Faith & Spirit Quote by William Gurnall

Gurnall is policing the border between “I agree” and “I’m changed.” In one brisk phrase, he treats “assent” as the cheap currency of religion: real enough to pass in polite conversation, useless at the judgment seat. The jab is aimed at a familiar loophole in Protestant culture, especially in post-Reformation England, where the gospel has become widely available as information. If faith is reduced to correct answers - the right creed, the right doctrinal boxes ticked - it can be worn like a uniform rather than lived like allegiance.

“Justifying” does heavy lifting here. Gurnall is not talking about generic spirituality or warm religious feeling; he means the kind of faith that, in Reformed theology, unites a person to Christ and stands as the instrument of justification. By denying that it’s a “naked assent,” he insists faith has texture: trust, reliance, a turning of the will. The subtext is pastoral and combative. Pastoral, because he’s warning comfortable churchgoers that orthodoxy without dependence is self-deception. Combative, because he’s also guarding against another error: treating faith as a meritorious work. He wants faith to be active without being payment.

The context is the Puritan project of spiritual diagnosis: testing whether belief has produced repentance, perseverance, and what they’d call “fruit.” Gurnall’s line works because it refuses two easy exits at once - intellectual minimalism and self-made moralism - and forces the reader into the uncomfortable middle: doctrine that must be trusted, and trust that must reshape a life.