For the Christian, therefore, endeavoring to keep the law was not to be construed as evidence of being under the law as a covenant of works. But a man under the covenant of grace should equally endeavor to keep God’s law. There is no contradiction between the grace of the gospel and the usage of the law in the life of the believer. Grace and law are complementary to each other, because it is the Spirit of Christ, given in grace, who subdues and enables man’s otherwise stubborn and rebellious will “to do that freely and cheerfully which the will of God revealed in the law requireth to be done.” (WCF 19.6, 7)

Andrew A. Woolsey, Unity and Continuity in Covenantal Thought: A Study in the Reformed Tradition to the Westminster Assembly, 89.

Historians have tended to define “covenant theology” with respect to the number of covenants employed, or whether or not the covenant can be viewed as the organizing principle in the theological system of a given writer. But it would be much more satisfactory to keep the discussion within the parameters legitimated by the scriptural usage of the concept, that is, as a divinely ordained means of portraying the nature of God’s relationship with man, particularly “the organic unity and progressiveness” of God’s saving purpose for his people throughout the history of mankind.

Andrew A. Woolsey, Unity and Continuity in Covenantal Thought: A Study in the Reformed Tradition to the Westminster Assembly, 21.

Ask the universe, the adornment of the heavens, the brilliance and arrangement of the stars, the sun, the sufficiency of the day, the moon, the solace of the night. Ask the earth, bearing fruit in herbs and trees, filled with animals, adorned with men. Ask the sea, full of such great and varied aquatic creatures! Ask the air, flourishing with such great flying creatures! Ask all things if they do not, in their own sense, as it were respond to you, ‘God made us!’

Augustine, Sermon 141 on John 14:6.

At this point remains the fourth practice, concerning care for the knowledge of God (Hos. 6:3). And this care, if first you consider persons, applies to the following: (1) magistrates, that they may not be content to have provided a knowledge of God for themselves, but that they may in every way take care, by their example, by their calling of qualified teachers, and even as circumstances arise, by their own instruction, to confer and augment the knowledge of God in their subjects, according to the example of Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, and others. (2) Ministers, upon whom it is preeminently incumbent by their office to instill in their hearers the knowledge of God, and namely that knowledge which is the basis of all faith, religion, and godliness, according to the judgment of the text, that God exists (John 14:8; 2 Peter 1:1–2; Phil. 1:9). (3) Every believer (see the same passages).

PETRUS VAN MASTRICHT, THEORETICAL-PRACTICAL THEOLOGY, VOLUME 2: FAITH IN THE TRIUNE GOD, 122.

Without meditation on the Word, our prayers will become vague and dull and directed by the world rather than God’s spirit.

Joel R. Beeke and Terry D. Slachter, Encouragement for Today’s Pastors, 32.

I wrote to your bishop, the saintly Ambrose, to tell him of my past errors and the purpose I now had in mind. I asked him to advise me which books of Scripture it would be best for me to study, so that I might be better prepared and more fitted to receive so great a grace. He told me to read the prophet Isaiah, presumably because the Gospel and the calling of the gentiles are foretold more clearly in that book than in any other.

Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book IX.5.

Like brilliant lights the churches were now illuminating the world, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ was flourishing everywhere when the Devil, who hates what is good, true, and saving, turned all his weapons against the church. Previously he had attacked her from the outside through persecutions, but now that he was prevented, he resorted to internal tactics, using wicked imposters as corrupt agents of destruction, assuming the name of our religion to destroy every believer they could ensnare while deflecting unbelievers from the path that leads to salvation.

Eusebius, The Church History, 137-138.

Clearly then, the recent proclamation of Christ’s teaching to all nations is none other than the very first and most ancient of all religions discovered by Abraham and those lovers of God who followed him.

Eusebius, The Church History, 31.

“Then at last, when all humanity throughout the world was now ready to receive knowledge of the Father, that same divine Word of God appeared at the beginning of the Roman Empire in the form of a man, of a nature like ours, whose deeds and sufferings accorded with the prophecies that a man who was also God would do extraordinary deeds and teach all nations the worship of the Father. They also predicted the miracle of his birth, his new teaching, the wonder of his deeds, the manner of his death, his resurrection from the dead, and, finally, his restoration to heaven by the power of God.”

Eusebius, The Church History, 26.

“The history of nations must be imperfect and erroneous, unless all is referred to the secret spring by which every motion is directed — the purpose of God to glorify himself in the salvation of the Church.”

Alexander McLeod’s historical introduction to the 1806 Testimony, quoted in William J. Edgar, History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America 1871-1920, 159.