We ought always to beware of making the smallest claim for ourselves.

How do we know that God has elected us before the creation of the world? By believing in Jesus Christ.

Joy is a quiet gladness of heart as one contemplates the goodness of God's saving grace in Christ Jesus.

The Lord has given us a table at which to feast, not an altar on which a victim is to be offered; He has not consecrated priests to make sacrifice, but servants to distribute the sacred feast.

For it was not after we were reconciled to him by the blood of his Son that he began to love us, but he loved us before the foundation of the world, that with his only begotten Son we too might be sons of God before we were anything at all.

We are not to look to what men in themselves deserve but to attend to the image of God which exists in all and to which we owe all honor and love.

There is nothing in afflictions which ought to disturb our joy.