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Note: Mastricht’s Treatise on Regeneration is an extract from his Theologia theoretico-practica which was translated and published separately in 1770.
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XXV1. Quest. Fourth. Does the physical operation of regeneration effect the will immediately? The rank Pelagians, with the Socinians, allow no physical operation of God at all in regeneration; but hold only to a moral and external operation. The Semi-Pelagians, with the Jesuits and Arminians, allow some physical efficiency in regeneration; but such as affects not the will, or free will; but only other faculties of the soul. Some of the Reformed, v.g. John Cameron, and many others allow indeed a physical operation upon the will; but that only by the medium of the understanding, which God, in regeneration so powerfully enlightens, and convinces that the will cannot but follow it’s own last practical dictate. The synod of Dort, with most of the Reformed, extend the physical operation of regeneration to the will, and that immediately, as it begets in the will a new propensity towards spiritual good, which, in my judgment, is most agreeable to truth.Peter van Mastricht, A Treatise on Regeneration (New-Haven: Printed and Sold by Thomas and Samuel Green, in the Old-Council-Chamber, 1770), 37–38. [Some spelling modernize; marginal header not included; italics original.]
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But as to the baptism of infants, here the orthodox are divided; some deny that regeneration can precede baptism, which therefore, as they suppose, only seals regeneration as future, when the elect infant shall arrive to years of discretion, so as to be capable of faith and repentance; thus the celebrated Amyraldus. But he inaccurately confounds regeneration, which bestows spiritual life in the first act or principle (by which the infant is effectually enabled, when he arrives to the exercise of reason, to believe and repent), with conversion; which includes the actual exercises of faith and repentance; which cannot take place before the years of discretion.van Mastricht, A Treatise on Regeneration, 46–47. [Some spelling modernized and italics original.]
Note: Mastricht’s Treatise on Regeneration is an extract from his Theologia theoretico-practica which was translated and published separately in 1770.
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The Reformed universalists distinguish between objective and subjective grace: they make the former universal and state that the latter is proper only to the elect.25Petrus van Mastricht, Faith in the Triune God, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester and Michael T. Spangler, vol. 2 of Theoretical-Practical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), 367.
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25 E.g. Moises Amyraut (1596–1664), De libero hominis arbitrio (Saumur: Jean Lesnier, 1667); another form of Reformed universalism is represented by John Davenant (1572–1641), Dissertationes duae, prima de morte Christi … altera de praedestinatione et reprobatione (Roger Daniel, 1650).
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It is asked: 1. Is God not occupied with free choice except by moral providence? A comparison of opinions XI. This chapter is not so troubled with controversies particular to it. Yet at the same time it is asked, first, whether God is not occupied with the first determination of free choice except by his moral providence, to the exclusion of physical providence. The Pelagians and Pelagianizers—Socinians, Jesuits, Arminians, and others—in favor of free choice so urge moral governance that from free actions, as regards their first determination, they entirely exclude physical governance, when they state that he governs only by persuasions, to which they are able to yield or not to yield. Among the Reformed, those who receive the idea of universal grace and want the will to follow indeclinably the last judgment of the practical intellect, such as the renowned Cameron, Amyraut, and others, state that God so powerfully affects the intellect by his persuasions that he cannot but thoroughly move the will, but yet he does not immediately touch the will by conferring to it a new propensity in conversion, or by physical operation exciting and rousing that propensity once conferred, thus turning the will.Petrus van Mastricht, The Works of God and the Fall of Man, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester, vol. 3 of Theoretical-Practical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2021), 361.
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