III.
(Continued from p. 289.)
THE most lucid summary of the Marrow doctrine we have come across is in that excellent Treatise on Saving Faith by Dr. Colquhoun, Leith, who himself accepted the Marrow doctrine. “It may be remarked,” he says, “that there is a very great difference between the assurance of faith and the assurance of sense, which is one of the fruits of faith. The assurance of
sense is a believer’s assurance that he is already united to Christ, and is in a state of grace. The assurance of faith is as inseparable from faith as light is from the sun; but it is quite otherwise with the assurance of sense. A man cannot have faith without having assurance in it; but he may have faith and not have assurance of it. For, though the mind cannot but be conscious of its own act, yet whether that act have the peculiar properties and nature of saving faith cannot satisfactorily be known but by reflexion. The assurance of sense or reflexion, then, is not a believing in Christ; but it is a believing that we have believed in Him. It is not a direct act terminating on Him, but a reflex act by which we are assured of the saving nature of that direct act. But, although the direct act may be without the reflex, yet the latter cannot be without the former. A man must begin to believe before he can begin to know that he has believed . . . . The assurance of faith is commonly not so strong nor sweet as the assurance of sense which is supported by evidences. By the former, a man trusts upon the warrant of the free offer and promise that Christ will do the part of a Saviour to him; by the latter he believes upon the inward evidences of grace, that his faith is unfeigned and operative. By the one, he is assured of the truth of what God hath said to him; by the other, of the reality of what God hath wrought in him. By that he trusts he shall be pardoned and saved; but by this he is persuaded that he is pardoned and saved in part already. The object of the assurance of faith is Christ revealed and offered in the Word; the object of the assurance of sense is Christ formed and perceived in the heart. The former is the root and the latter is the fruit.”
The controversy in connection with the Marrow doctrine of saving faith passed into England where it had an able defender in James Hervey, the author of Theron and Aspasio. His view was attacked by Robert Sandeman with great acuteness in his Letters on Theron and Aspasio. Sandeman’s views were adopted by Dr. John Erskine, Greyfriars, Edinburgh, the noted Evangelical leader in his Theological Dissertations. Archibald
Maclean, Edinburgh, the Baptist preacher, and Dr. Chalmers, the famous preacher and divine, also held Sandeman’s view that faith is a bare belief of the bare truth. Dr. Stewart, Dingwall, in a little book, Hints on Faith and Hope (1845), held the same view. Sandeman was ably answered by Wilson in his Palaemon’s Creed Reviewed, by Cudworth in his Defence of Theron and Aspasio, and by Andrew Fuller in his Strictures on Sandemanianism. Sandeman’s views were adopted by the Glasites to which denomination he belonged and also by the Old Scots Independents who trace their history back to 1768. The Bereans or Barclayites, another small sect, the followers of John Barclay, who was deposed by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1773, while holding that the assurance of the Westminster Divines was of the essence of faith, rejected the Marrow doctrine with scorn (Assurance of Faith Vindicated, p. 185). In America the Marrow view as set forth by Hervey was attacked by Bellamy in his Letters and Dialogues between Theron, Paulinus, and Aspasio, while the Rev. Prof. Anderson, D.D., in his Scripture Doctrine of Appropriation, ably defended it. Among the writings of more recent divines who advocate the same view is to be mentioned Dr. James Buchanan’s Cunningham Lectures, The Doctrine of Justification.
Having briefly discussed the Marrow doctrine of assurance we are now in a position to deal more directly with the teaching of the Confession on the subject. Dr. A. A. Hodge has summarised the Confessional doctrine as set forth in Chapter xviii under the following heads: “1. There is a false assurance of salvation which unregenerate men sometimes indulge, in which they are deceived, and which shall be finally disappointed. 2. There is, on the other hand, a true assurance, amounting to an infallible certainty, which sincere believers may entertain as to their own personal salvation, which shall not be confounded. 3. This infallible assurance of faith rests—(1) Upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation. (2) Upon the inward evidence of those graces unto which those promises are made. (3) The testimony of the Spirit of adoption, witnessing with our spirits that we are
the children of God” (Class-book on the Confession of Faith, p. 230). True assurance may be distinguished from false by the following characteristics:—1. True assurance begets humility; false assurance begets spiritual pride (I. Cor. xv. 10; Gal. vi. 14). 2. True assurance leads to activity; false to sloth and indolence (Ps. li. 12, 13, 19). 3. True assurance leads to self-examination; false to self-satisfaction (Ps. cxxxix. 23, 24). In true assurance there are longings after God (I. John, iii. 2, 3).
The assurance of their personal salvation to which true believers may attain is not a bare conjectural persuasion founded upon a fallible hope “but an infallible assurance of faith, founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation (Heb. vi. 17, 18), the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made (II. Pet. i. 4, 5, 10, 11; I. John, ii. 3), the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God (Rom. viii. 15, 16); which spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption (Eph. i. 13, 14; iv. 30; II. Cor. i. 21, 22).” In sections iii and iv the Confession teaches that this “infallible assurance of faith” (1) does not so belong to the essence of faith but a true believer may wait long and conflict with many difficulties before he be a partaker of it (I. John, v. 13; Is. i. 10; Mark, ix. 24; Ps. lxxxviii; lxxvii. 1-12). (2) Yet diligent use of the ordinary appointed means is to be made for its attainment. “And therefore it is the duty of every one to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure” (II. Pet. i. 10).
We return again to the experience of the Reformers. God gave these noble instruments such a convincing assurance of their own salvation such as stood them in good stead in the day of battle though it is true that many of them erred in saying that such personal assurance was of the essence of saving faith. Donald Cargill, the martyr, among others of our Scottish witnesses had this assurance of his own salvation to a remarkable degree as had also Donald Matheson, the Kildonan bard. Others might be mentioned but these will suffice for the present. As
pointed out already great care must be exercised not to condemn the genuine with the false as many are too ready to do. The benefits accompanying such assurance the Confession says are attainable by the use of the ordinary means and surely they are worth striving after. Some of these are as set forth in section iii. of chapter xviii. of the Confession such as:—Peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, love and thankfulness to God, strength and cheerfulness in the duties of obedience.
This personal assurance of salvation is not incompatible with its being shaken, diminished and intermitted. Such experiences arise as our Confession informs us from “negligence in preserving it; by falling into some special sin, which woundeth the conscience and grieveth the Spirit; by some sudden or vehement temptation; by God’s withdrawing the light of His countenance, and suffering even such as fear Him to walk in darkness and have no light.” It is when God’s people have such experiences that they may wrongly conclude that the doctrine of personal assurance of salvation is untenable doctrine and so fall into the error of reading into their doctrine what may after all be only a passing phase of their experience. We have in this article and the foregoing endeavoured to “redd the marches,” to use a well-known and significant Scottish phrase, between true and false assurance. It has been pointed out that this true assurance is attainable by the use of ordinary means and is accompanied by comforting and strengthening fruits.