This Week's Quote - Augustine

"Drunkenness is a flattering devil, a sweet poison, a pleasant sin, which whosoever hath hath not himself; which whosoever doth commit, doth not commit sin, but he himself is wholly sin."

                                                            - Augustine of Hippo, 354-430

This Week's Quote - The Westminster Shorter Confession

"The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption: but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them: the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies. And the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Beside these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledges none."

                                - The Westminster Confession of Faith, XXXII.1 (1647)

This Week's Quote - Alexander MacLaren

“The apostolic church thought more about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ than about death and heaven. The early Christians were looking, not for a cleft in the ground called a grave but for a cleavage in the sky called Glory."

- Alexander MacLaren, 1826-1910

This Week's Quote - Henry Smith

“There is a place in hell where the covetous judge sitteth, the greedy lawyer, the griping landlord, the careless bishops, the lusty youth, the wanton dames, the thief, the robbers of the commonwealth. They are punished in this life because they ever sin as long as they could, while mercy was offered unto them; therefore because they would not be washed, they shall be drowned.”

- Henry Smith, c. 1560-1591

This Week's Quote - Mary Winslow

“Is it not strange that we can for one moment lose sight of heaven, and the increasing glory; and grovel in the dust to gather pebbles, for the pleasure of throwing them afterwards away?”

- Mary Winslow, 1774-1854

This Week's Quote - Thomas Adams

“There is no other fortification against the judgements of God but repentance. His forces be invisible, invincible; not repelled with sword and target; neither portcullis nor fortress can keep them out; there is nothing in the world that can encounter them but repentance.”

Thomas Adams, 1583-1653

This Week's Quote - Spurgeon

“I believe that one reason why the church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church.”

C. H. Spurgeon

This Week's Quote - Thomas Watson

God is but one, yet are there three distinct persons subsisting in one Godhead. This is a sacred mystery, which the light within man could never have discovered. As the two natures in Christ, yet but one person, is a wonder; so three persons, yet but one Godhead. Here is a great deep, the Father God, the Son God, the Holy Ghost God; yet not three Gods, but one God. The three persons in the blessed Trinity are distinguished, but not divided; three substances, but one essence. This is a divine riddle, where one makes three, and three make one. Our narrow thoughts can no more comprehend the Trinity in Unity, than a nut-shell will hold all the water in the sea.

- Thomas Watson (c. 1620-1686)

This Week's Quote - William Barclay

“One of the highest of human duties is the duty of encouragement. …It is easy to laugh at men’s ideals; it is easy to pour cold water on their enthusiasm; it is easy to discourage others.  The world is full of discouragers.  We have a Christian duty to encourage one another.  Many a time a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept a man on his feet.  Blessed is the man who speaks such a word.”

William Barclay, 1907-1978

This Week's Quote - Chrysostom

“Rightly does the grammarian say, ‘Who is ignorant of the city of the Ephesians?’...He does not say ‘Who does not know Artemis?’ but ‘Who does not know your city?’ which is what they were worshiping:...they were trying to make their faith a pretext for making money.”

- John Chrysostom, c. 349-407

This Week's Quote - Ambrose

“The dust is to be shaken off your feet lest when the dryness of barren unbelief crumbles the sole of your mind it is stained as if by a dry and sandy soil. A preacher of the gospel must take on himself the bodily weaknesses of a faithful people, so to speak. He must lift up and remove from his own soles worthless actions as if they were dust.”

- Ambrose of Milan, 333-397

This Week's Quote - Ambrose

“You must consider what this act represented and what was the reason for this outward show; it was that the young Jewish youths and maidens would be led away into exile and walk naked, ‘as my servant Isaiah walked,’ he says, ‘naked and barefoot.’ This might have been expressed in words, but God chose to enforce it by an example that the very sight might strike more terror, and what they shrank from in the body of the prophet they might utterly dread for themselves. Wherein lay the greater abhorrence: in the body of the prophet or in the sins of the disbelievers?”

- Ambrose, 333-397

This Week's Quote - Chrysostom

“The word gift refers to all the blessings which come from almsgiving, both to those who receive and to those who give. Or it refers to the inexpressible gift which Christ bestowed liberally on the whole world by his incarnation.”

- John Chrysostom, c. 349-407

This Week's Quote - Westminster Confession of Faith

“Whosoever taketh an oath ought duly to consider the weightiness of so solemn an act, and therein to avouch nothing but what he is fully persuaded is the truth: neither may any man bind himself by oath to any thing but what is good and just, and what he believeth so to be, and what he is able and resolved to perform. (Yet it is a sin to refuse an oath touching any thing that is good and just, being imposed by lawful authority.)”

- Westminster Confession of Faith, XXII.iii

This Week's Quote - Polycarp

“The presbyters must always be compassionate and merciful toward everyone, turning back the sheep which have gone astray, visiting the sick, not neglecting a widow or an orphan or a poor man but providing always for that which is honorable in the sight of God and of men.”

- Polycarp, 69-155

This Week's Quote - Chrysostom

“This happened in the case of the manna, when those who gathered more and those who gathered less were found to have the same quantity. God did this in order to punish greed, and Paul recalls it both to alarm them by what happened then and to persuade them never to desire more than they already have or to be anxious because they have less.”

- John Chrysostom, c. 395

This Week's Quote - Chrysostom

“The secret of the Macedonians’ zeal was that first, they gave themselves to the Lord. Everything else flowed from that. As a result, when they showed mercy they were not filled with pride but rather displayed great humility and heavenly wisdom.”

- John Chrysostom, 347-407

This Week's Quote - Calvin

“This deadly plague reigns everywhere throughout the world. Men are grown mad with an insatiable desire of gain. Christ charges them with folly, in collecting wealth with great care, and then giving up their happiness to moths and to rust, or exposing it as a prey to thieves. What is more unreasonable than to place their property, where it may perish of itself, or be carried off by men? Covetous men, indeed, take no thought of this. They lock up their riches in well-secured chests, but cannot prevent them from being exposed to thieves or to moths They are blind and destitute of sound judgment, who give themselves so much toil and uneasiness in amassing wealth, which is liable to putrefaction, or robbery, or a thousand other accidents: particularly, when God allows us a place in heaven for laying up a treasure, and kindly invites us to enjoy riches which never perish.”

- John Calvin, 1555

This Week's Quote - The WCF

“At the last day, such as are found alive shall not die, but be changed; and all the dead shall be raised up, with the self-same bodies, and none other (although with different qualities), which shall be united again to their souls forever.

“The bodies of the unjust shall, by the power of Christ, be raised to dishonour; the bodies of the just, by His Spirit, unto honour; and be made conformable to His own glorious body.”

- The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter xxxii.2-3

This Week's Quote - George Downame

We must understand that faith does not justify and save us by itself...but as an instrument, whereby we lay hold of and apply to ourselves Christ with His righteousness and merits, by which only we appear just before God. A small and weak hand, if it be able to reach up the meat to the mouth, as well performs its duty for the nourishment of the body as one of greater strength, because it is not the strength of the hand but the goodness of the meat which nourishes the body.

- George Downame (1560-1634)