out all that Catholic foundation on which the Doctor of Grace built.

The “Institutes of the Christian Religion” are divided into four books and exhibit a commentary on the Apostles’ Creed. Book I considers God the Creator, the Trinity, revelation, man’s first estate and original righteousness. Book II describes the Fall of Adam, and treats of Christ the Redeemer. Book III enlarges on justifying faith, election, and reprobation. Book IV gives the Presbyterian idea of the Church. In form the work differs from the “Summa” of St. Thomas Aquinas by using exposition where the Angelic Doctor syllogizes; but the style is close, the language good Latin of the Renaissance, and the tone elevated, though often bitter. Arguments employed are always ostensibly grounded on Scripture, the authority of which rests not upon fallible human reasoning, but on the internal persuasion of the Holy Spirit. Yet Calvin is embarrassed at the outset by “unsteady men” who declare themselves enlightened of the same spirit and in no want of Scripture. He endeavours to refute them by the instance of St. Paul and other “primitive believers,” i.e. after all, by Catholic tradition. It will be obvious, moreover, that where the “Institutes” affirm orthodox tenets they follow the Councils and the Fathers, while professing reliance on the Bible alone. Thus we need not rehearse those chapters which deal with the Nicene and Chalcedonian formulas.

We shall best apprehend Calvin’s master-thought if we liken it to modern systems of the Unconscious, or of physical predetermination, wherein all effects lie folded up, as it were, in one First Cause, and their development in time is necessitated. Effects are thus mere manifestations, not fresh acts, or in any way due to free will choosing its own course. Nature, grace, revelation, Heaven, and Hell do but show us different aspects of the eternal energy which works in all things. There is no free will outside the Supreme. Zwingli argued that, since God was infinite being, He alone existed — there could be no other being, and secondary or created causes were but instruments moved entirely by Divine power. Calvin did not go to this length. But he denies freedom to creatures, fallen or unfallen, except it be libertas a coactione; in other words, God does not compel man to act by brute force, yet he determines irresistibly all we do, whether good or evil. The Supreme is indeed self-conscious — not a blind Fate or Stoic destiny; it is by “decree” of the sovereign Lawgiver that events come to pass. But for such decrees no reason can be rendered. There is not any cause of the Divine will save Itself. If we ask why has the Almighty acted thus and thus, we are told, “Quia ipse voluit” — it is His good pleasure. Beyond this, an explanation would be impossible, and to demand one is impiety. From the human angle of sight, therefore God works as though without a reason. And here we come upon the primal mystery to which in his argument Calvin recurs again and again. This Supreme Will fixes an absolute order, physical, ethical, religious, never to be modified by anything we can attempt. For we cannot act upon God, else He would cease to be the First Cause. Holding this clue, it is comparatively simple to trace Calvin’s footsteps along the paths of history and revelation.

Luther had written that man’s will is enslaved either to God or to Satan, but it is never free. Melanchthon declaimed against the “impious dogma of Free Will,” adding that since all things happen by necessity according to Divine predestination, no room was left for it. This was truly the article by which the Reformation should stand or fall. God is sole agent. Therefore creation, redemption, election, reprobation are in such sense His acts that man becomes merely their vehicle and himself does nothing. Luther, contending with Erasmus, declares that “God by an unchangeable, eternal, infallible will, foresees purposes and effects all things. By this thunderbolt Free Will is utterly destroyed.” Calvin shared Luther’s doctrine of necessity to the full; but he embroiled the language by admitting in unfallen Adam a liberty of choice. He was likewise at pains to distinguish between his own teaching and the “nature bound fast in Fate” of the Stoics. He meant by liberty, however, the absence of constraint; and the Divine wisdom which he invoked could never be made intelligible to our understanding. What he rejected was the Catholic notion of the self-determining second cause. Neither would he allow the doctrine laid down by the Fathers of Trent (Sess. VI Canon 16), that God permits evil deeds, but is not their author. The condemnation struck expressly at Melanchthon, who asserted that the betrayal by Judas was not less properly God’s act than the vocation of St. Paul. But by parity of reasoning it falls upon Calvinism. For the “Institutes” affirm that “man by the righteous impulsion of God does that which is unlawful ,” and that “man falls, the Providence of God so ordaining” (IV, 18, 2; III, 23, 8). Yet elsewhere Calvin denied this impulse as not in accordance with the known will of the Almighty. Both he and Luther found a way of escape from the moral dilemma inflicted on them by distinguishing two wills in the Divine Nature, one public or apparent, which commanded good and forbade evil as the Scripture teaches, the other just, but secret and unsearchable, predetermining that Adam and all the reprobate should fall into sin and perish. At no time did Calvin grant that Adam’s transgression was due to his own free will. Beza traces it to a spontaneous, i.e. a natural and necessary, movement of the spirit, in which evil could not fail to spring up. He justifies the means — sin and its consequences — by the holy purpose of the Creator who, if there were no one to punish, would be incapable of showing that he is a righteously vindictive God. As, however, man’s intent was evil, he becomes a sinner while his Creator remains holy. The Reformed confessions will not allow that God is the author of sin — and Calvin shows deep indignation when charged with “this disgraceful falsehood.” He distinguishes, like Beza, the various intentions concurring to the same act on the part of different agents- but the difficulty cannot well be got over, that, in his view, the First Cause alone is a real agent, and the rest mere instruments. It was objected to him that he gave no convincing reasons for the position thus taken up, and that his followers were swayed by their master’s authority rather than by the force of his logic. Even an admirer, J. A. Froude, tells us: To represent man as sent into the world under a curse, as incurably wicked-wicked by the constitution of his nature and wicked by eternal decree-as doomed, unless exempted by special grace which he cannot merit, or by any effort of his own obtain, to live in sin while he remains on earth, and to be eternally miserable when he leaves it-to represent him as born unable to keep the commandments, yet as justly liable to everlasting punishment for breaking them, is alike repugnant to reason and conscience, and turns existence into a hideous nightmare. (Short Studies, II, 3.)

Another way to define the Reformed theology would be to contrast its view of God’s eternal decrees with that taken in the Catholic Church, notably by Jesuit authors such as Molina. To Calvin the ordinances of Deity seemed absolute, i.e. not in any way regardful of the creature’s acts, which they predetermined either right or wrong; and thus reprobation — the supreme issue between all parties — followed upon God’s unconditioned fiat, no account being had in the decree itself of man’s merits or demerits. For God chose some to glory and others to shame everlasting as He willed, not upon foreknowledge how they would act. The Jesuit school made foreknowledge of “future contingencies” or of what creatures would do in any possible juncture, the term of Divine vision “scientia media” which was logically antecedent (as a condition not a cause) to the scheme of salvation. Grace, said Catholic dogma, was offered to all men; none were excluded from it. Adam need not have transgressed, neither was his fall pre-ordained. Christ died for the whole human race; and every one had such help from on high that the reprobate could never charge their ruin upon their Maker, since he permitted it only, without an absolute decree. Grace, then, was given freely; but eternal life came to the saints by merit, founded on correspondence to the Holy Spirit’s impulse. All these statements Calvin rejected as Pelagian, except that he would maintain, though unable to justify, the- imputation of the sinner’s lapse to human nature by itself.

To be consistent, this doctrine requires that no prevision of Adam’s Fall should affect the eternal choice which discriminates between the elect and the lost. A genuine Calvinist ought to be a supralapsarian; in other terms, the Fall was decreed as means to an end; it did not first appear in God’s sight to be the sufficient cause why, if He chose, He might select some from the “massa damnata,” leaving others to their decreed doom. To this subject St. Augustine frequently returns in his anti-Pelagian treatises, and he lays great emphasis on the consequences to mankind as regards their final state, of God’s dealing with them in fallen Adam. But his language, unlike that of Calvin, never implies absolute rejection divorced from foreknowledge of man’s guilt. Thus even to the African Father, whose views in his latter works became increasingly severe (see “On the Predestination of the Saints” and “On Correction and Grace”) there was always an element of scientia media, i.e. prevision in the relation of God with His creatures. But, to the Reformer who explained Redemption and its opposite by sheer omnipotence doing as it would, the idea that man could, even as a term of knowledge, by his free acts be considered in the Everlasting Will was not conceivable. As the Arian said, “How can the Eternal be begotten?” and straightway denied the generation of the Word, in like manner Calvin, “How can the contingent affect the First Cause on which it utterly depends?” In the old dilemma, “either God is not omnipotent or man is not self determined,” the “Institutes” accept the conclusion adverse to liberty. But it was, said Catholics, equally adverse to morals; and the system has always been criticised on that ground. In a word, it seemed to be antinomian.

With Augustine the Geneva author professed to be at one. “If they have all been taken from a corrupt mass,” he argued, “no marvel that they are subject to condemnation.” But, his critics replied, “were they not antecedently predestined to that corruption?” And “is not God unjust in treating His creatures with such cruel mystery?” To this Calvin answers, “I confess that all descendants of Adam fell by the Divine will,” and that “we must return at last to God’s sovereign determination, the cause of which is hidden” (Institutes, III, 23, 4). “Therefore,” he concludes, “some men are born devoted from the womb to certain death, that His name may be glorified in their destruction.” And the reason why such necessity is laid upon them? “Because,” says Calvin “life and death are acts of God’s will rather than of his foreknowledge,” and “He foresees further events only in consequence of his decree that they shall happen.” Finally, “it is an awful decree, I confess [horribile decretum, fateor], but none can deny that God foreknew the future final fate of man before He created him — and that He did foreknow it because it was appointed by His own ordinance.” Calvin, then, is a supralapsarian; the Fall was necessary; and our first parents, like ourselves, could not have avoided sinning.

So far, the scheme presents a cast-iron logic at whatever expense to justice and morality. When it comes to consider human nature, its terms sound more uncertain, it veers to each extreme in succession of Pelagius and Luther. In St. Augustine, that nature is almost always viewed historically, not in the abstract hence as possessed by unfallen Adam it was endowed with supernatural gifts, while in his fallen children it bears the burden of concupiscence and sin. But the French Reformer, not conceding a possible state of pure nature, attributes to the first man, with Luther (in Gen., iii), such perfection as would render God’s actual grace unnecessary, thus tending to make Adam self-sufficient, as the Pelagians held all men to be. On the other hand, when original sin took them once captive the image of God was entirety blotted out. This article of “total depravity” also came from Luther, who expressed it in language of appalling power. And so the “Institutes” announce that “in man all which bears reference to the blessed life of the soul is extinct.” And if it was “natural” in Adam to love God and do justice, or a part of his very essence, then by lapsing from grace he would have been plunged into an abyss below nature, where his true moral and religious being was altogether dissolved. So, at any rate, the German Protestants believed in their earlier period, nor was Calvin reluctant to echo them.

Catholics distinguish two kinds of beatitude: one corresponding to our nature as a rational species and to be acquired by virtuous acts; the other beyond all that man may do or seek when left to his own faculties, and in such wise God’s free gift that it is due only to acts performed under the influence of a strictly supernatural movement. The confusion of grace with nature in Adam’s essence was common to all the Reformed schools; it is peculiarly manifest in Jansenius, who strove to deduce it from St. Augustine. And, granting the Fall, it leads by direct inference to man’s utter corruption as the unregenerate child of Adam. He is evil in all that he thinks, or wills, or does. Yet Calvin allows him reason and choice, though not true liberty. The heart was poisoned by sin, but something remained of grace to hinder its worst excesses, or to justify God’s vengeance on the reprobate (over and above their original fault inherited). On the whole, it must be said that the “Institutes” which now and then allow that God’s image was not quite effaced in us, deny to mankind, so far as redemption has not touched them, any moral and religious powers whatsoever. With Calvin as with his predecessor of Wittenberg, heathen virtue is but apparent, and that of the non-Christian merely “political,” or secular. Civilization, founded on our common nature, is in such a view external only, and its justice or benevolence may claim no intrinsic value. That it has no supernatural value Catholics have always asserted; but the Church condemns those who say, with Baius, “All the works of unbelievers are sinful and the virtues of the philosophers are vices.” Propositions equivalent to these are as follows: “Free Will not aided by God’s grace, avails only to commit sin,” and “God could not have created man at the beginning such as he is now born” (Props. 25, 27, 55, censured by St. Pius V, Oct., 1567, and by Urban VIII, March, 1641). Catholic theology admits a twofold goodness and righteousness — the one natural, as Aristotle defines it in his “Ethics,” the other supernatural inspired by the Holy Ghost. Calvin throws aside every middle term between justifying faith and corrupt desire. The integrity of Adam’s nature once violated, he falls under the dominion of lust, which reigns in him without hindrance, save by the external grace now and again preventing a deeper degradation. But whatever he is or does savours of the Evil One. Accordingly the system maintained that faith (which here signifies trust in the Lutheran sense) was the first interior grace given and source of all others, as likewise that outside the Church no grace is ever bestowed.

We come on these lines to the famous distinction which separates the true Church that of the predestined, from the seeming or visible, where all baptized persons meet. This falls in with Calvin’s whole theory, but is never to be mistaken for the view held by Roman authorities, that some may pertain to the soul of the Church who are not members of its body. Always pursuing his idea, the absolute predestinarian finds among Christians, all of whom have heard the Gospel and received the sacraments, only a few entitled to life everlasting. These obtain the grace which is in words offered to every one; the rest fill up the measure of their condemnation. To the reprobate, Gospel ordinances serve as a means to compass the ruin intended for them. Hereby, also, an answer is made possible when Catholics demand where the Reformed Church was prior to the Reformation. Calvin replies that in every age the elect constituted the flock of Christ, and all besides were strangers, though invested with dignity and offices in the visible communion. The reprobate have only apparent faith. Yet they may feel as do the elect, experience similar fervours, and to the best of their judgment be accounted saints. All that is mere delusion; they are hypocrites “into whose minds God insinuates Himself, so that, not having the adoption of sons, they may yet taste the goodness of the Spirit.” Thus Calvin explained how in the Gospel many are called believers who did not persevere; and so the visible Church is made up of saints that can never lose their crown, and sinners that by no effort could attain to salvation.

Faith, which means assurance of election, grace, and glory, is then the heritage of none but the predestined. But, since no real secondary cause exists man remains passive throughout the temporal series of events by which he is shown to be an adopted son of God. He neither acts nor, in the Catholic sense co-operates with his Redeemer. A difference in the method of conversion between Luther and Calvin may here be noted. The German mystic begins, as his own experience taught him, with the terrors of the law. The French divine who had never gone through that stage, gives the first place to the Gospel; and repentance, instead of preceding faith, comes after it. He argued that by so disposing of the process, faith appeared manifestly alone, unaccompanied by repentance, which, otherwise, might claim some share of merit. The Lutherans, moreover, did not allow absolute predestination. And their confidence in being themselves justified, i.e. saved, was unequal to Calvin’s requirements. For he made assurance inevitable as was its object to the chosen soul. Nevertheless, he fancied that between himself and the sounder medieval scholastics no quarrel need arise touching the principle of justification — namely, that “the sinner being delivered gratuitously from his doom becomes righteous.” Calvin overlooked in these statements the vital difference which accounts for his aberration from the ancient system. Catholics held that fallen man kept in some degree his moral and religious faculties, though much impaired, and did not lose his free will. But the newer doctrine affirmed man’s total incompetence, he could neither freely consent nor ever resist, when grace was given, if he happened to be predestinate. If not, justification lay beyond his grasp. However, the language of the “Institutes” is not so uncompromising as Luther’s had been. God first heals the corrupt will, and the will follows His guidance; or, we may say, cooperates.

The one final position of Calvin is that omnipotent grace of itself substitutes a good for an evil will in the elect, who do nothing towards their own conversion but when converted are accounted just. In all the original theology of the Reformation righteousness is something imputed, not indwelling in the soul. It is a legal fiction when compared with what the Catholic Church believes, namely, that justice or sanctification involves a real gift, a quality bestowed on the spirit and inherent, whereby it becomes the thing it is called. Hence the Council of Trent declares (Sess. VI) that Christ died for all men, it condemns (Canon XVII) the main propositions of Geneva, that “the grace of justification comes only to the predestinate,” and that “the others who are called receive an invitation but no grace, being doomed by the Divine power to evil.” So Innocent X proscribed in Jansenius the statement: “It is Semipelagian to affirm that Christ died for all men, or shed His blood in their behalf.” In like manner Trent rejected the definition of faith as “confidence in being justified without merit”; grace was not “the feeling of love,” nor was justification the “forgiveness of sin,” and apart from a special revelation no man could be infallibly sure that he was saved. According to Calvin the saint was made such by his faith, and the sinner by want of it stood condemned, but the Fathers of Trent distinguished a dead faith, which could never justify, from faith animated by charity — and they attributed merit to all good works done through Divine inspiration. But in the Genevese doctrine faith itself is not holy. This appears very singular; and no explanation has ever been vouchsafed of the power ascribed to an act or mean, itself destitute of intrinsic qualities, neither morally good nor in any way meritorious, the presence or absence of which nevertheless fixes our eternal destiny

But since Christ alone is our righteousness, Luther concluded that the just man is never just in himself; that concupiscence, though resisted, makes him sin damnably in all he does, and that he remains a sinner until his last breath. Thus even the “Solid Declaration” teaches, though in many respects toning down the Reformer’s truculence. Such guilt, however, God overlooks where faith is found — the one unpardonable sin is want of faith. “Pecca fortiter sed crede fortius” — this Lutheran epigram, “Sin as you like provided you believe,” expresses in a paradox the contrast between corrupt human nature, filthy still in the very highest saints, and the shadow of Christ, as, falling upon them, it hides their shame before God. Here again the Catholic refuses to consider man responsible except where his will consents; the Protestant regards impulse and enticement as constituting all the will that we have. These observations apply to Calvin — but he avoids extravagant speech while not differing from Luther in fact. He grants that St. Augustine would not term involuntary desires sin; then he adds, “We, on the contrary, deem it to be sin whenever a man feels any desires forbidden by Divine law — and we assert the depravity to be sin which produces them” (Institutes, III, 2, 10). On the hypothesis of determinism, held by every school of the Reformers, this logic is unimpeachable. But it leads to strange consequences. The sinner commits actions which the saint may also indulge in; but one is saved the other is lost; and so the entire moral contents of Christianity are emptied out. Luther denominated the saint’s liberty freedom from the law. And Calvin, “The question is not how we can be righteous, but how, though unworthy and unrighteous, we may be considered righteous.” The law may instruct and exhort, but “it has no place in the conscience before God’s tribunal.” And if Christians advert to the law, “they see that every work they attempt or meditate is accursed” (Institutes, III, 19, 2, 4). Leo X had condemned Luther’s thesis, “In every good work the just man sins.” Baius fell under censure for asserting (Props. 74, 75) that “concupiscence in the baptized is a sin, though not imputed.” And, viewing the whole theory, Catholics have asked whether a sinfulness which exists quite independent of the will is not something substantial, like the darkness of the Manichaeans, or essential to us who are finite beings.

At all events Calvin seems entangled in perplexities on the subject, for he declares expressly that the regenerate are “liable every moment at God’s judgment-seat to sentence of death” (Instit., III, 2, 11); yet elsewhere he tempers his language with a “so to speak,” and explains it as meaning that all human virtue is imperfect. He would certainly have subscribed to the “Solid Declaration,” that the good works of the pious are not necessary to salvation. With Luther, he affirms the least transgression to be a mortal sin, even involuntary concupiscence — and as this abides in every man while he lives, all that we do is worthy of punishment (Instit., II, 8, 68, 59). And again, “There never yet was any work of a religious man which, examined by God’s severe standard would not be condemnable” (Ibid., III, 14,11). The Council of Trent had already censured these axioms by asserting that God does not command impossibilities, and that His children keep His word. Innocent X did the like when he proscribed as heretical the fifth proposition of Jansenius, “Some commandments of God are impossible to the just who will and endeavour; nor is the grace by which they should become possible given to them.”

Two important practical consequences may be drawn from this entire view: first, that conversion takes place in a moment — and so all evangelical Protestants believe; and, second, that baptism ought not to be administered to infants, seeing they cannot have the faith which justifies. This latter inference produced the sect of Anabaptists against whom Calvin thunders as he does, against other “frenzied” persons, in vehement tones. Infant baptism was admitted, but its value, as that of every ordinance, varied with the predestination to life or to death of the recipient. To Calvinists the Church system was an outward life beneath which the Holy Spirit might be present or absent, not according to the dispositions brought by the faithful, but as grace was decreed. For good works could not prepare a man to receive the sacraments worthily any more than to be justified in the beginning. If so, the Quakers might well ask, what is the use of sacraments when we have the Spirit? And especially did this reasoning affect the Eucharist. Calvin employs the most painful terms in disowning the sacrifice of the Mass. No longer channels of grace, to Melanchthon the sacraments are “Memorials of the exercise of faith,” or badges to be used by Christians. From this point of view, Christ’s real presence was superfluous, and the acute mind of Zwingli leaped at once to that conclusion, which has ever since prevailed among ordinary Protestants. But Luther’s adherence to the words of the Scripture forbade him to give up the reality, though he dealt with it in his peculiar fashion. Bucer held an obscure doctrine, which attempted the middle way between Rome and Wittenberg. To Luther the sacraments serve as tokens of God’s love; Zwingli degrades them to covenants between the faithful. Calvin gives the old scholastic definition and agrees with Luther in commending their use, but he separates the visible element proffered to all from the grace which none save the elect may enjoy. He admits only two sacraments, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Even these neither contain nor confer spiritual graces; they are signs, but not efficacious as regards that which is denoted by them. For inward gifts, we must remember, do not belong to the system, whereas Catholics believe in ordinances as acts of the Man-God, producing the effects within the soul which He has promised, “He that eateth Me shall live by Me.”

When the Church’s tradition was thrown aside, differences touching the Holy Eucharist sprang up immediately among the Reformers which have never found a reconciliation. To narrate their history would occupy a volume. It is notable, however, that Calvin succeeded where Bucer had failed, in a sort of compromise, and the agreement of Zurich which he inspired was taken up by the Swiss Protestants. Elsewhere it led to quarrels, particularly among the Lutherans, who charged him with yielding too much. He taught that the Body of Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, and that the believer partakes of it that the elements are unchanged, and that the Catholic Mass was idolatry. Yet his precise meaning is open to question. That he did not hold a real objective presence seems clear from his arguing against Luther, as the “black rubric” of the Common Prayer Book argues — Christ’s body, he says, is in heaven. Therefore, it cannot be on earth. The reception was a spiritual one; and this perfectly orthodox phrase might be interpreted as denying a true corporal presence. The Augsburg Confession, revised by its author Melanchthon, favoured ambiguous views — at last he declared boldly for Calvin, which amounted to an acknowledgment that Luther’s more decided language overshot the mark. The “Formula of Concord” was an attempt to rescue German Churches from this concession to the so-called Sacramentarians; it pronounced, as Calvin never would have done, that the unworthy communicant receives Our Lord’s Body; and it met his objection by the strange device of “ubiquity” — namely, that the glorified Christ was everywhere. But these quarrels lie outside our immediate scope.

As Calvin would not grant the Mass to be a sacrifice, nor the ministers of the Lord’s Supper to be priests, that conception of the Church which history traces back to the earliest Apostolic times underwent a corresponding change. The clergy were now “Ministers of the Word,” and the Word was not a tradition, comprising Scripture in its treasury, but the printed Bible, declared all-sufficient to the mind which the Spirit was guiding. Justification by faith alone, the Bible, and the Bible only, as the rule of faith — such were the cardinal principles of the Reformation. They worked at first destructively, by abolishing the Mass and setting up private judgment in opposition to pope and bishops. Then the Anabaptists arose. If God’s word sufficed, what need of a clergy? The Reformers felt that they must restore creeds and enforce the power of the Church over dissidents. Calvin, who possessed great constructive talent, built his presbytery on a democratic foundation — the people were to choose, but the ministers chosen were to rule. Christian freedom consisted in throwing off the yoke of the Papacy, it did not allow the individual to stand aloof from the congregation. He must sign formulas, submit to discipline, be governed by a committee of elders. A new sort of Catholic Church came into view, professing that the Bible was its teacher and judge, but never letting its members think otherwise than the articles drawn up should enjoin. None were allowed in the pulpit who were not publicly called, and ordination, which Calvin regarded almost as a sacrament, was conferred by the presbytery.

In his Fourth Book the great iconoclast, to whom in good logic only the Church invisible should have signified anything, makes the visible Church supreme over Christians, assigns to it the prerogatives claimed by Rome, enlarges on the guilt of schism, and upholds the principle, Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. He will not allow that corrupt morals in the clergy, or a passing eclipse of doctrine by superstition, can excuse those who, on pretence of a purer Gospel, leave it. The Church is described in equivalent terms as indefectible and infallible. All are bound to hear and obey what it teaches. Luther had spoken of it with contempt almost everywhere in his first writings; to him the individual guided by the Holy Spirit was autonomous. But Calvin taught his followers so imposing a conception of the body in which they were united as to bring back a hierarchy in effect if not in name. “Where the ministry of Word and Sacraments is preserved,” he concludes, “no moral delinquencies can take away the Church’s title.” He had nevertheless, broken with the communion in which he was born. The Anabaptists retorted that they did not owe to his new-fashioned presbytery the allegiance he had cast away — the Quakers, who held with him by the Inward Light, more consistently refused all jurisdiction to the visible Church.

One sweeping consequence of the Reformation is yet to be noticed. As it denied the merit of good works even in the regenerate, all those Catholic beliefs and ordinances which implied a Communion of Saints actively helping each other by prayer and self-sacrifice were flung aside. Thus Purgatory, Masses for the dead, invocation of the blessed in Heaven, and their intercession for us are scouted by Calvin as “Satan’s devices.” A single argument gets rid of them all: do they not make void the Cross of Christ our only Redeemer? (Instit., III, 5, 6). Beza declared that “prayer to the saints destroys the unity of God.” The Dutch Calvinists affirmed of them, as the Epicureans of their deities, that they knew nothing about what passes on earth. Wherever the Reformers triumphed, a wholesale destruction of shrines and relics took place. Monasticism, being an ordered system of mortification on Catholic principles, offended all who thought such works needless or even dangerous — it fell, and great was the fall thereof, in Protestant Europe. The Calendar had been framed as a yearly ritual, commemorating Our Lord’s life and sufferings, with saints’ days filling it up. Calvin would tolerate the Swiss of Berne who desired to keep the Gospel festivals; but his Puritan followers left the year blank, observing only the Sabbath, in a spirit of Jewish legalism. After such a fashion the Church was divorced from the political order — the living Christian ceased to have any distinct relation with his departed friends; the saints became mere memories, or were suspected of Popery; the churches served as houses of preaching, where the pulpit had abolished the altar; and Christian art was a thing of the past.

The Reformers, including Calvin, appealed so confidently to St. Augustine’s volumes that it seems only fair to note the real difference which exists between his doctrine and theirs. Cardinal Newman sums it up as follows: The main point is whether the Moral Law can in its substance be obeyed and kept by the regenerate. Augustine says, that whereas we are by nature condemned by the Law, we are enabled by the grace of God to perform it unto our justification; Luther [and Calvin equally] that, whereas we are condemned by the law, Christ has Himself performed it unto our justification — Augustine, that our righteousness is active; Luther, that it is passive; Augustine, that it is imparted, Luther that it is only imputed; Augustine, that it consists in a change of heart; Luther, in a change of state. Luther maintains that God’s commandments are impossible to man Augustine adds, impossible without His grace; Luther that the Gospel consists of promises only Augustine, that it is also a law, Luther, that our highest wisdom is not to know the Law, Augustine says instead, to know and keep it — Luther says, that the Law and Christ cannot dwell together in the heart. Augustine says that the Law is Christ; Luther denies and Augustine maintains that obedience is a matter of conscience. Luther says that a man is made a Christian not by working but by hearing; Augustine excludes those works only which are done before grace is given; Luther, that our best deeds are sins; Augustine, that they are really pleasing to God (Lectures on Justification, ch. ii, 58).

As, unlike the Lutheran, those Churches which looked up to Calvin as their teacher did not accept one uniform standard, they fell into particular groups and had each their formulary. The three Helvetic Confessions, the Tetrapolitan, that of Basle, and that composed by Bullinger belong respectively to 1530, 1532, 1536. The Anglican 42 Articles of 1553, composed by Cranmer and Ridley, were reduced to 39 under Elizabeth in 1562. They bear evident tokens of their Calvinistic origin, but are designedly ambiguous in terms and meaning. The French Protestants, in a Synod at Paris, 1559, framed their own articles. In 1562 those of the Netherlands accepted a profession drawn up by Guy de Bres and Saravia in French, which the Synod of Dort (1574) approved. A much more celebrated meeting was held at this place 1618-19, to adjudicate between the High Calvinists, or Supralapsarians, who held unflinchingly to the doctrine of the “Institutes” touching predestination and the Remonstrants who opposed them. Gomar led the former party; Arminius, though he died before the synod, in 1609, had communicated his milder views to Uytenbogart and Episcopius, hence called Arminians. They objected to the doctrine of election before merit, that it made the work of Christ superfluous and inexplicable. The Five Articles which contained their theology turned on election, adoption, justification, sanctification, and sealing by the Spirit, all which Divine acts presuppose that man has been called, has obeyed, and is converted. Redemption is universal, reprobation due to the sinner’s fault and not to God’s absolute decree. In these and the like particulars, we find the Arminians coming close to Tridentine formulas. The “Remonstrance” of 1610 embodied their protest against the Manichaean errors, as they said, which Calvin had taken under his patronage. But the Gomarists renewed his dogmas; and their belief met a favourable reception among the Dutch, French, and Swiss. In England the dispute underwent many vicissitudes. The Puritans, as afterwards their Nonconformist descendants, generally sided with Gomar; the High Church party became Arminian. Wesley abandoned the severe views of Calvin; Whitefield adopted them as a revelation. The Westminster Assembly (1643-47) made an attempt to unite the Churches of Great Britain on a basis of Calvinism, but in vain. Their Catechism — the Larger and the Smaller — enjoyed authority by Act of Parliament. John Knox had, in 1560 edited the “First Book of Discipline,” which follows Geneva, but includes a permissive ritual. The “Second Book of Discipline” was sent out by a congregation under Andrew Melville’s influence in 1572, and in 1592 the whole system received Parliamentary sanction. But James I rejected the doctrines of Dort. In Germany the strange idea was prevalent that civil rulers ought to fix the creed of their subjects, Cujus regio, ejus religio. Hence an alternation and confusion of formulas ensued down to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Frederick III, Count Palatine, put forward, in 1562, the Heidelberg Catechism, which is of Calvin’s inspiration. John George of Anhalt-Dessau laid down the same doctrine in 20 Articles (1597). Maurice of Hesse-Cassel patronized the Synod of Dort; and John Sigismund of Brandenburg, exchanging the Lutheran tenets for the Genevese, imposed on his Prussians the “Confession of the Marches.” In general, the reformed Protestants allowed dogmatic force to the revised Confession of Augsburg (1540) which Calvin himself had signed.

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WILLIAM BARRY Transcribed by Tomas Hancil

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IIICopyright © 1908 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, November 1, 1908. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Calvinism

properly, the whole system of theology taught by John Calvin, including his doctrine of the sacraments, etc. It is now, however, generally used todenote the theory of grace and predestination set forth in Calvin’s Institutes, and adopted, with more or less modification, by several of the Protestant churches. SEE CALVINISTS.

1. Calvin’s owin Views (Supralapsarian). These ere set forth (from Neander) under the article CALVIN SEE CALVIN (q.v.). We give here simply such farther extracts from Calvin’s own writings as are necessary to show his system.

(1.) Predestination, by which God adopts some to the hope of life, and adjudges others to eternal death, no one desirous of the credit of piety dares absolutely to deny. But it is involved in many cavils, especially 1 y those who make foreknowledge the cause of it. We maintain that both belong to God; but it is preposterous to represent one as dependent on the other. Predestination we call the eternal decree (f God, 1,y which he hath determined in himself what he would have to become of every individual of mankind. For they are not all created with a similar destiny; but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the 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. Institutes, bk. 3, ch. 21.

(2) As to the theory that predestination depends on foreknowledge of holiness, Calvin says: 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 bycovering it with the veil of foreknowledge, but pretend that it originates in another cause (bk. 3, ch. 22). Consistently with this, he a little further 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. (Bk. 3, ch. 23.)

(3.) So, as to the ground of reprobation: 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 hepleases, 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. (Bk. 3, ch. 23.)

(4.) Calvin denies that his doctrine makes God the author of sin, asserting that the ruin of sinners is their I own work: 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.

(5.) 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,. See especially Institutes, bk. 3, ch. 23, 27, and ch. 24, 8.

From the above passages it will be seen that Calvin went beyond the Augustinian theory of predestination, and held to the supralapsarian view. Supralapsarianism regards man, before the fall, as the object of the unconditional decree of salvation or damnation; Sublapsarianism, on the other hand, makes the decree subordinate to the creation and fall of man. According to Dr. Shedd’s definition, supralapsarianism holds that the decree to eternal bliss or woe precedes, in the order of nature, the decree to apostasy; infralapsarianism holds that it succeeds it (History of Doc. trines, 2:192). The Supralapsarians hold that God decreed the fall of Adam; the Sublapsarians, that he permitted it. Some writers have maintained that Calvin was not a supralapsarian, but that view of histeaching is hardly tenable. Calvin terms the exclusion of the fall of the first man from the divine pre. destination afrigidum commentum (3, ch. 23, 7). So also, 4, he says, Quum ergo in sua corruptione pereunt (homines), nihil aliud quam poenas luunt ejusdem calamitatis, in quam ipsius prcedestinationem lapsus est A dam, ac posteros suos praecipites secum traxit. It is on this particular point that Calvin goes farther than Augustine, who did not include the fall of Adam in the divine decree (Smith’s Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines, 249). Amyraldus (q.v.) sought to reduce Calvin’s system to sublapsarianism, but was effectually answered by Curcellaeus in his tractate de jure Dei in Creaturas. But Fisher (New Englander, April, 1868, p. 305) holds that Calvin was not a supralapsarian. (See Christ. Remembrancer, Jan. 1856, art. iv; Warren, in Methodist Quarterly Review, July, 1857, art. i; Mohler, Symbolism, 4.)

2. Doctrines of Dort (Infralapsariah). The controversy with the Remonstrants on the five points (SEE ARMINIANISM; SEE REMONSTRANTS) led to the clearer definition of the doctrines in question’ by the Synod of Dort, which refused to accept the supralapsarian view, at least in terms. See the Confessions and Canons of the Synod of Dort for the full statement. The following summing up is given by Watson, from Scott’s Synod of Dort, of the five articles which constitute the standard of what is now generally called strict Calvinism:

(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 3:19; Rom 3:23; Rom 6:2.). That some, in time, have faith given them by God, and others have it not given, proceeds from his eternal decree; forknown unto God are all his works from the beginning,’ etc. (Act 15:18; Eph 1:11). 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 givethem 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, etc. (Eph 1:4-6; Rom 8:30). This same election is not made from any foreseen faith, obedience of faith, holiness, or any other good quality and disposition, as a prerequisite cause or condition in the man who should be elected, etc. He hath chosen us,’ not because we were, but that we might be holy,’ (Eph 1:4;Rom 9:11-13; Act 13:48). 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, etc.

(3.) Of Man’s Corruption, etc. 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.

The Confessions of the Reformed Church agree more or less closely with the statements of Dort, whether they preceded or followed it in date. See the Confessio Gallica, art. 12; Confessio Belgica, art. 16; Form. Convensus Helvet. arts. 4 and 19; Cosif. Helvet. 2:10. (See Winer, Comp. Darstcllung, 9:1; Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, 249.) The Westminster Confession is the standard of the Church of Scotland, and of the various Presbyterian Churches in Europe and America. Its 3d article states God’s Eternal Decree as follows:

Of God’s Eternal Decree. God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of I sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken I away, but rather established. Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon ,all sup, posed conditions, yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw its future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their numb er is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen, in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of his mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith, or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving him thereunto; and all to the praise of his glorious grace. As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he, by the eternal and most free purpose of his will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, are effectually called unto faith in Christ, by his Spirit working in due season; are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy, as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.

The 17th article of the Church of England is as follows:

Of Predestination and Election. Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed, by his counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honor. Wherefore they which he endued with so excellent a benefit of God be called according to God’s purpose, by his Spirit working in due season: they, through grace, obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works; and at length, by God’s grace, they attain to everlasting felicity. As the godly consideration of predestination and our election in Christ is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh and theirearthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love toward God; so, for curious and carnal persons, lacking theSpirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God’s predestination is a most dangerous’ downfall, whereby the devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into Wretchedness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation. Furthermore, we must receive God’s promises in such wise as they be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture. And in our doings, that will of God is to be followed which we have expressly declined unto us in the Word of God.

It has always been a question in the Church of England whether theArticles are or are not Calvinistic. On this question, see Toplady, Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England (Works, vol. i and ii); Overton, True Churchman (2d ed. York, 1801); Laurence, Bamptn Lecture for 1804 (Oxford, 1805, 8vo); Cunningham, The Reformers, Essay iv (Edinb. 1862, 8vo); printed also in the Brit. and For. Evang. Rev. (No. 35); reptinted in the Am. Theol. Review (October, 1861, art. v); Hardwick, History of RJformation, ch. iv, p. 260.

The Lutheran Church never adopted the Calvinistic system. In the beginning, both Luther and Melancthon received the Augustinian theology; but as early as’ 1523 Melancthon expunged the passages supporting it from his Loci Theologici. Luther bestowed the highest praise on the last editions of the Loci (Luther’s Works, 1546, vol. i, preface; see Laurence, Bampton Lect. Sermon ii, note 21). The Augsburg Confessio Variata (20) says: Non est hic opus disputationibus de predestinatione et similibus. Nam promissio est universalis et nihil detrahit operibus, sed exsuscitat ad fidem et vere bona opera (see Gieseler; Church-History, 4, 36, 37). In the German Reformed Church the strictly Calvinistic doctrine never, as such, received any symbolical authority; and it was significantly left out of the Heidelberg Catechism, and handed over to the schools and scientific theology. At the same time, it was never rejected by the German Church, nor regarded with any thing like hostility. Appel, in the Tercentenary Monument of the Heidelberg Catechism, p. 327; Hase, Church History, 354.

3. The Calvinistic system was still farther modified by the Federal Theology, or the THEOLOGY OF THE COVENANTS. Under the too exclusive influence of the doctrine of Predestination, it had assumed a scholastic character, from which it was in part relieved by the introduction of the idea of the Covenant, as a constructive principle of the system. John Cocceius, trained in the German Reformed theology (born at Bremen 1603, died 1699), first developed the system under this point of view, the effect of which was to introduce historical facts and elements, and a distinctive ethical idea (a covenant implying mutual rights), into the heartof the system, and to banish the idea of the divine sovereignty as mere will. Cocceius distinguished between, 1. The covenant before the Fall, the covenant of works; and, 2. The covenant after the Fall, the covenant of grace. The latter covenant embraces a threefold economy: (1) Theeconomy before the law; (2) The economy under the law; (3) The economy of the Gospel. See his Summa Doctrine de Feedere et Testamentis Dei.1648. Heppe says: The fruit of his influence was to lead the Reformed theologians back to the freedom of the Word of God, delivering it from the bondage of a traditional scholasticism. This type of Calvinism was still farther developed in the writings of Braun, Doctrina Fwderumn 1698; of Burmann of Utrecht (t 1679), Synopsis Theologica et (Economice Faderum Dei, 1671; Heidanus of Leyden (t 1678), Corpus Theol. Christ.1687; and especially of Witsius of Leyden (t 1708), whose Economy of the Covenants (1694) was translated into English (Lond. 1763; revised ed. Edinb. 1771, 1803; NewYork, 3 vols. 1798). This theology of the covenants also shaped, to a considerable extent, the Reformed system as it was adopted in England, Scotland, and America. It is clearly recognized in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, Later writers divide the covenant of grace into two parts, viz. the covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son, and the covenant of grace between God and his people in Christ. On this important phase of the Calvinistic theology, see Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:60 sq.; Gass, Geschichte der Protest. Dogmatik, Bd. 2, 1857; Schweizer, Glaubenslehre der evang. reformire ireirche, 2 Bde. 1844, and also his Protestantische Centraldogmen, 2 Bde.1854; Schneckenburger, Vergleichende Darstellung der lutherischen uni refornirten Lehrbegriffe, 1855; G. Frank, Geschichte der Protest. Theol. 2Bde. 1865; also Heppe, D gnatik d. deutschen Protestantismus, 1:204; Dogmatik der evang. ref. Kirche, 1:278; and the article FEDERAL THEOLOGY SEE FEDERAL THEOLOGY .

4. Moderate Calvinists. This phrase designates those, especially in England and America, who, while adhering to the Calvinistic as contrasted with the Arminian system, have yet receded from some of the extreme statements of the former, especially upon the two articles of Reprobation and the Extent of the Atonement. See Dr. E. Williams, Defence of Modern Calvinism, 1812; Sermon and Charges, p. 128, and Appendix, p. 399. Dr. Williams says: Reprobation, or predestination to death or misery as the end, and to sin as the means,’ I call an impure mixture’ with Calvinism, as having no foundation either in the real meaning of Holy Writ, or in the nature of things; except, indeed, we mean by it, what no one questions, a determination to punish the guilty. He calls this a mixture,’ because its connection with predestination to life is arbitrary and forced; impure,’ because the supposition itself is a foul aspersion upon the divine character.

The other point on which the moderate Calvinists modified the system is the nature and extent of the atoning work of Christ. Strict Calvinism asserts that the Lord Jesus Christ made atonement to God by his death only for the sins of those to whom, in the sovereign good pleasure of the Almighty, the benefits of his death shall be finally applied. By this definition, the extent of Christ’s atonement, as a provision, is limited to those who ultimately enjoy its fruits; it is restricted to the elect of God. Both Strict and Moderate Calvinists agree as to the intrinsic worth of the atonement, and as to its final application. It has been asserted (e.g. by Amyraut, q.v.) that Calvin himself held to general redemption; and certainly his language in his Comm. in Job 3:15-16, and in 1Ti 2:5, seems fairly to assert the doctrine. Comp. Fletcher, Works (N. Y. ed.2:71); but see also Cunningham, The Reformers (Essay 7). As to the variations of the Calvinistic confessions, see Smith’s Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, 249. In the French Reformed Church, the divines of Saumur, Camero, Amyraldus, and Placeus maintained universal grace (see articleson these names). The English divines who attended the Synod of Dort (Hall, Hale, Davenant) all advocated general atonement, in which they were followed by Baxter (Universal Redemption; Methodus Theologica; Orme, Life of Baxter, 2:64). The moderate doctrine as to the nature of the atonement is, in brief, that it consists in that satisfaction for sin which was rendered to God as moral governor of the world by the obedienceunto death of his son Jesus Christ. This satisfaction preserves the authority of the moral government of God, and yet enables him to forgive sinners. That this forgiveness could not be given by God without atonement constitutes its necessity. SEE ATONEMENT. That Christ’s atonementwas sufficient for all, that it is actually applied only to the elect, and that it enhances the guilt of those who reject it, is now almost universally conceded by the different schools. But its universality, as a provision, is also asserted by the moderate Calvinists, with some modifications in the statement of its nature.

The English views as to the nature of the atonement are presented in the following extracts: Dr. Magee (On the Atonement) says, The sacrifice of Christ was never deemed by any, who did not wish to calumniate the doctrine of atonement, to have made God placable, but merely viewed as the means appointed by divine wisdom by which to bestow’ forgiveness. But still it is demanded, in what way can the death of Christ, considered as a sacrifice of expiation, be conceived to operate to the remission of sin, unless by the appeasing of a Being who otherwise would not have forgiven us’? To this the answer of the Christian is, I know not, nor does it concern me to know, in what manner the sacrifice of Christ is connected with the forgiveness of sins; it is enoughthat this is declared by God to be the medium through which my salvationis effected: I pretend not to dive into the councils of the Almighty. I submit to his wisdom, and I will not reject his grace because his mode of vouch safing it is not within my comprehension. Andrew Fuller, in his Calvinistic and Socinian Systems compared (Letter 7), strongly reprobates the idea of placating the Divine Being by an atonement, contending that the atonement is the effect, and not the cause of divine love to men; and insists that the contrary is a gross misrepresentation of the Calvinists in general, though it must be confessed some Calvinists have given too much countenance to such an idea. Mr. Fuller adds, If we say a way was opened I y the death of Christ for the free and consistent exercise of mercy in all the methods which sovereign wisdom saw fit to adopt, perhaps we shall include every material idea which the Scriptures give us of that important event.

5. Farther modifications in the Calvinistic system have been made in this country through the influence of the so-called NEW-ENGLAND THEOLOGY, especially as set forth in the writings of Jonathan Edwards and his successors. In respect to original sin, the elder Edwards, in his work on that subject, advocated the mediate rather than the immediate imputation of Adam’s first sin to his posterity. On the nature of virtue he introduced an important modification, in making love to being (in the two forms of love of benevolence and love of complacency) to constitute the essence of virtue. On the nature of the atonement he made no modification. He also distinguished more carefully than had previously been donebetween natural ability and moral inability, and this distinction was farther elaborated by the younger Edwards, who also represented the atonement as consisting in a satisfaction to the general rather than the distributive justice of God. Hopkins and Emmons carried out these views still farther, but under the influence (especially in the case of Emmons) of the supralapsarian scheme. These discussions extended from New England into the Presbyterian Church. The parties there known as Old and New School differ chiefly on the following articles:

1. Imputation of sin, whether it be immediate or mediate;

2. The nature and extent of the atonement;

3. Ability and inability.

For the history of the development of Calvinism, SEE REFORMED CHURCH. For the Antinomian and extreme supralapsarian developments of Calvinism, SEE ANTINOMIANISM; SEE CRISP; SEE HOPKINSIANS. For certain mitigated schemes of Calvinism, SEE AMYRALDISM; SEE BAXTER; SEE CAMERO. On two of the principles which distinguish the so-called Moderate Calvinism, viz.

(1.) the universality of the atonement, SEE ATONEMENT; SEE REDEMPTION;

(2.) The natural ability of all men to repent, SEE INABILITY; SEE THEOLOGY.

6. Literature. The literature of the Calvinistic controversy is enormous. I he principal books only can be named here: Calvin, Instiluiones; Zwinglius, Brevis Isagoge; Ccmm. de vera etfalsa relgione; the Confessions of the Reformed Chuiches, given in Augusti, Corpus Librorum Symbolicorum (1828). or in icmeyer, Collectio Conjissonum (1840); the Westminster Confession (1868); the Decrees of the Synod of Dort (1619). The chief Calvinistic writers of the 16th and 17th centuries were Beza, Bullinger, Alstedt, Whitgift, Cartwright, CriFp, Perkins, Leighton, Baxter (moderate), Owen, Howe, Ridgely, Gomar, Alting, Rivetus, Heidegger, Turretin,Pictet. Of the 18th and 19th centuries the following are selected: Stapfer, Wyttenbach, Gill, Toplady, Erskine, Dick, Hill, Breckinridge, Krummacher. Of the new American school: Edwards, Bellamy, Emmons, Dwight, West, Snmtlley etc., whose influence was seen in England in the writings of Fuller, Ryland, Hall, Jay, Pye Smith, and Chalmers. The so- called Old Calvinism has produced fewwriters of late in England. It is ally defended in America by the Princeton theologians. For the historical treatment of the subject, see Gill, Cause of God and Truth, pt. iv; Neander,History of Dlgmas (I. c.); Hagenbach, Hist. of Doctrines (ed. by Smith, 219222); Ebrard’ Christ. Dogmatik, 17-51, ard 556565; Womack,Calvinistic Cabinet Unlocked; Watson, Theolog. Institutes, pt. ii, ch. 28; Herrmann, Geschichte der Prot. Dicgatlik (Leips. 1842); Gass, Geschichte der Prot. Dcgmactik (Berlin, 1854); Heppe, Dogmatik der evang reform. Kirche (Elherfeld, 1861); Mozley, Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination (Londo 1855); Christian Renembrancer, Jan. 1856, 170 sq.; Nicholls, Calvinism ard Armininism compared (Land. 1824, 2 vc, ls.8vo) is very full as to English writers, and abounds in valuable citations,but is destitute of scientific arrangement; Cunningham, Historical Theology (1862); Ditto, Thohlogy of the Information (1862); Hill, Lectures on Divinity, chap. 11. For the later forms of Calvinism, especially in America, see Tyler, History of the New Heaven Theology (1837); Beecher, Views in Theology ; ice, Old and New Schools (1853); Bangs, Errors of Hopkinsianism, 1815); Hodgson, New Divinity (1839)); Fisk, The Calvinistic Controversy; and especially, on the whole subject, Warren, Systematische Theologie, 24 (Bremen, 1865, 8vo). Polemical works against Calvinism: (a) Lutheran, Chemnitz, in his Loci Theologoci; Dannhauer, Hodomoria Spiritus Calvin (1654); FeuerLorn, Epit me Error. Calv. (1651); (1) Arminan and Methodist (besides those above named): Arminius, Episcopius, Limborch, Curcelleus (writings generally); Wesley ( oio ks, see Index); Fletcher, Cheakls to Anfinomianism, etc.; Watson, Theol. Institutes, vol. 2; Goodwin, Redemption Redeemed; Foster, Calvinism as it is; (c) Later German writers Ebrard, in his Dogmatik (Knigsberg, 1851, 2 vols. 8vo); Lange, Die Lehre. der heil. Schriften von derfreien und allgemeinen Gnade Gottes (Elberf. 1631, 8vo). Writers on special topics, e. a. Election, Redemption, Predestination, etc., will be named under those heads respectively. SEE ARMINIANISM; SEE ELECTION; SEE FEDERAL THEOLOGY; SEE GRACE; SEE PREDESTINTATION; SEE SACRAMENTS.

Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

Calvinism

A term covering the current of theological thought dating back to John Calvin (1509-1564) whose famous Institutes embodies its historic principles. Generally speaking, Calvinistic thought is a system in which God is made the center of all that is and happens, God’s will pervading human and cosmic events, and upon whom man is utterly and cheerfully dependent. — V.F.

Fuente: The Dictionary of Philosophy

Calvinism

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 3.

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 fore-knows 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. 23.

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. How 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 DEGREE, 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 Curcellaeus, 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 Curcellaeus 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 3:19; Rom 3:23; Rom 6:23. 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, Act 15:18; Eph 1:11. 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 1:4-6; Rom 8:30.

This same election is not made from any foreseen faith, obedience of faith, holiness, or any other good quality and disposition, as a prerequisite 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 1:4; Rom 9:11-13; Act 13:48. 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, in 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, Danaeus, 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 reflection 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 formulae 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 Godtheir 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 whatever 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 towards 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 preeminence, 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 winters, 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 words 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 aera, 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.

Fuente: Biblical and Theological Dictionary