PREDESTINATION AND ELECTION.
On the premundane mystery of predestination, which no system of philosophy or theology can satisfactorily solve in this world, and which ought to be approached with profound reverence and humility, all the Reformers, in their private writings, followed originally the teaching of the great Augustine and the greater St. Paul; meaning thereby to cut human merit and pride at the roots, and to give all the glory of our salvation to God alone. But the Lutheran symbols (with the exception of the later Formula of Concord) are silent on the subject, while most of the Reformed standards, under the influence of Calvin, give it a prominent place. The English Articles handle it with much wisdom and moderation, dwelling exclusively on the election of saints or predestination to life. We give the XVIIth Article in its original form with the later amendments; the clauses which were omitted in the Elizabethan revision are printed in italics, the words which were inserted or substituted are inclosed in brackets.
Art. XVIII.
OF PREDESTINATION AND ELECTION.
Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen [in Christ] [1207] out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honor. Wherefore, such as have [they which be endued with] so excellent a benefit of God given unto them, be called according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons [of God] by adoption: they be made like the image of God's [his] only begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.
As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God: so, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil may [doth] thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.
Furthermore, although the Decrees of Predestination are unknown unto us, yet we must receive God's promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture; and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.
This Article can not be derived from the Augsburg Confession, nor from the Thirteen Articles, nor from the Würtemberg Confession--for they omit the subject of predestination altogether [1208] --nor from Melanchthon's private writings, for he abandoned his former views, and suggested the synergistic theory as early as 1535, and more fully in 1548. [1209] It can not be naturally understood in any other than an Augustinian or moderately Calvinistic sense. It does not, indeed, go as far as the Lambeth Articles (1595), which the stronger Calvinism of the rising generation thought necessary to add as an explanation. It omits the knotty points; it is cautiously framed and guarded against abuse. [1210] But it very clearly teaches a free eternal election in Christ, which carries with it, by way of execution in time, the certainty of the call, justification, adoption, sanctification, and final glorification (Rom. viii. 29, 30).
This is all that is essential, and a matter of dogma in the Reformed Churches; the rest of what is technically called Calvinism, in distinction from Arminianism, is logical inference, and belongs to the theology of the school. It should be remembered that all the Reformed Confessions (even the Canons of Dort, the Westminster Confession, and the Helvetic Consensus Formula) keep within the limits of infralapsarianism, which puts the fall under a permissive decree, and makes man alone responsible for sin and condemnation; the most authoritative, as the Helvetic Confession of Bullinger, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Brandenburg Confessions (also the Scotch Confession of 1560) teach only the positive and comforting part of predestination, and ignore or deny a separate decree of reprobation; thus taking the ground practically that all that are saved are saved by the free grace of God, while all that are lost are lost by their own guilt. They also teach that God's promises and Christ's redemption are general, and that we must abide by the revealed will of God, which sincerely offers the gospel salvation to all who repent and believe. [1211]
The remarks of the Article about the 'sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort' of our election in Christ, and the caution against abuse by carnal persons, are consistent only with the Calvinistic interpretation, and wholly inapplicable to Arminian views, which are neither comfortable nor dangerous, and have never thrust any man 'into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living.' [1212]
The view here taken is confirmed by the contemporary testimonies already quoted, and by the first learned commentator of the Articles, Thomas Rogers, who was chaplain to Archbishop Bancroft, and did not sympathize with the Puritan party. He draws the following propositions from the XVIIth Article, and fortifies them with abundant Scripture passages: [1213]
'1. There is a predestination of men unto everlasting life.
'2. Predestination hath been from everlasting.
'3. They who are predestinate unto salvation can not perish.
'4. Not all men, but certain, are predestinate to be saved.
'5. In Christ Jesus, of the mere will and purpose of God, some are elected, and not others, unto salvation.
'6. They who are elected unto salvation, if they come unto years of discretion, are called both outwardly by the Word and inwardly by the Spirit of God.
'7. The predestinate are both justified by faith, sanctified by the Holy Ghost, and shall be glorified in the life to come.
'8. The consideration of predestination is to the godly-wise most comfortable, but to curious and carnal persons very dangerous.
'9. The general promises of God, set forth in the holy Scriptures, are to be embraced of us.
'10. In our actions, the Word of God, which is his revealed will, must be our direction.'
To this theological comment I add the judgment of an impartial and well-informed secular historian. Henry Hallam [1214] declares that the Articles on predestination, original sin, and total depravity, 'after making every allowance for want of precision, are totally irreconcilable with the scheme usually denominated Arminian.' He justly appeals in confirmation of this judgment to contemporary and other early authorities, and adds: 'Whatever doubts may be raised as to the Calvinism of Cranmer and Ridley, there can surely be no room for any as to the chiefs of the Anglican Church under Elizabeth. We find explicit proofs that Jewel, Nowell, Sandys, and Cox professed to concur with the Reformers of Zurich and Geneva in every point of doctrine. The works of Calvin and Bullinger became the text-books in the English universities. Those who did not hold the predestinarian theory were branded with reproach by the name of Free-willers and Pelagians; and when the opposite tenets came to be advanced, as they were at Cambridge about 1590, a clamor was raised as if some unusual heresy had been broached.'
The Arminian interpretation of the Article under consideration is an anachronism and a failure. The Lutheran interpretation is more plausible, but true only so far as the Lutheran system is itself Augustinian. The Tractarian interpretation, which identifies eternal election with ecclesiastical calling, and the elect with the baptized, is contrary both to the spirit and letter of the Article. It must in all fairness be admitted that Art. XVII., in connection with Arts. X. and XIII., implies the infralapsarian scheme, and that the Lambeth Articles are not a reaction, but a legitimate though one-sided development.
Note.--The anti-Calvinistic interpretation began after the Synod of Dort with Archbishop Laud, or his biographer, Peter Heylin (in his Historia Quinqu-Articularis, London, 1660, which was answered and refuted by Henry Hickman, in his Historia Quinqu-Articularis Exarticulata, 1673). It was maintained, with hesitation, by Waterland (1721), more decidedly by Dr. Winchester, d. 1780 (Dissertation on the XVIIth Article, new ed. London, 1808); by Dean Kipling (The Articles of the Church of England proved not to be Calvinistic, Cambridge, 1802); by Bishop Tomline, d. 1827 (A Refutation of Calvinism, London, 1811); and, with considerable learning, by Archbishop Laurence, d. 1839 (Bampt. Lect., Lect. VII. and VIII., Oxford, 1834, 3d ed. 1838), and by Hardwick (Hist. of the Articles).
Laurence and Hardwick, as already remarked, trace Article XVII to Lutheran sources, but they overlook the difference between the Lutheran system (which admits the Augustinian premises, and even the doctrine of unconditional election of grace--see the formula of Concord, ch. xi.) and the Arminian system (which denies the Augustinian anthropology, and makes both election and reprobation conditional), and show more dislike than real knowledge of Calvin. It is little less than a caricature when Laurence says of Calvin that his 'love of hypothesis' was superior to his great talent and piety (p. 43); that his 'vanity induced him to frame a peculiar system of his own' (pp. 262, 263), and that 'no man, perhaps, was ever less scrupulous in the adoption of general expressions, and no man adopted them with more mental reservations' (p. 375). Principal Cunningham has exposed this unfairness (The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformers, 1866, pp. 179 sqq.).
Bishop Burnet (who was an Arminian and Latitudinarian) and Bishop Browne (a moderate High-Churchman) hesitate between the Augustinian and the Arminian interpretation. Burnet, after calmly reviewing the different theories of predestination, says (p. 236, Oxford ed.): 'It is not to be denied, but that the Article seems to be framed according to St. Austin's doctrine: it supposes men to be under a curse and damnation, antecedently to predestination, from which they are delivered by it; so it is directly against the supralapsarian doctrine; nor does the Article make any mention of reprobation--no, not in a hint; no definition is made concerning it. The Article does also seem to assert the efficacy of grace--that in which the knot of the whole difficulty lies is not defined; that is, whether God's eternal purpose or decree was made according to what he foresaw his creatures would do, or purely upon an absolute will, in order to his own glory. It is very probable that those who penned it meant that the decree was absolute; but yet since they have not said it, those who subscribe the Articles do not seem to be bound to any thing that is not expressed in them; and, therefore, since the Remonstrants do not deny but that God having foreseen what all mankind would, according to all the different circumstances in which they should be put, do or not do, he upon that did by a firm and eternal decree lay that whole design in all its branches, which he executes in time; they may subscribe this Article without renouncing their opinion as to this matter. On the other hand, the Calvinists have less occasion for scruple, since the Article does seem more plainly to favor them. The three cautions that are added to it do likewise intimate that St. Austin's doctrine was designed to be settled by the Articles for the danger of men's having the sentence of God's predestination always before their eyes, which may occasion either desperation on the one hand, or the wretchedness of most unclean living on the other, belongs only to that side; since these mischiefs do not arise out of the other hypothesis. The other two, of taking the promises of God in the sense in which they are set forth to us in holy Scriptures, and of following that will of God that is expressly declared to us in the Word of God, relate very visibly to the same opinion.