Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/55

Rh so passed by and forsaken.'" A clearer or more exact statement of the common Reformed doctrine on this subject could scarcely be found. Although the matter is capable of very copious illustration from the Westminster divines, we may content ourself with this typical statement. Enough has been already quoted to point out that the Westminster divines had in mind, as, indeed, they could not fail to have, the very obvious and necessary distinction between God's sovereign decree of preterition—"negative reprobation," as Arrowsmith calls it—which must be as free and sovereign as election itself, of which it is, indeed, but the negative statement; and his dealing with those thus passed by, which depends on their deserts. The fact that men are sinners does not affect the sovereignty of preterition; it only affects the treatment they are left to by preterition. If, for instance, out of the holy angels God chose sovereignly a certain number for some high service, involving special gifts of grace to them to fit them for it, the "leaving" of the rest would be just as truly "preterition" as in the case of fallen men; but the consequent treatment being but the "consequent," and not the "effect," of preterition, would be infinitely different in the two cases, seeing that it is the effect of the deserts, whatever they may be, in which those who are "passed by" are found to be left. Consequently, sin is not the cause of preterition; election is the cause of preterition; i. e., the choosing of some is the cause that "the rest" are left. Sin is the cause, however, of how the preterited ones are treated. And to guard this, the Westminster men were accustomed to use a phrase they borrowed from Wollevius, which affirmed that sin is not the causa reprobationis, but the causa reprobabilitatis; that is, sin is not the cause of reprobation (otherwise the elect, who also are sinners, would be reprobates), but it is the cause of men being in a reprobatible state.