The Calvinist is counter-cultural in the modern world. There is much to discuss. There is much to ignore. When matters relate to music, the arts and worship, they come very close to home for composer Abigail J. Fox. These are her occasional essays, not to court controversy but to take a stand.
Boasting is for ever excluded, because all is of grace. Wisdom is to teach the sinner saving knowledge, righteousness to justify him, strength to keep him, comforts to bless him, heaven to receive him, these are the free gifts of covenant love.
~ William Romaine
Humility ... is less an act than a disposition of mind. It is not so much a single performance of some detached humble deed, as an incessant watchfulness against every propensity to pride.
~ Hannah More
Look to no motive to do good to men below the glory of God. And remember, thy doing it may be the means of His visiting them, as He visited thee, with His great salvation. O blessed fruit of brotherly love! may it be the happy effect of thy light shining before men.
~ William Romaine
God looks down with an eye of favour upon those who sincerely look up to him with an eye of faith.
~ Matthew Henry
Men and women are fearfully and wonderfully made. We are not made up merely of brains, and head, and intellect and reason. We are frail, dying creatures, who have got hearts, and feelings, and consciences; and we live in a world of sorrow, and disappointment, and sickness, and death. And what can help us in a world like this? ... None but He who said, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11.28). None but He who has thrown light on the grave, and the world beyond it, and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel ...
~ J. C. Ryle
One error into which even some good people are apt to fall, is that endeavouring to deceive young minds by temporising expedients. In order to allure them to be become religious, they exhibit false, or fait, or inadequate views of Christianity; and while they represent it as it really is, as a life of superior happiness and advantage, they conceal its difficulties, and like the Jesuitical Chinese missionaries, extenuate, or sink, or deny, such parts of it as are least alluring to human pride. In attempting to disguise its principles, they destroy its efficacy. They deny the cross instead of making it the badge of a Christian.
~ Hannah More
Nature is content with a little and that which is most natural, grace with less, but lust with nothing.
~ Matthew Henry
I would walk close with Him in His way, not to buy His love, it is inestimable; not to merit it, free grace and merit cannot stand together; not that I may deserve it for my walk, but may freely receive it of Him in my walk; not that He may give it me for walking with Him, but that in walking with Him, I may enjoy what He has already given me. His love is a free gift. I would be faith enjoy it in time, as I hope by sense to enjoy it in eternity.
~ William Romaine
The life of faith is called the fight of faith (1 Tim. 6.12); and truly called so. For, where divine faith is given, it is seldom exercised without a conflict in the heart, which loves an earthly refuge, and dreads a ‘naked’ promise; dearly loves a human prop and always seeks some wooden buttress to support God’s iron pillar. On this account, men dare not trust to Christ’s atonement alone for their peace, but clap their feeble shoulder to his cross, to strengthen it ...
~ John Berridge
