Quote 3789
24.2K
Other Quotes from the Author & Topic
The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.
Justification takes place by works and by faith—by the works of Christ and by our faith.
God loves all in some ways, and God loves some in all ways.
If hatred of sin is necessary to God, then penal justice is equally necessary because the hatred of sin is the constant will of punishing it.
To know that God knows everything about me and yet loves me is indeed my ultimate consolation.
A godly man weeps sometimes out of the sense of God's love. Gold is the finest and most solid of all the metals, yet is soonest melted with the fire. Gracious hearts, which are golden hearts, are the soonest melted into tears by the fire of God's love.
Love is the only attribute which God hath acted to the utmost. We have never seen the utmost of His power, what God can do, but we have seen the utmost of His love: He hath found a ransom for lost souls (Job 33:24).
When the apostle says that 'faith is by hearing' (Rom. 10:17), he does indeed give us to understand that the ministry of the church ought to come in as the ordinary means of producing faith in adults. He does not teach, however, that the church is clearer and better known than the Scriptures.
Good works are required as the means and way for possessing salvation. Even though they don't contribute anything to the acquisition of our salvation, they are necessary to the obtainment of it. No one can be saved without them.
We do not deny that the church has many functions in relation to the Scriptures. She is: (1) the keeper of the oracles of God to whom they are committed and who preserves the authentic tables of the covenant of grace with the greatest fidelity, like a notary (Rom. 3:2); (2) the guide, to point out the Scriptures and lead us to them (Is. 30:21); (3) the defender, to vindicate and defend them by separating the genuine books from the spurious, in which sense she may be called the ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15*); (4) the herald who sets forth and promulgates them (2 Cor. 5:19; Rom. 10:16); (5) the interpreter inquiring into the unfolding of the true sense. But all these imply a ministerial only and not a magisterial power.
The reading and contemplation of the Scriptures is enjoined upon men of all languages, therefore the translation of it into the native tongues is necessary. Since men speak different languages and are not all familiar with those two in which it was first written, it cannot be understood by them unless translated; it comes as the same thing to say nothing at all and to say what nobody can understand. But here it happens by the wonderful grace of God that the division of tongues (which formerly was the sign of a curse) becomes now the proof of a heavenly blessing. What was introduced to destroy Babel is now used to build up the mystical Zion.
It was not necessary for the apostles to write a catechism so as to deliver their doctrines professedly. It was enough for them to hand down to us those doctrines in accordance with which all symbolical books and catechisms might be constructed. If they did not formally write a catechism, they did materially leave us either in the gospels or in the epistles those things by which we can be clearly taught the principles of religion (katécheisthai).
If theology takes some things from other systems, it is not as an inferior from superiors, but as an superior from inferiors (as a mistress freely using her handmaids). Theology does not so much take from others, as presupposes certain previously known things upon which it builds revelation.
Institutes of Elenctic Theology
That God is the object of theology is evident both from the very name (theologias and theosebeias), and from Scripture which recognizes no other principal object.Institutes of Elenctic Theology
Thus that all things are discussed in theology either because they deal with God himself or have a relation (schesin) to him as the first principle and ultimate end.Institutes of Elenctic Theology
But the divine dayspring from on high is adored, Christ the Lord, who is our sun and shield; the sun of every blessing, asserting the glory of religion; the shield of the most safe protection, affording an invincible and inexpugnable guard to liberty.
There is tremendous relief in knowing his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery can disillusion him about me.
It is the love of Christ, i. e. his love to us which passes knowledge. It is infinite; not only because it inheres in an infinite subject, but because the condescension and sufferings to which it led, and the blessings which it secures for its objects, are beyond our comprehension. This love of Christ, though it surpasses the power of our understanding to comprehend, is still a subject of experimental knowledge. We may know how excellent, how wonderful, how free, how disinterested, how long-suffering, how manifold and constant, it is, and that it is infinite. And this is the highest and most sanctifying of all knowledge. Those who thus know the love of Christ towards them, purify themselves even as he is pure.
The question is not whether there is only one conception in the sense of the Scriptures, for we grant that often there are many conceptions of one and the same sense (but subordinate and answering to each other especially in the composite sense which embraces type and antitype). The question is whether there may be many diverse and non-subordinated senses of the same passagehttps://www.reformowani.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Institutes-of-Elenctic-Theology-Francis-Turretin-vol-1.pdf
That the Scriptures have only one sense is evident: (I) from the unity of truth—because truth is only one and simple and therefore cannot admit many senses without becoming uncertain and ambiguous; (2) from the unity of form— because there is only one essential form of any one thing (now the sense is the form of the Scriptures); (3) from the perspicuity of the Scriptures, which cannot allow various foreign and diverse senses.https://www.reformowani.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Institutes-of-Elenctic-Theology-Francis-Turretin-vol-1.pdf
We thus think that only one true and genuine sense belongs to the Scriptures. That sense may be twofold: either simple or compound. Simple and historical is that which contains the declaration of one thing without any other signification; as the precepts, the doctrines and the histories. And this again is twofold, either proper and grammatical or figurative and tropical; proper, arising from the proper words; tropical, from figurative words. https://www.reformowani.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Institutes-of-Elenctic-Theology-Francis-Turretin-vol-1.pdf
Whether the Scriptures have a fourfold sense: literal, allegorical, anagogical and tropological. We deny against the papists.https://www.reformowani.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Institutes-of-Elenctic-Theology-Francis-Turretin-vol-1.pdf
In regard to use, the moral is the end of the others, while the others are subservient to the moral. A Clear and Simple Treatise on the Lord’s Supper
The moral law regards the Israelite people as men; the ceremonial as the church of the Old Testament expecting the promised Messiah; the civil regards them as a peculiar people who in the land of Canaan ought to have a republic suiting their genius and disposition. A Clear and Simple Treatise on the Lord’s Supper
The moral law is for the most part expressed by mtsvth ("precepts"), the ceremonial by chqym ("statutes") and the judicial by mshptym ("judgments"), which the Septuagint renders by entolas, dikaiōmata and krimata. "I will speak unto thee all the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which thou shalt teach them" (Dt. 5:31); so also in 6:1, 20; 7:11; and Lev. 26:46. Sometimes however these words are synonymous and used promiscuously (Ezk. 5:6; 20:11, 16, 18). But the distinction appears principally from the nature of the thing and the office of the law (whose it is to settle the order according to which man is joined to God and his neighbor) A Clear and Simple Treatise on the Lord’s Supper
Special OfferTop Authors
1. Thomas Watson (189)
2. Charles Spurgeon (135)
3. J.C. Ryle (117)
4. John Calvin (107)
5. Thomas Brooks (104)
6. J.I. Packer (93)
7. John Flavel (92)
8. John Piper (87)
9. George Swinnock (86)
10. William Gurnall (84)
11. John Owen (74)
12. A.W. Pink (68)
13. Thomas Manton (66)
14. Louis Berkhof (63)
15. C.S. Lewis (59)
16. B.B. Warfield (59)
17. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (58)
18. R.C. Sproul (55)
19. Matthew Henry (54)
20. Samuel Rutherford (53)
2. Charles Spurgeon (135)
3. J.C. Ryle (117)
4. John Calvin (107)
5. Thomas Brooks (104)
6. J.I. Packer (93)
7. John Flavel (92)
8. John Piper (87)
9. George Swinnock (86)
10. William Gurnall (84)
11. John Owen (74)
12. A.W. Pink (68)
13. Thomas Manton (66)
14. Louis Berkhof (63)
15. C.S. Lewis (59)
16. B.B. Warfield (59)
17. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (58)
18. R.C. Sproul (55)
19. Matthew Henry (54)
20. Samuel Rutherford (53)
Top Topics
1. Sin (230)2. Prayer (186)
3. Scripture (154)
4. Faith (134)
5. Preaching (129)
6. Gospel (112)
7. The Law (111)
8. Suffering (99)
9. Salvation (94)
10. Sabbath (91)
11. Church (85)
12. Christ (82)
13. Grace (74)
14. Justification (63)
15. Law (61)
16. Truth (53)
17. Death (52)
18. Love (51)
19. Holiness (48)
20. Children (46)
21. Pride (46)
22. Sanctification (46)
23. Heaven (45)
24. Obedience (45)
25. Creation (43)
26. Theology (43)