A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

By the Calvinists, (see Calvinism,) election is judged to be the election of certain individuals out of the great mass of mankind, directly and immediately, to eternal life, while all other individuals are either passively left, or actively doomed, to a certainty of eternal death; and the moving cause of that election is defined to be God’s unconditional and irrespective will and pleasure, inherent in, and exercised in consequence of, his absolute and uncontrollable sovereignty.

By the Arminians, or Remonstrants, (see Arminianism,) Scriptural election is pronounced to be the election of certain individuals, out of the great mass of mankind, directly and immediately to eternal life; and the moving cause of that election is asserted to be God’s eternal prevision of the future persevering holiness and consequent moral fitness of the individuals themselves, who thence have been thus elected.

Election under the gospel or Catholic view denotes, the election of various individuals into the pale of the visible Church, with God’s merciful purpose, that through faith and holiness they should attain everlasting glory, but with a possibility (since God governs his intelligent creatures on moral principles only) that through their own perverseness they may fail of attaining it.

Stanley Faber, from whose learned and most satisfactory work these definitions are taken, very clearly proves this to be the doctrine of the reformed Church of England; where, in the seventeenth Article, the Church of England, speaking of predestination to life, teaches not an election of certain individuals, either absolute or previsional, directly and immediately, to eternal happiness. But she teaches an election of certain individuals into the Church catholic, in order that there, according to the everlasting purpose and morally operating intention of God, they may be delivered from curse and damnation, and thus, indirectly and mediately, may be brought, through Christ, to everlasting glory; agreeably to God’s promises, as they are generically, not specifically, set forth to us in Holy Scripture.

That such is the real doctrine of the Church of England—in other words, that she teaches a predestination to life, not direct and immediate, but indirect and mediate—inevitably follows from the circumstance that, while in her sixteenth Article she hints at the possibility of the elect individually departing from grace given, in her Homilies and in her Burial Service, she distinctly states, that the elect, in her sense of the word, may, in their individual capacity, fall away utterly, and thus perish finally. Now, this statement is palpably incompatible with the tenet of a direct and immediate predestination of individuals to eternal life; for individuals, so predestinated, could not, by the very terms of their predestination, fall away utterly and irrecoverably. Therefore, the predestination to life, mentioned in the seventeenth Article, can only mean an indirect and mediate predestination of individuals; or, in other words, it can only mean a predestination of individuals to eternal life, through the medium of election into the Catholic Church; in God’s everlasting purpose and intention indeed; but still, (since God, in executing his purpose and intention, operates upon the minds of his intelligent creatures not physically, but morally,) with a possibility of their defeating that merciful purpose and intention, and thence of their finally falling away to everlasting destruction.

As the article, in connexion with the other documents of the Anglican Church, must, unless we place them in irreconcilable collision with each other, be understood to propound the doctrine of predestination after the manner and in the sense which has been specified; so it distinctly enjoins us to receive God’s promises, as they are generally set forth to us in Holy Scripture.

The word generally in this place is not opposed to unusually, but to particularly, and signifies generically. And the other documents of the Church of England agree with this interpretation of the seventeenth Article.

We may refer, in the first instance, to the peculiar phraseology introduced into the office of Infant Baptism. “Regard, we beseech thee, the supplications of thy congregation: sanctify this water to the mystical washing away of sin: and grant that this child, now to be baptized therein, may receive the fulness of thy grace, and ever remain in the number of thy faithful and elect children, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Thus, in systematically generalizing phraseology, runs the prayer. Now the same prayer is recited over every child. Consequently, by the inevitable force of the word “remain” as here used, every child, baptismally brought into the pale of the Church, is declared to be, at that time, one of the number of God’s elect.

But the largest charity cannot believe that every child, baptismally brought into the pale of the Church, is elect in the sense of election as jointly maintained by Calvin and Arminius.