Divine right

“ We know that the religion is right which leads to union with righteousness. God is our wise nature, best thought, and righteous act. May God grant us unity with the divine spirit and immortality in himself!
"This religion of the Wise One cleanses the believer from every evil thought and sinful deed. I bow before the God of heaven in repentance if I have offended in thought, word, or act—intentionally or unintentionally—and I offer prayers for mercy and praise for forgiveness. I know when I make confession, if I purpose not to do again the evil thing, that sin will be removed from my soul. ”

“ But when we, in writing or conversation, say that virtue is grounded on the divine will, we should at the same time include in the complex idea of it, that the divine will which constituted virtue, was eternally and infinitely reasonable. ”

“ Few seem to understand that it is to love truth, sincerity, justice, benevolence—all those divine and heavenly principles which come from God, and which, when received by men, make them angels—images and likenesses of the Heavenly Father. Nor has it been, nor is it now, generally known that these divine principles are truly loved, only so far as they are carried into practice—ultimated in our daily lives—made governing principles of action in all our intercourse and transactions with our fellow-men. ”

“ The principal object of divine law is to render man holy. "Be ye holy, as I am holy," says the Lord. This holiness consists in perfect love of God and man. This charity is the accomplishment of the Law. It is, then, by the practice that we become holy and resemble God. Hence it was necessary that the Old Law should contain different moral precepts regarding the virtues necessary for the perfect happiness of man. These moral precepts are all contained in the ten commandments. These commandments are a full explanation of the natural law. ”

“ This is what gives to Christianity, in its simplest and most unlettered form, its force and life. Sin and suffering for sin; a sacrifice, itself mysterious, offered mysteriously to the Divine Nemesis, or Law of Sin—dread, undefined, unknown, yet sure and irresistible, with the iron necessity of law. . . . Virtue, truth, love, are not mere names; they stand for actual qualities which are well known and recognized among men. These qualities are the elements of an ideal life, of that absolute and perfect life of which our highest culture can catch but a glimpse. ”

“ The arbitrary and incomprehensible will of the deity may, in ultimate analysis, be the changeful basis of right and wrong, but, if so, divine justice differs from human not merely in degree but likewise in character, and not apparently to its advantage. The tuneful Psalmist had sung in ecstatic wonder at the mercy of God: "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour." ”

“ But these same writers tell us that, while we have this natural power sufficient without Divine grace to form a basis of obligation, “we are entirely dependent upon God’s grace for moral power”—in other words, according to the definition of moral power, we are dependent upon grace for the exercise of our natural power—and since natural power means the faculties of the understanding, will, and conscience—the statement is simply and evidently this: we are dependent upon Divine grace for the exercise of our understanding, conscience, and will, in making a holy choice. ”

“ Just so far as it was in the deepest and purest sense 'natural' religion,—just so far as it emancipated the moral forces of humanity,—was it quick and quickening.... Human nature, under liberty, will vindicate itself as a divine creation. ”

“ To reveal the universal and perpetual law of grace, which God's common beneficence to the children of men, such as puts them into a better state than that of devils, gives us some ground to expect. The divine authority likewise, which in this book commands our belief and obedience, is universal and perpetual, and knows no limits, either of time or place ”

“ These moral perfections constitute God a proper object of religious adoration, and without which no worship would be due or could be rendered to him. The Divine Nature is the foundation of that worship which we, as rational beings, are under obligations to perform; and the revelation of the will of God, with which he has graciously favored us in the Scripture, is the constant rule of his worship. ”

“ And so, by equal reasoning, while what is commonly called good might without the existence of God be conceivable in the world, yet it could not properly bear the name of righteousness, for the simple reason that, in order to deserve this name, according to the Biblical way of thinking, it needs first to be placed in the light of the divine nature, the divine will, the divine judgment. ”

“ Section I Concerning common and distinctive theology, and what is the Divine Union and distinction.
LET then the self-existent Goodness be sung from the Oracles as defining and manifesting the whole supremely-Divine-Subsistence in its essential nature. For, what else is there to learn from the sacred theology, when it affirms that the Godhead Itself, leading the way, says, "Why dost thou ask me concerning the Good?----None is Good except God alone." ”

“ Of that Equilibrium in the Deity, between the Infinite Divine WISDOM and the Infinite Divine POWER, from which result the Stability of the Universe, the unchangeableness of the Divine Law, and the Principles of Truth, Justice, and Right which are a part of it; and the Supreme Obligation of the Divine Law upon all men, as superior to all other law, and forming a part of all the laws of men and nations. ”

“ The service of the living God must flow from a new principle of life in the soul. The Divine word must be the rule of our actions. The Divine will must be consulted and obeyed. We must remember that God is holy, and jealous of His honour. The consideration that He is everywhere, and sees everything, and will bring every work into judgment, must fill us with reverence and godly fear. An ardent love for His law, and His character must supplant the love of sin, and prompt to a cheerful and impartial obedience. ”

“ And which way can these souls possibly be comforted, but by a divine testimony, (not that they are good, or sincere, or conformable to the scripture in heart and life, but) that God justifieth the ungodly: him that ’till the moment he is justified, is all ungodly, void of all true holiness? Him that worketh not, that worketh nothing that is truly good, ’till he is conscious that he is accepted, not for any works of righteousness which he hath done, but by the mere, free mercy of God? ”

“ And still further,—what is divine and heavenly flows into the sincere acts of his moral life, and into the just acts of his civil life, and makes them spiritual; since the man then does them from the Divine, because for the sake of the Divine. ”

“ To the Christian, on the other hand, the dread enemy is sin—that moral obliquity which differentiates the soul from the perfect ethical beauty of God. In consonance with this, the salvation which is exalted as the summum bonum, to be forever sought by the one, is self-knowledge, by the other self-realization in conformity to the Divine Will. ”

“ And so the Holiness of God is that infinite Perfection by which He keeps Himself free from all that is not Divine, and yet has fellowship with the creature, and takes it up into union with Himself, destroying and casting out all that will not yield itself to Him. ”

“ We will now consider the reciprocal obligations of ethics to theology; and, in the first place, to Natural Religion. Pure theism attaches the Divine sanction to the verdicts of conscience, makes them the will, the voice of God, enforces them by his authority, and elevates the conception of virtue by establishing a close kindred between the virtuous man and the Ruler of the universe. ”

“ It must be the same, because there can no more be any medium between sin and righteousness, or between being right and being wrong, in a moral sense, than there can be a medium between straight and crooked in a natural.”88 This is applied to the first man as he came from the hand of the Creator, and is designed to show that he was created with true holiness or virtue in his heart. ”

“ Therefore while men disregard this inward divine principle, of grace and truth, and do not believe in it, as essential and sufficient to salvation; they are in danger of becoming either Atheists, or Deists—these are also in danger of becoming so blinded as not to believe in that necessary and very essential doctrine of perfection, as contained in that clear, rational, and positive injunction of our dear Lord: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” ”

“ Among the ethical qualities of divine perfection set forth in scripture for man's imitation Holiness stands preeminent. God, the perfect being, is the type of holiness, and men are holy in proportion as their lives are Godlike. This conception of holiness is fundamental in the Old Testament. It is summed up in a command almost identical with that of our Lord: 'Be ye holy, for I am holy.' [42] Holiness, as Christianity understands it, is the name for the undimmed lustre of God's ethical perfection. God is 'the Holy one'—the alone 'good' in the absolute sense. ”

“ This rule clearly interprets God as divine Principle, — as Life, represented by the Father; as Truth, represented by the Son; as Love, represented by the Mother. Every mortal at some period, here or hereafter, must grapple with and overcome the mortal belief in a power opposed to God. ”

“ After thus indicating in general outline the essential features of this culminating teaching of ethical religion, it may be well to trace its historical development. It will be found to be, not an original speculation of our own teacher, but a precious belief held by elect souls in all ages to embody the truth of the relations between what is called the Divine and the human. ”

“ For the wisdom and power of the Deity are displayed in carrying on designs of the greatest good: and the existence of moral evil has, undoubtedly, occasioned a more full, perfect, and glorious discovery of the infinite perfections of the divine nature, than Could otherwise have been made to the view of creatures. ”

“ The real ground of strife between religious and rational morality lies, or lay, in the old doctrine that the standard of right is divinely "revealed," and that we do right in virtue of divine command. ”

“ He whose heart is bent upon serving God, doing His will and practising the moral precepts of our Lord, will soon recognise and feel within his mind and heart that the doctrine proposed by our Lord is and must be divine. ”

“ The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is—unique, [5] as I am unique.
Nothing is more to me than myself! ”

“ Since therefore this appealing to our own reason, as the absolutely perfect rule of all that ought to pass between God and man, has an appearance of a pride of the worst kind, and such as unites us both in temper and conduct with the fallen spirits of darkness, it highly concerns every pleader on that side, to consider what grounds he proceeds upon, and to ask himself, what there is in the state and condition of human nature, to oblige him to think, that nothing can be divine or holy, or necessary, in religion, but what human reason dictates? ”

“ Princes may make laws and repeal them, but they can neither make nor destroy virtue, and how indeed should they be able to do what is impossible to the Deity himself? Virtue being as immutable in its nature as the divine will which is the ground of it.*
* Virtue did not derive its nature merely from the omnipotent will of God, but also from the eternal truth and moral fitness of things; ”

“ And so the New Theology objects to all moral views of the atonement which make provisions for waiving any legal process or infliction of penalty, and holds that no new provision of grace or special scheme of redemption for the recovery of man from the power and dominion of sin was necessary; that all the elements for the restoration from sin to righteousness are included in the provisions of Nature, and are sufficient when quickened and invigorated by the Divine Spirit to reinstate men in holiness and in the favor of God. ”

“ The course which the divine dispensations suggest is the course to which divine revelation has afiixed its most solemn and sacred sanction. We are too much accustomed to consider the men of other countries as if they came not within the scope of the sympathies and dispositions of the religion of Christ. ”

“ Justifying faith implies, not only a divine evidence or conviction, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself but a sure trust and confidence, that Christ died for my sins, that he loved me and gave himself for me. ”

“ To impart to that spirit a right direction, to sanctify it with holy motives, to temper it to righteous purposes, to shape it to ends which lie beyond p. 164the limits of this beginning of our existence, will be the endeavour of those who desire to make the cultivation of intellect conducive to moral improvement, and to establish the kingdom of Christ at once in the understanding and affections of mankind. ”

“ Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow. ”