J.C. Ryle on Our View of Ministers of Christ

"What do you think of the minister of Christ? Strange as that question may seem, I verily believe that the kind of answer a man would give to it, if he speaks honestly, is very often a fair test of the state of his heart.

"Observe, I am not asking what you think of an idle, worldly, inconsistent clergyman, a sleeping watchman and faithless shepherd. No! I ask what you think of the faithful minister of Christ, who honestly exposes sin, and pricks your conscience? Mind how you answer that question. Too many nowadays like only those ministers who prophesy smooth things and let their sins alone, who flatter their pride and amuse their intellectual taste, but who never sound an alarm, and never tell them of a wrath to come. When Ahab saw Elijah, said, 'Have you found me, O mine enemy?' (1 Kings 21:20). When Micaiah was named to Ahab, he cried, 'I hate him because he doesn't prophesy good of me, but evil' (1 Kings 22:8). Alas, there are many like Ahab in the nineteenth century! They like a ministry which does not make them uncomfortable, and send them home ill at ease. How is it with you? Oh, believe me, he is the best friend who tells you the most truth! It is an evil sign in the church when Christ's witnesses are silenced, or persecuted, and men hate him who reproves (Isa. 29:21). It was a solemn saying of the prophet to Amazia, 'Now I know that God has determined to destroy you, because you have done this, and not hearkened to my counsel' (2 Chron. 25:16)" (J.C. Ryle, Holiness).

John Calvin on the Importance of the Word in the Depravity of Our Nature

"For if we reflect how prone the human mind is to lapse into forgetfulness of God, how readily inclined to every kind of error, how bent every now and then on devising new and fictitious religions, it will be easy to understand how necessary it was to make such a depository of doctrine as would secure it from either perishing by the neglect, vanishing away amid the errors, or being corrupted by the presumptuous audacity of men.  It being thus manifest that God, foreseeing the inefficiency of his image imprinted on the fair form of the universe, has given the assistance of his word to all whom he has ever been pleased to instruct effectually, we, too, must pursue this straight path, if we aspire in earnest to a genuine contemplation of God - we must go, I say, to the word, where the character of God, drawn from his works is described accurately and to the life; these works being estimated, not by our depraved judgment, but by the standard of eternal truth.  If, as I lately said, we turn aside from it, how great soever the speed with which we move, we shall never reach the goal, because we are off the course.  We should consider that the brightness of the divine countenance, which even an apostle declares to be inaccessible (1 Tim. 6:16), is a kind of labyrinth - labyrinth to us inextricable, if the word do not serve us as a thread to guide our path; and that it is better to limp in the way, than run with the greatest swiftness out of it.  Hence the psalmist, after repeatedly declaring (Pss 93, 96, 97, 99, etc.) that superstition should be banished from the world in order that pure religion may flourish, introduces God as reigning; meaning by the term, not the power which he possesses and which he exerts in the government of universal nature, but the doctrine by which he maintains his due supremacy: because error never can be eradicated from the heart of man until the true knowledge of God has been implanted in it" (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion).