"Christ is the very essence of all delights and pleasures, the very soul and substance of them. As all the rivers are gathered into the ocean, which is the meeting-place of all the waters in the world, so Christ is that ocean in which all true delights and pleasures meet."
"O when you go to God in any duty, take your heart aside, and say, "O my soul, I am now addressing myself to the greatest work that ever a creature was employed about -- I am going into the solemn presence of God about business of everlasting importance!"
Luther said he feared his own heart, more than Pope or Cardinal. The heart is the fomenter of sin. It mints evil thoughts-and blows up the coals of fiery passions. It is the Trojan horse out of which comes a whole army of lusts! Shall we not fight the good fight, and discharge with the fire of zeal against this bosom traitor, the flesh! The primitive Christians chose rather to be destroyed by lions without-than by lusts within!
"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what isunseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen iseternal." - 2 Corinthians 4:18, KJV
"And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it." - Isa. 2:2, KJV
"Now, Christians, the more great and glorious things you expect from God, as the downfall of antichrist, the conversion of the Jews, the conquest of the nations to Christ, the breaking of all yokes, the new Jerusalem's coming down from above, the extraordinary pouring out of the Spirit, and a more general union among all saints, the more holy, yea, the more eminently holy in all your ways and actings it becomes you to be."
- Thomas Brooks, The Crown and Glory of Christianity, 1662, Complete Works (on the Puritan Hard Drive), 1867, p. 444
By all which, you see where the idolatry of worship lies. The instituting of any, though the smallest part of worship, in and by our own authority, without scripture-warrant, makes it idolatrous, as well as if we worshipped an idol (Ex: 20:5).
- John Flavel, The Works of John Flavel, Vol, 4. p. 527 (on the Puritan Hard Drive)
Arminianism In Worship Is Idolatry & Will Worship, & Leads To the Papal Antichrist, by Greg Price (Free MP3 and PDF) All things considered, certainly it is no small condemnation of us to behold what an ardent zeal the holy martyrs had in the past, especially in comparison with the nonchalance we demonstrate. For as soon as a poor man of that time got so much as a little taste of the true knowledge of God, he did not hesitate to expose himself to the danger involved in confessing his faith. He would have preferred to be burned alive than to go so far as to commit some outward act of idolatry.
"Another instance in which posterity is recognized in covenant obligation is found in Joshua 9:15. This covenant was made between the children of Israel and the Gibeonites. Between four and five hundred years after that time, the children of Israel are visited with a very severe famine, in the days of David. 2 Sam. 21:1. And it is expressly declared by the Lord that, 'It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.' And at the same time, v. 2, that very covenant is recognized, and the breach of it is stated, as being the formal reason of the divine displeasure. Now, had it not been for this covenant, the extirpation of the Gibeonites would not have been imputed to Israel as a thing criminal; for they were comprehended in Canaanitish nations, which God had commanded them to root out." - William L. Roberts, The Reformed Presbyterian Catechism (1853, emphases added), pp. 139-140, on the Puritan Hard Drive, http://bit.ly/ci3g2z.
"Brethren, I speak after the manner of men; Though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto" (Galatians 3:15, KJV)
