Two Quotes from Oliver Hart

Two quotes from Oliver Hart (1723–95), the first Baptist theologian of the South, that deeply resonate with me:

 “Grant, O Lord!... [w]hen I go to thy house to speak for thee, may I always go full fraught with things divine, and be enabled faithfully and feelingly to dispense the word of life.... Teach me to study thy glory in all I do.” (Oliver Hart, Diary, entry for August 5, 1754)

“If I had not been willing to endure the scoff of the world, I should never have made an open profession of the religion of Jesus; much less should I have become a preacher of his much-despised gospel.” (Oliver Hart, Dancing Exploded [1778])

A Needed Balance

“Let us cultivate the most cordial esteem for all that love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. …but let us aim, at the same time, to acquire and retain the most accurate conceptions of religious truth.” Who said this? None other than Robert Hall, Jr., who is sometimes seen as lax in the second of these two admonitions. I am so glad that Pastor Cody McNutt has done a PhD thesis on Hall at Southern, hopefully a progenitor of an intellectual biography of a man who was the first Baptist celebrity of the 19th century (that is, before Spurgeon). He defends it in a few weeks.

For the source of the above quote, see Hall’s “Introductory Preface to the Third London Edition” of his father’s Help to Zion’s Travellers (Boston: Lincoln, Edmands and Co., 1833), xv.

Petrarch on time and multi-tasking

"The riches of time are the most uncertain, the most fleeting, of all possessions" (Letters on Familiar Matters 17.12). Petrarch knew this most keenly. As he once told Francesco Nelli, while he was being "shaved or having my hair cut I commonly read or write or listen to a reader or dictate to a scribe" (Letters on Familiar Matters 21.12). He would have loved the devices we have today to multitask!

Eberhard Bethge on Remembering the past

These words of Eberhard Bethge, the biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, are an important reminder of the need to remember the past: “Commemoration renders life human; forgetfulness makes it inhuman. …even when remembrance carries grief and shame, it fills the future with perspectives. And the denial of the past furthers the affairs of death, precisely because it focuses exclusively on the present."[1]

[1] Friendship and Resistance. Essays on Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Geneva: WCC Publications/Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1995), 105.

John Gill & Jonathan Edwards

“To see Him, the King, in his beauty, is a ravishing sight, and which fills [the soul] with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Sounds like Jonathan Edwards, right? Or another one of the divines from his affective stream of piety? No. It is from the much-maligned John Gill (d.1771). See his Body of Divinity, p.777.

There is much more in Gill than dry-as-dust theology—there is life and power and joy in Christ. While I do not deny there are some theological problems with his Calvinism, at its heart it was drawn from the same well as Edwards’.

Someone needs to compare the theology of Edwards and Gill. I am amazed that no one ever has.

C.S. Lewis on Friendship

Found this great quote on friendship from C.S. Lewis on the blog of Jayme Thompson: “Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say, “Sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.” I know I am very fortunate in that respect.” [The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (29 December 1935)].

Poem by John Donne–A Posting Borrowed from Bruce Keisling

I have always loved the poetry of John Donne. I recently found this poem that I do not recall ever reading. It was posted by Bruce Keisling, Librarian of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on the website/blog of Third Avenue Baptist Church, Louisville (http://www.thirdavenue.org/), a church I deeply love and admire.

XV Wilt thou love God, as he thee? Then digest, My soul, this wholesome meditation, How God the Spirit, by angels waited on In heaven, doth make his Temple in thy breast. The Father having begot a Son most blest, And still begetting, (for he ne’er be gone) Hath deigned to choose thee by adoption, Co-heir t’ his glory, and Sabbath’ endless rest. And as a robbed man, which by search doth find His stol’n stuff sold, must lose or buy’t again: The Son of glory came down, and was slain, Us whom he’d made, and Satan stol’n, to unbind. ’Twas much that man was made like God before, But, that God should be made like man, much more.

Thomas Chalmers on the Imputed Righteousness of Christ

The doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ is being challenged today by some Evangelicals. They are far are not only from Scriptural truth but also our Evangelical heritage rooted in that truth. Here is Thomas Chalmers, from his introduction to Abraham Booth’s The Reign of Grace from its Rise to its Consummation (1768):

“Had we fulfilled the law of God, heaven would have been ours, and it would have been given to us because of our righteousness. We have broken that law, and yet heaven may be ours, not because of our righteousness, but still because of a righteousness; and the honor of God is deeply involved in the question, What and whose righteousness this is? It is not the righteousness of man, but the righteousness of Christ reckoned unto man. The whole distinction between a covenant that is now exploded, and the covenant that is now in force, hinges upon this alternative. If we make a confidence of the former plea, we shall perish; and if of the latter, we shall have everlasting life.

“The merit of His well-beloved Son is to Him the incense of a sweet-smelling savor, so that the guiltiest creature who takes shelter there, has posted himself on the very avenue, along which there ever rolls the tide of divine complacency. We should invest ourselves then with this merit, and wrap ourselves firmly in it, as in a covering. We should put on Christ, who is offered to us without money and without price. We should present ourselves before God, with His invitation as our alone warrant, and the truth of His promises, which are yea and amen in Christ Jesus, as our alone confidence. His place in the new covenant is to declare our forgiveness, through the blood of a satisfying atonement. Our place in the covenant, is to give credit to that declaration.”

Reader: is what is delineated in the second paragraph a reality in your life?

A Gem from Oliver Hart

A gem from the 18th century Baptist minister Oliver Hart (1723-1795), who pastored First Baptist Church, Charleston, from 1750 to 1780: “I apprehend the spirituality of worship…consists in communion with God, through Christ, by the operations of the Holy Ghost. I am sensible there are many who discard the doctrine of divine influences, as enthusiastical [i.e. fanatical]; but I look upon it as the quintessence of religion, without which there can be no spiritual, acceptable worship at all.”

[A Gospel Church portrayed and her Costly Service pointed out (Trenton, 1791), 37-38].

Thomas Chalmers Quotes

Here are three great quotes from Thomas Chalmers, whose life was recently remembered by Darrin Brooker.

  • “My God, spiritualise my affection! Give me to know what it is to have the intense and passionate love of Christ.”
  • “We do not steady a ship by fixing the anchor on aught that is within the vessel. The anchorage must be without. And so of the soul, when resting, not on what it sees in itself, but on what it sees in the character of God, the certainty of His truth, the impossibility of His falsehood.”
  • “Only three things are truly necessary in order to make life happy: the blessing of God, the benefit of books, and the benevolence of friends.”

The second one applies to my penultimate post on Holland. The third could well form the three headings of a talk. I would love to see what a Spurgeon would have done with three such headings!

HT: Darrin Brooker: Thomas Chalmers ; Ian Clary: Thomas Chalmers.

Two Thomas Manton Gems

My friend Crawford Gribben, at his blog Anablepo , has drawn attention to a series of sayings of Thomas Manton (1620-1677) in a one-page broadsheet, Words of Peace, or Dr Mantons Last Sayings (London, 1677). Here are two excellent ones—the first one applies to some Christian bloggers I have occasionally read! And the second, well the second has a large application in our day, when, like the Athenians, so many love to entertain only the latest novelty:

  • 32. Some men love to live in the fire, and be always handling the red hot questions of the Age with passion and Acrimony: but alas! this doth no good.
  • 9. When a people begin to Innovate, ‘tis an hard matter to keep them within the bounds of any Moderation.

For other sayings from the list, see the blog of Ian Clary: Anablepo - Gems from Thomas Manton.

More Lloyd-Jones

And here is another—this one is really a gem: “The best preparation for prayer, I often feel, is the reading of history.” [“True and false religion” in his Unity and Truth, ed. Hywel R. Jones (Darlington, Co. Durham: Evangelical Press, 1991), 161].

Another Saying by Lloyd-Jones

Yet another from the Doctor: “Puritanism was not primarily a preference for one form of church government rather than another; but it was that outlook and teaching which put its emphasis upon a life of spiritual, personal religion, an intense realization of the presence of God, a devotion of the entire being to Him.” [From Puritanism to Nonconformity (2nd ed.; Bryntirion, Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan: Evangelical Press of Wales/London: The Evangelical Library, 1991), 11].

A Pithy Lloyd-Jones Remark

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, like his beloved Puritans, was a master of pithy statements. Students of history, ponder this one: “What is needed today is for us to forget the nineteenth century completely and make a detailed study of the beginning of the eighteenth century” [“Religion Today and Tomorrow” in his Knowing the Times (Banner of Truth, 1989), 30].

There is a lot of wisdom in that remark.

Quoting E F Schumacher

Great quote from the economist E. F. Schumacher (1911-1977), whose book Small is Beautiful (1973) is reckoned to be among the 100 most influential books published since World War II. While I would not agree with all of Schumacher’s thought, the following is very apropos and intriguing from a Christian standpoint: “The essence of civilization is not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character.”

[Cited Rod Dreher, “Mr and Mrs Crunchy”, The Sunday Times (January 1, 2006) (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1964887_1,00.html )].