# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 09 17_S11
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

11

says: the robber is innocent, for he has killed at God's instigation. He has indeed sinned against the law. But, thou wilt say, he was indeed compelled to sin. I grant it, say I, that he was compelled."

"In the third place, they teach that God in His secret counsel has ordained the greater part of men to eternal damnation, upon whom He will never have mercy. *) Is that the true knowledge of God concerning the riches of His grace, His mercy, His great love? Does not that run contrary to the honor of God? Does not this doctrine rob the troubled and tempted hearts of all their comfort? Is that not contrary to the love of God and of the neighbor?"

*) Among other things Calvin writes: "Not all are created to the same lot, but to some eternal life, to others eternal damnation is foreordained." (Institut. III, 21. 5.) Further: "I ask again, whence has it come that the fall of Adam has plunged so many peoples, together with their infant children, into eternal death without any remedy, except because it so pleased God? I confess indeed that it is a terrible decree, yet no one will be able to deny that God foreknew what end man would have before He created him, and that He foreknew it for this reason, because He had so ordained it in His decree." (Ib. III, 23.7.) Further Calvin writes: "that the reprobate do not obey the Word of God revealed to them, this is rightly ascribed to the wickedness of their heart, if only it be added at the same time that they are given over to this wickedness for this reason, because they are raised up by God's just but unsearchable judgment to promote His glory by their damnation. Just as, when it is related of the sons of Eli that they gave no heed to the wholesome admonitions, because God would slay them, it is not denied that their stubbornness came from their own wickedness; but at the same time it is remarked why they were left in their stubbornness, since God could soften their hearts, namely because His unchangeable counsel had once for all devoted them to destruction." (Ib. III, 24. 14.) Beza writes: "God hates the reprobate before they are born, and has appointed them to perdition without regard to unworthiness." (Glossa N. T. Rom. 9.) "Those speak with Paul who say that God has created some for just destruction. And they who take offense at this manner of speaking betray their ignorance." (Ib.) Zanchius writes: "The Holy Scripture plainly teaches that the ungodly either do not believe in God and Christ, or do no good works, [and] that this comes from their not being predestined by God to faith and to good works." (Miscell. p. 229.) The same: "God has decreed from eternity to bestow upon some of those who hear the Gospel faith unto salvation, upon some not." (Ib. p. 227.) — In the Canons of the Synod of Dort, in which the Heidelberg Catechism was confirmed, the most esteemed public confession of the Reformed Church, it says: "That some in time are endowed by God with faith, some are not endowed, this comes from His eternal decree. For known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world. Acts 15, 18. Eph. 1, 11, according to which decree He graciously softens the hearts of the elect, though they be hard, and inclines them to faith, but leaves the non-elect, in just judgment, to their wickedness and hardness." (Chap. I, art. 6.) Further: "The Holy Scripture further testifies that not all men are elect, but that there are some who are not elected or have been passed over in God's eternal election, concerning whom, namely, God, according to His wholly free, just, blameless and unchangeable good pleasure, has decreed to leave them in the common misery into which they have plunged themselves by their own guilt, and not to bestow upon them the grace of salvation and conversion." (Ib. art. 15.) Further: "The Synod rejects the errors of those who teach: that God has decreed, out of His mere just will, to leave no one in the fall of Adam and in the common state of sin and damnation, or to pass over anyone in the communication of the grace necessary for faith and conversion." (Ib. Rejection. 8.) In the Confession of Faith, the public creed of the Presbyterians, it says: "It hath pleased God" to pass by "the rest of mankind" (besides the elect) "according to the unsearchable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy, as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice."

"In the fourth place, they teach that although God the LORD has the Gospel proclaimed to many, yet He does not will that they all believe and repent. *) This runs contrary to so much testimony of the Scripture, contrary to the true knowledge of God, contrary to God's honor, contrary to the love of God, and robs the consciences of all comfort and plunges them into the abyss of despair."

*) Calvin writes on this, among other things, as follows: "Those whom God has created to the shame of life and to the destruction of death, that they might be instruments of His wrath and examples of His severity, these, that they may come to the end appointed for them, He now deprives of the opportunity of hearing His Word, now blinds the more by the preaching of it. . Behold, He directs His voice to them, that they may become deafer; He kindles the light, that they may become blinder; He brings forth the doctrine, but that they may become the more ignorant; He applies the medicine, but that they may not be healed." (Instit. III, 24, 12. 13.) — J. H. Heidegger, author of the Formula consensus, a Swiss Reformed confession, first professor at Heidelberg, then at Zürich (died 1698), writes: "Neither does God call certain reprobates at all in such a way that He had decreed or were willing to give them faith and repentance just as well as the elect, if they only did not resist the calling Holy Spirit." (Corp. Theolog. loc. 21, p. 206.) — John Piscator, Reformed professor at Herborn, died 1626, writes: "The righteousness acquired by Christ's death is offered to the elect alone, with the intention that they shall become partakers of it." (De praedest. th. 85.) Further it says in the Formula Consensus: "It is said with right that it is God's will that every one who seeth the Son and believeth on Him have everlasting life. John 6, 40. Although this 'every one' means only the elect. . But that, when the will of God is so generally set forth in the external calling, only the elect believe, but the reprobate are hardened, this comes solely from the distinguishing grace of God." (Can. 19.) Further Spanheim writes, professor at Leyden, died 1701: "We Reformed affirm that God, who could have saved all men, in His eternal, unchangeable decree, out of mere and free good pleasure, has decreed to leave certain, and indeed, in view of the elect, many men who were no worse than the elect, in their misery, and not to have mercy upon them, but to refuse them the saving grace and powerful calling to reconciliation in Christ, although He calls them outwardly, that they might have no pretext for their excuse." (Elenchus controvers. cum Lutheranis. p. 368. cf. Cyprians Unterricht etc. p. 30.)

"In the fifth place, they teach that the divine nature is wholly in the human nature of Christ and wholly outside of it *), contrary to the clear saying John 1, 14: 'The Word was made flesh,' and Colossians 2, 9: 'In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.' Is that the right knowledge of the person of Christ? If the divine nature is wholly outside the human nature, then it is not one person, but two persons."

*) So it says, namely, in the Heidelberg Catechism, this chief confession of the German Reformed: "Since the Godhead is incomprehensible and everywhere present, it must follow that it is indeed beyond its assumed manhood, and yet nevertheless is also in the same and remains personally united with it." (Pag. 23. Question 48.) In the Neustadt Admonition, a work held by the Reformed almost equal to a confession, which Zach. Ursinus drew up, it says further: "The whole Word (Son of God), which is everywhere beyond His manhood, is and remains at the same time inseparably in the human nature." (p. 79.)

"In the sixth place, they teach that the divine and human nature in Christ have absolutely no active and real communion; *) is that the right knowledge of Christ? Then God has not become man, then God has not suffered for us, then Christ's blood does not cleanse us from our sins, then we are not redeemed and justified by Christ's blood, then Christ is not, according to both natures, our Redeemer, Savior, Shepherd, Head, Light, Life, High Priest, King, Mediator, Atonement: where remain here the knowledge of Christ, the honor of Christ, and our comfort?"

*) In the Admonition indicated above it says: "If anything human is predicated of the God (Christ) and anything divine of the man (Christ) (in the Holy Scripture), that is only a figure of speech." (p. 70.) "That the essential properties of the other nature are communicated to the individual natures in the person of Christ, we deny with the greatest decision." (p. 66.) Further Zwingli writes: "What is said of faith in Christ and in His death does not refer to His human nature." (Epp. III, p. 114.) Yea, Beza and his associates say in their theses for the Montbéliard Colloquy: "We maintain that one cannot even speak of a communion according to which the manhood is, after its manner, to be everywhere and almighty." (Thes. 8. 9.) Further writes Zach. Ursinus, co-author of the Heidelberg Catechism: "Of Christ it is said that by virtue of the communication of properties He is everywhere, that is, according to the divine nature, but not according to the human." (Tract. theol. p. 661.) Finally Zwingli himself makes the following terrible confession: "Christ is salutary to us in this part, that He came from heaven, not that He was born of the virgin." (Comm. de ver. et fals. rel.)

In the seventh place they teach, Christ did not die for all men, but only for the elect. *) Where remains St. Paul's conclusion, 1 Tim. 2, 5. 6: "There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all"; from which ground St. Paul concludes: therefore God will have all men to be saved. Or thus, v. 4: "God will have all men to be saved." But it cannot be that all are helped except through the death of Christ; therefore Christ gave His life as a ransom for all. Does not the Calvinistic doctrine, then, run contrary to God's Word, contrary to God's universal grace and mercy, contrary to God's honor and contrary to our highest comfort?"

*) In the Canons of the Synod of Dort it says: "It was the altogether free counsel, gracious will and purpose of God the Father, that the quickening and saving power of the precious death of His Son should exert itself effectually in all the elect, in order that these alone should be endowed with justifying faith and by it be led infallibly to salvation: that is, God willed that Christ through the blood of His cross