System of Sacred Theology — Book 4

4.1.1BOOK FOUR. On the principles and means of human salvation.

CHAPTER ONE. On the principles of human salvation, and namely on the grace of paternal mercy.

Up to this point, in three books we have treated the nature and constitution of sacred theology; then the last and absolutely highest end of the human being — namely the supernatural blessedness of soul and body; and finally (1) the humans creation, by which God made him fit to attain this highest end, endowed with righteousness and innocence, so that after living a pleasant and quiet life in sincere and constant love and worship of the Creator without hardships he might be transferred, immortal and without sense of death, into heavenly, eternal, and absolutely blessed life; and (2) his defection, when by Satans persuasion and impulse and by his own imprudence he lost the blessedness to which he had been divinely ordered, and offended his Creator by wicked disobedience, so that he became heir not of eternal life but of eternal death, and as one guilty of divine majesty lese-majeste, stripped of those gifts received above his natures condition, cannot by himself see, find, and keep that way which leads to the blessedness destined for him at the beginning.

I. There follow now the principles on which eternal salvation depends; and they are nothing other than acts of divine grace, by which Gods mercy and justice are so tempered that the sinful human can escape Gods wrath and damnation and regain Gods friendship and eternal life.

4.1.2II. The principles of human salvation are the grace of paternal mercy, of fraternal redemption, and of Gods heavenly calling.

Since our salvation and Gods friendship are wholly desperate whether we turn to ourselves or to all or any other creatures — because Gods justice, whose precept we violated, cannot otherwise be satisfied — the first principle of this friendship and of our salvation is truly Gods grace. By this we do not mean that general beneficence of God by which all created things are conserved and governed; for that would stand even if the human had never been received into grace. We mean rather the acts of divine benevolence and philanthropy by which God pitied the fallen human race when He saw it wholly sunk in eternal ruin and unable to be freed from it unless He Himself came to its aid (Ephesians 1:5; 2:4; Titus 3:4).

First, therefore, when the divine writings say we have been saved by grace, by grace is to be understood nothing but Gods mercy and free favor toward us. And so the Papists sense must be rejected, who here interpret grace as an infused quality or habit — whether the habit of charity or another distinct from charity. This grace itself was given us in Christ before the ages of the world (2 Timothy 1:9). Nor is it to be doubted that God foresaw the humans fall before all times, even though it happened in time, and so foresaw the miseries and punishments in which the human race was to be entangled; and second, that just as God pitied humans in time, so by the very foresight of those miseries He pitied from eternity and decreed when He would help.

Yet since God is not only good but also just and constant in His words, it cannot be that He fail to exact the severest punishment for sins, and what He Himself pronounced must most certainly be fulfilled: in whatever day you eat the forbidden fruit, you shall die the death. Therefore it is most necessary to hold that Gods decree to free humans was made according to His mercy in such a way that His truth and justice were in no way violated. From this we gather that the principle of our salvation is truly an admirable tempering of divine mercy and justice, unsearchable to human reason — so that justice is satisfied, and yet mercy also has its place to help the wretched.

4.1.3III. The grace of paternal MERCY is the first principle of human salvation, by which God so embraces the whole human race that He wills all humans to be saved, and according to His wisdom and justice orders and determines for them the amplest means of salvation. The proper seats of this first principle are Genesis 3:8,15; John 3:16; 1 Timothy 2:4; Titus 2:11; 2 Peter 3:9.

IV. Here its object and mode are to be considered. V. The object of the grace of mercy is the whole human race, as miserable and stained by sin. Our Savior teaches this by the word world in John 3:16. For it is certain that world here does not mean the whole system of heaven and earth with all its inhabitants produced from nothing by God, but only the human race. In the sacred writings this word sometimes signifies the human race universally, sometimes a certain part of it — either only believers gathered from the whole world into Gods kingdom, or only the impious condemned from the whole world.

It is also plain that world here is not taken in that last sense of John 17:9 and 14:17. Nor does Christ here mean by world only the elect as already separated from the world, but the whole human race taken universally, as by nature it lies in sin, and as it is commonly called through the gospel to repentance and faith in Christ (Mark 16:15; 1 John 2:2). Yet although God so loved the whole world universally, this love peculiarly and chiefly regards believers.

We distinguish three post-fall states of the human: first, of nature or common corruption; second, of grace or regeneration; third, of impenitence or final hardening, where at last Gods love stops and sheer wrath and judgment overflow upon the obstinate.

4.1.4VI. From what we have said about the object of the divine grace of mercy, two things especially become plain.

First is the great controversy whether God so loved all humans, or only some. Who will deny that God singularly loved believers, whom He also elected and acknowledged from eternity, above all other humans? Who will affirm that God so loves unbelievers who remain without repentance in their unbelief, once He has already judged and condemned them? Who on the other side will assert that God in no way loved those to whom He so often, variously, seriously, and from the heart offers His love and grace — and against whom He is so vehemently angry, judging and condemning them precisely because they do not believe in the Son and spurn and reject love and grace?

Second: this love of God that embraces the whole world does not clash with the election of Gods children, and it by no means follows that if God so loved the whole world He therefore also elected the whole to salvation. Here the Saviors sayings in John 15:19; 13:18; Matthew 22:14 have place. For election first distinguishes the children of God, whom He gifts with salvation by His grace, from the remaining world that by its own fault remains in unbelief.

4.1.5VII. The mode of the grace of mercy consists in its amplitude and determination. VIII. Its amplitude is set in the gift, in what is demanded, and in the promise.

IX. First, Gods overflowing love toward us is made plain by the gift. For He did not love us because of any merit of ours, as if we had first given Him something He should repay (Romans 11:35), or because we loved Him first (1 John 4:19), but much more because when we had deserved sheer wrath and indignation, and had as far as in us lay destroyed the image we had received from Him at the beginning — yes, and overturned what we owed Him, fear, honor, love, obedience, even our soul and body — when from servants we had become enemies, and when He could have given us the wages of sins, death and hell: He gave us the image of His substance, His only-begotten Son. It was grace to Israel to be given the servant Moses and David: how much greater the grace that we are given not a servant but the Son of God, and Him only-begotten — and not merely as prophet and teacher of salvation, as the Socinians invent, or as an earthly savior, as the Jews, but as eternal Savior, High Priest, and King, who offered Himself as a true propitiatory sacrifice unto death for us, not to lead us from Egypt into Canaan but from death and hell into heaven.

Second, the grace of divine mercy is plain from what He demands of us. For God does not exact Levitical sacrifices and gifts, nor servile and forced obedience to the Mosaic law, but the filial obedience of faith — and He demands this in such a way that He also wills to work it in us by His Spirit.

Third, and most of all, it shines from the promise made to us in the Son of God: that all who believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

4.1.6The determination of the grace of mercy is that by which God, through His wisdom and justice, so limits, measures, and orders it that He receives the sinful human into His friendship, absolves from sin, and gifts with eternal life — not without Christ His Son or outside Him, nor without repentance and faith, but by requiring this in accordance with His justice and promising life through Christ, and by grace bestowing both.

Three things therefore restrain and limit the universal philanthropy by divine wisdom and justice. First: God loved the world stained by sin, yet not so as to love it without the Son or outside the Son, or to remit sins and bless it without satisfaction and expiation, but only in the Son and through the Son, whom He gave as mediator and propitiator.

Second: after God gave His Son for reconciliation, He so loved the world in Him and reconciled it to Himself through Him that remission of sins is not obtained without repentance and faith.

Third: by the force of that new covenant of grace in Christ God so loved the world that He not only, according to His justice, exacted obedience and promised life as in the old covenant of the law, but also by His grace wills to work and bestow both what the gospel demands — the obedience of faith — and what it promises — the most certain consolation of remission of all sins and of eternal life; yet not by bare omnipotence and mere miracles, or by forcing humans as it were violently to faith, but by the light of Word and Spirit in the gospel.

4.1.7From what has been said the following corollaries flow.

1. It does not clash with the universal grace and philanthropy by which God loved the world, nor with Christs merit, that God grants one people or region greater light — and so also greater grace and love — than others, and more or less according to the diversity of ages and times.

2. Nor does it clash with Gods love and Christs merit that even at the same time and place He grants one human greater light and grace than another, each according to the measure of Christs gifts.

3. In this disposition of God — when, where, and how He lets the light and efficacy of His Word and Spirit shine and work in the world — consists properly the highest mystery of the election of Gods children. For according to His counsel and purpose God from eternity mercifully appointed to dispense to fallen humans in Christ this free light of Word and Spirit.

4. Even though God was moved not by foresight of works or of faith or of any other animal condition in sinful humans, but by His alone unmerited mercy, to elect some of them to life: still this decree of election cannot simply be called absolute; for although on the animals side in the human there is no determination or condition of it, yet there is some on Gods side, who Himself bound it to Christs merit and to the means — namely the preaching of the gospel and the faith that applies it.

4.1.8Reprobation is the just sentence of Gods judgment upon all impenitent unbelievers. First, the fault is not the Fathers. For He sent His Son into this world not to judge it but to save it. By right, according to the rigor of His justice, He could have sent His Son to judge and condemn the world for sins against the law, because the whole lies in evil: yet from sheer grace He first sent Him not for judgment.

The proximate and chief cause of damnation is in humans themselves. The Lord does not speak simply of habitual and innate unbelief, but of actual, affected, obstinate unbelief joined with perpetual impenitence. This is the head of all sins, which God by His justice and truth cannot but condemn. The reason is that they do not believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God: outside which name there is no salvation.

From all this it is plain that love of darkness and hatred of light — the proper cause of humans judgment and damnation — is to be sought only in themselves. See the excellent theologian Dr. Johann Bergius in his explanation of the saying So God loved the world, on the causes of human salvation and damnation, published at Berlin in 1629.

CHAPTER TWO follows, on the grace of redemption.

4.2.1CHAPTER TWO. On the grace of redemption: where of the incarnation and person of Christ.

Thus far concerning the grace of paternal mercy: there follows the grace of fraternal redemption, which is the second principle of our salvation, by which the Son of God, as philanthropic mediator, reconciled the fallen human race to His Father, justice being kept safe, according to the order and promise of the new grace.

For the grace of mercy explained in the preceding chapter is so arranged that the parts of divine justice, by which He hates and punishes sin, nevertheless remain whole, and nothing is derogated from it by Gods mercy. That this might be satisfied, it was necessary that the Son of God Himself put on human nature, so that a human might satisfy for humans and God might thus put a certain infinite force into this satisfaction. For infinite justice injured by us could be satisfied only by an obedience and passion in some way infinite. This grace is immense, as David testifies in Psalm 49:8-9.

II. Here are to be considered the incarnation, office, state, and satisfaction of the person of Christ.

4.2.3IV. In the incarnate person of Christ are contemplated the truth of the two natures, divine and human, and their personal union.

V. The divine nature in Christ is that by which He Himself, the eternal Son of God, personally united human nature to Himself. The divine nature, as the Leiden theologians rightly teach (Synopsis, disputation XXV, thesis 9), is not here properly understood as incarnate insofar as it is common to the three persons, but insofar as it is the Sons, distinct by a singular mode of subsistence — not as if the Deity of the Father and of the Holy Spirit were other and other, but because the Word of the essence is distinctly considered in the Son as communicated to Him from the Father by eternal generation (1 Timothy 3:16; Colossians 2:9; Proverbs 8:22-23; John 1:1,14; 8:58; Philippians 2:6). Orthodox theologians demonstrate this most solidly against Photinians, Arians, Servetists, and Socinians.

VI. The human nature in Christ is that which, absolute in all its essential parts and properties, was assumed by Him from the flesh of the virgin Mary into the unity of person. From this nature the Son of God is called made flesh (John 1:14) by synecdoche, as a whole human consisting of a true body and a rational soul — and indeed not excluding the humble and miserable condition and origin of humans (Philippians 2:7; John 1:14; 2 Corinthians 8:9; Hebrews 2:14; 4:15). Hence His genealogy is also led to Adam (Luke 3:38), against Marcion and the Manichees who invent Christs body as only apparent and simulated, and against the Valentinians who deny that Christ assumed His flesh from the substance of the virgin mother. Because He is a true human, He will have what constitutes a humans essence and without which to be human would involve a contradiction: namely an animated body and a rational soul endowed with intellect and will.

4.2.4VII. Further, of the human nature are considered conception, assumption, and nativity.

VIII. Conception is that by which, by a singular operation of the Holy Spirit, it began to exist in the womb of the virgin Mary from her own seed. This is taught in Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:18,20; Luke 1:30-31 — and indeed supernaturally and by the immediate power of the Holy Spirit, in respect of which He is singularly called not begotten but made (Romans 1:3; Galatians 4:4), and holy (Luke 1:34-35; Hebrews 7:26), and is compared with the first Adam not as to the matter of the body but as to the mode of conception (Romans 5:14; 1 Corinthians 15:45,47).

IX. The assumption of human nature by the Word is that by which the Son of God, at the very first moment of conception, bestowed His own personality on that human substance in Marys womb that was properly without subsistence or personality. For Leo the Great rightly says (epistle XI): Our nature was not so assumed that it was first created and afterward assumed, but that it was created by the very assumption — lest anyone suppose the humanity existed before it was united to the Word. Compare Hebrews 2:16; Colossians 2:9; Philippians 2:7.

X. Nativity is that by which the Son of God was brought forth into the light as a true human from the virgin Mary at the mature and lawful time of birth. From the prediction of Moses (Genesis 49:10) and of Isaiah 7:14; Micah 5:2; Luke 2:6-7,22-23 teaches Christs birth, as also Paul in Galatians 4:4.

4.2.5XI. Personal union is that by which the Son of God joined the assumed nature to Himself into the unity of His person. XII. In it are contemplated mode and effect.

XIII. Although the mode is ineffable, it is denied to be a conjunction or union that is either essential — by which things having a mutual and natural respect to one another are united, as act and potency, matter and form, genus and specific difference — or accidental, by which either accidents are joined to subjects or substances themselves are accidentally joined among themselves: but personal, by which in the personality of the Word as a common bond distinct natures, not inclining by any natural tendency to union, are gathered into one — a union whose like is not found in the whole nature of things — against Eutyches confusing the natures and Nestorius tearing them apart and wrongly dissolving the unity of Christs person.

Since therefore there is one personality of both natures, there is also one person and one personal union (1 Corinthians 8:6; John 20:31; 1 John 4:15; John 9:37).

4.2.6XIV. The effect of the personal union is the communion both of the natures and of the properties, which is called the communication of idioms. On account of it they are predicated of one another — not absolutely and abstractly, but through concrete words that involve the supposit and connote the personality in which the natures agree. For the reason why one nature is predicated of the other is none other than the hypostatic union in the same supposit.

Therefore it is unlawful to say absolutely that God suffered, or that a human created heaven; but through concretes one is rightly declared of the other, and the property and operation of the one of the other — as God is human, the human is God, God suffered and died, the human is eternal and made heaven and earth. Damascene calls this an exchange of names, and Melanchthon defines the predication in which a property belonging to one nature is attributed to the person in the concrete. For just as the unity of person and the personal union, so also the distinction of the two natures in Christ is necessarily retained. And because the idioms of both natures are attributed indifferently to the person signified by concrete words, therefore on account of the difference of natures it is sometimes usual to add according to which nature the predicate belongs to the subject.

CHAPTER THREE follows, On the offices of Jesus Christ.

4.3.1CHAPTER THREE. On the offices of Jesus Christ.

The office of Jesus Christ is threefold: prophetic, priestly, and kingly. Since all offices are instituted for a certain end, and therefore have the character of means to obtaining that end, we will not badly measure Christs offices by the notion of His name. He is called JESUS CHRIST by words that belong to this person by excellence, of which the former indicates the ratio of the offices that serve this end.

The word Jesus signifies savior and physician. To save is to keep safe from evils — either by preventing them from coming on, or by removing them if they have prevailed — and consequently by conferring contrary goods. The worst of evils are sin and its wages, eternal death. The best of goods are righteousness and eternal life. He is therefore Savior in the most excellent mode, because He frees from sin and eternal death and confers righteousness and life (Matthew 1:21).

The word Christ denotes the anointed, from the anointing that under the Old Testament was done with oil, which because by natural efficacy it made bodies both fragrant and agile was fit to signify two supernatural things: the consecration of a person to some divine munus, and the collation of the gifts necessary for it.

4.3.2II. The PROPHECY of Christ is considered both in its imposition and in its execution. III. This prophecy of Christ is not only that He confirmed the old law and the evangelical promise made to the fathers of the Old Testament, but that He more fully disclosed the new gospel.

IV. In the imposition are contemplated sanctification, instruction, and the promise of help. V. SANCTIFICATION is that by which Christ was separately destined and consecrated by the Father to the prophetic munus. VI. INSTRUCTION is that by which the gifts necessary for prophecy were conferred on Him. VIII. The PROMISE of help is that by which the Father promises His aid to the Son for discharging this munus.

Christs prophecy is necessary to eternal salvation, because without the knowledge of God and of Christ salvation does not come about.

4.3.4It is called kingly because it properly belongs to a king to govern, judge, and defend his people. Christ is king (Zechariah 9:9; Revelation 17:14), prince of the kings of the earth (Revelation 1:5), prince of peace (Isaiah 9:6), leader (Matthew 2:6), ruler (Micah 5:2), and judge (Acts 10:42; 2 Timothy 4:8).

XIX. To the kingly office pertain (1) the calling and gathering of the church; (2) its governance by Word and Spirit; (3) defense against enemies; (4) the final judgment. The means by which the kingly office is administered in the church are chiefly the Word and the efficacy of the Holy Spirit, which ought by no means to be separated from each other.

4.3.5For the Holy Spirit Himself ordinarily uses the Word or the senses of the Word in its external preaching (2 Corinthians 3:6). And the Word alone, apart from the Holy Spirits illumination and inspiration, does not suffice for the humans edification, as was shown above in Book I chapter 8. And Christ does not separate these two except by the fault of those who despise the Word and resist the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:51; Luke 7:30).

Events opposite to the predicted outcome are the casting off of Christs right, the imputation of sin, the denial or removal of the Holy Spirit, and handing over into Satans power, into a reprobate mind, hardness of heart, and besides temporary evils eternal death.

CHAPTER FOUR follows, On the states of Christ.

4.4.1CHAPTER FOUR. On the states of Christ.

The states of Christ that were required around the imposition and execution of these offices, so that He might bear the name Savior according to the will of His Father, are two: namely of humiliation and of exaltation.

II. To the state of humiliation belong the passion, crucifixion, death, burial, and descent to the lower regions.

4.4.2III. The passion of Christ is completed by insults and torments of every kind, both of soul and of body, which partly the fury of enemies inflicted on Him, and partly the immediate chastisement of the Father.

We take the beginning of those sufferings from His captivity. What happened to Him before that we judge to have been foresufferings rather than the sufferings proper, by which He would be tested whether, already foreknowing the evils to be borne, and indeed by experimental knowledge, He would nevertheless be ready by voluntary obedience to bear others still. Hence Augustine: Christ did not die from necessity, because He is omnipotent, nor from debt, because He is holy and immaculate, but from free will, because He is a merciful and compassionate Lord.

IV. Crucifixion is a mode of killing that teaches that Christ was made a curse for us, so that we might be freed by His cross from the curse of the law. On the mode of crucifixion see, among others, Justus Lipsius. The cross was not for the sake of execration, but a trophy and sign, as Sanford teaches from Eusebius Pamphilus and Chrysostom (On the Descent to Hell, book 3, section 125).

4.4.4VIII. The state of exaltation embraces three principal degrees: resurrection, ascension into the heavens, and session at the right hand of God the Father.

IX. Resurrection is the beginning of glory and liberation from the bonds of hell and death, by which the dead body of Christ, placed in the tomb, with the effects of death in it removed, was reunited to His soul and recalled into life — not this animal life, but a spiritual one. Yet by an overflowing power He could also discharge the offices of animal life for as long as after the resurrection He remained in this life with the disciples to win faith for the resurrection. We attribute this resurrection not only to the Father through the Holy Spirit, but also to Christ Himself as efficient cause, since He had power both to lay down and to take up again His soul (John 10:17-18).

X. The ascension of Christ into heaven is the progress of His exaltation, by which, after He had administered on earth the office enjoined on Him, He was taken up in His glorious body to discharge in heaven and from heaven other offices necessary for procuring the salvation of men, and there He remains until He returns for judgment. From this fountain are drawn certain solutions of the sophisms by which some papal writers seem to defend the dogma of transubstantiation, and some the dogma of consubstantiation, or of the presence of Christ's body IN, with, and UNDER the bread by substantial non-distance — an error that wiser men today do not acknowledge, as absurd.

4.4.5XI. The session of Christ at the right hand of the Father is the supreme degree of that exaltation, which contains the highest glory and kingly power with full empire in heaven and on earth over all and in all created things, and the dignity of further discharging the priestly office in that action which was to be carried out in the heavens by the priest made higher than the heavens — all communicated to Christ Himself by the Father.

This state of exaltation is necessary especially for two reasons: 1. Because of the priestly office, since He had to appear in heaven before the Father's face, sprinkled with His own blood, and intercede for the faithful. 2. Because of the kingly munus, since He had to send from the heavens the Word (where the administration of prophecy is understood as subordinated to the kingly munus) and the Spirit, conferring all things sealed in the New Testament on those who obey Him, but inflicting evils on the disobedient after they have abused the patience of God, which His justice could tolerate. And the act of this administration will be the universal judgment that we await, and that we explained in Book II, chapter 13.

CHAPTER FIVE follows, On the satisfaction of Christ.

4.5.1CHAPTER FIVE. On the satisfaction of Christ.

Here, after the states of Christ, follows SATISFACTION, by which the Son of God, incarnate by the grace of mercy from the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit, granted to us as Sponsor of the better covenant, and paying Himself as the price of redemption for us, by His perfect obedience found in humiliation, truly and fully compensated the disobedience of the human race, and so merited and effected that, the justice of GOD being preserved, all sinners who believe in Him actually obtain remission of sins and eternal life, while the rest, if they repent and believe, can certainly obtain it.

The seat of this principle is Romans 3:24-25; 5:6,9,16-19; 8:1; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 15:22; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Isaiah 53:4; John 1:29; Ephesians 1:7; 5:2; Colossians 1:14; 1 Thessalonians 1:10; 1 Timothy 2:6; Hebrews 7:22; 9:12; 10:12; 1 Peter 1:18-19; 2:24; 2 Peter 2:1; Revelation 5:9; Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45.

4.5.2This part of Christian doctrine Faustus Socinus, most unhappy of men, attacked most vehemently of all in his books on our mediator and Savior the Lord Jesus Christ. Against him we set Hugo Grotius's most learned writing On Satisfaction, and the learned and orthodox notes of others on that writing, together with what the most learned Constantijn L'Empereur discusses on this argument against the Jews on Isaiah and elsewhere. And what the papal writers undermine here, see asserted after Luther everywhere and Calvin, Institutes 3.4.25-26, by the most noble theologian Antoine de Chandieu (Sadeel) and other orthodox writers who write well and solidly against human merits and satisfactions.

Moreover among the orthodox it ought least of all to be controversial: 1. Not a bare man, but the Son of God Himself suffered and died for us, not according to a bare and external denomination only, but in very deed and in the work itself. For just as the Son of God truly became man for our sake, so also the Son of God truly and in reality died for us.

II. From this it by no means follows that the Deity, or Christ according to the Deity, properly suffered and died. For it is one thing to ask who suffered and died for us, and another in which nature, or according to which nature, He properly died. If you ask about the person who suffered for us, I answer with Peter (Acts 3:15) that they killed the Author of life; and with Paul (1 Cor. 2:8) that they crucified the Lord of glory; and Acts 20:28 that God Himself acquired the church with His own blood; and Galatians 2:20: the Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me. But if you ask about the nature in which or according to which He suffered, I answer with Peter that He was killed according to the flesh (1 Pet. 3:18), suffered for us in the flesh (1 Pet. 4:1), and bore our sins in His body (1 Pet. 2:24). For the Deity is and remains of itself immortal and subject to no passion; and yet the passion is and is called the Son of God's own, because He suffered in His own body and poured out His own blood.

4.5.3III. Least of all may it be called into doubt that Christ, according to the eternal counsel of God, properly died for this end, and that by the fullest propitiatory sacrifice and the satisfaction of His passion and death He properly merited and obtained this: that each and every human who believes in Him actually obtains, because of Him, remission of sins and eternal life, while each and every other person, if only they repent and believe, can certainly obtain it — as I once answered to the second article, or second chapter of doctrine on the death of Christ, in the Synod of Dort. See the Judgments of the Foreign Theologians, p. 127, published at Dordrecht.

When it is asked whether Christ died for all humans or not for all, both can be said with a sound and distinct sense without contradiction. For He died for all, in the phrasing of Scripture, as to the perfection and sufficiency of His merit and satisfaction, because by His death He most fully, sufficiently, and efficaciously obtained this grace announced in the Gospel — that they ought to obtain remission of sins through faith — for all humans in this world, indeed even if there were another world of them, so that: 1. it is offered in common to all seriously and in good faith; 2. true repentance and unfeigned faith are demanded of all; and 3. remission of sins and eternal life are seriously promised to all together for Christ's sake under the condition of faith. Hence also 4. all are obligated and bound to repent and believe in Christ as their Messiah and Savior, that they may obtain the promise.

4.5.4And in this way it is not badly asserted that God through the death of Christ has been so far reconciled to the whole human race that He wills His grace and reconciliation in Christ to be offered faithfully and seriously in common to all, even though by nature they are children of wrath (2 Cor. 5:20). And so there is absolutely no one among all humans for whom Christ did not make satisfaction, as Prosper truly answered the Pelagians on the articles falsely imposed on Augustine. Therefore the death of Christ in itself, without consideration of faith, pertains to all humans whatsoever, even sinners, enemies of Christ, and the ungodly; but the saving application of its fruit can be attributed to none except the believer, since faith is its instrumental cause.

He died not for all, but for believers alone, as to the actual communication and application of the merit of His death, because it does not benefit all with full act, nor do all humans thus become real partakers of it, but only those who embrace it with true faith. The chief foundations of this assertion are that Christ laid down His life for His sheep (John 10:15), for friends (John 15:13), that He might gather the scattered children of God (John 11:52), purify for Himself a people as His possession (Titus 2:14), redeemed the church with His blood (Acts 20:28), and gave Himself for the church (Eph. 5:25).

They assert only this: that Christ did not die, nor obtain and merit any reconciliation, for unbelievers insofar as they harden themselves in their unbelief and impenitence and persevere to the end. Those who do not believe, therefore, are excluded from it not because of any defect of the new grace of paternal mercy or of Christ's satisfaction and merit, but because of their own unbelief.

4.5.5II. Here there are certain NOTABLE points.

1. The satisfaction and merit of Christ do not differ in the thing itself so that they must be sought in diverse operations; but they must be recognized under a varied ratio in one and the same obedience and humiliation of His. For this was also merit, insofar as it is ordered to our benefit or to acquiring something good for us under the ratio of a wage (Rom. 5:10,19; 3:25).

2. This satisfaction, as to the substance of the thing, was perfect from the rigor of justice; yet it presupposes grace, by which Christ was called to perform this work, and by which what was performed was accepted in our name and for our good; and finally by which, from the remunerating covenant, that which was sought in this satisfaction is perfected (John 3:16; Rom. 3:24; 5:15). And so in the redemption of the human race the highest justice of God and the highest grace shine together (Rom. 5:17), so that all the fruits and effects of this satisfaction are rightly attributed at once to the grace and mercy of God. See John Calvin.

4.5.63. The value of this satisfaction is sufficient and in some respect infinite. That is proved: 1. from the person of the offerer, who was God; 2. from the dignity and excellence of the thing offered — for He offered Himself, God and man; 3. from the mode of offering, to which a certain divine perfection belongs from the hypostatic union. For just as the dignity of the offended person increases the gravity of the injury, so the value of satisfaction is intensified by the dignity of the one who satisfies, because here is seen the exhibition of honor that depends on the dignity of the exhibiting person.

4. The substantial dignity that was in Christ contributes more properly to the dignity of the work than accidental dignity, such as is in certain humans above others — namely princes, the wise, parents. Finally, whoever desires a fuller explanation of the description of satisfaction should see the Synopsis of Purer Theology of the Leiden theologians, disputation 29; Wolfgang Musculus's Common Places; and what we discussed for the Augsburg Confession to D. Mentzer on this argument.

Today especially the Photinians and Socinus On Christ the Savior dissent, with Smalcius, György Enyedi, Sommer, and Ostovod, following Peter Abelard, who around A.D. 1140 attacked satisfaction — to whom Arnold of Brescia and Albert bishop of the Poitevins and the Spaniard Servetus agreed, Judaizing in this.

CHAPTER SIX follows, On the grace of heavenly and holy calling.

4.6.1CHAPTER SIX. On the grace of heavenly and holy calling.

There follows the grace of heavenly and holy calling, which is the third principle of human salvation, by which the Holy Spirit, given by the Father through the sacrifice of the Son who has propitiated the whole world, and given to the Son, calls all sinners without exception to the faith of Christ and seriously invites them to participation in life.

We call this principle of human salvation heavenly and holy calling, with the Apostle at Philippians 3:14 and 2 Timothy 1:9 — and so heavenly (Heb. 3:1) — which differs from the lower and external call by which someone is lawfully called to the function of an ecclesiastical or political office, as Aaron (Exod. 28:1) and Saul (1 Sam. 10:1), the Apostles and among them Judas also (John 6:70), and which can be called personal. But that former calling is common and spiritual, by which all humans are called to the communion of spiritual goods.

4.6.2III. The parts are the offering of the grace of redemption and the precept concerning embracing it.

IV. The offering of the grace of redemption is that by which the Holy Spirit offers grace to all sinners through His word. So Christ teaches (Matt. 22:4,8 and following; Luke 14:17).

V. The precept concerning embracing the grace of redemption is that by which the Holy Spirit seriously commands all the called to accept the offered grace of redemption in Christ and to enjoy it for their salvation. So Christ teaches (Luke 14:23) and Paul (2 Cor. 5:20; 1 Tim. 2:4).

4.6.3VI. The degrees of heavenly calling are those according to which it is either of public preaching or of singular revelation.

VII. That of public preaching is that by which the grace of redemption is announced to the whole world and seriously offered (Matt. 28:19; Acts 17:30; Col. 1:28). VIII. Singular revelation is ordinary or extraordinary. IX. The ordinary is that which the Holy Spirit used under the Old Testament in responses from the mercy-seat and through Urim and Thummim.

XI. It is direct or indirect. XIII. Indirect is that by which the Holy Spirit leads humans to Christ through secondary means. Sufficient calling is that which is seriously proposed to all humans; abundant calling is that which is efficaciously applied to the elect.

4.6.4XVII. The calling of abundant grace is also called efficacious calling. It is called operating either because God works it in the human without the human, or because God through it also works alone and without the human or his consent, as He wills. It is also called preventing grace, because it altogether precedes human consent and is the help that God grants to a human still dead in sins, by illuminating his intellect or moving the will to saving acts.

XX. The calling of assisting grace is that by which the Holy Spirit aids a human already excited so that he wills, toward the good that he wills — so to speak — to be willed and perfected. This grace works willing in the human, but not without him consenting and cooperating in a human manner; yet so that the willing itself also is referred wholly to divine grace as its first principle. It is also called accompanying, consequent, and cooperating.

4.6.5XXI. It is external or internal. External is that which is done through the externally preached word and the administration of the sacraments.

XXIII. Internal is that by which the Holy Spirit illuminates the mind and bends the will, so that the human seriously and efficaciously obeys the external calling. This can also sometimes and in a certain extraordinary mode happen without the external word, but God's ordinary institution is to join the word with the internal operation of the Spirit.

4.6.6XXIV. The effects of the grace of calling are illumination, regeneration, faith, conversion, and begun sanctification.

XXV. Here there are certain notable points. 1. Although God does not call all nations and persons in the same mode, nevertheless no one lacks what would suffice for salvation if his own fault did not obstruct. 2. That God withdraws the external preaching of the Gospel from some nations for a longer time does not remove His just judgment, nor that He seriously wills all to be saved. 3. That not all obey the calling is not the fault of the One who calls, but of the called and of the devil.

4.6.7Christ teaches this (Luke 8:12-14; Luke 14:18). For some altogether refuse to hear; some hear sleepily; others from hope of external advantage, or zeal for novelty, or a spirit of slander; others harden themselves by perpetual habit of sinning; others seek secular wisdom and eloquence in preachers; others of their own accord withdraw from acknowledged truth.

Whoever wants more on the grace of God and its necessity in the business of salvation against old and new Pelagians should read especially the Pelagian history described by the great men Johannes Latium and Gerhard Johann Vossius.

CHAPTER SEVEN follows, On the means of human salvation, and namely on the law.

4.7.1CHAPTER SEVEN. On the means of human salvation, and namely on the law.

Thus far we have seen the principles of salvation on which it depends; now we will treat the means by which one arrives at it. These are partly external, by which God opens and offers us eternal salvation by which it is conferred on us by the same God and apprehended by us.

II. The external means are: the word, the sacraments, and the ministry. III. The WORD of God is the external means of salvation by which God indicates His will to humans, so that they may know what He wills to be done by them and how He is affected toward them. IV. And it is law or Gospel. The whole word of God is now contained in the books of the Old and New Testaments.

4.7.2VI. Distinctions are to be observed here. The divine law in itself is nothing other than the idea of the divine will concerning things to be done and omitted. The law of God requires perfect obedience with all powers; it not only orders the human's actions but also forbids actions by which occasion of sinning is given to others.

VII. Law is either of nature, or human, or divine. VIII. The law of NATURE is the light and dictate of right reason by which a human naturally discerns the honorable from the base. The law of nature as it now is in humans after the fall still retains certain sparks by which sin is rebuked.

X. Human law is a definite sentence of right issued by the magistrate for governing civil society.

4.7.3XI. Divine law is a definite sentence of God proposed in the Scriptures. XIII. Moral law is that which commands perpetual duties toward God and neighbor, summarily comprehended in the Decalogue.

XIV. The TEN WORDS of this law are the sum of all morality. XV. The moral law is therefore distinguished into two tables. XVI. The former table contains duties toward God in four precepts; the latter table contains duties toward the neighbor in six precepts.

4.7.4XVII–XXIV. The precepts of the former table require knowledge, love, fear, trust, and worship of God, internal and external; they forbid idolatry, abuse of God's name, and violation of the sabbath.

Images of God for worship are prohibited; historical images, provided they are not used for worship or cause scandal, are not altogether forbidden. Words related to religion are sanctified by the third precept. Solemn duties of public and private worship are contained in the fourth precept.

4.7.5XXV. The latter table with six precepts prescribes duties toward the neighbor, which Christ comprehended in the sum of charity: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

XXVIII. Duties that regard actions around the order of human society are prescribed by the fifth precept, so that some preside and others are subject. There follow the precepts concerning life, marriage, goods, and speech: you shall not kill, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, or covet.

XXXIV. Thus far were the duties that the moral law prescribes.

4.7.6XXXV. In the moral law the use and abrogation are to be noted. XXXVI. The use of the moral law varies according to the human's state. In the state of integrity its use was the norm of perfect obedience.

After the fall its use toward humans is: 1. that it may convict them of their sins (Rom. 3:19-20; 4:15; 7:7); 2. that it may be a pedagogue to Christ (Gal. 3:24); 3. that it may be a herald of the just judgment of God finally to be exercised against them; 4. that for the regenerate it may be a norm of life.

4.7.7XXXVIII. How far the abrogation of the moral law extends, and how far it obtains among the faithful constituted under the grace of Christ, is easily gathered from the uses already set out. For 1. it is abrogated as to the first use of justifying; 2. as to curse and condemnation; 3. as to increasing sin into all desiress to the rigor and mode of leading a human into obedience.

XXXIX. But the substance of the obedience that the law demands remains, even if the mode and rigor of legal justification has ceased under the Gospel.

4.7.8In an affirmation the opposite negation is comprehended, and in a negation the opposite affirmation, because God demands not only abstinence from evil but also the doing of good. Homogeneous and related actions are commanded or forbidden by the same precept. An effect is commanded and forbidden in its cause, and a cause in its effect. When one relative is commanded or forbidden by a precept, the other also is commanded or forbidden. If it happens that two precepts cannot be observed at once, regard is had to that which is of greater moment.

CHAPTER EIGHT follows, On the ceremonial law.

4.8.1CHAPTER EIGHT. On the ceremonial law.

After the moral law follows the CEREMONIAL, which is an ordinance of God containing precepts concerning the external worship of God to be observed in the Old Testament Church, for signifying, prefiguring, and sealing the promised good, and for preserving the sworn order in ecclesiastical assemblies and actions.

By this law God's Church in the Old Testament was governed as an infant and a girl under elemental mysteries (Gal. 4:1-3; Heb. 8:5; 10:1; Col. 2:14, 11).

4.8.2II. Its precepts, however varied, may chiefly be referred to four classes: sacraments, sacrifices, sacred things, and legal observances. Of the sacraments we will speak below in their place.

A sacrifice is an external sacred action by which some sensible, permanent thing is offered immediately to God by a properly authorized minister, to testify His supreme dominion and the human's subjection. four ways: by matter, by form, by bloody or unbloody offering, and by particular end (latreutic, eucharistic, petitionary, or propitiatory).

By sacred things are meant sacred persons and all else required for external worship. Legal observances were ceremonies of pacification and sanctification by which they were distinguished from unbelievers.

4.8.3III. The use and abrogation of the ceremonial law are to be observed. IV. Its use was: 1. to hold the ancient people under hope of the promised goods; 2. to distinguish Israel from the nations by a middle wall until Christ tore it down and they coalesced into one body; 3. that occupied with this laborious worship they might neither invent other cults nor take up those invented by others.

The first use it performs through types, figures, and shadows. In this respect that law is rightly called a pedagogue to Christ (Heb. 10:1-3; Col. 2:14, 17; Gal. 3:24; Eph. 2:14-15).

4.8.4V. The ceremonial law was abrogated through Christ's cross, death, resurrection, ascension, and the sending of the Spirit—by the sun driving away the shadows and the body succeeding into their place.

It is abrogated as to the necessity of observing it, every right of obligation being taken away at once; and by this it ceases to be living and is dead. It was abolished in fact partly by the Apostles' teaching and partly by God's destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. From then those ceremonies became deadly which had been tolerable only among Jews in the intervening space (Col. 2:11-17; Gal. 4:9-10; Acts 16:3; 21:22-24).

CHAPTER NINE follows, On the forensic law.

4.9.1CHAPTER NINE. On the forensic law.

The FORENSIC law is an ordinance God prescribed through Moses to Israel and repeated through his successors, containing precepts on the form of political government in civil society, for procuring animal and spiritual benefits by conserving the external worship and discipline of the moral and ceremonial law.

It chiefly treats magistrates, contracts, divisions of goods, judgments, and penalties (Exod. 21–23; Deut. 17). It has two genera: common right as to substance, and singular right belonging exclusively to the Jewish people.

4.9.2II–III. Its use is threefold: first, that the Jewish people's whole state might be ordered by a norm of public equity and justice; second, that this people might be distinguished by this law from other peoples; third, that it looked to future things and was a type.

The first use is gathered from Psalm 122:3-8. The second flows from God's will that His people share nothing needless with others (Ps. 2; Ezek. 34:23-24). As to the third, that whole Jewish state and kingdom shadowed Christ and His spiritual kingdom. In this respect the forensic law also deserves to be called a pedagogue to Christ.

4.9.3IV. Abrogation does not remove the common equity founded in nature's light; yet insofar as the law looked to Christ, it is abrogated universally.

Simple observation is neither forbidden nor absolutely prescribed to any people, except what rests on common right and natural equity. What as to substance and chief end looks to Christ, no people may usurp. Refer Josephus, Philo, Maimonides, Sigonius, Bertram, and Cunaeus On the Jewish Commonwealth.

CHAPTER TEN follows, On the Gospel: where also on the Apostles' Creed.

4.10.1CHAPTER TEN. On the Gospel: where also on the Apostles' Creed.

The Gospel is the word of God announcing and proposing to all humans Christ the Redeemer with His merits to be apprehended, and freely promising to those who apprehend Him by living faith remission of sins, righteousness, and eternal salvation for His sake.

Gospel properly means a good or glad message. In theology it notes the good news of the Savior born for us (Luke 2:10-11) and His merits; specially the doctrine of Christ the Redeemer and free remission of sins for Him (Matt. 11:5; Rom. 1:16). Sometimes it sometimes refers to the whole New Testament teaching, which also embraces the law (Mark 1:14-15).

4.10.2The Gospel chiefly contains as subject-matter two things: 1. the doctrine of Christ the Savior of humans and His merit (Rom. 1:3)—incarnation, fulfillment of the law, payment of penalties, liberation from the curse, reconciliation with God, overthrow of the Devil;

2. the doctrine of applying Christ's merit—remission of sins (Acts 10:36, 43), perfect righteousness of Christ promised to us (1 Cor. 1:30), and eternal salvation (Rom. 1:16; 1 Tim. 1:15).

4.10.3Law and Gospel differ: 1. in matter—the law commands works; the Gospel announces Christ to be apprehended by faith (Rom. 3:27; Gal. 3:2);

2. in form—law-promises under condition of one's own merit (Lev. 18:5); Gospel-promises free (Rom. 4:16; Eph. 2:8);

3. in effects—the law terrifies and condemns (Rom. 3:20); the Gospel consoles and absolves (Isa. 61:1-2; Luke 4:18);

4. in object—the law toward the ungodly; the Gospel toward crushed hearts (Matt. 11:28);

5. in mode of revelation—the law somehow known by nature (Rom. 2:15); the Gospel a mystery revealed through the Son (John 1:18; Rom. 16:26).

4.10.4Therefore the Gospel is not a doctrine of works, and so adds neither new commands nor counsels upon the divine law. That it is not a doctrine of works is clear from Romans 10.

III. The compendium or little sum of the Gospel is the Apostles' Creed, whose letter, origin, and authority are to be considered. IV. Its letter, harmoniously arranged, the following SCHEMA of the sum exhibits.

4.10.5V–VII. From the beginning the baptismal Creed consisted in the Trinity alone, as gathered from the earliest fathers and the Nicene Creed. Ancient expositions do not go beyond the Trinity.

VII. What the Creed is today, as to the remaining clauses, contains nothing but as if in splendid garments and fair structures built upon that foundation, which in their times were necessarily added to extinguish heresies and are now necessarily retained lest they break out again. Heretics gave occasion for a more popular explanation of that Creed which before had been folded as in majesty of silence.

4.10.6VIII. The authority of the Apostles' Creed is considered either as it was from the beginning, or as it was later explained on the occasion of diverse heresies.

IX. The authority of the Creed as it was from the beginning is altogether divine and equal to the other canonical Scriptures, for it is immediately from Jesus Christ our Savior (Matt. 28:19). Among juniors Luther, Melanchthon, Erasmus, Bullinger, Calvin, Chytraeus, Hemmingius, Ursinus, Olevianus, Piscator, Perkins, Alsted, and others have piously and learnedly expounded the sense of the articles.

CHAPTER ELEVEN follows, On the sacraments in general.

4.11.1CHAPTER ELEVEN. On the sacraments in general.

Thus far concerning the WORD, the first external means of salvation; there follows the second, namely the SACRAMENT, which is a sacred solemn action instituted by a peculiar word of God, by which a heavenly and invisible thing mystically united with a visible external element is dispensed, for offering, applying, and sealing the Gospel promise to humans. The same speech the Greeks call mystery.

Casaubon holds the name's origin may be Hebrew. They called sacraments and mysteries visible signs of invisible things that God Himself instituted in His church.

4.11.2II. These rules help understand the definition. 1. Divine institution alone makes a Sacrament; remove it and the sacrament is removed, change it and it is changed. In the essentials of a sacrament, nothing is to be changed

2. Though sacraments are signs, they are not empty signs, but exhibitive of the thing signified—namely spiritual grace—as veiled under them.

3. Sacramental union is not essential-natural but mystical, not feigned but true and real: the closest conjunction of earthly and heavenly thing, so that in lawful use, when one is named and exhibited, the other is truly exhibited to the believer according to the promise's formula.

4.11.34. Sacraments are also means or instruments through which Gospel grace is not only sealed and confirmed but truly conferred and applied to believers—baptism to regeneration (Rom. 6:4); the Supper to refresh spiritual life.

5. God Himself through the sacraments as instruments of grace exerts His power to apply and seal grace, not to any whatsoever, but only to those who apprehend what is offered by true faith. Sacraments neither have grace physically inhering nor exhibit it ex opere operato. Those who use them without faith acquire no grace and impose on themselves the heaviest burden of divine wrath (1 Cor. 11:27-29).

6. Their use is neither arbitrary nor superfluous but necessary from God's ordinance—not as simply as the preaching of the word, yet so that in a case of necessity they may be interrupted for a time. The rule: Not privation, but contempt of the sacraments damns.

4.11.4III. There are sacraments of the Old Testament and of the New. Before Abraham the Church was without sacraments strictly so called, fed by the word alone—though in integrity the tree of life showed Christ with a kind of sacramental signification, and after the fall there were extraordinary sacramental signs (Noah's ark, 1 Pet. 3:20-21; 1 Cor. 10:1-4).

On the sacraments of the Old Testament.

4.12.1CHAPTER TWELVE. On the sacraments of the Old Testament.

Old Testament sacraments are those handed down and instituted by God for the Jewish people which through an earthly thing designated the coming Messiah for conferring and sealing Gospel grace.

II. There are chiefly two: CIRCUMCISION and the PASSOVER. Other signs we do not here count under the stricter notion of sacraments.

4.12.2III. CIRCUMCISION was an Old Testament sacrament by which, with the foreskin of the little boy cut off on the eighth day from birth, God's covenant with Abraham and his seed was sealed (Gen. 17).

It designated circumcision of the heart by the Spirit (Deut. 10:16; Rom. 2:28-29; Col. 2:11) and Christ coming in the flesh. The eighth day shadowed Christ's resurrection and the beginning of the new age.

4.12.3IV. The PASSOVER was the slaughter and eating of an unblemished little lamb for memory of liberation from Egypt and as a shadow of Christ.

The paschal lamb is not a sacrifice properly so called, but a true sacrament shadowing Christ and His merit and benefits—because the institution mentions no sacrificing; slaughter was by the people not a priest; it was eaten not burned; and it was slain in Egypt where no sacrifice was to be offered (Exod. 8:26). Yet it was a type of Christ's sacrifice: unblemished yearling (1 Pet. 1:19); set apart; slain (Isa. 53:7); bones unbroken (John 19:36); blood on the doorposts; memorial of liberation; flesh eaten without leaven (1 Cor. 5:7-8).

Chapter thirteen continues with a discussion of baptism.

4.13.1CHAPTER THIRTEEN. On baptism.

Thus far Old Testament sacraments; there follow those of the New, divinely instituted for the Christian people, which through an earthly thing exhibit at once a heavenly thing, that they may seal and confer Gospel grace on believers.

II. New Testament sacraments are two: BAPTISM and the LORD'S SUPPER. Baptism is the sacrament by which a human washed with water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is received into the covenant of grace, sealed with remission of sins, regeneration, and adoption (Matt. 28:19; Acts 2:38; Tit. 3:5).

4.13.2VII. The object of baptism is every human who can be enrolled in the covenant of grace. VIII. Baptism is not to be iterated often.

John's baptism does not differ from ours as to substance: same matter (Matt. 3:11), same form (John 1:33; Matt. 28:19). Baptism is to be administered only by a lawfully called minister of Christ. Only humans who can and ought to be saved are to be baptized.

4.13.34. Infants of both believing and unbelieving parents are to be baptized—not because of fleshly generation or parents' merits, but because of the promise of grace adhering to the covenant (Gen. 17; Acts 2:39; 1 Cor. 7:14).

5. Infants are rightly baptized in the New Testament as boys were circumcised in the Old—because the same promise and covenant, the same Christ, and the same faith of covenanted parents.

4.13.46. Rites of baptism instituted by God belong to its integrity: washing with water and invocation of the Trinity; accessories include catechizing of adults, naming, and sponsors.

7. Baptismal water regenerates and renews not by its natural power but by supernatural operation and the adjoining word of the holy Trinity (1 Pet. 3:20-21; Eph. 5:26; Tit. 3:5; John 3:5).

8. Baptism's fruit is applied to adults through actual faith, and to infants dying before years of discretion by the Holy Spirit as principal cause of faith. 9. Though received only once, baptism serves us through all life for strength of faith, confirmation against temptations, and diligence in God's worship.

4.13.510. If anyone cannot be sure from the testimony of church, parents, or others that he received baptism in infancy, he is to be baptized without scruple. The fifth Council of Carthage rightly decided that such infants are to be baptized without scruple. As Leo rightly adds, what is not known to have been done cannot be called iterated.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN follows, On the Lord's Supper.

4.14.1CHAPTER FOURTEEN. On the Lord's Supper.

The LORD'S SUPPER is a New Testament sacrament instituted by Christ Himself immediately for the Church's use until the world's end, in which by lawful external administration, taking, eating, and drinking of bread and wine the Lord's death is announced; inwardly the taking and fruition of Christ's body and blood are exhibited; and that closest union or koinonia by which we are joined to Christ our Head is sealed and confirmed; while the faithful profess their gratitude and obligation toward God, communion among themselves, and separation from others.

4.14.2Those who charge our churches' doctrine with setting mere bread and wine as merely heavenly in the Supper do us injury. For Calvin (Inst. 4.17) says we affirm that Christ descends to us by the external symbol as well as by His Spirit, so that He truly vivifies our souls by the substance of His flesh and blood.

Transubstantiation and consubstantiation or impanation excluded, we readily admit with the ancients in a sound sense those particles 'with', 'under', or 'in'or 'in'or 'in', to declare a presence of the things signified that is true yet mystical, and their exhibition in lawful use of the sacrament.

4.14.34. Christ's body and blood are present in the Supper neither locally nor in any physical mode, but truly and really without any fiction, united with bread and wine by sacramental union through analogy and mystical relation—not by local inexistence or coexistence.

5. Blessed bread is not converted or transmuted into Christ's body, nor wine into blood; essences remain distinct on both sides even in sacramental union—because Scripture still names bread after consecration (Matt. 26:26; 1 Cor. 11:26-28); because bread is the communion of Christ's body; because Christ said not let this become but this is my body.

4.14.4Sacramental eating is to be distinguished according to its objects. Those who approach unworthily eat and drink judgment to themselves (1 Cor. 11:27-29).

Chrysostom terribly warns ministers not to provoke the Lord by failing to purge the body: I would sooner give up my life than give the Lord's body to anyone unworthily; I would rather have my blood poured out than grant that most sacred blood except to one who is worthy. Far worse than a demoniac is the one who approaches conscious of sin.

4.14.513. True Christians do not use the sacred Supper by custom alone, but eagerly and religiously from ardent desire for Christ, that they may satisfy His precept, enjoy His love and treasure, and frequently also for their own need, to strengthen weak faith. In the primitive church the faithful communicated daily; later, as faith's ardor cooled, that custom faded.

As for little ones: since this mystery requires self-examination and announcing the Lord's death (1 Cor. 11), the institution does not of itself pertain to infants who cannot perform these.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN follows, On the ministry of the word.

4.15.1CHAPTER FIFTEEN. On the ministry of the word.

The MINISTRY OF THE WORD is a sacred office enjoined by God through lawful calling on fit persons, that by teaching His word, administering the sacraments, and absolving and binding, they may call and direct people to God's kingdom and salvation.

In Greek it is called diakonia, leitourgia, episkope, oikonomia; in the Old Testament the Levites' ministry is custody and warfare. The Fathers call it hierurgia; Paul names ministers presbyteroi. It is a sacred office distinct from profane and civil offices.

4.15.2Its chief efficient cause is God, and the Holy Spirit Himself speaks through the prophets. The proximate cause is divine calling—also named mission or election—either immediate or mediate.

Immediate or extraordinary calling is when God sends some by His peculiar mandate without human election (patriarchs, prophets, Apostles). Mediate and ordinary calling runs through means God constituted, directed by Him as the principal cause.

4.15.3The means of ordinary calling is the Church's lawful election. God gave His church the keys of the kingdom and entrusted word and sacraments; therefore the church elects ministers through three orders: the eldership or pastors; magistrates as nursing fathers; and the Christian people.

Paul teaches the requisites (1 Tim. 3; Tit. 1): common—faithful, blameless, sober, hospitable, just; proper to the office—apt to teach, holding sound doctrine, able to exhort and refute opponents, not neophytes.

4.15.4The form of the ministry consists chiefly in three parts. First comes teaching and preaching the word; hence ministers are teachers, ambassadors of God, and laborers in the word.

Second comes administering the sacraments according to Christ's institution; ministers are stewards of the mysteries of God.

Third comes remitting sins to the repentant and binding the unrepentant, which is called excommunication, whether generally in sermons or specially toward persons, so that people may be saved unto the glory of God.

4.15.5II. Rules: God works salvation not by private suggestions against Scripture but by the ministry of word and sacraments. All Christians must handle and spread the word, yet none may publicly teach and administer sacraments unless specially and lawfully called—except in a case of necessity.

Immediate calling is neither to be sought nor expected today. The ministry is not idle dignity but an arduous office. Call is not of the eldership alone; diverse orders stand; errors must be refuted without chasing obsolete husks; visitations and discipline proceed from private admonition to public rebuke, excommunication only as last resort.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN follows, On faith.

4.16.1CHAPTER SIXTEEN. On faith.

Thus far the external means of our salvation; there follows the internal, namely FAITH: a fiduciary assent and acknowledgment of the truth which is according to godliness, unto hope of eternal life which God who does not lie promised before the ages and manifested in His times (Tit. 1:1-3).

Paul calls it the faith of the elect; Hebrews 11:1 describes it as the hypostasis of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

4.16.2Hypostasis properly means substance or subsistence, sometimes boldness of soul. Elenchus is demonstration and conviction.

Hope's object is both what is hoped for (eternal life) and that in which one hopes (God, Christ). Present and past goods believed done and trusted to remain also belong here, with things unseen that faith must apprehend.

4.16.3Faith is distinguished as historical, dogmatic, temporary, miraculous, and justifying or saving faith.

Historical faith knows and assents to Gospel history without trust; temporary faith sprouts on rocky ground and withers under persecution; miraculous faith credits divine power for wonders. Justifying faith alone saves: knowledge, assent, and trust in Christ the mediator, apprehending the Gospel promise unto justification and eternal life.

4.16.4In justifying faith concur knowledge of Gospel truth, firm assent, and the trust by which the sinner rests on Christ alone for remission of sins and acceptance with God.

Faith is the organ or instrument of justification, not a meritorious cause; Christ and His righteousness are the object and foundation. Faith apprehends; it does not earn.

4.16.5Living faith is not idle but effective through love (Gal. 5:6); yet it justifies alone—not insofar as it works, but insofar as it apprehends Christ.

Faith's effects—union with God, evangelical justification, sanctification, peace of conscience—are treated in the next chapter.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN follows, On the consequences and effects of Christian faith.

4.17.1CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. On the consequences and effects of Christian faith: where on the union of believers with God, and their evangelical justification.

From faith in Christ follow justification, sanctification, and peace of conscience. Here union and justification; sanctification and peace in the chapters that follow.

4.17.2II. The union of believers with God is that by which a human is joined to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through faith—mystically yet truly and most closely—so as to abide in Him and be blessed forever.

Notabilia: the union is real not imaginary; outside it one can neither act well, enjoy true peace, nor be blessed; it does not wholly remove infirmities in this life yet covers and increasingly purges them; believers united to God also share communion with one another.

4.17.3IV. Union with God through faith is followed by EVANGELICAL JUSTIFICATION: an act of free grace by which God absolves the sinner from guilt and reckons him righteous solely for Christ's merit apprehended by faith.

In the act of justification one's own merit and working are opposed.

4.17.41. The grace by which we are justified is not an infused inherent quality but God's mercy and favor in Christ. 2. That grace is not utterly absolute but determined to Christ's merit.

3. Faith, though never alone but accompanied by good works as fruits, nevertheless alone justifies. Justification of the converted lasts as long as life and faith. The righteousness of faith is Christ's own righteousness and God's inexhaustible grace—the only true consolation.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN follows, On sanctification and good works.

4.18.1CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. On sanctification and good works.

Sanctification or renewal of believers and GOOD WORKS are actions of the converted performed by the Holy Spirit's operation from true faith according to the norm of divine law, by which sin is continually mortified in them and God's image renewed unto obedience and honor to God.

Renewal differs from regeneration: by regeneration we are made God's children; by renewal we are declared such. The one changes state; the other qualities.

4.18.2The principal efficient cause is the Holy Spirit; the proximate secondary cause is true faith working through love.

The form of good works lies in conformity to God's law—sin is lawlessness, a good work is law-keeping. Yet because believers' works are imperfect, defects are supplied through faith in Christ, and Christ apprehended by faith makes His righteousness ours so that the works please God.

4.18.3Ends: toward God—obedience and honor; toward ourselves—confirming our calling; toward the neighbor—relieving by love's duties and avoiding scandal.

On necessity: good works are not necessary to justification as a cause, but are necessary in the justified as fruit and the Christian way of life—against those who thrust them into justification itself.

4.18.4VII–VIII. On perfection: we assert that the saints' good works in this life are not perfect by the law's measure. That imperfection appears often as to parts, always as to degrees.

Daily remission is needed; no one first gave to God so as to be repaid. Condign and congruent merit are to be rejected; God crowns His own gifts in us, not our merits.

4.18.51. Zeal for good works necessarily includes self-denial and bearing the cross. 2. What Christians must do, God's law perfectly shows as divine rule and canon; Christ is the pattern. Without true knowledge of God they cannot be borne.

CHAPTER NINETEEN follows, On Christian liberty.

4.19.1CHAPTER NINETEEN. On Christian liberty.

Christian liberty is the fruit of the fullness of grace and truth that came through Christ, by which believers, freed from bondage to sin, the condemning law, and Mosaic ceremonies, called into the liberty of God's children, freely use things that do not matter for building up.

4.19.2Freedom from sin's bondage is regeneration and sanctification, so that sin does not reign (Rom. 6). Freedom from the law is from its curse and rigorous right as to justification—not from the moral norm.

Mosaic ceremonies are abrogated in Christ; forensic determinations of Jewish particular law do not bind Christians insofar as they are particular.

4.19.3In indifferent things liberty does not extend to scandalizing the weak nor to fastening a worship of necessity on adiaphora. Those err most gravely who attach necessary worship to indifferent things, or pretend things are indifferent that are not.

Christians are not bound by Moses' forensic laws as particular right; what is moral in them remains. Carlstadt and Müntzer are rejected for binding the Christian magistrate to Moses' particular forensic laws.

4.19.4X. A consequence of liberty from sin and law—to which peace of conscience is annexed—is both the right of God's children and the sending of the Spirit of adoption into believers' hearts.

XI–XII. The right of sons is that they are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, including the body's liberation from vanity; the Spirit of adoption assures us of coming glory.

CHAPTER TWENTY follows, On Christian warfare and the cross.

4.20.1CHAPTER TWENTY. On Christian warfare and the cross.

Christian warfare is believers' spiritual fight against the enemies of salvation under Christ the captain.

God's enemies to be distinguished: Satan from the beginning; the world following its prince and hating God and His friends; our flesh opposed to God and His Spirit.

4.20.2VI–VII. Though Satan tried to hinder God's counsel of salvation, the Father sent the Son to save what was lost and destroy the devil's works. Christ the captain assaulted and conquered the enemy in the cross and death.

VIII. The victory accomplished bodily by Christ the Head in the days of His flesh is applied and continued spiritually in Christian members through faith and the Spirit.

4.20.3X. The Apostle sets out the armor (Eph. 6)—breastplate of righteousness, shield of faith, helmet of salvation, sword of the Spirit.

XI–XII. Recruits fight both open works of the flesh and hidden heart-wickedness. XVII. The prize prepared for conquerors is the tree of life, the crown of life, the new name.

4.20.4On the believers' cross: 1. The school of the cross is the school of light. 2. Though believers' sins deserve the cross as punishment, God turns it into medicine.

3. The heaviest cross is when the faithful soul is engaged with God Himself as if an enemy—the trial of forsakenness—yet conquered by faith.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE follows, On prayer.

4.21.1CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. On prayer.

Prayer is an exercise of piety and Christian warfare by which believers, by the Spirit's prompting and in Jesus Christ's name, address God the Father by petition and thanksgiving concerning goods to be given or already given, and evils to be averted or already averted.

It is also called invocation or adoration; metaphorically sacrifice, incense, calves of the lips. In the regenerate it is nearly a compendium of all good works.

4.21.2IV. Three impulsive causes: God's will, our need, and the examples of Christ and the saints. The end: God's glory, union and communion with God, increase of faith.

What we ask for is personal (for ourselves and others) or real (spiritual and temporal goods). Ask in Christ's name; God alone is to be religiously adored.

4.21.3XIV. Corollaries: 1. Prayers should be born in the heart and formed with the mouth. 2. Christians are invited to continual prayer by command, promises, and needs.

3. No creature but God alone is to be religiously adored. 4. Even when we distinctly invoke Father, Son, and Spirit, one God is adored. 5. Spiritual goods are to be sought without condition insofar as they concern God's glory and salvation; temporal goods with the condition if God wills.

4.21.46–7. Faith, mother of true invocation, begets trust of certain hearing, humility, and custody of conscience.

8. Even when God does not always grant what is desired but denies or delays, by praying we are led to union with God. 9–10. Some goods may piously be prayed against; evils likewise deprecated.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. On peace of conscience.

4.22.1CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. On peace of conscience.

PEACE OF CONSCIENCE is tranquillity of soul in one who believes in Christ, such that he is neither disturbed by the law's threatenings nor broken by adversities, but according to the divine promise surely expects and at last obtains glorious liberation from all that troubles this life.

It arises from faith in reconciliation with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1); it is fostered by hope that does not put to shame; it is kept by zeal for a good conscience.

4.22.2This is the peace the angels wished the shepherds at Christ's birth. Whoever is truly illumined by word and Spirit and believes Christ acquired salvation by passion and death and applied it in baptism can have a tranquil conscience.

The whole heart is seasoned with heavenly peace's sweetness; even sensing remaining sin in the flesh, he rejoices in the Lord, knowing the Savior took his sins and made satisfaction.

4.22.3The smoke of God's wrath held forth by the law does not terrify the one at peace: where there is no sin, there is no wrath as wages; a father's chastening does not remove the peace of knowledge.

Chrysostom urges a daily tribunal of conscience: let the mind sit as judge over the soul; search out faults; accuse your own vices not others'; before the day, call conscience to account for words, works, and thoughts.

4.22.4Let the one being absolved take every care not to doubt that his sins are remitted before God. He is bound to stand by another's judgment not because of the prelate but because of Christ's word: Whatever you loose on earth. Faith in that word will make peace of conscience.

Whoever seeks peace another way—say by inward experience—seems to tempt God. You will have as much peace as you believe the word. Luther: even if absolved a thousand times by the pope himself, one who does not believe the word will never be at rest.

4.22.5X. The consummation of peace of conscience and the harbor of true tranquillity, into which our Theology desires to penetrate, is ETERNAL LIFE—the absolutely highest end of man.

Therefore we too, surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, casting aside every weight and sin, must run the race with endurance, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of faith.