§ 112. THE CALVINISTIC SYSTEM. 541
the latter is clearer, stronger, more logical and rigorous, and far superior as an exegete.
Their views are chiefly derived from the Epistle to the Romans as they understood it, and may be summed up in the following propositions : God has from eternity foreordained all things that should come to pass, with a view to the manifestation of his glory ; he created man pure and holy, and with freedom of choice ; Adam was tried, disobeyed, lost his freedom, and became a slave of sin ; the whole human race fell with him, and is justly condemned in Adam to everlasting death ; but God in his sovereign mercy elects a part of this mass of corruption to everlasting life, without any regard to moral merit, converts the elect by irresistible grace, justifies, sanctifies, and perfects them, and thus displays,in them the riches of his grace ; while in his inscrutable, yet just and adorable counsel he leaves the rest of mankind in their inherited state of condemnation, and reveals in the everlasting punishment of the wicked the glory of his awful justice.
The Lutheran system is a compromise between Augustinianism and Semi-Pelagianism. Luther himself was fully agreed with Augustin on total depravity and predestination, and stated the doctrine of the slavery of the human will even more forcibly and paradoxically than Augustin or Calvin.^ But the Lutheran Church followed him only half way. The Formula of Concord (1577) adopted his doctrine of total depravity in the strongest possible terms, but disclaimed the doctrine of reprobation ; it represents the natural man as spiritually dead like " a stone " or " a block," and teaches a
1 De Servo Arbitrio, against Erasmus (1525). He never retracted this book, but declared it many years afterwards to be one of liis best. He was followed by Amsdorf, Flacius, Wigand, and Brenz. See Church History, vol. VI. 430 sqq. ; KiJstlin, Luther's Theologie, I. 773 sqq. ; Luthardt, Dogmatik, p. 120 ((3th ed.), and his Lehre vomfreien Willen : Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, III. 714 sq. ; and Loofs, Leitfaden zuin Studium der Dogmengeschichte, 2d ed. Halle, 1890, pp. 322-324, and 317-350.
542 THE KKFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
particular and uiicoiiditioiial election, but also an universal vocation.^
The Augustinian system was unknown in the ante-Nicene age, and was never accepted in the Eastern Church. This is a strong historical argument against it. Augustin himself developed it only during the Pelagian controversy ; while in his earlier writings he taught the freedom of the human will ao-ainst the fatalism of the Manichieans.^ It triumphed in the Latin Church over Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism, which were mildly condemned by the Synod of Orange (629). But his doctrine of an absolute predestination, which is only a legitimate inference from his anthropological premises, was indirectly condemned by the Catholic Church in the Gottschalk controversy (853), and in the Jansenist controversy (1653), although the name and authority of the great (Rector and saint were not touched.
The Calvinistic system was adopted by a large portion of the Reformed Church, and has still able and earnest advoi;ates. Calvin himself is now better understood, and more highly respected by scholars (French and German) than ever before ; but his predestinarian system has been effectively opposed by the Arminians, the Quakers, and the Methodists, and is undergoing a serious revision in the Presbyterian and Calvinistic Churches of Europe and America.
The Augustinian, Lutheran, and Calvinistic systems rest on the same anthropology, and must stand or fall together with the doctrine of the universal damnation of the whole human race on the sole ground of Adam's sin, including
^ See Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, I. 313 sqq. ; and the works on the Formida Concord ice.
^ Calvin was well aware of Augustin's change on this point. "Origen, Ambrose, and Jerome," he says, "believed that God dispenses his grace among men, according to his foreknowledge of the good use which every individual will make of it. Augustin also was once of the same sentiment, but when he had made a greater proficiency in scriptural knowledge, he not only retracted, but powerfully confuted it." Then he quotes in proof a number of passages. Inst. III. ch. XXII. § 8.