Code name E9

Idk why I’m on this app | Reformed Catholike | OPC | Classical Presbyterian

[Code name E9 @CodeNameE9]

The only way one can get right with God is through the intercessory work of Christ and His ministry.

[The Pilgrim's Progress 🍇 @ToCelestialCity]

"A disposition to good works is necessary to justification, being the qualification of an active and lively faith. Good works of all sorts are necessary to our continuance in the state of justification, and so to our final absolution, if God give opportunity. But they are not the cause of, but only a precedent qualification or condition to final forgiveness and eternal bliss. If then, when we speak of the conditions of the covenant of grace, by condition we understand whatsoever is required on our part, as precedent, concomitant, or subsequent to justification, repentance, faith, and obedience are all conditions. But if by condition we understand what is required on our part as the cause of the good promised though only instrumental, faith or belief in the promises of free mercy is the only condition."

–– John Ball, A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace, p. 20

Note: This work was massively influential for the formation of the Westminster Standards, and was widely popular among the Assemblymen.

[Michael J. Lynch @reformedtexan]

"For the Christian religion consists not in the leaves of words, nor in the bark of ecclesiastical ceremonies, but in the root of reason and the kernel of truth and piety handed down in the holy Scriptures..."

Link below.

[Edwin D. Nuñez @EdwinNunez1646]

“The term ‘irresistible grace’ is not really of Reformed origin but was used by Jesuits and Remonstrants to characterize the doctrine of the efficacy of grace as it was advocated by Augustine and those who believed as he did. The Reformed in fact had some objections to the term because it was absolutely not their intent to deny that grace is often and indeed always resisted by the unregenerate person and therefore could be resisted.”

— Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, V. 4, 82-83

[Code name E9 @CodeNameE9]

"Bucer uses Justification ambiguously. It means for him both to impute righteousness and to impart it. The two are distinguishable, and Bucer does distinguish them (at some points more clearly than at others); but he never separates them. It is not a question of one following chronologically upon the other, though this does happen, rather is the second necessarily involved in the first. God never imputes righteousness without also imparting it. He does not simply transform a man’s standing in his sight; he transforms a man’s life in his sight and in the sight of men

[...]
It is precisely his concern to hold these two ideas together that seems to lead Bucer to use them almost indiscriminately. One moment justification can mean to impute righteousness or to forgive, another moment it can mean to impart righteousness or to renew."

~ W. P. Stephens, The holy spirit in the theology of Martin Bucer, pt. 1. ch. 3

[Code name E9 @CodeNameE9]

“[God] hath patiently forborne thee, and mercifully upheld thee, and given thee that breath which thou didst breathe out against him, and given those mercies which thou did sacrifice to thy flesh, and afforded thee that provision, which thou spentest to satisfy thy greedy throat; he gave thee every minute of that time which thou didst waste in idleness, or drunkenness, or worldliness: and doth not all his patience and mercy shew that he desired not thy damnation? Can the candle burn without the oil? Can your houses stand without the earth to bear them? As well can you live one hour without the support of God. And why did he so long support thy life, but to see when thou wouldest bethink thee of the folly of thy ways, and return and live. Will any man purposely put arms into his enemy’s hands to resist him; or hold a candle to a murderer that is killing his children, or to an idle servant that plays or sleeps the while? Surely it is to see whether you will at last return and live, that God hath so long waited on thee. ”

~ Richard Baxter, A Call to the Unconverted, serm. II

[Summum @7ummumbonum]

“Every virtuous deed is a sin; unless it rises from the seed of true faith, it becomes a source of guilt, and its barren glory heaps up punishment for itself.”

—Prosper of Aquitaine, Carmen de Ingratis, v. 405

[IrenicalProt. @irenicalprot]

F. Turretin on the need of a new justification or particular remission of sins:

[Summum @7ummumbonum]

“There are some that think the Scripture gives a ground for a second Justification, or the continuing and increasing of it, and bring those places, Tit. 3:5-7, Rev. 22:11. The learned and excellent Interpreter Ludovicus de Dieu, in Cap. 8, of the Romans, verse. 4, largely pleadeth for a twofold Justification; The first he makes to be the imputing of Christ’s righteousness to us, received by faith, which is altogether perfect, and is the cause of pardon of sins: The second he makes an effect of the former, whereby through the grace of God regenerating, we are conformable unto that love in part, and are day by day more and more justified, and shall be fully so when perfection comes: of which Justification he saith these texts speak, Jam. 2:21, 24, Rev. 22:11, Matth. 11:37, 1 King. 8:32. This twofold Justification he makes to differ toto coelo from the Papists, whose first is founded upon the merit of congruity, the second upon the merit of condignity. […]

Austin seemeth to hold Justification a frequent and continued act, lib. 2. contra Julianum, cap. 8. When we are heard in that prayer [Forgive us our sins] we need (saith he) such a remission daily, what progress soever we have made in our second Justification. He speaks also of a Justification hujus vitae, which he calls minorem the lesser; and another plenam and perfectam, full and perfect, which belongs to the state of glory, Tract. 4, in Joannem lib. de spiritu and lit. cap. ultim.”

—Anthony Burgess, True Doctrine of Justification, Lect. XXIX

[Summum @7ummumbonum]

"Perfect obedience, which the Law requireth, and imperfect obedience which the Gospel accepteth (for it requireth perfection as well as the Law doth) are but graduall differences; as the same summe of gold, though clipped, if accepted by the creditor as full payment, the rest which is wanting being pardoned, may in grace and value, be as good as the full payment."
—Samuel Rutherford, Spiritual Antichrist, CHAP. VII. How the Law and the Gospel require the same obedience.

“Therefore, all the commandments are considered fulfilled when whatever is not fulfilled is forgiven.”
—Augustine, Retractationes, Bk. I, Ch. XIV.

[Code name E9 @CodeNameE9]

"We teach that rewards have been offered and promised to the works of believers. We teach that good works are meritorious, not for the remission of sins, for grace or justification (for these we obtain only by faith), but for other rewards, bodily and spiritual, in this life and after this life because Paul says, 1 Cor. 3, 8: Every man shall receive his own reward, according to his own labor. There will, therefore, be different rewards according to different labors. But the remission of sins is alike and equal to all, just as Christ is one, and is offered freely to all who believe that for Christ's sake their sins are remitted."

~ Phillip Melancthon, Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article III

[Summum @7ummumbonum]

“We confess that in the Supper of the Lord not only the benefits of Christ, but the very substance itself of the Son of Man; that is, the same true flesh which the Word assumed into perpetual personal union, in which he was born and suffered, rose again and ascended to heaven, and that true blood which he shed for us; are not only signified, or set forth symbolically, typically or in figure, like the memory of something absent, but are truly and really represented, exhibited, and offered for use; in connection with symbols that are by no means naked, but which, so far as God who promises and offers is concerned, always have the thing itself truly and certainly joined with them, whether proposed to believers or unbelievers."

—Theodore Beza (& other delegates), Confession of Faith presented at the Colloquy of Worms (1557)

[Matthew Pearson☩ @_matthewpearson]

John Owen on good works as a duty prescribed by the gospel:

“Though there are no conditions properly so called of the whole grace of the covenant, yet there are conditions in the covenant, taking that term, in a large sense, for that which by the order of divine constitution precedeth some other things, and hath an influence into their existence; for God requireth many things of them whom he actually takes into covenant, and makes partakers of the promises and benefits of it. Of this nature is that whole obedience which is prescribed unto us in the gospel, in our walking before God in uprightness; and there being an order in the things that belong hereunto, some acts, duties, and parts of our gracious obedience, being appointed to be means of the further additional supplies of the grace and mercies of the covenant, they may be called conditions required of us in the covenant, as well as duties prescribed unto us."
-John Owen, 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝐻𝑒𝑏𝑟𝑒𝑤𝑠, in 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑠, 23:137

[Summum @7ummumbonum]

“[The Holy Virgin] after her regeneration, never committed any wilful, intentional sin or vice and was more sanctified, more freed from sinful frailties than even any of the most holy children of God. And it would herewith be a very inapt, yea, if it happened out of intentional malice, a godless speech, if someone would want to say: ‘The holy Virgin Mary was a woman like other women’… A true Christian should herewith guard himself very diligently from suchlike erroneous speeches.”

—Johann Heinrich Heidegger, Short Instruction on the Holy and Highly Lauded Virgin Mary, Q.33

[Summum @7ummumbonum]

“It is necessary in respect of the proper place of holiness in the new covenant [that it is] the means unto the end. God hath appointed that holiness shall be the means, the way to that eternal life… it is the way appointed of God for us to walk in for the obtaining of salvation. And therefore, he that hath hope of eternal life purifies himself, as he is pure: and none shall ever come to that end who walketh not in that way; for without holiness it is impossible to see God.”

—John Owen, Of Communion with God, VIII

[Dordtius @dordtius1618]

“Let us proceed now to shew what the opinion of our Divines is: in the setting forth of which, in the first place, observe, that although our Divines now abstain from the use of the word merit, which the Fathers frequently employ; yet they do it, not because their sentiments differ from those of the Fathers, but lest they should be assenting to Papists, who seize upon that term; and though all antiquity cry out against them, forcibly distort it to a meaning both pernicious and heretical. For what the Fathers understood under the term merit, namely, the work of a believer and regenerate person, endued with supernatural goodness, pleasing and acceptable to God in a supernatural order, and destined to receive the gracious rewards, as well of this life as of that which is to come, from the promise of a God most bountiful; this, all our Divines have always entirely conceded: as has been shown, when treating professedly of the works really good. We are not, then, opposing the mere term merit,”
— John Davenant, Treatise on Justification, vol. 2, pg. 75-76

[Code name E9 @CodeNameE9]

"[W]e are not contending against inherent righteousness : indeed, we acknowledge such a quality to be infused in the act of justification ; but yet we assert, that remission of our sins, the being received into the Divine favour, and acceptance unto life eternal, do not either flow from this quality or depend upon it ; but upon the gratuitous mercy of God absolving us from our sins and accepting us to life eternal for the sake of Christ and the obedience of Christ. Neither are the Fathers to be considered as opposed to this our opinion, if sometimes they refer the word justification to the infusion of righteousness : for the same word is used sometimes in a different sense, not only by the Fathers, but even in the Scriptures themselves ."

~ John Davenant, Disputatio De Justita, Vol. 1. ch. XXV

[Summum @7ummumbonum]

"It is somewhat strange that a man should be judged at the last day, and justified in this life, just in the same way and manner,—that is, with respect unto faith and works,—when the Scripture doth constantly ascribe our justification before God unto faith without works; and the judgment at the last day is said to be according unto works, without any mention of faith. […]

[The proposition that] God judges all men, and renders unto all men, at the last judgment, ‘according unto their works,’ is true, and affirmed in the Scripture.”

—John Owen, Doctrine of Justification, ch. 6

[Dordtius @dordtius1618]

[W]e do not deny the presence of Christ’s actual flesh as pertains to true Communion, nor do we esteem empty symbols. We do not in any way doubt that through the symbols what truly is represented to our external senses God internally offers to us by the power of His Holy Spirit most truly and efficaciously as we ascend by faith to heaven; namely, that—made one with our Head—we truly become in Him sharers in eternal life.” — Theodore Beza, A Clear & Simple Treatise on the Lord's Supper, pg. 74

[Code name E9 @CodeNameE9]

"In asserting the intercession of the saints, if all you [Sadoleto] mean is, that they continually pray for the completion of Christ's kingdom, on which the salvation of all the faithful depends, there is none of us who calls it in question. "

~ John Calvin, Reply to Jacopo Sadoleto's Letter to the Genevans

[Dordtius @dordtius1618]

"Now we for our parts, despise not the Apocrypha, as namely the books of the the Apocrypha, as namely the books of the Maccabees, Ecclesiasticus and the rest, but we reverence them in all convenient manner, preferring them before any other books of men, in that they have bin approved by an universal consent of the Church: yet we think them not meet to be received into the Canon of holy scripture, and therefore not to be believed, but as they are consenting with the written word." — William Perkins, Reformed Catholic, Of Saving Faith