Quote 4011
let none of us say hereafter, "Why do I need to care what is written to the Jews in the old Testament, or what the apostles have written to the Romans, to the Corinthians, and to other nations? I am a Christian. The prophets both preached and wrote to the men of their time, and the apostles to those who lived in the same age with them." For if we think uprightly of the matter, we will see that the scriptures of the old and new Testaments should therefore be received by us, even because we are Christians. For Christ, our Saviour and Master, referred us to the written books of Moses and the prophets.
Heinrich Bullinger
The Decades, https://www.monergism.com/decades-ebook9.8K
Other Quotes from the Author & Topic
How easy it is to read the Scriptures and give a kind of nominal assent to the truth and yet never to appropriate what it tells us!
O my soul, is it possible for thee to hear the excellency of Scripture thus opened to thee, and not to burn in love to it? Hast thou been all this while in such a host bath, and still cold and shivering?The Christian Man\'s Calling
the gospel is the most evident sentence of the eternal God, brought down from heaven, absolving all believers from all their sins, and that is freely too, for Christ's sake, with a promise of eternal life.
the Ten Commandments are the very absolute and everlasting rule of true righteousness and all virtues, set down for all places, men, and ages, to frame themselves by. For the sum of the Ten Commandments is this: to show our love to God, and to love one another. And the Lord requires this at all times, and everywhere, of all kinds of men. The Decades, https://www.monergism.com/decades-ebook
Do not look for the Church nearest to your house. Look for the Church closest to the Bible.
A Christian without a Bible is a soldier without a weapon.The Christian\'s Reasonable Service 1:76
God will condemn those by his Word, who will not judge themselves by it.
We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behavior.
though some are not at all zealous, and hardly drawn to hearing sermons in the church, that springs out of no other fountain than this: it is because they neither understand rightly, nor weigh diligently enough, the virtue and true force of the word of GodThe Decades, https://www.monergism.com/decades-ebook
The body of Scripture is a doctrine sufficient to live well. It comprehends many holy sciences of which one is principal, and the others are handmaids or attendants.https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/perkins/A%20Golden%20Chain%20-%20William%20Perkins.pdf
Christians need to remember that the sufficiency of Scripture gives us a comprehensive worldview that equips us to wrestle with even the most challenging ethical dilemmas of our time.
In short, I will preach it [the Word], teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God's Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.
The collapse in evangelical doctrinal consensus is intimately related to the collapse in the understanding of, and role assigned to, Scripture as God's Word spoken within the church.Reformation: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Many have and many do miserably pervert the Scriptures by turning them into vain and groundless allegories. Some wanton wits have expounded Paradise to be the soul, man to be the mind, the woman to be the sense, the serpent to be delight, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to be wisdom, and the rest of the trees to be the virtues and endowments of the mind. O friends! It is dangerous to bring in allegories where the Scripture doth not clearly and plainly warrant them and to take those words figuratively which should be taken properly.
Search the Scriptures daily, as mines of gold wherein the heart of Christ is laid.
The reading of the Scriptures is nothing else but a kind of holy conference with God, wherein we inquire after and He reveals unto us Himself and His will; we shall manifest more fully hereafter, when we shall show that these holy writings are the Word of God Himself, who speaks unto us in and by them. Wherefore when we take in hand the book of the Scriptures, we cannot otherwise conceive of ourselves then as standing in God's presence to hear what He will say unto us. Way to the Tree of Life
He that is mighty in Scripture is the man that can hit this unclean bird in the eye and wound it mortally with one blow (Acts 18:28). Even women, that are the weaker sex, with this sword in their hands, having learned from the Spirit how to use it, have encountered with great doctors, disarmed them of all their philosophical weapons, and shamefully foiled them.
Jewels do not lie upon the surface; you must get into the caverns and dark receptacles of the earth for them. No more do truths lie in the surface and outside of an expression. The beauty and glory of the Scriptures is within and must be fetched out with much study and prayer.
The testimony of the church is highly to be reverenced because to it are these oracles of God delivered to be kept as a sacred deposit; yea, it is called "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15) and the candlestick (Rev. 1:12) from whence the light of the Scriptures shines forth into the world. But who will say that the proclamation of a prince hath its authenticity from the pillar it hangs on in the market cross or that the candle hath its light from the candlestick! The office of the church is ministerial, to publish and make known the word of God; but not magisterial and absolute to make it Scripture or unmake it, as she is pleased to allow or deny.
The reading of the Scriptures with general instructions, admonitions, reprehensions, exhortations, and consolations I grant are most necessary, being the groundwork and matter of the cure. But what sound conversion is wrought thereby in any man, without discreet application, let every man that hath profited anything in the school of Christ be judge.
When a man's mind is empty, as in temptation and want of comfort, it is empty of Christ and full of fear. Then it grinds itself, as in a quern or mill when empty of corn, one stone grinds another. The more full a man's mind is, the more free from temptations and fears. Now Scripture matter is the most filling matter.
If you take a candle out of a lantern, you have taken the light from the lantern, but you have not put out the candle. Truly, because the candle is taken away, the lantern remains full of darkness; but the candle feels so little hurt by removing it, that being taken away from the lantern, it then shines more clearly, and casts forth the beams of its light more at large. So truly, being separated from its earthly or slimy body, the soul feels so little discommodity, that being delivered from the trouble and burden of the body, it lives more at liberty, and works more effectually. But the common sort do not understand thisThe Decades
But let no man so understand these things, as if the devil were able to do all things, and that whatever he wills, he can also do later. For his power is definite, or limited and restrained, so that he cannot do as much as he would: otherwise all things would have been overthrown and perished long ago.The Decades
To be strangers to the word of God, little conversant in it, and to make little use of it, is a great affront done to God. We should acquaint ourselves not with the letter only, as little children learn it by rote, but with the sense and purpose of ithttps://www.monergism.com/rich-young-ruler-exposition-mark-1017-27-ebook
Nevertheless we must take heed here lest, contrary to the nature of true religion, we attribute too much to angels. We must take heed that we not worship them; that we not call upon them, nor serve them. Indeed, when men hear that angels are given to them by God as ministers, and that God does good to us by them, they later think that some honour is to be ascribed and given to them. But sincere religion teaches us to acknowledge God as the author of all good things; that the angels are the ministers of God, and instruments as it were, by whom God works — just as we see the sun, the moon, and the stars, the patriarchs, the prophets, and the apostles, to be and to have been.The Decades, https://www.monergism.com/decades-ebook
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