In session 6 of the Council of Trent (1546), we read the following:
CHAPTER XII.
That a rash
presumptuousness in the matter of Predestination is to be avoided.
No one, moreover, so
long as he is in this mortal life, ought so far to presume as regards the
secret mystery of divine predestination, as to determine for certain that he is
assuredly in the number of the predestinate; as if it were true, that he that
is justified, either cannot sin any more, or, if he do sin, that he ought to
promise himself an assured repentance; for except by special revelation, it
cannot be known whom God hath chosen unto Himself.
Writing in response to this in 1547, John
Calvin explicitly taught the importance of a "spiritual witness" of
one knowing they are among the elect and in a saved state:
But they affirm that
it is impossible to know whom God has chosen except by special revelation. I
admit it. And, accordingly, Paul says that we have not received the spirit of
this world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we may know the things which
are given us of God, that we may know the things which are given us of God. The
gift he elsewhere interprets as meaning the adoption, by which we are classed
among his children, and which he holds to be so certain that we may with loud
voice glory in it. But I am not unaware of what they intend by special
revelation. I, however, mean that which our Heavenly Father specially deigns to
bestow on his own children. Nor is this any fancy of my own. The words of Paul
are well known, “Those things which are hidden from human sense God hath
revealed unto us by his Spirit, who also searcheth the deepest things of God.”
And, “Who hath known the mind of God, or who hath been his counsellor? But we
have the mind of Christ.”
On the whole then, we
see that that the venerable Fathers call rash and damnable presumption, is
nothing but that holy confidence in our adoption, revealed unto us by Christ,
to which God everywhere encourages his people. (John Calvin, "Antidote to
the Council of Trent," in Tracts, Volume 3 [trans. Henry Beveridge;
Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1851], 136)
Protestant Fideism: A Primer
and
Protestant Fideism Part 2: The "Testimonies" of Evangelical Anti-Mormons: Nothing but Subjective Feelings
