[K]nowledge alone of the divine will does not suffice for true and saving faith, or understanding of all the concepts [which] are contained in the gospel. For this is possible without assent and trust. Indeed, it really is in the demons, and in many of the ungodly and unbelieving. Nor indeed is it any assent whatever, namely sudden, perfunctory, implicit, brutish or blind, ungrounded in reason and yielded without judgment. For this by itself, taken alone, is not saving, nor can it ever sufficiently move the will to any rational and free obedience. And therefore [assent] is not rarely found in those who live little like Christians, but it must be entirely firm and solid, strengthened by the command of a deliberate will. Finally, assent which is faithful and obedient is called faith, not just an absolute confidence of special mercy, almost as if already secured, namely, by which I believe that my sins are already forgiven me (for this is not the essential form which constitutes justifying faith, but only a certain additional consequent[;] indeed it necessarily presupposes saving faith itself, as its prerequisite condition), but by which I firmly establish that it is impossible that I should escape eternal death and to the contrary obtain eternal life by any other means than Jesus Christ, and in any other way than by that prescribed by him. And hence this has always had joined to it our debt of new obedience to Jesus Christ, that is, not some sterile purpose of obeying or feelings without effect, but which continually brings forth of itself true and actual obedience itself.
Simon Episcopius,[1] ‘On faith in Jesus Christ’, in Mark A. Ellis (trans. and ed.), The Arminian Confession of 1621, Princeton Theological Monograph Series (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2005), pp. 78–9
Copyright © Mark A. Ellis, 2005. All rights reserved.
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Note
1. Simon Episcopius (1583–1643), protégé of Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609), is attributed as the author of the Arminian/Remonstrant Confession of 1621 (i.e. the ‘Confession or Declaration of the Pastors which in the Belgian Federation are called the Remonstrants, on the principle articles of the Christian Religion’). See Ellis, ‘Introduction’, in
Tbe Arminian Confession of 1621, p. ix, par. 2. Ellis’ translation of the confession is from Latin to English. (As an aside, the Dutch names of Episcopius and Arminius are Simon Bisschop and Jakob Hermanszoon [respectively].) —J. D. Gallé
Addendum. Emended the title of post on Saturday, 30 October 2021.
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