Taken from the Southern Presbyterian Review. I know of nothing quite like it for research and footnotes...
"Assurance - as it regards the truths and doctrines of the Scriptures, it is the assurance of the understanding ; as it regards the testimony of God concerning Christ and salvation through Him, it is the assurance of faith; as it regards the glory of the future inheritance, it is the assurance of hope; as it regards our particular occupation in life and our obligation to undertake and to discharge any particular duty, it is the assurance of conscience, "making our calling and duty sure;" and as it regards our outward condition, health, suffering, and affliction, it is the assurance of comfort, enabling our patience, confidence and resignation, "to have their perfect exercise," "so that in whatever state we are we may therein be content." "All
these are diversities of operations" of one and the same spirit
working in us, to will and to do according to God's good pleasure, and thoroughly furnishing the man of God for every good word and work. In all these cases, the object of which we are assured is external to us, and these kind of assurances may be denominated objective. But as it regards our own personal interest in Christ and salvation through Him, the evidence is not outward in the word, but inward in the heart, and this kind of assurance, which may be denominated subjective, is the assurance of salvation^—or, as it is called, the reflex exercise of saving faith, the assurance of sense, or the assurance of experience. |
