Louis Le Blanc On Reprobation in the Reformed School (Theses 12-16)
In what reprobation chiefly consists? The decree of preterition or damnation?
12. But if it is asked in which of those two preordinations does reprobation chiefly consist, the views of the doctors seem to vary at this point. And indeed, Polyander seems especially to position reprobation in this latter preordination. For when he defines reprobation, he expressly mentions only it, thesis 18. “Reprobation,” he says, “is the predestination of certain people, fallen in their sins, and bound in their unrighteousness through various means and levels of rejecting the truth of God or the preaching of the gospel to themselves to the destruction of eternal death.”
13. Even the older doctors of the Reformed school seemed to chiefly place the emphasis [rationem] of reprobation in the predestination of certain men on the destruction and eternal death, as is clear from their definitions. But the Synod of Dordt on reprobation especially treats of the decree of denying certain people grace by which their hearts might be softened and turned to faith and repentance. This is seen in their chapter on predestination, art. 6. “That some receive the gift of faith from God, and others do not receive it proceeds from God's eternal decree, according to which decree, he graciously softens the hearts of the elect, however obstinate, and inclines them to believe, while he leaves the non-elect in his just judgment to their own wickedness and obduracy. And herein is especially displayed the profound, and merciful, and at the same time the righteous discrimination between men, equally involved in ruin; or that decree of election and reprobation, revealed in the Word of God.”
14. Similarly, Rivet in his disputation about reprobation, in his disputation on predestination, which [citation], properly grounds reprobation in that negative act, by which God eternally did not choose, but passed over certain people. For these are his words in thesis 8. “These things being premised, we say that to that negative act, namely preterition, which is properly reprobation, insofar as it is the other side of election, there is need of no cause, which ought to be antecedent,” for God to move one to be reprobated.
15. In fact, the theologians of Great Britain in their judicium which they gave at the Synod of Dordt place the whole reason [rationem] of reprobation in that negative act by which God established not to grant to certain people that grace by which the elect would be effectively led to faith and salvation. For this is how they speak in their second chapter of their judicium on predestination, the first orthodox thesis: “Reprobation properly called, or not-electing, is the eternal decree of God, by which out of his most free will he has decreed, not so far to take pity of some persons fallen in Adam, as to rescue them effectually, through Christ, out of the state of misery, and without fail to bring them to bliss.” Afterwards they add, by their judicium, that reprobation insofar as it is opposite to election, does not imply or denote any other proper action except the negation of that same glory and of that same grace, which God prepared in election for his own sons.
16. But the Professors at Saumur seem to restrict reprobation to a sole negation of saving grace. For they openly distinguish the decree of reprobation from the decree of damnation. And they define temporal reprobation by the exclusion from saving grace, of which the eternal decree is reprobation—about which we now investigate. Thus, in their first disputation about election and reprobation, thesis 36 has: “Damnation itself is one thing, reprobation another; and the decree of damnation is likewise one thing, and the decree of reprobation another, and the cause of both decrees. Damnation is the most-just infliction itself for the justly deserved punishment. Reprobation is the exclusion, or a denial of the saving grace by which a person believes and is truly led to penitence.” This is consistent with what Paul Testard teaches in his Synopsis of doctrine about nature and grace, thesis 294. “Reprobation,” he says, “is a decree of hardening, that is, of surrendering to the reprobate mind, according to a just judgment by withholding the grace of effectual calling. But less properly, with a wider meaning, besides that decree, there is a decree to condemn and afflict with punishments, both temporal ones with a malediction, and eternal ones.”