What They Said

"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