True Conversion, Assurance of Salvation

Timothy Edwards, following Puritan precedents, emphasized three principal steps toward true conversion. (1.) “Conviction” or an awakening sense of a person’s sad estate with reference to eternity.” An “awakening” was no guarantee of salvation. Parents nightly reminded their children that sleep was a type of death and taught them such prayers as “This day is past; but tell me who can say/That I shall surely live another day.” (2.) Second step humiliation. Following the first enthusiasm of their awakening, they would experience a backsliding into sin that would lead them to realize the terribleness of their sins and that God would be entirely just in condemning them to hell ... involving a sense of “terror…”truly humbled by total sense of their unworthiness. (3.) Third step – receiving God’s regenerating “light,” or a “new spirit created in them,” so that they truly repented and sin would no longer reign in them, but rather they would be guided by the Holy Sprit “dwelling in them” experience a “glorious change” to a life dedicated to serving God.

In this Calvinist scheme of things God’s Grace could not be controlled……….. Seldom has there been a spiritual discipline where so much effort was put into recognizing the worthlessness of one's own efforts……All of life was preparation for death and eternal judgment. - George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, 26-29.