Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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doctrine was religious rather than metaphysical. He found in it the
strongest support for his faith. He combined with it the certainty of
salvation, which is the privilege and comfort of every believer. In this
important feature he differed from Augustin, who taught the Catholic view
of the subjective uncertainty of salvation. f821 Calvin made the certainty,
Augustin the uncertainty, a stimulus to zeal and holiness.
Calvin was fully aware of the unpopularity of the doctrine. “Many,” he
says, “consider nothing more unreasonable than that some of the common
mass of mankind should be foreordained to salvation, and others to
destruction … When the human mind hears these things, its petulance
breaks all restraint, and it discovers a serious and violent agitation as if
alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet.” But he thought it impossible
to “come to a clear conviction of our salvation, till we are acquainted with
God’s eternal election, which illustrates his grace by this comparison, that
he adopts not all promiscuously to the hope of salvation, but gives to some
what he refuses to others.” It is, therefore, not from the general love of
God to all mankind, but from his particular favor to the elect that they, and
they alone, are to derive their assurance of salvation and their only solid
comfort. The reason of this preference can only be found in the inscrutable
will of God, which is the supreme law of the universe. As to others, we
must charitably assume that they are among the elect; for there is no certain
sign of reprobation except perseverance in impenitence until death.
Predestination, according to Calvin, is the eternal and unchangeable decree
of God by which he foreordained, for his own glory and the display of his
attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit
of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of
their sin, to eternal damnation. “Predestination,” he says, “we call the
eternal decree of God, by which he has determined in himself the destiny of
every man. For they are not all created in the same condition, but eternal
life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man,
therefore, being created for one or the other of these ends, we say, he is
predestinated either to life or to death.” f822
This applies not only to individuals, but to whole nations. God has chosen
the people of Israel as his own inheritance, and rejected the heathen; he has
loved Jacob with his posterity, and hated Esau with his posterity. “The
counsel of God, as far as concerns the elect, is founded on his gratuitous
mercy, totally irrespective of human merit; but to those whom he devotes