“The question of law is another area where the Puritans are greatly misunderstood. The modern mind has a vision of Massachusetts Bay as haven for wannabe ayatollahs and manufacturers of scarlet letters” (Beyond Stateliest Marble, p. 29).
Plain Speaking
“What Paul means is plainly that Christ sent him to change human hearts through the preaching of the gospel, not to impress them with his literary eloquence” (Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures, p. 191).
When Gratitude Should Kill Envy
I don’t really know what is more out of kilter — nonbelievers looking at this kind of thing without enormous gratitude to God, or soft leftist believers refusing to look at this kind of thing because it throws a spanner into their politics of envy. We should remember that Jesus Himself said that gaining the …
As If By Magic
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) The Basket Case Chronicles #20 “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritual discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). According the apostle, there are two …
Like Jesse James Robbing a Train
“And, of course, New England also had her head cases, and some of them made their mark on posterity. One man, a pastor, was called ‘Handkerchief Moody.’ He thought he had sinned greatly and would not appear in public without a handkerchief over his face. He would preach with his his back to the congregation, …
Not Sent to Dazzle
“The cultivated rhetoric of Hellenistic society was notorious for grabbing center stage, as it were, and losing sight of the primary concern of the message. That this should not happen in Christian preaching was Paul’s main concern in the opening chapters of the first epistle to the Corinthians. In fact, the greatest of Christian preachers, …
Pretty Much Says It All
HT: Steven Wedgeworth
When God Settles Our Hash
There are many reasons for my behavior on this theme of mere Christedom, but one of them is that the concept provides the only real antidote to American exceptionalism on the one hand and radical Islam on the other. When it comes to American exceptionalism, a couple recent examples are here and here. We are …
Come Round the Age of Gold
For the interested, I participated in a short feature about Christmas carols over at CT, which you can find here.
Winsome Puritanism
“Misunderstanding the Puritans is a popular indoor sport for many amateur historians and not a few professionals . . . Anne Bradstreet was a representative figure, but she is frequently presented as a Puritan anomaly. She had such a winsome personality, and, since everyone knows that the Puritans were cranks, she is treated as something …