"God has such ascendancy over his creatures that he can dispose of them at his pleasure." Calvin

"Mystery as God’s inscrutable way of doing business. Mystery as the way he steers the bicycle of history with his hands in his pockets. Nobody is shoved, nothing is jimmied; nothing need ever be anything but true to itself. He never even touches the handlebars! Pilate is Pilate, and Caiaphas is Caiaphas; Peter is Peter, and John is John; the soldiers are soldiers, and the women are themselves; the nails are iron, and the cross is wood. All in their own natures, all acting for themselves: the creatures of a God powerful enough not to have to use inside mystiques or outside clubs; of a God who can afford anything; of a God who can do nothing but hang there and still ride history home no-hands." (Robert Capon)

"Let us understand that if it is God's good pleasure to take from us the possessions He has bestowed upon us, we must be ready from one day to the next to be deprived of them. Let us not think it evil to lose in a moment everything we have been able to acquire throughout our lives. Job leads us beyond thinking such loss is evil when He says, 'God gave and He has taken away. But blessed be the name of the Lord.' ” Calvin

"When we feel some evil desire within us, some of us influenced by a wicked lust, others by something else, and others even by something else, let us be aware that it is the enemy who is working slyly in us." Calvin

"So when we see God, relax the bridle on the wicked, what will we say? There is only one remedy: namely, that those who bear the rod of justice constrain those who trouble the good. But we see to the contrary that they are so bound by self-interest that they allow things to continue as they are. What can we say but that the magistrates who ought to grant everybody his right allow the wicked to do the worst they can? They give us no relief, and when we expect them to do their duty they do nothing. They are like useless idols." (John Calvin)

“There is no one who does not find himself guilty when his life is examined before God” John Calvin

"throw off the notion that weighty books of doctrine are joy-squelching, while light devotional books are joy-producing." piper

"Christianity meets the mythological search for romance by being a story, and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story. That is why the ideal figure had to be a historical character, as nobody had ever felt Adonis or Pan to be a historical character. But that is also why the historical character had to be the ideal figure and even fulfill many of the functions given to these other ideal figures; why he was at once the sacrifice and the feast, why he could be shown under the emblems of the growing vine or the rising sun." Chesterton

“There but for the grace of God go, I.” So said the English reformer John Bradford, apparently, when he saw prisoners being taken for execution. Death, he knew, was what his sin deserved. He would in the end be executed himself, though not for any sin. In 1555 he was burned to death at Smithfield, London, as part of “Bloody” Queen Mary's campaign against the evangelicals. Tied to the stake he turned to his fellow martyr, John Leaf, and said, "Be of good comfort brother, for we shall have a merry supper with the Lord this night."