Heppe:

25.-But while by praeteritio God refuses His redeeming grace to the rejected He does not deprive them of His common grace, which latter would have sufficed man in his original state to attain to eternal blessedness, and of which man continues to receive so much that he has no ground for excuse left at the judgment seat of God.

LEIDEN SYNOPSIS (XXIV, 54-55): “For this to be understood correctly, careful note must be taken that this praeterition does not remove or deny all grace in those passed over, but that only which is peculiar to the elect. But that which through the dispensation of common providence, whether under the law of nature or under gospel grace, is dispensed to men in varying amount, is not by this act of praeterition removed but is rather presupposed; the non-elect are left under the common government of divine providence and the exercise of their own arbitrium.-55: Moreover this dispensation of common providence always involves the communication of outward and inward benefits; which indeed sufficed for salvation in the unimpaired nature, as is clear in the rejected angels and the whole human race considered in the first parent before the fall. But in the corrupt nature so much has survived or been superadded to nature under the gospel, that they have been stripped and deprived of every pretext of excuse before the divine judgment, as the apostle testifies Ac. 14. 27 (they rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how they had opened a door of faith unto the Gentiles), Rom. I. 20 (the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity, that they may be without excuse) 2. I (Wherefore thou art without excuse, whosoever thou art that judge: wherein thou judgest another, thou condemn thyself: for thou that judgest practice the same things); also Jn. 15.22 (If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin) I Cor. 4. 3 (with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment: yea 1 judge not mine own self) and elsewhere.”

WALAUS 490-491: “But reprobation does not deny in the reprobate all grace or every gift saving in itself: for we see that even to the reprobate many even supernatural things are communicated above the gifts of nature, as the propounding of the gospel, many other charisms, and illumination of the mind, and some improvement of the affections or joy, and a taste of future benefits (Heb. 6; Mt. 13) ; by these gifts they are set in order for salvation, did they not suppress them themselves and render God’s counsel towards themselves of no effect, as saith Scripture in Lk. 7, 2nd Rom. I, also Ac. 7, resist the H. Spirit. For it must assuredly be held that they first desert God before they are deserted by God, as Augustine often says. For God endures with much longsuffering. vessels of wrath, etc. Rom. 9.22. In fact we say more with the same Augustine, that it does not conflict with reprobation that even grace sufficient for salvation is given them, as is clear from the example of the reprobate angels, as well as of all men created in Adam in the image of God. Only they are denied grace infallibly effectual for salvation. In Adam all had strength to keep the law, even also to believe in Christ, had it been revealed to them (as even theologians themselves confess who ascend above the fall in this article), and they lost it in him (sc. Adam). Therefore grace sufficient for salvation is consistent with the decree of reprobation.”

Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, 1978), 185-187.

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