6
" But God’s topics, the fall, the curse, sin, death, immortality, duty, redemption, faith, hope, judgment, hell, heaven, these transcendent subjects have an abiding, an overmastering common interest All men share it, because they are men. These assert their power over the human soul under every condition, and in spite of man’s natural carnality, with a force akin to their vastness. Honour God then, my young brethren, by urging no other truths than those he has given you, urging them with disinterested fidelity, and he will honour your ministry. "
― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching
9
" Now, for the preacher, the chief of these secondary sources is the testimony of the sacred Scriptures. Their authority as our rule of faith is inferred immediately from their inspired character; for if God is perfect truth, as must be assumed, or else all search for truth anywhere is preposterous; and if the Bible is God’s word, then it is infallible, and of course authoritative over the soul. But is the inspiration of the Bible self-evident to its readers? I answer, it is not immediately self-evident – that is to say, the proposition, “The Bible is inspired,” is not axiomatic – but it is readily found to be true upon bringing the internal and external evidences of it under the light of our self-consciousness, our mental and our moral intuitions. This is but saying that God, in revealing himself to man, has clothed his revelation with an amount of reasonable and moral evidence adapted to the creature’s nature, and sufficient, when inspected, to produce a perfect conviction. Thereupon the word of God assumes its place as of plenary authority over the soul in the department of which it professes to teach, that of our religious beliefs, duties, and redemption. "
― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching
10
" If, for instance, a Presbyterian pastor begins: “Methodists teach that a true believer may totally and finally fall away from a state of grace: this I shall now refute,” every person of that persuasion in the house will naturally feel as though he were personally assailed. But had this pastor advanced the opposite doctrine, so explained as to free it from odious misconceptions, in a didactic mode and temper, making only a respectful general reference to an honest difference of judgment upon it among the recognized followers of Christ, every fair-minded adherent of Wesley would have listened without offence, and would have come away with the pleasing impression that Christians were not so far asunder upon this vexed question as he had supposed. It is very much due to the observance of this simple rule that wise pastors (without infidelity to truth) preserve pleasant relations with other communions, hold their own ground triumphantly against encroachments, and even win accessions, without awakening denominational strife And it is usually the rash contempt of this easy caution which plunges others into unseemly and mischievous rivalries. "
― Robert Lewis Dabney , Evangelical Eloquence: A Course of Lectures on Preaching