It is God’s word that does convert, quicken, comfort, and build up, or, on the other side, wound and beat down. What is the reason that there was so great an alteration made by the ministry of Christ and His disciples, by the apostles and others after them, indeed, by Luther, and other ministers of reformed churches? They did not preach traditions of elders like the scribes; nor men’s inventions like the Roman Catholics do. They preached the pure word of God. The more purely God’s word is preached, the more deeply it pierces and the more kindly it works.

William Gouge (1575–1653), Pfarrer

Related Bible passage: HEB.4.12

Topics: The Bible & the Word of God, Church & Congregation

Occasions: For Reflection

William Gouge

William Gouge (1575–1653) war ein englischer puritanischer Theologe und Geistlicher, der über vier Jahrzehnte an St. Ann Blackfriars in London predigte und maßgeblich am Westminster-Bekenntnis mitwirkte. Bekannt wurde er für seinen monumentalen Kommentar zum Hebräerbrief sowie für seine Abhandlung über christliche Familienethik, deren streng patriarchales Rollenverständnis bereits von Zeitgenossen und heute kritisiert wird. Heutigen Bibellesern begegnet er vor allem in konservativ-reformierten Kreisen als klassischer Vertreter puritanischer Schriftauslegung und praktischer Alltagsethik.

All quotes by William Gouge (7)

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I read the Bible the way I harvest my apple tree: I shake it, and what falls down and is ripe, I take. The rest I leave hanging for now.

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The Bible is the cradle wherein Christ is laid.

Martin Luther

The law is divine and holy. Let the law have its glory, but yet no law, be it never so divine and holy, ought to teach me that I am justified, and shall live through it. I grant it may teach me that I ought to love God and my neighbor; also to live in love, soberness, patience, etc., but it ought not to show me how I should be delivered from sin, the devil, death, and hell. Here I must take counsel of the gospel. I must hearken to the gospel, which teaches me, not what I ought to do but what Jesus Christ the Son of God hath done for me: that He suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel wills me to receive this, and to believe it. And this is the truth of the gospel. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.

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