Creation Being Itself

"The work of the Spirit, as well as being fundamentally eschatological, is also essentially immanent: the Spirit works within creation, establishing the creation's ability to be itself to the praise of its Creator" (Stephen R. Holmes, Listening to the Past: The Place of Tradition in Theology, 158).

Read with Prayer

"Read [the Bible] with the prayer that the Holy Spirit's grace will help you understand it" (J. C. Ryle, Thoughts for Young Men, 57).

Holy Spirit Produces Real Effects

In interaction with John Owen's Communion with God: "The Holy Spirit produces consolation, peace, joy, and hope in believers. The Holy Spirit produces real effects in the experience of believers, experience revolving around Christ as revealed in Scripture. Thus Owen rejected both the rationalists who dismissed the experiential work of the Spirit and the fanatics whose "spirit" disregarded the Word and Christ" (Joel R. Beeke & Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life, 112).

Receiving and Seeking the Holy Spirit

"Thou the elect experience the Spirit's regeneration passively as so many dry bones (Ezek. 37:1-14), believers put their trust in the promises of the comfort of the Spirit and pray for Him and His work in them (Gal. 3:2, 14; John 7:37-39; Luke 11:13). Thus believers have a responsibility to seek the Spirit" (Joel R. Beeke & Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life, 111).

Justification and Sanctification, Again

"I have no desire to make an idol of holiness. I do not wish to dethrone Christ, and put holiness in His place. But I must candidly say, I wish sanctification was more thought of in this day than it seems to be, and I therefore take occasion to press the subject on all believers into whose hands these pages may fall. I fear it is sometimes forgotten that God has married together justification and sanctification. They are distinct and different things, beyond question, but one is never found without the other. All justified people are sanctified, and all sanctified people are justified. What God has joined together let no man dare to put asunder. Tell me not of your justification, unless you have also some marks of sanctification. Boast not of Christ's work for you, unless you can show us the Spirit's work in you. Think not that Christ and the Spirit can be divided" (J. C. Ryle, Holiness, 47).

Family Resemblance: Sanctification and Holiness

"If men have no likeness to the Father in heaven, it is vain to talk of their being His "sons." If we know nothing of holiness we may flatter ourselves as we please, but we have not got the Holy Spirit dwelling in us: we are dead, and must be brought to life again--we are lost, and must be found. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they," and they only, "are the sons of God." (Rom. viii. 14.) We must show by our lives the family we belong to.--We must let men see by our good conversation that we are indeed the children of the Holy One, or our son-ship is but an empty name" (J. C. Ryle, Holiness, 42).

The Capacity for Dissent

"What we need in this day is precisely what God has supplied his church in every age, what Stanley Hauerwas has called "the capacity for dissent." It's the capacity to resist the attractive but destructive narratives at hand because "you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God " (Col. 3:3). We know the great periods in which the Holy Spirit empowered a fresh proclamation of Christ by the people's marked capacity for dissent. At the heart of that capacity is the overwhelming power of the Christian story to transform the story of our life [emphasis CCS]. This alone renders the dominant alternatives not simply wrong but uncompelling by comparison" (Michael Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship, 51).

Treasury of Scripture

"When Scripture is stored in the mind, it is available for the Holy Spirit to take and bring to your attention when you need it most" (Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, 42).

Marshaled Embodiment

In Desiring the Kingdom and Imagining the Kingdom, James K. A. Smith argues that Christians need to pay special attention to liturgies because they shape what we love, which is incredibly important because "we are what we love." In the latter work, Smith says, "The [Holy] Spirit marshals our embodiment in order to rehabituate us to the kingdom of God. The material practices of Christian worship are not exercises in spiritual self-management but rather the creational means that our gracious God deigns to inhabit for our sanctification" (15).

Holy Ghost: Special and Peculiar Gift

That "Christ dwells in our hearts by faith," and carries on His inward work by His Spirit, is clear and plain. But if we mean to say that beside, and over, and above this there is some mysterious indwelling of Christ in a believer, we must be careful what we are about. Unless we take care, we shall find ourselves ignoring the work of the Holy Ghost. We shall be forgetting that in the Divine economy of man's salvation election is the special work of God the Father--atonement, mediation, and intercession, the special work of God the Son--and sanctification, the special work of God the Holy Ghost. We shall be forgetting that our Lord said, when He went away, that He would send us another Comforter, who should "abide with us" for ever, and, as it were, take His place. (John xiv. 16.) In short, under the idea that we are honouring [sic] Christ, we shall find that we are dishonouring [sic] His special and peculiar gift--the Holy Ghost (J. C. Ryle, Holiness, xiii).

Unity of Scripture by Inspiration of Holy Spirit: Purpose - Make Us Wise unto Salvation Through Faith in Christ

From many points of view the Scriptures show a manifold variety, but they present an impressive unity when considered in the light of the purpose for which they were given, to make us wise unto salvation through faith in Christ. This unity we believe to be the result of their inspiration, and it is to be appreciated by the illumination of that same Spirit who controlled the writers in their recording of the revelation and guided the Church in its discerning of what was so inspired (F. F. Bruce, “What Do We Mean By Biblical Inspiration?” Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute, 78 (1946): 120-139).