Will mere prudence, without a divine right, be a sufficient basis to erect the whole frame of church-government upon (as some concede)? Prudentials according to general rules of Scripture may be of use in circumstantials, but will bare prudentials in substantials also satsify either our God, our covenant, our consciences, or our end in this great work of reformation?

Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici, ed. Chris Coldwell, 41.

It is not enough to be born and raised in the church and receive the benefit of Christian education. A covenant child still needs the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. . . . They need the internal saving essence of the covenant, which is the regeneration by the Holy Spirit and union with Christ. If we do not understand and emphasize this, we will end up producing little Pharisees who say, “We are covenant children, so we are saved”; rebels who abandon everything and plunge back into the world; or nominal Christians who warm pews for eighty years and die, never having brought forth the fruits of salvation. Of them, Scripture says, “And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done: this is also vanity” (Eccl. 8:10).

Joel R. Beeke, Parenting by God’s Promises, 24.

The knowledge that we, too, are sinners should make us more understanding and more compassionate toward our erring children.

In acknowledging that our children are sinners, we must reckon with the seriousness of sin. Sin must be dealt with. As parents, we must maintain a precarious balance between seeing sin as sin and yet being gracious in dealing with it. The delicate balance we seek is that of God Himself.

Joel R. Beeke, Parenting by God’s Promises, 16.

While we swim in a sea of “Christian” things, Christ is increasingly reduced to a mascot or symbol of a subculture and the industries that feed it. Just as you don’t really need Jesus Christ in order to have T-shirts and coffee mugs, it is unclear to me why he is necessary for most of the things I hear a lot of pastors and Christians talking about in church these days.

Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church, 22).

While we may use the word ‘conduct’ or ‘behavior’ to denote the sum-total of actions which constitute the patterns of life, yet behind all overt action is the dispositional character or complex which is the psychological determinant of action. Hence ethics must take into account the dispositional complex of which the overt act is the expression. This is to say, biblical ethics has paramount concern with the heart out of which are the issues of life.

John Murray, Principles of Conduct, 13.

[T]he decree of God does not displace history; on the contrary, it gives us history. It does not make the events of history eternal — if they were eternal they would not be historical events in time — but it does mean that the temporal events of history are grounded in the divine will and dependent upon God’s providence, ordinary and extraordinary, in order to come into existence and reach their end.

“Introductory Essay” by J. Mark Beach in Herman Bavinck, Saved By Grace, xxv.

[The] covenant of grace was first revealed in the promise of the Savior that God gave to Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:15). It was more fully expressed in the promises God made to Abraham and his seed (Gen. 17:7). Finally, it was renewed, confirmed, and enlarged by the shedding of Christ’s blood at Calvary (Matt. 26:28; 2 Cor. 1:20). As in all the covenants God makes with human beings in Scripture, the covenant of grace is extended to believers and their children (Acts 2:39).

Joel R. Beeke, Parenting by God’s Promises, xvi.

The inclusion of both manuscripts and texts in the title is important. If one were to restrict the study of the documents to the texts which they contain, it would be possible to limit their use to the practice of textual criticism, that is to the study of variant readings and their placing in a chronology by which one, therefore to be adjudged the oldest, accounted for the formation of the others. But documents consist of more than the texts they contain, and their layout, their design and the material of which they are made, their ink and script, their marginalia and the ornamentation, paintings and bindings with which they may have been adorned all provide evidence about cultural as well as religious history and even cast light on economic, social and political matters. . . . The variant readings which are not the oldest are not therefore without interest. They provide information about subsequent interpretations of the text and understandings of Christian faith and practice, including the fact that the oldest form had been modified. The title is intended to reflect this wider value of the manuscripts for historical study.

D. C. PARKER, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS AND THEIR TEXTS, 7.

In this book, ‘document’ means a manuscript. The following quotation underpins not only this definition, but the entire concept of the book:

“The first step towards obtaining a sure foundation is a consistent application of the principle that KNOWLEDGE OF DOCUMENTS SHOULD PRECEDE FINAL JUDGEMENT UPON READINGS.”

The source of this (the part in capitals is often quoted) is one of modern textual criticism’s key texts, Westcott and Hort’s introduction to The New Testament in the Original Greek (p. 31). The meaning of the quotation is this: before deciding which of one or more different wordings is likely to be the source of the others, the scholar should know about the character and nature of the documents which contain the different wordings. They go on to write that “If we compare successively the readings of two documents in all their variations, we have ample materials for ascertaining the leading merits and defects of each” (p. 32).

This book follows not only the implications of Hort’s famous dictum but also the example of many predecessors by beginning with an introduction to the study of the manuscripts of the New Testament, in particular those in Greek and the oldest languages into which it was translated. The focus will be on two ways of studying a document: as a physical item, of a particular size, format, age, and so forth, and as what will be called a ‘tradent’ of the text or texts which it contains. The former belongs to the discipline of palaeography, the latter to textual criticism.

D. C. Parker, An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts, 2-3.

Deuteronomy 29:29 [KJV] The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.

[Deuteronomy 29:29] speaks of the sufficiency of God’s revelation and affirms that he will reveal to his people whatever they need to know. This understanding should give them rest in knowing that he is at work and should help them trust in his sovereign ways. Their focus should be obedience to the word that God reveals.

Richard P. Belcher Jr., Prophet, Priest, and King: The Roles of Christ in the Bible and Our Roles Today, 20.