Punishment must reach the mind and bend the will

 

 

If punishment reaches not the mind, and makes not the will supple, it hardens the offender.

-- John Locke

Lying means the death of conversation

 

 Lying is a vice subversive of the very ends and design of conversation.

-- John Rogers (1679-1729)

It's heartwarming to observe that a deceased stand-up comic was wiser than an astrophysicist

 

They are the enemies of the cross of Christ whose god is their belly and whose glory is in their shame

 

 

 

 Had the upper part, to the middle, been of human shape, and all below swine, had it been murder to destroy it?

-- John Locke

The most natural division of all offenses

The most natural division of all offenses, is into those of omission and those of commission.

-- Joseph Addison

John Locke, no New Testament scholar, correctly understood 350 years ago that St. Paul's religion was entirely a matter of private interpretation

Saint Paul was miraculously called to the ministry of the gospel, and had the whole doctrine of the gospel from God by immediate revelation; and was appointed the apostle of the Gentiles for propagating it in the heathen world.

-- John Locke

That he accepted this enthusiasm as a miracle is beside the point, making him but a child of his time and therefore not the radical he is sometimes made out to be.

No one is above the law

 

Should vice expect to 'scape rebuke,

Because its owner is a duke?

 

-- Jonathan Swift

Love thy neighbor this, and love thy neighbor that, but they always seem to leave this part out

 

. . . You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him.

-- Leviticus 19:17

Lying by omission is our way of life here in America, in service of our "live and let live" ideology, perhaps made most famous in the old "Don't ask, don't tell" policy of Bill Clinton about gays in the military.

Truth no longer exists. There is only "my truth".

Libertarianism = injustice.

The Lord raises up evil

Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house ... 

τάδε λέγει κύριος ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ἐξεγείρω ἐπὶ σὲ κακὰ ἐκ τοῦ οἴκου σου ...

-- II Samuel 12:11

When the Presbyterians were the fanaticks

 

The presbyterians, and other fanaticks that dangle after them, are well inclined to pull down the present establishment.

-- Jonathan Swift

The well worn way

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nature, that rude, and in her first essay,

Stood boggling at the roughness of the way;

Us'd to the road, unknowing to return,

Goes boldly on, and loves the path when worn.

-- John Dryden, 13th Satire of Juvenal

For the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.

 

-- Matthew 7:13

The good man melts

 

 

A few soft words and a kiss, and the good man melts; see how nature works and boils over in him.

 

--  William Congreve (1670-1729)

If only this ignoramus knew about The Presbyterian Rebellion he'd be crowing more than he usually does about how right he is

 

The write stuff

Every man cannot distinguish betwixt pedantry and poetry;

every man therefore is not fit to innovate.

-- John Dryden

Catholic systematic theologian Thomas Weinandy featured at First Things appears to be a process theologian in disguise, not an orthodox one

He appears to be driven to his conclusions by his reading of the Fourth Gospel, which has the risen Jesus still in process in heaven "preparing a place for you" (John 14:2f.).

As a consequence the historical Jesus wasn't really fully Jesus, nor are Christians ever fully Christians, until the end of the world when they all are reunited in that place.

... the Incarnation of God’s eternal Word, his “pitching his tent among us” (Jn. 1:14) in our mortal condition is not an instantaneous happening, confined to Annunciation or Nativity, but an ever-deeper process of immersion and transformation. ...

In his coming down out of heaven at the end of time, and in his taking up with him the faithful into his ascended glory, Jesus will then become fully Jesus, for he will have fully enacted his name—YHWH-Saves. ...

As Jesus becomes fully in act at the end of time, so Christians, who fully abide in Christ, become Christians fully in act at the end of time ...

More.

This all sounds suspiciously like it is tailored for the "Life is about the journey, not the destination" crowd, a theology for the consumers of pop-cultural Marxism not of the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

Of course one has to ignore, among many other things, the imminent end of the world preached by the Jesus of the Synoptics and its failure to come, to even begin to go down this path, which makes the reviewer's assertion that there is eschatological energy in all of this completely laughable.

That is precisely what one would expect of enthusiasm for systematic theology, which, pace the Pope, always ends up making a mockery of the inconvenient evidence.

"The dualism between exegesis and theology" which Francis laments is irreconcilable.