John Knox (c.1514–1572) on Common Love

Shortly after that the people of Israel, I mean the tribes of Juda, Benjamin, and Levi, were, by the miraculous work of God, after the bondage of seventy years, set at libertie and broght againe to Jerusalem; in which they did re-edifie the temple, repaire the walles, and beginne to multiplie, and so to grow to some strength within the citie and land; they fall to their old nature, I mean to be ungrate and unthankfull unto God. The people were slothfull; and the priestes, who should have provoked the people to the remembrance of those great benefites, were become even like to the rest. The Lord therefor did raise up his Prophete Malachie, (who was the last before Christ,) sharply to rebuke, and plainely to convict this horrible ingratitude of that unthankfull nation, who so shamefully had forgotten those so great benefits recently bestowed upon them. And thus beginneth he his Prophecie: "I have loved you, saieth the Lord;" in which wordes he speaketh not of a common love, which in preserving and feeding all creatures is common to the reprobate, but of that love by the which he had sanctified and seperated them from the rest of nations, to have his glorie manifested. But because they (as all ungrate persons do) did not consider wherin this his love towardes them more then towards others did stand, he bringeth them to the fountain, demanding this question: "Was not Esau brother to Jacob? saith the Lord, and nevertheless Jacob have I loved, and Esau I have hated." And this he proveth, not onely by the diversitie of the two countreis which were given to their posterities, but also by that, that God continually shewed himself loving to Jacob and to his posteritie, reducing them againe after long captivitie; declaring himself, as it were, enemy to Edom, whose desolation he wold never restore, but wold distroy that which they should go about to build.

John Knox, “On Predestination,” in The Works of John Knox, ed. David Laing, 5 vols. (Edinburgh: J. Thin, 1895), 5:150–151.

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Note: See also pages 58 and 82 for other affirmations of God's "common love" in Knox. His comments on page 61, which seem to deny common love, should be understood as a "common love" in the sense of his free-will opponents, or a love that is alike (p. 82) for all and universally redemptive in scope. George Gillespie seems to be like John Knox in this regard.

In his dispute with Edmund Calamy and other moderates at the Westminster Assembly, Gillepsie, by way of a question, seems to deny God's love for all men. But, if one reads the context carefully, it is probably best to take him as denying God's redemptive love for all men, since Gillespie was disputing the redemptive sense of God's love as taught by Calamy and other moderates who maintained a Calvinistic form of universal redemption. See Mitchell and Struthers’s Minutes of the Westminster Assembly. It is not likely that Gillespie denied the universal sense of God's love in the sense taught by his colleague and elder theologian, Samuel Rutherford.

Phil Johnson, in his Primer on Hyper-Calvinism, seems to have Gillespie in mind when he says, "A few other Puritan and mainstream Reformed theologians have also denied the love of God to the reprobate. They are a distinct minority, but they nonetheless have held this view." He (unlike Dr. Curt Daniel) doesn't want to label Arthur Pink as a hyper-Calvinist due to Pink's denial of God's universal love. Johnson speaks of a plurality, when it is really only one man (Gillespie) he has in mind at the Westminster Assembly. I spoke to Johnson about this in an e-mail, and he mentioned the Minutes. Again, Gillespie doesn't positively assert anything in the context, but rather puts his seeming denial of God's universal love in the form of a question. He also, in the context of the question, refers to the sense of love "as is maintained," which likely to refer to the redemptive sense of God's love in Christ as taught by Calamy. Gillespie was indeed a very high Calvinist, but not likely to differ from the equally high Rutherford and Knox on the subject of God's common love for all in His image, or as they are His creatures.