The Baptist Catechism

    A Commentary on the Shorter Catechism (1883), Alexander Whyte

    Question 36

    The benefits—Compare Ps. ciii. 2–5.

    These benefits are first mentioned in Answer 32, and they are there connected with effectual calling. What benefits do they that are effectually called partake of in this life? Justification, adoption, and sanctification are the great foundation benefits; but these being possessed, certain other benefits accompany or flow from them, and some, though not yet all of these, are now enumerated. And the first is

    assurance of God’s love—Those students who have any acquaintance with the riper fruits of scriptural and experimental truth will at once recognize the wide field that opens before us at the mention of the word assurance. The Larger Catechism condenses whole treatises of practical divinity into its 80th and 81st Answers. Can true believers be infallibly assured that they are in the estate of grace? and are all true believers at all times assured of their present being in the estate of grace, and that they shall be saved? The only safe and scriptural way by which a believer can attain to assurance is by observing in himself the evidences of a saving change, by discerning in himself those spiritual graces to which the promises of eternal life are made. Assurance is a scriptural word. It is found in the sense of the text in Isa. xxxii. 17: “The effect of righteousness shall be quietness and assurance for ever.” 1 John iii. 18, 19: “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him.” At the same time, assurance is not of the essence of faith: that is to say, a man may have a true faith, and sufficient true faith to justify him and finally save him, and yet may not have enough of faith or of its fruits to enable him to attain to assurance. (See Answer 81, Larger Catechism.) The late Canon Mozley in his early work On Predestination speaks to this effect. The divine decree may be conducting a particular person by sure steps all his life through to final glory, and yet he may not be aware of it: he may act without much contemplating himself, or, if he does, he may distrust himself. Predestinarians accordingly, both Augustine and his school, and modern ones, have disowned the doctrine of assurance, so far as it is maintained in it, that assurance is absolutely necesssary for a Christian. In modern language, they held that “assurance is not of the essence of faith,” and consequently that a man might be in a state of grace and yet not possess the assurance of it. (Students should read Dr. Cunningham’s essay on “Assurance” in his Reformers.) Bunyan in his Grace Abounding tells in his incomparable way how the “assurance of God’s love” manifested itself in his soul. “Then I began to give place to the Word, which, with power, did over and over make this joyful sound within my soul, Thou art my Love, thou art my Love; and nothing shall separate thee from my love: and with that Rom. viii. 39 came into my mind. Now was my heart filled full of comfort and hope, and now I could believe that my sins should be forgiven me: yea, I was so taken with the love and mercy of God, that I remember I could not tell how to contain till I got home. I thought I could have spoken of His love and of His mercy to me, even to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed land before me, had they been capable to have understood me.”

    peace of conscience—Every man’s conscience is a kind of court of justice; a court that has been set up by the authority and letters patent of our Divine Sovereign; a court that never rises, and never goes on circuit. It sits in the same place summer and winter, daylight and darkness. A strange and an awful court, surpassingly strange in this, that each man among us holds all its offices; for every man is judge, witness, and accused in the inner house of his own heart. “The conscience is in a man what the snout is in a bear, and the mouth in a horse, a tender part to tame them by. Conscience is acutely sensible to God’s wrath, and hell-fire could not take hold of the soul but at this corner. Conscience is the channel by which the streams of fire and brimstone enter the soul. Conscience, accordingly, hath its fullest dominion in hell, and will be at the highest of its power there” (Goodwin).

    “O Conscience, who can stand against thy power?
    Endure thy gripes and agonies one hour?
    Stone, gout, strappado, racks, whatever is
    Dreadful to sense, are only toys to this.
    No pleasures, riches, honours, friends, can tell
    How to give ease to this, ’tis like to hell.”—Flavel.

    How great a benefit then must “peace of conscience” be! And how important to learn early how it is to be attained and preserved! And how essential that we be taught to hold clear scriptural truth on this all-important subject! This distinctively evangelical subject has never had a fuller, or clearer, or more suggestive preacher than Dr. Thomas Goodwin, whose name occurs so often in these pages. Writing on this subject in his book on The Holy Ghost, he says: “The Scripture knows no such phrase as ‘peace of conscience.’ It is indeed peace of conscience subjectively, conscience being the principle as to which peace is spoken. But when it is spoken, it is so spoken as that it is the peace of God, and not peace with God only. I will hear what God the Lord will speak; for He will speak peace to His people and to His saints.” (See the whole passage, Book vii. chap. xii.)

    joy in the Holy Ghost—This is a scriptural expression. In Rom. xiv. 17, we read of “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” The Holy Ghost is that Divine Person who enters our hearts and makes them His home and His temple. Now the heart is the proper seat of joy, as the conscience is of peace; and as all our solid peace comes to us from God through Christ, so all holy joy comes when the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. We cannot indeed say with the Ephesian converts that “we have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost,” but few have attained to much of his joy. We continually vex and grieve the Holy Spirit, and we do not aright and earnestly pray, “Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me; restore to me the joy of Thy salvation.” Hopeful, describing the work of the Holy Ghost in his heart to Christian, says: “Now was my heart full of joy, mine eyes full of tears, and mine affections running over with love to the name, people, and ways of Jesus Christ. . . . It made me love a holy life, and long to do something for the honour and glory of the name of the Lord Jesus; yea, I thought that had I now a hundred gallons of blood in my body, I could spill it all for the sake of the Lord Jesus.”

    Cowper, who tasted too little of that joy, thus sings of it:—

    “There is a paradise that bears
    No forfeiture, and of its fruits He sends
    Large prelibations oft to saints below.”

    increase of grace—Our salvation is of grace, and it is all of grace. It begins in grace, and it is built up in grace, and the headstone is brought out with shoutings of Grace, grace unto it. “By grace ye are saved, not of works, lest any man should boast.” There are few finer things in a book full of good things than when the dreamer describes Old Honest’s character, and then tells us of his passage of the river. “Mr. Honest in his lifetime had spoken to one Good Conscience to meet him there, the which he also did, and lent him his hand, and so helped him over. The last words of Mr. Honest were, Grace reigns. So he left the world.”

    Pauline, Augustinian, and Calvinistic divines, of which John Bunyan was one of the best, have all conspired to magnify the grace of God in the salvation of men. And this indeed is the distinguishing mark of their theology, that they attribute all our salvation in all its parts to the free grace of God. Thus they make much of prevenient grace, meaning by that, as the etymology of the word teaches, the grace that goes before or precedes and excites all our efforts after or interest in divine things. The second stage in the growth of grace is when that grace becomes internally and effectually operative. (See Answers 30, 31.) And lastly, co-operating or habitual grace is the name given to that indwelling and assistance of the Holy Ghost whereby all that has been attained in grace is secured, and new progress is made from grace to grace. These three great stages have of course all manner of modifications and fluctuations in the individual soul, till it is made a partaker of the grace that is to be brought to it at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

    and perseverance therein to the end. Stedfastness, constancy, endurance, progress, final perseverance. This is the crowning “benefit” we receive “in this life.” And of all the graces, it is the most precious, because it is the one which makes all the others of lasting value “The only sure sign that any man is one of the elect is his perseverance in the Christian life; for he is elected to holiness as well as happiness. Perseverance, like faith, is the gift of God, and Augustine denominates it donum perseverantiæ, the gift or grace of perseverance” (Shedd).

    The Larger Catechism gathers up the teaching of Scripture on this subject with its usual clearness and fulness: “True believers, by reason of the unchangeable love of God, and His decree and covenant to give them perseverance, their inseparable union with Christ, His continual intercession for them, and the Spirit and seed of God abiding in them, can neither totally nor finally fall away from a state of grace, but are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” At the same time it is the believer who perseveres, and not another for him. He must work out his own salvation. He must endure, and press on, and remain stedfast. He must resist unto blood, striving against sin. (See Evangelist’s counsels to Christian and Faithful when they were approaching the town of Vanity.) The greatest work in our language on this subject is John Owen’s Perseverance of the Saints. It is sadly disfigured in form through its polemical character, but it is a great work, and will well repay any man who reads it. (See also Hooker’s Sermon on the Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect, in which the style is all but worthy of the subject.)

    “I have seen
    The thorn frown rudely all the winter long,
    And after bear the rose upon its top;
    And bark, that all the way across the sea
    Ran straight and speedy, perish at the last,
    E’en in the haven’s mouth.”—Dante.

    “One leak will sink a ship, and one sin will destroy a sinner” (Bunyan). “The evening praises the day, and the chief grace of the theatre is the last scene. Be faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Joseph Hall).

    Uses

    1. A believer should have his best benefits in daily recollection. Blessed be the Lord who daily loadeth us with benefits. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness.
    2. “The technicalities of the controversy are somewhat altered, while its substance remains the same. The grave question still is, as it has always been, Is it practicable, obligatory, or expedient that believers should be assured of their justification and salvation? . . . We believe that the prevailing practical disregard of the privilege and duty of having assurance, is, to no inconsiderable extent, at once the cause and the effect of the low state of vital religion amongst us,—one main reason why there is so little of real communion with God as our reconciled Father, and so little of real, hearty devotedness to His cause and service” (Dr. Cunningham).
    3. “When we want the faith of assurance, we must live by the faith of adherence” (Matthew Henry).
    4. “Serve your God day and night faithfully, walk humbly; there is a promise of the Holy Ghost to come and fill your hearts with joy unspeakable and glorious, to rear you up to the day of redemption. Sue this promise out, wait for it, rest not in believing only, rest not in assurance by graces only; there is a further assurance to be had” (Goodwin).
    5. The use and intent of the whole of the First Epistle of John is to lead the soul to joy in the Holy Ghost. “These things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.” Keep conscience well enlightened as to the alone ground of its peace. (See Answers 33, 86, 87.)
    6. Ps. cxxxviii. 8, a: “The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me.”
    7. Learn to think of your hearts as the true and only home of the Holy Ghost, and trace all holy and happy affections to His indwelling, and to the effusions of His grace.

    Questions

    1. Derive benefit. Name the sources of the benefits enumerated in Answer 36. Name also the several streams that are said to flow from those sources. So far as the case admits, trace each stream to its proper source or sources, and illustrate the whole from Scripture.
    2. Explain what is meant by the position: Assurance is not of the essence of faith.
    3. Explain what is meant by the evidential, judicial, and prophetic functions of conscience, and illustrate from Scripture.
    4. The following expressions are found in the Scriptures applied to the conscience: good, pure, purged, void of offence, weak, evil, defiled, seared. Explain.
    5. What is meant by Giant Despair falling into fits in sunshiny weather?
    6. In some cases perseverance is more difficult than conversion. What does Manton mean to teach in saying so?
    7. Explain and illustrate from Scripture the saying of St. Bernard: Perseverance is the only one of all the virtues that is crowned.
    8. Explain Bengel’s remark on John vi. 70: There is therefore a kind of election from which one may fall away. (See Answer 20.) Explain and reconcile.