this Calvinist scheme of things God's grace could not be controlled. Puritans, like others in the Reformed tradition, were insistent on giving God credit for everything. God's saving grace was in no way a reward for good works. Truly good works, or works motivated by true love to God, were possible only for the regenerate, and even then they were tinged by the remnants of one's inherited sinful nature. Even faith itself, though a positive act of receiving God's free gift of salvation, was not the efficient cause of salvation but only a necessary means by which one received the gift as one's
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