First falsehoods of the newer Lutherans: Stoic fate, confusing permission with efficiency, and equating damnation's cause with the decree
Most of the first falsehoods of the newer Lutherans are accusations and misrepresentations of Reformers' words, though those Reformers speak with Scripture at every turn, as we have just shown in the State of the Controversy.
They fasten on us Stoic fate, Manichaean heresy, and the so-called Predestinarian heresy — and with them an absolute reprobation after the fact, with no eye to sins or unbelief.
In the same way they confuse God's permission of sin as a means that pleases Him with His sending sin in, with efficient causation, and the like.
They also argue badly: if sin and unbelief are the cause of damnation, then they must also be the cause of the decree to damn — as if God's willing, which has properly no cause outside God, worked by the same account as the things He wills, which come about through means.
So likewise with the good pleasure of grace and mercy in Christ (Ephesians 1:5, 9, and the like).
Latin
ΠΡΩΤΑ ψεύδη novorum Lutheranor. pleraque in affictis consistunt, & intortis violenter dictis Reformatorum, cum Scripturâ ubique loquentium, ut nos modò in Statu Controvers. V. gr. dùm nobis affingunt Fatum Stoïcum, Manichaicam Haeresim, & Praedestinatianam illam vulgò; adeòque Reprobationem absolutam a posteriori, citra respectum peccatorum, vel incredulitatis. Ita dum confundunt peccati permissionem ut medium Dei placitum, & peccati immissionem, efficientiam, &c. Malè etiam inferunt, si peccatum, incredulitas, &c. est causa damnationis, Ergò & causam esse decreti de damnando; quasi sit eadem ratio volitionis divinae cujus nulla extrà Deum causa propriè dicta est, & rerum volitarum quae per media fiunt. Sic εὐδοκίαν gratiae, misericordiae in Christo, Eph. I. 5. 9. &c.