5. If, as Paul teaches (Rom. viii. 29, 30), foreknowledge pre- cedes predestination, and if the mission of Christ is the means of accomplishing the end of predestination, then of necessity predesti- nation to eternal life precedes the gift of Christ. Having, as we are taught in Eph. i. 4, 5, predestinated us to the adoption of sons, God chose us before the foundation of the world, and sent his Son to be the pi'opitiation for our sins. This is the order of the divine purposes, or the mutual relation of the truths of redemption as presented in the Scriptures.
6. The motive (so to speak) of God in sending his Son is not, as this theory assumes, general benevolence or that love of which all men are equally the objects, but that peculiar, mysterious, infinite love in which God, in giving his Son, gives Himself and all con- ceivable and possible good. All these points, however, as before remarked, ask for further consideration when we come to treat of the nature and design of Christ's work.
§ 5. The Lutheran Doctrine as to the Plan of Salvation.
It 'is not easy to give the Lutheran doctrine on this subject, because it is stated in one way in the early symbolical books of that Church, and in a somewhat different way in the " Form of Concord," and in the writings of the standard Lutheran theologians. Luther himself taught the strict Augustinian doctrine, as did also Melancthon in the first edition of his " Loci Communes." In the later editions of that work Melancthon taught that men cooperate with the grace of God in conversion, and that the reason why one man is regenerated and another not is to be found in that coopera- tion. This gave rise to the protracted and vehement synergistic controversy, which for a long time seriously disturbed the peace of