Jun 30, 2011

An eye for the truth.

 
Gabriel, comte de Montgomery, seigneur de Lorges (5 May 1530 – 26 June 1574), a French nobleman, was a captain in Henry II's Scots Guards. He is remembered for mortally injuring Henry in a jousting accident and subsequently converting to Protestantism, the faith that the Scottish Guard sought to suppress.

On either 30 June or 1 July 1559, during a jousting match to celebrate the Peace of Cateau Cambrésis between Henry II and his longtime Habsburg enemies, a splinter of wood from Montgomery's shattered lance pierced Henry's eye and entered his brain, mortally injuring him.

From his deathbed Henry absolved Montgomery of any blame, but, finding himself disgraced, Montgomery retreated to his estates in Normandy. There he studied theology and converted to Protestantism, making him an enemy of the state.

Jun 25, 2011

Ruination Day

"The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of
derelict, half-built towers -- the ruins of those who began
to build and were unable to finish.  For thousands of
people still ignore Christ's warning and undertake to
follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of
doing so.  The result is the great scandal of Christendom
today, so-called 'nominal Christianity'."


--John R.W. Stott, from "Basic Christianity" (rev. edn. London: IVP, 1971),
p. 108.

Jun 16, 2011

Evolutionary tendencies.


"People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-
driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness,
prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.
We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift
toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward
superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of
lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward
prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have
escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince
ourselves we have been liberated."


– D.A. Carson

Cribbed from CQOD.