quotations about doctrine
Do not believe anything merely because you are told it is so, because others believe it, because it comes from Tradition, or because you have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect. Believe, take for your doctrine, and hold true to that, which, after serious investigation, seems to you to further the welfare of all beings.
JEAN-YVES LELOUP
Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic Between Buddhism and Christianity
False doctrine can never be corrected by fire and sword.
JULIAN
attributed, Day's Collacon
Live to explain thy doctrine by thy life.
MATTHEW PRIOR
Practical Discourse Concerning Death
If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to get to heaven or the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine.
ERIC HOFFER
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Good conduct arises out of good doctrine.
JOHN STOTT
Ephesians: Building a Community in Christ
No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth. It must be the one word from which all things are and all things speak. Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth.
ERIC HOFFER
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Doctrine is the frame-work of life; it is the skeleton of truth, to be clothed and rounded out by the living graces of a holy life. It is only the lean creature whose bones become offensive.
ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON
Grace and Glory
For his religion, it was fit
To match his learning and his wit;
'Twas Presbyterian true blue;
For he was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints, whom all men grant
To be the true Church Militant;
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery;
And prove their doctrine orthodox,
By Apostolic blows and knocks.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Hudibras
Be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.
BIBLE
Ephesians 4:14
Do not talk of doctrine. Give me doctrine ground into experience. Doctrine is good; but experience is better. Experiential doctrine is the true doctrine which comforts and which edifies.
CHARLES H. SPURGEON
The Spurgeon Series 1855 & 1856: Unabridged Sermons in Modern Language
The question is not whether a doctrine is beautiful, but whether it is true. When we want to go to a place, we don't ask whether the road leads through a pretty country, but whether it is the right road, the road pointed out by authority.
JULIUS CHARLES HARE
Guesses at Truth
We should no more tolerate false doctrine than we would tolerate sin.
J. C. RYLE
Knots Untied: Being Plain Statements on Disputed Points in Religion from the Standpoint of an Evangelical Churchman