This Psalm is brief, but who can estimate its unbounded preciousness. It was given by inspiration of God. May the Spirit us it to invigorate our grace!

Henry Law, Daily Prayer and Praise: The Book of Psalms Arranged for Private and Family Use, Vol. 2, 158.

To say that Father, Son, and Spirit are consubstantial is to affirm that each has what is necessary to count as fully and equally divine. They are not identicals, nor are they an absolute numerical unity, for at the level of persons, hypostasis, and relation, they are distinct. Plurality must always norm consubstantiality in this way. Nevertheless, the persons are not divided into distinct substances. Consubstantiality does not mean that the persons are fully distinct, individual instantiations of the same secondary substance or of a common genus. The consubstantiality of the Father, Son, and Spirit is a dogmatic presupposition of the claim that the Son and Holy Spirit are the self-revelation of the Father, mediators unlike any others. Consubstantiality also follows from the trinitarian nature of Christian worship, since only God is worthy of worship but recognition and worship of God as Father requires worship of the correlative Son and Holy Spirit. Here again, consubstantiality is normed by divine plurality, for the definition of God, what it means to be God, is to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is no God the Father apart from the Spirit and Son, no God without his breath and reason. We must regulate the unity we affirm in proclaiming divine consubstantiality through an equal affirmation that this unity is not one that destroys the distinction in hypostases. In other words, plurality in the Godhead regulates our initial affirmation of unity, just as the unity of the divine nature will help us clarify our initial steps toward speaking of divine plurality, as we will see in the next chapter. A denial of consubstantiality is a denial of the Trinity, but an affirmation of the consubstantiality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not yet a full affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity.

D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God, 43-44.

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 recorded within the Old Testament.

D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God, 5.

In writing a work of trinitarian dogmatics, I am intending to write a systematic account of the Trinity that is normed by Scripture and shaped by centuries of polemical debates going up to the present, my purpose being to create instruction that benefits the church.

D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God, 3.

To write of the Trinity is to write of God, eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternally one, unique, and indivisible . . . It is a bold endeavor that would make no headway apart from the grace of the God we seek.

D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God, 1.

With our loss of the sense of majesty has come further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit. The words, “Be still, and know that I am God,” mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper in this middle period of the twentieth century . . . It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate.

A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, vii-viii.

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.

RP Testimony, 25.6

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, 25.7