Cap. 5 second member tip: Immediate effect is reconciliability; adults, infants, and rival errors

For the explanation of this proposition I will premise these few things.

The first is: that we, by the death of Christ generally considered as a cause of human salvation, denote nothing other than a consideration of the Lord’s passion in its immediate effect, which it produces of itself without any concurrence of human acts. This immediate effecting, which is produced without any media required from our side, we affirm to be reconciliability about to come into act as soon as we believe, not however actual reconciliation, or placement in the state of adoption and salvation before we believe.

The second thing which we thought should be premised looks to a certain discrimination to be observed here in the matter between adults and infants. For it has been said that none of adults is reconciled to God, or freed from the guilt of their sins, without an act of faith (which will shortly be proved). Whence it is clear that we admit that some of infants are by the virtue of the death of Christ absolved from sins and placed in the state of salvation, without any act of their will. For because they cannot by faith apply the blood of Christ for purging their souls, merciful God by the secret operation of his Spirit as it were sprinkles and vivifies their souls with the blood of Christ. This was well annotated by Aquinas, Disputed questions on Justification, article 3. Because children, he says, do not have whence they can convert themselves to the justifying cause, the justifying cause itself, namely the passion of Christ, is applied to them in baptism, and from this they are justified.

The last is: By the state of grace and salvation, which we deny belongs to any of adults before he has apprehended the mediator by an act of faith, we understand such a state as the Psalmist described, Psalm 32, when he pronounces blessed those whose iniquities have been remitted and whose sins have been covered; such as the Apostle painted, Colossians 1:12, 14, where he says they have been liberated from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of the beloved Son of God, already having redemption through his blood, namely remission of sins.

This thesis so explained must be proved, both against those who posit all human beings by the very merit of the passion of Christ received into the state of grace and salvation, and against those who think the elect at least reconciled from eternity, justified, and gifted with remission of their sins. Some attribute the former opinion to the Remonstrants: but, as it seems to me, however ambiguously and obscurely they speak, they are nonetheless alien from this error. They do indeed say, Hague Colloquy, page 9, that Christ by the death of the cross merited for all reconciliation and remission of sins. But they add, yet so that no one becomes a partaker of this remission in fact except believers. So elsewhere they say, page 131, that Christ by the death of the cross obtained for all reconciliation and remission of sins. But immediately they weave on this gloss, that the real participation of this obtained reconciliation and remission is proper to believers. Finally, pages 162 and 163, they expressly reject that dogma which is attributed to them by some, namely that all human beings by the death of Christ were restored from the fall and replaced in the state of grace; nor by remission obtained for all do they denote anything other than that a medium and mode has already been prepared and stabilized by the death of Christ whereby, faith applied, all and each can obtain remission of sins, page 186. So they soften and explain what seemed spoken more suspiciously in the Hague Colloquy: yet it must be confessed that some of them progressed somewhat further in this matter. Borreus, with Arminius, defends that God assumed the whole human race into the grace of reconciliation, Response to articles 13 and 14. Arnoldus against Tilenus seems also to sense the same, pages 232 and 261. Huberus and Puccius (whose writings I confess I have not yet seen) are everywhere charged with having taught that by the death of Christ all and each human beings were justified and restored into the bosom and grace of God. Now as concerns the latter opinion, I do not remember that I have read anyone of ours who expressly defends it. Yet our Thomson in his Diatriba, chapter 24, pages 92 and 99, commemorates some who try to prove the sins of the elect forgiven from eternity from the dignity and efficacy of the merits of Christ. Which granted, it would follow that the same were justified before faith in Christ, reconciled to God, and restored into the state of grace and salvation, which is most false. The proof of our thesis will be the refutation of both errors. We will therefore confirm it first in place by the testimonies of the Scriptures.