We have been considering the presence of our children together here with us at this Table. We have noted that nothing is required of them except the capacity to receive, the capacity to be shaped and taught. We have seen from Scripture that all who are bread get bread. All who are the covenant get …
By the Root
James tells us the source of quarreling and wars. He says, authoritatively, that people fight and quarrel because of their covetousness. Covetousness, in its turn, a violation of the tenth commandment, is the opposite of contentment. When you are weeding in a garden, it is not enough to simply clip the weed so that it …
The Greatest Wedding Song in the World . . . and by a Puritan
[Speaking of Edmund Spenser] “The point is that in those particular sonnets which all agree were addressed to Elizabeth Boyle, and supremely in his Epithalamion, the greatest wedding song in the world, he sings with the same full-throated ease, the same happy assurance that we hear in the contemporary and mature Hymn of Heavenly Love …
But What About the Crusades?
“The major difference is this: Crusader atrocities contradicted the New Testament whereas Muslim atrocities were in accord with the Koran” (Richardson, Secrets of the Koran, p. 158).
Unworthy of a Weed
“But in substance what I said about the dandelion is exactly what I should say about the sunflower or the sun, or the glory which (as the poet said) is brighter than the sun. The only way to enjoy even a weed is to feel unworthy even of a weed” (G.K. Chesterton as quoted in …
Evangelical Devolution
“Whatever disagreements existed among believing Christians in the era after the Second World War, evangelicals at that time were clearly doctrinal vertebrates of some description. But in recent decades, we have added more than a little money to the movement, some academic respectability, a lust for influence, and the result is the widespread existence of …
Westminster XXXI: Of Synods and Councils
1. For the better government, and further edification of the Church, there ought to be such assemblies as are commonly called Synods or Councils (Acts 15:2, 4, 6). The church has an authoritative presence beyond the local assembly. In this chapter of the Confession we come to the doctrine which separates presbyterianism from the independency …
Original Puritanism
[Elizabeth I] “released their creative power. She was a Queen, not a King, and all that was left of medieval chivalry idealized her into an incarnation of England, a militant heroine inseparable in imagination from the brave, young new nation who was saving herself from those proud old foes, the Papacy, Spain, and France, that …
Lining Up with the Premises
“By the same token, what is called Islam but is not Koran-based is pseudo-Islam. Hence violent Christianity is pseudo-Christianity, but oppositely—due to the violent nature of the Koran—moderate Islam is pseudo-Islam” (Richardson, Secrets of the Koran, p. 138).
Now You’re Talking
“I wish we did not have to fritter away on frivolous things, like lectures and literature, the time we might have given to serious, solid and constructive work like cutting out cardboard figures and pasting coloured tinsel upon them” (G.K. Chesterton as quoted in Thomas Peters, The Christian Imagination, p. 10).