November 2007 - Protestant Reformed Churches in America

Preparatory Grace in the Puritans
assisted duties: “reading and hearing … serious application of the
mind … conviction … illumination in regard to the requirements
of the law … distress of conscience and … reformation of the
outward life.” 62 This is God’s normal mode of operation, except
in infants:
Man gains spiritual life in an instant, though he may have had days
and months of a foregoing experience of conviction and spiritual death.
This is the ordinary divine method. 63
Furthermore, Shedd insists that the unregenerate have the “duty
and privilege” to pray for the “convicting and regenerating
Spirit.” 64 His proof is Luke 11:13. He reasons that since the
Father has promised to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him,
when the unregenerate pray for the Holy Spirit of regeneration,
God will grant that request (or to be more exact, “might possibly”
grant it). But Christ is not teaching that the unregenerate can ask
for the Holy Spirit. He is teaching that believers can be assured
that God will grant them His grace and Holy Spirit, which they
need to live a sanctified life. The teaching of Luke 11:13 and
similar passages is summarized in Lord’s Day 45 (Q&A 116) of
the Heidelberg Catechism: “God will give His grace and Holy
Spirit to those only who with sincere desires continually ask them
of Him, and are thankful for them.” Shedd then appeals to Ezekiel
36 and Joel 2 and claims that the ground for such a prayer is that
the Holy Spirit is “promised generally under the Gospel”! If Shedd
means by this that God promises every unregenerate person regenerating
grace, we stand amazed, since the promises in the
prophets are particular, and certain. God promises to give His
people, and them only, a new heart. The unregenerate are required
to pray for regeneration, writes Shedd:
No man has any warrant or encouragement to pray either for conversion
or for sanctification, before he has prayed for regeneration.
62. Shedd, Theology, vol. 2, pp. 512-513.
63. Shedd, Theology, vol. 2, p. 512.
64. Shedd, Theology, vol. 2, p. 513.
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