- Jun 30, 2020
- 147
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Can you be reformed and not hold to the doctrine of Evanescent Grace? Or must you believe it to hold the title? How can anyone know they are truly loved and saved...It seems very cruel to not know you're being used in such a way:
"Experience shows that the reprobate are
sometimes affected in a way so similar to the elect
that even in their own judgment there is no
difference between them. Hence, it is not strange,
that by the Apostle a taste of heavenly gifts, and by
Christ himself a temporary faith is ascribed to
them. Not that they truly perceive the power of
spiritual grace and the sure light of faith; but the
Lord, the better to convict them, and leave them
without excuse, instills into their minds such a
sense of goodness as can be felt without the Spirit
of adoption ... there is a great resemblance and
affinity between the elect of God and those who
are impressed for a time with a fading faith ... Stil
it is correctly said, that the reprobate believe God
to be propitious to them, inasmuch as they accept
the gift of reconciliation, though confusedly and
without due discernment; not that they are
partakers of the same faith or regeneration with
the children of God; but because, under a covering
of hypocrisy they seem to have a principle of faith
in common with them. Nor do l even deny that God
illumines their mind to this extent ... there is
nothing inconsistent in this with the fact of his
enlightening some with a present sense of grace,
which afterwards proves evanescent." (Institutes
3.2.11).
"Experience shows that the reprobate are
sometimes affected in a way so similar to the elect
that even in their own judgment there is no
difference between them. Hence, it is not strange,
that by the Apostle a taste of heavenly gifts, and by
Christ himself a temporary faith is ascribed to
them. Not that they truly perceive the power of
spiritual grace and the sure light of faith; but the
Lord, the better to convict them, and leave them
without excuse, instills into their minds such a
sense of goodness as can be felt without the Spirit
of adoption ... there is a great resemblance and
affinity between the elect of God and those who
are impressed for a time with a fading faith ... Stil
it is correctly said, that the reprobate believe God
to be propitious to them, inasmuch as they accept
the gift of reconciliation, though confusedly and
without due discernment; not that they are
partakers of the same faith or regeneration with
the children of God; but because, under a covering
of hypocrisy they seem to have a principle of faith
in common with them. Nor do l even deny that God
illumines their mind to this extent ... there is
nothing inconsistent in this with the fact of his
enlightening some with a present sense of grace,
which afterwards proves evanescent." (Institutes
3.2.11).
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