“But, if you are still in ignorance, I must tell you again: men’s ordinances cannot be observed together with the Word of God, because the former bind consciences and the latter looses them. The two things are as much opposed to each other as fire and water” (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, 96).

“In short, let us remember that that invisible God, whose wisdom, power, and righteousness, are incomprehensible, sets before us Moses’ history as a mirror in which his living likeness glows. For just as eyes, when dimmed with age or weakness or by some other defect, unless aided by spectacles, discern nothing distinctly; so, such is our feebleness, unless Scripture guides us in seeking God, we are immediately confused” (Translated by Ford Lewis Battles, John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 160-161)).

“No; doctrinal truth should be preached always, openly, without compromise, and never dissembled or concealed. There is no offence in it; it is the staff of uprightness” (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, 95).

“Your intentions are of the best (at least, I think so); but the gouty foot laughs at your doctoring” (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, 92).

“I would rather be joyful in God’s grace and bear the brunt of this temporal uproar for the sake of the Word of God — which demands to be asserted with invincible and unshakeable zeal — rather that, I say, than be ground to powder under the wrath of God by the unbearable torments of the uproar that shall be everlasting!” (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, 90)

“Consciences are bound by God’s law alone, and the Papal tyranny, which by its falsehoods frightens and murders souls within, and uselessly exhausts the body from without, is an intruder that should be banished forthwith” (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, 89).

“The truth is, you fetch from afar and rake together all these irrelevances simply because you are embarrassed on this one point, the foreknowledge of God; and, since you cannot overthrow it by any argument, you try meantime to tire out the reader with a flow of empty verbiage” (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, 87).

“For if you hesitate to believe, or are too proud to acknowledge, that God foreknows and wills all things, not contingently, but necessarily and immutably, how can you believe, trust and rely on His promises? . . . for the Christian’s chief and only comfort in every adversity lies in knowing that God does not lie, but brings all things to pass immutably, and that His will cannot be resisted, altered or impeded” (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, 84-85).

“It is, then, fundamentally necessary and wholesome for Christians to know that God foreknows nothing contingently, but that he foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His own immutable, eternal, and infallible will” (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, 80).

“We need, therefore, to have in mind a clear-cut distinction between God’s power and ours, and God’s work and ours, if we would live a godly life” (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, 78).