All Articles For The Voice Of Our Fathers

Article 5. By such enormous sins, however, they very highly offend God, incur a deadly guilt, grieve the Holy Spirit, interrupt the exercise of faith, very grievously wound their consciences, and sometimes lose the sense of God’s favor, for a time, until on their returning into the right way of serious repentance, the light of God’s fatherly countenance again shines upon them. 

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  Article 13. The manner of this operation cannot be fully comprehended by believers in this life. Notwithstanding which, they rest satisfied with knowing and experiencing that by this grace of God they are enabled to believe with the heart, and love their Savior.

Article V. Who teach: That all men have been accepted unto the state of reconciliation and unto the grace of the covenant, so that no one is worthy of condemnation on account of original sin, and that no one shall be condemned because of it, but that all are free from the guilt of original sin. For this opinion is repugnant to Scripture which teaches that we are by nature children of wrath. Eph. 2:3.

That God deals righteously even then, when the actuating and influencing operation of His grace is such that it “permits” the saints to deviate from the guidance of grace and to be seduced into sin, so that they comply with the lusts of the flesh and actually fall, implies, in the first place, that the falls of the saints are not to be ascribed to the Lord God. On the contrary, the sins of the saints spring forth from their own sinful flesh and from their own carnal lusts and from the attacks of Satan and of the world.

Article VI.

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 

For the correct rendition of this article we refer the reader to the previous issue of The Standard Bearer. 

Article VII. Who teach: That Christ neither could die, needed to die, nor did die for those whom God loved in the highest degree and elected to eternal life, and did not die for these, since these do not need the death of Christ. For they contradict the Apostle, who declares: “Christ loved me, and gave himself for me,” Gal. 2:20. Likewise: “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth?

Introductory Remarks  The necessity of this Rejection of Errors is, of course fundamentally the same in this chapter as in the other chapters of our Canons. That necessity is, in the first place, a matter of principle: to every positive there is a negative. And it is, in the second place, a matter of history: the Arminians and their errors were a matter of historical fact, and it was incumbent upon the Reformed churches to maintain and defend the truth antithetically, that is, with rejection of error. 

REJECTION OF ERRORS