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“I find it most true, that the greatest temptation out of hell, is to live without temptations; if my waters should stand, they would rot. Faith is the better of the free air, and of the sharp winter storm in its face. Grace withereth without adversity. The devil is but God’s master fencer, to teach us to handle our weapons.”
Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2007), 4-5.
“The philosopher as we understand him . . . will make use of religions for his project of cultivation and education, just as he will make use of whatever political and economic states are at hand . . . For the strong and independent who are prepared and predestined to command and in whom the reason and art of a governing race become incarnate, religion is one more means for overcoming resistances, for the ability to rule — as a bond that unites rulers and subjects and betrays and delivers the consciences of the latter, that which is most concealed and intimate and would like to elude obedience, to the former . . .”
To ordinary human beings, finally — the vast majority who exist for service and the general advantage, and who may exist only for that — religion gives an inestimable contentment with their situation and type, manifold peace of the heart, an ennobling of obedience. . . . Religion and religious significance spread the splendor of the sun over such ever-toiling human beings and make their own sight tolerable to them.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 61; cited in Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World (Washington DC: Regnery, 2008), 160-61.
“I remember that Staupitius was wont to say: ‘I have vowed unto God above a thousand times, that I would become a better man; but I never performed that which I vowed. Hereafter I will make no such vow: for I have now learned by experience, that I am not able to perform it. Unless therefore God be favourable and merciful unto me for Christ’s sake, and grant unto me a blessed and happy hour when i shall depart out of this miserable life, I shall not be able with all my vows and all my good deeds, to stand before him.’”
Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections From His Writings (New York: Anchor, 1962), 149.
“The flesh is accursed, exercised with temptations, oppressed with heaviness and sorrow, bruised by the active righteousness of the law; but the spirit reigneth, rejoiceth and is saved by this passive and Christian righteousness, because it knoweth that it hath a Lord in heaven at the right hand of the Father, who hath abolished the law, sin, death, and hath trodden under his feet all evils, led them captive and triumphed over them in himself (Col. 2.15).”
Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections From His Writings (New York: Anchor, 1962), 106.
“This is a righteousness hidden in a mystery, which the world doth not know, yea, Christians themselves do not thoroughly understand it, and can hardly take hold of it in their temptations. There fore it must be diligently taught and continually practised. And whoso doth not understand or apprehend this righteousness in afflictions and terrors of conscience, must needs be overthrown. For there is no comfort of conscience so firm and so sure, as this passive righteousness.”
Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections From His Writings (New York: Anchor, 1962), 101.
“Christ daily drives out the old Adam more and more in accordance with the extent to which faith and knowledge of Christ grow. For alien righteousness is not instilled all at once, but it begins, makes progress, and is finally perfected at the end through death.”
Martin Luther, “Two Kinds of Righteousness,” sermon from 1519, in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections From His Writings (New York: Anchor, 1962), 88.
“The means of grace that God provides in worship are sustenance for believers. They are what keep us going through the wilderness of our pilgrimage and warfare. If we avoid them or take them for granted, we foolishly ignore God’s gracious and wise provision. Moreover, if we trivialize them by preferring means of our own devising, then it is likely that we do not understand how difficult the pilgrimage of the Christian life is and how generous is God’s provision.”
D. G. Hart and John Muether, With Reverence and Awe: Returning to the Basics of Reformed Worship (Phillipsburg: P & R, 2002), 137.
“The most heavenly duties we perform need to be purged by the blood of Christ.”
Jeremiah Burroughs, “Gospel Worship (The Right Manner of Sanctifying the Name of God in General), edited by Don Kistler (Orlando: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 133; originally published in 1648.
“Man, indeed, accept the persons of men because they do good actions; but God accepts the actions of men because their persons are good. If we see a man do good, then we love him and accept the person of the man; but God will first accept the person before the action, as the Lord accepted Abel first and then accepted his offering. So you must look to have your persons first accepted by God before any duty can be accepted.”
Jeremiah Burroughs, “Gospel Worship (The Right Manner of Sanctifying the Name of God in General), edited by Don Kistler (Orlando: Soli Deo Gloria, 1990), 83; originally published in 1648.
“We should so reason that the splendor of the divine countenance, which even the apostle calls ‘unapproachable’ [1 Tim. 6.16], is for us like an inexplicable labyrinth unless we are conducted into it by the thread of the Word; so that it is better to limp along this path than to dash with all speed outside of it.”
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, 7, 3.
