Louis Le Blanc On Reprobation in the Reformed School (Theses 30-36)
More on the effects of reprobation. Discussion of the object of reprobation.
1-6. 7-11. 12-16. 17-23. 24-29.
30. Nevertheless, on this point, Pierre du Moulin turns away from the common position; for he simply denies that permission of sin is an effect of reprobation. And he rejects the definition of Thomas who says that the decree of reprobation is a will to permit someone to fall into guilt and to inflict the penalty of damnation for that guilt. “For,” he says, “the permission by which God permits a sin does not pertain to predestination but to providence no matter how much it might serve predestination.” In Anatomy of Arminianism, ch. 26.
31. But what do those who restrict the decree of reprobation to only the will to deny to some men effective and salvific grace by which the elect are given true faith and penitence do? As I already said, the Saumur professors and Testard in the Irenicum, they, I say, do not think that damnation is a proper and immediate effect of reprobation, but only a negation of that efficacious grace which works faith and repentance in the elect.
32. But just as Reformed theologians variously define reprobation, and they include more or less decrees of God under the word “reprobation,” nor do they assign to it its effects in the same way, so also, they give various views about its object. For those who think to make the decree about the creating of man and the permission of his fall a part of reprobation as Polanus, Beza, Zanchi, Gormarus, Ursinus, Bucanus, Twisse, and others, they want the object of reprobation to be considered, according to all of his acts, to be not fallen and created man, but simply man as creatable. This position was strongly defended a few years ago by Voetius, professor at Utrecht.
33. But some teach that the object of predestination, taken generally, and therefore of reprobation, is man—indeed considered as created—but as not yet fallen into sin. This is the position of Franciscus Junius in his Amica Collatione with Jacob Arminius on predestination.
34. But according to the view of the Synod of Dordt, and many teachers today in the Reformed school, the object of reprobation is not man simply as created and founded by the foresight in God, but whom God considers as fallen in Adam and infected with original sin. For in their description of the decree of reprobation, they do not ascend above the fall.
35. But according to Sohnius, once professor at Heidelberg, the object of reprobation as well as election is not man simply fallen in Adam and corrupted by sin, but also as called by God, both to faith and repentance, either called and invited through the word or through the works of nature and providence. This can be seen in his tract on eternal predestination.
36. But the Bremen Theologians in their Judicium offered at the Synod of Dordt and the Saumurians in their theses and others who agree with them in their doctrine of universal grace seem to agree in this point. For they think that God, before he decreed to place any distinction between people by election and reprobation, established to provide commonly Christ to be the redeemer for all, and to call and invite all by various steps and ways to the participation in that grace. And then finally, when he saw that all, if they were left to themselves, would be impenitent and unbelieving, decreed to overcome their hardness and obstinacy by his grace, but to harden others, by not granting that same grace to the latter, and permitting them to resist the invitation and calling of God, and not to yield to him.