Gave overview of the Scottish Reformation and the role of John Knox and the Scots Confession, 1560. Talked about the inevitable decline away from the gospel that has happened in Scotland and in Edinburgh--and everywhere else where there was nice a great outpouring of the grace of the gospel. Why is this true? Where does the devil attack in every generation? How do we guard against the decline in our own day?
Note how the language used in the excerpt from the Council of Trent, the Catholic Counter Reformation uses theological phraseology to denounce the gospel doctrines of the Reformers:
If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, let him be anathema. If anyone says that men are justified either by the sole imputation of Christ's righteousness, or by the sole remission of sins, let him be anathema.... If anyone says that this righteousness received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works, but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification, but not the cause of the increase, let him be anathema. If anyone says that the good works of the one justified are gifts of God in such a way that they are not also the good merits of the one justified, let him be anathema.
"Satan's stratagem is, that he does not attempt an avowed destruction of the whole gospel, but he taints its purity by introducing false and corrupt opinions....We must exercise the utmost caution lest we allow any counterfeit to be substituted for the pure doctrine of the gospel."
John Calvin
“The safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
C. S. Lewis
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