Query 8. The Direct Act of Justifying Faith
QUERY 8. — Does knowledge, belief, and persuasion that Christ died for me, and that he is mine, and that whatever he did and suffered, he did and suffered for me, the direct act of faith by which a sinner is united to Christ, and interested in him, as instituted in God’s Covenant of Grace? Or is that knowledge a persuasion that is included in the very essence of that justifying act of faith?
Ans. The query, it is evident, exceedingly narrows the import and design of the Representation in the place referred to. For there we assert nothing positively concerning the passages relating to faith, but we remonstrate against condemning them as to what, it seemed to us, hurt the appropriating act of faith; and fixed a blot on the Reformation, reformed churches, and divines who had generally taught, concerning faith, what is in the condemned passages. All of this, we might say, was done without determining whether the persuasion spoken of in the query was the direct and formal act of justifying faith or not. But now, since the query is worded so tightly, and since the matter in question is none other than the old Protestant doctrine on that topic (as we will endeavour to make apparent), the Reverend Commission, we humbly conceive, cannot take it amiss if we inquire, in the first place, into the true sense and meaning of this way of speaking about faith, that we are now questioned about.
Most of the condemned passages the query refers to, do not run in the order set down in it, but as follows: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved;”Act 16.31 that is, “Be truly persuaded in your heart that Christ Jesus is yours, and that you shall have life and salvation by him; that whatever Christ did for the redemption of mankind, he did it for you.” This is the same in substance with what has been commonly taught in the Protestant churches, and in the words of the renowned Mr. John Rogers of Dodham. He was a man so noted for orthodoxy, holiness, and the Lord’s countenancing of his ministry, that no sound Protestants in Britain or Ireland, of whatever denomination, would in the age in which he lived, have taken it upon themselves to condemn him as erroneous. We have his definition of faith as follows: “A particular persuasion of my heart that Christ Jesus is mine, and that I shall have life and salvation by his means; that whatever Christ did for the redemption of mankind, he did it for me.” Here one may see, though the difference in words is almost none at all, yet it runs rather stronger with him than in The Marrow.
In this account of saving faith, we have, first, the general nature of it; namely, a real persuasion, agreeing to all sorts of faith whatever — for it is certain that whatever one believes, he is truly persuaded of it. More particularly, it is a persuasion in the heart, whereby it is distinguished from the general, dead, and naked assent in the head which one gives to things that in no way affect him, because he reckons they do not concern him. But with the heart, man believes here: “If you believe with all your heart,” says the Scripture. For when a man believes in his heart the dreadful tidings of the law, or its curse, it signifies not only an assent to them as true, but a horror of them as evil. So it is here: being persuaded in one’s heart of the glad tidings of the gospel, it bears not only an assent to them as true, but a relish of them as good.
Then we have the most special nature of it, namely, it is an appropriating persuasion, or a persuasion with an application to a person’s self, that Christ is his own, etc. The particulars of this are first, that Christ is yours. The ground of this persuasion is the offer and grant of Christ as a Saviour in the word, to be believed in for salvation by all those to whom the gospel is made known by this offer, and setting forth Christ as a Saviour. Though before we believe, lacking union with him, we have no actual or saving interest in him; yet in some sense he is ours: namely, as it is lawful and warrantable for us (not for fallen angels) to take possession of him and his salvation by faith. Without this faith, our common interest in him as a Saviour, by virtue of the offer and grant in the word, will avail us nothing. Though the call and the offer of the gospel is really particular, everyone, both in point of duty and in point of interest, ought to appropriate, apply, or make his own, the thing that is offered, by believing. They have good and sufficient ground and warrant in the word to do so. Yet it is either neglected and despised, or the truth and sincerity of it is suspected and called into question, until — by driving home the word of the gospel with such a measure of evidence and power as to be effectual — the Holy Spirit satisfies the convinced sinner that, with application to himself in particular, “it is a faithful saying, worthy of all acceptance, that Jesus Christ came to save sinners,”1Tim 1.15 and the Spirit enables him to believe it. Thus the persuasion of faith is begotten, which is always proportioned to the measure of evidence and power from above, that sovereign grace is pleased to put forth to work it.
The next branch of the persuasion is, “that you shall have life and salvation by him,” namely, the life of holiness as well as of happiness; salvation from sin as well as from wrath; not in heaven only, but begun and carried on here, and completed hereafter; which is the true notion of life and salvation, according to the Scriptures, and as Protestant divines commonly explain it. Therefore this persuasion of faith is inconsistent with an unwillingness to part with sin, with a bent or purpose of heart to continue in it. There can be little question, we apprehend, whether this branch of the persuasion belongs to the nature of justifying faith; for salvation being above all things in a sensible sinner’s eye, he can never believe anything to his satisfaction, unless he sees a ground to comfortably believe it. Few therefore will, we conceive, differ from Dr. Collins, laying it down as a conclusion on this very topic, namely, that “a Christian cannot have true, saving, justifying faith, unless he does (I do not say, unless he thinks he does, or unless he says he does, but unless he does) believe, and is persuaded that God will pardon his sins.” Further, this believing in the Son for life and salvation is the same as receiving him (this last is explained by the Holy Spirit himself in John 1.12); and likewise, it evidently bears the soul’s resting on Christ for salvation. For it is not possible to conceive of a soul resting on Christ for salvation, without a persuasion that he shall have life and salvation by him, namely, a persuasion of the same measure and degree as resting.
The third branch of the persuasion, ‘‘that whatever Christ did for the redemption of mankind, he did it for you,” — being much the same, in other words, as these words of the apostle — “Who loved me, and gave himself for me;”Gal 2.20 and coming in the last place, we think none will question that whoever believes, in the manner explained before, may and ought to believe this in a like measure and in the same order. And it is certain that all who receive and rest on Christ for salvation, believe it — if not explicitly, yet virtually and really.
Now, this account of justifying faith runs in terms that are much less strong than those of many eminent divines who used to define it by a persuasion of God’s love, of his special mercy to one’s self, of the remission of his sins, etc.; and it is the same for substance and matter, even though the words are not the same as our Shorter Catechism: “A receiving and resting upon Christ alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.” There it is evident that the offer of Christ to us, though mentioned last, is to be believed first. For till the soul is persuaded that Christ crucified is in the gospel set forth, offered, and exhibited to it as if expressed by name, there can be no believing on him. And when the offer is brought home to a person by the Holy Ghost, there will be a measure of persuasion that Christ is his, as explained above. And that receiving, or believing in, and resting on him for salvation, cannot be without some measure of persuasion that one shall have life and salvation by him, as already said. But more directly to the query:
We answer, 1st, Since our reformers and their successors, such as: Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Beza, Bullinger, Bucer, Knox, Craig, Melvil, Bruce, Davidson, Forbes, etc., — men eminently endowed with the spirit of truth, and who fetch their notions of it immediately from the fountain of the holy Scripture; the most eminent doctors and professors of theology that have been in the Protestant churches, such as Ursinus, Zanchius, Junius, Piscator, Rollock, Danaeus, Wendelinus, Chamierus, Sharpius, Bodius, Pareus, Altingius, Triglandii (Gisbertus and Jacobus) Arnoldus, Maresius; the four professors of Leyden, namely: Wallaeus, Rivetus, Polyander, Thysius; Wollebius, Heideggerus, Essenius, Turretinus, etc.; with many eminent British divines, such as Perkins, Pemble, Willet, Gouge, Roberts, Burgess, Owen, etc.; the churches themselves of Helvetia, the Palatinate, France, Holland, England, Ireland, Scotland, in their standards of doctrine; all the Lutheran churches which, in point of orthodoxy on the topic of justification and faith, are second to none; the renowned synod of Dort, made up of eminent divines, called and commissioned “from seven reformed states and kingdoms, besides those of the several provinces of the Netherlands — since all of these, we say, stand for that special fiducia, confidence, or appropriating persuasion of faith spoken of in the condemned passages of The Marrow, on which this query is raised; — the synod of Dort, besides the minds of the several delegates on this topic, in their several suffrages about the Five Articles, declaring themselves plainly, both in their final decisions concerning those articles, and in their solemn and ample approbation of the Palatine Catechism, as agreeable to the word of God in all things, and as containing nothing that should either be altered or amended; — and this Catechism being full and plain as to this persuasion of faith, has been commented on by many great divines, and received by almost all of the reformed churches, as a most excellent compendium of the orthodox Christian doctrine, and particularly by the Church of Scotland, as the Rev. Mr. Robert Wodrow lately told his Majesty King George, in the dedication of his history; — and since we, with this whole church and nation, by virtue of the awful tie of the oath of God in our national covenant, are ever bound to abhor and detest the Popish general and doubtsome faith, with all the erroneous decrees of Trent — among which is opposition to the special fiducia of faith condemned in it — this is established: Protestants are so-called mainly for denying and opposing the confidence and persuasion of faith now in question, with application to one’s self. By this renunciation, our forefathers no doubt pointed at and asserted to be held and professed as God’s undoubted truth and verity, that particular and confident or assured faith, then commonly known and maintained in this church, as standing plain and express in her standards. In the same covenant, they bound themselves and us to the profession and defence of it, promising and swearing by the great name of the Lord our God. And since then, this same persuasion of faith — however speaking about that topic has come to be altered — was never denied or condemned by any judicatory of a reformed Church, until now.
CONSIDERING all these things, and what dangerous consequence such a judicial alteration may have, we cannot and we dare not consent to the condemnation of that point of doctrine. For we cannot think of charging error and delusion in a matter of such importance upon so many Protestant divines, eminent for their holiness and learning; upon the Protestant churches; and upon our own forefathers, so signally owned by the Lord; and also upon the standards of Protestant doctrine in this Church for nearly a hundred years after her reformation. Otherwise, if we were to speak this way, we are persuaded we would offend against the generation of his children. Nor can it ever enter into our minds that the famous Assembly of Westminster had it so much as once in their thoughts, to depart in this point from their own doctrine, and the doctrine of this church of which they were all bound to maintain by the strongest ties — nor to depart from the synod of Dort, which had so recently before settled the Protestant principles as to doctrine, and by doing so, surrender to Socinians, Arminians, and Papists, what all of them have a mortal aversion to: namely, the special fiducia, or the appropriating persuasion of faith. Protestant divines before and since that time contended for this to their utmost, as being not only a precious truth, but a point of vast consequence to religion. And we are sure the Assemblies of this Church understood, and received their confessions and catechisms, both larger and shorter, as entirely consistent with our confessions and catechisms before that time, as we have already made evident in our Representation, from the acts of Assembly receiving and approving the Westminster Confession and Catechisms.
We answer 2d, that it is to be considered that most of the words of the Holy Ghost, made use of in the Old and New Testament to express the nature of faith and believing, signify the confidence or persuasion in question; and consider that confidence and trust, as used in the Old Testament, are expounded as faith and believing in the New Testament; and the same things attributed to the latter, as were commonly attributed to the former. Diffidence and doubting are, by nature, acts and effects contrary to faith; peace and joy are the native effects of believing; the promises of the gospel, and of Christ in his priestly office held forth in it, are the proper objects of justifying faith; faithfulness in God, and faith in the believer, being relatives (and the former being the ground of the latter), our faith should correspond to his faithfulness, by trusting his good word of promise for the sake of it. It is certain that a believer, in the exercise of justifying faith, believes something in reference to his own salvation, on the ground of God’s faithfulness in the promise. No other person whatsoever does or can believe if it is not to this purpose — that now Christ is and will be a Saviour to him, and that he shall have life and salvation by him; — we are utterly at a loss to conceive what other purpose it can be. Such persuasion, confidence, and assuredness are greatly attributed to faith in the Scripture; and the saints in Scripture ordinarily express themselves in their addresses to God in words of appropriation. And finally, according to our Larger Catechism, FAITH justifies a sinner in the sight of God, as an instrument, receiving and applying Christ and his righteousness, as held forth in the promise of the gospel; and faith rests upon these for pardon of sin, and for accepting and accounting one’s self righteous before God for salvation. How faith can do this without some measure of the confidence or appropriating persuasion we are now on, seems extremely hard to conceive.
On these considerations, and others that are too long to be inserted here, we can only think that confidence or trust in Jesus Christ as our Saviour, and the free grace and mercy of God in him as crucified, are offered to us in the gospel for salvation (including justification, sanctification, and future glory), upon the ground and security of the divine faithfulness plighted in the gospel promise; and upon the warrant of the divine call and the command to believe in the name of the Son of God; or in other words, a persuasion of life and salvation from the free love and mercy of God in and through Jesus Christ, a crucified Saviour offered to us upon the security and warrant mentioned. This is the very direct, uniting, justifying, and appropriating act of faith whereby the convinced sinner becomes possessed of Christ and his saving benefits; instated in God’s covenant and family; always taking this along as assumed, that all is driven home and worked by the Holy Spirit who brings Christ, his righteousness, salvation, and whole fulness, near to us in the promise and offer of the gospel; at the same time clearing our right and warrant to intermeddle with all, without fear of vicious intromission, encouraging and enabling us to a measure of confident application, and taking home all of this to ourselves freely, without money and without price.Isa 55.1
This confidence, persuasion, or whatever other name it may be called by, we take to be the very same as what our Confession and Catechisms call accepting, receiving, and resting on Christ offered in the gospel for salvation; and the same as what polemic and practical divines call “Fiducia specialis misericordiae,” “fiducial application,” “fiducial apprehension,” “fiducial adherence,” “recumbence,” “affiance,” ‘‘fiducial acquiescence,” “appropriating persuasion,” etc. All of these, if duly explained, would issue in a measure of this confidence or persuasion we have been speaking of. However, we are fully satisfied that this is what our fathers and the body of Protestant divines, speaking with the Scriptures, called “the assurance of faith.”
That once burning and shining light of this church, Mr. John Davidson, though in his Catechism he defines faith by a “hearty assurance” that our sins are freely forgiven us in Christ; or a sure persuasion of the heart that Christ by his death and resurrection has taken away our sins, and clothing us with his own perfect righteousness, has thoroughly restored us to the favour of God; which he reckoned to be the same as a “hearty receiving of Christ offered in the gospel for the remission of sins.” Yet in a former part of the same Catechism he gives us to understand what sort of assurance and persuasion he meant, as follows: “And it is certain,” he says, “that both the enlightening of the mind to acknowledge the truth of the promise of salvation to us in Christ, and the sealing up of the certainty of it in our hearts and minds (of which two parts faith consists, as it were) are the works and effects of the Spirit of God.” In like manner, in our first Confession of Faith, Art. 3, 12, it is called, “An assured faith in the promise of God revealed to us in his word; by which faith we apprehend Christ Jesus, with the graces and benefits promised in him.”— “This faith, and the assurance of the same, does not proceed from flesh and blood.” And in our first Catechism, commonly called Calvin’s Catechism, faith is defined as a “sure persuasion” and “steadfast knowledge” of God’s tender love towards us, according to how he has plainly uttered in his gospel, that he will be a Father and Saviour to us through the means of Jesus Christ; and again, “faith which God’s Spirit works in our hearts, assuring us of God’s promises made to us in his holy gospel.” In the Summula Catechismi, or Rudimenta Pietatis, to the question, “Quid est fides?” the answer is, “Cum mihi persuadeo Deum me omnesque sanctos amare, nobisque Christum cum omnibus suis bonis gratis donare;” and in the margin, “Nam in fide duplex persuasio, 1. De amore Dei erga nos; 2. De Dei beneficiis quae ex amore fluunt, Christo nimirum, cum omnibus suis bonis,” etc. And to that question, “Quomodo fide percipimus, et nobis applicamus corpus Christi crucifixi? the answer is, “Dum nobis persuademus Christi mortem et crucifixionem non minus ad nos pertinere quam si ipsi nos pro peccatis nostris crucifixi essemus. Persuasio autem haec est verae fidei.”
From all these it is evident they held that a belief of the promises of the gospel, with application to oneself, or a confidence in a crucified Saviour for a man’s own salvation, is the very essence of justifying faith; or that we become actually possessed of Christ, remission of sins, etc., in and by the act of believing, or by confidence in him, as explained above. And for them, this was the assurance of faith — which widely differs from the Antinomian sense of the assurance or persuasion of faith, which is that Christ and pardon of sin are ours, no less before believing than after; this is a sense which we heartily disclaim.
Whether these words in the query, “Or, is that knowledge a persuasion included in the very essence of that justifying act of faith,” are exegetic of the former part of it; or else a new branch of the query; we answer that we have already explained the persuasion of faith held by us. And we think that — in the language of faith, though not in the language of philosophy — knowledge and persuasion relating to the same object, go hand in hand in the same measure and degree.
It is evident that the confidence or persuasion of faith for which we plead, includes or necessarily and infallibly infers consent and resting, together with all the blessed fruits and effects of faith, in proportion to our measure of faith.
Having mentioned consent, we can only be more confirmed in this matter when we consider such a noted person as Mr. Baxter. He made the marriage consent to Christ, as King and Lord, the formal act of justifying faith, as an epitome of all gospel obedience — including and binding us to all the duties of the married state, and so giving us a right to all the privileges. By this as well as his other dangerous notions about justification, and other points connected with it, that are scattered throughout his works, he corrupted the fountain and endangered the faith of many. Yet in the end, he came to be of another mind, and he had the humility to tell the world as much. For Mr. Cross informs us (Serm. on Rom. 4.2, p. 148) that Mr. Baxter, in his little book Against Dr. Crisp’s Errors, says, “I formerly believed the formal nature of faith to lie in consent; but now I recant it. I believe,” he says, “that it lies in trust: this makes the right lie in the object; for I depend on Christ as the matter or merit of my pardon, my life, my crown, my glory.”
There are two things further concerning this persuasion of faith to be mentioned: one is that such faith is not axiomatic, but real; that is, the sinner does not always have at his first closing with Christ, nor afterwards, such a clear, steady, and full persuasion that Christ is his, and that his sins are forgiven, and that he shall eventually be saved, that he dare profess it to others, or even positively assert it within himself. Yet, upon the first saving manifestation of Christ to him, such a persuasion and humble confidence is begotten, as is real and relieving, and particular as to himself and his own salvation, and which works a proportionate hope as to its outcome. Though he fears to express it directly and particularly about himself, because of the humbling impressions he has of himself and of his own guilt at the time, the awe of God’s majesty, justice, and holiness on his spirit, and his indistinct knowledge of the doctrine of the gospel, along with the grounds and warrants of believing contained in it.
The other is that whatever is said about the habit, actings, strength, weakness, and intermittings of the exercise of saving faith, the same is to be said of this persuasion in all points. From all of this, it is evident that the doubts, fears, and darkness, so frequently found in true believers, can very well consist with this persuasion in the same subject. For though these may be, and often are in the believer, yet they are not of his faith, which in its nature and exercise is as opposite to them as light is to darkness, or the flesh is to the Spirit. Though they are in the same subject, yet they are contrary to one another, Gal. 5.17. And therefore faith wrestles against them, though with various success, sometimes being so far overcome and brought under by the main force and much superior strength of prevailing unbelief, that it cannot be discerned more than the fire when covered with ashes, or the sun when wrapped in thick clouds. The confidence and persuasion of faith in many, at first especially, is but as the grain of mustard-seed cast into the ground, or like a spark amidst the troubled sea of all manner of corruption and lust, where the rolling waves of unbelieving doubts and fears, hellish temptations and suggestions and the like, moving on the face of that deep, are every now and then going over it. Were there not a divine hand and care engaged for its preservation, they would effectually extinguish and bury it. What wonder is it that many times in such a case it cannot be discerned? Yet it will still hold so much of the exercise of justifying faith, and so much persuasion. Indeed, not only may a believer have this persuasion and not know it for the time (as say Collins, Roberts, Amesius, and others, who distinguish the persuasion from the sense of it), but being under the power of temptation and confusion of mind, he may resolutely deny that he has any such persuasion or conscience; while it is evident to others at the same time, by its effects, that he really does have it. For this, one may see, among others, the holy and learned Haliburton, in his “Inquiry into the Nature of God’s Act of Justification,” p. 27. And if one wants to see the consistence of faith’s persuasion with doubting well-discoursed and illustrated, he may consult Downham’s “Christian Warfare.”
But we answer, 3dly, there is a full persuasion and assurance by reflection, spiritual argumentation, or inward sensation, which we are far from holding to be of the essence of faith; but this last (inward sensation), being mediate, and collected by inference as we gather the cause from those signs and effects that evidence it, is very different from that confidence or persuasion that divines call the assurance of faith.
“Sanctification,” says Rutherford, “does not evidence justification as faith evidences it, with such a clearness as light evidences colours, though it is no sign or evident mark of them; but more as smoke evinces fire, and as the morning star in the east evinces the sun will rise early, or as the streams prove there is a head-spring from which they issue, though none of these make what they evidence visible to the eye. So sanctification gives evidence of justification only as marks, signs, and effects give evidence to the cause.”
He calls it a light of arguing and of heavenly logic, by which we know that we know God by the light of faith, because we keep his commandments.
“In effect,” he says, “we know the person must be justified in whom these gracious evidences exist, only by hearsay report or consequence, rather than by knowing or seeing justification or faith itself in abstracto. But the light of faith — the testimony of the Spirit by the operation of free grace — will cause us to see with our eyes, as it were, justification and faith; not by report, but as we see the sun-light.’”
Again he says,
“We never had a question with Antinomians touching the first assurance of justification, as is proper to the light of faith. He (Cornwall) might have spared all his arguments to prove that we are first assured of our justification by faith, not by good works, for we grant the arguments of one sort of assurance which is proper to faith, and they prove nothing against another sort of assurance, by signs and effects, which is also divine.”
Further, as to the difference between these two kinds of assurance: the assurance of faith has its object and foundation without the man, but that of sense has them within him. The assurance of faith looks to Christ, the promise and covenant of God, and says, ‘‘ This is all my salvation; God has spoken in his holiness; I will rejoice;” but the assurance of sense looks inward at the works of God, such as the person’s own graces, attainments, experiences, and the like. The assurance of faith giving evidence to things not seen, can claim an interest in, and plead a saving relation to a hiding, withdrawing God. Zion said, “My Lord has forgotten me;”Isa 49.14 and the spouse, “I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone.”Song 5.6 So he may be a forgetting and a withdrawing God to my feeling; “and yet to my faith, he is my God and my Lord still,” says holy Rutherford; “even as the wife may believe the angry and forsaking husband is still her husband.” But on the other hand, the assurance of sense is the evidence of things seen and felt. The one says, “I take him for mine;” the other says, “I feel he is mine.” The one says with the church, “My God yet will hear me, though he covers himself with a cloud that my prayer cannot pass through;” the other, “My God has heard me.”Psa 66.19 The one says, “He will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness;” Psa 17.15 the other says, “He has brought me forth to the light, and I behold his righteousness.” The one says, “Though he should kill me, yet will I trust in him;”Job 13.15 the other, “He smiles and shines on me, therefore, I will love him and trust in him.”
On the whole, we humbly conceive, if the nature and grounds of faith’s persuasion were more narrowly and impartially under the guidance of the Spirit of truth, if it were searched into and laid open, instead of discouraging weak Christians, it would exceedingly tend to strengthen and increase faith, and consequently it will have a mighty influence on spiritual comfort, and true gospel holiness, which will always be found to bear proportion to faith, as effects bear proportion to the efficacy and influence of their causes.