At the Synod of Dort, the foreign delegates spoke as broadly as possible about the worth and sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice. The English theologians even stated that Christ, in a sense, had died for all: “Christ so died for all that all people and individuals, with faith mediating, can gain remission of sins and eternal life in virtue of this ransom (ἀντιλυτρον).”¹¹⁷ In England, over against the rigorously Reformed school of Twisse, Rutherford, Gillespie, Goodwin, and others, there was a moderate group represented by Davenant, Calamy, Arrowsmith, Seaman, and others and especially by Richard Baxter.¹¹⁸ Their view completely agreed in substance with that of the French theologians Cameron, Testard, Amyraut, and others. There was an antecedent decree by which Christ had conditionally satisfied for all, on condition of faith, and another subsequent particular decree by which he had so made satisfaction for the elect that he would in time also grant them faith and infallibly lead them to salvation.”¹¹⁹

117 Acta, National Synod of Dort (1620), Judicia, 79.

118 Richard Baxter (1615–91) published his Universal Redemption of Mankind by the Lord Jesus Christ and thereby contributed substantially to the introduction of Amyraldism in England. His contemporary, Isaac Barrow (1630–77), author of The Doctrine of Universal Redemption Asserted and Explained, had committed to Arminianism (see W. Cunningham, Hist. Theol., II, 328). Against their hypothetical universalism it was objected that if Christ died for all on condition of faith, he cannot have died for the children who can never actually believe. Cf. B. B. Warfield, “The Making of the Westminster Confession, and Especially of Its Chapter on the Decree of God,” Presbyterian and Reformed Review 12 (1901): 226–83.

119 Cf. H. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, II, 368–72; C. Vitringa, Doctr. christ., VI, 138ff.

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Sin and Salvation in Christ, trans. John Bolt, and John Vriend. vol. 3 (Baker Academic, 2006), 460–61.

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