Arminius

Since the threefold office of Christ was treated in the preceding disputation, the plan of the order we have set ourselves requires that we now treat his sufferings.

First, the ambiguity of the word passion must be removed. For one passion is destructive (φθαρτική), another effective (ἐνεργητική); and the latter is either perfective (τελειωτική), or disciplinary (παιδευτική), or restorative (ἐπανορθωτική). And it is in this last sense that we here take the word, because the passion of Christ restored and made whole again the ruined affairs of men.

This passion, then, is a punishment laid, for the sake of the human race, upon Jesus Christ the Mediator, as high priest and as expiatory victim, and borne by him, by which he broke the power of sin, of death, and of Satan, took away from us the curse of the law, and reconciled us to God, while he, the guiltless for the guilty, was made sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

We call it a punishment because it was laid upon him on account of sins and for their expiation. It is both outward, affecting the body, and inward, pertaining to the soul, and it consists in his temptations, sorrow, pains, anguish, and torments. Its parts and its causes are now to be considered by us; and the parts we shall consider, following the Apostles' Creed, first in the passion properly so called, the crucifixion and death, and then in the burial and the descent into hell.

Although all the miseries which Christ bore from the very moment of his birth from Mary can be included under the name passion, we nevertheless understand by it, pre-eminently (κατ᾽ ἐξοχήν), that last act which immediately preceded his death; in which the passion in the garden, the betrayal, and the trial come up for consideration.

The passion in the garden, which may not unfittingly be called a propassion, is that anxiety, dread, and sorrow of the soul of Christ even unto death, which caused his sweat to be as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground, and caused him three times to ask the Father that the cup might be taken away from him. Now so great an anxiety seems to have arisen from the clearest foresight and anticipation of that horrible judgment and destruction which he was on the very point of undergoing, and not only from consideration of the torments which human power could inflict on him.

But that prayer for the taking away of the cup was uttered by him without sin. For it was natural affection, which shrinks from the things contrary to nature, that uttered it; and he corrected it at once, casting his eyes on the will of the Father. Considering, then, the magnitude of that evil in itself, without regard to the divine decree, he poured out that request from horror; but beholding that same evil together with this circumstance of the divine ordination, he took it upon himself gladly and willingly, from ready obedience. And in this way the objection raised about contrary wills in Christ is conveniently resolved.

The betrayal follows, carried out by Judas the disciple, hired to it at the price of thirty pieces of money. This could not but be most bitter to Christ, who was the most just hater of all iniquity and the supreme lover both of his enemies and of his own, because of the signal enormity of so great a malice; and this is signified by these words: he that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me. Upon the betrayal followed the trial, before which Christ had to be set, so that he, the innocent, being condemned by an unjust judgment, might deliver us from the most equitable and most severe judgment of the Father, which awaited us on account of sin.

And so that the Mediator of the New Testament might make the testament valid, death followed, which consists in the separation of soul and body, and that a local separation. It followed by way of the punishment of the cross, with which he was to be visited by the decree of the Father, so that by that very fact it might be established that he, made a curse for us (for the death of the cross was accursed by God), had taken away from us the curse due to us, that we might be made partakers of the blessing in him, the handwriting that was against us being fixed to the cross and so taken out of the way.

Burial succeeded death, by which the body of Christ was laid in a new tomb: both so that by that very fact it might be established that he was truly dead, and so that he might be held for a while, as though shut up, in that place where death seizes its dominion over bodies bereft of the soul that quickens them. He was not to be retained by death, nor reduced to dust, but, after he had vanquished death hand to hand in the very citadel of its power, he was to return into a spiritual and immortal life.

In the Creed there is added the descent into hell. Although this article is found in almost none of the creeds of the ancients, yet since it has been received for many ages, and can take a sound interpretation useful for strengthening our faith, there is no reason why it should be rejected. By these words, then, is signified either that three-day state of Christ in which, bound by the bonds of death, he was under its dominion, or the feeling of the spiritual pains of hell which Christ bore, partly from the living apprehension of the sins laid upon him, and of the most grievous wrath of God against them, partly from the very immediate stroke of the Father, from which arose that lamentable cry: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Having considered the passion itself and its parts, let us look at its causes. The primary efficient cause is God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave to his Son the part of expiating our crime, and made him sin, that is, laid upon him the offering for sin and the chastisement of our peace. The occasioning cause (προκαταρκτική) was sin itself, and the misery arising from sin according to the rigour of the divine law; the antecedent cause (προηγουμένη) was the mercy and loving-kindness (φιλανθρωπία) of God, which is commended in this, that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.

The instrumental causes were Satan, Judas, the priests, Pontius Pilate, and the rest of the crowd of the Jews, whom God used most holily to bring about that which his counsel and his hand had decreed to be done; although they themselves meanwhile sinned grievously, in condemning and killing an innocent man and the very Lord of glory. In respect of that sin, and of their own malice, instigated by which they perpetrated it, they are said to have done their own proper work; and on account of it they deserved the most grievous wrath of God and incurred liability to eternal death.

The passion has no matter out of which; but its matter in which, or the very subject of the passion, is our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God and of man, and that indeed as Son of man, and made flesh for the suffering of death. And because he undertook that death willingly, out of obedience toward the Father and love toward the lost human race, he himself also can not undeservedly be numbered among the assisting causes; in which respect he is also said to have given himself up to death for us.

The form and manner exist in each of the several parts. The proximate end is that he should give his life a price of redemption for many; bear our sins in the body of his flesh and expiate them by his blood; make purgation of our sins by himself; reconcile us to God; obtain eternal redemption; bring in everlasting righteousness; and procure eternal life. The remote end is that he should glorify God the Father, and, being himself exalted into the glory of God, fill his Church with every abundance of spiritual blessings. And these ends, their respect being changed, are also the effects flowing abundantly from the passion of Christ.