Christian Theology - Media Sabda Org

night of spiritual affliction, and precisely in that way in which the
Scriptures promise this blessing. It has also been accompanied with
power over sin; and I hold it through the same mercy, as explicitly, as
clearly, and as satisfactorily, as ever. No work of imagination could have
ever produced or maintained any feeling like this. I am, therefore, safe in
affirming, for all these reasons, that we have neither misunderstood nor
misapplied the scriptures in question.
As to the doctrine of assurance, (or the knowledge of our salvation by
the remission of sins; or, in other words, that a man who is justified by
faith in Christ Jesus knows that he is so, the Spirit hearing witness with
his spirit that he is a child of God,) against which such a terrible outcry
has been made, I would beg leave to ask, What is Christianity without it?
A mere system of ethics; an authentic history; a dead letter. It is by the
operations of the Holy Spirit in the souls of believers, that the connection
is kept up between heaven and earth. The grand principle of the Christian
religion is to reconcile men to God by Christ Jesus; to bring them from
a state of wrath to reconciliation and favour with God; to break the
power, cancel the guilt, and destroy the very being of sin; for Christ was
manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. And can this be
done in any human soul, and it know nothing about it, except by inference
and conjecture? Miserable state of Christianity indeed, where no man
knows that he is born of God! This assurance of God's love is the
birthright and common privilege of all his children. It is a general
experience among truly religions people: they take rest, rise up, work, and
live under its influence. By it they are carried comfortably through all the
ills of life, bring forth the fruits of the Spirit, triumph in redeeming grace,
and die exulting in Him whom they know and feel to be the God of their
salvation. Nor is this confined to superannuated women, as Mr. Southey
charitably hopes Mrs. Wesley was, when she professed to receive the
knowledge of salvation by the remission of sins. Men also as learned as
Mr. Badcock, as philosophical as Mr. Southey, as deeply read in men and
things as Bishop Lavington, and as sound divines at least as the rector of
Manaccan, have exulted in the same testimony, walked in all good
conscience before God, illustrated the doctrine by a suitable deportment,