It seems harsh to many to think that God chooses some and rejects others, and does not consider men’s worth, that by his own free will he chooses whom he pleases and moreover rejects others. But what is this scruple except a desire to call God to order and subject him to their judgment?
We carefully conceal our abundant vices from others – and we pretend they’re small and insignificant. In fact, we so delude ourselves that we sometimes embrace our vices as virtues. When.
We are cold when it comes to rejoicing in God! Hence, we need to exercise ourselves in it and employ all our senses in it – our feet, our hands, our arms and all the rest – that they all might serve in the worship of God and so magnify Him.
Children, who are dealt with more generously and more liberally by their fathers, do not hesitate to show them unfinished projects that they have only begun, or even spoiled a little. Even if they have not succeeded in doing quite what they wanted, they are confident that their obedience and readiness of mind will be accepted. Such children we ought to be, trusting confidently that our most lenient Father will approve of them, however small, rough, or imperfect they may be.
This is how we can distinguish true religion from superstition: when the Word of God directs us, there is true religion; but when each man follows his own opinion, or when men join together to follow an opinion they hold in common, the result is always concocted superstition.
Hero-worship is innate to human nature, and it is founded on some of our noblest feelings, – gratitude, love, and admiration. – but which, like all other feelings, when uncontrolled by principle and reason, may easily degenerate into the wildest exaggerations, and lead to most dangerous consequences.
The poor man yields to the rich, the plebeian to the noble, the servant to the master, the unlearned to the learned, and yet every one inwardly cherishes some idea of his own superiority.
For, until men feel that they owe everything to God, that they are cherished by his paternal care, and that he is the author of all their blessings, so that nought is to be looked for away from him, they will never submit to him in voluntary obedience; nay, unless they place their entire happiness in him, they will never yield up their whole selves to him in truth and sincerity.
It teaches us not to regard others according to their own merits, but to consider in them the image of God to which we owe both honor and love. But.
Let us, however, remember this truth: No one has made much progress in the school of Christ who doesn’t look forward joyfully both to his death and the day of his final resurrection.
Now, in order that true religion may shine upon us, we ought to hold that it must take its beginning from heavenly doctrine and that no one can get even the slightest taste of right and sound doctrine unless he be a pupil of Scripture.
There has been nothing in heaven or on earth which has not witnessed that Jesus Christ is God, Lord and Master, and the great Ambassador of the Father sent here below to accomplish the salvation of mankind. All.
The Holy Spirit has consecrated us as temples of God. We, therefore, must let the glory of God shine through us, and we must not pollute ourselves with sin.
Each of us thinks we have just cause for elevating ourselves and despising all others in comparison to ourselves – our self-love ruins us with such blindness. If, in fact, God has gifted us with something that is good in itself, we immediately make it the basis for praising ourselves to such a degree that we not only swell up but almost burst with pride.
Therefore, as Paul testifies, election, which is the cause of good works, does not depend upon men.
Indeed, the holiest among us know they stand by God’s grace and not by their own virtues. Yet they would nevertheless become too confident in their own courage and constancy if they weren’t led to a more intimate knowledge of themselves by the testing of the cross.
I have become used to swallowing insults for so long that I am almost insensitive; yet.
The difference between us and the papists is that they do not think that the church can be ‘the pillar of the truth’ unless she presides over the word of God. We, on the other hand, assert that it is because she reverently subjects herself to the word of God that the truth is preserved by her and passed on to others by her hands.
Would the Lord have dressed the flowers with a beauty that runs freely to meet our eyes if it were wrong to be moved by such beauty? Would He have endowed them with so sweet a fragrance that flows freely into our nostrils if it were wrong to be moved by the pleasantness of such fragrance?
For so blindly do we all rush in the direction of self-love, that every one thinks he has a good reason for exalting himself and despising all others in comparison.