Quote 3719
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If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.
God does not have mercy on someone because that person has willed and run, but he willed and ran because God has had mercy on him.Contra Julianum opus imperfectrum, bk1, c141.
Every good work in us is performed only by grace.Epist. 105 ad Bonifac.
although indeed 'God is love', yet we have to remember that his love is 'holy love', love which yearns over sinners while at the same time refusing to condone their sin.The Cross of Christ (88)
God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.
In answering this question I have tried hard to maintain the free choice of the human will. But the grace of God prevailed. Augustine: earlier writings, Volume 1953, Part 2 (Page 370)
But, during all those years, where was my free will? What was the hidden, secret place from which it was summoned in a moment, so that I might bend my neck to your easy yoke and take your light burden on my shoulders, Christ Jesus, my Helper and my Redeemer? How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose and was now glad to reject! You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood, you who outshine all light yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts, you who surpass all honour though not in the eyes of men who see all honour in themselves. At last my mind was free from the gnawing anxieties of ambition and gain, from wallowing in filth and scratching the itching sore of lust. I began to talk to you freely, O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation. Confessions Book IX Chapter I
Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.
If the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, why should we not believe that he proceeds from the Son? Indeed, if he did not proceed from the Son, Christ would not have breathed on his disciples after the resurrection and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." What else did such breathing mean than that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son?Tractatus in Iohannis Evangelium 99.6
yet they preach that our visible sun spreads its rays over all manner of offal, but keeps them clean and pure. Therefore, if pure things which are visible can be touched by visible things which are unclean and not share their pollution how much more did the unchangeable and invisible Truth, receiving a soul through the spirit and a body through the soul, take on the whole man without contamination to itself and free him from all infirmities?De agone christiano, c18 n20
sin is every word or deed or desire which happens against the law of GodContra Faustum bk22 c27
the sin of the first man harmed not only him, but the whole human race, because from it we received condemnation and fault together.Hypognosticon, bk2 c4 n4
some heretics, who are called Pelagians, said that the sin of the first transgression passed into other men not by propagation, but by imitationDe Peccatorum b1 c9 m9-10
Since God is an incorporeal and unchangeable living nature, remaining in eternal stability in his own self, he is entirely present in all things, and entirely in each of them. But those in whom he dwells receive him according to the diversity of their capacity, some more, some less, whom he builds into a temple most beloved to himself by the grace of his goodness.Epistola 187, c6 n19
How foolish are they who know not God! So many good things before their eyes, yet Him Who Is they fail to see.Confessions (Ch. Conversion)
He loves Thee too little who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.
Perfect love is a kind of self-dereliction, a wandering out of ourselves; it is a kind of voluntary death wherein the lover dies to himself and all his own interest, not thinking of them nor caring for them anymore, and minding nothing but how he may please and gratify the party whom he loves.
Love is a commanding affection, a uniting grace; it draws all the faculties of the soul to one center. The soul that loves God, when it hath to do with Him, is bound to the beloved object; it can mind nothing else during such impressions. When the affection is set to the worship of God, everything the soul hath will be bestowed upon it.
Love is the commander of the soul, and therefore God knows that if He has our hearts, He has all, for all the rest are at His command; for it is, as it were, the nature of the will, which is the commanding faculty, and its object is the ultimate end which is the commanding object. Love sets the mind on thinking, the tongue on speaking, the hands on working, the feet on going, and every faculty obeys its command.
The heart thus opened to the Lord, when God is come in, will close upon Him. Abide with me; Thou hast entered upon Thy habitation. O let this be Thy dwelling forever. Only this must be further added, that with God it takes in all things of God: His word, His ordinances, His ways, and all His dispensations. With His love, His laws; with His comforts, His counsels; with His counsels, His corrections.Heaven Opened
there is a sinful self-love when either we love that for a self which is not ourself, when we love our flesh and fleshly interest, or when we love ourselves inordinately more than God, and God only for ourselves. And there is a lawful self-love when we love ourselves in the Lord and for the Lord. And the more we thus love ourselves, the more is the Lord loved by us; and the more He is our own, the more love He hath. Now in Christ the Lord is our God. Heaven Opened
Love is to the soul as the weights to the clock, it sets the soul a-going towards God, as the wings by which we fly to heaven.
[the Ten Commandments] are reduced to two, namely, that we should love God with our whole heart, and with our whole soul, and with our whole mind; and that we should love our neighbours as ourselves.Catechizndis Rvdibvs, 99
All love, in general, has an assimilating efficacy; it casts the mind into the mould of the thing beloved.
God is man's happiness.
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2. Charles Spurgeon (135)
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7. J.I. Packer (95)
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