Thesis 1 continued: John 3:16 does not restrict the death to the elect; Testimonies 2–3
I know that some learned and godly theologians take “the world” here for the world, or university, of the elect, and they lean on this argument: that the Son of God is said to be given so that everyone who believes in him should not perish; yet only the elect are those who so believe in Christ that they do not perish but obtain eternal life. I answer that nothing more can be inferred from this than that the death of Christ is in the event saving to the elect alone, and is in fact applied through intervening faith. It cannot be gathered that it was not a remedy applicable to others, and to be applied, if they had believed, by God’s ordination.
Let us illustrate the matter by a similitude. Suppose that in some city each and every person is laboring under an epidemic and deadly disease, and that the king sends to them a most skilled physician furnished with a most efficacious medicine, and publicly proclaims that all shall be cured who are willing to use this medicine. Without doubt we could truly say of this king: So he loved this city that he sent his most skilled physician to it, that all who were willing to use his labor and medicine should not perish but recover their former health. If anyone should reply that this physician was sent only to those who use his labor, and that by the king’s ordinance his medicine was applicable only to those who were willing to drink it, that man both diminishes the king’s beneficence and says what is openly false. For the physician was sent to all, with no condition presupposed on the side of the one sent or of the sick; he was also furnished with a saving medicine applicable promiscuously to all. Willingness to admit the physician and to drink the medicine does not belong to the destination of the physician or of the medicine, but to the undoubted perception of health.
The ancient Fathers seem to have delighted greatly in this similitude. Prosper looks to it when, answering Vincent’s objection that on Augustine’s view our Lord Jesus Christ did not suffer for the salvation and redemption of all human beings, he replies that against the wound of original sin, by which the nature of all human beings was mortified, the remedy is the death of the Son of God. And a little later: This cup of immortality has indeed in itself what would profit all; but if it is not drunk, it does not heal. Our faith is therefore required not so that God may be said to have given or destined his Son to us as a remedy, but so that the Son given and destined may be received by us unto the obtaining of eternal life.
The second testimony is drawn from two places joined and compared with each other. The former is (John 3:17-18): God did not send his Son to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned; but whoever does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. To these words let us add also (John 12:47-48): If anyone hears my words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. Whoever rejects me has one who judges him; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. From these we have that the Son of God was sent by the Father to bring a universal remedy applicable to the whole world. Nor can these words be restricted to the world of the elect. First, because this world, to save which Christ was sent, is divided into believers and unbelievers; but the world of the elect consists of believers alone, or at least of those who will believe in their time. Second, because some of those to save whom Christ is here affirmed to have been sent are to be condemned; yet none of the elect will be damned. Third, because those who are here pronounced to be damned are said to undergo damnation because they did not believe in the only-begotten Son of God, or because they rejected him. By these forms of speech it is sufficiently clearly intimated that he was offered to them by God and sent to save them. But how, or in what sense, are we rightly to understand that Christ was sent to save those who perish by their own fault — that is, by their own unbelief? In no other sense than that expressed in our thesis: namely, that the death of Christ was constituted by God as a universal cause of salvation, and is applicable to any human being under the condition of faith — a condition which those persons by their voluntary malice have despised. Calvin understood these words no otherwise; on (John 3) he noted that the name “world” is repeated again and again, lest anyone think himself altogether shut out, provided he holds the way of faith. And on (John 12:47) he observed that, so that all might have more courage toward repentance, salvation is here offered promiscuously to all. It is therefore clear from these places that the death of Christ is proposed and considered as a remedy applicable to all unto salvation by God’s ordination, even if it is rejected by unbelievers.
We will bring forward a third testimony from (Acts 13:38) and following: Be it known to you, men and brethren, that through this man remission of sins is announced to you; and from all things from which you could not be absolved by the law of Moses, by him everyone who believes is absolved. See, you despisers, and wonder, etc. Then in verse 46: Since you thrust away the word of God and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles. From these words it is plain that by God’s own ordination Christ and the death of Christ are proposed and offered promiscuously to human beings as a remedy applicable to each and every person unto the obtaining of remission and eternal life. Second, it is also clear that by the will and ordination of God this remedy was applicable not only to those to whom it is in fact so applied through faith, but even to the despisers themselves, who thrust away Christ and eternal life by their unbelief. Finally, verse 48 also makes plain that faith itself — by whose intervention what is by God’s decree applicable to all is in fact applied to some — is not found in unbelievers by their own fault, but arises in believers by the special benefit of a merciful God. And here at last the secret of election puts itself forth — from whose untimely and too lofty speculation we ought not to overwhelm that philanthropy of God by which he ordained and gave a remedy applicable to each and every sinner unto salvation, a remedy that will indeed profit those alone, and all, who have believed.
Latin
Scio nonnullos doctos et pios Theologos per mundum hic intelligere mundum sive universitatem electorum, atque nituntur hoc argumento, quod Filius Dei datus dicitur, ut omnis qui credit in eum non pereat: Soli autem electi sunt qui ita in Christum credunt ut non pereant sed vitam aeternam consequantur. Sed respondeo, nihil aliud hinc inferri posse quam mortem Christi solis electis in eventu esse salutiferam, et ipso facto per fidem intervenientem applicatam: non autem fuisse remedium aliis applicabile, et, si credidissent, ex Dei ordinatione applicandum, colligi non potest. Fac similitudine rem illustrabimus. Fac in urbe aliqua omnes et singulos morbo aliquo epidemico et mortifero laborare: Regem autem ad illos mittere medicum peritissimum pharmaco efficacissimo instructum, atque publice edicere omnes curandos qui hoc pharmaco uti voluerint. Proculdubio de hoc Rege vere dicere possemus, Sic dilexit hanc urbem, ut medicum suum peritissimum ad eam mitteret, ut omnes qui ejus opera et pharmaco uti voluerint, non pereant, sed pristinam valetudinem recuperent. Quod si quis excipiat, hunc medicum missum fuisse solummodo ad eos qui ejus opera utuntur, et pharmacum ejus ex ordinatione Regis fuisse tantum applicabile illis qui illud bibere voluerunt, nae ille et Regis beneficentiam extenuat, et aperte falsum dicit. Nam missus est ad omnes, nulla conditione ex parte missi aut aegrotum prerequisita: instructus etiam fuit pharmaco salutifero omnibus promiscue applicabili: Velle autem medicum admittere et pharmacum ebibere, non ad destinationem medici aut pharmaci spectat, sed ad indubitam sanitatis perceptionem. Antiqui Patres valde videntur hac similitudine delectati. Prosper ad illam respicit, quando Vincentio objicienti, Quod ex sententia Augustini Dominus noster Jesus Christus non pro omnium hominum salute et redemtione sit passus, respondet, Contra vulnus originalis peccati, quo omnium hominum mortificata est natura, remedium esse mortem Filii Dei. Et paulo post, Poculum hoc immortalitatis habet quidem in se ut omnibus prosit; sed si non bibitur, non medetur. Fides igitur nostra requiritur, non ut Deus dicatur dedisse aut destinasse nobis Filium suum in remedium, sed ut datus et destinatus percipiatur a nobis ad consecutionem vitae aeternae. Secundum testimonium petitur ex duobus locis conjunctis et inter se collatis. Prior habetur Johan. iii. 17, 18: Non misit Deus Filium suum ut mundum judicet, sed ut mundus per eum servetur. Qui credit in eum, non condemnatur: qui vero non credit, jam condemnatus est, quia non credidit in nomen unigeniti Filii Dei. Hisce verbis addamus et illa Johann. xii. 47, 48: Si quis audierit verba mea, neque crediderit, ego non judico eum: non enim veni ut judicem mundum, sed ut servem mundum. Qui rejicit me, habet qui ipsum judicet; Sermo quem locutus sum ille judicabit eum in novissimo die. Ex hisce habemus Filium Dei a Patre missum, ut apportaret remedium universale toti mundo applicabile: Neque possunt haec verba ad mundum electorum restringi. Primo, quia hic mundus, ad quem servandum Christus missus est, dividitur in credentes et non-credentes: At mundus electorum ex solis credentibus, aut saltem suo tempore credituris, consistit. Secundo, quia condemnandi sunt quidam ex iis ad quos servandos Christus hisce in locis missus affirmatur: At nemo electorum damnabitur. Tertio, quia illi ipsi qui damnandi hoc in loco pronunciantur, damnationem subituri dicuntur ob hoc, quia non crediderunt in unigenitum Dei Filium, vel, quia rejecerunt eum. Quibus loquendi formulis fuisse iis a Deo oblatum et ad eos salvandos missum satis perspicue innuitur. Sed quomodo aut quo sensu recte intelligamus Christum missum ad eos servandos qui suo vitio, hoc est, sua incredulitate, pereunt? Non alio quam in thesi nostra expresso; nimirum, quod mors Christi universalis causa salutis a Deo constituta sit, et cuilibet homini applicabilis sub conditione fidei; quam conditionem isti voluntaria sua malitia sunt aspernati. Non aliter Calvinus haec verba intellexit; qui in Johann. iii. notavit, Mundi nomen iterum iterumque repeti, ne quis omnino arceri se putet, modo fidei viam teneat. Atque in Johann. xii. 47. observavit, Quo plus animi omnes haberent ad resipiscentiam, salutem hic promiscue omnibus offerri. Liquit igitur ex hisce locis Christi mortem proponi et considerari ut remedium ex Dei ordinatione omnibus applicabile ad salutem, etiamsi ab incredulis rejiciatur. Tertium testimonium proferemus ex Actor. xiii. 38, etc. Notum sit vobis, viri fratres, annunciari vobis remissionem peccatorum per Jesum Christum; et ab omnibus a quibus per legem Mosis absolvi non potuistis, per hunc quemvis qui credat absolvi. Videte, contemtores, et admiramini, etc. Dein versu 46: Postquam repellitis sermonem Dei, et indignos vos ipsos decernitis vita aeterna, ecce convertimur ad gentes. Ex quibus verbis manifestum est, Dei ipsius ordinatione Christum Christique mortem promiscue hominibus proponi et offerri, ut remedium omnibus et singulis applicabile ad consecutionem remissionis et vitae aeternae. Secundo, et illud perspicuum est, ex voluntate et ordinatione Dei hoc remedium fuisse applicabile, non modo illis quibus actu sic applicatum per fidem, sed ipsis contemtoribus, qui repulerunt Christum et vitam aeternam per suam infidelitatem. Denique, et hoc patet vers. 48: ipsam fidem, cujus interventu fit actu applicatum quibusdam quod est Dei decreto applicabile omnibus, ipsorum vitio non reperiri in incredulis, Dei autem miserentis speciali beneficio exoriri in credentibus. Atque hic demum se exserit arcanum electionis, ex cujus intempestiva et nimis alta speculatione non debemus illam philanthropian Dei obruere, ex qua ordinavit et dedit remedium peccatoribus omnibus et singulis applicabile ad salutem, profuturum utique illis solis et omnibus qui crediderint.
About this text
New English, free to read. Open any section below.
English follows locked 1650 Cambridge Latin of De morte Christi Cap. 1-6 opening (origin + Thesis 1 + Cap. 2 Rat. 1-ultima + Cap. 3 Satisfit through Obj. 17 + Cap. 4 Thesis 2 tip through Mem. 1 close + Cap. 4 Mem. 2 through Mem. 3 tip + Cap. 4 Mem. 3 possible-faith through Thesis 2 close + Cap. 5 Thesis 3 tip through Mem. 2 Scripture close + Cap. 5 Mem. 2 Rat. 1-4 + Cap. 5 Mem. 2 Fathers tip + Cap. 5 Mem. 2 Huberiana objections tip through Obj. 3 Solut close + Cap. 5 Mem. 2 elect-from-eternity objections tip through Obj. 3 Solut close + Cap. 5 Mem. 2 Scripture elect objections tip through Cap. 5 thesis close + Cap. 6 opening tip through Arg. 1 close before Arg. 2), reconstructed from the Internet Archive PDF (pdftotext + tesseract) of the Roger Daniel folio with DjVu OCR check. The 1683 reprint was not used as copy-text. No modern English was copied.
Catalogue & scope
Partial through De praedestinatione Cap. 1 subject tip. Cap. 1 mid-Thesis+ remain.
Witnesses
- Copy-text Locked Latin, De morte Christi Cap. 1-5 densify through Cap. 5 Mem. 2 Fathers tip (Daniel 1650) (Latin)
- Print Facsimile Internet Archive PDF of the 1650 Cambridge folio (Latin)
- Checked print Internet Archive DjVu OCR of the 1650 Cambridge folio (Latin)
This is an AI-assisted study translation. Source fidelity and completeness have not been independently certified. Open Latin on each section (or the Latin source witness link) for the source text. This is not a complete critical edition.