All Agreed on Repentance & Faith - Glenn Conjurske

All Agreed on Repentance & Faith

by the editor

Twice in the past I have published statements by prominent men of God, to the effect that all Christians are agreed on the terms upon which men may obtain salvation.

The first of these, by Brownlow North, appeared in October of 1997, on page 237.

The second, by Richard Baxter, in December of 1997, on page 284.

North belonged to the nineteenth century, and Baxter to the seventeenth. Since publishing those two, I have found another which says essentially the same thing. This one is from Richard Cecil, who flourished mainly in the eighteenth century, living from 1748 to 1810. He says,

“There has been a slander brought against religion—-that we are NOT AGREED, as to the truths we should set before men. I say, it is false! We ARE agreed. All, who know anything of real religion, are agreed, that the SUBSTANCE of the matter is contained in REPENTANCE toward God, and FAITH toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

“If a man, like the Prodigal, feels that he has left his father’s house, turned his back on God—-and is become a fool and a madman for so doing—-and that there is no hope but in his returning again; if such a change of mind is wrought in him by the Holy Spirit, as he wrought in David, when he cried, Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin: if, like Peter, he goes forth weeping bitterly—-feeling that he has acted foolishly and wickedly, and that his only hope is in the mercy of God through the Saviour—-then the man enters so far into the spirit of religion—-REPENTANCE TOWARD GOD.

“But does he rest in this? Nay, he knows that if he could offer thousands of rams, and ten thousand rivers of oil, he could make no satisfaction for the sin of his soul. He looks to the atonement!—-to Him, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.

“Repentance toward God must be accompanied by faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.”

This is what Christ preached, this is what Paul preached, and this is what has been agreed upon by all the men of God through all the centuries, until the present antinomian age, in which repentance has been either denied, or so defined as to mean nothing at all, or something very different from what has been meant by it from John the Baptist onward, through all the centuries.

Glenn Conjurske