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
What is the reason that many professors are no more holy and humble, but waspish and peevish and harsh, and of a rugged disposition, but because they have not studied the gospel more
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.
the Sabbath day is our market day, and then after we have bought our market on the Sabbath, we should roast it by meditation on the week. We do not go to the market on the market day to buy meat into the house only for the market day but for all the time until the market day comes about again. Indeed, Solomon says of the sluggard that he is so sluggish and slothful that "he doth not roast what he hath taken in hunting." The Sabbath day is the hunting day for souls wherein the venison is taken; on the weekday we are to roast it and to live upon it by meditation and otherwise. And what is the reason that many do not live upon their venison that they have taken on the Lord's Day? But because they do not roast it by meditation on the weekday.
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
A man must not run into a suffering without a call, and he must not rush out of it without a call. And therefore you shall find Christ and the apostles, and all the martyrs, that thus they acted. They would hide, and go aside, and avoid their sufferings; but when they were in hold they would not go out though the doors were open. So that that is the next thing: be sure of this, that you do not run into sufferings without a call nor rush out of sufferings without the same call from God.
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.
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.
What is prayer and the nature of it? Prayer is the pouring out of the soul to God; not the pouring out of words nor the pouring out of expressions, but the pouring out of the soul to God.
Idleness breeds temptation. Our vacation is the devil's term; when we are least at work for God, then is Satan most at work about us. By doing nothing men learn to do evil. Yea, idleness is the burying of a living man.
Seek not great things for yourselves in this world, for if your garments be too long, they will make you stumble; and one staff helps a man in his journey when many in his hands at once hinders him.
What if God will that His people should have a taste of hell in this life, that so they may be sensible of and very thankful for their deliverance from hell and the wrath to come? There are three things in hell: torment of body, horror of conscience, loss of God. By our pains and torments, gouts and stone, we think of the torments of hell, or may think. By the horror of conscience that we meet withal, we may think of the horror of conscience there. And by God's withdrawing and God's departing from us here, we may think of the loss of God forever there.