I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.
— John Wesley
Craziest Doctrinal quotations
Hate speech it seems to be is been defined by the political left as anything we don't like, anything that violates social justice doctrines, feminism, Black Lives Matter kind of ideology. It is not something that I have ever heard particularly effectively defined.
The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
The Christian faith is ultimately not only a matter of doctrine or understanding or of intellect, it is a condition of the heart.
The path of descent is the path of transformation.
Darkness, failure, relapse, death, and woundedness are our primary teachers, rather than ideas or doctrines.
The church today is riddled with fad doctrines and new sounds that distract from the clear message of the Great commission in the New Testament. Any message that attracts you which does not bring glory to Christ is the message of a seducing spirit and the man giving it is in deception.
The testimony of scripture is so plain that to add anything were superfluous, were it not that the world is almost now come to that blindness, that whatsoever pleases not the princes and the multitude, the same is rejected as doctrine newly forged, and is condemned for heresy.
People are submissive to power, and few of them can be influenced by doctrines of righteousness.
Sound doctrine does not enter into the hard and disobedient heart;
but, as if beaten back, enters anew into itself.
We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men ... We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
Grace is not a theology. It is not a subject matter. It is not a doctrine. It is a person, and his name is Jesus. That's the reason the Lord wants you to receive the abundance of grace, for to have the abundance of grace is to have the abundance of Jesus.
Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.
It is an error to believe that Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine applicable to all times and to all men, but rather that He inaugurated a religious movement adapted, or to be adapted, to different times and different places.
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
And as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ's enemy and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine.
The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded.
It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member, without a sympathetic injury to all the members
To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
The world is poisoned with erroneous theories, and needs to be taught sane doctrines, but it is difficult to straighten what has become crooked.
My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.
Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.
The Galatians are severely censured for giving heed to false doctrines, and are called to pronounce even an apostle anathema, if he preached another gospel.
Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and economic sphere.
When a denomination begins to consider doctrine divisive, theology troublesome, and convictions inconvenient, consider that denomination on its way to a well-deserved death.
Modern man has so long preached a doctrine of false tolerance;
he has so long believed that right and wrong were only differences in a point of view, that now when evil works itself out in practice he is paralyzed to do anything against it.
Any denomination or church group that forsakes inerrancy will end up shipwrecked. It is impossible to prevent the surrender of other important doctrinal teachings of the Word of God when inerrancy is gone.
Doctrinal preaching certainly bores the hypocrites;
but it is only doctrinal preaching that will save Christ's sheep.
Truth is not over there, wherever over there is.
Truth is neither housed in religious rituals nor secret doctrines, nor in a guru's touch or beatific smile, nor in exotic locations or ancient temples. Truth is quite literally the only thing that does exist. It is not hidden but in plain view, not lacking but abundantly present.
No doctrine is more excellent, or necessary to be preached and studied, than Jesus Christ, and him crucified.
If Christianity is really true, then it involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just 'dogmatically' true or 'doctrinally' true. Rather, it is true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life.
From time immemorial men have quenched their thirst with water without knowing anything about its chemical constituents. In like manner we do not need to be instructed in all the mysteries of doctrine, but we do need to receive the Living Water which Jesus Christ will give us and which alone can satisfy our souls.
It is time that Christians were judged more by their likeness to Christ than their notions of Christ. Were this sentiment generally admitted we should not see such tenacious adherence to what men deem the opinions and doctrines of Christ while at the same time in every day practise is exhibited anything but a likeness to Christ.
When it was first said that the sun stood still and world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science.
Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of the world.
It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.
Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me... Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.