Luther and Melanchthon again leave no empty reprobation against eternal ordination
Again with Luther and those who vote with him, the fight is not over a vacant reprobation, but over God's eternal ordination — His disposal of everything, even the damnation of the reprobate, Pharaoh's hardening, Judas's betrayal, and the rest.
See the passages from Luther and Melanchthon in the Rinteln Apology, or in Calixtus's Consultation on Tolerating the Reformed, around pages 12–14 — not to mention our own writers.
Melanchthon, for example: Judas's betrayal is no less God's work than Paul's conversion; everything falls out by divine predestination, by which the Lord has worked all things for Himself, even the wicked for the day of evil.
Luther, for his part: by His will God necessarily makes us damnable, so that He seems to take pleasure in the torments of the miserable; God does not will the sinner's death by the Word, yet He does will it by an unsearchable will; whatever is said to clear God is said in vain — lest He Himself be made the author and the blame of our hardening; if God foresaw that Judas would betray, Judas necessarily became a traitor.
Still more of this is drawn from the single book On the Bondage of the Will, volume II, first Wittenberg edition.
Latin
Cum Luthero rursum, & ὁμοψήφοις, lis de Reprobatione nulla, seu aeternâ Dei ordinatione, dispositione omnium, etiam quoad damnationem reproborum, indurationem Pharaonis, proditionem Judae, &c. Loca ex Luthero, & Melanchthone, vide vel in Apologia Rintelensium, aut apud Calixtum, Consultat. de Tolerantia Reform. p. m. 12. 13. 14. ut nostros taceam. V. gr. Melanchthon; Non minùs Judae proditionem, quàm Pauli conversionem Dei opus esse; Evenire omnia juxta divinam Praedestinationem, secundum quam Universa propter seipsum operatus est Dominus, etiam impium ad diem mali, &c. Lutherus verò; Deus suâ voluntate nos necessariò damnabiles facit; ut videatur delectari cruciatibus miserorum: Deus non vult mortem peccatoris Verbô, vult autem Voluntate imperescrutabili: Frustrà dicitur, quicquid dicitur, pro excusando Deo, &c. ne ipse sit auctor & culpa nostrae Indurationis: Si praescivit Deus Judam fore proditorem, necessariò Judas fiebat proditor, &c. Et quae plura excerpta sunt, vel ex uno Libro de Servo Arbitrio, Tomo II. Ed. I. Wittenb.