Cap. 2 Ratios 6–7: God’s counsel provided a lytron even for those who remain unbelieving; death is ordained before faith

If it was the counsel and will of God that Christ by dying should deliver into his hands a lytron most absolute, most perfect, and most sufficient, not only for freeing those who by God’s benefit believe and so are saved as to the event, but also for those who by their own fault remain unbelieving and so are damned as to the event, then it must be confessed that this death of Christ is a remedy applicable to all by the nature of the thing and by God’s ordination. And such was God’s counsel, such his will — which is proved from the divine promises that indicate his will to us. For God promised salvation under the condition of faith and repentance even to those who will never perform these conditions. So to Cain himself, if he repent, remission is promised (Genesis 4:7). Which salvation, or remission of sins, promised under condition to such a person, clearly argues that a cause of salvation was prepared for that same person and is applicable under the said condition. The same is proved from this: that God so ordered his counsel in the work of redemption that no mortal can truly complain that he perished for want of an expiatory sacrifice. Yet he to whom the death of Christ is not a remedy applicable unto salvation by God’s will can no less truly affirm that a sacrifice was wanting to him than can the evil angels, for whom the death of Christ is ordained under no condition. And this is that counsel which the Pharisees are said to have despised (Luke 7:30).

If according to the order and nature of the things themselves, and of our consideration, the death and merit of Christ must be posited as something first ordained and destined by God for the good of the human race before faith is understood to be destined for anyone, then it is necessary to think of it as a cause of salvation applicable to all before it is stated as applied, or to be applied infallibly, to this one and that. The reason of the consequence is this: that the death or merit of Christ is understood as applied or to be applied to no one until faith is conceived as granted or to be granted to him; and on the contrary, the death of Christ is considered applicable to anyone before faith is conceived as denied or to be denied to him forever. I now add the Minor: namely, that the death of Christ, or his infinite merit, must be posited as something first established and destined for human beings before faith is destined for these or those singular persons. This is plain, first, because the death or merit of Christ is the object of faith: to what end would he destine to give faith to Peter or to Paul unless he had first ordained a remedy of salvation applicable to anyone through the medium of faith? Further, faith, like all other saving gifts, is conferred on human beings on account of Christ and from the merit of Christ; therefore in the order of the divine decrees the death of Christ precedes the faith of every Christian. Here belong those words of the Palatine theologians in the judgment they exhibited at Dort (Acts of the Synod of Dort, p. 88): The faith of the elect does not precede but follows the death of Christ, because that death is the cause of the faith by which the elect are given on account of Christ, and its object, which faith itself looks upon and embraces. Finally, for all human beings lost in the first Adam, a obtainable salvation is decreed in the death of the second Adam before it is decreed to whom it is to be given efficaciously and infallibly, and to whom it is not to be given. It must therefore be confessed that the Mediator Jesus Christ, with his death and the infinite treasury of his merits, is by God’s ordination applicable to the whole human race unto salvation, although there intervene the freest, most just, and most hidden good pleasure of God, according to which he decrees that faith (by whose medium application is made) is to be given infallibly to certain persons and by no means to others. But why, in dispensing the treasury of Christ’s merits — sufficient and applicable to each and every person — he deals so unequally with equals, we ought not to ask, because we cannot know, but with the Apostle to rest in the secret will of God, who has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens (Romans 9:18); to whom no one has first given, that he should be bound to repay him as a debt (Romans 11:35).