The Westminster Confession Quotes

“The Limit of this obligation to obedience [to the civil government] will be found only when we are commanded to do something contrary to the to the superior authority of God (Acts iv. 19; v. 29); or when the civil government has become so radically and incurably corrupt that it has ceased to accomplish the ends for which it was established. When that point has unquestionably been reached, when all means of redress have been exhausted without avail, when there appears no prospect of securing reform in the government itself, and some good prospect of securing it by revolution, then it is the privilege and duty of a Christian people to change their government - peacefully if they may, forcibly if they must.”
― A.A. Hodge, A Commentary on The Westminster Confession of Faith With Scripture Proofs

“Unregenerate men perform many actions, good so far as their external relations to their fellow-men are concerned. But love to God is the foundation-principle upon which all moral duties rest, just as our relation to God is the fundamental relation upon which all our other relations rest.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, A Commentary on The Westminster Confession of Faith With Scripture Proofs

“All authority and power descends, and does not ascend. Pastors and elders teach and rule in the name of God, and not of man. It is the commission of Christ, and not of the Church, that the minister carries with him, and by authority of which he acts. The Church only witnesses to the genuineness of this commission, and sees that it is faithfully discharged by the bearer of it. Hence all the power of church officers, either in their several or collective capacity, is ministerial and declarative”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, Westminster Confession: A Commentary

“But since the Church is an organized society, under laws executed by regularly appointed officers, it is evident that ordinances — which are badges of Church membership, the gates of the fold, the instruments of discipline, and seals of the covenant formed by the great Head of the Church with his living members — can properly be administered only by the highest legal officers of the Church, those who are commissioners as ambassadors for Christ to treat in his name with men. 1 Cor iv. 1; 2 Cor v. 20.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, Westminster Confession: A Commentary

“The authors of our Confession can hardly have intended to declare that each individual Pope of the long succession is the personal Antichrist, and they probably meant that the Papal system is in spirit, form, and effect, wholly antichristian, and that it marked a defection from apostolical Christianity foreseen and foretold in Scripture. All of which was true in their day, and is true in ours. We have need, however, to remember that as the forms of evil change, and the complications of the kingdom of Christ with that of Satan vary with the progress of events, “even now are there many Antichrists.” 1 John ii. 18.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, Westminster Confession: A Commentary

“evidence. If, as a matter of fact, Christ delegated his authority either to the Pope or to national Sovereigns, and made them, as his victors, visible heads of his Church, then we ought to obey them, and our disobedience is treason to Christ. On the contrary, if they have no such authority, and are unable to prove their claims by unquestionable credentials, then their assumption of such power is a blasphemous intrusion upon divine prerogatives and treason to the human race. It is obvious that neither party can show any plausible foundation for their claims, and that upon the slightest interrogation they fall of their own weight.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, Westminster Confession: A Commentary

“The churches which acknowledge the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome have abandoned the faith and obscured the glory of their Lord in one direction, while many professedly Protestant churches — as the English and American Socinians and the German Rationalists — have made an equal apostasy in another.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, Westminster Confession: A Commentary

“Section VI There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ.[13] Nor can the pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof;[14] but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalts himself, in the Church, against Christ and all that is called God.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, Westminster Confession: A Commentary

“The Romish and Ritualistic view is, that individuals are united to the Church through the sacraments, and through the Church to Christ. The true view is, that the individual is united to Christ the Head by the Holy Ghost and by faith; and by being united to Christ he is, ipso facto, united to all Christ’s members, the Church. The holy catholic Church is the product of the Holy Ghost.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, Westminster Confession: A Commentary

“The Scriptures explicitly distinguish between the two calls. Of the subjects of the one it is said, "Many are called, but few are chosen." Matt. xxii. 14. Of the subjects of the other it is said, "Whom he called, them he also justified." Rom. viii. 30. Comp. Prov. i. 24, and John vi. 45.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, A Commentary on The Westminster Confession of Faith With Scripture Proofs

“Since, therefore, neither Christ’s redemption nor his intercession can fail of the ends for which they are designed, it is evidently impossible that those for whom he was substituted, and for whom he acquired a perfect righteousness, and for whom he offers an effectual intercession, can fail of salvation.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, Westminster Confession: A Commentary

“(5.) The working of the Romish system of celibacy, voluntary poverty, and monastic vows, has produced such fruits as prove the principle on which they rest radically immoral and false.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, Westminster Confession: A Commentary

“The Romish Church teaches the ordinary Arminian theory of perfectionism. In addition to this error, they teach, (a.) that good works subsequent to baptism merit increase of grace and eternal felicity (Council of Trent, sess vi., ch xvi., can. 24, 32); and (b.) they distinguish between the commands and the counsels of Christ. The former are binding upon all classes of the people, and their observance necessary in order to salvation. The latter, consisting of advice, not of commands — such as celibacy, voluntary poverty, obedience to monastic rule, etc. — are binding only on those who voluntarily assume them, seeking a higher degree of perfection and a more exalted reward. We have already, under chapter xiii., seen that a state of sinless perfection is never attained by Christians in this life; and it, of course, follows that much less is it possible for any to do more than is commanded.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, Westminster Confession: A Commentary

“The Roman Catholic Church has historically taught that, as an element of penance and evidence of true repentance, the Christian must confess all his sins without reserve, in all their details and qualifying circumstances, to a priest having jurisdiction; and that if any mortal sin is unconfessed it is not forgiven; and if the omission is willful, it is sacrilege, and greater guilt is incurred. (Cat. Rom., part 2., ch. 5., qs. 33, 34, 42.) And they maintain that the priest absolves judicially, not merely declaratively, from all the penal consequences of the sins confessed, by the authority of Jesus Christ. This is an obvious perversion of the Scriptural command to confess. They bid us simply to confess our faults one to another. There is not a word said about confession to a priest in the Bible. The believer, on the contrary, has immediate access to Christ, and to God through Christ (1 Tim. 2:5; John 14:6; 5:40; Matt. 11:28), and is commanded to confess his sins immediately to God. (1 John 1:9.) No priestly function is ever ascribed to the Christian ministry in the New Testament. The power of absolute forgiveness of sin belongs to God alone (Matt. 9:26), is incommunicable in its very nature, and has never been granted to any class of men as a matter of fact. The authority to bind or loose which Christ committed to his Church was understood by the apostles, as is evident from their practice, as simply conveying the power of declaring the conditions on which God pardons sin;”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, Westminster Confession: A Commentary

“(b) That the external penance of the Romanist is an impertinent attempt to supplement the perfect satisfaction of Christ;”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, Westminster Confession: A Commentary

“(c) Satisfaction or some painful work, imposed by the priest and performed by the penitent, to satisfy divine justice for sins committed; and (d) Absolution, pronounced by the priest judicially, and not merely declaratively. They hold that the element of satisfaction included in this sacrament makes a real satisfaction for sin, and is an efficient cause of pardon, absolutely essential-the only means whereby the pardon of sins committed after baptism can be secured. (Cat. Rom., part 2., ch. 5., qs. 12, 13.)”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, Westminster Confession: A Commentary

“From what the Scriptures say of man's state by nature. It is declared to be a state of " blindness " and "darkness " and of "spiritual death." Eph. iv. 18; Col. ii. 13. The unregenerate are the "servants of sin" and "subject to Satan.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, A Commentary on The Westminster Confession of Faith With Scripture Proofs

“From what the Scriptures say of man's state by nature. It is declared to be a state of " blindness " and "darkness " and of "spiritual death." Eph. iv. 18; Col. ii. 13. The unregenerate are the "servants of sin" and "subject to Satan." Rom. vi. 16, 20; 2 Tim ii. 26; Matt. xii. 33 -- 36.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, A Commentary on The Westminster Confession of Faith With Scripture Proofs

“Effectual calling being the actual saving of a soul from the death of sin by the mighty power of God, it is obvious that it must be applied to all who are to be saved, and that it cannot be applied to any whoare not to be saved.”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, A Commentary on The Westminster Confession of Faith With Scripture Proofs

“The Articles of the Synod of Dort affirm that moral depravity is inflicted upon all the descendants of Adam at birth "by the just judgment of God." Ch. 3., s. 2. This”
― Archibald Alexander Hodge, A Commentary on The Westminster Confession of Faith With Scripture Proofs