J H Thornwell
2. The doctrine of election is specially favourable to the cultivation of humility, in two respects. (1.) It lays the axe at the root of all human merit, and ascribes to sovereign, unmerited grace the whole glory of our salvation. It is found from experience that the legality of the heart presents a formidable barrier to the reception of the gospel. Men’s performances are so essential to their own self-complacency that it is hard to persuade them that all their righteousnesses are as filthy rags and that salvation is not the reward of debt but the gift of grace. This very natural pride of the carnal heart can be humbled or removed by no truth so effectually as the doctrine of election. When this is brought home upon their minds, men can understand that “it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy”. It strips them of all pretensions to merit, shows them their deep and loathsome unworthiness, and prostrates their souls in the very dust of self-abasement.
The following remarks of Zanchius^2 are forcible and appropriate: “Conversion and salvation must, in the very nature of things, be wrought and effected either by ourselves alone, or by ourselves and God together, or solely by God Himself. Pelagians were for the first, the Arminians are for the second, true believers are for the last, because the last hypothesis, and that only, is built on the strongest evidence of reason, Scripture and experience. It most effectually hides pride from man, and sets the crown of undivided praise upon the head – or, rather, casts it at the feet – of that glorious Triune God ‘who worketh all in all’. But this is a crown which no sinners ever yet cast before the throne of God who were not first led into transporting views of His gracious decree to save freely, and of His own will, the people of His eternal love.”
(2.) This doctrine is not only favourable to humility by counteracting a legal spirit, but it is the very soul of dependence on divine influence. The importance which the Scriptures attach to a uniform, habitual dependence on the grace of God sufficiently appears from the frequent and earnest exhortations to cultivate such a disposition; and if the Holy Spirit is indeed the source of all pious and devout affections, this dependent temper is the only one which is consistent with a Christian’s true condition or his relations to God. Emptied as we are by election of all that cannot abide the scrutiny of heaven, we are pointed to inexhaustible treasures at God’s right hand, which are bestowed only upon those who habitually depend upon His grace. Blind, naked and miserable in ourselves, we take the counsel of the Holy Spirit and lean upon the Lord for all that we need. Self-annihilation, as Luther calls it, is the main-spring of uniform dependence upon grace; and whatever has a tendency to drive us out of ourselves has likewise a tendency to drive us to God.
3. The doctrine of election affords great encouragement to prayer [1] Because prayer is the natural expression of dependence upon divine influences. [2] Because election represents the grace of God as efficient. There would be no motive to pray for spiritual blessings if our growth in grace depended upon our own free wills and not upon the Spirit of God. If Divine grace exerted no invincible efficacy in subduing sin, mortifying lust and invigorating the principles of piety, it would be hard to determine why the life of a Christian should be a life of habitual, unceasing prayer. [3] Because election represents prayer as a gift of God, and as the appointed medium of receiving divine blessings. When God decrees to bestow a blessing upon His people, He decrees also to give them the Spirit of prayer and supplication, so that when they find this Spirit poured out upon them they have every encouragement from the usual order of divine providence to “ask in faith, nothing doubting”.
4. This doctrine is the sole foundation of a full assurance of faith. It is the duty and privilege of Christians not only to be assured of their present acceptance with God, but also of their future, everlasting salvation. But they never could possess this assurance if justification, sanctification and glorification were not inseparably connected in the divine decree. That such an assurance is in the highest degree friendly to piety is manifest from the fact that faith itself, even in its lowest exercises, works by love and purifies the heart.
Such are some of the obvious tendencies of election. I have said nothing of the support which it yields in affliction and distress, the patience and submission with which it inspires the soul in the gloomiest hours of adversity, and the strong consolation it administers to the dying saint when struggling in the pangs of death. Enough has been said, however, to show that its tendencies are all in favour of godliness, and I regard it as no proof of the spirituality of the present age that amid our bustle and excitement so little is said of this precious doctrine of the gospel.
That wicked and profane persons have perverted it to their own eternal undoing, I have no disposition to deny. So has every doctrine of the gospel been perverted. The difficulty is not in the doctrine, but in the heart; swine will trample on a jewel, be it ever so precious.
^1 Reprinted, with slight editing, from Thornwell’s Collected Writings, vol 2. Though the Thornwell’s first point has not been included, the original numbering has been preserved.
^2 Jerome Zanchius (1516-90) was an Italian Reformer, best known for his book, The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination. However, as Arminius was only ordained to the ministry in 1588, it seems most unlikely that the remark about Arminianism should be attributed to Zanchius. More likely it at least is due to his translator, Augustus Toplady, who “occasionally ventured to . . . enlarge” Zanchius’ work as he rendered it into English.