Finished Reading “Heretics”

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  "G. K. Chesterton, the "Prince of Paradox," is at his witty best in this collection of twenty essays and articles from the turn of the twentieth century. Focusing on  "heretics" - those who pride themselves on their superiority to Christian views - Chesterton appraises prominent figures who fall into that category from the literary and art worlds... those who hold incomplete and inadequate views about "life, the universe, and everything." He is, in short, criticizing all that host of non-Christian views of reality, as he demonstrated in his follow-up book Orthodoxy. The book is both an easy read and a difficult read. But he manages to demonstrate, among other things, that our new 21st century heresies are really not new because he himself deals with most of them." (Goodreads)

Of Thankfulness to God

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[by John Gill (1697-1771): Baptist minister, theologian, and biblical scholar. Author of A Body of Divinity, The Cause of God and Truth, and his nine-volume Expositions of the Old and New Testaments. Visit the John Gill Archive.]

Thankfulness follows contentment: a discontented man is not thankful for anything, but a contented man is thankful for everything. Thankfulness is a branch of godliness: none but a godly man is truly a thankful man. There are some things not to be named among saints and are not becoming them; but this is, and rather becoming them than many other things (Eph 5:3, 4).

An unthankful saint is a very odd sound, if not a contradiction. “Unthankful, unholy,” are characters joined together and agree (2Ti 3:2) and [likewise] “unthankful” and “evil” (Luk 6:36).

And particularly none but an holy man can give thanks “at the remembrance of the holiness of God” (Psa 97:12).

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