Words are merely carriers of the secret, supernatural communications, the light and call of God. That is why spiritual books bear such different meanings for different types and qualities of soul, why each time we read them they give us something fresh, as we can bear it.
…Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Light of Christ [1944]
Few have defined what free will is, although it repeatedly occurs in the writings of all. Origen seems to have put forward a definition generally agreed upon among ecclesiastical writers when he said that it is a faculty of the reason to distinguish between good and evil, a faculty of the will to choose one or the other. Augustine does not disagree with this when he teaches that it is a faculty of the reason and the will to choose good with the assistance of grace; evil, when grace is absent.
…John Calvin (1509-1564), The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ii.2.4 [1559]
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
…Jim Elliot (1927-1956), missionary, martyr, The Journals of Jim Elliot [1978]
True progress is not found in breaking away from the old ways, but in abiding in the teaching of Christ and His Spirit in the Church. There is an apparent contradiction here, for how can we abide, and yet advance? It is a paradox, like much else in scripture; but Christian experience proves it true. Those make the best progress in religion who hold fast by the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and not those who drift away from their moorings, rudderless upon a sea of doubt.
…Henry Barclay Swete (1835-1917)
“If the heart is devoted to the mirage of the world, to the creature instead of the Creator, the disciple is lost… However urgently Jesus may call us, His call fails to find access to our hearts. Our hearts are closed, for they have already been given to another.”
…Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)
“You must not lose confidence in God because you lost confidence in your pastor. If our confidence in God had to depend upon our confidence in any human person, we would be on shifting sand.”
…Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984)
Meditation: Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
— Matthew 5:48 (KJV)
Who is it that has helped you most? Has it not been those who believed in you? Perhaps there may be few such left. The light of expectation may have died out of the most friendly and hopeful eyes; and you yourself may have lost heart. Ah! but there is still One whose faith in you has never wavered. And how wonderful it is that that one should be Jesus Christ!… It was a wonderful dream God dreamed, Christ says, when He created you; it was a stately being that was in His mind when you were fashioned; and I can make you all He meant that you should be.
…A. J. Gossip (1873-1954), The Galilean Accent [1926]
Augustine shows clearly the religious character of sin. Sin for him is not a moral failure; it is not even disobedience. Disobedience is a consequence but not the cause. The cause is: turning away from God, and from God as the highest good, as the love with which God loves Himself, through us. For this reason, since sin has this character — if you say “sins”, it is easily dissolved into moral sins; but sin is first of all basically the power of turning away from God. For this very reason, no moral remedy is possible. Only one remedy is possible: return to God. But this of course is possible only in the power of God, and this power is lost. This is the state of man under the conditions of existence.
…Paul Tillich (1886-1965), A History of Christian Thought [1968]
Religion is not ours till we live by it, till it is the Religion of our thoughts, words, and actions, till it goes with us into every place, sits uppermost on every occasion, and forms and governs our hopes and fears, our cares and pleasures.
…William Law (1686-1761) Feast of Monica, Mother of Augustine of Hippo, 387