terious subjects should be dealt with in preaching (Sec. 8). This whole objection to the Confession reduces thus to the opinion that the Confession ought not to state the fact that God's decree embraces the destiny of His creatures until after it has stated the grounds on which He deals diversely with His creatures—predestinating some men to life "out of His mere free grace and love" (Sec. 5); and "ordaining others to dishonor and wrath" for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice (Sec. 7). With this opinion most will disagree—while, in the end, all will conclude that it raises a very petty point.
But why, it may be asked, leave the Confession in a form that needs this explanation? The answer is, that it does not need this explanation; the matter is obvious to every one who will read the chapter consecutively. It needs a commentary to make it misunderstood. And let it be observed, in conclusion, that as all objections to this section arise from strange misapprehension, so all proposed remedies for the assumed evil result in materially narrowing the Confession. It is so phrased now as to cover the ground common to supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism, without condemning or asserting either as over against the other:[1] the alterations would positively exclude supralapsarianism. This is an alteration in the wrong direction.
- ↑ Let it be observed that this is not to say that the language is ambiguous, as has sometimes been presumed. The language is not ambiguous, but perfectly straightforward and unmistakable. What the Assembly did was, not to seek phraseology which was capable of either a supra- or an infra-lapsarian interpretation, but to confine themselves to stating the positive common ground on which both alike stand. The third chapter of the Confession, thus, is simple, essential Calvinism—the common belief of all Calvinistic parties. Supra- and infra-lapsarianism disagree in some things and they agree in some things. This is what they agree in.
