Opinions offensive are of two sorts: some savoring of impiety, and some of incivility. Against the first, Christ Jesus never called for the sword of steel to help the sword of the spirit, that two-edged sword that comes out of the mouth of the Lord Jesus... The second sort, to wit, opinions of incivility, doubtless the opinions as well as practices are the proper object of the civil sword...
Roger Williams (theologian)Related topics
christ comes help impiety lord mouth proper savoring second sort spirit steel sword well witRelated quotes
The Natives of the Country now Possessed by the New-Englanders, had been forlorn and wretched Heathen ever since their first herding there; and tho' we know not When or How those Indians first became Inhabitants of this mighty Continent, yet we may guess that probably the Devil decoy'd those miserable Salvages hither, in hopes that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ would never come here to destroy or disturb his Absolute Empire over them.
Cotton Mather
But the church cries: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Without this belief there is no salvation. Salvation is the reward for belief. Belief is, and forever must be, the result of evidence. A promised reward is not evidence. It sheds no intellectual light. It establishes no fact, answers no objection, and dissipates no doubt. Is it honest to offer a reward for belief?
Robert G. Ingersoll
After this I fell into a graveness, and said: I see three things: I see game, scorn, and earnest. I see game, in that the Fiend is overcome; I see scorn, in that God scorneth him, and he shall be scorned; and I see earnest, in that he is overcome by the blissful Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ that was done in full earnest and with sober travail.
Julian of Norwich
The religious principle of Jesus was thus certainly freed by Paul from its original Jewish and national husk, but only to be immediately clothed again in a new supernaturalistic envelope, the origin of which likewise lay in the historically given ideas of Hellenism and Pharisaism. Therefore the Pauline Christ can just as little be for us a binding object of faith as the Jesus of history.
Otto Pfleiderer
Cosmao's ... thesis is that societies obey two "sociological laws,” ... according to which, when left to their own inertia, they "structure inequality” and "fabricate gods that become their masters.” God's revelation in Jesus Christ expressly contradicts these two laws and should produce equality and destroy false gods. [Cosmao] contends, however, that Christianity has taken on the role of a "civil religion” and has thus become Christendom.
Jacques Ellul