Stirring words from surprising sources?

1. Christ is present in his word, since it is he himself who speaks when the holy Scriptures are read in the church.

2. It is the duty of pastors of souls to ensure that the faithful take part in church services knowingly, actively, and fruitfully... all the faithful should be led to that full, conscious, and active participation... Such participation by the Christian people as "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people" is their right and duty by reason of their baptism.

3. It is necessary to promote warm and living love for Scripture... The treasures of the Bible are to be opened up more lavishly, so that richer fare may be provided for the faithful at the table of God's word... Whatever smacks of mythology or ill accords with Christian piety is to be removed or changed.

4. It is necessary that each one recognise and confess that since all men had lost innocence in the prevarication of Adam, having become unclean, and as the Apostle says, by nature children of wrath... they were so far the servants of sin and under the power of the devil and of death, that not only the Gentiles by the force of nature, but not even the Jews by the very letter of the law of Moses, were able to be liberated or to rise therefrom

5. All do not receive the benefit of Christ's death, but only those to whom the merit of his passion is communicated; because as truly as men would not be born unjust, if they were not born through propagation of the seed of Adam... so if they were not born again in Christ, they would never be justified, since in that new birth there is bestowed upon them, through the merit of his passion, the grace by which they are made righteous.

6. We are said to be justified by faith, because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God and to come to the fellowship of his sons. And we are therefore said to be justified gratuitously, because none of those things that precede justification, whether faith or works, merit the grace of justification. For if by grace, it is not now by works, otherwise, as the Apostle says, grace is no more grace... It is necessary to believe that sins neither are remitted nor ever have been remitted except gratuitously by divine mercy for Christ's sake.