Preface
A Catechism and Confession of Faith (1673)
Context: Since first that great Apostacy took place in the Hearts and Heads of those who began even in the Apostles days, to depart from the simplicity and purity of the Gospel, as it was then delivered in its primitive Splendor and Integrity, innumerable have been the manifold Inventions and Traditions, the different and various Notions and Opinions, wherewith Man (by giving way to the vain and airy Imaginations of his own unstable mind) hath burdened the Christian Faith: so that indeed, first by adding these things, and afterwards by equalling them, if not exalting them above the Truth, they have at last come to be substitute in the stead of it; so that in process of time, Truth came to be shut out of doors, and another thing placed in the room thereof, having a shew and a Name, but wanting the substance and thing itself: Nevertheless it pleased God to raise up Witnesses for himself almost in every Age and Generation, who, according to the Discoveries they received, bore some Testimony, less or more, against the Superstition and Apostacy of the time; and in special manner through the appearing of that Light which first broke forth in Germany about One hundred and fifty years ago, and afterwards reached divers other Nations; the Beast received a deadly Wound: and a very great Number did at one time Protest against, and Rescind from the Church of Rome in divers of their most gross and sensual Doctrines and superstitious Traditions: But alas! it is for matter of lamentation, that the Successors of these Protestants are Establishing and Building up in themselves that which their Fathers were pulling down, instead of prosecuting and going on with so Good and Honourable a Work; which will easily appear.
“The more one pleases generally, the less one pleases profoundly.”
"The Great Hate Debate" https://www.takimag.com/article/the-great-hate-debate, Taki's Magazine (July 13, 2019).
“Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.”
Source: 1840s, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), Ch. 2
“The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.”
The Fair Haven http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/fhvn10h.htm, Memoir of the Late John Pickard Owen, Ch. 3 (1873)
Source: 1840s, Philosophical Fragments (1844), p. 76
Summations, Chapter 52
Context: In our intent we abide in God, and faithfully trust to have mercy and grace; and this is His own working in us. And of His goodness He openeth the eye of our understanding, by which we have sight, sometime more and sometime less, according as God giveth ability to receive. And now we are raised into the one, and now we are suffered to fall into the other.
And thus is this medley so marvellous in us that scarsely we know of our self or of our even-Christian in what way we stand, for the marvellousness of this sundry feeling.
Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 169
Source: 1840s, Philosophical Fragments (1844), p. 75
(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Five: Refiner’s Fire. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1985, 258).
