According to [William] Perkins, preaching involves

1. 1. Reading the text clearly from the canonical Scriptures.
2. 2. Explaining the meaning of it, once it has been read, in light of the Scriptures themselves.
3. 3. Gathering a few profitable points of doctrine from the natural sense of the passage.
4. 4. If the preacher is suitably gifted, applying the doctrines thus explained to the life and practice of the congregation in straightforward, plain speech.

Chad Van Dixhoorn, God’s Ambassadors: The Westminster Assembly and the Reformation of the English Pulpit, 1643-1653, 28.

What aspects of this problem [the relation of God to evil] does the Bible leave unexplained?

(a) How evil could originate in beings wholly good, as Satan and all the angels were when they were created. (b) How Satan could succeed in leading our first parents into sin, when there was no evil in their nature to which he could appeal. (c) How God could permit and foreordain evil without himself becoming responsible for its sinfulness.

These are mysteries which baffle our minds. We simply do not know the answers. Yet we dare not attempt to deny the facts. Those who attempt to solve the problem by denying these three facts only plunge into heresies which are totally destructive of Christianity. There is a point at which a reverent ignorance, rather than irreverent speculation and theorizing, becomes us.

J. G. Vos, The Westminster Larger Catechism: A Commentary, 576.

Trials and hairbreadth escapes strengthened my faith, and seemed only to nerve me for more to follow; and they did tread swiftly upon each other’s heels. Without that abiding consciousness of the presence and power of my dear Lord and Saviour, nothing else in all the world could have preserved me from losing my reason and perishing miserably. His words, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,” became to me so real that it would not have startled me to behold Him, as Stephen did, gazing down upon the scene. I felt his supporting power, as did St. Paul, when he cried, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”

John G. Paton, The Autobiography of the Pioneer Missionary to the New Hebrides (Vanuatu), 117.

The Lord Jesus Christ has clothed His Church with power and authority. This authority is vested in the whole membership of the Church, which has a right to choose its officers from among those of its own members who possess the scriptural qualifications.

Christ has appointed in His Word a particular form of government for the visible church. It is government by elders (Greek: presbyters) and is therefore called presbyterian. Each congregation should be ruled by a session of ordained elders, elected by the membership of the congregation.

RP Testimony, 25.6 & 25.7

According to the biblical story, God heals and reconciles his creation to himself not by snapping his fingers or merely saying, “Let it be so,” but by becoming incarnate as this man Jesus. While the incarnate Word of God does not cease to be God, with the assumption of a human nature he also becomes what he was not: fully human.

Kelly M. Kapic, Christian Life, 96.

As God by his power and wisdom has made, and governs the world: so must they be our defense against all enemies and dangers.

Commentary on Psalm 93:1 in English Annotations

The challenge of Psalm 93 is that two things are set side by side. The throne and the sea — the throne representing God’s sovereignty, the sea representing evil powers too strong for us to control. Both the throne and the sea appear again, together, in Revelation 4:5-6, but the sea doesn’t sound like Psalm 93 anymore: “Flashes of lightning and rumblings and peals of thunder came from the throne. Seven fiery torches were burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God. Something like a sea of glass, similar to crystal, was also before the throne.”

David Platt, Jim Shaddix, and Matt Mason, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary: Exalting Jesus in Psalms 51-100, 387.

Having established that God is, he next thing we might say is that God reigns.

David Platt, Jim Shaddix, and Matt Mason, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary: Exalting Jesus in Psalms 51-100, 382.

Though the Christian faith is grounded in the belief that Christ is the ultimate revelation of the Father, I contend that Christ’s life, ministry, and teachings are intelligible only within the framework of the history of Israel as recorded within the Old Testament. Christ himself drew on the sacred texts of Israel, and the earliest records we have of the incarnate life of the Son interprets him within this framework, sometimes by clear citation formulas — “Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet” (Matt. 1:22) — and sometimes through less direct allusions, as when Matthew depicts Jesus as the new Moses. This fact prompts me to hold two principles. First, what I have elsewhere called the inspiration principle requires that we see these biblical texts as exceeding merely human records. If these texts are necessary to understand God’s self-revelation in the Son, and if true human knowledge of God must participate in the archetypal knowledge that God has of himself, then Christians must take it as an article of faith that these texts participate in God’s knowledge by inspiration. Second, the fact that Jesus must be interpreted within the context of these older texts prompts a canonical principle. Again, if these books are necessary in understanding Jesus, then they must be included in theological analysis and thus rendered as canon, while other texts that are not equally important in interpreting Christ within his historical context are excluded from having equal authority. Only the canon is fully normative in theology.

A dogmatic account of the Trinity thus begins with the affirmation of the Bible as Scripture — a specific canon of texts viewed as uniquely communicating God’s knowledge of God in a manner appropriate to human knowledge.

D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics, 5-6.

What do the early papyri add to our understanding of the textual heritage of the Catholic Epistles other than their early dates? I submit that the answer is ‘But little’, and even to emphasize their early dates is deceptive . . . In conclusion, we need to ask why it is that the papyri are privileged by most textual critics and editors of an apparatus criticus. Who first promoted their supremely great authority? . . . Some papyri have obviously achieved their greatness just because of their age, and thereby allowing an insight into a tantalizing period in the life the text preceding the time of the great uncials and often problematizing the nature of their text. They are like elder statesmen basking in their own longevity, revered as custodians of an otherwise lost link to the distant past. But most papyri have had their greatness thrust upon them, whatever the dates allocated to them by palaeographers (and a significant number of papyri are indeed later than the fifth century), partly because they are all of recent discovery, thus making their arrival on a scholar’s radar relatively newsworthy, partly because most are published soon after they are unearthed so gaining for themselves a popularity due to their being quickly in the public domain, and partly because the gullible believe that there is an unwarranted magic associated with their having been written on papyrus.

The Early Text of the Catholic Epistles by J. K. Elliott in The Early Text of the New Testament, eds. Charles E. Hill & Michael J. Kruger, 223-224.