Quote 4086
A man's house is his castle, and God's law, as well as man's, sets a guard up upon it; he that assaults it does so at his peril.
Matthew Henry
Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1:29119.7K
Other Quotes from the Author & Topic
The way to preserve the peace of the church is to preserve its purity.
The Gospel is temporary, but the law is eternal and is restored precisely through the Gospel. Freedom from the law consists, then, not in the fact that the Christian has nothing more to do with the law, but lies in the fact that the law demands nothing more from the Christian as a condition of salvation. The law can no longer judge and condemn him. Instead he delights in the law of God according to the inner man and yearns for it day and night.
though the moral law be thus far abolished, it remains as a perpetual rule to believers. Though it be not their Saviour, it is their guide. Though it be not foedus, a covenant of life; yet it is norma, a rule of life. Every Christian is bound to conform to it; and to write, as exactly as he can after this copy. 'Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid.' Rom iii 31. Though a Christian is not under the condemning power of the law, yet he is under its commanding power.The Ten Commandments, 44
It is easy to be religious when religion is in fashion; but it is an evidence of strong faith and resolution to swim against a stream to heaven, and to appear for God when no one else appears for Him.Matthew Henry's Commentary
The service of sin is perfect slavery; the service of God is perfect liberty.
The way of family worship is a good old way, no new thing, but the ancient usage of the saints.Commentary Gen 12:6
Human learning is both ornamental and serviceable to a gospel minister, especially for the convincing of those who are outside; for it enables him to beat them at their own weapons, and to cut off Goliath's head with his own sword.
A life spent in the service of God and communion with Him is the most pleasant life that anyone can live in this world.
He whose head is in heaven need not fear to put his feet into the grave.
The moral teaching of Christ and his apostles is the old law deepened and reapplied to new circumstances--life in the kingdom of God, where the Savior reigns; and in the post-Pentecost era of the Spirit, where God's people are called to live heaven's life among themselves and to be God's counterculture in the world.Concise Theology, Section 34
Behold, and wonder, that the great God should love such a worthless world! That the holy God should love such a wicked world with a love of good will, when he could not look upon it with any complacency.
Christ in fact had not the least intent of making any change or innovation in the precepts of the law. God there appointed once for all a rite of life which he will never repent of... so let us have no more of that error, that here a defect of the law is corrected by Christ; Christ is not to be made into a new law-giver, adding anything to the everlasting righteousness of his Father, but is to be given the attention of a faithful interpreter, teaching us the nature of the law, its object and its scope.
If God does not give His people what they ask for, it is because He knows they do not need it, and that it is not for their good.
Take Jesus for your king, and by baptism swear allegiance to him; take him for your prophet, and hear him; take him for your priest, to make atonement for you.
No man will say, "There is no God" 'till he is so hardened in sin that it has
become his interest that there should be none to call him to account.
It is common for those that are farthest from God, to boast themselves most of their being near to the Church.
A modest dress is a very good thing, if it be the genuine indication of a humble heart, and is to instruct; but it is a bad thing if it be the hypocritical disguise of a proud ambitious heart, and is to deceive. Let men be really as good as they seem to be, but not seem to be better than really they are.Matthew Henry's Commentary
If covetousness reigns in the heart, commonly all compassion is banished from it.
Those that are of a fretful spirit will always find something to quarrel with. When we complain without cause, it is just with God to give us cause to complain.Gems, 28
I think it is my duty to choose rather to join with those who refuse to admit into the Communion with them such as are openly vicious and profane than with those who, being under an unhappy obligation to administer the Lord's Supper to all in office and to transfer the trial of all suspensions to the bishop's court, cannot possibly use so strict a discipline. Not that I think I am ever the worse for bad people's joining with me in the Lord's Supper, but perhaps they are the worse for my joining with them; and I would not be accessory to the hardening of them in their impieties. I do not expect to meet with any society of Christians perfectly pure on this side heaven. There are spots, I know, in our feasts of charity; but I must prefer those who appear to me either to be more pure from the mixture of corrupt members, or at least more solicitous and desirous to be so and capable of being so by their own constitution.
God's hiding his face is trouble enough to a good man even in his prosperity but if when we are in trouble, God hides his face, the case is sad indeed.
to be angry at nothing but sin is the way not to sin in anger.
the law of God must be perpetual from its very nature.
The law of the Old Testament is not a mere datum or a mere code book, but the personal word of the great King of the universe. And who is this King? From eternity to eternity the Word was with God and the Word was God (John 1:1). The King is the trinitarian God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God the Son was always at work from the beginning. The law of Moses is a reflection and foreshadowing of the absolute perfection and righteousness of Christ, rather than Christ being a reflection of the law.
We are now by the Spirit at liberty to delight in the law, to make the law our counsellor, to make the Word of God our counsellor. That which terrified and frightened us before is now our direction. A severe schoolmaster to a very young pupil becomes later, as the pupil grows, a wise tutor to guide and direct. So, the law that terrifies and whips us when we are in bondage, till we are in Christ -it scares us to Christ -that law afterward comes to be a tutor, to tell us what we shall do, to counsel us and say this is the best way. And we come to delight in those truths when they are revealed to us inwardly. And the more we know, the more we want to know, because we want to please God better every day.Glorious Freedom, 41
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20. Matthew Henry (51)
2. Charles Spurgeon (135)
3. J.C. Ryle (117)
4. John Calvin (107)
5. J.I. Packer (93)
6. John Piper (87)
7. George Swinnock (80)
8. Thomas Brooks (79)
9. John Flavel (76)
10. A.W. Pink (68)
11. John Owen (68)
12. Louis Berkhof (63)
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14. C.S. Lewis (59)
15. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (58)
16. B.B. Warfield (58)
17. R.C. Sproul (55)
18. William Gurnall (55)
19. Heinrich Bullinger (53)
20. Matthew Henry (51)
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