Notes
88. As early even as several confessions of the time of the Reformation. Even Ritschl (Pietismus, I, p. 258 f.) does not deny, although he looks upon the later development as a deterioration of the ideas of the Reformation, that, for instance, in Conf. Gall. 25, 26, Conf. Belg. 29, Conf. Helv. post, 17, the true Reformed Church was defined by definitely empirical attributes, and that to this true Church believers were not accounted without the attribute of moral activity. (See above, note 42.)
89. "Bless God that we are not of the many" (Thomas Adams, Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 138).
90. The idea of the birthright, so important in history, thus received an important confirmation in England. "The firstborn which are written in heaven. . . . As the firstborn is not to be defeated in his inheritance, and the enrolled names are never to be obliterated, so certainly they shall inherit eternal life" (Thomas Adams, Works of the Puritan Divines, p. xiv).
91. The Lutheran emphasis on penitent grief is foreign to the spirit of ascetic Calvinism, not in theory, but definitely in practice. For it is of no ethical value to the Calvinist; it does not help the damned, while for those certain of their election, their own sin, so far as they admit it to themselves, is a symptom of backwardness in development. Instead of repenting of it they hate it and attempt to overcome it by activity for the glory of God. Compare the explanation of Howe (Cromwell's chaplain 1656-58) in Of Men's Enmity against God and of reconciliation between God and Man," Works of the English Puritan Divines, p. 237: "The carnal mind is enmity against God. It is the mind, therefore, not as speculative merely, but as practical and active that must be renewed", and, p. 246: "Recondliation . . . must begin in (1) a deep conviction . . . of your former enmity. . . . I have been alienated from God. . . . (2) (p. 251) a clear and lively apprehension of the monstrous iniquity and wickedne'Ss thereof.” The hatred here is that of sin, not of the sinner. But as early as the famous letter of the Duchess Renata d’Este (Leonore’s mother) to Calvin, in which she speaks of the hatred which she would feel toward her father and husband if she became convinced they belonged to the damned, is shown the transfer to the person. At the same time it is an example of what was said above [pp. 104-6] of how the individual became loosed from the ties resting on his natural feelings, for which the doctrine of predestination was responsible.
92. "None but those who give evidence of being regenerate or holy persons ought to be received or counted fit members of visible Churches. Where this is wanting, the very essence of a Church is lost", as the principle is put by Owen, the Independent-Calvinistic Vice-Chancellor of Oxford under Cromwell (Inv. into the Origin of Ev. Ch.). Further, see the following essay (not translated here.—Translator).
93. See following essay.
