Cap. 4 Mem. 2 close: Adversaries’ concessions; Gospel announceability to every nation

But perhaps someone may say: Even if this pact stabilized by Christ’s blood pertains not promiscuously to all human beings but to the elect alone, yet remission and salvation can be proposed and offered to all under the hypothesis of faith, because it is certain that the elect alone will perseveringly believe; and therefore no one of the non-elect will ever be able to charge that this conditioned covenant was false on God’s part as to himself, or violated. But this reply is of no moment. For the truth of any conditional proposition is to be conceived before the positing of the condition: indeed, although the condition is never going to come into act, still the truth of a rightly instituted conditional proposition ought to stand. Here, then, the conditional proposition or promise, If you have believed, your sins will be remitted to you, is false as to Cain or Judas unless a true foundation of the connexion is given, if it should happen that they believe. Nor does it matter at all to the truth of a conditioned proposition whether they are going to believe or not; since in such a proposition the ratio of the connexion is looked to, not the truth or falsity of the parts taken separately. If Peter shall have denied Christ, he will obtain eternal life, is a false proposition because of the weakness of the connexion, and yet each part separately was true. If Peter shall not have believed, he will not obtain eternal life, is a true proposition, and yet each part taken apart was false: for Peter both believed and obtained eternal life. By like reason, then, this conditional pronouncement, If you have believed, you will obtain remission of sins and eternal life, would be false as to any non-elect person, even if he is supposed never going to believe, if the antecedent ratio and cause of the connexion is lacking: but it is lacking unless that conditioned pact is asserted stabilized with all and each human being. For it does not follow: God in Christ’s death sanctioned a covenant concerning saving all the elect by faith: Therefore if Cain shall have believed, he will be saved. That conditioned covenant is therefore stabilized with the whole human race.

3. We prove that this Evangelical pact stabilized in Christ’s death, concerning giving salvation under the condition of faith, is universal, by urging this same reason further, and that from the concessions of those who seem to oppose us. Those therefore who try most of all to restrict Christ’s death nevertheless concede that by the merit of Christ’s death there is some way and ratio constituted by which any unbeliever can escape merited condemnation, namely if he believes. They concede that Christ’s death would abundantly have sufficed for saving all human beings, if as many human beings as are in the whole world believed in him. They concede finally that the word of the Gospel concerning Christ crucified is announced indiscriminately to elect and non-elect, and all are commanded to believe in him, with this promise added, that all believing in him will obtain remission of sins. These things posited, I argue thus: If as many human beings as are in the whole world would obtain remission of sins and salvation if they believed, then there is firmed by Christ’s death a universal pact concerning saving any human being under the aforesaid condition of faith: But the first is true: Therefore also the second. The reason of the consequence is this: Because that conditional which they admit as much as to non-elect as to elect — namely, If you have believed, whoever at length you are, you will be saved — does not have necessary truth from the nature of the thing, as these do, If there is fire, it is hot, or, If it is a human being, it is an animal: it remains therefore that it have its truth founded in some voluntary ordination of God, by which he himself sanctioned that as to any human being, the antecedent being posited in being, the consequent also would be posited. For no third foundation can be assigned on which the truth of the aforesaid conditional rests. Therefore it must be confessed that that Evangelical pact is universal from God’s own ordination, and looks equally to all and each human being.

If anyone here objects that the Gospel itself was never announced to all human beings, and therefore neither does that Evangelical pact embrace the whole human race, or pertain to all and each, I reply: it does not follow, The Evangelical pact is not announced to this nation, or to this singular human being, Therefore as to them it was not sanctioned or stabilized: But this rightly follows, The Evangelical pact is not of itself Announceable to this nation, or to this human being, Therefore it pertains to them in no way. For other causes of the Gospel’s not being announced can underlie, while we still confess it announceable to all; which causes it is not of the present design to search out. We say therefore that in any age, to any nation, and to any human being, remission of sins in the Redeemer’s death under the condition of faith could truly have been announced. So in the time of the Old Testament this covenant was revealed to Job the foreigner. So in our age if an Evangelical Minister came to the Antipodes, he would not wait for a new stabilization of this conditioned covenant as to them, but at once, acknowledging it as stabilized, would announce it to them. And hence it is that the Apostle calls this word of the Gospel a mystery hidden from ages and generations, but now made manifest, and so on (Colossians 1:26). He therefore acknowledged it stabilized from eternity with the human race, although hidden or made manifest to these or those according to the Divine good pleasure. See (Romans 16:25–26) and (Ephesians 3:5) and 9.