§ 113. PREDESTINATION. 553
allowed it to come to pass for higher ends. He did not cause it, but neither did he prevent it. The Supralapsarians, more logically, include the fall itself in the efficient and positive decree ; yet they deny as fully as the Infralapsarians, though less logically, that God is the author of sin. The Infralapsarians attribute to Adam before the fall the gift of free choice, which was lost by the fall ; some Supralapsarians deny it. The doctrine of probation (except in the one case of Adam) has no place in the Calvinistic system, and is essentially Arminian. It is entirely inapplicable to infants dying in infancy. The difference between the two schools is practically worthless, and only exposes the folly of man's daring to search the secrets of God's eternal counsel. They proceed on a pure metaphysical abstraction, for in the eternal God there is no succession of time, no before nor after.^
Calvin was claimed by both schools. He must be classed rather with the Supralapsarians, like Beza, Gomarus, Twysse, and Emmons. He saw the inconsistency of exempting from the divine foreordination the most important event in history, which involved the whole race in ruin. " It is not absurd," he says, " to assert that God not only foresaw, but also foreordained the fall of Adam and the ruin of his posterity." He expressly rejects the distinction between permission (^permissio) and volition (voluntas) in God, who cannot permit what he does not will. "What reason," he asks, "shall we assign for God's permitting the destruction of the impious, but because it is his will ? It is not probable that man procured his own destruction by the mere permission, and with-
1 On the distinction, see Beza, Summa totius Ghristianismi {Opera, I. 170) ; Limborcli, Theol. Christ. IV. 2 ; Heppe, Dor/matik der evang. reform. KIrche, pp. 108 sqq., and the curious oi'der of Beza there printed, as if the order of tlie divine counsels were a mathematical problem. The infralapsarian view is milder and passed into most of the Calvinistic Confessions. The Westminster Confession is a compromise between the two schools, and puts the fall of Adam under a permissive decree (ch. V. 4), and yet not under a bare permission, but including it in the purpose of God, who ordered it for his own glory (VI. 1).
554 THE EEFOKINIATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
out any appointment of God. As though God liad not determined what he would choose to be the condition of the chief of his creatures. I shall not hesitate, therefore, to confess with Augustin, ' that the will of God is the necessity of things, and what he has willed will necessarily come to pass ; as those things are really about to happen which he has foreseen.' "^ But while his inexorable logic pointed to this abyss, his moral and religious sense shrunk from the last logical inference of making God the author of sin; for this would be blasphemous, and involve the absurdity that God abhors and justly punishes what he himself decreed. He attributes to Adam the freedom of choice, by which he might have obtained eternal life, but he wilfully disobeyed.^ Hence his signifi-
1 List. III. XXIII. 7 and 8. The passage quoted from Augustin is De Gen. ad lit., 1. VI. c. 15. In List. III. ch. XXIV. 12, Calvin uses strong supralapsarian language : " Those whom God has created to a life of shame and death (qitos in vitce contumeliam et mortis exltitim crenvit), that thej"^ might he instruments of his wrath, and examples of his severity, he causes to reach their appointed end; sometimes depriving them of the opportunity of hearing the Word, sftmetimes by the preaching of it increasing their blindness and stupidity." Tlien he illustrates this by examples, especially that of Pharaoh, and the aim of the parables of Christ (Matt. 13:11; John 12:39,40). In the Consensus Genevensis (Niemeyer, p. 251), he saj's that the fall was ordained by the admirable counsel of God (admirabili Dei consilio fuisse ordinatum). Beza understood Calvin correctly.
2 He gives his view of the primitive state in Inst. I. ch. XV. § 8 : " God has furnished the soul of man with a mind capable of discerning good from evil, and just from unjust; and of discovering, by the liglit of reason, what ought to be pursued or avoided: whence the philosophers called this directing faculty rh iiye/xoyiKov, the principal or governing "part. To this he hath annexed the will, on which depends the choice. The primitive condition of man was ennobled with those eminent faculties ; he possessed reason, understanding, prudence, and judgment, not only for the government of his life on earth, but to enable him to ascend even to God and eternal felicity. To these were added choice, to direct the appetites, and regulate all the organic motions, so that the will was entirely conformed to the government of reason. In this integrity man was endued with free will, by which, if he had chosen, he might have obtained eternal life. For here it would be unreasonable to introduce the question respecting the secret predestination of God, because we are not discussing what might possibly have happened or not, but what was the real nature of man. Adam, therefore, could have stood if he would, since he fell merely by his own trill ; but because his will was flexible to either side, and he