November 2007 - Protestant Reformed Churches in America

Preparatory Grace in the Puritans
“profanely despise his salvation” to attend the means of grace,
for there is a “brighter hope” for the one who listens to the preaching
and cries to God for converting grace, than for the one who
neglects the church altogether. 81
V. Objections to Preparationism
We repudiate this doctrine as foreign to Scripture and the
Reformed confessions. Although there is much to admire in the
Puritans, on this issue we must part company.
A. The Unregenerate Do Not Hunger After Righteousness
The Scriptures teach that spiritual hunger will always be satisfied.
There is no sinner who has ever hungered after righteousness
who will go away empty into that place where he will not
have as much as a drop of water to cool his tongue (Luke 16:24).
Jesus promises as much in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed
are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Why
Because there is a good chance, a fair possibility, a high probability,
but no guarantee that they may be filled No, the sweetness
contained in the beatitude is this: “For they shall be filled” (Matt.
5:6). Preparationists take this sweet morsel of bread and cast it to
the dogs (Matt. 15:26). Indeed, the point of this beatitude is that
the one who is hungering and thirsting is blessed, that is, already
regenerate. Such a hungering after mercy is not (contra Ames) a
preparation for regeneration, but evidence of it. The Canons of
Dordt deny that the unregenerate “can yet hunger and thirst after
righteousness and life, and offer the sacrifice of a contrite and
broken spirit, which is pleasing to God,” for the Fathers at Dordt,
quoting Matthew 5:6, insisted,
to hunger and thirst after deliverance from misery and after life, and
to offer unto God the sacrifice of a broken spirit, is peculiar to the
regenerate and those that are called blessed (Canons, III/IV, Rejection
4).
81. Witsius, The Economy, pp. 371-372.
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