Archive for August 14th, 2014
The Colloquy of Thorn (1645)
1. Common Confession of the Doctrine of the Reformed Church in the Kingdom of Poland, and in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Respective Provinces of the Kingdom, For the Clarification of
Disputed Points at the Colloquy at Thorn, in 1645,
Presented on September 1.
1) From sin and death, there is no salvation or justification by the power of nature or through the righteousness of the law, but only through the grace of God in Christ, who redeemed us from wrath and the curse who were dead in sins through that only sacrifice of His death and through the merit of His perfect obedience in which He worked sufficiently for our, and not only for our, but also for the sins of the entire world. . . .
5) We are falsely accused, however, as if we deny that the death and merit of Christ suffices for all or as if we diminish His power. For we teach much the same as that which the Council of Trent taught in its sixth session, in the third chapter, namely: “although Christ died for all yet not all enjoy the benefit of His death; rather only they to whom the merit of His suffering is imparted:” We profess also that the cause or blame for this, whereby it is not imparted to all, lies in men themselves and in no way in the death and merit of Christ.
6) We are also falsely accused, as if we teach that not all those called through the Word of the gospel are earnestly, sincerely, or sufficiently called to repentance and blessedness by God, but rather that most are only seemingly and deceitfully called, only by signs through the revealed will, whereas the inner will of God’s counsel is lacking and He does not therein wish blessedness for all. We profess that we are far removed from this notion, for which people have charged us, either through false understanding or by the up toward words of a few; and that in God we attribute the highest truth and fidelity to all of His words and works, but in particular to those words which accompany the grace which calls to salvation, we do not attribute to Him a will which stands in constant contradiction to itself.
“The Colloquy of Thorn (1645)” in, Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, ed., James T. Dennison, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010), 4:212, 213-214. [Underlining mine.] [Note: one could reasonably conclude from the above that, at that time, the entire body of Reformed churches in both Poland and Lithuania were hypothetical universalists!]