The redemption of Christ, if it is to be worthily viewed, must be looked at not merely individualistically, but also in its social, or better in its cosmical relations . . . We have only partially understood the redemption in Christ, therefore, when we have thought of it only in its modes of operation and effects on the individual. We must ask also how and what it works in the organism of the human race, and what its effects are in the greater organism of the universe.

Benjamin B. Warfield, The Plan of Salvation, 100.

Let it be understood once for all that the completest recognition of the sovereignty of God does not suffice to make a good Calvinist . . . There can be no Calvinism without a hearty confession of the sovereignty of God; but the acknowledgement of the sovereignty of God of itself goes only a very little way toward real Calvinism.

Benjamin B. Warfield, The Plan of Salvation, 96.

Calvinism insists that the saving operations of God are directed in every case immediately to the individuals who are saved. Particularism in the process of salvation becomes thus the mark of Calvinism. As supernaturalism is the mark of Christianity at large, and evangelicalism is the mark of Protestantism, so particularism is the mark of Calvinism. The Calvinist is he who holds with full consciousness that Go the Lord, in his saving operations, deals not generally with mankind at large, but particularly with the individuals who are actually saved.

Benjamin B. Warfield, The Plan of Salvation, 87.

It is directly upon God and not the means of grace that the evangelical feels dependent for salvation; it is directly to God rather than to the means of grace that he looks for grace; and he proclaims the Holy Spirit therefore not only able to act but actually operative where and when and how he will. The Church and its ordinances he conceives rather as instruments which the Spirit uses than as agents which employ the Holy Spirit in working salvation. In direct opposition to the maxims of consistent sacerdotalism, he takes therefore as his mottoes: Where the Spirit is, there is the church; outside the body of the saints there is no salvation.

Benjamin B. Warfield, The Plan of Salvation, 19.

The deepest cleft which separates men calling themselves Christians in their conceptions of the plan of salvation, is that which divides what we may call the Naturalistic and the Supernaturalistic views. The line of division here is whether, in the matter of the salvation of man, God has planned simply to leave men, with more or less completeness, to save themselves, or whether he has planned himself to intervene to save them. The issue between the naturalist and supernaturalist is thus the eminently simple but quite absolute one: Does man save himself or does God save him?

Benjamin B. Warfield, The Plan of Salvation, 16.

The age of the Patriarchs, before the Flood, being generally nine centuries, rendered them living libraries of sacred knowledge. Two eminent prophets, Noah and Enoch, were also inspired to make further revelations.

Reformation Principles Exhibited, by the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (New York: Hopkins and Seymour, 1807), 8.

The Church is the centre, around which the Creator causes all terrestrial things to revolve. Our views, therefore, of the present world, must be indistinct, unless we perceive its relation to the kingdom of Christ. The history of nations must be imperfect and erroneous, unless they refer to the secret spring by which every motion is directed — the purpose of God to glorify himself in the salvation of his Church. This is the meridian line which the former of all things strikes out through the vast and crowded map of time, and to which every figure, however apparently indistinct and unconnected, is directed by an unerring hand.

Reformation Principles Exhibited, by the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (New York: Hopkins and Seymour, 1807), 2.

It can be said that the entire Reformation developed within the Augustinian framework of the relation of human nature and divine grace. Luther emerged from the Augustinian tradition, but Calvin was Augustine’s most ardent, though not uncritical, follower.

Andrew A. Woolsey, Unity and Continuity in Covenantal Thought: A Study in the Reformed Tradition to the Westminster Assembly, 234.

A vast amount of literature is available on the Scottish Covenanters, including many original papers and sermons. A lot of hagiographical material, based mainly on anecdotal evidence for popular consumption, was produced by later generations, but from the more serious writings the following is offered as a guide: J. Beveridge, The Covenanters (London, n.d.); P. Walker, Biographia Presbyteriana (Edinburgh, 1827); Six Saints of the Covenant, 2 vols. (London, 1901); J. Aikman, Annals of the Persecution in Scotland, from the Restoration to the Revolution (Edinburgh, 1842); The Presbyterian’s Armoury (Edinburgh, 1846); J. Dodds, The Scottish Covenanters (Edinburgh, 1860); J. C. Johnston, A Treasury of the Scottish Covenant (Edinburgh, 1887); The Covenants and the Covenanters, ed. J. Kerr (Edinburgh, 1895); J. K. Hewison, The Covenanters, 2 vols. (Glasgow, 1908); A. Smellie, Men of the Covenant (London, 1908); J. Lumsden, The Covenants of Scotland (Paisley, 1914); A. S. Morton, Galloway and the Covenanters (Paisley, 1914); H. MacPherson, The Covenanters Under Persecution (Edinburgh, 1923); W. Syme, The Covenanters, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, n.d.); J. G. Vos, The Scottish Covenanters: Their Origins, History, and Distinctive Doctrines (Pittsburgh, 1940); H. Watt, Recalling the Scottish Covenants (Edinburgh, 1946); J. Barr, The Scottish Covenanters (Glasgow, 1947); J. D. Douglas, “The Scottish Covenanters 1638-1683: A Study in the Political Implications of their Theological Literature” (PhD diss., Hartford Seminary Foundation, 1955); I. B. Cowan, The Scottish Covenanters 1660–88(London, 1976).

Andrew A. Woolsey, Unity and Continuity in Covenantal Thought: A Study in the Reformed Tradition to the Westminster Assembly, 139.

In its disregard of the Christian church and silence concerning Jesus Christ, the 1787 American Constitution was new in Christendom. Covenanters called the doctrine underlying political dissent the “mediatorial dominion of Christ” over the nations, meaning that the risen Christ–God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever–has full authority in heaven and on earth, including over nations and their governments. They should therefore recognize and submit to his rule. The lordship, or kingship, of Christ over all things is common to all Christians. Eighteenth-century Reformed Presbyterians added “mediatorial” to exclude the Scottish Associate Presbyterians (Seceders) teaching that Christ ruled over all things only as he was already God. In a long pamphlet war with the Seceders (nickname of the Associate Presbyterians), RPs argued that Seceder teaching amounted to a heretical denial of the hypostatic union of Christ’s divine and human nature. Associate Presbyterians followed some seventeenth-century Covenanters who, for polemical reasons of that era, applied the term “mediatorial” to Christ’s saving work in the church, not to his person.

William J. Edgar, History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America 1920-1980, 388-389.