Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/41

Rh others, whereupon only arise the different opinions as touching the object of predestination and reprobation, it is merely apex logicus, a point of logic. And were it not a mere madness to make a breach of unity or charity in the Church of God merely for a point of logic?" Some in these last days seem scarcely to share either Twisse's clearness of apprehension or his charity.

How, then, are we to account for the frequent assertion to-day that "the language is supralapsarian"? Partly by a strange confusion which confounds the order in which the decrees are stated with the statement of the order of the decrees; and which thus, because predestination is treated of before creation, asserts that predestination is "placed" before creation. As well might it be argued that because Chap. I. treats of the Scriptures, and Chap. II. of God, therefore the Confession teaches that the Scriptures are the "logical prius" to God. Partly, again, by an unwillingness to take the trouble to read the Confession as we would any other book, consecutively, following its line of thought and analysis. This third chapter, for example, is ordered thus: First, the nature and scope of God's decree, in general, is defined in Sections 1 and 2; secondly, the application of these general facts is made to the special fact of human destiny in Sections 3–8. In making the application, first the fact is asserted that God's sovereign, particular, and unchangeable decree embraces also the destiny of His creatures, in Sections 3 and 4; and then the details of how God deals with those whose varying destinies are included in the decree, and on what grounds the varying destinies are dealt to them, are asserted in Sections 5–7; a final section being added on the care with which such