Commonplaces: June/July 2023

[On John VII 37, “Let him come to Me and drink”] “Nor let him go to the heathen philosophy, which does but beguile men, lead them into a wood, and leave them there; but let him go to Christ, admit his doctrine, submit to his discipline, believe in him; come to him as the fountain of living waters, the giver of all comfort.”—Matthew Henry, Commentaries

“Wherever a new generation takes up the attack against the resisting forces of evil or against a tense obsession with a security which clings to the delusion that the disharmony of the world is fundamentally curable by cautious and correct “tactics,” it is above all necessary to maintain a lively and vigilant awareness that such fighting can only reach beyond sound and fury if it draws its strongest forces from the fortitude of the spiritual life, which dares to submit unconditionally to the governance of God. Without a consciously preserved connection with these reserves of strength, all struggle for the good must lose its genuineness and the inner conviction of victory, and in the end can lead only to the noisy sterility of spiritual pride.”—Joseph Peiper, The Four Cardinal Virtues

“Weak people are those who know the truth, but who maintain it only as far as it is in their interest to do so. Beyond that, they abandon it.”—Pascal, Pensees

“Indeed, contemporary debunking of the author and the author's explicit intentions has proceeded at such a pace that it seems at times as if literary criticism has become a jolly game of ripping out an author's shirt-tail and setting fire to it.”—D. Stienmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis” Theology Today"

“Jesus says, ‘Take freely.’ He wants no payment or preparation. He seeks no recommendation from our virtuous emotions.”—Spurgeon, Morning and Evening M. June 13

“We dread fostering men’s favorite notion that a little church-going and sacrament-receiving—a little patching, and mending, and whitewashing, and gilding, and polishing, and varnishing, and painting the outside—is all that his case requires. Hence we protest with all our heart against formalism, sacramentalism, and every species of mere external or vicarious Christianity.”—J.C. Ryle, Knots Untied

“There are times when there is a mine of deep meaning in our Lord’s words, ‘He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” To such times we have come.”—Ryle, Knots Untied

“There are only two sorts of people who can truly be called reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart, because they do not yet know Him.”—Pascal, Pensees

“Armis munimenta, non munimentis arma tuta esse debent.”—Livy, IX.xxiii

“Ferte signa in hostem!”—Livy, IX.xxiii

“Friendships that are acquired at a price and not with greatness and nobility of spirit are bought, but they are not owned; and when the time comes they cannot be spent.”—Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince