Learning in Christ's School
Ralph Venning maps the Christian life onto four grades in a schoolhouse, tracing believers from newborn babes through little children and young men to spiritually mature fathers in the faith, each with its own weaknesses, strengths, and lessons. Drawing on the categories John uses in his first epistle, Venning shows that every stage belongs to God's family even as he presses every reader onward toward maturity in Christ.
Based on Christ's School, also published as Learning in Christ's School (1675)
Puritan quotes
Quotes by Ralph Venning
“The fathers, the young men, the little children, and the babes have this in common, that they are of God's family and of the household of faith. They are all in Christ's school, though not in the same class.”
“God's Word and God's Spirit always agree and are of the same mind. The Spirit of God who gave the Holy Scripture cannot say one thing here and another in your heart.”
“Sin, in being contrary to God, is contrary to man, for what crosses God's glory is opposed to man's happiness.”
“Sin is the quintessence of evil; it has made all the evils that there are & is itself worse than all evils it has made. It is so evil that it is impossible to make it good or lovely by all the arts that can be used.”
“None of God's elect die before they are converted.”
“Sin does not please men whether they are full or fasting.”
“To be merciful to [indwelling] sin is to be cruel to yourself.”
“Oh, learn to pity your own soul, for he who sins offends and wrongs God, but also wrongs and destroys his own soul.”
“To maintain an opinion because it is thine, and not because it is true, is to prefer thyself above the truth.”
“All the beauty of the world, 'tis but skin deep.”
