The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 330

PREPARATORY GRACE

2go

and that in His e/ect is a great gulf. The workings in these nonelect have nothing in common with saving grace hence prepara;

tory grace, as well as saving grace, is altogether out of the question.

is preparatory grace, but only for the elect who come to life, and who being once quickened will reThe fatal doctrine of three conditions — viz., that (i) of

Surely there

will certainly

main

so.

the spiritually dead, (2) of the spiritually living, and

hovering between

life

and

death

—must

be abandoned.

(3)

of

men

The spread

of this doctrine in our churches will surely destroy their spiritual character, as

it

has done in the ancient Huguenot churches of

Life and death are absolute opposites, and a third state

France.

between them is unthinkable. He that is scarcely alive belongs to the living; and he that has just died belongs to the dead. One apparently dead is living, and he that is apparently living is dead. The boundary-line is a hair's breadth, and a state between does not This applies to the spiritual condition. One lives, altho he exist. received no more than the vital germ, and still wanders unconhas verted in the ways of sin. And he is dead, tho tasting the heavenly Every other repregift, so long as life is not rekindled in his soul. sentation

is false.

Others advance the view that preparatory grace prepares not for the reception of

life,

but for conversion.

And

this is just as

For then the soul's salvation depends not upon regeneration, but upon conversion and this makes the salvation of our deceased infants impossible. Nay, standing by the graves of our baptized young children, confident of their salvation through the one Name given under heaven, we reject the teaching that salvation depends upon conversion but confess that it is effected by the divine act of creating in us a new life, which sooner or later pernicious.

;

;

manifests

itself in

conversion.

new life hence it ceases quickened before being bap-

Preparatory grace always precedes the

even before holy Baptism, tized.

Hence

in a

in infants

more limited

;

sense, preparatory grace operates

only in persons quickened later on in

life,

shortly before conversion.

For the sinner once quickened has received grace, i.e., the germ all grace and that which exists can not be prepared.

of

;

A

third error, on this point, is the representation that certain

moods and

dispositions

must be prepared

in the sinner before

God

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