John Owen on faintheartedness (Hebrews 12:3)

Consider him who endured from such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted (Hebrews 12:3).

John Owen writes in his commentary on Hebrews 12:3d about being fainthearted or losing heart.

Literally, “faint.” This fainting consists in a remission of the due acting of faith by all graces and in all duties. It is faith that stirs up and engages spiritual courage, resolution, patience, perseverance, prayer, all preserving graces and duties. If it fails here and we are left to fight our difficulties in our own natural strength, we will quickly grow weary. This is where all spiritual decline starts, namely, in not exercising faith in all these graces and duties.

Marsden on Jonathan Edwards's Purpose of Life.

I read the book Jonathan Edwards: A Life by George Marsden. It is an excellent book, but this quote I stole from Owen Strachan's blog,

Yet Edwards's solution---a post-Newtonian statement of classic Augustinian themes---can be breathtaking. God's Trinitarian essence is love. God's purpose in creating a universe in which sin is permitted must be to communicate that love to creatures. The highest or most beautiful love is sacrificial love for the undeserving. Those---ultimately the vast majority of humans---who are given eyes to see that ineffable beauty will be enthralled by it. They will see the beauty of a universe in which unsentimental love triumphs over real evil. They will not be able to view Christ's love dispassionately but rather will respond to it with their deepest affections. Truly seeing such good they will have no choice but to love it. Glimpsing such love, they will be drawn away from their preoccupations with the gratifications of their most immediate sensations. They will be drawn from their self-centered universes. Seeing the beauty of the redemptive love of Christ is the true center of reality, they will love God and all that he has created.

(p. 505)

Edwards on the Trinity

John Piper in his book Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God quotes Jonathan Edwards essay on the Trinity.

This I suppose to be the blessed Trinity that we read of in the Holy Scriptures. The Father is the deity subsisting in the prime, unoriginated and most absolute manner or the deity in its direct essence. The Son is the deity generated by God’s understanding, or having an idea of Himself and subsisting in that idea. The Holy Ghost is the deity subsisting in act, or the divine essence flowing out and breathed forth in God’s infinite love to and delight in Himself. And I believe the whole in God’s infinite love to and delight in Himself. And I believe the whole Divine essence does truly and distinctly subsist both in the Divine idea and Divine love, and that each of them are properly distinct persons.

Further on in the chapter Piper quotes Edwards again:

God is glorified within Himself these two ways: (1) By appearing…to Himself in His own perfect idea [of Himself], or in His Son, who is the brightness of His glory. (2) By enjoying and delighting in Himself, by flowing forth in infinite…delight towards Himself, or in his Holy Spirit. …So God glorifies Himself toward the creatures also in two ways: (1) By appearing to…their understanding. (2) In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying, the manifestations which He makes of Himself…God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory; and that it might [be] received both by the mind and heart. He that testifies his idea of God’s glory [doesn't] glorify God so much as he that testifies also his approbation of it and his delight in it.

Edwards on Heaven

Jonathan Edwards preached about heaven in his final sermon on 1 Corinthians 13:

There in heaven this fountain of love, this eternal three in one, is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it. There this glorious God is manifested and shines forth in full glory, in beams of love; there the fountain overflows in streams and rivers of love and delight, enough for all to drink at, and to swim in, yea, so as to overflow the world as it were with a deluge of love

This has a slightly different tone than "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."

John Owen on "Let us fix our eyes upon Jesus.."

In his commentary on Hebrews, John Owen writes about "looking away" at Jesus in Hebrews 12:2:

Literally, “looking away.” We are to look to Jesus in a special way, a way that is different from the way we looked at the cloud of witnesses. The verb is in the present tense, so a continual act is intended. In all that we do, in our profession and obedience, we are constantly to look to Christ.“Looking,” in Scripture, when it refers to God or Christ, denotes an act of faith or trust, with hope and expectation. It is not just an act of understanding or considering what we are looking at; it is an act of the whole soul in faith and trust (see Psalm 34:4-6; Isaiah 45:22). Such is the look of believers on the pierced Christ (Zechariah 12:10), (See Hebrews 9:28; 11:10; also Micah 7:7, “I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.”)
 So the Lord Jesus is not set before us here merely as an example for us but as him in whom we place our faith, trust and confidence, with all our expectation of success in our Christian course. Without this faith and trust in him, we will derive no benefit from his example. (Owen, p. 243)

Tyndale's Key to Interpreting Scripture

David Teems, in his biography of Tyndale, describes Tyndale's approach to the Bible.

Even his [Tyndale] Englishing of the Scripture has something to tell us. To William Tyndale, the Word of God is a living thing. It has both warmth and intellect. It has discretion, generosity, subtlety, movement, authority. It has a heart and a pulse. It keeps a beat and has a musical voice that allows it to sing. It enchants and it soothes. It argues and it forgives. It defends and it reasons. It intoxicates and it restores. It weeps and it exults. It thunders but never roars. It calls but never begs. And it always loves. Indeed, for Tyndale, love is the code that unlocks and empowers the Scripture. His inquiry into Scripture is always relational, never analytic.

(p. xvii, Tyndale: The Man Who Gave God an English Voice)