Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/53

Rh statement of the great mysteries of God's decree to be found in the whole body of the Reformed Confessions. How, then, shall we account for the offence which has been taken with it of late? I trust I shall be excused for saying it frankly. It seems to me to have arisen from a very strange confusion, involving both the doctrine of reprobation on the one side and the purport of the Westminster Confession on the other.

In order to explain what I mean, let me begin by reminding the reader that the Reformed doctrine has always distinguished (under various names) between what we may call preterition and condemnation, and has always taught that preterition is sovereign (as, indeed, it must be if election is sovereign), while condemnation, a consequent only of preterition, is for men's sins. The sentence which Dr. Van Dyke quotes from Dr. A. A. Hodge is perfectly accurately expressed: "It is no part of the Reformed faith that God's . . . . treatment of the lost is to be referred to His sovereign will. He condemns men only 'for their sins, to the praise of His glorious justice.'" But it is a part of the Reformed faith that preterition is sovereign, as Dr. Whitaker, in the age before the Westminster Assembly, clearly tells us: "Of predestination and reprobation it is our part to speak advisedly. But that the only will of God is the cause of reprobation, being taken as it is contrary to predestination, not only St. Paul and St. Augustine, but the best and learnedest schoolmen, have largely and invincibly proved." I do not know where this necessary distinction between the sovereignty of preterition and the grounding of the consequent condemnation on sin, is better put, in late writing, than in the late Dr. Boyce's (of the Louisville Baptist Seminary) "Abstract of Systematic Theology," which I mention here chiefly to call attention to the fact that Dr. Boyce's treatment is precisely that, even