Charles Hodge

“Conscience is not satisfied with mere forgiveness. It is essential to peace with God, that the soul should see that justice is satisfied. This is the reason why the death of Christ, why his blood, is so inexpressibly precious in the eyes of his people. All the experience of the saints is a protest against the principle that expiation is unnecessary, that sin can be pardoned without a satisfaction for justice.”

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, I.V.12D(7).

Charles Hodge

“Christ was set forth as a propitiation, in order that God might be just in justifying the ungodly. This assumes that it would be unjust, i.e., contrary to moral rectitude, to pardon the guilty without such a propitiation. This necessity for a satisfaction is never referred to expediency or to governmental considerations. If sin could have been pardoned, without a satisfaction, the Apostle says, Christ is dead in vain (Gal. 2.21).”

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, I.V.12D(7).

Charles Hodge

“. . . evil inflicted for the benefit of the sufferer, is chastisement, and not punishment. Punishment, properly speaking, is evil inflicted in satisfaction of justice.”

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, I.V.12C.

Charles Hodge

“Notwithstanding all the apparent inequalities in the distribution of his favours; notwithstanding the prosperity of the wicked and the afflictions of the righteous, the conviction is everywhere expressed that God is just; that somehow and somewhere He will vindicate his dealings with men, and show that He is righteous in all his ways and holy in all his works.”

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, I.V.12A.

Benjamin Franklin

“These libraries have made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defense of their privileges.”

Cited in Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 257-8.

Andrew Marvell

“Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run”

Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress,” final two lines.

Thomas Manton

“Love is at the bottom of all. We may give a reason of other things, but we cannot give a reason of his love, God showed his wisdom, power, justice, and holiness in our redemption by Christ. If you ask, Why he made so much ado about a worthless creature, raised out of the dust of the ground at first, and had now disordered himself, and could be of no use to him? We have an answer at hand, Because he loved us. If you continue to ask, But why did he love us? We have no other answer but because he loved us; for beyond the first rise of things we cannot go. And the same reason is given by Moses, Deuteronomy 7:7-8: ‘The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people, for ye were the fewest of all people; but because the Lord loved you…’ That is, in short, he loved you because he loved you. All came from his free and undeserved mercy; higher we cannot go in seeking after the causes of what is done for our salvation.”

Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, 2.340-341; this quote, found through a post by Tony Reinke, comes from the 22 volumes set (!).

Thomas Paine

“Mankind being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance; the distinctions of rich, and poor, may in a great measure be accounted for, . . . but there is another and greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is, the distinction of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS.”

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 2nd printing of Feb. 14, 1776 as edited by Isaac Kramnick (London: Penguin, 1986), 71-2.

Thomas Paine

“There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required. The state of a king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly; wherefore the different parts, unnaturally opposing and destroying each other, prove the whole character to be absurd and useless.”

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 2nd printing of Feb. 14, 1776 as edited by Isaac Kramnick (London: Penguin, 1986), 69; True for every earthly ruler? Not true for a King who makes Himself known through relationship.

C. S. Lewis

“Because the 18th century was fond of personifying abstractions (’Corruption has seized the provinces’ etc.) and because Carlyle carried that further and gave us a tinge of poetry in his French Revolution, whence it passed into every writer who wants to write impressively on poetical and historical subjects, we have now reached a stage at which causes, movements, tendencies etc. are talked of as if they were real things who did things: as if it were Bolshevism, not Bolsheviks, who fomented revolutions, and the revolutionary spirit, instead of the revolutionary spirits, which made men drunk.”

Walter Hooper, ed., The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Family Letters 1905-1931 (San Francisco: Harper, 2004), 704; serial letter written to his brother, dated 9-27 July, 1927.