Hodge:

There is still another ground on which it is urged that Augustinians cannot consistently preach the gospel to every creature. Augustinians teach, it is urged, that the work of Christ is a satisfaction to divine justice. From this it follows that justice cannot condemn those for whose sins it has been satisfied. It cannot demand that satisfaction twice, first from the substitute and then from the sinner himself. This would be manifestly unjust, far worse than demanding no punishment at all. From this it is inferred that the satisfaction or righteousness of Christ, if the ground on which a sinner may be forgiven, is the ground on which he must be forgiven. It is not the ground on which he may be forgiven, unless it is the ground on which he must be forgiven. If the atonement be limited in design it must be limited in its nature, and if limited in its nature it must be limited in its offer.

This objection again arises from confounding a pecuniary and a judicial satisfaction between which Augustinians are so careful to discriminate. This distinction has already been presented on a previous page. There is no grace in accepting a pecuniary satisfaction. It cannot be refused. It ipso facto liberates. The moment the debt is paid the debtor is free; and that without any condition. Nothing of this is true in the case of judicial satisfaction. If a substitute be provided and accepted it is a matter of grace. His satisfaction does not ipso facto liberate. It may accrue to the benefit of those for whom it is made at once or at a remote period; completely or gradually; on conditions or unconditionally; or it may never benefit them at all unless the condition on which its application is suspended be performed. These facts are universally admitted by those who hold that the work of Christ was a true and perfect satisfaction to divine justice. The application of its benefits is determined by the covenant between the Father and the Son. Those for whom it was specially rendered are not justified from eternity; they are not born in a justified state; they are by nature, or birth, the children of wrath even as others. To be the children of wrath is to be justly exposed to divine wrath. They remain in this state of exposure until they believe, and should they die (unless in infancy) before they believe they would inevitably perish notwithstanding the satisfaction made for their sins. It is the stipulations of the covenant which forbid such a result. Such being the nature of the judicial satisfaction rendered by Christ to the law, under which all men are placed, it may be sincerely offered to all men with the assurance that if they believe it shall accrue to their salvation. His work being specially designed for the salvation of his own people, renders, through the conditions of the covenant, that event certain; but this is perfectly consistent with its being made the ground of the general offer of the gospel. Lutherans and Reformed agree entirely, as before stated, in their views of the nature of the satisfaction of Christ, and consequently, so far as that point is concerned, there is the same foundation for the general offer of the gospel according to either scheme. What the Reformed or Augustinians hold about election does not affect the nature of the atonement. That remains the same whether designed for the elect or for all mankind. It does not derive its nature from the secret purpose of God as to its application.

C. Hodge, Systematic Theology, 2:557-8.

Bullinger:

1) For why, I pray you, do we baptize our infants? Is it because they believe with their heart and confess with their mouth? I think not. Do we not therefore baptize them, because God hath commanded them to be brought to unto him? because he hath promised, that he will be our God, and the God of our seed after us? to be short, because we believe that God, of his mere grace and mercy, in the blood of Jesus Christ, hath cleansed and adopted them, and appointed them to be heirs of eternal life? We therefore, baptizing infants for these causes, do abundantly testify that there is not first given unto them in baptism, but that there is sealed and confirmed which they had before. Decades, 5th Decade, Sermon 7,  vol 2, p, 312-313.

2) Again we defend and maintain that the same infants out to be baptized, if it be possible, though the right of the covenant they belong to the body of Christ and are sanctified by the blood of Christ. Decades, 5th Decade, Sermon 8,  vol 2, p, 376.

3) But the catholic truth, which is delivered unto us n the holy scriptures, doth pronounce, that all they are to be baptized whom God acknowledges for his people, and giveth sentence that they are partakers of purification or sanctification or remission of sins. For in all this treatise concerning the sacraments I have already and do now shew, that baptism is a badge or cognisance of the people of God, and an assured token of our purification by Christ. Therefore since the young babes and infants of the faithful are in the number or reckoning of God’s people, and partakers of the promise touching the purification through Christ; it follows of necessity, that they are as well to be baptized, as they that be of perfect age which profess the Christian faith. Decades, 5th Decade, Sermon 8,  vol 2, p, 383.

4) The power of Christ is ever effectual throughly [thoroughly] to cleanse and wash away all the sins of them that be his. How often therefore soever we have sinned in our life-time, let us cal into our remembrance the mystery of holy baptism; wherewith for the wile course of our life we are washed, that we might know, and not doubt that our sins are forgiven as of the same God and our Lord, yea, and by the Blood of Christ, into whom by baptism once we are graffed, that he might always work salvation in us, even till we be received out of misery into glory. Decades, 5th Decade, Sermon 8,  vol 2, p, 398.

BULLINGER:

Secondary Sources, Classic:

1) Kimedoncius:

Bullinger, Gualther, Musculus and others are cited, and the confessions of one or two Churches in Helvetia, out of whom and the like kind of sayings are diligently drawn: to wit, that “Christ, as much as is in him is a Saviour of all, and came to save all [Bulling. Ser. 2. de Nativit. Chri.]: that he pleased God by the sacrifice of all the sins of all times [The same on I. John. 1.] : that his passion ought to satisfy for the sins of all men, and that the whole world is quickened by the same [Catech. minore Eccl. Tigur.]: that the grace of remission of sins is appointed for all mortal men [Musc. in locis de remiss. p.q.2],” and such like.

Unto these, I answer, that howsoever, and in what sense soever those writers uttered these and like kind of speeches, it is certain that they were not of the adversaries opinion, that effectually and in very deed all, without exception of anyone, and without any difference of believers and unbelievers, are received into grace, and made partakers of remission of sins, righteousness and salvation in Christ. Of which thing we may not doubt at all in the Miscellanies of D. Jerome Zanchi of godly memory, there is the judgement extant of the church and school of Tigur, touching certain Theses of the said Zanchi, which at that time were hatefully pursued of certain that moved the same mischief that Huber does.  Jacob Kimedoncius, The Redemption of Mankind: Three Books: Wherein the Controversy of the Universality of the Redemption and Grace by Christ, and his Death for All Men, is Largely Handled, trans., by Hugh Ince, (London: Imprinted by Felix Kingston, 1598), 143-144.

2) Davenant:

So likewise Bullinger, on Rev. v. Serm. 28, The Lord died for all: but all are not partakers of this redemption, through their own fault. Otherwise the Lord excludes no one but him who excludes himself hy his own unbelieving and faithlessness. John Davenant, Dissertation on the Death of Christ, 337-338.

3) Augustine Marlorate:

For more material from Bullinger, see the Augustine Marlorate file.

Secondary Sources, Modern:

1) Clear statements of nonspeculative hypothetical universalism can be found (as Davenant recognized) in Heinrich Bullinger’s Decades and commentary on the Apocalypse, in Wolfgang Musculus’ Loci communes, in Ursinus’ catechetical lectures, and in Zanchi’s Tractatus de praedestinatione sanctorum, among other places. In addition, the Canons of Dort, in affirming the standard distinction of a sufficiency of Christ’s death for all and its efficiency for the elect, actually refrain from canonizing either the early form of hypothetical universalism or the assumption that Christ’s sufficiency serves only to leave the nonelect without excuse. Although Moore can cite statements from the York conference that Dort “either apertly or covertly denied the universality of man’s redemption” (156), it remains that various of the signatories of the Canons were hypothetical universalists–not only the English delegation (Carleton, Davenant, Ward, Goad, and Hall) but also the [sic] some of the delegates from Bremen and Nassau (Martinius, Crocius, and Alsted)–that Carleton and the other delegates continued to affirm the doctrinal points of Dort while distancing themselves from the church discipline of the Belgic Confession, and that in the course of seventeenth-century debate even the Amyraldians were able to argue that their teaching did not run contrary to the Canons. In other words, the nonspeculative, non-Amyraldian form of hypothetical universalism was new in neither the decades after Dort nor a “softening” of the tradition: The views of Davenant, Ussher, and Preston followed out a resident trajectory long recognized as orthodox among the Reformed.  “English Hypothetical Universalism: John Preston and the Softening of Reformed Theology,” by Jonathan D. Moore. Reviewed by Richard A Muller, Calvin Theological Journal, 43 (2008), 149-150.

2) “The Lord made to meet on him, as an expiatory sacrifice, not one or another or most sins of one or other man, but all the iniquities of all of us. Therefore I say, the sins of all men of the world of all ages have been expiated by his death.”  Bullinger, Isaiah, 266b, sermon 151; cited by G. Michael Thomas, The Extent of the Atonement: A dilemma for Reformed Theology from Calvin to the Consensus, 1536- 1675 (Carlisle, Cumbria: Paternoster, 1997), 75.

C.f., “The sins of every human in the world of every age are atoned for through Christ, by his death, and we have in him the most complete remission of every sin and eternal life.”  Bullinger, Isaias, fol. 266b, cited in J. Wayne Baker, “Heinrich Bullinger, the Covenant, and the Reformed Tradition in Retrospect,” in The Sixteenth Century Journal 29  (1998): 373.

3) The Storehouse. Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5.

4) New Bullinger Blog of interest.

Primary Sources:

Confessional statements:

Second Helvetic Confession:

1) “Jesus Christ Is the Only Savior of the World,” and the True Awaited Messiah. For we teach and believe that Jesus Christ our Lord is the unique and eternal Savior of the human race, and thus of the whole world, in whom by faith are saved all who before the law, under the law, and under the Gospel were saved, and however many will be saved at the end of the world. For the Lord himself says in the Gospel: He who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber… I am the door of the sheep (John 10:1 and 7). And also in another place in the same Gospel he says: Abraham saw my day and was glad (ch. 8:56). The apostle Peter also says: There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. We therefore believe that we will be saved through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, as our fathers were (Acts 4:12; 10:43; 15:11). For Paul also says: All our fathers ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ (I Cor. 10:3 f.). And thus we read that John says: Christ was the Lamb which was slain from the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8), and John the Baptist testified that Christ is that Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Wherefore, we quite openly profess and preach that Jesus Christ is the sole Redeemer and Savior of the world, the King and High Priest, the true and awaited Messiah, that holy and blessed one whom all the types of the law and predictions of the prophets prefigured and promised; and that God appointed him beforehand and sent him to us, so that we are not now to look for any other. Now there only remains for all of us to give all glory to Christ, believe in him, rest in him alone, despising and rejecting all other aids in life. For however many seek salvation in any other than in Christ alone, have fallen from the grace of God and have rendered Christ null and void for themselves (Gal. 5:4). Bullinger, The Second Helvetic Confession – Chapter XI Of Jesus Christ, True God and Man, the Only Savior of the World

2) The Teaching of the Gospel Is Not New, but Most Ancient Doctrine. And although the teaching of the Gospel, compared with the teaching of the Pharisees concerning the law, seemed to be a new doctrine when first preached by Christ (which Jeremiah also prophesied concerning the New Testament), yet actually it not only was and still is an old doctrine (even if today it is called new by the Papists when compared with the teaching now received among them), but is the most ancient of all in the world. For God predestinated from eternity to save the world through Christ, and he has disclosed to the world through the Gospel this his predestination and eternal counsel (II Tim. 2:9f.). Hence it is evident that the religion and teaching of the Gospel among all who ever were, are and will be, is the most ancient of all. Wherefore we assert that all who say that the religion and teaching of the Gospel is a faith which has recently arisen, being scarcely thirty years old, err disgracefully and speak shamefully of the eternal counsel of God. To them applies the saying of Isaiah the prophet: Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! (Isa. 5:20). Bullinger, The Second Helvetic Confession – Chapter XIII Of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, of the Promises, and of the Spirit and Letter.

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a’ Brakel:

The Love of God Love is an essential attribute of God by which the Lord delights Himself in that which is good, it being well–pleasing to Him, and uniting Himself to it consistent with the nature of the object of His love. The love of God by definition is the loving God Himself, for which reason John states that “God is love” (1 John 4:s). When we view the love of God relative to its objects, however, several distinctions need to be made. We call this love natural when it refers to the manner in which God delights in Himself as the supreme manifestation of goodness. “For the Father loveth the Son” (John 5:20). We call this love volitional when it refers to the manner in which God delights in His creatures. And thus this love is either the love of benevolence or the love of His delight. The love of His benevolence is either general as it relates to the manner in which God delights in, desires to bless, maintains, and governs all His creatures by virtue of the fact that they are His creatures (Psa. 145:9), or it is special. This special love refers to God’s eternal designation of the elect to be the objects of His special love and benevolence. This finds expression in the following texts, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16); “As Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it” (Eph. 5:25). The love of God’s delight has the elect as its object as they are viewed in Christ, being clothed with His satisfaction and holiness perfect and complete in Him (Col. 2:lO); “According as he hath chosen us in Him… according to the good pleasure of His will… wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:4-6).

This also applies to the believer in his present state, having the principle of holiness within him. “For the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved Me, and have believed that I came out from God” (John 16:27). This love of benevolence precedes all good works of man, whereas the love of God’s delight concerns itself with men who presently either are partakers of or perform that which is good.

a’ Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, 1:123-124.