Canons of Dordt, III/IV:1—“… became wicked, rebellious, and obdurate in heart and will …”

… he forfeited these excellent gifts, and on the contrary entailed on himself blindness of mind, horrible darkness, vanity, and perverseness of judgment, became wicked, rebellious, and obdurate in heart and will, and impure in his affections (Canons, III/IV:1).

(I)

Rev. Martyn McGeown

[Source: An Answer to Phil Johnson’s “Primer on Hyper-Calvinism”]

Notice what the Synod affirms—this is what man became, not what he would have become but for “common grace.”  This is what man is. This is what the unbeliever is. This is what that friendly, unbelieving neighbour on your street is. This is what your friendly, unbelieving postman is. This is what your kind, helpful, obliging but unbelieving colleague or family member is. And this is what you, believing reader, still are by nature, but for the grace of regeneration and conversion. Do you believe that or is that too strong? If it is too strong for you, do not call yourself a Calvinist and do not claim that you “affirm without reservation the Canons of the Synod of Dordt.”

Having set that forth in Canons III/IV:1, the Synod concludes,

Therefore all men are conceived in sin, and by nature children of wrath, incapable of saving good, prone to evil, dead in sin, and in bondage thereto, and without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit they are neither able nor willing to return to God, to reform the depravity of their nature, nor to dispose themselves to reformation (Canons III/IV:3).

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(II)

More to come! (DV)