104. A similar thing would happen to us if we were to embrace the faith of the new church but also hold onto the faith of the former church regarding the assignment of the Lord’s justice or merit, since from the latter concept as from a root all the tenets of the former church have risen up like shoots.

If this were to happen, it would be like people escaping from three of the dragon’s heads but entangling themselves in the other four. It would be like running away from a leopard but stumbling onto a lion. It would be like climbing out of a dry pit only to fall into a water-filled pit and drown.

(The truth of this statement will be further shown after the discussion of the next proposition [§§109– 113], where the topic of being assigned spiritual credit or blame is taken up.)

65. Brief Analysis

The only kind of salvation people believe in today is an instantaneous salvation as a result of direct mercy. They say that a verbal statement of faith alone and a confidence expressed by the lungs takes care of everything we need in the way of salvation. There is no need for goodwill (even though in actuality goodwill is what allows verbal faith to become real faith, and allows confidence expressed by the lungs to become confidence felt at heart). If you remove the idea of a cooperation that we undertake seemingly on our own through our exercise of goodwill, then this cooperation that spontaneously and automatically follows faith becomes “a passive activity,” which is a meaningless expression. What more, then, would we need than the following brief, direct statement: “Save me, O God, for the sake of the suffering of your Son. He washed away my sins with his own blood and is bringing me as a pure, just, and holy person before your throne”? If we had not made a statement like this before, even in our final hour before dying it would serve to initiate our justification.

Section 340 in the work Divine Providence, published in Amsterdam in 1764, shows, however, that the concept of instantaneous salvation by direct mercy is the flying fiery serpent in the church today, that it is destroying the religion, that it gives people an unwarranted feeling of security, and that it blames God for our damnation.