In "James Ussher on Satisfaction" (Post Nuance, October 20), Jonathan Tomes argues that Ussher's distinctions solve a real problem: Christ prepared a remedy for all in one respect and secured salvation for the elect in another, so the gospel can address every hearer truthfully without promising that everyone is forgiven. The problem is real, and Tomes states Ussher fairly. But Ussher's own contemporaries answered the same problem without a universal satisfaction, and they judged his double intention incoherent: a satisfaction that secures nothing for those it covers, and a Surety divided against himself. The sources that answered him are Dort, Ames, Owen, Durham, Turretin and the Heidelberg tradition, and they are all in the Commonplace library.
Start with the bankrupt and the king of Spain. Tomes, following Ussher, argues that a hearer needs more than "bare sufficiency." He needs a remedy that is in some sense his, or the invitation is a list of someone else's treasure. The Synod of Dort, where Ussher's friend Davenant sat as a delegate, located the warrant elsewhere. "This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be declared and published to all nations, and to all persons promiscuously and without distinction, to whom God out of his good pleasure sends the gospel."1 The bankrupt is not left admiring a treasury. He is handed a promise with his name on the envelope: whoever comes will be received. That is a word about him, and it is true about him.
The second premise follows from the first: if Christ died for the elect alone in every respect, the command to believe would require the reprobate to believe something false. Owen answered that the command never had that content. "No reprobate for whom Christ died not, shall be condemned for not believing that Christ died for him in particular, which is not true; but for not believing those things whereunto he was called." To believe on Christ's name "is not to believe that it was the intention of God that Christ should die for us in particular, but to rest upon him for salvation."2 John Ball had made the same point two years earlier: to believe that "according to the purpose of God Christ is my Redeemer" is "the consequent of resting upon Christ for salvation."3 The sinner's first act is to come, not to make a claim about the decree. Nothing false is asked of anyone.
James Durham pressed the point further, and his answer goes to the heart of Ussher's pastoral case. A conditional redemption does not "warrand a person with any greater boldnesse to take hold of Christ, or to close with the offer of the Gospel made unto him." The anxious man who doubts whether he was redeemed can doubt just as well "if by His death he hath procured Faith to him, or not."4 Ussher's scheme moves the bankrupt's worry rather than removing it. If he wants to know before he comes whether the treasure is his, Ussher cannot tell him either, because on Ussher's own account only the special intention secures faith. The only cure is the one Ussher himself named: "it is the word of promise that gives comfort." That is Dort's answer, not a new one.
Third, the claim that Christ's satisfaction made the sins of all men "pardonable" without securing their pardon. Tomes admits that Ussher's warning against stretching the payment analogy "does not, by itself, settle the objection." The tradition did not leave it unsettled. In 1643 Owen met that very word and refused it: Christ's blood brings "remission of sinnes ... not a sole vindication into such an estate, wherein, if it please God, and our selves, our sinnes are pardonable."5 Heidegger stated the principle that decides the case: "There can be no sufficiency of merit without efficacy, because what has no efficacy cannot suffice for salvation."6 A satisfaction that leaves its beneficiary as condemned as before has not satisfied anything on his behalf. Turretin said Christ "obtained for us not the possibility of salvation, but eternal redemption."7 Possibility is precisely what Ussher's general satisfaction purchases.
Fourth, the split between Christ's death and his intercession. Ussher grants that Christ intercedes only for those given him (John 17) but denies that his death must have the same limit. Ursinus, writing a generation before Ussher, saw that the priesthood cannot be divided this way: "There are also two inseparable parts of the sacrifice of Christ — intercession and death. And if he himself refuse to extend one part to the ungodly, who is he that will dare to give the other to them."8 Tomes reports that Ussher agreed with William Ames that obtaining forgiveness and its application extend to the same persons. Ames's Marrow shows what that agreement commits him to. Application depends "vpon the intention of Christ whereby he hath determined his satisfaction for the good of those, whom he hath appointed to him by his Father."9 On Ames's terms, intention, satisfaction, intercession and application run on one line. Ussher accepted the end of that line and denied its beginning.
That brings the argument to its center, which Tomes rightly identifies as the heart of the matter: Christ's intention, not only the worth of his death, reached all men. Turretin's verdict on that proposal is short. It is a double intention "fictitiously created ... as if in one Surety two were to be sought: one who guarantees in part for all, but another who guarantees completely for some."10 A surety who undertakes for a man and secures nothing for him has not stood surety for him. The Reformed did not need this second Surety to keep the gospel honest, because, as Turretin added, the external call is not "fallacious and illusory": the promise "is not absolute, but conditional."11 God promises to every hearer exactly what he gives: life to whoever believes.
None of this denies what Tomes most wants to protect, and the tradition agrees with him more than his framing suggests. Ussher was no Arminian, and Tomes is right that his doctrine of satisfaction is robust: the double debt, the active and passive obedience, the Surety discharged in resurrection. The orthodox shared all of it. They also shared the universal sufficiency. Ursinus taught that Christ "willed to die for all in general, as touching the sufficiency of his merit," so that "all the wicked who perish may be without excuse."12 And they shared the urgency of the offer: Dort commands it "promiscuously and without distinction." The disagreement is narrower and sharper than "limited" against "unlimited." The Reformed located the universal aspect in the infinite worth of the price and the sincere promise; Ussher located it in a second divine purpose that purchases a possibility. The first keeps the Surety one. The second makes Christ intend for some men a satisfaction he does not intend to apply, while praying for others whom he alone saves.
Ussher's best sentence is the one Tomes opens with: "Sufficiency indeed is requisite, but it is the word of promise that gives comfort." The orthodox could have signed it. The bankrupt does not need a general fund opened in his name that may never be paid out. He needs a King who says "whosoever will" and keeps his word, and a Surety who, for everyone he undertakes for, finishes the work. That is not a narrower gospel than Ussher's. It is the same offer, made by one Christ with one intention.
Notes
- Synod of Dort, Canons, Second Head, art. 5. Read ↩
- John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, passages 199764 and 199768. Read ↩
- John Ball, A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (1645), ch. 2, p. 227. Read ↩
- James Durham, A Commentarie upon the Book of the Revelation (1658), p. 323. Read ↩
- John Owen, Theomachia autexousiastike, or, A Display of Arminianisme (1643), p. 102. Read ↩
- Johann Heinrich Heidegger, Tumulus Tridentini Concilii, vol. 1, quaestio L. Read ↩
- Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, passage 210165. Read ↩
- Zacharias Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's Day 16. Read ↩
- William Ames, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity (1642), I.24.2, p. 111. Read ↩
- Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, passage 210165. Read ↩
- Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, passage 210108. Read ↩
- Zacharias Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's Day 16. Read ↩