The question we debate, and which the Reformed Church has decided, is as to the wntended application of the Atonement. If any man insists upon our abstracting that intended application, and considering apart from it the sufferings of Christ by themselves, we have no ob- jection to acknowledge that when considered apart from all design or intention whatsoever, the mere literal suf- fering which remains is indifferently as well adapted to the case of one man as to that of another.
CHAPTER V.
THE QUESTIONS, WHAT WAS THE OPINION OF CALVIN AS TO THE DESIGN OF THE ATONEMENT ?—WHAT IS THE STANDARD OF CALVINISM ? —AND WHAT IS THE DOCTRINE ON THIS SUBJECT OF THE WEST- MINSTER CONFESSION AND CATECHISM? CONSIDERED AND ANSWERED.
‘email come now to consider the questions, What cnarme #]/ was the opinion of Calvin as to the design of _"_ Christ in dying ?—What is the standard of True posi. that system of faith held, by common consent, ne by the Reformed Churches?—and especially, What i 0 doctrine on this subject is solemnly professed by all those the at- who adopt the Westminster Confession as the confession ae of their faith ?
Many, in our day, who hold very imperfect views as to the nature of the Atonement, and as to the design of God in it, fall back upon some of the vague statements as to the latter point which they are able to glean out of Calvin’s voluminous works, and under cover of his great name claim that their various specialties come legitimately under the category of genuine Calvinism. Jenkyn, in words borrowed from Bishop Horsley, chal- lenges the advocates of definite and personal redemption to remember that “those who boast in the name of Catvin should know what CALVINIsM is.” What I have to say as to Calvin and the standard of Calvinism will be presented under the following heads.
1. It has been a very old, and is still a very common trick of errorists, to seek to cover themselves with the
CHAPTER
The stan- dard of Calvinism proved to admit only a definite Atone- ment,
3508 THE DESIGN OF THE ATONEMENT.
authority of the general and unscientific statements of eminent theologians, written before any particular doc- trine in question has been consciously considered and clearly discriminated and defined by the responsible representatives and organs of the Church. Thus Arians, Socinians, and Pelagians, have of old, for their own justi- fication, paraded fragments torn out of the unsystematic writings of the Fathers, who wrote before the times of the Council of Nice or of the controversies of Augustine with Pelagius. Papists find a large measure of material apparently justifying their distinguishing positions im the writings of the best theologians preceding the era of the Reformation—even in the writings of Augustine himself. Arminians quote much that they find to their mind in the books of all the Fathers, especially those of the early Church. In like manner the advocates of | self-styled “improvements in theology,” on occasion, find it to their interest to quote the general and in- definite language of Reformers, who wrote without ever consciously entertaining the precise points in ques- tion ; such as those.developed by means of the “ No- velties ’ subsequently introduced by the school of Sau- mur-—special questions, for instance, involved in the nature of justification, the method and grounds of imputation, and the design of the Atonement. Let the fact be well noted, therefore, that Calvin does not appear to have given the question we are at present discussing a deliberate consideration, and has certainly not left behind him a clear and consistent statement of his views. |
2. I have already sufficiently proved that Calvin held the Satisfaction Theory of the Atonement in its strictest sense; and all the world knows that as a predestinarian he went to the length of Supralapsarianism, from which such theologians as Turretin, Witsius and Owen, and
OPINION OF CALVIN. 359
the Synod of Dort, and the Assembly of Westminster, recoiled. When the advocates of a general Atonement claim to stand by Calvin, they ought to be well prepared for the arduous undertaking. The entire analogy and spirit of Calvin’s system was as a whole broadly charac- terized by the subjection of Redemption to Election as a means to an end. The able, learned, and impartial F. Christian Baur, in his History of the Atonement (A.D. 1838), says: “ Zwingle and Calvin did indeed adhere to the dogma of Satisfaction in its traditional form; but from their point of view the Satisfaction itself was sub- sumed under the idea of the absolute decree, in relation to which the satisfaction of Christ was not the causa meritoria of salvation, but only the causa imstrumentalis carrying out the purpose of redemption.” That this is true, so far as it represents Calvin subordinating the purpose of redemption to the purpose of election, every student of his /nstvtutes and of his Consensus Genevensis knows; and that this conclusively settles the present