2. The foreknowledge of God is a divine perception of what that agent will choose to do in a given case of responsibility. In this there is no conflict between freedom and foreknowledge.
We admit that God saw sin as a certainty, but that perception did not make sin a certainty. The freedom of the agent does not destroy the knowledge of God, nor does the knowledge of God destroy the freedom of the agent. God's knowledge of the certainty does not cause the certainty. His knowledge of what an agent will choose to do depends on the certainty that he will do it, and until the certainty exists God cannot know it, as neither God nor man can know anything where there is nothing to know. The knowledge may follow after, go before, or accompany an event, but gives no existence or character to the event, any more than a light shining around a rock gives character or existence to the rock.
IV. The New Birth.
The new birth, according to Wesley, includes pardon, justification, regeneration, and adoption. These are coetaneous—received at one and the same time. But they are always preceded by conviction of sin, repentance, and submission to God by faith.
Mr. Wesley says that whosoever is justified is born again, and whosoever is born again is justified, that "both these gifts of God are given to every believer at one and the same moment. In one point of time his sins are blotted out, and he is born again of God."
Mr. Wesley taught that the new birth put an end to the voluntary commission of sin. This change is really a "new creation;" it removes the "love of sin," so that "he that is born of God does not commit sin." Sin, though it may and does exist, does not reign in him who is born of God. It has no longer dominion, though it may have a being, in his heart, requiring a still further work of grace. This wonderful change is effected by faith in the atoning sacrifice. It must be by faith alone. And such a doctrine is very full of comfort.
V. The Witness of the Spirit.
This doctrine, as well as justification by faith, was strongly contested in Wesley's time, and the contest has not fully subsided. Many argue that there is no direct witness of the Spirit except what comes through the Word, and hence is an inference which we draw by a process of reasoning. The Word of God, it is claimed, gives us certain marks of the new birth. We recognize such internal evidence, hence we infer that we are justified, or born again. This is Wesley's indirect witness, or the witness of our own spirit. But he claimed that God, by his own Spirit, gives us a direct witness; that the "Spirit of God witnesses with our spirit that we are the children of God." And here is his incomparable definition of this soul-cheering truth: "By the witness of the Spirit I mean an inward impression of the soul, whereby the Spirit of God immediately and directly witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God; that Jesus Christ hath loved me and given himself for me; that all my sins have been blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God."
Twenty years later, speaking of this definition, he said: "I see no cause to retract any of these suggestions. Neither do I conceive how any of those expressions may be altered so as to make them more intelligible."