“With Dangers Compast Round” 1660–1665tion (election) and others to damnation (reprobation) from all eternity, with regard
only to his will and good pleasure rather than to any quality in them; then he
decreed the Creation, and also the Fall with all its consequences, as the necessary
means to execute that eternal predestination. As Calvin put it,
No one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before he created
him, and consequently foreknew because he so ordained by his decree.... And it
ought not to seem absurd for me to say that God not only foresaw the fall of the first
man, and in him the ruin of his descendents, but also meted it out in accordance with
his own decision. For as it pertains to his wisdom to foreknow everything that is to
happen, so it pertains to his might to rule and control everything by his hand.^101Calvin insists that God’s justice and goodness are not hereby compromised because
God’s will is simply unfathomable to humans. But in practice this position comes
close to that of utter voluntarists like Hobbes, for whom God’s will itself, as the
manifestation of his omnipotence and sovereignty, is what makes a thing just or
good, even as the sovereign’s will does in human affairs.^102 Infralapsarian Calvinists
sought to rescue God’s justice and goodness by placing his decrees of election and
reprobation after the decree of Creation and the foreseen though not decreed Fall
of the human race in Adam. They could then conclude that God showed superla-
tive mercy by his entirely arbitrary gift of grace to elect individuals, while he justly
assigned the rest to their deserved reprobate condition. Both groups held to the five
principles of Calvinist orthodoxy affirmed at the Synod of Dort (1619) and restated
in England in the Westminster Confession (1647): unconditional election (God’s
eternal decrees of Election and Reprobation have no reference whatever to human
merit, desires, or acts); limited atonement (Christ won grace for the elect only);
total depravity (fallen humans, with intellects blinded and wills in bondage, cannot
intend or perform any good act leading to or meritorious for salvation); irresistible
grace (the elect are saved by God’s grace, which they can neither resist nor cooper-
ate with); and final perseverance of the saints (whatever their sins and backslidings,
the elect cannot finally be lost).^103 The Dort manifesto was directed against the
Remonstrant followers of Arminius, whose doctrines made a place for human free-
dom and moral responsibility. Those doctrines were: conditional election and rep-
robation (God’s predestinating decrees are based on his certain foresight of the faith
and virtue, or lack thereof, of particular individuals); general atonement (Christ
atoned for all humankind, not a predetermined elect); sufficient grace given to all to
renew the fallen understanding and will (all humans are thereby able to accept
salvation); resistible grace (humans can reject God’s call and grace); and no assur-
ance of final perseverance (even the regenerate may fall from grace).^104
In the early 1640s Milton ranged himself with orthodox Calvinists against
Arminius: like many Puritans, he then associated Arminian doctrine with Roman
Catholic and Laudian belief in grace gained through sacraments and good works.^105