Louis Le Blanc On Reprobation in the Reformed School (Theses 24-29)
How the permission of sin relates to the decree of reprobation.
24. But whether reprobates are able to be said to have been preordained and destined to sin by the decree of God, it is an open question among the doctors of the Reformed school. To this, Zanchi responds that indeed no one was predestined to commit a sin, insofar as it is a sin, “but nevertheless both elect and reprobate were preordained to sin, even as it is sin, insofar as by it the glory of God ought to be magnified and is magnified.” These words come from his sixth thesis on reprobation, second question, found in the second chapter of the fifth book about the nature of God.
25. But this is said harshly and with some offense to pious ears, and it is simply false that anyone was predestined or preordained by God to sin, as it is sin, no matter what restriction is afterwards added; although both elect and reprobate are predestined that they would be allowed to happen upon and fall into various sins, and that God also had preordained to magnify his own glory from their sins which he himself permitted.
26. Others at this point distinguish between the effective and approbative decree and between the moderating or permissive decree, and indeed they deny that the sins of the reprobate arise from this effective and approbative decree. But they insist to truly and justly attribute those sins to the decree of God which they call moderating and permissive. Therefore, according to them, men are able to be said to be preordained to sin by a permissive decree, but not by God’s effective one. This is the doctrine and distinction of Bucanus in loc. 36. q. 40. to which the teaching of Perkins has an affinity, in his book on predestination, response to the third accusation. But to others (and more rightly), it seems that the harshness of such speaking ought to be avoided.
27. But putting this aside, seeing that many of the Reformed theologians think that the whole decree of reprobation includes no other acts of the divine will than that by which God established certain people to remain in the mass of sin, and finally, on account of their sins, to justly damn them, from their position it follows that the permission of the first sin of man, and, from that, the consequences of original sin, ought not to be attached to reprobation as its effect, but should pertain only to common providence.
28. And it is much more necessary that they assert the same about creation, which in their mind, does not depend upon reprobation, as a cause. But instead, it depends upon a certain decree of common providence which according to our mode of conceiving these things, comes before the decree of reprobation and is presupposed by it.
29. Moreover, the permission of their sins, which follows upon original sin in the reprobate and the negation of the grace which is conferred upon the elect, and finally eternal death, which is repaid for the sins of the reprobate by the just judgment of God, they acknowledge and enumerate as the proper consequent effects of reprobation. This can be seen in Rivet’s theses on reprobation.