I'm not a player in the so-called "Federal Vision" controversies that are currently plaguing my former denomination (Presbyterian Church in America), but some persons whom I consider friends are.
In any case, I am posting these files because a good number of persons on the wrong side of those debates are constantly whining about "innovators" who treat Baptism and Eucharist as "converting ordinances." The paper I posted the other day treats the Sacramental thought of Solomon Stoddard in a tertiary manner, but it bears repeating that Stoddard's theology of Baptism and Eucharist was actually less "Catholic" than many of his fellow Congregationalists. Rather than the sacraments being "means" they were merely the possible "occasion" for a person to receive an "effectual calling" (i.e. "initial justification by faith" on Puritan terms).
Ironically, it is this sub-catholic sacramentology that brings Stoddard and the current crop of Zwinglians in conservative American Presbyterianism into close similitude.
Anyway, I just thought that people batting about terminology like "converting ordinances" ought to have some small idea of what they are talking about and poor students standing for licensure and ordination could benefit from the historical background. Also, Stoddard is one of the dearer American Puritans and this work is apparently not available online anywhere else:
Solomon Stoddard, An Appeal to the Learned, Being a Vindication of the Right of Visible Saints to the Lord’s Supper, Though they be destitute of a Saving Work of God’s Spirit on their Hearts (2nd ed.;Boston, 1751).
Part 1 (Preface through Book 1)
Part 2 (Books 2 and 3)
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