Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/40

32 to be supralapsarian. To quote only three witnesses: Dr. Charles Hodge ("Systematic Theology," ii. 317)—"The symbols of that Assembly, while they clearly imply the infralapsarian view, were yet so framed as to avoid offence to those who adopted the supralapsarian theory." Dr. Philip Schaff ("Creeds of Christendom," I., 454)—"The doctrine of predestination, in its milder, infralapsarian form, was incorporated into the Geneva Consensus, the Second Helvetic, the French, Belgic, and Scotch Confessions, the Lambeth Articles, the Irish Articles, the Canons of Dort, and the Westminster Standards." (Cf., I., 635, et passim.) Dr. Alex. F. Mitchell ("Minutes," p. 55)—"The same care was taken to avoid the insertion of anything which could be regarded as indicating a preference for supralapsarianism." Last of all, the language itself is not supralapsarian, but such careful, moderate, guarded language as all Calvinists may adopt, not to say as natural religion itself forces on those who believe in an infinite personal God. Twisse himself, for example, points out to us that the statements here are not disputed, but common, ground among the Calvinistic parties. "It is true," he says, "there is no cause of breach either of unity or amity between our divines upon this difference"—of supra- and infra-lapsarianism—"as I showed in my digressions ('De Predestination,' Digress. 1), seeing neither of them derogates either from the prerogatives of God's grace or of His sovereignty over His creatures, to give grace to whom He will, or to deny it to whom He will; and, consequently, to make whom He will vessels of mercy, and whom He will vessels of wrath; but equally they stand for the divine prerogative in each. And as for the ordering of God's decrees of creation, permission of the fall of Adam, giving grace of faith and repentance unto some and denying it to others, and finally, saving some and