“Some think that God is under a necessity of bestowing even on the unworthy what He has promised [to give]. So they turn His liberality into His slavery… For do not many afterwards fall out of [grace]? Is not this gift taken away from many? These, no doubt, are they who… after approaching to the faith of repentance, build on the sands a house doomed to ruin.”
“The world returned to sin . . . and so it is destined to fire. So is the man who after baptism renews his sins.”
“It is neither the faith, nor the love, nor the hope, nor the endurance of one day; rather, ‘he that endures to the end will be saved.'”
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“It was not to those who are on the outside that he said these things, but to us – lest we should be cast forth from the Kingdom of God by doing any such thing.”
“I hold further, that those of you who have confessed and known this man to be Christ, yet who have gone back for some reason to the legal dispensation [i.e., the Mosaic Law], and have denied that this man is Christ, and have not repented before death – you will by no means be saved.”
“The whole past time of your faith will profit you nothing, unless now in this wicked time we also withstand coming sources of danger.”
“And let those who are not found living as He taught, be understood to be no Christians, even though they profess with the lip the precepts of Christ; for not those who make profession, but those who do the works, shall be saved, according to His word: ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven’ [Matt. 7:21].”
“We are philosophers – not in words – but in deeds. We do not speak great things; we live them.”