Harry Blamires on the Crucial Mark of a Christian Mind

Of all the marks of a Christian mind, its supernatural orientation is the most important for anyone considering the collision between the Christian mind with the secular mind in the modern world. – Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind, 74

God’s Riches In Us – Abraham Kuyper

“God’s elect do not exist without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  We derive all that we are not from ourselves, but from that rich Dweller in our hearts.  we, His poor host, have nothing, and from our own treasury can produce not even a grain of love; but our rich Guest works in us with all His wealth.  Or rather, not with His own, but with the riches of Christ’s cross-merits; and with lavish hands He spends these cross-merits upon the poor owner of the house, making him unspeakably rich.” – Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, 546.

Adam Clarke’s Definition of Prayer

Prayer is the language of dependence; he who prays not is endeavoring to live independently of God; this was the first curse, and continues to be the great curse of mankind. – Adam Clarke (courtesy of Roy Ingle’s blog)

What Sin Is – W. H. Griffith Thomas

There are three circles of life: our relation to self; to our fellows; and to God.  And when this is realised it is at once seen that sin and selfishness are not synonymous.  Selfishness is, of course, one of the consequences and manifestations of sin, but it is not sin itself.  Sin involves far more than this.  The New Testament definition of sin is not selfishness, but “lawlessness.”  Law is as real in the moral world as in the physical, and no definition of sin is adequate that does not regard it as a violation of the law of God, whether of conscience or Scripture. – W. H. Griffith Thomas, The Principles of Theology, 169.

Shedd on Man’s Original Holy Inclination

A creature with no character will never originate a character.  Consequently, the first inclination of the will must be given to the will when the will is made ex nihilo; and since the holy Creator cannot give to his own work a bad inclination, he must give a good one. – W.G.T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, Third Edition, 498.

Thomas Manton on the Temptations of the World

Temptations from the world should the less prevail with us, because it is the whole drift of religion to call us off from the world; so that if we be baptized into the spirit of our religion, we should be quite another temper, not apt to be wrought upon by temptations of this kind…What! a christian (sic)? and so worldly? a christian, and so vain and frothy?  it is a contradiction.  You that are carried out after the pomp and vanities of the world, do you believe in Christ, whose kingdom is not of this world?  False christians are branded: 1 John iv. 5, ‘They are of the world, and speak of the world, and the world heareth them;’ they are engulfed in the world, and they would fain draw others to be as bad as themselves.” – Thomas Manton, Works IV. The Life of Faith,120

The Obduracy of the Natural Man – Bishop Reynolds

In our reflection upon ourselves, whom neither the promises of Heaven can allure, nor the blood and passion of Christ persuade, nor the flames of Hell affright from our sins, till the Lord, by the sweet and gracious power of His Holy Spirit, subdue and conquer the soul unto Himself. – Edward Reynolds, The Exaltation of Christ, 309.

God’s Approbation – Andrew Fuller

If we would hope to succeed in God’s work, our character and undertakings must be such as He approves. – Andrew Fuller, Works, Vol. 1, p.188.

Alexander Maclaren on Jesus and Our Troubles

When, in the tempests that sweep over our own lives, we sometimes pass into a great calm as suddenly as if we had entered the centre of a typhoon, we wonder unbelievingly instead of saying, out of a faith nourished by experience, ‘It is just like Him.’ – Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: Mark, 161

Jesus and Sanctification – Adolf Schlatter

Jesus effects a purification in an ongoing way.  That is how the disciple takes part in what Jesus does and is placed by God in the location where Jesus stands. – Adolf Schlatter, Do We Know Jesus?, 415.