July 15, 2008

"(Charles) Simeon's main goal in all his preaching was to emphasize what God wanted emphasized, and he did this by putting the stress on what Scripture stresses. Everytime he went to Scripture, his goal was to see what the author of that book was particularly insisting on, and then to insist on that in his exposition of it. Simeon's own words for this: 'I love the simplicity of the scriptures . . . I wish to receive and inculcate every truth precisely in the way and to the extent that it is set forth in the inspired volume . . . My endeavor is to bring out of Scripture what is there, and not to thrust in what I think might be there. I have a great jealousy on this head; never to speak more or less than I believe to be the mind of the Spirit in the passage I am expounding.' "
- quoting Charles Simeon, Fred Sanders "Oscillating, Not Vacillating: Simeon at Both Extremes"

May 5th, 2007

"If such men as having liberty to read and exercise themselves in God's holy Scriptures, and yet begin to get weary, because from time to time they read but one thing, I ask, why weary they not also every day to eat bread? Every day to drink wine? Every day to behold the brightness of the sun?"
- John Knox, quoted by Jasper Ridley in "John Knox" (p 238)

"Knox took his ideas of Church organization and moral discipline from Calvin, but differed from him completely on the question of resistance to authority."
- Jasper Ridley "John Knox" (p 255)