Cap. 4 Mem. 1 Rat. 1–2: Bare intrinsic sufficiency cannot ground ‘died sufficiently for all’

1. The mere sufficiency of Christ’s death, which is estimated from the intrinsic value alone of this lutron, without that ordained sufficiency which arises from the mind and act of offering, does not avail so far that Christ may truly be said to have died sufficiently for all. I thought this thesis should be added because of those who hold tightly that Christ died for the elect alone, and yet (I confess I am too slow to understand how) admit that Christ died sufficiently for all; and sometimes exalt this thing, a sufficiency spreading itself to all human beings, in very strong words. For they confess that Christ died for all human beings, for all orders, states, and kinds of human beings, indeed even for individual human beings as to the sufficiency of merits. The Contra-Remonstrants in the Judgment exhibited to the Synod of Dort write thus: When Christ is said to have died for all, this can be understood of the sufficiency of the merit, or the magnitude of the price. For the death of the Son of God is the one perfect and sufficient lytron for expiating and blotting out all the sins of the whole world: an immense merit of righteousness, a catholic medicine of death, a perennial fountain of life, etc. A little later: This sufficiency of the lytron, as to the reprobate, has a twin end, one of itself, the other by accident. The end of itself, that God may make it plain he does not delight in the destruction of human beings, inasmuch as he gave his only-begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). The end by accident, that by this sufficiency of the lytron they may be rendered inexcusable. For these perish not by Christ’s fault but by their own, when by their unbelief they repudiate the benefits offered by Christ in the Gospel. So far they. This sufficiency of Christ’s death for reconciling all, I deny can be rightly conceived from a bare sufficiency of the thing offered, unless an ordained sufficiency from the offerer’s act accompanies it. Which can be proved thus.

When we say that Christ died sufficiently for all, we say nothing else than that he was offered sufficiently for all, or that he gave himself as a lytron or price of redemption sufficiently for all. But to die for all, or to be offered for all, or to give oneself for all, designates the act of one dying or offering himself, terminated under some ordination to freeing all. Therefore the mere sufficiency of the lytron, without the mind and act of the offerer terminated to persons, cannot make true this assertion, Christ died sufficiently for all. For common sense refuses that one should be granted to have died sufficiently for all who is denied to have died or been offered for some. And while the intrinsic sufficiency of the lytron for redeeming a thousand worlds stands and is conceded, it can at the same time stand that this same lytron has not yet been offered in any way for many human beings, much less sufficiently offered. For just as for freeing five debtors who each owe two hundred pounds, ten thousand pounds are more than enough; yet if this whole sum is offered and paid to the creditor by name for two only, the other three excluded, the sufficiency and superabundance in itself of this lytron will not make it that it was sufficiently given and paid for those three: so in this common cause of the human race, although Christ’s precious blood is a lytron more than sufficient for canceling the debts of all and each, yet it would not thence be affirmed to have been sufficiently offered for those who are discretely excluded in the very act of offering. They seem therefore not so much to interpret as to mock this most received and most true pronouncement of the Theologians, Christ died sufficiently for all, who transfer this term sufficiently from the mind and act of the one dying to a bare sufficiency or intrinsic value of the death considered in itself; as if the sense were, Christ’s death in itself has sufficient merit and value for blotting out the sins of all human beings, but Christ was not offered or dead for all — when the clear sense of this saying is that Christ died for all, and died sufficiently for all, although what he sufficiently offered for all is not efficaciously applied to all because of the intervening obstacle of unbelief.

In this distinction of the Scholastics, which our men commonly admit — namely that Christ died for all sufficiently, for the predestinate efficaciously — those words sufficiently and efficaciously denote what in the very mode of oblation was common to all human beings, elect and non-elect alike, and what was peculiar to the elect alone. Common to both was that Christ was sufficiently dead or offered for them as a victim to God the Father. But how will this former term, sufficiently, be referred promiscuously to elect and non-elect, if it designates a bare sufficiency of the thing, excluding the ordination of the same thing to persons that arises from the offerer’s mind and act? Or what need is there of that latter term, efficaciously, to constitute a distinction in the mode of oblation or in the offerer’s intention as to elect and non-elect, if there was absolutely no intention of Christ offering himself except for the predestinate alone? A bimembral distinction is frivolous and plainly inept where both members are not presupposed in the thing distinguished. It is to be observed, then, that the holy Fathers, urging the universal sufficiency of Christ’s death, do not stick in a bare sufficiency of the thing, but in the act, mind, and very mode of offering. So repeatedly Athanasius in the treatise On the Incarnation of the Word. I will set down one golden place: Christ the Son of God, having borrowed a body like ours, because we all were liable to death, sacrificed to his Father that same body given over to death for all. Likewise: After the monuments of his Divinity had been displayed, it remained that he should offer a sacrifice for all, delivering his temple to death for all, that he might make all free from the old transgression, etc. You see that the note of universality is joined not with the intrinsic sufficiency of the thing offered, but with the mind and act of the offerer, which looked to all. So Augustine: Christ’s blood was so poured out for the remission of all sins that it could blot out even the very sin by which it was poured. He does not say that in the blood poured out there is a sufficient intrinsic value for expiating all human beings’ sins, which is confessed among all who know how to estimate God’s blood rightly; but he urges the mode and act of offering, and in that constitutes this universality: It was so poured for the remission of all sins. It is one thing to say that Christ’s blood has from itself and in itself a sufficient value for blotting out all human beings’ sins; another to affirm that it was poured by the very fact for the remission of all sins, which Augustine said. But why do I recall the holy Fathers? Holy Scripture so speaks of Christ’s death that it does not refer its universal force to the bare dignity of the victim offered, but to the act and mind of the offerer (1 Timothy 2:6): He gave himself a price of redemption for all. The Apostle does not say, This lytron in itself and in its intrinsic value is sufficient for redeeming all, but was in truth given for a few, not for all; but, He gave himself for all. The mind and act, then, of Christ giving himself embraced all. So also of the Father sending the Son; So God loved the world, etc. (John 3:16). That bare sufficiency of the thing, then, does not avail so far that Christ may be affirmed to have died sufficiently for all, without a sufficiency ordained toward all from the offerer’s mind and act.