All Articles For The Voice Of Our Fathers

(The true doctrine having been explained, the Synod rejects the errors of those:) 

PART TWO  EXPOSITION OF THE CANONS  THIRD AND FOURTH HEADS OF DOCTRINE  OF THE CORRUPTION OF MAN, HIS CONVERSION TO GOD, AND THE MANNER THEREOF 

We must still call attention to the meaning of the several negative statements in this article. These statements by their negative form, remember, set the limits beyond which the saints cannot fall, due to God’s preserving operation, no matter how grievous their fall and how enormous their sin. Specifically the article defines these limits in the following statements: 1) God does not wholly withdraw the Holy Spirit from His people. 2) God does not suffer them to slip to the point that they fall out of the grace of adoption and the state of justification.

Article 6. But God, who is rich in mercy, according to his unchangeablepurpose of election, does not wholly withdraw the Holy Spirit from his own people, even ii their melancholy falls; nor suffers them to proceed SO far as to lose the grace of adoption, and forfeit the state of justification, or to commit the sin unto death; nor does he permit them to be totally deserted, and to plunge themselves into everlasting destruction. 

The third consequence of the “enormous sins” of the saints is that they “grieve the Holy Spirit.” This is, of course, a Scriptural expression, taken from Ephesians 4:30: “And grieve not the; Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” The expression refers, in the first place, to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ dwelling in the church and in the hearts of believers.

Article II. Who teach: That it was not the purpose of the death of Christ that he should confirm the covenant of grace through his blood, but only that he should acquire for the Father the mere right to establish with man such a covenant as he might please, whether of grace or of works. For this is repugnant to Scripture, which teaches that Christ has become the surety and mediator of a better, that is, the new covenant, and that a testament is of force where death as occurred.

Article III. Who teach: That Christ by his satisfaction merited neither salvation itself for anyone, nor faith, whereby this satisfaction of Christ unto salvation is effectually appropriated; but that he merited for the Father only the authority or the perfect will to deal again with man, and to prescribe new conditions as he might desire, obedience to which, however, depended on the free will of man, so that it therefore might have come to pass that either none or all should fulfill these conditions.

A very crucial question it is, therefore, as to how this assurance is attained by the elect. And the Canons teach that the elect obtain this assurance of their eternal and unchangeable election, “not by inquisitively prying into the secret and deep things of God, but by observing in themselves with a spiritual joy and holy pleasure, the infallible fruits of election pointed out in the word of God,—such as a true faith in Christ, filial fear, a godly sorrow for sin, a hungering and thirsting after righteousness, etc.”

8. God is Perfectly Just. In connection with this divine virtue, we may notice again that our creed makes but a partial mention of God’s attributes. In reciting the so-called ethical attributes of God it passes by what might well be called God’s ethical attribute par excellence, namely, the divine holiness, and it makes specific mention of God’s righteousness, or justice. Though we probably cannot say anything with certainty as to the reason for the selection made in this article, we may surmise that there may have been a historical reason why the perfect justice of God stood on the foreground...

Article IV. Who teach: That the new covenant of grace, which God the, Father, through the mediation of the death of Christ, made with man, does not herein consist, that we by faith, in as much as it accepts the merits of Christ, are justified before God and saved, but in the fact that- God having revoked the demand of perfect obedience of the law, regards faith itself and the obedience of faith, although imperfect, as the perfect obedience of then law, and does esteem it worthy of the reward of eternal life through grace.