Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/36

28 Westminster Confession stands alone among the Calvinistic Confessions of the Reformation in its statement of this doctrine; it is even said that the language of the Confession is here supralapsarian. What can be meant by some of these objections it is somewhat difficult to understand. Many—of whom Mr. Hardwick and Dr. Schaff are examples—seem to consider it illegitimate to state the doctrine of reprobation at all in a Confession. But the Westminster Confession does not stand alone in doing this; in varying measures of fullness, the Second Helvetic Confession, the Gallic and Belgic Confessions, the Irish Articles, the Canons of the Synod of Dort, and the Formula Consensus Helvetica, state the doctrine. Nor can this view be consistently defended. No doubt, as the English delegates advised the divines of Dort, both "the sublime mystery of predestination," and still more "the mystery of reprobation," are subjects that ought to be "handled sparingly and prudently," and treated of only "in the proper time and place, with tenderness and judgment," and thus, indeed, the Confession (III., viii.) unites with them in advising; but is not a confession "a proper time and place"? No less an one than Calvin teaches us how impossible it is to avoid confessing the doctrine of sovereign reprobation if we confess the doctrine of election, of which it is not the logical inference, but the other half—writing with some sharpness: "Many, as if they wished to avert odium from God, so confess election as to deny that any one is reprobated. But this is puerile and absurd, because election itself could not exist without being opposed to reprobation. God is said to separate those whom He adopts to salvation. It were worse than absurd to say that chance gives others, or their own efforts acquire for them, what election alone confers on a few. Whom God passes by, therefore, He reprobates, and from no other cause than His determination