Yates:

God is prepared to give faith to all that hear his Gospel.

Matt. 23:37. I would, ye would not. It is the will of God by the Gospel that all should be gathered unto him. Man’s will resists God’s will, and makes that Gospel of none effect that should be effectual unto all. God may add further grace and give men hearts to receive as freely, as his Gospel is offered unto them: but such grace is a royal prerogative, and reserved for some of many. All are beholding to God, but some find and feel the very riches of his grace, and are never able to be thankful enough, that they above others should receive so much. [Some spelling modernized and underlining mine.]

John Yates, The Saints Sufferings and Sinners Sorrows (Printed by T. Cotes, for N. Bourne, dwelling at the Royall Exchange, 1631), 198-199.

Credit to Tony for the find.

Ambrose:

(2.4) Consider another point. “How good is God to Israel, to them that are right in heart!” Is God not good to all men, then? He is certainly good to all, because He is the Savior of all men, especially of the faithful. And so the Lord Jesus came that He might save what was lost;¹ He came, indeed, to take away the sin of the world,² to heal our wounds. But not all men desire the remedy, and many avoid it; else the sore may be stung by the drugs and lose its virulence. For that reason, He heals those that arc willing and does not compel the unwilling. Therefore, those who desire the remedy regain their health. But those who resist the physician³ and do not seek him out, cannot perceive his goodness, for they do not experience it. Now one who is healed is also restored to health, and thus the physician is good to those whom he has restored to health. Accordingly, God is good to those whose sins He has forgiven. But if someone has a sin that is incurable from a sore on his spirit, how can he value the physician as good, when he is avoiding Him? And therefore, as I said earlier, the Apostle aptly explained that God, “who wishes all men to be saved,”⁴ is good to all men. And the special favor of God’s goodness is reserved most of all for the faithful, who receive the assistance of His good will and of His grace. But also, when the psalmist said, "How good is God to Israel, to them that are right in heart" he conveyed the sentiment of those who do not know how to entertain any other opinion concerning God, except that He is good toward all things and is in all.

Ambrose, “The Prayer of Job and David,” in Seven Exegetical Works, trans. Michael P. McHugh (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1972), 371-372.[Underlining mine; footnote values modified; footnote content original.]

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¹Cf. Luke 19.10.

²Cf. John 1.29 .

³The motif of Christ as physician occurs very frequently in Ambrose. For a listing of the relevant passages, see Gryson 287 n. 157, and add the passing reference to the good physician in The Prayer of Job and David 2.3.10, above. Studies have been done on this theme as it appears, most notably, in Augustine, but none as yet on its use by Ambrose.

⁴1 Tim. 2.4.

Aquinas:

[Objection:]

[26] Furthermore, if Christ made satisfaction enough for the sins of the human race, it seems unjust that men still suffer the penalties which were brought in, Scripture says, by sin. Summa Contra Gentiles 4.53.26.

[Rebuttal:]

[29] Granted, of course, that Christ has sufficiently satisfied for the sins of the human race by His death, as the twenty-sixth argument proposed, every single one, for all that, must seek the remedies of his own salvation. For the death of Christ is, so to say, a kind of universal cause of salvation, as the sin of the first man was a kind of universal cause of damnation. But a universal cause must be applied specially to each one, that he may receive the effect of the universal cause. The effect then, of the sin of the first parent comes to each one in the origin of the flesh, but the effect of the death of Christ comes to each one in a spiritual regeneration in which the man is somehow conjoined with Christ arid incorporated into Him. And for this reason each must seek to be regenerated through Christ, and must himself undertake to do those things in which, the power of Christ’s death operates. Summa Contra Gentiles 4.55.29. [Underlining mine and bracketed inserts mine.]

[1) For further explication, compare Ursinus, and Davenant, or Dabney. 2) In short, Aquinas here affirms that while Christ is the cause of salvation for all men, and in other places that Christ suffered for all men, nonetheless, the application of the benefit of Christ’s passion is conditional. Therefore, if someone for whom Christ suffers fails to meet the requisite condition, that man will be punished in his own person for his own sin. Hence, there is no injustice in the second punishment for the same sin.]

No Atonement for the House of Eli (1 Sam 3:14)

Short Notes

Definition

By limited atonement and limited satisfaction, I mean the doctrine that Christ was only punished for the sins of the elect. That is, Christ only sustained a penal relationship with them, and them alone.

The Argument

In brief, it is argued that because it is stated that there was no atonement for the House of Eli, this entails or suggests a limited satisfaction with regard to the work of Christ. That is, that the satisfactory work of Christ is limited to the elect alone, to the exclusion of the non-elect. The suggestion is something like: If the House of Eli can be excluded from atonement in the Old Testament, then the non-elect can be excluded from the Christ’s satisfaction in the New Testament.

Responses

1) The context is because of their sin, the house of Eli was precluded from obtaining atonements (probably forgiveness) for their sins. At one time there were atonements or forgiveness available to them for their sins, then on account of their sins, at a later time, there was not as access to atonement as it was denied or withdrawn from them.

2) For the argument for “limited atonement” to work, one would have to show that at no point was there access for the house of Eli to atonements for sin. This would then indicate that they were denied access to atonements a priorily, even before they were born, etc. But having access to atonement removed, is not the same as never having an atonement made available to them in the first place.

3) Even if we grant that a priorily, there was no atonement (i.e., atonements) for the House of Eli, that would not prove “limited atonement,” properly speaking. It would only prove that a certain segment of the class “non-elect” were not died-for. It would not prove that all the class, non-elect, were not died-for. Here I am simply inverting Owen’s logic, when he concedes that even if a given passage in Eze 18 proves that God wished the salvation of the House of Israel, one could not universalize the text to claim that God wished the salvation of all men, or specifically of all non-elect.

4) Relative to 3), the OT sacrifices were a type to Christ’s future sacrifice, and even though they were limited to the Israel of God, Christ’s sacrifice, on the other hand, is for the world (Jn 1:29, John 3:14-17, 1 Jn 2:2). Therefore, any limitation in the type does not necessarily entail to a corresponding limitation in the anti-type. We have plenty of examples of this, the flood, the Ark, the Bronze Serpent, and so forth. With regard to Christ, the anti-type is expansive and global.

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