THE WESTMINSTER
CONFESSION OF FAITH
We just don’t periodically repair to the Confession for quarterly Presbytery meetings. Rather, it is the sober intellectual assessment that this reflects the teaching of Scriptures. Further, it is not just an academic exercise, but is confessed ex animo, with animus and heart. Or, to quote one Dutch Elder who once said, “It is the heart cry from the pew!”
CHAPTER XVIII
Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation.
I. Although hypocrites, and other unregenerate men,
may vainly deceive themselves with false hopes and carnal presumptions: of
being in the favor of God and estate of salvation; which hope of theirs shall
perish: yet such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity,
endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him, may in this life be
certainly assured that they are in a state of grace, and may rejoice in the
hope of the glory of God: which hope shall never make them ashamed.
II. This certainty is not a bare conjectural and
probably persuasion, grounded upon a fallible hope; but an infallible assurance
of faith, founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the
inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made, the
testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the
children of God; which Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, whereby we are
sealed to the day of redemption.
III. This infallible assurance doth not so belong to
the essence of faith but that a true believer may wait long and conflict with
many difficulties before he be partaker of it: yet, being enabled by the Spirit
to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may, without
extraordinary revelation, in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto.
And therefore it is the duty of everyone to give all diligence to make his
calling and election sure; that thereby his heart may be enlarged in peace and
joy in the Holy Ghost, in love and thankfulness to God, and in strength and
cheerfulness in the duties of obedience, the proper fruits of this assurance:
so far is it from inclining men to looseness.
IV. True believers may have the assurance of their
salvation divers ways shaken, diminished, and intermitted; as, by negligence in
preserving of it; by falling into some special sin, which woundeth the
conscience, and grieveth the Spirit; by some sudden or vehement temptation; by
God's withdrawing the light of his countenance and suffering even such as fear
him to walk in darkness and to have no light: yet are they never utterly
destitute of that seed of God, and life of faith, that love of Christ and the
brethren, that sincerity of heart and conscience of duty, out of which, by the
operation of the Spirit, this assurance may in due time be revived, and by the
which, in the meantime, they are supported from utter despair.
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