Assurance, Justification, and the Covenant of Grace

Abstract

This chapter discusses how catechists who adopted a more flexible structure could introduce new material into their forms. A recent survey has pointed to the apparent spread of religious despair in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, but the sources are often hard to evaluate and for the most part not part of the catechetical tradition. Samuel Hieron may be cited as an example of an author who put particular stress on duties. His scriptural catechism dealt with catechetical topics of a fairly conventional nature, except for a long section on how God's children dealt with afflictions, which included a good deal of introspective material. For St. Augustine and Martin Luther, assurance of salvation was through faith in Christ, though both doubted whether absolute assurance was possible.