“You say, you find it hard to believe it [is] compatible with the divine purity to embrace or employ such a monster as yourself. [In thinking this, you] express not only a low opinion of yourself, which is right, but too low an opinion of the person, work, and promises of the Redeemer; which is certainly wrong. ... Satan transforms himself into an angel of light. He sometimes off ers to teach us humility; but though I wish to be humble, I desire not to learn in his school. His premises perhaps are true, that we are vile, wretched creatures—but he then draws abominable conclusions from them; and would teach us, that, therefore, we ought to question either the power, or the willingness, or the faithfulness of Christ.”
— John Newton, “Letter XI, to the Rev. Mr S”
“[I]t is as if an error slipped into an author’s writing and the error became conscious of itself as an error. ... and now this error wants to mutiny against the author, out of hatred toward him, forbidding him to correct it and in maniacal defiance saying to him: No, I refuse to be erased; I will stand as a witness against you, a witness that you are a second-rate author.”
— Søren Kierkegaard
