The effect of every clerical interposition invariably was, and must be, to make religion external and to smother it with sacerdotal forms. Only where all priestly intervention disappears, where God’s sovereign election from all eternity binds the inward soul directly to God Himself, and where the ray of divine light enters straightway into the depth of our heart-only there does religion, in its most absolute sense, gain its ideal realization.#
The entire development of science in our age presupposes a cosmos which does not fall a prey to the freaks of chance, but exists and develops from one principle, according to a firm order, aiming at one fixed plan.#
Only when there is faith in the organic interconnection of the Universe, will there be also a possibility for science to ascend from the empirical investigation of the special phenomena to the general, and from the general to the law which rules over it, and from that law to the principle, which is dominant over all.#
For though God is said to change his determinations (so that in a tropical sense the Holy Scripture says even that God repented), this is said with reference to man’s expectation, or the order of natural causes, and not with reference to that which the Almighty had foreknown that he would do.#
It is true that wicked men do many things contrary to God’s will; but so great is his wisdom and power, that all things which seem adverse to his purpose do still tend toward those just and good ends and issues which he himself has foreknown. And consequently, when God is said to change his will, as when, for example, he becomes angry with those to whom he was gently, it is rather they than he who are changed, and they find him changed insofar as their experience of suffering at his hand is new, as the sun is changed to injured eyes, and becomes as it were fierce from being mild, and hurtful from being delightful, though in itself it remains the same as it was.#
Not only were these evil institutions God’s ordinances, but wicked men who directed them were recognized as his servants. They constituted the constituency or the subjects of these Divine institutions because God used them to accomplish his work of punishing sin, and destroying his enemies. In this sense, God ordained all the institutions of earth, and used the vilest sinners of earth as his servants. He used the rebellious and the wicked to punish his disobedient children, and to destroy others whose measure of wickedness was full; then in turn, he punished the wicked individuals and peoples that he had used, for doing the very work he had used them to accomplish, because they did it from a wicked, selfish, and cruel spirit.#
As God appoints ministers having characters fitted to do the work for which he appoints them, and Nero was a chosen minister to do this work, it is clear that a true humble faithful Christian could not be chosen to do the same work.#
[Romans 13] constitutes at best acquiescence in that government’s dominion, not the establishing of a given state by God or the installation of a particular sovereign by providential disposition.#
That God orders and uses the powers does not reveal anything new about what government should be or how we should respond to government.#
God preached works to the end that sin and death may be taken away, and we may be saved. But God hidden in majesty neither deplores nor takes away death, but works life and death, and all in all; nor has he set bounds to himself by his word, but has kept himself free over all things.#
By the omnipotence of God I mean, not the power by which he omits to do many things that he could do, but the active power by which he mightily works all in all.#
Predestination made it fundamentally impossible for the State really to promote religion by intolerance. It could not thereby save a single soul. Only the idea of the glory of God gave the Church occasion to claim its help in the suppression of heresy. Now the greater the emphasis on the membership of the preacher, and all those that partook of the communion, in the elect, the more intolerable became the interference of the State in the appointment of the clergy.#