Philip Schaff Quotes

“To the first class belong the Gospels and Acts; to the second, the Epistles; to the third, the Revelation.”

— Philip Schaff

“The apostolic writings are of three kinds: historical, didactic, and prophetic.”

— Philip Schaff

“Jesus Christ is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all. In the Gospels he walks in human form upon the earth, and accomplishes the work of redemption.”

— Philip Schaff

“Christ himself wrote nothing, but furnished endless material for books and songs of gratitude and praise.”

— Philip Schaff

“The New Testament presents, in its way, the same union of the divine and human as the person of Christ. In this sense also 'the word became flesh, and dwells among us.'”

— Philip Schaff

The living Church of the redeemed is his book. He founded a religion of the living spirit, not of a written code, like the Mosaic law. Yet his words and deeds are recorded by as honest and reliable witnesses as ever put pen to paper.

— Philip Schaff

It is more than a book, it is an institution which rules the Christian world.

— Philip Schaff

“The style of the Bible in general is singularly adapted to men of every class and grade of culture, affording the child the simple nourishment for its religious wants, and the profoundest thinker inexhaustible matter of study.”

— Philip Schaff

“The New Testament evinces its universal design in its very, style, which alone distinguishes it from all the literary productions of earlier and later times.”

— Philip Schaff

“Without His Resurrection the death of Christ would be of no avail, and His grave would be the grave of all our hopes. A gospel of a dead Savior would be a miserable failure and delusion. The Resurrection is the victory of righteousness and life over sin an death.”

— Philip Schaff

“Calvinism emphasizes divine sovereignty and free grace; Arminianism emphasizes human responsibility. The one restricts the saving grace to the elect; the other extends it to all men on the condition of faith. Both are right in what they assert; both are wrong in what they deny. If one important truth is pressed to the exclusion of another truth of equal importance, it becomes an error, and loses its hold upon the conscience. The Bible gives us a theology which is more human than Calvinism and more divine than Arminianism, and more Christian than either of them.”

— Philip Schaff

“Freedom of religion is one of the greatest gifts of God to man, without distinction of race and color. He is the author and lord of conscience, and no power on earth has a right to stand between God and the conscience.”

— Philip Schaff

The resurrection of Christ is therefore emphatically a test question upon which depends the truth or falsehood of the Christian religion. It is either the greatest miracle or the greatest delusion which history records.

— Philip Schaff

The Son of God, prompted by the same infinite love, laid aside his divine glory and mode of existence, emptied himself exchanged the form of God for the form of a servant, humbled himself and became obedient, even unto the death of the cross.

— Philip Schaff

“The United States furnishes the first example in history of a government deliberately depriving itself of all legislative control of religion.”

— Philip Schaff

“Religion and liberty are inseparable. Religion is voluntary, and cannot, and ought not to be forced. This is a fundamental article of the American creed, without distinction of sect or party. Liberty, both civil and religious, is an American instinct. Such liberty is impossible on the basis of a union of church and state, where the one of necessity restricts or controls the other. It requires a friendly separation, where each power is entirely independent in its own sphere.”

— Philip Schaff

“Those who make pictures of the Savior, who is God as well as man in one inseparable person, either limit the incomprehensible Godhead to the bounds of created flesh, or confound his two natures like Eutyches, or separate them, like Nestorius, or deny his Godhead, like Arius; and those who worship such a picture are guilty of the same heresy and blasphemy.”

— Philip Schaff

“In our country we ask no toleration for religion and its free exercise, but we claim it as an inalienable right.”

— Philip Schaff

“If Christians are ever to be united, they must be united in Christ, their living head and the source of their spiritual life.”

— Philip Schaff

“One man with truth on his side is stronger than a majority in error, and will conquer in the end.”

— Philip Schaff

“The history of the Church is the rise and progress of the kingdom of heaven upon earth, for the glory of God and the salvation of the world.”

— Philip Schaff

“Who touches money touches dirt; and the less religion has to do with it, the better.”

— Philip Schaff

“The person of Christ is to me the greatest and surest of all facts.”

— Philip Schaff