Quote of the Day

Christians, bewail lost conscience, and let it be recovered. [Richard Alleine]

Quote of the day

"It’s far easier to fight for principles, than to live up to them" [Stephenson]

An important distinction

The consuming purpose of the vatican is to convert the entire world not to Christianity, but to Roman Catholicism. [Loraine Boettner]

Theodore Beza on the "Paper popes" of Reformed Theology

I wrote a few blog posts ago, On the Paper Popes of Reformed Theology, about how folks are mistaken when they say as Reformed Christians we follow tradition exactly the same as the papists do.  This is what Theodore Beza said in his biography of the life of John Calvin:

 Let men, therefore, (both those who believe through ignorance, and those who so speak from malice,) cry out, that Luther, Zuinglius, and Calvin, are regarded by us as gods, though we are continually charging the worshippers of saints with idolatry; let them, I say, cry out as much and as long as they please, — we are prepared with our answer, viz., that to commemorate the labors which holy men have undertaken in behalf of religion, together with their words and actions, (through the knowledge of which the good become better, while the wicked are reproved, our only aim in this kind of composition,) is a very different thing from doing as they do, when they either bring disgrace on the lives of men who were truly pious, by narratives not less impious than childish, (as an obscure individual called Abdias did with the history of the Apostles,) or compose fabulous histories filled with the vilest falsehoods, (they, in their barbarous jargon, call them Golden Legends, I call them abominable trash,) and endeavor, moreover, to bring back the idols of the ancient Gods, the only difference being a change of name. We are as far from these worshippers of the dead as light is from darkness. Against conduct such as theirs, the Lord denounces the severest threatenings, ours, on the contrary, he commends, when he bids us keep both our bodily and mental eye intent upon his works. Nobody, I presume, will deny, that of all the works of God, men best deserve to be known and observed, and of men, those of them who have been distinguished at once for learning and piety. It is not without cause Daniel (Daniel 12:3) compares holy men of God to stars, since they by their brightness show the way of happiness to others. Those who allow that brightness to be entirely extinguished by death, deserve to be themselves plunged in thicker darkness than before. I have no intention, however, to imitate those who, in their eagerness for declamation and panegyric, have not so much adorned the truth as brought it into suspicion.

Theodore Beza on the "Paper popes" of Reformed Theology

I wrote a few blog posts ago, On the Paper Popes of Reformed Theology, about how folks are mistaken when they say as Reformed Christians we follow tradition exactly the same as the papists do.  This is what Theodore Beza said in his biography of the life of John Calvin:

 Let men, therefore, (both those who believe through ignorance, and those who so speak from malice,) cry out, that Luther, Zuinglius, and Calvin, are regarded by us as gods, though we are continually charging the worshippers of saints with idolatry; let them, I say, cry out as much and as long as they please, — we are prepared with our answer, viz., that to commemorate the labors which holy men have undertaken in behalf of religion, together with their words and actions, (through the knowledge of which the good become better, while the wicked are reproved, our only aim in this kind of composition,) is a very different thing from doing as they do, when they either bring disgrace on the lives of men who were truly pious, by narratives not less impious than childish, (as an obscure individual called Abdias did with the history of the Apostles,) or compose fabulous histories filled with the vilest falsehoods, (they, in their barbarous jargon, call them Golden Legends, I call them abominable trash,) and endeavor, moreover, to bring back the idols of the ancient Gods, the only difference being a change of name. We are as far from these worshippers of the dead as light is from darkness. Against conduct such as theirs, the Lord denounces the severest threatenings, ours, on the contrary, he commends, when he bids us keep both our bodily and mental eye intent upon his works. Nobody, I presume, will deny, that of all the works of God, men best deserve to be known and observed, and of men, those of them who have been distinguished at once for learning and piety. It is not without cause Daniel (Daniel 12:3) compares holy men of God to stars, since they by their brightness show the way of happiness to others. Those who allow that brightness to be entirely extinguished by death, deserve to be themselves plunged in thicker darkness than before. I have no intention, however, to imitate those who, in their eagerness for declamation and panegyric, have not so much adorned the truth as brought it into suspicion.

Quote of the Day

Give me a stout heart to bear my own burdens. Give me a willing heart to bear the burdens of others. Give me a believing heart to cast all burdens upon Thee, O Lord. … John Baillie (1886-1960)

John Brown's body lies a moulding in the grave

  The epitaph on John Brown, Covenanter’s grave:  Compromise seems to be the thing the puritans and Covenanters never knew how to do by the overwhelming majority, yet we today would compromise to save ourselves the least inconvenience.

Here lies the body of JOHN BROWN martyr who was murdered in this place by GRAHAM of Claverhouse for his testimony to the Covenanted work of Reformation Because he durst not own the authority of the then Tyrant destroying the Same, who died the first day of May A D 1685 and of his age 58.

In deaths cold bed the dusty part here lies

Of one who did the earth as dust despise

Here in this place from earth he took departure

Now he has got the garland of the martyr

Butchered by Claverse and his bloody band

Raging most ravenously over all the land

Only for owning Christ’s supremacy

Wickedly wronged by encroaching Tyrrany

Nothing how near soever he to good

Esteemed, nor dear any truth his blood.

(Note that it’s necessary to read the ‘I’ as a ‘J’ to get the acrostic poem)

John Brown's body lies a moulding in the grave

  The epitaph on John Brown, Covenanter’s grave:  Compromise seems to be the thing the puritans and Covenanters never knew how to do by the overwhelming majority, yet we today would compromise to save ourselves the least inconvenience.

Here lies the body of JOHN BROWN martyr who was murdered in this place by GRAHAM of Claverhouse for his testimony to the Covenanted work of Reformation Because he durst not own the authority of the then Tyrant destroying the Same, who died the first day of May A D 1685 and of his age 58.

In deaths cold bed the dusty part here lies

Of one who did the earth as dust despise

Here in this place from earth he took departure

Now he has got the garland of the martyr

Butchered by Claverse and his bloody band

Raging most ravenously over all the land

Only for owning Christ’s supremacy

Wickedly wronged by encroaching Tyrrany

Nothing how near soever he to good

Esteemed, nor dear any truth his blood.

(Note that it’s necessary to read the ‘I’ as a ‘J’ to get the acrostic poem)

John Brown's body lies a moulding in the grave

  The epitaph on John Brown, Covenanter’s grave:  Compromise seems to be the thing the puritans and Covenanters never knew how to do by the overwhelming majority, yet we today would compromise to save ourselves the least inconvenience.

Here lies the body of JOHN BROWN martyr who was murdered in this place by GRAHAM of Claverhouse for his testimony to the Covenanted work of Reformation Because he durst not own the authority of the then Tyrant destroying the Same, who died the first day of May A D 1685 and of his age 58.

In deaths cold bed the dusty part here lies

Of one who did the earth as dust despise

Here in this place from earth he took departure

Now he has got the garland of the martyr

Butchered by Claverse and his bloody band

Raging most ravenously over all the land

Only for owning Christ’s supremacy

Wickedly wronged by encroaching Tyrrany

Nothing how near soever he to good

Esteemed, nor dear any truth his blood.

(Note that it’s necessary to read the ‘I’ as a ‘J’ to get the acrostic poem)

Quote of the Day

How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite. [Voltaire ]

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