February 13, 2006

William Twisse (1578–1646) Quote on Christ's Death for All

Now I am ready to profess, and that, I suppose, as out of the mouth of all our Divines, that every one who hears the Gospel (without distinction between Elect and Reprobate) is bound to believe that Christ died for him, so far as to procure both the pardon of his sins, and the salvation of his soul, in case he believe and repent.
William Twisse, The Riches of God's Love unto the Vessels of Mercy, consistent with his absolute hatred or reprobation of the Vessels of Wrath (Oxford, 1653), 1:154.

I managed to find one of the pages in Twisse’s work above that both Bellamy and Douty reference. Douty gets his Twisse information from Bellamy, and Bellamy doesn’t site the page reference for the Twisse quotes.

Here's how some of the quotes appear in Bellamy:
*I am ready to profess," says the famous Dr. Twisse, "and that, I suppose, as out of the mouths of all our divines, that every one who hears the gospel, (without distinction between elect or reprobate,) is bound to believe that Christ died for him, so far as to procure both the pardon of his sins and the salvation of his soul, in case he believes and repents." Again, "As Peter could not have been saved, unless he had believed and repented, so Judas might have been saved, if he had done so." Again, "John iii.16, gives a fair light of exposition to those places where Christ is said to have died for the sins of the world; yea, of the whole world, to wit, in this manner; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." – Dr. Twisse, on "The Riches of God's Love to the Vessels of Mercy," etc.
The above is quoted from Bellamy's "True Religion Delineated, in Two Discourses," in The Works of Joseph Bellamy, 2 vols. (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1987), 294.

J. I. Packer has this comment on page 204 in his work on Baxter:
Baxter now remembered that Twisse, his oracle, had himself asserted that Christ had died for all in such a sense that salvation could be offered to all without exception, on condition of faith (though, plainly, he had failed to integrate this idea with the rest of his soteriology), #103 and, reviewing the case, was converted to a belief in universal redemption.
Footnote #103 in Packer's work reads: "In Universal Redemption, 287f., Baxter quotes a passage that shows Twisse 'industriously explaining' John 3:16, in proof of his claim that Twisse taught this doctrine."

James Durham seems to acknowledge William Twisse as a hypothetical universalist, or having “many hints to this purpose [i.e. a conditional redemption],” in A Commentary Upon the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: Printed by Christopher Higgins, in Harts Close, over against the Trone-church, 1658), 314; cited by Donald John MacLean, James Durham (1622–1658) and the Gospel Offer in its Sixteenth-Century Context (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprect, 2015), 120.

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