The most perfect way of seeking God, and the most suitable order, is not for us to attempt with bold curiosity to penetrate to the investigation of His essence, which we ought more to adore than meticulously to search out, but for us to contemplate Him in His works, whereby He renders Himself near and familiar to us, and in some manner communicates Himself.
Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
The ground of discrimination that exists among men is the sovereign will of God and that alone; but the ground of damnation to which the reprobate are consigned is sin and sin alone.
Whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of his fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil. It is the Heavenly Father's will thus to exercise them so as to put his own children to a definite test. Beginning with Christ, his first-born, he follows this plan with all his children.
There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.
Man with all his shrewdness is as stupid about understanding by himself the mysteries of God, as an ass is incapable of understanding musical harmony.
But sons who are more generously and candidly treated by their fathers do not hesitate to offer them incomplete and halfdone and even defective works, trusting that their obedience and readiness of mind will be accepted by their fathers, even though they have not quite achieved what their fathers intended. Such children ought we to be, firmly trusting that our services will be approved by our most merciful Father, however small, rude, and imperfect these may be.
Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols.
God does not deliberate or consult, but has once for all decreed before the creation of the world what he will do."
The Holy Spirit teaches us in Scripture, that our mind is smitten with so much blindness, that the affections of our heart are so depraved and perverted, that our whole nature is so vitiated, that we can do nothing but sin, until he forms a new will within us.
God acts as a Father towards his elect, and as a judge towards the reprobate.
The Creed sets forth what Christ suffered in the sight of men, and then appositely speaks of that invisible and incomprehensible judgement which he underwent in the sight of God in order that we might know not only that Christ's body was given as the price of our redemption, but that he paid a greater and more excellent price in suffering in his soul the terrible torments of a condemned and forsaken man.
We are consecrated and dedicated to God; therefore, we may not hereafter think, speak, meditate or do anything but with a view to his glory. We are God's; to him, therefore, let us live and die.
The world invents its own good works and persuades itself that they are good. But Paul declares that good and right according to the world are to be judged by the commandments of God.
The ground of discrimination that exists among men is the sovereign will of God and that alone; but the ground of damnation to which the reprobate are consigned is sin and sin alone.
Justification is the main hinge on which salvation turns.
And this must be said of all men in general: God has set them above women, and yet, if they do not rule themselves wisely, and thus fail to live up to their rank, it will be to their greater shame. They will be degraded both before God and before the world, and their foolishness and laziness will, of necessity, be the better known.
Wherefore all theology, when separated from Christ, is not only vain and confused, but is also mad, deceitful, and spurious; for, though the philosophers sometimes utter excellent sayings, yet they have nothing but what is short-lived, and even mixed up with wicked and erroneous sentiments.
Therefore, although the preaching of the cross does not agree with our human inclination, if we desire to return to God our Author and Maker, from whom we have been estranged, in order that he may again begin to be our Father, we ought nevertheless to embrace it humbly.
Let every one go whither he shall be called, even if he should not have a single follower. Even if the whole world should be blind and ungrateful, and that it should seem to you that all your pains had been laid out in vain, let it satisfy you that God and the angels approve of your conduct.
The eternal and inviolable truth of God, is not founded on the pleasure and judgement of men, and can easily be distinguished as light from darkness, and white from black.
The Fanaticism which discards the Scripture, under the pretense of resorting to immediate revelations is subversive of every principle of Christianity. For when they boast extravagantly of the Spirit, the tendency is always to bury the Word of God so they may make room for their own falsehoods.
I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.
God foreordained, for His own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.
God, who is perfect righteousness, cannot love the iniquity which he sees in all. All of us, therefore, have that within us which deserves the hatred of God.
There is no legitimate religion apart from truth.
Seeing that a Pilot steers the ship in which we sail, who will never allow us to perish even in the midst of shipwrecks, there is no reason why our minds should be overwhelmed with fear and overcome with weariness.
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