Third Chapter. Preparatory Grace
Third Chapter.
XVII.
What Is It?
“We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.” —1 John iii. 14.
It is unnecessary to say that the scope of these discussions does not include the redemptive work as a whole, which in its choicest sense is not of the Holy Spirit alone, but of the Triune God whose royal majesty shines and sparkles in it with excellent glory. It includes not only the work of the Holy Spirit, but even more that of the Father and of the Son. And in these three we see the triune activity of the tender mercies of the Triune God.
These discussions treat only that part of the work which reveals the operation of the Holy Spirit.
The first question in order is that of the so-called “preparatory grace.” This is a question of surpassing importance, since Methodism See the author’s explanation of Methodism, section 5 of the Preface. neglects it and modern orthodoxy abuses it, in order to make the determining choice in the work of grace once more to depend upon man’s free will.
Regarding the principal point, it must be conceded that there is a “gratia prœparans,” as our old theologians used to call it, i.e., a preparatory grace; not a preparation of grace, but a grace which prepares, which is in its preparatory workings real grace, undoubted and unadulterated. The Church has always maintained this confession by its soundest interpreters and noblest confessors. It could not surrender it as long as God is indeed eternal, unchangeable, and omnipresent; but by it must forcibly protest against the untrue representation that God lets a man be born and live for years unnoticed and independent of Himself, suddenly to convert him at the moment of His pleasure, from that hour to make him the object of His care and keeping.
Tho it can not be denied that the sinner shared this delusion because as he cared not for God, why then should God care for him?—yet the Church may not encourage him in this ungodly idea. For it belittles the divine virtues, glories, and attributes. Heretics of every name and origin have made the soul’s salvation their chief study, but almost always have neglected the _knowledge of God. _And yet every creed begins with: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth”; and the value of all that follows concerning Christ and our redemption depends only upon the correct interpretation of that first article. Hence the Church has always insisted upon a pure and correct knowledge of God in every confession and in every part of the redemptive Work; and has considered it its principal duty and privilege to guard the purity of this knowledge. Even a soul’s salvation should not be desired at the expense of the slightest injury to the purity of that confession.
Regarding the work of preparatory grace, it was before all things necessary to examine whether the knowledge of God had been retained in its purity, or whether to favor the sinner it had been distorted and twisted. And tested by this, it can not be denied that God’s care for His elect does not begin at an arbitrary moment, but is interwoven with their whole existence, including their conception, and even before their conception, with the mysteries of that redeeming love which declares: “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” Hence it is unthinkable that God should have left a sinner to himself for years, to arrest him at a certain moment in the midst of his life.
Nay, if God is to remain God and His omnipresent power unlimited, a sinner’s salvation must be an _eternal _work, embracing his entire existence—a work whose roots are hidden in the unseen foundations of the wondrous mercies which extend far beyond his conception. It can not be denied that a man, converted at twenty-five, was during his godless life the subject of the divine labor, care, and protection; that in his conception and before his birth God’s hand held him and brought him forth; yea, that even in the divine counsel the work must be traced which God has wrought for him long before his conversion:
The confession of election and foreordination is essentially the recognition of a grace active long before the hour of conversion. The idea that from eternity God had recorded a mere arbitrary name or figure, to quicken it only after many centuries, is truly ungodly. Nay, God’s elect never stood before His eternal vision as mere names or figures; but every soul elect is also foreordained to stand before Him in his complete development, the object in Christ of God’s _eternal _pleasure.
Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary, which satisfies for the elect, justifying them by His Resurrection, was not accomplished independently of the elect, but included them all. The resurrection is a work of the divine Omnipotence, in which God brings back from the dead not only Christ _without _His own, but Christ _with _His own. Hence every saint with clear spiritual vision confesses that his heavenly Father performs in him an eternal work, not begun only in his conversion, but wrought in the eternal counsel through the periods of old and new covenants; in his person all the days of his life, and which will work in him throughout eternity. Even in this general sense the Church may not neglect to confess preparatory grace.
However, the question is narrowed when, excluding what precedes our birth, we consider only our sinful life before conversion, or the years intervening between the age of discretion and the hour when the scales fell from our eyes.
During those years we departed from God, instead of coming more closely to Him. Sin broke out more violently in one than in another, but there was iniquity in us all. As often as the plummet was let down beside our soul’s, they appeared out of the perpendicular. And during this _sinful period, _many hold that preparatory grace is _out of the question. _They say, “Where sin is, there can be no grace”; hence during those years the Lord leaves the sinner to himself, to return to him when sin’s bitter fruit shall be ripe enough to move him to faith and repentance. They deny not God’s gracious election and foreordination, neither His care for His elect in their birth; but they do deny His preparatory grace during the years of alienation, and believe that His grace begins to operate only when it breaks forth in their conversion.
Of course there is some truth in this; there is such a thing as the abandoning of the sinner to iniquity, when God lets a man walk in his own ways, giving him up unto vile passions to do things that are unseemly. But instead of interrupting God’s labor upon such a soul, the very words of Scripture, “to give them up,“ “to give them over” (Rom. i. 24, 28), show that this drifting away upon the current of sin is not without God’s notice. Men have confessed that, if inward sin had not revealed itself, breaking forth in its fury, they would never have discovered the inward corruption nor have cried to God for mercy. The realization of their guilt and the remembrance of their fearful past have been to many saints powerful incitements to labor with strong hands and pitying hearts for the rescue of those hopelessly lost in the same deadly waters from which they had been saved. The remembrance of the deep corruption from which they are now delivered has been to many the most potent safeguard from fancied self-righteousness, proud bearing, and the conceit of being holier than others. Many depths of reconciliation and grace have been discovered and sounded only by hearts so deeply wounded that, for the covering of their guilt, a mere superficial confession of the atoning blood could not suffice. How deeply did David fall; and who ever shouted from mercy’s depths more jubilantly than he? Who impressed the Church’s pure confession more profoundly than Augustine, incomparable among the Church fathers, who from the abyss of his own guilt and inward brokenness had learned to gaze upon the firmament of God’s eternal mercies. Even from this extreme view of man’s sinful way it can not be affirmed that in that way God’s grace was suspended. Light and shadow are here necessarily blended.
And this is not all. Even tho by sin we have forfeited all, and the sinful ego, however virtuous outwardly, has tinctured every action of life with sin, yet this is not all of life. In the midst of it all, life was shaped and developed. The sinner of five-and-twenty differs from the child of three, who by his ugly temper plainly showed his sinful nature. During all those years the child has become a man. That which slumbered in him has gradually manifested itself. Influences have wrought upon him. Knowledge has been mastered and increased. Talents have been awakened and developed. Memory and remembrance have accumulated treasures of experience. However sinful the form, the character has become settled and some of its traits have adopted definite lines. The child has become a man—a person, living, existing, and thinking differently from other persons. And in all this, so confesses the Church, was the hand of the Omnipresent and Almighty God. It is He who during all these years of resistance has guided and directed His creature according to His own purpose.
Sooner or later the Sun of Grace will rise upon him, and, since much depends upon the condition in which grace shall find him, it is the Lord God Himself who prepares that condition. He prepares it by graciously restraining his character from adopting traits which would prevent him later on from running his course in the kingdom of God, and, on the other hand, by graciously developing in him such character and such features as will appear after his conversion adapted to the task which God intended for him.
And so it is evident that even during the time of alienation God bestows grace upon His elect. Afterward he will perceive how evidently all things have worked together for good, not because he intended it so, but in spite of his sinful intentions, and only because the protecting grace of God was working in and by and through it all. His course might have been altogether different. That it is as it is, and not much worse, he owes not to himself, but to higher favor. Hence, reviewing his life’s dark background, the saint thinks at first that it contains but a night of Satanic darkness; later on, being better instructed, he perceives through that darkness a faint glimmer of divine love.
In fact, in his life there are three distinct periods of thankfulness:
First, immediately after his conversion, when he can think of no other reason of thankfulness than the newly found grace.
Second, when he learns to render thanks also for the grace of his _eternal election, _extending far behind the first grace.
Lastly, when the darkness between election and conversion being dispelled, he thanks God for the _preparatory grace _which in the midst of that darkness watched over his soul.
XVIII.
What It Is Not.
“We are His workmanship.” —Ephes. ii. 10.
In the preceding article we contended that there is preparatory grace. In opposition to the contemporary deism of the Methodists, See section 5 in Preface. the Reformed churches ought to confess this excellent truth in all its length and breadth. But it should not be abused to reestablish the sinner’s free will, as the Pelagians did, and the Arminians after them, and as the Ethicals do now, tho differently.
The Methodist errs in saying that God does not care for the sinner until He suddenly arrests him in his sinful way. Nor may we tolerate the opposite error, the denial of regeneration, the new starting-point in the life of the sinner, which would make the whole work of conversion but an _awakening _of _dormant _and suppressed energies. There is no gradual transition; conversion is not merely the healing of disease, or an uprising of what had been suppressed; least of all, the arousing of dormant energies.
As regards his first birth, the child of God was _dead, _and can be brought to life only by a second _birth _as real as the first. Generally the person so favored is not conscious of it. In the nature of the case, man is unconscious of his first birth. Consciousness comes only with the years. And the same applies to regeneration, of which he was unconscious until the time of his conversion; and that may be ten or twenty years.
The grounds upon which the Church confesses that a large majority of men are born again _before _holy Baptism are _many _indeed; wherefore, in Baptism, it addresses the infants of believers as being regenerate.
And what do the Semi-Pelagians of all times and shades, and the Ethicals of the present time, teach concerning this? They lower the first act of God in the sinners to a sort of preparatory grace, imparted not only to the elect, but to all baptized persons. They represent it as follows:
First, all men are conceived and born in sin; and if God did not take the first step, all would perish.
Second, He imparts to the children born in the Christian Church a sort of assisting grace, relieving inability.
Third, hence every baptized person has the power to choose or reject the offered grace.
Fourth, wherefore, out of the many who received preparatory grace, some choose life and others perish.
And this is the confession not of Augustine, but of Pelagius; not of Calvin, but of Castellio; not of Gomarus, but of Arminius; not of the Reformed churches, but of the sects which they have condemned as heretical.
This impious lie, which pervades this whole representation, must be eradicated; and the Methodist brethren deserve our strongest support when with holy enthusiasm they oppose this false system. If this representation be true, then the counsel of God has lost its certainty and stedfastness; then the Mediator’s redemptive work is uncertain in its application; then our passing from death unto life depends in the end upon our own will; and the child of God is robbed of all his comfort in life and death, since his new life may be lost.
It does not avail the Ethical theologians when under many beautiful forms they confess their belief in an eternal election, and that grace can not be lost, and in the perseverance of saints. As long as they do not purge themselves of their principal error—viz., that in Baptism God so relieves the inability of the sinner that he can choose life of himself—they do not stand on the basis of the Reformed churches, but are directly opposed to it. Nor will they be counted as children of the Reformed household of faith until, without any subterfuge, they confess definitely that preparatory grace does not operate at all, except upon persons who will surely come to life, and who will never be lost again. To suppose that this grace can work in a man without saving him to the uttermost is to break with the doctrine of Scripture and to turn the back upon a vital feature of the Reformed churches. We do not deny that many persons are lost in whom many excellent powers have wrought. The apostle teaches this very clearly in Heb. vi.: “They may have tasted of the heavenly gift.” But between God’s work upon _them _ and that in His _elect _is a great gulf. The workings in these non-elect have _nothing _in common with saving grace; hence preparatory grace, as well as saving grace, is altogether out of the question. Surely there is preparatory grace, but only for the elect who will certainly come to life, and who being once quickened will remain so. The fatal doctrine of three conditions—viz., that (1) of the spiritually dead, (2) of the spiritually living, and (3) of men hovering between life and death—must be abandoned. The spread of this doctrine in our churches will surely destroy their spiritual character, as it has done in the ancient Huguenot churches of France. Life and death are absolute opposites, and a third state 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 exist. This applies to the spiritual condition. One lives, altho he has received no more than the vital germ, and still wanders unconverted in the ways of sin. And he is _dead, _tho tasting the heavenly gift, so long as life is not rekindled in his soul. Every other representation is false.
Others advance the view that preparatory grace prepares not for the reception of life, but for _conversion. _And, this is just as pernicious. 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 to a new life, which sooner or later manifests itself in conversion.
Preparatory grace always precedes the new life; hence it ceases even before holy Baptism, in infants quickened before being baptized. Hence in a 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 of all grace; and that which exists can not be prepared.
A third error, on this point, is the representation that certain moods and dispositions must be prepared in the sinner before God can quicken him; as tho quickening grace were conditioned upon preparatory grace. The salvation of our deceased infants opposes this also. There were no moods or dispositions in them; yet no theologian will say that they are lost, or that they are saved by another name than the One in whom adults find salvation. No; the sinner needs nothing whatever to predispose him for the implanting of the new life; and, tho he were the most hardened sinner, devoid of every predisposition, God is able at His own time to quicken him. The omnipotence of divine grace is unlimited.
The implanting of the new life is not a moral, but a _metaphysical _act of God—i.e., He does not effect it by admonishing the sinner, but independently of his will and consciousness; yet despite his will, He plants something in him whereby his nature obtains another quality.
Even the representation, still maintained by some of our best theologians, that preparatory grace is like the drying of wet wood, so that the spark can more readily ignite it, we can not adopt. Wet wood will not take the spark. It must be dried before it _can _be kindled. And this does not apply to the work of grace. The disposition of our souls is immaterial. Whatever it may be, omnipotent grace can kindle it. And, tho we do not undervalue dispositions, yet we do not concede to them the potentiality of kindling.
For this reason the theologians of the flourishing period of our churches insisted that preparatory grace should not be treated loosely, but in the following order: “The grace of God first precedes, then prepares, and lastly _performs (præveniens, præparans, operans)—i.e., _grace is always first, never waits for anything _in us, _but begins its work before there is anything _in us. _Second, the time before our quickening is not wasted, but during it grace prepares us for our lifework in the kingdom. Third, at the appointed time grace alone quickens us unaided; hence, grace is the _operans, _the real worker. Hence preparatory grace must never be understood as a means to prepare for the impartation of life. Nothing prepares for such quickening. Life is enkindled, wholly unprepared, not from anything in us, but entirely by the working of God. All that preparatory grace accomplishes is this, that God by it so disposes our life, arranges its course, and directs our development that being quickened by His exclusive act, we shall possess the disposition required for the task assigned to us in the kingdom.
Our person is like the field wherein the sower is to scatter the seed. Suppose there are two fields in which the seed must be sown; the one has been plowed, fertilized, harrowed, and cleared of stones, while the other lies fallow, uncared for. What is the result? Does the former produce wheat of itself? By no means; the furrows were never so deep and the ground never so rich and smooth, if it receives no seed-grain it will never yield a single ear. And the other, not cultivated, will surely germinate the seed scattered therein. The origin of the wheat sown has no connection with the cultivation of the field, since the seed-grain is conveyed thither from elsewhere. But to the growth of the wheat, cultivation is of greatest importance. And so it is in the spiritual kingdom. Whether great or small, preparatory grace contributes nothing to the origin of life, which springs from the “incorruptible seed” sown in the heart. But to its _development _it is of greatest importance.
This is why the Reformed churches so strongly insist upon the careful training of our children. For, altho we confess that all our training can not create the least spark of heavenly fire; yet we know that when God puts that spark into their hearts, kindling the new fife, much will depend upon the condition in which it finds them.