Baxter:

General Conditional Decree:

1) 101. It is a thing so contrary to the nature of Christianity, and the Spirit of Christ in his Saints, to extenuate Christ’s Merit’s, Purchase, Interest or Honor, or rob him of his due, that doubtless so many sincere Christians would never be guilty of such injurious extenuations, and narrowing of Christ’s successes, but that they cannot reconcile special Grace with universal, and mistakingly judge them inconsistent: Nor durst opprobriously reproach his universal Grace, as they do, by calling it vain, lame, imperfect, a mockery, &c. if the conceit of their defending some truth by it did not quiet and deceive their Consciences. Whereas indeed universal Grace and special, do as perfectly and harmoniously consist, as Nature and Grace do, and as the foundation and the building, and as any generical and specific Natures: And so doth a general Decree, that [All who will believe shall be saved, and that this Promise shall be made to the world] with a special Decree that [Paul shall believe and be saved.]

But on two accounts I pass by all the rest about the extent of Redemption, 1. Because I must give you a special Disputation or Tractate on that subject. 2. Because the most Judicious of English Divines (so far as I can know them by their works) Bishop Davenant has said so much in his two Posthumous Dissertation de Redempt. & Prædestinat. (Published out of the hands of Bishop Usher) as might suffice to reconcile contenders on these two points, were not men slothful in studying them or partial or incapable in judging these matters. Richard Baxter, Catholick Theologie (London:  Printed by Robert White, for Nevill Simmons at the Princess Arms in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1675), 2:53-54.  [Some spelling modernized; some reformatting; marginal comments not include; and underlining mine.]

Conditional Decree:

2) 2. We affirm that God has many Decrees which are conditional in respect of the thing decreed. So Dr. Twisse frequently tells you. He makes one thing a means and a condition of the event of another. And he says that God has conditional Promises and Threatenings; [“If thou confess with thy mouth, and believe in thy heart,” &c. “thou shall be saved.”] And we believe that God’s will made these Promises and Threats, and that they are the true signs of his Will: And that he will fulfil them. And so far he has a conditional Will, and conditional expressions of his Will.

3. But as to the Act of Volition, we believe that his Wills are eternal, and have no proper condition of their existence; because being existent, they are Necessary necessiate existentiæ; e.g. God never had such a Will as this, [If thou repent, I will purpose or will to pardon thee if thou repent, or to make the pardoning conditional promise]; But [If thou repent I will pardon thee, and whether thou repent or not, I will conditionally pardon thee, or make that Covenant which says, I will pardon thee if thou repent], our Acts are the Conditions of God’s Gifts and Acts, but not of his Will, as suspended on those Acts. Richard Baxter, Catholick Theologie (London:  Printed by Robert White, for Nevill Simmons at the Princess Arms in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1675), 2:16-17.  [Some spelling modernized; some reformatting; marginal comments not include; and underlining mine.]

Bergius:

Q. 52. Then let us hear your [the Reformed] proper opinion and explanation of all these points; and First, Whether God will not at all that all men should be saved?
A. God is naturally good and merciful towards all men.¹ But also he is a just and angry God against the sins of men.² Therefore he has indeed no pleasure in himself in the condemnation of any man, but wills that every man turn by repentance and be saved:³ Yet with this proviso, that he will also according to his Justice judge and punish those that will not be converted.⁴

Q. 53. But your men [the Reformed]  teach that by the secret will of his Beneplacitum, he will not at all that all and every man should be saved, though externally after the revealed will, Voluntate signi, he make show of it.
A. They speak with Luther of that will of God which he wills wholly and altogether, so that it must certainly be done, of which it is written: He does whatsoever he will, Psal. 115:3 and 135:6. Isa. 46:10. Which the School-Divines have especially called the will of his Beneplacitum, because it is only fulfilled by, his good pleasure: And of this no man will say, no not the Lutherans, themselves wills that all men necessarily or inability must be saved.

Besides, ours deny not that God wills the salvation of all men thus far he has testified it in his word as the sign of his will, to which also the secret will of his beneplacitum is not contrary, which also some with Damascen called the Antecedent will of God, because herein is considered what God willed in and for himself before our works, according to the will of his goodness and mercy.

Namely First, Voluntate approbante: That for himself he has not delight or pleasure in their destruction but rather in their weal and salvation, Ezek. 18:32, and 33:11, 1 Tim. 2:4, and 2 Pet. 3:9.

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Shedd:

1) Accepted by the law and lawgiver. The primal source of law has no power to abolish penalty any more than to abolish law, but it has full power to substitute penalty. In case of a substitution, however, it must be a strict equivalent, and not a fictitious or nominal one. It would contravene the attribute of justice, instead of satisfying it, should God, for instance, by an arbitrary act of will, substitute the sacrifice of bulls and goats for the penalty due to man; or if he should offset any finite oblation against the infinite demerit of moral evil. The inquiry whether the satisfaction of justice by Christ’s atonement was a strict and literal one, has a practical and not merely theoretical importance. A guilt-smitten conscience is exceedingly timorous, and hence, if there be room for doubting the strict adequacy of the judicial provision that has been made for satisfying the claims of law, a perfect peace, the “peace of God,” is impossible. Hence the doctrine of a plenary satisfaction by an infinite substitute is the only one that ministers to evangelical repose. The dispute upon this point has sometimes, at least, resulted from a confusion of ideas and terms. Strict equivalency has been confounded with identity. The assertion that Christ’s death is a literal equivalent for the punishment due to mankind, has been supposed to be the same as the assertion, that it is identical with it; and a punishment identical with that due to man would involve remorse, and endless duration. But identity of punishment is ruled out by the principle of substitution or vicariousness, a principle that is conceded by all who hold the doctrine of atonement. The penalty endured by Christ, therefore, must be a substituted, and not an identical one. And the only question that remains is, whether that which is to be substituted shall be of a strictly equal value with that, the place of which it takes, or whether it may be of an inferior value, and it must be one or the other. When a loan of one hundred dollars in silver is repaid by one hundred dollars in gold, there is a substitution of one metal for another. It is not an identical payment; for this would require the return of the very identical hundred pieces of silver, the ipsissima pecunia, that had been loaned. But it is a strictly and literally equivalent payment. All claims arc cancelled by it. In like manner, when the suffering and death of God incarnate is substituted for that of the creature, the satisfaction rendered to law is strictly plenary, though not identical with that which is exacted from the transgressor. It contains the clement of infinitude, which is the clement of value in the case, with even greater precision than the satisfaction of the creature does; because it is the suffering of a strictly infinite Person in a finite time, while the latter is only the suffering of a finite person in an endless but not strictly infinite time. A strictly infinite duration would be without beginning, as well as without end. William G.T. Shedd, Discourses and Essays, (Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1862), 307-308.  [Underlining mine.]

2) In saying that the suffering substituted for that of the actual criminal must be of equal value, it is not said that it must be identical suffering. A substituted penalty cannot be an identical penalty, because identical means the same in every respect. Identity is inconsistent with any exchange whatever. To speak of substituting an identical penalty is a contradiction in terms. The identical punishment required by the moral law is personal punishment, involving personal remorse; and remorse can be experienced only by the actual criminal. If, in commercial law, a substituted payment could be prevented, a pecuniary debtor would be compelled to make an identical payment. In this case, he must pay in person and wholly from his own resources. Furthermore, he could not pay silver for gold, but gold for gold; and not only this, but he must pay back exactly the same pieces of gold, the ipsissima pecunia, which he had received. Identical penalty implies sameness without a difference in any particular. Not only is the quantity the same, but the quality is the same. But substituted penalty implies sameness with a difference in some particular. And in the case before us, that of Christ’s satisfaction, the difference is in the quality: the quantity being unchanged. The vicarious suffering of Christ is of equal value with that of all mankind, but is not the same in kind.

Equivalency, not identity, is the characteristic, therefore, of vicarious penalty. The exchange, implied in the term substitution, is of quality not of quantity. One kind of judicial suffering; that is, suffering endured for the purpose of satisfying justice; is substituted for another kind. Christ’s sufferings were of a different nature or quality from those of a lost man. But there was no difference in quantity, or value. A less degree of suffering was not exchanged for a greater degree. The sufferings of the mediator were equal in amount and worth to those whose place they took. Vicarious penalty then is the substitution of an equal quantity, but a different quality of suffering. The mediator suffers differently from the lost world of sinners, but he suffers equally.

Equivalency satisfies justice as completely as identity. One hundred dollars in gold extinguishes a debt of one hundred dollars as completely as does one hundred dollars in silver. If the sufferings of the mediator between God and man are of equal value with those of the world of mankind, they are as complete a satisfaction of justice as the eternal death of mankind would be, although they do not, in their nature or quality, involve any of that sense of personal wickedness and remorse of conscience which enters into the punishment of a lost man. They get their value from the nature of the God-man, and it is the value of what is substituted which justice looks at.

The following extract from Samuel Hopkins (System of Doctrine, Works, I. 321) enforces this truth. “The mediator did not suffer precisely the same kind of pain, in all respects, which the sinner suffers when the curse is executed on him. He did not suffer that particular kind of pain which is the necessary attendant or natural consequence of being a sinner, and which none but the sinner can suffer. But this is only a circumstance of the punishment of sin, and not of the essence of it. The whole penalty of the law may be suffered, and the evil may be as much and as great, without suffering that particular sort of pain. Therefore, Christ, though without sin, might suffer the whole penalty; that is, as much and as great evil as the law denounces against transgression.” William G.T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1971),, 2:454-456. [Underlining mine.]

Shedd:

1) 2. Revision is objectionable, because the Confession is a correct statement of ” the system of doctrine contained in the Scriptures.” The system meant in this phrase is universally known as the Calvinistic; not as resting upon the authority of Calvin, but as a convenient designation of that interpretation of Scripture which is common to Augustine, Calvin, the Reformed theologians, and the Westminster divines. The term “evangelical” does not define it, because there are several evangelical systems, but only one Calvinistic. The systems of Arminius, of Wesley, and of the Later-Lutherans, as well as that of Calvin, are alike evangelical, in distinction from anti-evangelical systems like Socinianism and Deism. They are all alike derived from the Bible, and contain the doctrines of the trinity, the incarnation, the apostasy, and the redemption But the Calvinistic interpretation of Scripture, which is the one formulated in the Westminster Standards, differs from these other “evangelical” systems, in teaching unconditional election and preterition, instead of conditional; limited redemption (not atonement) instead of unlimited; regeneration wholly by the Holy Spirit instead of partly; the total inability of the sinner instead of partial. The Calvinistic system, as thus discriminated from the other “evangelical” systems, has been adopted by American Presbyterians for two centuries. Neither Old Lights, nor New Lights; neither Old School, nor New School; have demanded that these tenets which distinguish Calvinism from Arminianism should be eliminated from the creed. They were accepted with equal sincerity by both branches of the Church in the reunion of 1870, and there is no reason for altering the formulas that were satisfactory then, unless the belief of the Church has altered in regard to these distinctive points of Calvinism. William G.T. Shedd, Calvinism: Pure and Mixed, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893), 14-15. See also: William G.T. Shedd, The Proposed Revision of the Westminster Standards, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890), 15.  [Underlining mine.]

2) The question, What is Calvinism? is mainly one of reasoning and discrimination. It relates to a matter of fact. This question will answer itself in the discussion now going on; for this theological system possesses as distinctive features as the Copernican astronomy, and it will be as impossible to confuse and unsettle the religious world respecting the former, as it would be to confuse and unsettle the scientific world respecting the latter. The essential parts of this system are the well-known five points of Calvinism, namely, total depravity in distinction from partial; unconditional election in distinction from conditional; irresistible regenerating grace in distinction from resistible; limited redemption (not atonement) in distinction from universal; the certain perseverance of the regenerate in distinction from their possible apostasy. No one of these points can be rejected without impairing the integrity of Calvinism, any more than one of the points of the mariners’ compass can be omitted and the scheme be complete; any more than one of the contrary five points of Arminianism can be deleted and the theory remain unaltered. William G.T. Shedd, Calvinism: Pure and Mixed, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893), 153-154.  [Underlining mine.]

3) Since redemption implies the application of Christ’s atonement, universal or unlimited redemption cannot logically be affirmed by any who hold that faith is wholly the gift of God, and that saving grace is bestowed solely by election. The use of the term “redemption,”  consequently, is attended with less ambiguity than that of “atonement,” and it is the term most commonly employed in controversial theology. Atonement is unlimited, and redemption is limited. This statement includes all the Scripture texts: those which assert that Christ died for all men, and those which assert that he died for his people. He who asserts unlimited atonement, and limited redemption, cannot well be misconceived. He is understood to hold that the sacrifice of Christ is unlimited in its value, sufficiency, and publication, but limited in its effectual application. William G.T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1971), 2:470.  [Underlining mine.]

[Note: For more on Shedd on unlimited atonement, go here.]