Top 50 Charles Hodge Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The gospel is so simple that small children can understand it, and it is so profound that studies by the wisest theologians will never exhaust its riches.”

— Charles Hodge

2. “Sanctification is not a work of nature, but a work of grace. It is a transformation of character effected not by moral influences, but supernaturally by the Holy Spirit.”

— Charles Hodge

3. “This whole process of education is to be religious, and not only religious, but Christian. And as Christianity is the only true religion, and God in Christ the only true God, the only possible means of profitable education is the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

— Charles Hodge

4. “Christian humility does not consist in denying what there is of good in us; but in an abiding sense of ill-desert, and in the consciousness that what we have of good is due to the grace of God.”

— Charles Hodge

5. “It is important that when we come to die we have nothing to do but die.”

— Charles Hodge

6. “Faith is not a blind, irrational conviction. In order to believe, we must know what we believe, and the grounds on which our faith rests.”

— Charles Hodge

7. “The best evidence of the Bible’s being the word of God is to be found between its covers. It proves itself.”

— Charles Hodge

8. “The doctrines of grace humble man without degrading him and exalt him without inflating him.”

— Charles Hodge

9. “The Church is everywhere represented as one. It is one body, one family, one fold, one kingdom. It is one because pervaded by one Spirit. We are all baptized into one Spirit so as to become, says the apostle, on body.”

— Charles Hodge

10. “If Christ has risen the Bible is true from Genesis to Revelation. The kingdom of darkness has been overthrown. Satan has fallen like lightning from heaven; and the triumph of truth over error, of good over evil, of happiness over misery, is forever secured.”

— Charles Hodge

11. “Our duty, privilege, and security are in believing, not in knowing; in trusting God, and not our own understanding. They are to be pitied who have no more trustworthy teacher than themselves.”

— Charles Hodge

12. “To be in Christ is the source of the Christian life; to be like Christ is the sum of his excellence; to be with Christ is the fullness of his joy.”

— Charles Hodge

13. “If all Church power vests in the clergy, then the people are practically bound to passive obedience in all matters of faith and practice; for all right of private judgment is then denied.”

— Charles Hodge

14. “The ultimate ground of faith and knowledge is confidence in God.”

— Charles Hodge

15. “It is only when men associate with the wicked with the desire and purpose of doing them good, that they can rely upon the protection of God to preserve them from contamination.”

— Charles Hodge

16. “Zeal is the chief source, or one of the chief sources of spiritual power. God employs living souls to communicate life. In all ages, men of zeal have produced great results. This qualification, in the absence of others, can accomplish wonders.”

— Charles Hodge

17. “But to be the Vicar of Christ, to claim to exercise his prerogatives on earth, does involve a claim to his attributes, and therefore our opposition to Popery is opposition to a man claiming to be God.”

— Charles Hodge

18. “The Church, however, is a self-governing society, distinct from the State, having its officers and laws, and, therefore, an administrative government of its own.”

— Charles Hodge

19. “When we are weak, then are we strong. When most empty of self, we are most full of God.”

— Charles Hodge

Featured in: Strong Quotes

20. “The grace of God exalts a man without inflating him, and humbles a man without debasing him.”

— Charles Hodge

21. “This is true religion, to approve what God approves, to hate what he hates, and to delight in what delights him.”

— Charles Hodge

22. “There is a great difference between the irreconcilable and the self-contradict ory.”

— Charles Hodge

23. “Original sin is the only rational solution of the undeniable fact of the deep, universal and early manifested sinfulness of men in all ages, of every class, and in every part of the world.”

— Charles Hodge

24. “It is because God is infinitely great and good that his glory is the end of all things; and his good pleasure the highest reason for whatever comes to pass. What is man that he should contend with God, or presume that his interests rather than God’s glory should be made the final end?”

— Charles Hodge

25. “If the Church is a living body united to the same head, governed by the same laws, and pervaded by the same Spirit, it is impossible that one part should be independent of all the rest.”

— Charles Hodge

26. “The Church, during the apostolic age, did not consist of isolated, independent congregations, but was one body, of which the separate churches were constituent members, each subject to all the rest, or to an authority which extended over all.”

— Charles Hodge

27. “When the great promise of the Spirit was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, it was fulfilled not in reference to the apostles only.”

— Charles Hodge

28. “It is a thoroughly anti-Christian doctrine that the Spirit of God, and therefore the life and governing power of the Church, resides in the ministry, to the exclusion of the people.”

— Charles Hodge

29. “No more soul-destroying doctrine could well be devised than the doctrine that sinners can regenerate themselves, and repent and believe just when they please.”

— Charles Hodge

30. “The Bible contains all the extant revelations of God, which He designed to be the rule of faith and practice for his Church; so that nothing can rightfully be imposed on the consciences of men as truth or duty which is not taught directly or by necessary implication in the Holy Scriptures.”

— Charles Hodge

31. “The sin of Adam did not make the condemnation of all men merely possible; it was the ground of their actual condemnation. So the righteousness of Christ did not make the salvation of men merely possible, it secured the actual salvation of those for whom He wrought.”

— Charles Hodge

32. “As the Church is the aggregate of believers, there is an intimate analogy between the experience of the individual believer, and of the Church as a whole.”

— Charles Hodge

33. “The Independent or Congregational theory includes two principles; first, that the governing and executive power in the Church is in the brotherhood; and secondly, that the Church organization is complete in each worshipping assembly, which is independent of every other.”

— Charles Hodge

34. “The Galatians are severely censured for giving heed to false doctrines, and are called to pronounce even an apostle anathema, if he preached another gospel.”

— Charles Hodge

35. “There is no form of conviction more intimate and irresistible than that which arises from the inward teaching of the Spirit.”

— Charles Hodge

36. “All moral obligation resolves itself into the obligation of conformity to the will of God.”

— Charles Hodge

37. “The Spirit never makes men the instruments of converting others until they feel that they cannot do it themselves; that their skill in argument, in persuasion, in management, avails nothing.”

— Charles Hodge

38. “That the apostolic office is temporary, is a plain historical fact.”

— Charles Hodge

39. “Ruling elders are declared to be the representatives of the people.”

— Charles Hodge

40. “The Reformers, therefore, as instruments in the hands of God, in delivering the Church from bondage to prelates, did not make it a tumultuous multitude, in which every man was a law to himself, free to believe, and free to do what he pleased.”

— Charles Hodge

41. “It would be well if all who call themselves Christians, should learn that it is not their business to believe and teach what they may think true or right, but what God in his Holy Word has seen fit to reveal.”

— Charles Hodge

42. “If, unable to solve the mysteries of Providence, we plunge into Atheism, we only increase a thousand fold the darkness by which we are surrounded.”

— Charles Hodge

43. “The functions of these elders, therefore, determine the power of the people; for a representative is one chosen by others to do in their name what they are entitled to do in their own persons; or rather to exercise the powers which radically inhere in those for whom they act.”

— Charles Hodge

44. “Every man, therefore, who expects justification by works, must see to it, not that he is better than other men, or that he is very exact and does many things, or that he fasts twice in the week, and gives tithes of all he possesses, but that he is sinless.”

— Charles Hodge

45. “No one book of scripture can be understood by itself, any more than any one part of a tree or member of the body can be understood without reference to the whole of which it is a part.”

— Charles Hodge

46. “The office of presbyters is a permanent one.”

— Charles Hodge

47. “So too, in forming a constitution, or in enacting rules of procedure, or making canons, the people do not merely passively assent, but actively cooperate. They have, in all these matters, the same authority as the clergy.”

— Charles Hodge

48. “It is intuitively true, to all who have eyes to see, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that his gospel is the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation, and that it is absolutely impossible that any theory which is opposed to these divine intuitions can be true.”

— Charles Hodge

49. “All Church power arises from the indwelling of the Spirit; therefore those in whom the Spirit dwells are the seat of Church power. But the Spirit dwells in the whole Church, and therefore the whole Church is the seat of Church power.”

— Charles Hodge

50. “As we fell in Adam, we are saved in Christ. To deny the principle in the one case, is to deny it in the other; for the two are inseparably united in the representations of Scripture.”

— Charles Hodge