Michael

“The purpose of Holy Scripture is not ultimately to make you smart, or make you relevant, or make you rich, or get you a job, or get you married, or take all your problems away, or tell you where to live. The aim is that you might be wise enough to put your faith in Christ and be saved.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Taking God at His Word: Why the Bible Is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What That Means for You and Me

“Rest assured that there is nothing new in theology except that which is false; and that the facts of theology are today what they were eighteen hundred years ago.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon, The Essential Works of Charles Spurgeon

“But while he wasn’t shy about correcting their erroneous interpretations of Scripture, there is no indication that Jesus ever thought his fellow Jews to have too high a view of Scripture. And if they had been wrong on such an essential matter, he would not have gone along with the flow. He would have corrected their beliefs about the Bible just as he chastised them for other “doctrines of men.”
― Kevin DeYoung, Taking God at His Word: Why the Bible Is Knowable, Necessary, and Enough, and What That Means for You and Me

“A nation ignorant of the equal benefits of liberty and law, must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice; his profusion, of liberality; his obstinacy, of firmness. If the most reasonable excuse be rejected, few acts of obedience will be found impossible; and guilt must tremble, where innocence cannot always be secure. The tranquillity of the people, and the discipline of the troops, were best maintained by perpetual action in the field; war was the trade of the Janizaries;”
― Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6