Apologetics

“When a man has taken a leading part in the conflicts of his age, it will often happen that… the feelings with which he was regarded during his life, will cluster around him after his death… Now perhaps there is no one in the whole history of the world, against whom such a host of implacable prejudices and antipathies have been permanently arrayed, as against Luther. For the contest in which he engaged is the most momentous ever waged by a single man… its issue is still pending.” - Charles Hare

19 Sep 2024

“Those who know nothing of (Lutheranism) can here learn everything that is desirable to know, and those who know us well, will be pleased to find the whole matter so conveniently arranged. - from the Introduction”

22 Aug 2024

“It is necessary to assure ourselves of the inheritance we have received from our fathers in the faith. This inheritance must again and again be laid hold of within us, that it may not vanish from our hearts. This inheritance is the faith of our Church, the faith of Luther.” - From chapter 1

14 Aug 2024

“…one grand object [of this book]…is to put the whole system of [the Prophet’s] imposture where it belongs, in the great scheme of the Divine administration of the world. - from the Preface”

26 Mar 2024

“I am not aware of any previous attempt to combine (these) scattered materials in a connected essay… I shall speak of the Slavery of Christians throughout the Barbary States.” - Charles Sumner

19 Feb 2024

“Suffice it to say that faith is faith, and not obedience, or love or delight in God, or any other distinct grace or virtue. Nor does the Bible say being justified by obedience, or love, or delight, or good works, but ‘being justified by faith, we have peace with God.’”

20 Oct 2022

“Why did I leave the ministry when I left the Congregational church? Because, in the first place, my New Theology and Higher Criticism had destroyed my faith in the perfect, divine authority of the Bible; and in the second place, they had destroyed my faith in the perfect deity of Christ. When I had lost these two things I had lost everything… I could preach all the practical side of Christianity, but not the central fundamental truths of Christianity, Christ and his salvation through the cross.

14 Sep 2022

“The peril… lies not in any apparent ability to gain a large number of adherents… but in the fact that where it is received… it undermines belief in the existence of the soul and in eternal retribution for sin. Those who accept even this much of its teachings become persons for whom the Gospel loses all power of appeal; for what appeal can the Gospel make to those who believe that they have no soul and that there is no eternal death from which they need to be saved?” – Joseph Stump

30 Jun 2022

“This weightiest chapter ever penned by Inspiration yields up its lessons best when literally understood, and when explained by the laws of common sense. “The secret of recent assaults upon the Bible is the restiveness of the modern spirit… so eager is the desire for anything new, that even the destruction of all that is precious and venerable is hailed on account of the morbid excitement thereby aroused. …these extremists are so irrational in their hate of the old that they would rather that the edifice of Revelation should be crumbled to the earth, and that the immortal hopes of mankind should be reduced to wreck, than that they should be immutably fixed upon the pillar and ground of the past.” — J. B. Remensnyder

11 May 2022

“Sweet First Fruits is a… story primarily designed to give scope and opportunity for presenting to the Muslim reader the proofs of the Christian faith, the purity and genuineness of our Bible, its attestation by the Koran, and the consequent obligation on Muslims to obey its precepts. The argument is developed, in the dialectic style, between a party of Christian converts and their former companions. The Muslim world has never, since the rise of Islam, had an appeal made to it under more favorable circumstances, nor one more likely to ensure respect, if not force conviction. Differing from all former treatises, it contains not one word offensive to the Muslim, beyond the strength and conclusiveness of the reasoning, which, indeed, is mainly drawn from the Koran itself.”

7 Apr 2022