Rev Keith M Watkins
- This is the fourth and final part of a paper given at the 2019 Theological Conference.
John Colquhoun (1742-1827) did not live through the Marrow Controversy that disturbed the Church of Scotland in the opening decades of the eighteenth century. But as minister of South Leith, he preached and wrote in full agreement with the biblical gospel that the Marrowmen such as Thomas Boston and Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine contended for. In 1824 he published a book on faith. Previous articles have explained his treatment (from the Marrow standpoint) of the grounds, objects and warrant of saving faith. This final article looks at the acts of saving faith.
4. The acts of saving faith.
Colquhoun distinguishes two acts in saving faith: assenting and trusting.
The assent of saving faith is much more than a nominal and merely intellectual acceptance that the Bible is true. Rather, it is “the assent of the heart to all the truths of Christ revealed in His Word” (p 165), and this “with application to one’s self” (p 166). The person with saving faith will accept everything the Bible says, and will apply its truths to himself. This is especially true concerning the law and the gospel.
Regarding the law, assent involves a “belief of the law as a covenant of works . . . with application to himself” (p 168). The person assents to the law’s demand for perfect obedience, as the condition of the covenant of works. As a result, he is convicted of his sin, of the curse that lies upon him, and of his inability to recover himself. This produces legal repentance, by which he “sorrows for sin as a destructive evil, longs for deliverance from it, and despairs of salvation by himself or from the law” (p 172).
Although legal repentance “paves the way for the exercise of the faith of the gospel” (p 172), it is no part of the sinner’s warrant to believe. Legal convictions are “necessary to excite and urge the sinner to believe in Jesus Christ; but they are not at all requisite as a condition of his welcome to Him. The most secure sinner . . . is as welcome to the Saviour as the most deeply convinced one, though the Saviour is not so welcome to him” (p 172). “Though none but the convinced sinner can or will believe on Christ . . . yet every sinner who hears the gospel may believe on Him” (p 173).
Later in his book, Colquhoun distinguishes between the true believer’s conviction of sin and the unbeliever’s legal terror. The former “is implied in unfeigned faith” (p 212). “This true conviction, however, is not, in the order of time, before saving faith, nor is it a . . . qualification previous to such faith; but it is a necessary ingredient in the exercise of it” (p 212). Legal terror, on the other hand, “unaccompanied by faith in Jesus Christ, is . . . an effect of inexcusable ignorance, unbelief and enmity to God as a God of grace. . . . While true conviction is necessary to the exercise of saving faith, legal terror is not necessary to it. Thousands, without experiencing such terror, have been deeply convinced of their sinfulness and misery, and have believed to the saving of the soul” (p 213).
The assent that saving faith gives to the gospel is “a cordial belief of the declarations and offers of the gospel with respect to one’s self” (p 174). It assents to seven things especially: the authority of Christ, His ability, His willingness, His suitability and excellence, His being offered to sinners, and the right of sinners to trust in Him.
Under the second of these, Christ’s ability, Colquhoun deals with sufficiency: “Many . . . perish for ever because they do not believe that the grace of Christ is sufficient for their pardon and purification. . . . But how enormous and heinous soever the sins of true believers may have been, they are enabled so to believe the all-sufficiency of God their Saviour, as to account them but a small matter in comparison of the infinite merit of His righteousness and of the immense riches of His grace” (p 176). Colquhoun does not write specifically of the sufficiency of the atonement.
Under the sixth, the offer, Colquhoun emphasises the personal application necessary in the sinner’s assent. He says, “It is not enough that he believe that Christ is tendered to sinners of the human race indefinitely: the devils themselves believe that. He must . . . believe that He is offered particularly to him, even to him” (p 181). Assent “believes that Christ . . . addresses all His words of grace as particularly to him as if they were addressed to him alone” (p 167).
Saving faith is more than assent; it is also trust. Indeed, “trusting in Christ for salvation is of the essence of saving faith” (p 193). The believer “cordially intrusts the whole affair of his salvation to the Lord Jesus, in confidence that He will perform the part of a Saviour to him” (p 189). This is receiving Christ “because He is presented to poor sinners as the gift of God to them” (p 191). It is resting on Him “because He is . . . offered in the gospel as a sure foundation on which a sinner may lay the weight of his eternal salvation with the firmest confidence” (p 191). Colquhoun points out that “receiving Christ and resting on Him are not two acts of faith but one. . . . The act of receiving is the act of resting begun; and the act of resting is the act of receiving continued” (pp 191-2).
Trusting in Christ includes firstly, “a renunciation of confidence in every other object for even the smallest part of salvation” (p 196). Secondly, it involves “an unfeigned desire to be saved from all sin . . . and to be made perfectly holy as well as perfectly happy” (p 197). Thirdly, it includes “the acquiescence of the heart in that way of salvation which is revealed in the gospel” (p 198). Fourthly, there is in it the “sinner’s recourse to Jesus Christ, and to His righteousness and fulness only, for salvation” (p 199). Fifthly – and Colquhoun writes much more on this point than on the others – the believing sinner’s trust in Christ includes “confidence or affiance in [Christ], that He will save me from sin and wrath” (p 200).
Explaining this fifth and most distinctive point, he says that “saving faith is not only an unfeigned belief that God gives Christ and that Christ gives Himself . . . to me in offer, but a cordial trust that He gives Himself . . . to me in possession” (p 201). “Trusting in Jesus Christ for salvation includes a trusting that He will save me” (p 205). He who has saving faith is not only sure that Christ will save those who believe; he is also sure that Christ will save him. Colquhoun states, “For my part, I am utterly at a loss to know what trusting in the Saviour for salvation can mean, unless it means my trusting that He will perform the part of a Saviour to me” (p 204). He quotes 20 Scripture texts to prove this, culminating with Peter’s words in Acts 15:11, “We believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved”.
From the Marrow standpoint, the believer’s persuasion that Christ will save him in particular is a vital element of saving faith. Without it, a person does not savingly believe. “A man’s trusting that Christ will save him, if he apply to Him, is not saving faith. . . . The woman . . . with an issue of blood said within herself, ‘If I may but touch His garment, I shall be whole’. She did not however stop here, but she actually touched the hem of Christ’s garment” (p 211). Likewise a sinner “must draw near and actually trust in Him, for complete salvation to himself in particular” (p 211).
If Colquhoun and the Marrowmen are right to assert that saving faith necessarily includes such certainty of one’s personal interest in Christ, how can a believer’s doubts and fears be explained? Colquhoun explains: although saving faith “has no doubting in the nature of it; yet, inasmuch as doubting remains in the believer, this particular trust may be violently assaulted by doubts and greatly enfeebled by fears” (p 209). “Although there is no doubting in the nature of faith, yet there is much doubting in the heart of the believer” (p 228). “Although every true believer has some measure of trust in the Saviour for salvation to himself in particular; yet he may sometimes not only not be sensible of it, but, under the power of prevailing unbelief, temptation and perplexity of mind, may obstinately deny that he has it. . . . He is far from being always so conscious of it as to be able either to assert it within himself or to express it to others” (p 210).
Not surprisingly, one of the accusations against the Marrowmen was that they had confused faith and assurance. Absolutely they had not. They used the one word “assurance” to refer to two different things. “There are two different kinds of assurance: the assurance of faith, and the assurance of sense. The former kind belongs to the essence of faith. It is essential to saving faith, and is nothing but faith itself” (p 221). This assurance of faith “is not . . . grounded on evidences, that I have the actual possession of Christ, but it is a taking of Him into my possession” (p 214). The Marrowmen’s assurance of sense, on the other hand, is an individual’s personal assurance that he is indeed a true child of God. This is what is usually called assurance, and is dealt with in chapter 18 of The Westminster Confession of Faith under the title, “Of Assurance of Grace and Salvation”.
In his 1926 article on the Marrow controversy, Rev Donald Beaton comments on the confusion caused by the Marrow terminology. He says that “the Marrowmen, while in full sympathy with the confessional doctrine, unfortunately for themselves and others, appropriated the phrase ‘assurance of faith’, but gave it a new meaning”. Mr Beaton says that “this distinction . . . however unfortunate the terms may be, must be kept carefully in view in arriving at a correct estimation of the Marrow position”.
Colquhoun makes the distinction at length: “There is a very great difference between the assurance of faith and that 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 be satisfactorily known but by reflection. The assurance of sense or reflection, 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 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” (pp 234-5). In the assurance of faith, “the believer looks to the Word of Christ without him, trusting that through grace he shall be saved” (p 235). In the assurance of sense, “he discerns the work of Christ within him, and so assures himself that his salvation is already begun” (p 235).
Colquhoun, following the Marrowmen, claims that this assurance of faith (as opposed to the assurance of sense) is “what our Reformers from popery called the assurance of faith” (p 202). The claim is not convincing. It is usually accepted that at times the Reformers described saving faith in such a way that it necessarily included an element of what the Marrow calls the assurance of sense. Mr Beaton is surely correct to say that in the Marrow-men’s “eagerness to have the Reformers on their side, it is evident they were not sufficiently critical at all times to recognise that the Reformers were using ‘assurance’ in a different sense from which they used it”.
In the rest of his book, Colquhoun proceeds to deal very helpfully with the adjuncts and fruits of faith, the distinction between true and counterfeit faith, and to answer objections. But the essence of saving faith from the Marrow standpoint has been made clear already. And it is nothing other than the saving faith of the Bible.
The importance of the subject cannot be overstated, for “he that believeth on the Son [with this saving faith] hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (Jn 3:36). If we have saving faith, we have Christ and salvation. If we do not have saving faith, we have neither Christ nor salvation. So, if anyone asks, “What must I do to be saved?”, the one and only answer must always be: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Ac 16:30,31).
- John Colquhoun, A View of Saving Faith from the Sacred Records, Free Presbyterian Publications reprint, 2010, to which all unreferenced page numbers refer.
- By a “secure sinner”, Colquhoun means one who considers himself altogether safe, in no danger from the wrath to come.
- Donald Beaton, “The ‘Marrow of Modern Divinity’ and the Marrow Controversy”, Records of the Scottish Church History Society, 1926, p 124.
- Beaton, “The Marrow”, p 125.
- Beaton, “The Marrow”, p 125.