Louis Le Blanc On Reprobation in the Reformed School (Theses 1-6)
Reprobation among the Supralapsarians and those who hold to "double-predestination."
Theological theses about reprobation—its nature, object, cause, and effects. In which is expounded the doctrine of those who among the Protestants are called with the single name Reformed, and compared with the doctrine of the Roman school.
1. More than a few Reformed theologians seem to include under the decree of reprobation anything that God eternally decreed and ordained with regard to those who are excluded from salvation, and are assigned the penalties of hell. They even assign to the decree of reprobation an act of the divine will by which God determined to create reprobates and to permit any of their sins. And they think that God, with that intention, created the reprobates and permitted their sins, even that first sin by which they are born corrupted in order that he might show himself to be an avenger of their sins in their just punishment.
2. Given that there are those who understand predestination in some general sense, as embracing election and reprobation under the term as if there were two species, they define it thus: “Predestination is, the eternal, most righteous and unchangeable counsel of God concerning the creation of man, the permission of man to fall into sin and eternal death, the sending of his Son in the flesh that he might be a sacrifice, and the salvation of some by true faith and conversion through the Holy Spirit and the Word for the sake of the mediator, by, and on account of whom they are justified, raised to glory, and granted eternal life; while the rest are left in sin and death, raised to judgement, and cast into everlasting punishment.” This is the description of predestination by Ursinus in his explication of the Catechism, part 2, the chapter about predestination, q.2.
3. The definition of Zanchi is consistent [with the above], which he imagines with these words. “Predestination is an eternal and immutable decree of God by which he established with himself eternally to: first, create all people, then, to permit that they fall into sins and rush to death. Then, of those people, some he decreed to graciously give his grace in Christ and then eternal life, but for the others he did not deign this grace, but instead to blind and harden them with Satan and then to destroy them by eternal destruction. And he did this so that among the former he might declare his divine goodness and mercy, but among the latter his divine power and justice, and this, in all things God is glorified.” Tome 7, tract on predestination, num 9 [col. 188].
4. The description of Bucanus is also like the others. “The decree of predestination is that by which God, in the creation of men for himself, before he created them, deciding to what end he would create them, decreed according to his power and will thus to serve his own glory that there should be vessels and examples of his own goodness and mercy, but others as vessels of his wrath, that is, of his justice in revenging sin and of his power.” Loco 36, q. 8.
5. This also is the same position of Beza, who in his brief explanation of the whole of Christianity, established that the decree of predestination is that in which God decreed to create men, like everything else, for his own glory, but in two completely different ways. So, namely, some, whom it seemed [good?] to himself by his own hidden will, he made participants of his own glory through his mercy, but in others whom he similarly was pleased to make use of, he showed his own power and wrath in order that he also would be glorified among them. Ch. 2 on predestination. Aph. 2. And in chapter 5, the first aphorism, he repeats that our Lord thus created reprobates in order that he might be glorified in their just condemnation.
6. Moreover, Gomarus, Piscator, Twisse, and Voetius come to the same belief; and thus, whoever among the Reformed are called supralapsarians that hold and teach this, on account of which, whenever they assign an object of predestination, they ascend above the fall of man [supra lapsum hominis].