Commonplace

A Slippery Memory

Beware that you forget not the care and kindness of providence which your eyes have seen in so many fruits and experiences thereof. It was God’s charge against Israel, Psal.…

Read The Mystery of Providence

Origen

Accomodation of Form

For the Logos has different forms, appearing to each onlooker as is fitting, and not revealed to anyone beyond what the onlooker can receive.

Read Light on the Mountain: Greek Patristic and Byzantine Homilies on the Transfiguration of the Lord

Watson, Thomas

Acting Grace Makes the Heat Calm

Our consciences are never at peace in a drowsy state. It is the lively acting of grace makes the heart calm and serene.—These two go together, walking ‘in the fear of God,’ and…

Read The Christian Soldier, or Heaven Taken by Storm

Vos, Geerhardus

All Theology Requires Revelation

From the definition of Theology as the science concerning God follows the necessity of its being based on revelation

Read Reformed Dogmatics 1: Theology Proper

Basil the Great

Baited Questions

For the questions of many contain a hidden and elaborate bait, like the hunters’ snare and the military ambush. These are the people who throw out words, not so that they may…

Read On the Holy Spirit

Bauckham, Richard

Bauckham on Christian Exegesis

Much of the creative theological thinking in earliest Christianity was done by way of Old Testament exegesis. ... They brought the Old Testament text into relationship with the…

Read God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament

Watson, Thomas

Beware Dead Formality

Formalists are like the tombs in the church, which have their eyes and hands lift up to Heaven, but no soul

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Boyarin, Daniel

Boyarin on Logos/Sophia

The idea that the Logos/Sophia (and other variants as well) was the site of God’s presence in the world—indeed of God’s Word or Wisdom as a mediator figure—was a very widespread…

Read The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John

Cassius Dio

Cassius Dio on the Jews

This class exists even among the Romans, and though often repressed has increased to a very great extent and has won its way to the right of freedom in its observances. They are…

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Childs, Brevard

Childs on Boyarin and Kugel

A major emphasis of two of these scholars ... is to describe midrash as a way of reading the Bible according to a radical intertextual manner, assuming it to be the authoritative…

Read Critique of Recent Intertextual Canonical Interpretation

Watson, Thomas

Christ on his Own Terms

Hath God ever made you willing to take Christ upon his own terms, Zach. 6:13

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Watson, Thomas

Christian Meditation

Meditation may be thus described; it is an holy exercise of the mind, whereby we bring the truths of God to remembrance, and do seriously ponder upon them, and apply them to…

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Owen, John

Christ’s Natures Cannot Be Separated

There was a fulness of grace in the human nature of Christ,—he received not “the Spirit by measure,” John 3:34; a fulness like that of light in the sun, or of water in the sea (I…

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Anon.

David’s Inspiration in DSS

All these he spoke through prophecy given him by the Most High.

Read The Dead Sea Scrolls

Watson, Thomas

Do We Pray in the Morning as if We Were to Die at Night?

Do we use violence in prayer? Is there fire in our sacrifice? Doth the wind of the Spirit filling our sails, cause ‘groans unutterable?’ Rom. 8:26. Do we pray in the morning as if…

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Wodehouse, P. G.

Evensong

There's something about evening service in a country church that makes a fellow feel drowsy and peaceful. Sort of end-of-a-perfect-day feeling. Old Heppenstall was up in the…

Read The Inimitable Jeeves

Gurnall, William

Faith is the Spring of Good Works

Convince them they cannot do these without grace from Christ; for want of which the heathen’s virtues were but gilded vices. We must come to good works by faith, and not to faith…

Read The Christian in Complete Armour

Personal

False Conceptions of God

God is immanent and impersonal - God is finite and personal - God is the personification of an idea

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Watson, Thomas

Flesh v Spirit

flesh lusteth against the spirit. The pampering of the flesh, is the quenching of God’s spirit. The flesh choaks and stifles holy motions: the flesh sides with Satan, and is true…

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Watson, Thomas

Focus on Heaven

Travellers, when they are met in their Inn, do not spend all their time in speaking about their Inn; they are to lodge there but a few hours, and they are gone; but they are…

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Ethopian Eunuch

God is knowable within the community of his chosen people

In Judah God is known; his name is great in Israel.

Read The Holy Bible: English Standard Version

Vos, Geerhardus

God is not Beyond Human Knowledge but we can only describe what God is, not define Him

In what sense do Reformed theologians maintain that God cannot be known? a) Insofar as we can have only an incomplete understanding of an infinite being. b) Insofar as we cannot…

Read Reformed Dogmatics 1: Theology Proper

Berkhof, Louis

God Reduced to the Scope of Human Emotion and Intellect

Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century the practice was all but general to begin the study of Dogmatics with the doctrine of God; but a change came about under the…

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Bavinck, Herman

God the Highest Good

In a general sense we can say that God is the highest good of all His creatures. For God is the Creator and sustainer of all things, the source of all being and of all life, and…

Read Our Reasonable Faith

Watson, Thomas

God's Window into our Heart

So when we go to pray, the King of glory comes in to see in what frame we are; he hath a window which looks into our breasts, and if he sees a dead heart he may turn a deaf ear.

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Watson, Thomas

Good Men May Tempt to Evil

The devil hath made use sometimes of the eminentest and holiest men to promote his temptations. The devil tempted Christ by an apostle, Peter dissuades him from suffering.

Read The Christian Soldier, or Heaven Taken by Storm

Watson, Thomas

He That Is All Fire for the World, Will Be All Ice for Heaven

He that is all fire for the world, will be all ice for Heaven. Take heed of engaging your affections too far in these secular things. Use the world as your servant, but do not…

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Melito of Sardis

He Who Hung the Earth is Hanging

He who hung the earth is hanging. He who fixed the heavens in place has been fixed in place. He who laid the foundations of the universe has been laid on a tree. The master has…

Read On Pascha

Flavel, John

He Wrought it, We Wear It

It is true, we are justified and saved by the very righteousness of Christ, and no other; but that righteousness is formally inherent in him only, and is only materially imputed…

Read Vindiciarum Vindex

Van Asselt

Hegel and History as a Necessary Process

Hegel saw history as a necessary process. Individuals, eras, and powers were necessary steps in world history. In that process, there is over and over again a position (thesis)…

Read Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism

Webster, John

Hermeneutics are Spiritual

Whether done well or ill, theology and the study of Scripture are spiritual tasks, and the conditions for their flourishing include spiritual conditions. Pathologies of modern…

Read The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason

Hurtado, Larry W.

Hurtado on Early Church Exegesis

The third approach to finding (and demonstrating) Jesus in the Old Testament is just as bold, and indeed, may well appear still more bizarre to many moderns. The focus here is on…

Read Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity

Hurtado, Larry W.

Hurtado on Justin Martyr

[f]or the early Christian handling of these Old Testament texts that Justin exemplifies, the prior and essential basis is the belief that the historic Jesus was the incarnate form…

Read Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity

Barrett, Matthew

Inspiration Guarantees Narrative

Inspiration guarantees that the canon’s many stories tell one story; there is a single story to be told because there is a single divine author, who has declared himself to be its…

Read Canon, Covenant and Christology

VanderKam, James C.

Inspiration in Jubilees

Then he told the Angel of the Presence to dictate to Moses (starting) from the beginning of the creation until the time when my temple is built among them throughout the ages of…

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Watson, Thomas

Inward Gaze is harder than Outward Acts

Tis hard to look inward. External acts of religion are facile; to lift up the eye to Heaven, to bow the knee, to read a prayer; this requires no more labour than for a Catholic to…

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Hodge, A. A,

Irresistible Grace, not Coercion

When the wind beat upon the man in Esop, it made him only draw his cloak the closer round him. But when the sun made him hot, he by his own will threw off the cloak, which the…

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Murray, Iain

Is it Credible to Deny a Dependable Revelation?

Are we to suppose that God sent his Son to live and die in this world and left us with no dependable revelation of his words? Or are we to believe the disciples had to make up…

Read Evangelicalism Divided

Barr, James

James Barr on Inspiration

The conception of inspired scripture encouraged a more literalist approach. If God had inspired scripture, he had inspired not only its general meaning but its detail. Even the…

Read The Typology of Literalism in Ancient Biblical Translations

Sanders, James A.

James Sanders on Scripturalising

[t]he observation that all Early Jewish literature was written more or less Scripturally has always been operative in the study of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, as well as…

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Melito of Sardis

Jesus is All Things

He is all things. He is law, in that he judges. He is word, in that he teaches. He is grace, in that he saves. He is father, in that he begets. He is son, in that he is begotten.…

Read On Pascha

Bates, William

Jesus is not the Acceptable Face of God

The Son of God came into the world, not to make God less holy, but to make us holy

Read Cited by Thomas Manton

Ethopian Eunuch

Jesus on OT on the Road to Emmaus

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself… They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within…

Read The Holy Bible: English Standard Version

Ethopian Eunuch

Jesus on Textual Literalism

For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

Read The Holy Bible: English Standard Version

Barrett, Matthew

Jesus’s Obedience Speaks to Inspiration of the Scriptures

By looking to the manner in which Jesus accomplishes redemption – that is, his self conscious covenant obedience to the Scriptures – one also discovers Jesus' own attitude towards…

Read Canon, Covenant and Christology

John of Damascus

John of Damascus on Human Nature

Since this was the case, with His own hands He created man after His own image and likeness from the visible and invisible natures. From the earth He formed his body and by His…

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Lieu, Judith

Judith Lieu on Textual Communities

The experience of Judaism from the mid-second century BCE demonstrates how the extension of the ability to interpret, or the emergence of different claimants to the right to…

Read Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World

Justin Martyr

Justin Martyr’s Claim

“Then,” I said, “let us return to the Scriptures and I shall try to convince you that he who is said to have appeared to Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, and is called God, is distinct…

Read Dialogue with Trypho

Justin Martyr

Justin on the Names of Jesus in OT

“But, Trypho,” I continued, “if you had known who he is who at one time is called angel of great counsel, and Man by Ezekiel, and the Son of Man by Daniel, and a child by Isaiah,…

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Personal

Legitimising: Similarly 1 Maccabees makes use of a style…

Legitimising: Similarly 1 Maccabees makes use of a style which is similar to that of the Deuteronomic History and which, therefore, “claims legitimacy”.

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Lieu, Judith

Lieu on Continuity

The early church met this need [for continuity with Judaism] by a largely typological exegesis of the past: it is our greater historical consciousness which demands a continuity…

Read 'The Parting of the Ways': Theological Construct or Historical Reality

Lieu, Judith

Lieu on the Dead Sea Scrolls

... the surprising pluriformity of text-forms witnessed by the biblical manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that there was as yet no standardization of the text,…

Read Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World

Watson, Thomas

Lifeless Prayer

Lifeless prayer is no more prayer than the picture of a man is a man. To say a prayer is not to pray; Aschanius taught his parrot the Lord’s Prayer. St. Ambrose saith well, ‘It is…

Read The Christian Soldier, or Heaven Taken by Storm

Melito of Sardis

Man and God

For he was born a son, and led as a lamb, and slaughtered as a sheep, and buried as a man, and rose from the dead as God, being God by his nature and a man.

Read On Pascha

Watson, Thomas

Meditation is a Soaking Rain

Many truth’s are lost, because Ministers pour their wine into sieves, either into leaking memories or feathery minds. Meditation is like a soaking rain, that goes to the root of a…

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Watson, Thomas

Miracles have a purpose. They are to point to God. They are not simply for our benefit.

In the fourth verse Christ answers their question, go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are…

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Webster, John

Modernistic Hermeneutics are Merely Textual

What is clear, at least in outline, is that commanding authority gradually came to be accorded to the view that the natural properties of the biblical text and of the skills of…

Read The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason

Aristeas

Monotheism in Jewish Writings: Letter of Areastas

[Eleazar] began first of all by demonstrating that God is one, that his power is shown in everything, every place being filled with his sovereignty, and that none of the things on…

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Philo

Monotheism in Jewish Writings: Philo I

And God said, “At first say unto them, I am that I am, that when they have learnt that there is a difference between him that is and him that is not, they may be further taught…

Read On the Life of Moses

Philo

Monotheism in Jewish Writings: Philo II

Let us, therefore, fix deeply in ourselves this first commandment as the most sacred of all commandments, to think that there is but one God, the most highest, and to honour him…

Read On the Life of Moses

Albright, W. F.

Monotheism in the Synagogues • The Nash Papyrus (165 - 37BC)

The Nash Papyrus contains the entire decalogue (Ex 20 2-17 or Deut 5 6-21) and the Shema (Deut 6 4-5), on a single leaf, so it is clear that it does not come from a roll of the…

Read A Biblical Fragment from the Maccabaean Age: The Nash Papyrus

Personal

MY NOTES ON ANCIENT JEWSH INTERPRETATION

Expansions: ‘Gaps’ in Biblical stories filled in, and retold so narratives ‘completed’. Serves to underline the centrality of the Biblical texts for these communities. Jubilees:…

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Spurgeon, C. H.

Nearly is Still Not

Almost saved is altogether lost

Read Near the Kingdom, or in it?

Neusner, Jacob

Neusner on Jewish Histography

In canonical Judaism, by contrast, events have no autonomous standing; events are not unique, each unto itself; events have no probative value on their own; and events are not to…

Read The Historical Event as a Cultural Indicator: The Case of Judaism

Neusner, Jacob

Neusner on Midrash

Thus we see, first, that what people said and how they said it go together. What Matthew has taught us is to discern the relationship between form and meaning. He has furthermore…

Read What Is Midrash?

Neusner, Jacob

Neusner on Midrash

What we have in all of the New Testament Gospels, as in the Essene library of Qumran, is an entirely distinctive sort of exegesis: a reading of the verses of ancient Scripture in…

Read What Is Midrash?

Neusner, Jacob

Neusner’s Three Dimensions of Midrash

Three things go together: (1) the principles or processes of exegesis, (2) the purposes of exegesis accomplished in a given interpretation of a single verse, and (3) the formal…

Read What Is Midrash?

Brock, Sebastian

On Translating the Scriptures

[t]he translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek was a phenomenon quite without parallel in antiquity.

Read The Phenomenon of Biblical Translation in Antiquity

Melito of Sardis

Pascha Typology

Thus if you wish to see the mystery of the Lord look at Abel who is likewise slain, at Isaac who is likewise tied up, at Joseph who is likewise traded, at Moses who is likewise…

Read On Pascha

Ethopian Eunuch

Paul and the Importance of Nouns

Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ.

Read The Holy Bible: English Standard Version

Ethopian Eunuch

Paul before Felix

But this I admit to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our ancestors, believing everything laid down according to the law or written in…

Read The Holy Bible: English Standard Version

Ethopian Eunuch

Paul on the Resurrection

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the…

Read The Holy Bible: English Standard Version

Watson, Thomas

Pay Attention to Your Own Faults

It is the note of an harlot; she is seldom at home, Prov. 7:11, 12. ‘Her feet abide not in her house; now is she without, now in the streets.’ It is a sign of an harlot-professor,…

Read The Christian Soldier, or Heaven Taken by Storm

Watson, Thomas

Pray for Quickening Grace

The more lazy a Christian’s desires are, the more lively his corruptions. The weaker the body grows, the stronger the disease grows. O therefore pray for quickning grace, Psalm…

Read The Christian Soldier, or Heaven Taken by Storm

Watson, Thomas

Prayer Is the Bellows That Blows Up the Affections

Keep up daily prayer. Prayer is the bellows that blows up the affections; and a christian is most active, when his affections are most violent. Prayer keeps the trade of religion…

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Watson, Thomas

Preach Honestly

That is the best looking-glass, not which is most gilded, but which shews the truest face.—That preaching is to be preferred, which makes the truest discovery of men’s sins, and…

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Van Asselt

Predestination and Dependence

Schweizer claimed to be a Reformed theologian but was heavily influenced by Schleiermacher. The latter saw religion as a “sense and taste for the infinite” (Sinn und Geschmack…

Read Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism

Anon.

Prologue to Sirach on Translation

You are invited, therefore, to a reading with goodwill and attention, and to exercise forbearance in cases where we may be thought to be insipid with regard to some expressions…

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Charnock,Stephen

Providence as a Consequence of the Attributes of God

He that denies providence denies most of God’s attributes, he denies at least the exercise of them. He denies his omniscience, which is the eye of providence; mercy and justice,…

Read A Discourse of Divine Providence

Flavel, John

Read the History of Your Own Life

Ah sirs, let me tell you, there is not such a pleasant history for you to read in all the world, as the history of your own lives, if you would but sit down and record to…

Read The Mystery of Providence

Tacitus

Roman Witness to Jewish Monotheism

The Egyptians worship many animals and monstrous images; the Jews conceive of one god only, and that with the mind alone: they regard as impious those who make from perishable…

Read Histories

Saint Anastasius

Sanctification and the Form of Life

We understand from his own words that Paul did this; not only was he “crucified to the world, and crucified the world to himself,” but he changed the very form of his life, no…

Read Light on the Mountain: Greek Patristic and Byzantine Homilies on the Transfiguration of the Lord

Watson, Thomas

Satan Tempts to Sin Gradually

Satan tempts to sin gradually. As the husbandman digs about the root of a tree, and by degrees loosens it, and at last it falls. Satan steals by degrees into the heart: he is at…

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Watson, Thomas

Satan Tempts with Lawful Things

Satan tempts to evil in licitis‚ in lawful things. It was lawful for Noah to eat the fruit of the grape; but he took too much, and so sinned. Excess turns that which is good into…

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Berkhof, Louis

Schleiermacher and Pantheism

Theism has always believed in a God who is both transcendent and immanent. Deism removed God from the world, and stressed His transcendence at the expense of His immanence. Under…

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Hurtado, Larry W.

Scholars Conclusion

At least in the Greek and Roman eras, Jerusalem Temple sacrifice was offered exclusively to the one God of Israel. In other words, this central Jewish religious institution by its…

Read How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?: Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus

Moyise, Steve

Scripture Breathes

Scripture was not an ancient artefact for the people of Israel but a living word, accompanied by an oral tradition and scribal exegesis. The key question was not what such and…

Read Scripture in the New Testament: Literary and Theological Perspectives

Symeon the New Theologian

Symeon on Human Nature

This is what man is: a living essence both dead and immortal, visible and invisible, sensory and mental, capable of seeing visible creation, and grasping thought.

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Justin Martyr

The Appearing God in Justin

“My brothers,” I went on, “Moses states in Scripture that he who is termed God, and who appeared to the patriarchs, is also called Angel and Lord, in order that by these…

Read Dialogue with Trypho

Justin Martyr

The Begotten Son

“So, my friends,” I said, “I shall now show from the Scriptures that God has begotten of himself a certain rational power as a beginning before all creatures. The Holy Spirit…

Read Dialogue with Trypho

Bavinck, Herman

The Church Declares, not Creates, Dogma

The power of the church to lay down dogmas is not sovereign and legislative but ministerial and declarative.

Read Reformed Dogmatics: I Prolegomena

Calvin, John

The Church Remains God’s

Peter, indeed, expressly gives the churches this title, in order that we may know that whatever men ascribe to themselves is taken away from the Lord, as in many places he calls…

Read Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles

Watson, Thomas

The Damage of Remissness

Your remissness in religion, though it may not damn you, it will damage you.

Read The Christian Soldier, or Heaven Taken by Storm

Hodge, A. A,

The Danger of a Shallow Unity of Thought

If you give due attention to the difficulties involved in each of these divinely revealed doctrines, you would be able a priori to anticipate all possible heresies which have been…

Spurgeon, C. H.

The Danger of an Organ

I read the other day, that no phase of evil presented so marvellous a power for destruction, as the unconverted minister of a parish, with a £1200 organ, a choir of ungodly…

Read Lectures to my Students

Watson, Thomas

The Danger of Distracted Prayer

while they are praying, they are thinking of their shop and trade. How can he shoot right whose eye is quite off the mark?

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Watson, Thomas

The Danger of Lukewarmness

You that grow more dead in God’s service, and leave your first love, give great advantage to Satan. The less violent you are, the more violent he is; the less you pray, the more…

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Watson, Thomas

The Danger of the Fallow Heart

While men are idle in the vineyard, they are a prey to every temptation. We do not sow our seed in fallow ground; but Satan doth sow most of his seed of temptation in hearts that…

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Watson, Thomas

The Danger of Wicked Company

The company of the wicked will sooner cool you, than your company will heat them. Vinegar will sooner sour the wine, than the wine will sweeten the vinegar.

Read The Christian Soldier, or Heaven Taken by Storm

Hodge, A. A,

The Deep Motions of Providence

"I have never seen any providence", sneers Stuart Mill. But this is nothing wonderful. I have never seen the world revolve, though I have lived upon it more than fifty years. The…

Read Princetoniana

Webster, John

The Doctrine of Inspiration arises from the Doctrine of God

Some preliminaries: First, a prudent theology will treat questions concerning the nature and interpretation of Scripture indirectly, that is, as corollaries of more primary…

Read The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason

Watson, Thomas

The Drop of Pleasure

O what folly is it for a drop of pleasure to drink a sea of wrath.

Read The Christian Soldier, or Heaven Taken by Storm

Berkhof, Louis

The Erastian Deity

Since the days of Comte there has been a tendency to personify the social order of humanity as a whole and to worship this personification.

Read Systematic Theology

Ethopian Eunuch

The Ethiopian Eunuch

So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he…

Read The Holy Bible: English Standard Version

Prichard, Rhys

The Failure of Church Leadership

To set the blind to lead the blind, To set the dull t’instruct mankind, To set th’ unskilled to show the way From dark despair to perfect day; Is not the Spirit’s ordination, But…

Read Daniel Rowland and the Great Evangelical Awakening in Wales

Watson, Thomas

The False Colours of Satan

Another subtility is to draw men to evil, sub specie boni, under a pretence of good.—The pirate doth mischief by hanging out false colours: so doth Satan by hanging out the…

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Watson, Thomas

The Feather Bed of Hell

Men could be content to have the kingdom of Heaven; but they are loth to fight for it. They choose rather to go in a feather bed to Hell, than to be carried to Heaven in a ‘fiery…

Read The Christian Soldier, or Heaven Taken by Storm

Evagrius Ponticus

The Fiercest Passion

The most fierce passion is anger. In fact it is defined as a boiling and stirring up of wrath against one who has given injury or is thought to have done so. It constantly…

Read The Praktikos & Chapters On Prayer

Melito of Sardis

The Gospel is the Narrative and Fulfillment of the Law

The gospel is the narrative and fulfillment of the law and the Church is the repository of reality. So the type was valuable in advance of the reality and the illustration was…

Read On Pascha

Klawans, J

The Hope of the Pharisees

God will cause some divine aspect to dwell in a temple, provided it is pure.

Read Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism

Vos, Geerhardus

The Image of God and Knowledge

That we are able to know God truly rests on the fact that God has made us in His own image, thus an impression of Himself, albeit from the greatest distance. Because we ourselves…

Read Reformed Dogmatics: Theology Proper

Watson, Thomas

The Importance of the Sabbath

It is observable concerning Mary Magdalene, that she refused to anoint Christ’s dead body on the Sabbath day, Luke 23:56. She had before prepared her ointment, but came not to the…

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Ethopian Eunuch

The Innate Desire for God

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

Read The Holy Bible: English Standard Version

Burgess, Anthony

The Means of Prayer

God will have us pray because prayer is an appointed means by Him as well as faith and repentance. Now God's purposes and promises must never be opposed to, or separated from the…

Read Sermon 25 on John 17:5

Gregory the Great

The Necessity of Preaching

The Lord follows his preachers. Preaching comes first, and then the Lord comes to the dwelling places of our hearts; words of exhortation precede, and by means of them Truth is…

Read Forty Gospel Homilies

Wodehouse, P. G.

The Old Adam

Many a man who has seen the light is apt to switch it off when the Old Adam starts to come to life in him.

Read The Inimitable Jeeves

Berkhof, Louis

The Presuppositions of Theology

We start the study of theology with two presuppositions, namely (1) that God exists, and (2) that He has revealed Himself in His divine Word. And for that reason it is not…

Read Systematic Theology

Hodge, A. A,

The Purposeless, Isolated Miracle

A sporadic miracle I would never believe. Though old Dr John M‘Lean even were to take us all down to the graveyard and raise up a man who looked like Jonathan Edwards, it would…

Read Princetoniana

Melito of Sardis

The Reality Replaces the Type

For the law is old, but the word is new. The type is provisional, but grace is everlasting. The sheep is perishable, but the Lord, not broken as a lamb but raised up as God, is…

Read On Pascha

Knox, John

The Reek of Master Patrick Hamilton

But so it pleasith God to open up the mouth of Baalames awin asse, to cry out againest the vitious lyves of the clergie of that aige. Schorte after this, new consultatioun was…

Read History of the Reformation in Scotland

Bavinck, Herman

The Reformers on Original Sin

The Reformers further taught that from its very first motion this concupiscence was also sin: it does not first become sin when the will has consented to it, but it is sin in…

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Hardy, Thomas

The Respectable Burgher On 'The Higher Criticism

Since Reverend Doctors now declare That clerks and people must prepare To doubt if Adam ever were; To hold the flood a local scare; To argue, though the stolid stare, That…

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Ephrem the Syrian

The Return to Eden

With the blade of the sword of the cherub was the path to the Tree of Life shut off, but to the Peoples has the Lord of that Tree given Himself as food. Whereas Eden’s other trees…

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Van Asselt

The Role of Predestination in Theology

In Die protestantische Centraldogmen in ihrer Entwicklung innerhalb der reformierten Kirche (2 vols., 1854–1856), Schweizer defended the thesis that Reformed theology, with its…

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Owen, John

The Seal and the Image

The _nature_ of sealing consists in the imparting of the image or character of the seal to the thing sealed. This is to seal a thing,—to stamp the character of the seal on it. In…

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Watson, Thomas

The Sense of Want Will Quicken Prayer

A beggar that is pinched with want, will be earnest in craving an alms.—Christian, review thy wants; thou wantest an humble spiritual frame of heart; thou wantest the light of…

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Calvin, John

The Spectacles of the Scriptures

Just as old or bleary-eyed men and those with weak vision, if you thrust before them a most beautiful volume, even if they recognize it to be some sort of writing, yet can…

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Flavel, John

The Sweet Felicity of a Resigned Will

Psal. 4:8. “I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep, for the Lord only maketh me to dwell in safety.” He resolves the sinful fears of events shall not rob him of his inward…

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Ambrose, Isaac

The Sweetness of Pronouns

and herein lies the sweetness of faith: in that we believe not Christ only to be a Saviour, and righteousness, but my Saviour and my righteousness; and therefore Luther affirmed,…

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Evagrius of Pontus

The Theologian Prays

If you wish to pray, you have need of God, “who gives prayer to him who prays.” Invoke him, then, saying, “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come”—that is, the Holy Spirit and…

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Anastasius, Monk and Presbyter of Sinai

The Transfiguration as Adam Revived

For today the Lord has truly appeared on the mountain; today the old nature belonging to Adam—once made in the image of God, but dimmed to resemble the shapes of idols—is…

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Flavel, John

The Two Legs of Mortification

Mortification of our sinful affections and passions, is the one half of our sanctification, Rom. 6:11. “Dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God.”

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Melito of Sardis

The Type is Consumed by the Real

When the thing comes about of which the sketch was a type, that which was to be, of which the type bore the likeness, then the type is destroyed, it has become useless, it yields…

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Gregory of Nazianzus

The Unassumed is the Unhealed

The unassumed is the unhealed, but what is united with God is also being saved. Had half of Adam fallen, what was assumed and is being saved would have been half too; but if the…

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Watson, Thomas

The Want of Holy Meditation

But where is the meditating Christian?—Here I might lament the want of holy meditation. Most people live in a hurry; they are so distracted with the cares of the world, that they…

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Calvin, John

The Wonderful Exchange

This is the wonderful exchange which, out of his measureless benevolence, he has made with us; that, becoming Son of man with us, he has made us sons of God with him; that, by his…

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Owen, John

To worship Christ whilst denying his divinity is but idolatry

I. The person of Christ is *the object of divine honour and worship*. The formal object and reason hereof is the divine nature, and its essential infinite excellencies. For they…

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Anastasius, Monk and Presbyter of Sinai

Transfiguration and Type

Just as types were sketched out there that anticipated later realities, so on this mountain truth appears. There we encountered mist, here the sun; there darkness, here a cloud of…

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Berkhof, Louis

True Knowledge of God

It should be remarked, however, that it is only by faith that we accept the revelation of God, and that we obtain a real insight into its contents. Jesus said, “If any man will do…

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Berkhof, Louis

Types of Atheism

Prof. Flint distinguishes three kinds of theoretical atheism, namely, (1) dogmatic atheism, which flatly denies that there is a Divine Being; (2) sceptical atheism, which doubts…

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Watson, Thomas

Watch and Pray

When we have prayed against sin, do we watch against temptation?

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Gregory of Nazianzus

We Do Not Part the Human Being From the Godhead

People are not to deceive, nor are they to be deceived, into accepting a human being without a mind as the, in their language, “Lordly Man,” but to use better language, as “our…

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Personal

What is Good?

Is good something which is apart from God’s will, or rather is something good because it is God’s will? Is God constrained to do good, or rather is his doing good a consequence of…

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Melito of Sardis

What is the Pascha

What is the Pascha? It is called by its name because of what constitutes it: from “suffer” comes “suffering.” Therefore, learn who is the suffering one, and who shares in the…

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Watson, Thomas

Worldliness is the Enemy of Sanctification

the world cools good affections.—The earth puts out the fire. The world’s silver trumpet sounds a retreat, and calls men off from their pursuit after Heaven.—The world hindered…

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Personal

‘Biblicizing’: Community at Qumran kept different versions…

‘Biblicizing’: Community at Qumran kept different versions of books now considered canonical but also an array of other documents which sought to explicate those scrolls and other…

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