Westminster Shorter Catechism 98: Q. 98. What is prayer? A. Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God,[200] for things agreeable to his will,[201] in thename of Christ,[202] with confession of our sins,[203] and thankful acknowledgment of hismercies.[204] [201] 1 John 5:14. And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, ...
John Calvin eloquently described creation as the theatrum gloriae dei (spectacle or theater of God’s glory). A few samples of his well-known metaphor from the Institutes are worth noting from the theologian who loved God’s revelation in the book of nature and who loved God’s revelation in the sacred scriptures even more. John Calvin, Institutes ...
Johannes Vanderkamp (1664-1718), The Christian Entirely the Property of Christ, in Life and Death, Exhibited in Fifty-Three Sermons on the Heidelberg Catechism, Vol. 1, Preface, p. xxiii-xxv: Suffer me, my worthy reader, to detain thee yet a little, while I say something to thee concerning our excellent Heidelberg catechism. When, being yet a young man, ...
Thomas Lye, the great Puritan catechist, reviews some of the great catechisms of his day in his Cripplegate sermon, “By What Scriptural Rules May Catechising Be So Managed, As That It May Become Most Universally Profitable?” in Puritan Sermons, 1659-1689, Vol. 2, pp. 121-122: But what are the forms of catechising [which] I would propose? ...
Thomas M’Crie the Younger, The Story of the Scottish Church, pp. 251-252: [David Dickson] was a man of strong nerve and undaunted resolution in the discharge of his duty, of which the following anecdote may serve as an illustration: On one occasion, when riding between Edinburgh and Glasgow, he was attacked by robbers. Instead of ...
The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (James 5.16b) It is reported that Mary, Queen of Scots, confessed that she feared the prayers of John Knox more than an army of ten thousand men. Puritan prayer warrior and catechist Thomas Lye (d. 1684) said in his second ejection sermon preached on August ...
Synod condemns the error of those … VIII Who teach that it was not on the basis of his just will alone that God decided to leave anyone in the fall of Adam and in the common state of sin and condemnation or to pass anyone by in the imparting of grace necessary for faith ...
On March 13, 1836, Charles G. Finney resigned as pastor of the Second Free Presbyterian Church in New York City, and announced his intention to demit the ministry of the Presbyterian Church and to transfer his ordination to the Congregational Church.When asked at his licensure exam in 1823 whether he subscribed to the Westminster Confession ...
It seems easy to fall prey to our culture’s negative attitude towards work. We say that we’re “off to the salt mines,” or we claim to be “working for the weekends.” The Puritans, however, held a very different view. They believed that work should be kept in high esteem. They believed this because they were ...
Assuredly there is but one way in which to achieve what is not merely difficult but utterly against human nature: to love those who hate us, to repay their evil deeds with benefits, to return blessings for reproaches. It is that we remember not to consider men’s evil intention but to look upon the image ...