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Reformation Quotes

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Reformation Quotes

“I allow that it is easier to touch the body of a saint, or to be magnetised, than to restrain our appetites or govern our passions; but health of body or mind can only be recovered by these means, or we make the Supreme Judge partial and revengeful. Is he a man that he should change, or punish out of resentment? He - the common father, wounds but to heal, says reason, and our irregularities producing certain consequences, we are forcibly shewn the nature of vice; that thus learning to know good from evil, by experience, we may hate one and love the other, in proportion to the wisdom which we attain. The poison contains the antidote; and we either reform our evil habits and cease to sin against our own bodies, to use the forcible language of scripture, or a premature death, the punishment of sin, snaps the thread of life.”

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Book:A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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“12. So then, he that is left without chastisement is so left by the Divine judgment, and God is long-suffering towards some sinners, not without reason, but because it will be good for them, having regard to the immortality of the soul and eternal life, that they be not too soon assisted in the attainment of salvation, but be slowly brought thereto after they have had experience of much evil. For as physicians, though they might quickly cure a man, will adopt the opposite of remedial measures whenever they suspect lurking mischief, because by so doing they mean to make the cure more permanent, and think it better to keep the patient for a long time in feverishness and sickness, so that he may make a sounder recovery, than that he should soon seem to pick up strength, but suffer a relapse, and the too hasty cure prove to be only temporary: so God also, knowing the secrets of the heart and having foreknowledge of the future, in His long-suffering perhaps lets things take their course, and by means of outward circumstances draws forth the secret evil, in order to cleanse him, who through neglect, has harboured the seeds of sin; so that a man having vomited them when they have come to the surface, even if he be far gone in wickedness, may afterwards find strength when he has been cleansed from his wickness and been renewed. For God governs the souls of men, not, if I may so speak, according to the scale of an earthly life of fifty years, but by the measure of eternity; for He has made the intellectual nature incorruptible and akin to Himself; and the rational soul is not debarred of healing, as if this present life were all.”

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Book:The Philocalia of Origen
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“They say I am a reformer. They say wrong: for I have long since given up any such chimerical idea, as that of being able to make men happier who are wicked and miserable by prescription. Withdrawing, therefore, from any such Utopian and hopeless attempt, I believed the best thing I could do was, to relieve, where I could, individual distress, and to lighten the chains that villany often imposes on simplicity under the name of law. In this I have done some good, and what else ought a man to do on this earth?”

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Book:Marchmont: A Novel
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“In the wake of the Reformation, it was the Bible that reorganized Europe as modern nation-states. Developing vernaculars through Bible translation was only the first step towards linguistic nation-states. The Bible also provided the theological justification for fighting to build independent nation/states such as Holland.”

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Book:The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization
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“The essential unity of the formal and material principles of the Reformation lies in the fact that to affirm that Christianity was, formally and materially, solus Christus was perceived by the Reformers ultimately to depend upon the concurrent affirmation that Christ and his benefits could be known sola scriptura.”

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Book:The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation
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“The medieval period based its scriptural exegesis upon the Vulgate translation of the Bible. There was no authorized version of this text, despite the clear need for a standardized text that had been carefully checked against its Hebrew and Greek originals. A number of versions of the text were in circulation, their divergences generally being overlooked. It was not until 1592 than an 'official' version of the text was produced by the church authorities, sensitive to the challenges to the authority of the Vulgate by Renaissance humanist scholars and Protestant theologians.”

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Book:The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation
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“For the humanists, whatever authority Scripture might possess derived from the original texts in their original languages, rather than from the Vulgate, which was increasingly recognized as unreliable and inaccurate. In that the catholic church continued to insist that the Vulgate was a doctrinally normative translation, a tension inevitably developed between humanist biblical scholarship and catholic theology...Through immediate access to the original text in the original language, the theologian could wrestle directly with the 'Word of God,' unhindered by 'filters' of glosses and commentaries that placed the views of previous interpreters between the exegete and the text. For the Reformers, 'sacred philology' provided the key by means of which the theologian could break free from the confines of medieval exegesis and return ad fontes to the title deeds of the Christian faith rather than their medieval expressions, to forge once more the authentic theology of the early church.”

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Book:The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation
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“Evangelical Christians need to notice..., that the Reformation said 'Scripture Alone' and not 'the Revelation of God in Christ Alone'. If you do not have the view of the Scriptures that the Reformers had, you really have no content in the word 'Christ' - and this is the modern drift in theology. Modern theology uses the word without content because 'Christ' is cut away from the Scriptures. The Reformation followed the teaching of Christ Himself in linking the revelation Christ gave of God to the revelation of the written Scriptures.”

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Book:Escape from Reason
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“The Renaissance was the culture of a wealthy and powerful upper class, on the crest of the wave which was whipped up by the storm of new economic forces. The masses who did not share the wealth and power of the ruling group had lost the security of their former status and had become a shapeless mass, to be flattered or to be threatened—but always to be manipulated and exploited by those in power. A new despotism arose side by side with the new individualism. Freedom and tyranny, individually and disorder, were inextricably interwoven. The Renaissance was not a culture of small shopkeepers and petty bourgeois but of wealthy nobles and burghers. Their economic activity and their wealth gave them a feeling of freedom and a sense of individually. But at the same time, these same people had lost something: the security and feeling of belonging which the medieval social structure had offered. They were more free, but they were also more alone. They used their power and wealth to squeeze the last ounce of pleasure out of life; but in doing so, they had to use ruthlessly every means, from physical torture to psychological manipulation, to rule over the masses and to check their competitors within their own class. All human relationships were poisoned by this fierce life-and-death struggle for the maintenance of power and wealth. Solidarity with one's fellow man—or at least with the members of one's own class—was replaced by a cynical detached attitude; other individuals were looked upon as "objects" to be used and manipulated, or they were ruthlessly destroyed if it suited one's own ends. The individual was absorbed by a passionate egocentricity, an insatiable greed for power and wealth. As a result of all this, the successful individual's relation to his own self, his sense of security and confidence were poisoned too. His own self became as much an object of manipulation to him as other persons had become. We have reasons to doubt whether the powerful masters of Renaissance capitalism were as happy and as secure as they are often portrayed. It seems that the new freedom brought two things to them: an increased feeling of strength and at the same time an increased isolation, doubt, scepticism, and—resulting from all these—anxiety. It is the same contradiction that we find in the philosophical writings of the humanists. Side by side with their emphasis on human dignity, individuality, and strength, they exhibited insecurity and despair in their philosophy.”

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Book:Escape from Freedom
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“Since then your sere Majesty and your Lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, neither horned nor toothed. Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen." (Reply to the Diet of Worms, April 18, 1521)”

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Book:Luther's Works: Career of the Reformer III
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“It is an irony still to be appreciated by many scholars that by so maximizing sinfulness (before God every man is guilty of every conceivable sin) Protestants tried to minimize its psychological burden (no man is required to ponder and recite his every actual sin)”

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Book:The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland
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“There was just such a man when I was young—an Austrian who invented a new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it work. He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the civilized world into misery and chaos. But the thing which this fellow had overlooked, my friend, was that he had a predecessor in the reformation business, called Jesus Christ. Perhaps we may assume that Jesus knew as much as the Austrian did about saving people. But the odd thing is that Jesus did not turn the disciples into storm troopers, burn down the Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the blame on Pontius Pilate. On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher was to make ideas available, and not to impose them on people.”

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Book:THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING
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“Most of us have been deeply shaped by the false notion that in order for people to behave better they need to feel worse and be punished. In practice, we see that humans are, in fact, far more likely to change in desirable ways when they are more resourced, not less.”

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Book:Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement
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“Modern civilization is a worn-out vesture: it is not a question of sewing on patches here and there, but of a total and substantial reformation, a trans-valuation of its cultural principles; since what is needed is a change to the primacy of quality over quantity, of work over money, of the human over technical means, of wisdom over science, of the common service of human beings instead of the covetousness of unlimited individual enrichment or a desire in the name of the State for unlimited power.”

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Book:True Humanism
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“Any attempt to “cover everything” would succeed only in producing a completely unmanageable mountain of data. Indeed, in proportion to its increase, which has been enormous in the past half century, the sheer volume of historical scholarship—what Daniel Lord Smail has recently called “the inflationary spiral of research overproduction, coupled with an abiding fear of scholarly exposure for not keeping up with one’s field”—paradoxically militates against comprehension of the past in relationship to the present. A different approach is needed if we are to avoid being overwhelmed by specialized scholarship, the proliferation of which tends to reinforce ingrained assumptions about historical periodization that in turn hamper an adequate understanding of change over time.”

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Book:The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society
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“Catholic gossip and folklore, as one might term it, contributed to this demonizing legend around the conflict with the Protestants. At Geila in Brabant it was reported that the demons suddenly left all the possessed people, so that they could attend Luther's funeral[...] At St. Medard's Church in Paris the Calvinist iconoclasts allegedly broke all the winfows except that 'in gratitude' they left one which showed a red devil. In several other places, including St. Paul's in London, iconoclastic mobs left only depictions of devils untouched.”

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Book:ENCHANTED EUROPE:SUPERSTITION, REASON & RELIGION 1250-1750 PAPER: Superstition, Reason, and Religion 1250-1750
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“God once spoke through the mouth of an ass. I will tell you straight what I think. I am a Christian theologian and I am bound not only to assert, but to defend the truth with my blood and death. I want to believe freely and be a slave to the authority of no one, of a council, a university, or pope. I will confidently confess what appears to me to be true whether it has been asserted by a Catholic or a heretic, whether it has been approved or reproved by a council.”

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Author:Martin Luther
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“I stay, kneeling on the hearthstone, till the clock on the table strikes four with its silvery little chime and I realise that I have been in a trance of prayer for hours. I have prayed and I believe that I have been heard. I have spoken and I believe I have been answered. No priest took my confession or gave me absolution, no church took my fee, no pilgrim badges or miracle cures or little pieces of trumpery helped me to come into the presence of God. I simply asked for His great mercy and I received it, as He promised in the Bible that it should be granted.”

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Book:The Taming of the Queen
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“...Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed all mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes. [Letters to John Taylor, 1814, XVIII, p. 484]”

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Book:The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
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“The teaching authority of the magisterium had been seriously weakened through the obvious difficulties raised for such a concept of authority by the Great Schism, with the result that, in the absence of any magisterial guidance, theological opinions became confused with catholic dogma...Accompanying this erosion of the teaching authority of the church was an apparent disinclination (whether through unwillingness or inability) on the part of the magisterium to take decisive forcible action to suppress opinions of which it disapproved.”

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Book:The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation
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“Paradoxically, the reformed churches embraced the criminalization of sin and shifted towards individualism as a means of freeing people from the onerous demands of the Church. The Church unwittingly propelled Western society into secularism and inaugurated the immanent frame, which remains our primary mindset in the West. Jesus endeavored to free people from a centralized, hierarchical, religious system of laws that benefited the few. As the Church became a principality, it created just such a system.”

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Book:Vocatio: Imaging a Visible Church
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“There is a growing disconnect between those who lead and the grass roots movements of lay mission and service. The Church remains mired in culture wars, wringing its hands over shrinking attendance, and trying to save itself by better budgeting in the wake of shrinking resources. The institutional Church of today struggles to sustain aging structures, repeatedly tries to force uniformity over unity, and desperately attempts to create diversity by legislation at conventions. The world has changed, and we are at a loss for how to respond.”

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Book:Vocatio: Imaging a Visible Church
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“May be the power lies in the hands of the one who holds the gun... so he just presses the trigger whenever the slightest streak of anger passes his mind... and after a few haunting days he roams freely in the country without fear .. and what about the one who faces the wrath and bears the bullets? He leaves a movement behind... but haven't such movements always been ephemeral? Is death the price you need to pay to open the eyes of those who care but just for a couple of days?”

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Author:Sanhita Baruah
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“When, during and after the Reformation, the universities lost their status as so many autonomous parts of the universal church, they lost their independence correspondingly. In Protestant Europe, they came under the jurisdiction of the national churches and of the rapacious national monarchies; in Catholic Europe --although to a lesser extent--they came under the jurisdiction of the reinvigorated and consolidated Papacy, and of the sovereigns who, as in Spain and France, made royal influence over the church establishment within their realms a condition of their support for the Roman cause. The dissolution of medieval universalism meant that learning, like nearly everything else, was forced to submit to new or more rigid denominations. With the complete or partial secularization of society which followed upon the French Revolutionary era, in nearly every country except Britain, the universities were stripped of what remained of their old rights and became little better than state corporations.”

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Book:Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition
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“In principle, to be sure, the Reformation idea of the universal priesthood of all believers meant that not only the clergy but also the laity, not only the theologian but also the magistrate, had the capacity to read, understand, and apply the teachings of the Bible. Yet one of the contributions of the sacred philology of the biblical humanists to the Reformation was an insistence that, in practice, often contradicted the notion of the universal priesthood: the Bible had to be understood on the basis of the authentic original text, written in Hebrew and Greek which, most of the time, only clergy and theologians could comprehend properly. Thus the scholarly authority of the Reformation clergy replaced the priestly authority of the medieval clergy.”

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Book:Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture
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