Great Reformed Quotes

Here are some great quotes I've collected over the years. You will probably notice many of the quotes are admonitions to not compromise. This is such an important issue in Christianity. More damage is done to the community of saints by people claiming to be "Christians" but clearly not, than by those outside of Christianity.

Great Reformed/Calvinist Christian Quotes

1. Let the man who would hear God speak read Holy Scripture --Martin Luther
2. In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends --Martin Luther
3. Peace if possible, truth at all costs --Martin Luther
4. You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say --Martin Luther
5. I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels --John Calvin
6. We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ. We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else --John Calvin
7. I would rather believe a limited atonement that is efficacious for all men for whom it was intended, than a universal atonement that is not efficacious for anybody, except the will of men be added to it. --C.H. Spurgeon
8. The bounden duty of a true believer towards men who profess to be Christians, and yet deny the Word of the Lord, and reject the fundamentals of the Gospel, is to come out from among them --C.H. Spurgeon
9. Complicity with error will take from the best of men the power to enter any successful protest against it. --C.H. Spurgeon
10. At any rate, cost what it may, to separate ourselves from those who separate themselves from the truth of God is not alone our liberty, but our duty. --C.H. Spurgeon
11. For there is some danger of falling into a soft and effeminate Christianity, under the plea of a lofty and ethereal theology. --C.H. Spurgeon
12. The religion of both Old and New Testaments is marked by fervent outspoken testimonies against evil. To speak smooth things in such a case may be sentimentalism, but it is not Christianity. It is a betrayal of the cause of truth and righteousness. --C.H. Spurgeon
13. I know that charity covereth a multitude of sins; but it does not call evil good, because a good man has done it; it does not excuse inconsistencies, because the inconsistent brother has a high name and a fervent spirit; crookedness and worldliness are still crookedness and worldliness, though exhibited in one who seems to have reached no common height of attainment. --C.H. Spurgeon
14. Free will does not enable any man to perform good works, unless he is assisted by grace; indeed, the special grace which the elect alone receive through regeneration. For I stay not to consider the extravagance of those who say that grace is offered equally and promiscuously to all --John Calvin
15. But if the whole man is subject to the dominion of sin, surely the will, which is its principal seat, must be bound with the closest chains. And, indeed, if divine grace were preceded by any will of ours, Paul could not have said that 'it is God which worketh in us both to will and to do,' (Philip. 2: 13.) Away, then, with all the absurd trifling which many have indulged in with regard to preparation. --John Calvin
16. We shall now have a full definition of faith, if we say that it is a firm and sure knowledge of the divine favor toward us, founded on the truth of a free promise in Christ, and revealed to our minds, and sealed on our hearts, by the Holy Spirit --John Calvin
17. By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which He determined with Himself whatever He wished to happen with regard to every man --John Calvin
18. We say, then, that Scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction. We maintain that this counsel, as regards the elect, is founded on his free mercy, without any respect to human worth, while those whom he dooms to destruction are excluded from access to life by a just and blameless, but at the same time incomprehensible judgment --John Calvin
19. It is not the glorious battlements, the painted windows, the crouching gargoyles that support a building, but the stones that lie unseen in or upon the earth. It is often those who are despised and trampled on that bear up the weight of a whole nation --John Owen
20. Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers --John Owen
21. A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent --John Calvin
22. No true Christian is his own man --John Calvin
23. Wherefore all theology, when separated from Christ, is not only vain and confused, but is also mad, deceitful, and spurious; for, though the philosophers sometimes utter excellent sayings, yet they have nothing but what is short-lived, and even mixed up with wicked and erroneous sentiments. --John Calvin
24. Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God --Martin Luther
25. A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing --Martin Luther
26. Riches are the pettiest and least worthy gifts which God can give a man. What are they to God's Word, to bodily gifts, such as beauty and health; or to the gifts of the mind, such as understanding, skill, and wisdom! Yet men toil for them day and night, and take no rest. Therefore God commonly gives riches to foolish people to whom he gives nothing else --Martin Luther
27. Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason -- I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other -- my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen --Martin Luther
28. Anything that one imagines of God apart from Christ is only useless thinking and vain idolatry --Martin Luther
29. It is the most ungodly and dangerous business to abandon the certain and revealed will of God in order to search into the hidden mysteries of God --Martin Luther
30. If any man ascribes anything of salvation, even the very least thing, to the free will of man, he knows nothing of grace, and he has not learned Jesus Christ rightly --Martin Luther
31. There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage --Martin Luther
32. If you are not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don't want to go there --Martin Luther
33. They who truly come to God for mercy, come as beggars, and not as creditors: they come for mere mercy, for sovereign grace, and not for anything that is due --Jonathan Edwards
34. Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause, and to enable you to dispute with others; but seek it for the benefit of your souls, and in order to practice --Jonathan Edwards
35. Any sin is more or less heinous depending upon the honor and majesty of the one whom we had offended. Since God is of infinite honor, infinite majesty, and infinite holiness, the slightest sin is of infinite consequence. The slightest sin is nothing less than cosmic treason when we realize against whom we have sinned --Jonathan Edwards
36. A church has no right to make anything a condition of membership which Christ has not made a condition of salvation --AA Hodge
37. No one truth is rightly held till it is clearly conceived and stated, and no single truth is adequately comprehended till it is viewed in harmonious relations to all the other truths of the system of which Christ is the centre --AA Hodge
38. No more soul-destroying doctrine could well be devised than the doctrine that sinners can regenerate themselves, and repent and believe just when they please --Charles Hodge
39. The doctrines of grace humble a man without degrading him and exalt a man without inflating him --Charles Hodge
40. Original sin is the only rational solution of the undeniable fact of the deep, universal and early manifested sinfulness of men in all ages, of every class, and in every part of the world --Charles Hodge
41. Rome makes the church ultimate, the Anabaptists make the conscience ultimate and the Reformers made the Word of God ultimate --Greg Price
42. It holds almost universally in the history of the church, that until a doctrine has been fully discussed in a controversial way by men of talent and learning taking opposite sides, men's opinions regarding it are generally obscure and indefinite, and their language vague and confused, if not contradictory --William Cunningham
43. Where the God-centered principles of Calvinism have been abandoned, there has been a strong tendency downward into the depths of man-centered naturalism or secularism. Some have declared, rightly, we believe, that there is no consistent stopping place between Calvinism and atheism --Ken Talbot
44. If the Scripture has more than one meaning it has no meaning at all --John Owen
45. God works to over throw the ungodly, and increasingly the world will come under the dominion of Christians, not by military aggression, but by godly labor, saving, in vestment, and orientation toward the future... This is where history is going. The future belongs to the people of God, who obey His laws --David Chilton
46. The modern [endtimes] notion has greatly damped the zeal of the church for missions, and the sooner it is shown to be unscriptural the better for the cause of God. It neither consorts with prophecy, honours God, nor inspires the church with ardour --Charles Spurgeon
47. If an abridged gospel is presented, in which all is bright & beautiful, then the respect for God's Word diminishes automatically. Insight into the consequences of the Word concerning the broader matters of state, church & society, suffers as a result --Cornelius Van der Waal
48. The Kingdom must be advanced not merely extensively, but also intensively. The Church must seek to conquer not merely every man for Christ, but also the whole of man --Greg Bahnsen
49. Modern culture is a mighty force. It is either subservient to the gospel or else it is the deadliest enemy of the gospel --Gresham Machen
50. [It is] essentially wholesome and necessary, for a Christian to know, whether or not the will does any thing in those things which pertain unto Salvation. Nay, let me tell you, this is the very hinge upon which our discussion turns. It is the very heart of the subject --Martin Luther
51. There can be no tolerance in a law-system for another religion. Toleration is a device used to introduce a new law-system as a prelude to a new intolerance... Every law-system must maintain its existence by hostility to every other law-system and to alien religious foundations or else it commits suicide --RJ Rushdoony
52. The unhistorical are usually without thinking about it, enslaved to a fairly recent past --CS Lewis
53. The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men --Westminster Confession
54. Unless we learn the unwelcome art of repressing the forward, and rejecting the unworthy - as well as the more pleasing task of encouraging the modest and the timid; we shall, in the midst of all our honest zeal for the cause of Christ, be in danger of filling the Church with drones and pests, with clerical ignorance, imbecility, heresy, and carnal ambition, while we fondly dream that we are preparing faithful laborer for her service --Samuel Miller
55. The English word 'creed' is derived from the Latin 'credo', which simply means 'I believe...' ...Anyone who thinks of God in a particular way has a 'encreeded' a view of God, whether or not this 'creed' is put in writing --Kenneth Gentry
56. Our Lord never called His people to help build the tower of Babel in the hope of getting a Bible study in the basement. He commanded us to build our own city on a hill. --David Chilton
57. The Holy Spirit is no Skeptic, & the things He has written in our hearts are not doubts or opinions, but assertions -- surer & more certain than sense & life itself. --Martin Luther
58. When a certain shameless fellow mockingly asked a pious old man what God had done before the creation of the world the latter aptly countered that he had been building hell for the curious. --John Calvin
59. There is no erratic power or action or motion in creatures but they are governed by God's secret plan in such a way that nothing happens except what is knowingly and willingly decreed by Him. --John Calvin
60. So great and boundless is God's wisdom that he knows right well how to use evil instruments to do good. --John Calvin


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