1

Doubtless this is Assurance, but an Assurance so narrowed by predestination as to bear little resemblance to the Assurance afterwards preached by the Wesleys. The same naturally holds good of the teaching of Beza. Thus there is ample justification for the remark of Auguste Sabatier that, with the Reformers, the 'Witness of the Spirit' was not saving witness so much as a witness in respect of moral judgement." True it is that the doctrine finds a place in the Homilies of the Church of England, a fact which Wesley, in the First Part of his Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, makes clear by means of extracts. Yet it is extremely doubtful whether the English Church of 1563, with its Calvinistic temperament, believed whole-heartedly in Assurance as the privilege of all persons, and therefore it is a moot point how far this doctrine was expressed by the letter of the Homilies and not by their spirit. The Homilies are recommended in the thirty-fifth of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the seventeenth of which distinctly advocates predestination, so it is a fair inference that, in actuality, the Homilies were enshrouded with a Calvinistic cloak, which was little in evidence inasmuch as homiletic literature is always broader than creedal, and that the later outcry against Wesley's doctrine of Assurance arose from his snatching off that cloak. This might well have been an instance of difference not so much between creed and practice as between creed and creed.

Mysticism in emphasizing experience emphasized an Assurance of its own. Let the personality but become a spiritual unity and the Divine Unity is discovered within as well as without. In striving to follow Christ one can be certain of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the soul (Tauler). Such an Assurance, however, was the product of an unbalanced subjectivism which overlooked the fact that religion is a matter not only of feeling but also of reason. That Wesley, at least, acknowledged no contribution to this doctrine on the part of

1 Pope, ibid., iii., p. 124: 'The doctrine of Assurance, taught by what may be called the Calvinistic system. . . makes assurance a special privilege of the few, who through much discipline attain it as a gift of God.'

The Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit, ii., chap. iv. 'Those who feel within themselves the working of the Holy Spirit know that they are predestined to salvation, and experience comfort in so knowing. And those who lack the Holy Spirit may well be driven to despair, having continually before their eyes the sentence of God's predestination.' Cf. also Hallam, Hist. of England, i.,

the Mystics is patent from his writings. It is by God's peculiar blessing upon [the Methodists] in searching the Scriptures, confirmed by the experience of His children, that this great evangelical truth has been recovered, which had been for many years wellnigh lost and forgotten.' As this truth is maintained, so will experience be developed side by side with doctrine, and the Church of modern days be empowered by the Holy Spirit mightily to proclaim the whole message of the gospel, which is the only hope of the present age and of ages yet unborn.

1 Wesley, Sermons, Vol. I., serm. xi. (1767).

INDICES

I. INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES.

II. INDEX OF GREEK AND LATIN WORDS.

III. INDEX Of Persons.

IV. INDEX OF SUBJECTS.