SECTION III. APPROPRIATION OF THE BENEFITS OF IN the early stages of the Reformation, there was naturally a tendency to revert to the Augustinian stand-point, and to reduce man's part in the appropriation of salvation to the vanishing point. In no way, as the Reformers conceived, could the foundation of the Romish system of legality, ceremonialism, and dependence upon the merit of works be so effectually swept away as by asserting man's natural helplessness and the omnipotence of grace in his moral recovery. In a part of the domain of Protestantism this primitive position was steadily maintained ; but there were wide reactions from it in various quarters. Among the topics falling under the section, the two principal are the divine predestination, as conditioning the appropriation of salvation, and the doctrine of justification. The question of the factors entering into conversion, or regeneration, may fitly be considered in connection. with the former topic. In addition to these subjects, we have to consider that of assurance and of Christian perfection. I. The Roman Catholic Church was far from being a unit upon the subject of predestination. According to Sarpi, very diverse opinions were expressed at the council of Trent, and, taking the period through, some three or four different types of opinion must be distinguished. By the Jansenist school, or, at least, by some of its representatives, statements were indulged involving the full Augustinian doctrine, that predestination to life is unconditional, that the efficacy of Christ's death was not designed for all, and that there is in strictness no possibility of the salvation of the non-elect. These points are involved with sufficient clearness in such sentences from Quesnel as the following: "All whom God wills to save through Jesus Christ are infallibly saved." "Grace is the operation of the hand of the omnipotent God, which nothing is able to impede or retard." "Grace is nothing else than the will of the omnipotent God commanding and doing what He commands." There were also outside of the Jansenist school some who made no material modification of the Augustinian teaching. A second party taught, indeed, an unconditional predestination of some men to eternal life, but differed from the preceding in maintaining that a sufficient grace to secure salvation is given unto those not thus absolutely chosen. At the same time, however, they made the possibility of the salvation of the non-elect a purely theoretical one, since they taught that this sufficient grace never becomes actually efficacious grace, never brings into the possession of eternal life. Here belongs Pope Adrian VI. Thomassin describes his position as follows: "God does not now give to all the grace which will convert them, but that which is sufficient to convert them if they make their best efforts. He adds, that there is no one who makes always his best efforts, and consequently the grace simply sufficient is in the end always ineffectual, and the efficacious grace is that which is always superabundant." (Mémoire II.) Bellarmin's teaching harmonizes with Adrian's, and embraces the following points: (1.) There is an unconditional election of some to eternal life. "The Scripture teaches that some of the human race have been elected, and that they have been elected to the kingdom of heaven, and elected efficaciously, that they may infallibly attain to the kingdom; and, finally, that they have been elected gratuitously and before all foresight of their works." (2.) "Sufficient aid for salvation, respect being had to time and place, is given mediately or immediately to all." The clause respecting time and place is inserted to denote that there is at least some occasion where this aid is proffered, though it may not be always present. The proposition thus understood, says Bellarmin, is advocated by nearly all Roman Catholic theologians. (3.) The sufficient grace fails in fact of the end for whose attainment it is sufficient. "All have, in consideration of place and time, aid sufficient to enable them to be converted and then to persevere if they will; but in reality no one is converted and no one perseveres except he who has the special gift of repentance and perseverance, which is not given to all, but to those only to whom God has decided that it should be given." Here reference is made to a distinction previously laid down between gratia sufficiens and gratia efficax. (4.) "Reprobation comprises two acts, the one negative and the other positive, inasmuch as the reprobate are opposed to the elect both in the way of contradiction and of contrariety (contradictorie et contrarie). For in the first place God has not the will to save them; and then He has the will to condemn them; and, indeed, as respects the former act, there is no cause on the part of man, as there is none of predestination. But of the latter there is a cause, namely, the foresight of sin." (De Grat. et Lib. Arbit., Lib. I. cap. 11-13; Lib. II. cap. 1-16.) Nicole and Thomassin occupied essentially the same ground. According to a third view, while some are unconditionally elected to eternal life, there is not merely a theoretical possibility that some not thus elected may be saved, but a genuine probability that some of them will be saved. Such was the theory advocated by Catharinus at the council of Trent. As Sarpi represents, he taught that "God, of His goodness, hath elected some few, whom He will save absolutely, for whom He hath prepared most potent, effectual, and infallible means. The rest He desireth for His part to be saved, and, to that end, hath prepared sufficient means for all, leaving it to their choice to accept them and be saved, or to refuse them and be damned. Amongst these are some who receive them and are saved, though they be not of the number of the elect; of which kind there are very many. Others refusing to co-operate with God, who wisheth their salvation, are damned." A fourth view opposed unconditional election, and made foreordination to eternal life dependent upon foresight of grace accepted and improved. Among the Jesuits, Less, Hamel, and the school of Molina, represented this view. As previously noted, a number of sentences from the writings of the first two were censured by the theological faculty of Louvain. The following were among them: "The opinion which says, that those who are saved are not efficaciously elected to glory before the foresight of good works or the application of merit against sin, seems in the highest degree probable. . . . . . The number of the predestinated is not certain from a foreordination which goes before all foreknowledge of works." (Gieseler, Kirchengeschichte.) Less is also quoted by Thomassin as maintaining, "Rightly does Molina say that it depends upon the free will whether grace is efficacious or inefficacious." (Mémoire IV. chap. 86.) Another statement of Molina, carrying the same implication, is as follows: "For men who have not yet reached the dignity of the sons of God, power to become the sons of God is provided, to this extent, that if they strive as far as in them lies, God will be present to them, that they may obtain faith and grace." (Gieseler.) In the principal work of Petavius there are. likewise passages which speak with sufficient distinctness for a conditional election. "There is no place at all in Scripture," he says, "by which Augustine or the disciples of Augustine, prove that men are elected and predestinated to salvation and glory, absolutely and without any condition of merits, as a cause, which has not been explained in another sense by the more ancient fathers, or also by a majority of the later Greek and Latin fathers. So no divine authority compels us to accept that opinion; yea, rather it seems to warn away from it, as will be declared in the following chapter." (De Deo, Lib. X. cap. 1.) In the chapter referred to, after citing the rule of Vincentius, that, in things not clearly revealed in the Scriptures, the general consensus of the fathers should be followed, he says: "If we wish to observe this rule in the matter under consideration, we doubt not but that is the truer opinion, which assigns to each one his eternal lot in accordance with foresight of merits, so that God elects those to salvation whom He sees will persevere in grace and righteousness received." As respects official statements, none were made which distinctly and directly renounced unconditional election, but the moral effect of the papal condemnations of propositions from Baius, Jansenius, and Quesnel was evidently adverse to that doctrine. Some of the condemned propositions were genuinely Augustinian. The council of Trent rendered no definite decision. It says, indeed, that Christ died for all, but advocates of absolute predestination, whether consistently or not, have said as much. However, its doctrine of the will in relation to man's moral recovery, as being opposed to the monergistic operation of grace, had more or less of an adverse bearing toward the doctrine of unconditional predestination. In the fifth chapter of the decree on justification it is said: "They who by sins were alienated from God may be disposed, through His quickening and assisting grace, to convert themselves to their own justification, by freely assenting to and cooperating with that said grace: in such sort that, while God touches the heart of man by the illumination of the Holy Ghost, neither is man himself utterly inactive while he receives that inspiration, forasmuch as he is also able to reject it; yet he is not able by his own free will, without the grace of God, to move himself unto justice in His sight." Among Roman Catholic theologians, who taught an unconditional predestination, various theories were entertained as to the way in which the predestinating decree is accomplished, or divine grace is made infallibly effica |