The free offer of the gospel has been a matter of significant debate within Reformed theology. However, despite this controversy, Reformed theologians such as James Durham preached a gospel offer which was a sincere and free invitation from God to all, to embrace Jesus Christ as Saviour. This gospel offer expressed God's grace and goodness to all. Donald MacLean argues that Durham's doctrinal position is representative of the Westminster Standards and embraced by his contemporaries and evidenced by the later disputes concerning the meaning of the teaching of the Westminster Confession of Faith.
James Durham shows the blessedness of those who die in the Lord as well as the misery of those who reject Him. He gives directions for dying in the Lord, shows what to do when death comes suddenly, and then shows all of a believers comfort in death.
This is a reproduction of the original artefact. Generally these books are created from careful scans of the original. This allows us to preserve the book accurately and present it in the way the author intended. Since the original versions are generally quite old, there may occasionally be certain imperfections within these reproductions. We're happy to make these classics available again for future generations to enjoy!
Assurance was a central issue for the eminent Scottish theologian-pastor Thomas Boston long before it emerged as a focal point of the theological debate in the Marrow Controversy. In The Marrow of Certainty, Chun Tse presents the first full-length study of Boston's theology of assurance in six dimensions: trinitarian, covenantal, Christological, soteriological, ecclesiastical, and sacramental. This work not only furnishes the first-ever intellectual biography of Boston in his Scottish context and controversies, but it also cross-studies the theology of the Marrow of Modern Divinity with Boston's notes. This research argues that Boston's doctrine of assurance centres on union and communion with Christ, the architectonic principle of his theology. The book challenges the common conception that Boston's theology merely follows Calvin, the Scots Confession, the Marrow, the Westminster Standards, and Scottish federalism. Boston, most strikingly, holds in tension assurance as intrinsic to faith—itself a gift from God's sovereignty in election—while insisting on self-examination as a human responsibility. This salient mark of his doctrine of assurance originates from his assertion that Christ died for the elect alone but all—elect or not—have the warrant to receive Christ. As such, assurance is, theologically, a divine gift and, pastorally, a human endeavour. Certainty is thus both extra nos and intra nos. Boston, this study reveals, has a potent and enduring power to speak on the perennial issue of assurance, rooted in the person of Christ, whom he considers as being the covenant itself.
Recent decades have witnessed much scholarly reassessment of late-sixteenth through eighteenth-century Reformed theology. It was common to view the theology of this period-typically labelled 'orthodoxy'-as sterile, speculative, and rationalistic, and to represent it as significantly discontinuous with the more humanistic, practical, and biblical thought of the early reformers. Recent scholars have taken a more balanced approach, examining orthodoxy on its own terms and subsequently highlighting points of continuity between orthodoxy and both Reformation and pre-Reformation theologies, in terms of form as well as content. Until now Scottish theology and theologians have figured relatively minimally in works reassessing orthodoxy, and thus many of the older stereotypes concerning post-Reformation Reformed theology in a Scottish context persist. This collection of essays aims to redress that failure by purposely examining post-Reformation Scottish theology/theologians through a lens provided by the gains made in recent scholarly evaluations of Reformed orthodoxy, and by highlighting, in that process, the significant contribution which Scottish divines of the orthodox era made to Reformed theology as an international intellectual phenomenon.