The Counsel of God (7): God’s Counsel Exclusively Divine and Sovereign

We may now call attention to the conception of the counsel of God as entertained by the Reformers. And we may immediately remark that the Reformers returned to Paul and Augustine. This movement found in the confession of God's sovereign election the power to fight the pelagianism of the Roman Catholic Church. All the reformers were, at the beginning of their careers, unanimous in this respect. Luther taught and defended, at the beginning of his career as a reformer, the truth of divine...