1.23.2014 MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: a glimpse

27....the state of INDEPENDENT evangelicalism since 1966 has not been
all that he encouraged and urged it to be.
...some subconsciously expected great blessing to crown their secession or separatist stance
and were a little aggrieved when others seemed to see more growth and spiritual prosperity.
the separatist camp often looked uninviting to any would be seceder.

this situation did not remain static.
some went on, as entrenched as ever in their denominations;
others became ever more committed to no compromise separation.
some in the inclusive denominations, however, came to see that triumphalism is one thing,
the triumph of truth quite another.
a more biblical realism emerged.
they became more aware of who and were their true friends were.
at the same time some outside such bodies came to see that
a church which is uncompromised doctrinally can be compromised
just as seriously in other ways;
and that cold or dead orthodoxy is of little use to God or man.
they came to see that blessing cannot be
channelled according to paper lists of ecclesiastical association,
but runs much more along the lines of a people's working relationship with
God, His truth and other Gospel churches.

43...yet deep level isolation from most of his ecclesiastical peers
was a permanent part of the Doctor's experience
and this, i think, gave him a special sense of affinity with the puritans,
who were the odd men out in relation to the anglican establishment
in the century after the reformation.
...he viewed them as classic instances of christian determination to stop at nothing
and to refuse no form of unpopularity and rejection,
in order to get God's church into fully scriptural shape;
...natural as well as spiritual....was powerfully reinforced by the puritan example.

the final point needing to be noted ..is that he was a dyed in the wool reformed churchman
...one who saw that in scripture the church is central to
both the fulfilling of God's purposes and the furthering of His praise
and one for whom therefore THE STATE OF THE CHURCH was always a matter of prime concern.
overall, it is not too much to say that his preaching, ..
started from, revolved round and homed upon just tow areas:
one, the state of the church, for which his final remedy was Holy Ghost revival through a return to the old paths of fatih and practice;
the other, THE STATE OF THE WORLD, for which his final remedy was
the biblical gospel or the three Rs
-ruin, redemption, regeneration- set forth in the Holy Spirits's power.
he described himself as primarily an evangelist,
but in fact the condition of the church weighed upon him as heavily as did that to the lost.
...his ECCESIOLOGY had developed over the years:
ordained a presbyterian and officially one to his dying day,
he became in polity 'A CONVINCED INDEPENDENT'..
and ceased to baptize covenant children,
though retaining affusion as his mode of baptizing adults.
this combination of tenets and procedures was unsual if not unique.
but he WOULD NEVER MAKE POLITY AN ISSUR;
he urged...that evangelical churches should accept without question
each other's varieties of organization and usage
provided these did not directly contradict scripture
and concentrate together on the common quest for
doctrinal purity, spiritual profundity and missionary vitality,
under the guidance and authority of God's written word.
it was thus, to his mind, that true christian unity would be shown
and the church's real health promoted.

at first..he left on one side the question of denominations.
but over the years he came to think that since there was little hope
of the main protestant churches in england and wales accepting biblical reform of faith and life
and seeking spiritual revival together,
since too their links with the world council of churches were compromising their future
(for the Doctor never doubted that a single super church based on doctrinal horse trading
lay at the end of the WCC road)
,the wisest course was for evangelical ministers and congregations to withdraw from these bodies
and form a new 'non denominational' association of the old fashioned Independent type.
he once told me that he had privately believed that something of this kind
would have to happen ever since j. gresham machen
was put out of the ministry of the presbyterian church of the USA in 1936
and thus became a living proof of how resistant to biblical authority and reform
mainline churches can be.
in the 1960s, following the commemoration of the 1662 ejectment of 2000 puritan clergy,
the Doctor began to publicize his view...
his gestures evoked strong feelings both ways.

...how did the Doctor put his case?
essentially, his argument was three pronged:
that separation was prudent in the light of the unattractive ecumenical rapprochements
into which mainline denominations were being drawn;
that separation was an effective and glorious, even necessary, way of manifesting evangelical unity...
that separation was a present duty, since evangelicals wwere guilty by association
of all the evils currently found in their own denominations.

46...in the addresses, 'puritanism and its origins' and 'john knox-the founder of pritanism',
...he rejects what he calls 'the anglican view' of puritanism' as 'essentially pastoral theology'
...and of the puritans as clergy who whild pursuing this interest
stayed in the church of england
even though reforms they sought were not forthcoming.
he rightly observes that this view deals only with how the word 'puritan' was used historically,
not with the human relity to which it was applied.
with m.m. knappen he sees PURITANISM
as a mentality that first appeared as early as william tyndale,
one that starts with INDEPENDENT BIBLE STUDY
and insists on APPLYING THE FRUITS OF THAT STUDY TO THE REORDERING OF
CHURCH LIFE;
a spirit that demands 'REFORMATION WITHOUT TARRYING',
and that will CHALLENGE THE MAGISTRATE'S CONTROL OF THE CHURCH
and BREAK WITH the ECCLESIASTICAL ESTABLISHMENT
WHENEVER NECESSARY...TO SECURE THAT REFORMATION.
APPLICATION OF BIBLICAL TRUTH was and always will be central in puritanism:
'there is no such thing, it seems to me, as a theoretical or academic puritan.
there are people who are interested in puritanism as an idea;
but they are traitors to puritanism unless they apply its teachings;
for application is always the characteristic of the true puritan'.
and the church as such was and remains the prime object of this application;p
the puritan study of piety and pastoral care was, as a matter of history,
'subsidiary to the desire for true reform of the church.
indeed, the underlying argument is that only a truly reformed church...
guarantees the possibility of that full flowering...

52...the Doctor conceived christian experience in puritan terms.
his understanding hinged on two principles;
first, the primacy of the mind in man, as quide to his will and judge of his feelings;
second, the indirectness of the work of the HOLY SPIRT, who teaches and moves us
by FIRST MAKING US ACTIVELY LEARN
and THEN ROUSING US TO MOVE OURSELVES.
when the Spirit is at work, illuminating and imparting,
He stirs mind and feelings together to an affective awareness of divine realities;
God, Christ, grace, pardon, adoption, new creation and the rest;
christianity is therefore 'EXPERIMENTAL' (we would say EXPERIENCIAL)
in its very essence and the idea that the best christianity is that into which least emotion enters
is..shallow and absurd..

53...in teaching holiness, the life of obedience to Christ wherby one abides in Him,
...(he) saw QUIETIST passivity
(a form of religious mysticism taught by Molinos, a spanish priest, in the latter part of the 17th cent.'
requiring extinction of the will, withdrawal from worldly interests and passive meditation on God...)
as a kind of modern demon possessing evangelical minds and needing explicit exorcism.
slogans like 'LET GO AND LET GOD', 'STOP TRYING AND START TRUSTING',
seemed to him from this standpoint so misleading as to be scandalous.
the FORMULAE OF HOLINESS are 'DO THIS', 'DON'T DO THAT AGAIN',
'PRAY FIRST AND THEN ACT' and
WISDOM IS TO GUIDE ALWAYS IN THE APPLICATION OF BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES.
DETERMINATION and EFFORT are needed for the practice of holy living,
since opposition from indwelling sin is multiform and constant, as galatians 5.16-7 shows.
(the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh....)


...SPIRITUAL DEPRESSION,
a condition distinct from though often linked with the clinical depression
...has at its heart unbelief of God's gracious promises.
the remedy for it is to learn to fight the feelings that unbelief begets
by keeping one's spiritual eyes on god's faithfulness to His promises
as He disciplines His children
and by talking to oneself in the style of psalm 42 about the certainty that some day
one will be praising God for turning one's sorrow into joy.

54...ASSURANCE OF GOD'S EVERLASTING LOVE and of heaven to come
was to him the supreme blessing in his life
and the supreme form of assurance, which all christians should seek,
was the direct witness of God's Spirit with our spirit that we are children and heirs of God.
equating this witness of which romans 8.15-7 speaks,
with the seal of the Spirit (ephesians 1.13; 4.30 cf. II corinthians 1.22)
with baptism with the Spirit (john 1.33)
and with receiving the Spirit in some passages of acts,
...commending the puritan doctrine of direct assurance as a neglected truth that we need..to recover..

finally, the puritans, with christians of every age till this (19th) century,
viewed DYING WELL as the crown upon a godly life.

78...the PRIMARY WORK OF CHRIST in His earthly ministry he points out was not
physical healing or social relief or political reform.
the physical healins were 'signs' that pointed to profounder needs and possibilities.
the great thing was, SEEK YOU FIRST THE KINGDOM OF GOD + HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS
in comparison with that, all material, physical and social needs took second place...

80...'every preacher should be, as it were, at least three types or kinds of PREACHER.
thereis the preaching which is primarily EVANGELISTIC.
..there is the preaching which is instructional but mainly EXPERIMENTAL.
...there is more purely INSTRUCTIONAL type of preaching...
...'i am not and have never been, a typical welsh preacher.

83...i felt that in preaching the first thing that you had to do was to
demonstrate to the people that what you were going to do was demonstrate to people
that what you were going to do was very rfelevant and urgently important.
the welsh style of preaching started with a verse
and the preacher then told you the connection and analysed the words,
but the man of the world did not know what he was talking about and was not interested.
i started with the man whom i wanted to listen-
the patient,
a person in trouble,
an ignorant man who has been to the quacks
and so i deal with all that in the introduction.
i wanted to get the listener and THEN come to my exposition.
they started with their exposition and ended with a bit of application....

the rev. leigh powell of canada...recalls taking to westminster chapel a friend,
'an unemotional mathematician',
who st stirred to the depths as the Doctor
'ascended the ladder of pau's logic in romans'.
(he) writes..'as he was preaching he told me,
'i said "ah, yes, but"-and then he answered the but, until i had no buts left'..

86...'lloyd jones was a great logician and clear thinker, but as he himself said,
"no one has ever been 'reasoned' into the kingdom of God".
he preached with zeal and passion, but still many are proof against emotion, however sincere.
the Doctor himself comes to the heart of the matter when he writes,
"true preaching after all is God acting.
it is not just a man uttering words;
it is God using him.
he is being used of God".
this is the unique factor in effective preaching. I corinthians 2.3-5

...consequently the one thing he prayed for,
the one thing he relied on,
the one thing he waited for
and the one thing above all else and beyond most other preachers of his generation
which thousands felt under his preaching
was the unction or anointing  of the Holy Spirit:
that scarcely definable accompaniment of solemn, sacred, searching truth as proceeding from
the eternal presence of God....

113...Lloyd-jones became involved with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students,  IFES

...all member movements of the IFES had to be unreservedly committed to
the supreme authority of the holy scriptures.
sound doctrine, combined with Spirit generated warmth, must charaterise each national affiliate.
but in adition conscious as (lloyd-jones) was of
the possible domination of powerful countries over the weaker ones,
the Doctor guided the general committee to accept the need for an 'open' fellowship.
each (national?) movement must be encouraged to develop its own style of leadership,
suited to its cultural ethos;
no group should impose on another its pattern of work.
so the basic quality of indegeneity was affirmed at the very outset of this organization.
the fact that L-J was welsh helped considerably.
some delegates were amused when he insisted
that he would not allow the english or the church of england to formulate
his christian perception of truth!

114...as chairman, LJ guided his committees with wisdom.
he refused to allow his members to sidetrack on to trivia or petty issues.
he worked at biblical, rather than pragmatic, solutions to the major issues.
yet in spite of his spiritual stature the Doctor was never a dictator.
he listened to debates with sensitivityu and great patience.
he encouraged all members to participate actively in the discussion.
he would sometimes remind those who were articulate in english to consider their brothers
whose mother tongues were different: they had their distinctive contributions to make.

when i speak to those who served on the executive comjmittee under the Doctor's leadership,
they invariably refer to the evening discussions.
these were always introduced by the Doctor himself.
no business items were permitted.
the members were to tackle contemporary issues.
sometimes these might include a critique on the unification of the church as advocated by ecumenicals.
inevitably there would be a stimulating discussion of the presuppositions
adopted by different ecclesiastical camps.
'what then is the biblical view?', he would pertinently challenge his fellow committee members.
on other evenings they might explore current trends in theology, ethics and society.
the Doctor never allowed these topics to remain in the realm of the academic.
the principles deduced and agreed in their debates were applied to student work or to the church at large. ..

117...the delegates who were at the general committee heard him expound I samuel 4.
his message was on THE ABSENCE OF GOD.
it was possible for christians to be so preoccupied with themselves and their activities
-even christian ones-
that they left God out of their reckoning.
that message was used by God's Spirit to convict many of us of sin and insensitivity to His glory.
it resulted in confession and repentance and a new sense of joy.

118..large crowds of students-both british and those from overseas-
flocked to hear the Doctor (at westminster chapel.)
we would furiously scribble notes.
sometimes, indeed, we were admonished not to concentrate on note taking
lest we fail to meet the Lord Himself.
LJ's  preaching always brought us face to face with the triune God.
it also taught us to think biblically.
those of us from overseas found this discipline invaluable when we returned to our home countries.
faced with ethical compromise and with the current fads and fashions of materialistic societies,
how thankful we were to test every thing from scripture....

...'did you know, my friend, the Doctor asked us, that in east africa, when you gave aTESTIMONY
you did not stop at why and how you became a christian?
you carried on right up to today-this is TRUE christianity, my friend.

...but without a doubt, the greatest thing the Doctor has ever said, as far as i am concerned,
was not found in a sermon.
it was in his long prayer one sunday morning, and i have never forgotten it.
whenever i am in a corner, spiritually, and i remember that one sentence,
God's sovereignty just floods my heart and i am released.
many, many people the world over who have heard the Doctor PRAY can say the same....

..he taught themn to recognise the enemy
and the sins that could easily affect and divide the evangelical 'soldiers'.

124...the way in which he presided over committee meetings enabled future generations of IFES leaders
to major on the issues that really matter.
the fundamentals of the faith have alwys been in the forefront of the IFES.
secondary matters have obviously their importance and place.
but these were never overstressed by leaders in a way
that would lead to unnecessary schism and division.
the Doctor taught us the crucial need to be united in the Lord and in His word.

and finally, his availabilityu as a counsellow and friend meant a lot to younger leaders.
those of us who are in this position require encouragement from time to time
-and sometimes rebuke-
from an older saint who cares for us.
the Doctor's availability to leaders of student movements, and his godly counsel, sustained many of us
and we thank God for his life and ministry.

...friday night discussions which filled the institute hall..to hear him make the audience work out
THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TO THE QUESTIONS they had  RAISED.
he knew how to teach not only so that you did not forget,
but so that in future you knew how to begin on any problems which came up.
it was always scripturally based.
'you think that paul may have said something about it?
paul wrote a number of letters, which one was it in? ephesians?
very well, there are six chapters in ephesians, which chapter?
and so on, until the exact quotation was found
and then put in its context,
and then compared with other parts of the bible on the same subject,
until finally we were all quite clear what the bible was saying,
not because HE had told us, bu7t because he had made us work it through for ourselves.

then we had to apply it-and here he would try to make us separate our well worn prejudices
from the balance of biblical teaching.
'yes indeed, i understand that point of view, mr. catherwood
-and holding that, as you do, you would also logically hold the following, would you not?
you would cautiously assent.
'and that being so...'
and as he took you another step down your road of error you would begin to see where you were going and would hesitate.
'come, come, mr. catherwood, you do agree that that is the logic of your position, do you not?'
and having seen at last were your logic took you, you would be forced back to the beginning
and, having recanted in full public view, would never make that mistake again!
he once apologized for pressing me so hard.
he said, 'you can take it, but there are others who hold the views you are putting who could not take it
and i'm really teaching them through you'.

as i learnt myself later on, discussions are not easy to lead.
in a talk or sermon, YOU map out your own logical route
and you don't have to prepare for all the objections and diversions.
but in leading a discussion anything may arise,
and if you've not got the whole framework within which your doctrinal theme sits,
then you're lost.
if the line of thought is irrelevant, you have to persuade the contributor, very gently,
that it really is another subject.
if it is relevant, you have to know where and how if fits, so that the contributor can be led to the connection
and that facet of the truth can be properly illuminated.
but that requires a wide knowledge of the subject and of all the arguments
and that needs not only a well stocked mind, but the ability to assess
arguments against the framework of doctrine
and the spiritual sensitivity to detect in those arguments a tendency to truth or to error.

the Doctor's vast reading not only gave him a knowledge of the arguments,
but his supreme medical skill as a diagnostician gave him a superbly analytical and logical mind.
you could see him separating out the strands in the argument,
dividing the false from the true, showing why certain strands were dangerous and would not hold,
which strands were true and could be relied on
and where they needed strengthening with others before they could be put to the test.

he showed our generation clearly that the strand of pietistic evangelicalism,
the muscular christianity of the varsity and public school camps,
the devotional piety of the brethren,
the emotional dedication of the great conventions (ie. keswick)
the revivalism of the big interdenominational missions (ie billy graham crusades)
was not enough.
he, almost alone, stopped the retreat in face of the liberal humanism
which the church had not dared to meet head on.
he led the evangelical wing of the church back into the center of theological argument,
not by conceding a thing, but by going back to its foundation in the reformation.
he, almost alone to begin with, wove in again the strong central strand of reformed theology
to evangelical teaching
-a strand which had almost snapped off in the late 19th century,
when spurgeon seemed to lose to the rising tide of liberalism in the 'downgrade' controversy.
that reformed theology which illuminated the immense logical sweep of the christian gospel,
like the great mutually supporting arches of a majestic cathedral,
came as a revelation to those of us brought up on a diet of blessed thoughts and texts for the day.

and having read through calvin and the westminster confession,
through hodge and berkhof,
having seen that the reformed doctrine of the sovereignty of God the creator
transformed the natural sciences and indeed the whole of society,
having seen evolution as no more than speculative metaphysics
and liberalism and higher criticism for old fashioned heresies,
we tended to forget that the majestic fashioned rood of christian doctine was to cove and protect
the human relationships of a LIVING CHURCH.
bu LJ did not.
all the doctrine was dead without the strand of love,
a passionate love for God
-a love which God would return,
flooding us with an overwhelming sense of his presence
and a love for each other,
by which all men would know that we were God's children.

130..there was the nurse in bed at her parents' house, being looked after by a fellow nurse.
she had a soaring temperature which came down to normal every evening by the time the GP called round.
no one could make sense of the symptoms.
LJ got everyone out of the sick room and asked the nurse, 'why did the hospital dismiss you?
she hadn't dared to tell her parents
and had come home with a feigned illness
and with the other partner in collusion to report the high temperature and maintain their desperate cover.
LJ looked at the patient, not at the temperature chart and knew she wasn't ill.
my recollection is that he prescribed a speedy recovery followed by a dose of moral courage.

...what interested him in politics was, i think, the clash of personality.
for him politics was people.
he did not believe that there was a particularly christian view of politics.
it was more a matter of the capacity to make the right judgments.
..what Doctor did object to was the hypocrisy of a politician disregarding his marriage vows
and then taking a high moral tone about the sanctity of contracts.

139...we have a photo graph of LJ in the family (daughter speaking)
-it is my favourite of all the photographs..one of him in profile, reading.
and that is exactly how i think of him.
this oasis of peace in the middle of all the life that was going on around us,
this peaceful man sitting there with a book on his knee,
enjoying it and wanting us to enjoy it as well..

143..again he felt very strongly that you should never read just to get ideas which you then regurgitated.
he said, 'we are not meant to be gramophone records or tape recording machines'.
i remember sometimes his expressing some anxiety about various speakers who,
because of their love for the writers of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries,
would produce the thoughts of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries,
often in the language of the 17th, 18th and 19th century.
he used to worry sometimes about a person.
...he said, 'in a sense one should not go to books for ideas;
the business of BOOKs IS TO MAKE ONE THINK...
the function of reading is to stimulate us in general,
to stimulate us to think, to think for ourselves.
'take all you read'  he said and masticate it thoroughly'.
it is rather like bacon, isn't it?
you know how he said that some books are meant to be tasted, others to be swallowed
-and some..are to chewed and digested.
that was the reading that my father approved of.
you chewed and you digested your books,
so that they became part of you.
you were then stimulated.
you though and what came out was, as it were, your quintessence of all the reading,
but it was yours. (note: you not only spoke better, as LJ's daughter goes on to say, but you lived differently..)

148...also...'he said, 'what then is the main purpose and function of reading?
it is to provide information.
he read widely for information.

..our younger son, as many teenagers do, at one point flirted dangerously with
transcendental meditation.
he was talking endlessly about it, of course, discussing it with everybody
and saying he had been reading these marvelous books that would set the world right,
and it was all great...
so my father said, 'well, now what are these books?'
this is the great thing about grandparents, isn't it, they have time to talk.
and so jonathan produced a book by a man called lobsang rampa
and my father said, 'i'll take that book and read it'.
so he took the book..and he read it from cover to cover.
he did say that he had a slightly uncomfortable feeling while doing so.
it was a little paperback, with a picture of a sort of chinese face on the cover.
the book was called The Third Eye and in the chinese face there was an eye in the middle of the forehead
-a most bizarre looking cover, hideous with this eye glaring out.
..he took notes on it and when he came back he went through it with jonathan.

in other words, our tendency so often with young ones is to say,
'for goodness' sake, that's all rubbish, you'll forget about that.
that's nothing, you'll grow out of it'
this was not at all true of my father.
he wanted to know just exactly what it was that was getting hold of this boy
and so he went through the book.
he said where the points were good
and pointed out where they were dangerous.
and because he had read it, he knew the book far better than jonathan.
and as a result, the information that he had acquired made him able to deal with this kind of situation.

153..now , on the whole, if people do a lot of reading they are told,
'when you get tired go out and have a walk, play a game of tennis or watch TV or something'.
not my father.
he has a sentence which i think is very revealing.
he says, 'the mind must be given relief and rested.
but to relieve your mind does not mean that you stop reading;
read something different'...LJ would read medical journals...

...when LJ read..'he always wanted to know the other man's point of view better than he knew it himself.
and because he read these writers so thoroughly he always advised us...
to BE QUITE CERTAIN WHAT A MAN DIDN'T SAY AS MUCH AS WHAT HE DID.
you know, one would read and get taken over by, a certain writer.
'my goodness, we would comment, he says ABCDE'
'yes, my father would reply, but he doesn't say FGHIJ'.
so he would read these philosophical books and he would read all the journals;
theological journals of every shade and colour would arrive in the house.
he would read them and reading the reviews, he would have ideas for his own reading.
not only that.
he felt that it was IMPORTANT FOR US ALL as christians
TO KNOW WHAT (IS) GOING ON IN THE WORLD around us.

155...'i was reading english at oxford at the time and i remember quite well getting myself into terrible trouble
by attacking chaucer for writing some story that i felt he shouldn't have written
and more or less calling him a dirty old man.
i didn't quite, but i very nearly did.
and..the wrath of the tutor came upon my head
and i remember telling my father this, rather thinking that i had been suffering as a christian, as it were.
'not at all', he said, 'you are not handling your literature properly'.
he believed in this balance;
you looked at literature as literature ...
to see what the style did,
what the content was,
what the purpose of the man was in writing it.
...he was ..good at giving the right book to the right person.
...in Preaching and Preachers...he says that if somebody is introspective and slightly given to depression,
you do not give him a book that is
thundering out the message of conviction of sin and the total depravity of man and so on:
..he says, you may well drive him mad.

170...'the christian's supreme desire should be not simply to be forgiven and to be blessed
but to know and rejoice in God Himself.
LJ writes..'there are many examples of this in the bible.
psalm 42.1,2 expresses it perfectly,
'as the harrt panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God'.
that man is crying out for this direct knowledge of God,
this immediate experience3 of God.
his soul 'panteth', he is 'thirsting' for Him, the living God.
not God as an idea, not god as a source and fount of blessing,
but the living Person Himself.
do we know this?
do we hunger for Him and thirst for Him?
are our souls panting after Him?
this is a very profound matter and the terrible thing is
that it is possible to go through life praying  day by day
and yet never realizing that the supreme point in christian experience is to come face to face with God,
to worship Him in the Spirit
and in a spiritual manner
...is the greatest desire of our hearts and our highest ambition,
beyond all other blessings and experiences,
just to know that we are there before Him and that we know Him and are enjoying Him?

...174..the Doctor was undeviating in his insistence on the doctrine of the new testament
as the sole standard for christian truth,
the absolute authenticity of which flows from this fact,
that the truth the apostles communicate to us in its pges is precisely the truth
they themselves received from the Lord, who is Himself the Truth.
'the test of truth is its apostolicity, he declared.
'the gospel of Jesus Christ as announced and taught in the new testament, he added,
claims nothing less than that it comes with the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself
who gave it to these menh who, in turn, preached it and caused it to be written.
here is the only standard.
it is still the only standard.
...'it was his first principle' that 'every teaching is to be tested by the teaching of the new testament,
not by feelings, not by experience, not by results, not by what other people are saying and doing'.

wrong doctrine, he asserted, was generally attributable either to a diminishment or to an expansion of apostolic truth
and was recognizable by the insistent emphasis it placed on one particular idea or practice.
(ie. *adult baptism by immersion is essential to salvation...
*the absolute necessity of speaking with tongues if you are to be sure that you have received the Holy Spirt
*sometimes in connection with physical healing in the teaching that no christian should ever be ill...
*the cult of mary and the saints...etc)

259...*'augustine was greater than calvin.
calvin is the more complete; no thanks to him for that, for calvin was standing on augustine's shoulders,
augustine on his own feet'.
*'hyper calvinism is all house and no door.
arminianism is all door and no house!'
*God will neither take the blame of sin, nor alienate or split the praise of grace'.
*'i preach a free gospel to every man or i don't preach the gospel at all,
but i know that its acceptance without the help of the Spirit is an impossiblity...
calvinism is not inconsistent with a free gospel'.
...from william knight's Colloquia Peripatetica.