God working *through* means to bless us w/his grace according to the Reformed confessions.
I talk about in several of my books, but here’s one👇🏼(@wipfandstock) before I give a little🧵
wipfandstock.com/9781620327951/…

https://twitter.com/tartanlutheran/status/1819122091964371232

It is by faith alone that we share in Christ & all his benefits: where then does that faith come from?
The Holy Spirit works it in our hearts *by* the preaching of the holy gospel, & confirms it *by* the use of the holy sacraments.
#HeidelbergCatechism Q&A 65

We Reformed should be able to agree w/this! [while disagreeing w/our Lutheran church fam once we get into the weeds]
Here’s the historic Dutch Reformed form for infant💧[that is virtually replicated everywhere on the Continent & England pre-Westminster Assembly]
🧵⬇️

https://twitter.com/rurallutheran/status/1818458734286278665

1st,💧teaches that we & our children are conceived & born in sin. This means that we are by nature children of wrath & for that reason cannot be members of X’s kingdom unless we are born again. 💧, whether by immersion or sprinkling, teaches that sin has made us so impure…

Since I did the Dutch Reformed confessions & liturgies, here are historic Anglican statements on the real presence 🧵

https://twitter.com/danielrhyde/status/1815523325046825259

“…to such as rightly, worthily, & w/faith, receive [the sacrament of our Redemption by Christ’s death], the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ…the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.”
—39 Articles, Art 28

“…to maintain the spiritual & heavenly life that belongs to believers he…sent a living 🥖 that came down from heaven…JC, who nourishes & maintains the spiritual life of believers when eaten—that is, when appropriated & received spiritually by faith.”—Belgic Confession, art 35

https://twitter.com/farmingandjesus/status/1815495003969659360

“..as truly as we take & hold the sacraments in our 🤚s & eat & drink it in our mouths, by which our life is…sustained, so truly we receive into our souls, for our spiritual life, the true body & true blood of X…by faith…the 🤚 & mouth of our souls.”
—Belgic Confession, art 35

1/ “Reformed Scholastic John Owen's appropriation and adaptation of Thomas Aquinas’ development of the classical ‘disposition’ (Latin: habitus) concept offers practical insight into seventeenth century faculty psychology.” 2/ “This article argues that Owen not only borrows deliberately from Aquinas, he also attempts to simplify and even improve upon Aquinas’ more complicated theological, philosophical, and psychological insights in this important area.”

♨️ For those interested in reading all my work 📚 on #JohnOwen leading up to my @VUamsterdam / @VU_FRT #PhD dissertation: “‘These are the Times’: Public Worship as Manifestation of a New Age of Theo-Politics in the Theology of John Owen” (a chronological thread)👇🏼 1/ “For Freedom Christ Has Set Us Free: John Owen’s A Discourse Concerning Liturgies, And Their Imposition .” The Confessional Presbyterian 4 (2008): 29–42.
academia.edu/35514250/For_F…

1/ “Let us notice, for one thing in this passage, what honorable mention is here made of women...We should hardly have expected to have read such things. We might well have supposed that…the weaker & more timid sex would not have dared to show themselves His friends.” 2/ “It only shows us what grace can do. God sometimes chooses the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty. The last are sometimes first, & the first last. The faith of women sometimes stands upright, when the faith of men fails & gives way.”