Thomas:

But the first determined and direct assault against the HyperCalvinistic and Antinomian views prevalent at the time amongst the Baptists was in a book published by Fuller in 1785 and entitled The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, or the Duty of Sinners to Believe in Jesus Christ. Indeed, on considering the eminently scriptural and evangelical tone of this book it is almost incredible that it was the cause of such controversy. His purpose is to prove the obligation upon all men to believe whatsoever God declares and to obey whatsoever he commands, so that the moral law obliges all to whom the gospel is preached to exercise faith in Christ insomuch that it demands obedience to every declaration by God of his will. As Fuller deals with this point, he shows that the inability of man to conform in all points to God’s will, and therefore to the commandment to believe, is entirely a moral inability arising only from the corrupt nature of his heart and his enmity towards God, and not from any deficiency in his faculties or in the necessary natural abilities. Instead of excusing man for his unbelief and disobedience and releasing him from any obligation, this failure therefore only serves to increase the atrocity of his behaviour and to augment his guilt. Having proved the obligation that lies upon all who have heard, or have had opportunity to hear, the gospel to believe it, he then proceeds to answer the objections which are often put forward against this view: objections arising from the nature of man’s original holiness; the nature of predestination and the election of grace; man’s inability; the activity of the Spirit; and the necessity of a divine principle in order to believe. He very ably argues that the correct scriptural understanding of all these points is consistent with a belief in the general invitation of the gospel and in the duty of all to believe it.

Owen Thomas, The Atonement Controversy in Welsh Theological Literature & Debate 1707-1841, tran. John Aaron (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth, 2002), 131-132. [First published in 1874.]

Credit to Bob Schilling for the find.

Schaff:

THE CONSENSUS FORMULA

The Helvetic Consensus Formula (Formula Consensus Helvetica) is the last doctrinal Confession of the Reformed Church of Switzerland, and closes the period of Calvinistic creeds. It has been called a ‘symbolical after-birth.’ It was composed in 1675, one hundred and eleven years after Calvin’s death, by Professor John Henry Heidegger, of Zurich (1633-1698),¹ at the request and with the co-operation of the Rev. Lucas Gernler, of Basle (d. 1675), and Professor Francis Turretin, of Geneva (1623-1687).² It never extended its authority beyond Switzerland, but it is nevertheless a document of considerable importance and interest in the history of Protestant theology. It is a defense of the scholastic Calvinism of the Synod of Dort against the theology of Saumur (Salmurium), especially against the universalism of Amyraldus. Hence it may be called a formula anti-Salmuriensis, or anti-Amyraldensis.

THE SYNOD OF DORT AND THE THEOLOGY OF SAUMUR

The Twenty-third National Synod of the Reformed Church in France, held at Alais, Oct. 1, 1620, adopted the Canons of Dort (1619), as being in full harmony with the Word of God and the French Confession of 1559, and bound all ministers and elders by a solemn oath to defend them to the last breath. The Twenty-fourth National Synod at Charenton, September, 1623, reaffirmed this adoption.³ But in the theological academy at Saumur, founded by the celebrated statesman Du Plessis Mornay (1604), there arose a more liberal school, headed by three contemporary professors–Josué de la Pace (Placeus, 1596-1655), Louis Cappel (Capellus, 1585-1658), and Moyse Amyraut (Moses Amyraldus, 1596-1664)–which, without sympathizing with Arminianism, departed from the rigid orthodoxy then prevailing in the Lutheran and Reformed Churches on three points–the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, the particular predestination, and the imputation of Adam’s sin.

Saumur acquired under these leaders great celebrity, and attracted many students from Switzerland. It became for the Reformed Church of France what Helmstädt, under the lead of Calixtus, was for the Lutheran Church in Germany; and the Helvetic Consensus Formula of Heidegger may be compared to the ‘Consensus repetitus‘ of Calovius (1664), which was intended to be a still more rigorous symbolical protest against Syncretism, although it failed to receive any public recognition.⁴

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Charnock:

1) Which common grace is either,

[1.] More general, to all men. Whereby those divine sparks in their understandings, and whatsoever is morally praiseworthy in them, is kept up by the grace of God, which was the cause that Christ tasted death for every man: Heb. ii. 9, “That he by the grace of God should taste death for every man;” whereby the apostle seems to intimate, that by this grace, and this death of Christ, any remainders of that honor and glory wherewith God crowned man at first are kept upon his head; as will appear, if you consider the eighth Psalm, whence the apostle cites the words which are the ground of his discourse of the death of Christ.

[2.] More particular common grace, to men under the preaching of the gospel. Which grace men “turn into wantonness” or lasciviousness, Jude 4. Grace they had, or the gospel of grace, but the wantonness of their nature prevailed against the intimations of grace to them. Besides this common grace, there is a more special grace to the regenerate, the more peculiar fruit of Christ’s mediation and death for them. All this, and whatsoever else you can conceive that hath but a face of comeliness in man, is not the birth of fallen nature abstracted from this mediation. Therefore when the Gentiles are said to “do by nature the things contained in the law,” it is not to be understood of nature merely as fallen, for that could do no such thing; but of nature in this new state of probation, by the interposition of Christ the mediator, whose powerful word upheld all things, and kept up those broken fragments of the two tables of law, though dark and obscure. And considering God’s design of setting forth the gospel to the world, there was a necessity of those relics, both in the understanding, and affections, and desire for happiness, to render men capable of receiving the gospel, and those inexcusable that would reject it. So that by this mediation of Christ, the state of mankind is different since the fall from that of the evil angels or devils. For man hath, first, a power of doing that which is in its own nature good; secondly, a power of doing good with a good intention; not indeed supremely for the glory of God, but for the good of his country, the good of his neighbors, the good of the world, which was necessary for the soldering together human societies, so that sometimes even in sins man hath good intentions. Whereas the devil doth always that which in its own nature is evil, and al ways sins with evil intentions.¹ Without this mediation, every man had been as very a slave to sin as the devil; though he be naturally a slave to sin, yet not in that full measure the devil is, unless left in. a judicial manner by God upon high provocations. There is then a liberty of will in man; and some power there is left in man. And here I shall show,

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Augustine:

1)

CHAPTER 3

Verse Two Is Defended

5. The Manichees. in finding fault with what follows in the Book of Genesis. "But the earth was invisible and without form,” ask, "How did God make heaven and earth in the beginning if the earth was already invisible and without form?” Since they want to attack the divine Scriptures before they know them. they fail to understand even the clearest things. For what could be said more clearly than the. words. “In the beginning God made heaven and earth, but the earth was invisible and without form"? That is, in the beginning God made heaven and earth. but the very earth which God made was invisible and without form before God arranged the forms of all things by ordering and distinguishing them in their places and ranks. before he said. "Let there be light" and "Let there be the firmament" and "Let the waters be gathered together" and "Let the dry land appear" and the remaining things which are explained in order in the same book so that even the little ones can grasp them. All these things contain such great mysteries that whoever has learned them either grieves over the vanity of all heretics. because they are human beings. or mocks it. because they are proud

6. There follows in the same book. “And darkness was over the abyss.” The Manichees find fault with this and say. "Was God then in darkness. before he made the light?" They themselves are truly in the darkness of ignorance. and for that reason they do not understand the light in which God was before he made this light. For they know only the light they see with the eyes of the flesh. And therefore they worship this sun which we see. not only along with the larger animals, but even with flies and worms, and they say that this sun is a particle of that light in which God dwells. But let us understand that there is a different light in which God dwells" From it there comes that light of which we read in the gospel. "He was the true light that enlightens every man coming into this world,” For the light of this sun does not enlighten all of man, but the body of man and his mortal eyes, in which we are surpassed by the eyes of eagles which are said to gaze upon this sun much better than we." But that other light feeds, not the eyes of irrational birds, but the pure hearts of those who believe God and turn themselves from the love of visible and temporal things to the fulfillment of his commands, If they wish to, all men can do this, because that light enlightens every man coming into this world. Hence, darkness was over the abyss before there was this light, about which more is said in what follows. Augustine, Saint Augustine on Genesis: Two Books on Genesis and on the Literal Interpretation of Genesis: An Unfinished Book, trans. Roland J. Teske (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University Press, 1991), 52-54. [Footnotes not included and underlining mine.]

2)

Chapter 9

TWO BOOKS ON GENESIS, AGAINST THE MANICHEANS

(De Genesi adversus Manicheos libri duo)

(I) After I was now settled in Africa, I wrote two books, On Genesis, against the Manicheans. Although whatever I discussed in earlier books in which I showed that God is the supreme Good and the unchangeable Creator of all changeable natures and that no nature or substance, insofar as it is a nature and substance, is an evil, was intentionally directed against the Manicheans, yet these two books very manifestly were published against them in defense of the Old Law which they attack with the vehement intensity of frenzied error. The first book begins from the words: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth’" and continues up to the passage when seven days have passed where we read that God rested on the seventh day. The second book begins from the words: "This book of the creation of the heaven and the earth’" and covers up to the place when Adam and his wife were driven from Paradise’ and a guard was placed over the tree of life.’ Then, at the end of this book, I contrast the error of the Manicheans with the creed of Catholic truth, including briefly and clearly what they hold and what we hold.

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