What They Said

"God’s people have their trials. It was never designed by God, when he chose his people, that they should be an untried people. They were chosen in the furnace of affliction; they were never chosen to worldly peace and earthly joy. Freedom from sickness and the pains of mortality was never promised them; but when their Lord drew up the charter of privileges, he included chastisements amongst the things to which they should inevitably be heirs. Trials are a part of our lot; they were predestinated for us in Christ’s last legacy. So surely as the stars are fashioned by his hands, and their orbits fixed by him, so surely are our trials allotted to us: he has ordained their season and their place, their intensity and the effect they shall have upon us. Good men must never expect to escape troubles; if they do, they will be disappointed, for none of their predecessors have been without them. Mark the patience of Job; remember Abraham, for he had his trials, and by his faith under them, he became the “Father of the faithful.” Note well the biographies of all the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and you shall discover none of those whom God made vessels of mercy, who were not made to pass through the fire of affliction. It is ordained of old that the cross of trouble should be engraved on every vessel of mercy, as the royal mark whereby the King’s vessels of honour are distinguished. But although tribulation is thus the path of God’s children, they have the comfort of knowing that their Master has traversed it before them; they have his presence and sympathy to cheer them, his grace to support them, and his example to teach them how to endure; and when they reach “the kingdom,” it will more than make amends for the “much tribulation” through which they passed to enter it."

Charles Spurgeon

"None can know their election but by their conformity to Christ; for all that are chosen are chosen to sanctification."

Matthew Henry

"A Christian is just as much under the obligation to obey God's will in the most secular of his daily business as he is in his closet or at A Christian is just as much under the obligation to obey God’s will in the most secular of his daily business as he is in his closet or at the communion table. He has no right to separate his life into two realms, and acknowledge different moral codes in each…

The kingdom of God includes all sides of human life, and it is a kingdom of absolute righteousness. You are either a loyal subject or a traitor. When the King comes, how will he find you doing? The kingdom of God is one, it cannot be divided…

If the Church languishes, the State cannot be in health; and if the State rebels against its Lord and King, the Church cannot enjoy His favour…

I charge you, citizens of the United States, afloat on your wide sea of politics, THERE IS ANOTHER KING, ONE JESUS: THE SAFETY OF THE STATE CAN BE SECURED ONLY IN THE WAY OF HUMBLE AND WHOLE-SOULED LOYALTY TO HIS PERSON AND OF OBEDIENCE TO HIS LAW. communion table.  He has no right to separate his life into two realms, and acknowledge different moral codes in each."

A. A. Hodge

‎"It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend a meeting where the only attraction is God."

A.W. Tozer

"The preaching of the law does not make us more sinful, but reveals those sins unto us which before we discerned not; as the sun shining upon some filthy place does not make it so filthy, but only makes it manifest which was not seen in the dark."

George Downame

(1560-1634)

“Your works may bear luscious-looking fruit, but you are not safe from the devil’s blight unless you add  to your virtue knowledge. Knowledge is to faith as sunshine is to the farmer. Without it, faith cannot see to do her work. Nor can the work, once finished, be adequately inspected in the dim light of half-truths.  If you do not ground yourself in the truth of the gospel, Satan will play upon your ignorance to thwart your spiritual growth. He has a clever proposition for every occasion. In one instance he may try to persuade you that you are not humble enough, and cause the weeds of self-condemnation to choke out the assurance of your salvation. Another time, he will flatter you into a false sense of pride in your humility, and the pestilence of self-righteousness will wipe out the Spirit’s crop of fruit in your life.  Satan is not particular what lie he tells you; one will work as powerfully as another if he can get you to believe it.”

William Gurnall

"We may feel God's hand as a Father upon us when He strikes us as well as when He strokes us."

Abraham Wright

(1611-1690)

"Seek not so much to have thy ear tickled as thy understanding enlightened.” 

Nehemiah Rogers

"The end of all arts and sciences is the practice of them.  And as this is to be confessed in all other arts, so it cannot be decried in divinity and religion."

George Downame

(1560-1634)

"Let me persuade you to believe, that the gospel is not entailed upon England. England hath no letters patent of the gospel; the gospel is removeable. God took away the ark and forsook Shiloh, and he did not only take away the ark, but the temple also. He unchurched the Jews, he unchurched the seven churches of Asia, and we know not how soon he may unchurch us. I know no warrant we have to think that we shall have the gospel another hundred years. God knows how to remove bis candlestick, but not to destroy it, God doth often remove the church, but doth not destroy it. God removed his church out of the east, as the Greek churches were famous churches, bat God removed them, and now the Turk overspreads that country."

Edmund Calamy

"I charge you, citizens of the United States, afloat on your wide sea of politics, there is another king, one Jesus: the safety of the state can be secured only in the way of humble and whole-souled loyalty to His Person and of obedience to His Law."

A.A. Hodge

"all great & honourable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages. It was granted ye dangers were great, but not desperate; the difficulties were many, but not invincible."

William Bradford

(From his journal)

"The atonement is efficacious — it accomplishes redemption, it makes purification for sin, it reconciles to God, it secures the salvation of those for whom it was intended. Only on this premise is He the Saviour. Only on this basis is He freely offered as Saviour to all without distinction. It is not as Saviour He would be offered to all men if He did not actually save (cf. Matt. 1:21)."

John Murray

"Law is in every culture religious in origin. Because law governs man and society, because it establishes and declares the meaning of justice and righteousness, law is inescapably religious, in that it establishes in practical fashion the ultimate concerns of a culture. Accordingly, a fundamental and necessary premise in any and every study of law must be, first, a recognition of this religious nature of law.

Second, it must be recognized that in any culture the source of law is the god of that society. If law has its source in man’s reason, then reason is the god of that society. If the source is an oligarchy, or in a court, senate, or ruler, then that source is god of that system. Thus, in Greek culture law was essentially a religiously humanistic concept. …..

Third, in any society, any change of law is an explicit or implicit change of religion. Nothing more clearly reveals, in fact, the religious change in a society than a legal revolution. When the legal foundations shift from Biblical law to humanism, it means that the society now draws its vitality and power from humanism, not from Christian theism.

Fourth, no disestablishment of religion as such is possible in any society. A church can be disestablished, and a particular religion can be supplanted by another, but the change is simply to another religion. Since the foundations of law are inescapably religious, no society exists without a religious foundation or without a law-system which codifies the morality of its religion.

Fifth, there can be no tolerance in a law-system for another religion. Toleration is a device used to introduce a new law-system as a prelude to a new intolerance….. "

R.J. Rushdoony

The Institutes of Biblical Law, 1973

"The revelation of ‘the Christ’ embraces in it the revelation of the church in Him, as His temple, His body, His bride, His present witness on earth, and the watcher for His return in glory. This church, even on earth, is no mere association of men holding certain opinions, — no mere corporation favoured with certain privileges, — but a body chosen and called out of a world of darkness. Its legislation is divine, not human; its laws are not its own ideas of expediency and order, but the commandments of its Head. The essence of its constitution is not socialism, nor republicanism, nor despotism, nor anarchy, but an unearthly organization, founded on entire subjection to its heavenly Head; an organization working itself out in order, unity, growth, fruitfulness, love, and zeal. Its ministers are not philosophers, nor lecturers, nor theorists, nor humourists, nor orators, nor priests, but messengers of God’s free love, expositors of the word, shepherds of the flock, and executors of government and discipline. Its members are not politicians, nor lovers of pleasure, nor worshippers of gold, nor men who are trying to make the best of both worlds, but men alive from the dead, through the power of the Holy Ghost; possessors of a heavenly peace, bearers of a cross, yet heirs of a kingdom; strangers upon the earth, yet citizens of the New Jerusalem, which cometh down from God out of heaven."

Horatius Bonar

“A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master.”

George Washington

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

Thomas Jefferson

"Hope fills the afflicted soul with such inward joy and consolation, that it can laugh while tears are in the eye, sigh and sing all in a breath; it is called "The rejoicing of hope."

William Gurnall

"No doctrine in the whole Word of God has more excited the hatred of mankind than the truth of the absolute sovereignty of God."

Charles Spurgeon

"The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects [denominations] and to prevent any national ecclesiastical patronage of the national government."

Joseph Story

"Tomorrow is the devil's day, but today is God's. Satan does not care how spiritual your intentions are, or how holy your resolutions, if only they are determined to be done tomorrow."

J.C. Ryle

"It is not by incarnation but by blood shedding that we are saved. The Christ of God is no mere expounder of wisdom; no mere deliverer or gracious benefactor; and they who think they have told the whole gospel, when they have spoken of Jesus revealing the love of God, do greatly err. If Christ be not the Substitute, he is nothing to the sinner. If he did not die as the Sinbearer, he has died in vain. Let us not be deceived on this point, nor misled by those who, when they announce Christ as the Deliverer, think they have preached the gospel. If I throw a rope to a drowning man, I am a deliverer. But is Christ no more than that? If I cast myself into the sea, and risk my life to save another, I am a deliverer. But is Christ no more? Did he but risk his life? The very essence of Christ’s deliverance is the substitution of Himself for us, his life for ours. He did not come to risk his life; he cam to die! He did not redeem us by a little loss, a little sacrifice, a little labor, a little suffering, “He redeemed us to God by his blood;” “the precious blood of Christ.” He gave all he had, even his life, for us. This is the kind of deliverance that awakens the happy song, “To him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.”"

Horatius Bonar

"Sanctification is the real change in man from the sordidness of sin to the purity of God's image."

Williams Ames