"When once thy foot enters the church, be bare. God is more there than thou: for thou art there Only by his permission. Then beware, And make thyself all reverence and fear."

"Well has the name of Pontifex been given Unto the Church's head, as the chief builder And architect of the invisible bridge That leads from earth to heaven."

"In that temple of silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried, in the Great Abbey, which has during many ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall."

"A beggarly people, A church and no steeple."

"It was founded upon a rock."

"As like a church and an ale-house, God and the devell, they manie times dwell neere to ether."

"There can be no church in which the demon will not have his chapel."

"Non est de pastu ovium quæstio, sed de lana."

"No silver saints, by dying misers giv'n, Here brib'd the rage of ill-requited heav'n; But such plain roofs as Piety could raise, And only vocal with the Maker's praise."

"I never weary of great churches. It is my favourite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral."

"Boni pastoris est tondere pecus non deglubere."

"The itch of disputation will break out Into a scab of error."

"See the Gospel Church secure, And founded on a Rock! All her promises are sure; Her bulwarks who can shock? Count her every precious shrine; Tell, to after-ages tell, Fortified by power divine, The Church can never fail."

"Disputandi pruritus ecclesiarum scabies."

"It is common for those that are farthest from God, to boast themselves most of their being near to the Church."

"When I faced a congregation, it began to take all the strength I had not to stammer, not to curse, not to tell them to throw away their Bibles and get off their knees and go home and organize, for example, a rent strike. When I watched all the children, their copper, brown, and beige faces staring up at me as I taught Sunday school, I felt that I was committing a crime in talking about the gentle Jesus, in telling them to reconcile themselves to their misery on earth in order to gain the crown of eternal life. Were only Negroes to gain this crown? Was Heaven, then, to be merely another ghetto? Perhaps I might have been able to reconcile myself even to this if I had been able to believe that there was any loving-kindness to be found in the haven I represented. But I had been in the pulpit too long and I had seen too many monstrous things. I don’t refer merely to the glaring fact that the minister eventually acquires houses and Cadillacs while the faithful continue to scrub floors and drop their dimes and quarters and dollars into the plate. I really mean that there was no love in the church. It was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair. The transfiguring power of the Holy Ghost ended when the service ended, and salvation stopped at the church door."

"[C]hurches have tended to become conditioned more by our culture than by our Christ. So often our churches merely reflect the standards, the folkways, and the mores of the community, rather than the ethical standards of Christianity"

"The best service to the Church, in the long run, will be that kind of art that answers the second question best. The building of independent souls who are really growing is ultimately the best service to the Church, because the Church is not a monolithic ungrowing thing. The Church is, in one sense, the summation of where its members are. A church consisting of static, ungrowing members, even if it's growing in numbers, will still be a static church."

"Where God hath a temple, the devil will have a chapel."

"The word CHURCH had never any charm for me, in the mouths of those who made the most noise about it; for I could not perceive that they gave any other distinguishing proof of their regard for the thing than a frequent use of the word, like a spell to enchant weak minds; and a persecuting zeal against Dissenters and against those real friends of the Church who would not admit that persecution was agreeable to its doctrine. And as to Affairs of State: Many of these Churchmen seem to me to have no fixed principles at all, having endeavored during the last reign, to undermine that very government which they had contributed to establish."

"What is a church?" Let Truth and reason speak, They would reply, "The faithful, pure and meek, From Christian folds, the one selected race, Of all professions, and in every place."

"What is a church?—Our honest sexton tells, 'Tis a tall building, with a tower and bells."

"Habere non potest Deum patrem qui ecclesiam non habet matrem."

"Salus extra ecclesiam non est."

"The church in the spiritual and theological sense always contains a current that is hostile to political power, that is revolutionary and anarchical. But this is not the current that society as a whole, and especially the political authorities, recognize as the church."

"The Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts … his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them."

"The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it. ... The church and civilization are antipodal; one means authority, the other freedom; one means conservatism, the other progress; one means the rights of God as interpreted by the priesthood, the other the rights of humanity as interpreted by humanity. Civilization advances by free thought, free speech, free men."

"The nere to the churche, the ferther from God."