Christian Theology - Media Sabda Org

those who had every advantage which high cultivation and deep learning
could bestow. Perhaps I might, with the strictest truth, say that during the
forty years I have been in the ministry, I have met with at least forty
thousand who have had a clear and full evidence that God, for Christ's
sake, had forgiven their sins, the Spirit himself bearing witness with their
spirit that they were the sons and daughters of God.
We never confound the knowledge of salvation by the remission of
sins with final perseverance. This doctrine has nothing to do with a future
possession; the truly believing soul has now the witness in himself; and
his retaining it depends on his faithfulness to the light and grace received.
If he give way to any known sin, he loses this witness, and must come to
God through Christ as he came at first, in order to get the guilt of the
transgression pardoned, and the light of God's countenance restored. For
the justification which any soul receives is not in reference to his future
pardon of sin, since God declares his righteousness "for the remission of
sins which are past." And no man can retain his evidence of his
acceptance with God longer than he has that faith which worketh by love.
The present is a state of probation: in such a state a man may rise, fall, or
recover; with this, the doctrine of the "witness of the Spirit" has nothing
to do. When a man is justified all his past sins are forgiven him; but this
grace reaches not on to any sin that may be committed in any following
moment.
But it may be objected: "The human mind easily gets under the
dominion of superstition and imagination; and then a variety of feelings,
apparently divine, may be accounted for on natural principles." To this I
answer, 1. Superstition is never known to produce settled peace and
happiness; it is generally the parent of gloomy apprehensions and
irrational fears: but surely the man who has broken the laws of his Maker,
and lived in open rebellion against him, cannot be supposed to be under
the influence of superstition, when he is apprehensive of the wrath of
God, and fears to fall into the bitter pains of an eternal death. Such fears
are as rational as they are Scriptural; and the broken and contrite heart is
ever considered, through the whole oracles of God, as essentially