Richard Baxter’s (1615–1691) Notes on 1 Timothy 2:5–6

5. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; 6. Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

5, 6. For it must move us to pray for all, in compliance with this Will of God, that would have all Men saved; because there is One God who is good to all, and One Mediator between God and Mankind, who took on him the Common Nature of all Men, and gave himself a Ransom for all, revealed in the Season appointed of God, (or to be preached to all in due time, as God pleaseth.)

Note, The Controversie about Universal Redemption, too hotly agitated by Beza, Piscater, and others, on one side, and by many on the other, I have fully handled in my Catholick Theologie, and Methodus Theologiae; and it needs no more than as aforesaid: 1. Whoever is damned, it is not because no Ransom was made for him, or because it was not sufficient for him. 2. By Gods Will to save all, is meant the Effects of his Will that have a tendency to their Salvation. 3. It is notorious, that God hath made an Universal Act of Grace or Oblivion, giving Pardon of all Sin, and Right to Life in Christ, to all Men, without exception, on Condition of Believing-acceptance; and hath commissioned his Ministers to offer this Gift to all Men, to the utmost of their power, and entreat them to accept it; and doth by many Mercies intimate to them, that he useth them not according to the mere violated Law of Innocency, but on Terms of Grace. 4. Few Christians have the face to affirm, that this Universal Conditional Pardon and Gift (or Law of Grace) is no Fruit of the Death of Christ. 5. If therefore this Act of Pardon was purchased by Christ, and given to all, no modest Face can deny, that he so far died for all, as to purchase for them all that he actually giveth them. 6. It is usual to say that we give a Man a Benefit, (e. g. Life to a condemned Malefactor) if it be given him on the fair Condition of his Acceptance, and brought to his own Will, and he entreated to receive it. 7. If any Wrangler say, that this is unfit Language, (to say, He is willing that Men shall be saved, who offereth them Salvation freely, unless he also make them willing:) Let him confess, that it is but the Name that he denieth, and none of the Gifts in question. 8. And be it known, that Unwillingness cometh not from a Physical Impossibility, through the want of Natural Faculties, (as it is with Brutes) but from a voluntary Pravity, which aggravateth the Sin. 9. And the mutable Will of Man is to be changed by Reason: And God giveth Men Reasons in their kind sufficient to persuade them to accept of Christ and Life. 10. And lastly, No Man can say, that Adam when he fell had not Grace enough to make him Able to have stood, which he might have used, and should have done, to his actual standing: Nor, that God never giveth such a power to believe (or at least to come nearer the State of a true Believer) to many that might bring it into Act, and do not. This much is enough to end this Controversie with modest Wits.

Richard Baxter, “The First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy,” in A Paraphrase on the New Testament (London: Printed for B. Simmons, at the Three Cocks in Ludgate-street, 1685), xxx3^v.

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Paul N. Archbald’s Summary of Theodore Beza (1519–1605) on the Grace and Love of God

Beza also occasionally speaks in terms of what could be called common grace. He suggests that, in a sense, Christ died for the wicked, because all things were created by the Father in the Son (1 Corinthians 15:22). The wicked therefore receive life and blessing, but all this turns to a curse for them. Only those grafted into Christ are made partakers of His resurrection-life.⁶⁶ Beza rejects the idea that the incarnation made all without exception members of Christ. Union with Christ applies to the church alone. It is by covenant, not by nature.⁶⁷

It is still possible, however, to speak of a universal love of God. At Montbéliard, Andreae asked if God has ever loved those who are now damned, or will be. Beza replied with Augustine’s distinction that God both hates and loves at the same time. He loves what He has created, and He loves His ordaining of human beings as vessels for some use or other. He hates the sinful works of men, the ungodliness which He Himself did not make. God, “in that He makes vessels of perdition of the mass of the lost, does not hate what He does.”⁶⁸
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66. Questions, 21a–22.
67. Ibid., 36–36a.
68. Coll. Mont., 212–213. [“...Deum odisse simul & amare homines: amare videlicet homines quatenus sunt opus suum, odisse vero in hominibus opera hominis, id est peccata...]

Paul N. Archbald, A Comparative Study of John Calvin and Theodore Beza on the Doctrine of the Extent of the Atonement (PhD diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1998), 294–295. See also pp. 222–223. William Strong (d.1654), the Westminster divine, also said Beza taught God’s “common love” for all creatures as such, along with Calvin.

Beza wrote:

But lest thou exclaim that I do wrangle, I confess that the Lord doth do[?] an incredible favor and leniency, even towards the vessels of wrath, ordained to destruction. When is it that he should not destroy Cain by and by? Whence is it that he should protract the flood so many years? Whence is it that he should bless Esau with the plentifulness of the earth? That Ishmael should grow to a great kindred? That he should suffer the Caananites and the Amalachites so long? That he should not take away Saul by and by, but suffer him so long to enjoy the benefit of this life, and also the renown and benefits of the Kingdom of Israel? Finally, that we prosecute antiquities, whence is it that he so nourisheth, and so favorably suffereth so many wicked Turkes, such tyranny of Antichrist, and finally thyself with so many false Prophets, who cease not to seduce whomsoever they may from God's truth. Great, yea great and incomprehensible is this goodness of God towards his enemies, which would God they could once acknowledge, whosoever are elect among them, and be not known, that they might at the last return to him, who truly showeth himself favorable, and slow to wrath even to his adversaries.

Theodore Beza, An Evident Display of Popish Practices, or Patched Pelagianism, trans. William Hopkinson (London: Imprinted by Ralph Newberie, and Henry Bynnyman, 1578), 62–63. In the “benefits” that God gives the vessels of wrath who are “ordained to destruction,” He is being “good” to them, “blessing” them, and showing Himself “favorable” to them. This backs up Archbald’s claim above that “Beza also occasionally speaks in terms of what could be called common grace.”

William Strong (d.1654) on the Rich Young Ruler, God’s Restraining Grace, and Common Love

Seeing that all men are sinners in Adam alike, and sin in one man is as much improved as in another; that all men are not alike sinful in this life, and alike miserable in the life to come, (for there be degrees of wrath;) and that all men do not sin against the Holy Ghost, and are not by Satan hurried on to the great Transgression; it is not thanks to the man but merely to restraining Grace! So in Mar. 10:21 the young man that came to Christ, Christ is said to love him; he was proud, and stood upon his own righteousness, and was covetous, and did part with Christ to reserve to himself an Estate, and went away from him as being offended at his Doctrine, and never returned again; and yet it is said that Christ loved him; what was there lovely in such a man? Here Interpreters distinguish [1] of the act, [2] of the object. [1] Of the Act, they say there is a double love of Christ, so Cartwright; a Human and Divine; a Divine love, that is to Salvation; so he loves only the Saints; but there was a human love, and so he loved his friends and kindred according to the flesh, who yet did not believe in him. And some say there is a double love of God, and of Christ as God; there is a peculiar and fatherly love, and this he bears only to his own people; but there is also a common love, whereby he loves whatever is of his own in any of the Creatures. So Beza* and Calvin. But I should rather call them the common works of the Spirit of Christ, dispensed unto unregenerate men under the Gospel. [2] They distinguish of the Object, he loved the remainder of his own Image, or rather the works of his own Spirit in him, though they were common, that he was preserved unchangeable, in tanta morum corruptela, where there was such a general and universal overspreading of wickedness; and this was Donum Dei gratuitum naturale illam pravitatem non quidem immutantis, sed in quibus illi placet paulatim reprimentis, Bernard. i.e. Not mortifying but restraining sin. So that all this was grounded upon the restraining Grace of the Lord did vouchsafe unto him [the rich young ruler] in his younger years; for to be preserved is a good thing, a great gift, it is a great mercy not to be tainted with the common corruption, and not to wallow in the common mire of the times, nor to be given over thereunto.
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*Quia illi grata est humani generis conservatio, ideoque politicas virutes amare dicitur Tenues & paulatim per se evanescentes imaginis suae relinquias. - Beza

William Strong, A Discourse of the Two Covenants (London: Printed by J. M. for Francis Tyton at the Three Daggers in Fleet-street, and for Thomas Parkhurst at the Bible and Three Crowns at the lower end of Cheapside near Mercers Chapel, 1678), 101. This work is also available at the Westminster Assembly Project. For Beza on the love of God for all creatures as such, see the primary source here: Theodore Beza, Ad acta Colloquii Montisbelgardensis Tubingae edita (Genevae: Johannes Le Preux, 1588), 212–213; or a secondary source here (click).

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Robert Letham (1947–) on the Compromise at Dort

Thirdly, controversy [at Dort] raged over the extent of the atonement. Martinius, one of the Bremen delegation, as well as Davenant and Ward of the English delegation wished to stress the universal significance of Christ's death. Their language proved unacceptable to many and the resultant disagreement threatened to stall the Synod's progress and even to destroy its hopes of success. The English delegation made hasty consultation with the authorities at home. Eventually, they were instrumental in encouraging agreement and effecting an ingenious compromise that did justice to the universal sufficiency of Christ's death in a way calculated to win the support of Martinius, Ward and Davenant, while at the same time safe-guarding the orthodox concern for the particularity and efficacy of the intent of the atonement.¹³ Consequently, in the second head of doctrine, the Canons devote four sections to the universal significance of Christ's death. It is an atonement abundantly sufficient for the sins of the whole world.¹⁴ The value of Christ's death is infinite both because of who he is and what he endured.¹⁵ Therefore, the promise of the gospel, as it focuses on Christ and his death, should be proclaimed to all men without exception.¹⁶ The unbelief of man is attributable in no way to any supposed defect or limitation in the death of Christ but is fully man's own responsibility.¹⁷ Only then do the Canons move on briefly to refer to the intent of the atonement. God intends that the efficacy of Christ's death should be extended to the elect.¹⁸ God's purpose will be accomplished and the elect will receive salvation.¹⁹ Such a statement is nothing if not eirenic. Its balance leans, if anything, in the opposite direction from popular caricatures of limited atonement. Together with the statements on infralapsarianism, Dort is faced by an extreme hard-line option and firmly rejects it, choosing instead a moderate course acceptable to the bulk of international Reformed opinion.²⁰
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13. See Godfrey, pp. 135–269.
14. Canons 2, 3 in Schaff, Creeds, 3:561.
15. Canons 2, 4 in Ibid.
16. Canons 2, 5 in Ibid.
17. Canons 2, 6 in Schaff, Creeds, 3:562.
18. Canons 2, 8 in Ibid.
19. Canons 2, 9, in Ibid.
20. Kendall's characterization of Dort as rubber-stamping Bezan theology is misguided. Beza was a thoroughgoing supralapsarian; Dort is, almost to a man, infralapsarian. Beza disliked the distinction between the universal sufficiency and limited efficacy of the atonement because he thought it weakened the emphasis on the particularity of redemption; Dort stresses the universal scope of the atonement. See Kendall, pp. 175–177.

Robert W. A. Letham, Saving Faith and Assurance in Reformed Theology: Zwingli to the Synod of Dort, 2 vols. (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Aberdeen, 1979), 326–327.

[Note: The pagination of Letham's 1979 edition of Kendall's book (or his D.Phil thesis submitted to Oxford in 1976) is different from my 1997 Paternoster edition. I can see where Kendall on page 210 characterizes Westminster teaching as virtually "rubber-stamping Bezan theology," as Letham calls it (in footnote #20 above), but I don't yet see where Kendall makes that claim about Dort.]

Donald W. Sinnema on Calvin and Lapsarianism

Though scholars have differed on whether Calvin was supralapsarian or infralapsarian,¹⁷ it is incorrect to define his position as such, since this issue did not become formulated in terms of these alternatives until Theodore Beza, the first to present a clear supralapsarian position.¹⁸ While Calvin could speak of God predestinating man before he was created or fallen,¹⁹ in other passages he spoke in a more Augustinian fashion of God electing and reprobating from the condemned mass of perdition.²⁰ Calvin never presented his ideas on predestination in terms of an order of decrees; nor did he seek to identify the “object” of predestination, the two classic ways that the issue was formulated.
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17. Those who consider Calvin supralapsarian include Klaas Dijk, De strijd over infra- en supralapsarisme in de Gereformeerde Kerken van Nederland (Kampen, 1912), p. 25; E.A. Dowey, The Knowledge of God in Calvin’s Theology (Grand Rapids, 1994), p. 213; and J. Fesko, Diversity within the Reformed Tradition: Supra- and Infralapsarianism in Calvin, Dort, and Westminster (Ph.D. diss., University of Aberdeen, 1999), pp. 81–139. Others who consider Calvin infralapsarian include Henri Blocher, ‘Calvin infralapsaire,’ La Revue Réformé 31 (1980), 270–276; and Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3 vols., trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Phillipsburg, 1992-1997), 1:349–350.
18. Donald Sinnema, ‘Beza’s View of Predestination in Historical Perspective,’ in Théodore de Bèze (1519–1605), ed. Irena Backus (Geneva, 2007), pp. 225–229.
19. Institutes, 2.12.5; 3.23.7; Predestination, pp. 101, 121 (De praedestinatione, pp. 102, 144).
20. Institutes, 3.23.3; Predestination, pp. 89, 101, 121, 125 (De Praedestinatione, pp. 82, 102, 144, 150–152).

Donald W. Sinnema, “Calvin and the Canons of Dort,” in Church History and Religious Culture 91.1–2 (2011): 91–92.