justified person are anathematised,*-the favour shewn to the Jesuits who have always been the most strenuous supporters of the doctrine, that a conditional and conjectural hope of eternal life is the highest to which while in this world the mind of man can attain†—and the assertion of Cardinal Bellarmin, that no one can by any possibility become absolutely certain as to his own personal justification,-in which he has been followed by the most approved writers of the Popish Hierarchy— put the sentiments of the Church of Rome as a body, in reference to this subject, beyond the reach of misapprehension or mistake; and render the expression "Pontificiorum dubitatio,"§ happily characteristic of the leading article of her creed.

The foundations of Protestantism were laid avowedly in a broad and unqualified contradiction to the Roman Catholic doctrine respecting assurance. The conjectural

Sicut nemo pius de Dei misericordia, de Christi merito, deque sacramentorum virtute et efficacia dubitare debet; sic quilibet, dum seipsum, suamque propriam infirmitatem et indispositionem respicit, de sua gratia formidare et timere potest; cum nullus scire valeat certitudine fidei, cui non potest subesse falsum, se gratiam Dei esse consecutum. Sess. 6, cap. 9, contra inanem hereticorum fiduciam.— Si quis dixerit, omni homini ad remissionem peccatorum assequendam necessarium esse, ut credat certo, et absque ulla hesitatione propriæ infirmitatis et indisposi tionis, peccata sibi esse remissa, anathema sit. Si quis dixerit, hominem a peccatis absolvi, ac justificari, ex eo quod se absolvi ac justificari certo credat; aut neminem esse vere justificatum, nisi qui credat se esse justificatum; et hac sola fide absolutionem et justificationem perfici; anathema sit. Ead. Sess. Canon. 13 et 14 de justificatione.-Canon. et decret. S. S. cum. et general. concilii Tridentini. See the works of the Jesuits passim.

Bellar. lib. 3. de justificatione, c. 6.

§ Act. Synod. National. Dordrecht. Reject. error. circa Doct. de Persev. SanetEr. 5, p. 274.

and conditional hope of salvation inculcated by the Church of Rome, was combatted with many a scriptural argument—the fact of the interests of that church being involved in the maintenance of a doctrine by which her ignorant and deluded followers were kept dependent on her Priesthood, was to every candid and reflecting mind thoroughly exposed*-and the essential difference between the Roman Catholic and the Reformed Churches was, at first, made to appear to be, that according to the former, justified persons might doubt, while, according to the latter, they could not doubt with regard to their own personal salvation.† But alas, as shall afterwards be shewn, a very few years sufficed to prove, that the real state of the question at issue between them and their opponents had never been understood by the great majority of nominally Protestant writers. Protestants were soon found occupying the same ground from which their predecessors gloried in having driven the adherents of the Church of Rome. The very same weapons by which Roman Catholics had attempted to defend

* Non de nihilo autem est, quod tam acriter Pontificii pro retinenda sua ox et dubitatione certant. Intelligunt scilicet totam negotiationem nundinationis Pontificiæ hoc fundamento niti, et stabilita semel salutis fiducia concidere statim regni Pontificii vectigalia, vota, peregrinationes, fraternitates, opera supererogatoria, purgatorium, indulgentiarum mercem, nundinationes missarum, et ceteras ejusdem αισχροκέρδειας menзas nummularias. Nam qui certus esset de salute sua, neque ad patrocinia Sanctorum, neque ad merita Martyrum, neque ad Sacerdotis absolutionem confugeret, quae est Romanæ Tyrannidis carnificina. F. Turretin. Institut. Theolog. Elenet. L. 15, Q. 17, Sect. 4.

+ How delightfully does Luther express himself in regard to this point in many of his works, and especially in his well-known commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians.

B

themselves against the Fathers of the Reformation, were soon turned by persons calling themselves Protestants against the principles of the Reformation itself. The value, importance, and divine nature of the doctrine of the assurance of faith began to appear in the light of the fact, that it was as unintelligible, and as much an object of dislike to the natural minds of Protestants, as it had been to those of Roman Catholics. 1 Corinth. ii. 14. The Arminians, adopting without any scruple, and with scarcely any disguise, the notions of the Papists respecting the subject, denied the possibility of any person attaining to the infallible certainty of his own personal salvation.* And the better classes of Protestants, as shall afterwards be shewn, although avowedly opposed to both Papists and Arminians in reference to this matter, were found covertly rendering the most effective assistance to those open adversaries of the truth, by representing the personal and infallible certainty of eternal life not to be the belief of the gospel itself, but merely a possible adjunct and appendage of it-merely a

* See the works of Arminius, Episcopius, and the other writers of the Remonstrant School. The charge in the text I consider myself entitled to bring against the Remonstrants, notwithstanding their own disclaimer of the identity of their views with those of the Papists, in the statement submitted by them to the Synod of Dordt. For, although Episcopius and his brethren admit the possibility of a believer's being certain of his present belief, (more, by the way, than many soi-disant Calvinists now do), they are at considerable pains to shew that this by no means implies their admission of the possibility of any man's being absolutely and infallibly certain of his own final salvation. See the 7th and 8th theses of their statement, under the head of the perseverance of the Saints. Act. Synod. Dordrecht. p. 118. Such being the views of the Arminians with respect to assurance, how obvious that, although by a somewhat different route, they travel with the Church of Rome to the same conclusion.

privilege which a believer of the gospel might or might

not possess.*

Without wishing to anticipate at the present stage of this essay, what is afterwards to be proved from the writings of authors commonly regarded as belonging to the Calvinistic School of Theology, I may mention, that there is scarcely a statement or argument which was originally employed by the Church of Rome to assail the grand Protestant doctrine of the assurance of faith, which has not in modern times, I should rather say in our own day, been employed by writers calling themselves Protestant, to undermine the same glorious doctrine. I speak not of persons who are avowedly Arminian in their sentiments, but of those who would fain be reckoned among the disciples of Calvin. For instance, the distinction between the assurance of faith, as respecting the divine record itself merely, and the assurance of hope, as respecting our own personal interest in the promises contained in that record, which, having been revived and insisted on by Sandeman,† has obtained the sanction and patronage of many of our so styled Calvinistic writers, was employed by Cardinal Bellarmin, two centuries since, as one of the most effective weapons by which he could assail the doctrines of the Reformation, and thereby of course the Reformation

* This will be shewn afterwards.

+ See his Letters on the Dialogues of Theron and Aspasio.

Mr. Scott of Aston Sandford, in his Commentary, note on Hebrews vi. 11. Dr. Barr, in his Sermon entitled the peace of believing distinguished from Antinomian assurance, &c. &c.

itself. * That is, the professed disciples of Calvin gladly avail themselves of a weapon furnished them by one of the ablest and bitterest of Calvin's adversaries, and this for the purpose of overturning a doctrine which their great master professedly taught. Strange circumstance! and yet not more strange than true. To what awful lengths will not ignorance of the gospel and hostility to its most important truths carry the natural mind?

There remained one mode of assailing the doctrine of the assurance of faith, which it was reserved for Protestant and Calvinistic writers to adopt. This was to represent the mind as capable of being deceived by its own consciousness! So decidedly sceptical is this argument so thoroughly does it tend to subvert the very foundations of all our knowledge and belief-that even the champions of popery shrunk back from the idea of having recourse to it. Not so squeamish, however, have been some of those who glory in the name of protestant. Anxious to sieze upon every means of annoying an antagonist, no matter what might be the cost or riskeager to grasp at every argument which held out even the faintest prospect of overturning a much hated doctrine, no matter whether legitimate or not-the writers in question have not hesitated to assert, that our consciousness of believing a truth is no guarantee against the possibility of this our consciousness deceiving us! That the more talented and respectable part of those Calvinistic writers who oppose the doctrine of the assurance of faith are ashamed of this argument, and

* See oper. Bellarmin. lib. iii. de justificatione c. ii.