to exclude them from the inheritance which He predestines for His children" (Instit., III., 23, 1). "That the only will of God," says Dr. Whitaker, advisedly, "is the cause of reprobation, being taken as it is contrary to predestination,[1] not only St. Paul and St. Augustine, but the best and learnedest of the schoolmen have largely and invincibly proved." And not only the "schoolmen," but the Reformed Church at large—in its theologians and Confessions—have recognized the same obvious fact. Let any body of typical, Reformed theologians be looked into, and the result is the same. A glance over the citations in Heppe's "Dogmatic of the Evangelical Reformed Church" will be sufficient for most men. Or if we desire rather the testimony of certain prophets of our own, may not the general attitude of moderate Calvinists on the sovereignty of reprobation (preterition) be sufficiently attested by the following three somewhat typical American theologians? "That as God has sovereignly destinated certain persons, called the elect, through grace to salvation, so he has sovereignly decreed to withhold his grace from the rest; and that this withholding rests upon the unsearchable counsel of his own will, and is for the glory of his sovereign power" (Dr. A. A. Hodge, Commentary on Conf. of Faith, pp. 107–108). "Reprobation. This includes two parts, Preterition and Reprobation (Final Condemnation). The preterition is a sovereign act; the reprobation is a judicial act" (Dr. H. B. Smith, System of Christian Theology, p. 508). "The Reformed doctrine assumes that some
- ↑ Let this clause be observed: both Calvin and Whitaker teach that reprobation is sovereign, not punishment. Punishment rests "on their sins," reprobation on God's will. It is perhaps more usual, and less liable to mistake, to use the terms negative reprobation and positive reprobation, or the terms preterition and reprobation to express the two stages. But the doctrine is the same, under whatever phraseology.
