indeed’ upon the terms of the plan of salvation itself, upon which they are all at one, but in the region of the presuppositions of that plan; and for the sake of com- pleteness of enumeration it is desirable that this difference, too, should be adverted to here. It does not concern what God has done in the course of his saving operations; but passing behind the matter of salvation, it asks how God has dealt in general with the human race, as a race, with respect to its destiny. The two parties here are known in the history of thought by the contrasting names of Supralapsarians and Sublapsarians or Infralapsarians. The point of difference between them is whether God, in his dealing with men with reference to their destiny, divides them into two classes merely as men, or as sinners. That is to say, whether God’s decree of election and pret- erition concerns men contemplated merely as men, or contemplated as already sinful men, a massa corrupta.
The mere putting of the question seems to carry its answer with it. For the actual dealing with men which is in question, is, with respect to both.classes alike, those who are elected and those who are passed by, conditioned on sin: we cannot speak of salvation any more than of reprobation without positing sin. Sin is necessarily precedent in thought, not indeed to the abstract idea of discrimination, but to the concrete instance of discrimination which is in question, a dis- crimination with regard to a destiny which involves either salvation or punishment. There must be sin
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THE DIFFERING CONCEPTIONS
in contemplation to ground a decree of salvation, as truly as a decree of punishment. We cannot speak of a decree discriminating between men with reference to salvation and punishment, therefore, without positing the contemplation of men as sinners as its logical prius.
The fault of the division of opinion now in question is that it seeks to lift the question of the discrimina- tion on God’s part between men, by which they are divided into two classes, the one the recipients of his undeserved favor, and the other the objects of his just displeasure, out of the region of reality; and thus loses itself in mere abstractions. When we bring it back to earth we find that the question which is raised amounts to this: whether God discriminates between men in order that he may save some; or whether he saves some in order that he may discriminate between men. Is the proximate motive that moves him an abstract desire for discrimination, a wish that he may have some variety in his dealings with men; and he there- fore determines to make some the objects of his in- effable favor and to deal with others in strict accord- ance with their personal deserts, in order that he may thus exercise all his faculties? Or is the proximate mo- tive that moves him an unwillingness that all mankind should perish in their sins; and, therefore, in order to gratify the promptings of his compassion, he intervenes to rescue from their ruin and misery an innumerable multitude which no man can number—as many as under the pressure of his sense of right he can obtain
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THE PLAN OF SALVATION
the consent of his whole nature to relieve from the just penalties of their sins—by an expedient in which his justice and mercy meet and kiss each other? Whatever we may say of the former question, it surely is the latter which is oriented aright with respect to the tremendous realities of human existence.
One of the leading motives in the framing of the supralapsarian scheme, is the desire to preserve the particularistic principle throughout the whole of God’s dealings with men; not with respect to man’s salvation only, but throughout the entire course of the divine action with respect tomen. God from creation itself, it is therefore said, deals with men conceived as divided into two classes, the recipients respectively of his un- deserved favor and of his well-merited reprobation. Accordingly, some supralapsarians place the decree of discrimination first in the order of thought, pre- cedent even to the decree of creation. All of them place it in the order of thought precedent to the decree of the fall. It is in place therefore to point out that this attempt to particularize the whole dealing of God with men is not really carried out, and indeed cannot in the nature of the case be carried out. The decree to create man, and more particularly the decree to permit the man whose creation is contemplated to fall into sin, are of necessity universalistic. Not some men only are created, or some men created differently from others; but all mankind is created in its first head, and all mankind alike. Not some men only are per- mitted to fall; but all men and all men alike. The
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THE DIFFERING CONCEPTIONS