2. You afterwards object against some other text which I had cited, to illustrate the nature of saving faith. My words were, “Hear believing Job, declaring his faith, I know that my Redeemer liveth.” I here affirm two things, 1. That Job was then a believer. 2. That he declared his faith in these words. And all I affirm, you allow. Your own words are, “God was pleased to bestow upon him a strong assurance of his favour—to inspire him with a prophecy of the resurrection, and that he should have a share in it.”
I went on, “Hear Thomas, when having seen he believed, crying out my Lord and my God.” Hereon you comment thus, “The meaning of which is that St. Thomas makes a confession, both of his faith and repentance.” I agree with you. But you add, “in St. Thomas’s confession there is not implied an assurance of pardon,” you cannot agree with yourself in this; but immediately subjoin, “If it did imply such an assurance, he might well have it, since he had an immediate revelation of it from God himself.”
Yet a little before you endeavoured to prove that one who was not a whit behind the very chief apostles had not such an assurance: where, in order to shew that faith does not imply this, you said, St. Paul methinks has fully determined this point (1 Corinthians iv. 4.) I know nothing by myself, says he, yet am I not hereby justified.—“And if an apostle so illuminated, don’t think himself justified”—Then I grant, he has fully determined the point. But before you absolutely fix upon that conclusion, be pleased to remember your own comment that follows, on those other words of St. Paul, the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Your words are, “And no question a person indowed with such extraordinary gifts, might arrive at a very eminent degree of assurance.”—So he did arrive at a very eminent degree of assurance, tho’ he did not think himself justified!
I can scarce think you have read over that chapter to the Colossians: else surely you would not assert, that those words on which the stress lies, (viz. Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption thro’ his blood, even the forgiveness of sins) do not relate to Paul and Timothy who wrote the epistle, but to the Colossians, to whom they wrote, I need be at no pains to answer this; for presently after your own words are, “he hath made us, meaning the Colossians, as well as himself, meet to be inheritors.”——
3. You may easily observe, that I quoted the council of Trent by memory, not having the book then by me. I own, and thank you for correcting my mistake: but in correcting one, you make another. For the decrees of the sixth session were not “published on the 13th of January:” but the session itself began on that day.
I cannot help reciting your next words, although they are not exactly to the present question.
“The words of the 12th canon of the council of Trent are,”
“If any man shall say that justifying faith is nothing else but a confidence in the divine mercy, remitting sins for Christ’s sake, and that this confidence is that alone by which we are justified, let him be accursed.” You add,
“This Sir, I am sure is true doctrine, and perfectly agreeable to the doctrine of our church. And so you are not only anathematized by the council of Trent, but also condemned by our own church.”
“Our church holds no such scandalous and disgraceful opinion.”—According to our church, no man can have “the true faith, who has not a loving heart.”—Therefore faith is not a confidence that any man’s sins are actually forgiven, and he reconciled to God.” (What have the premisses to do with the conclusion!)