Holiness

J. C. Ryle, Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots (1877)

J. C. Ryle, first bishop of Liverpool

Plain, blunt, pastoral, and entirely without patience for a holiness that never shows.

Catch rate: 75 / 255
Base research: 178
Stat total: 320

Base stats

Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.

Stamina86

Contend86

Defend84

Popularity64

Total320

Cited for this book

Ryle wrote against a comfortable Victorian religion and against a rising "let go and let God" teaching that made sanctification a single crisis rather than a long fight. His holiness is visible by definition: a changed temper, changed company, changed use of time. If none of that has moved, he says, there is nothing there to have been sanctified.

Moves learned

By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.

Lv	Move	Type	Cat.	Pwr	Acc	PP
1	It Cannot Be Hid	Spirituality	Argument	84	100%	15
1	Random Verse	Bible	Argument	10	100%	30
34	Chapter…	Bible	Scripture	—	—	12
40	Rest	Spirituality	Rest	—	100%	5
50	Depraved Custom	Ethics	Argument	88	100%	5

The quotes behind its moves

How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.

Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.

“Sanctification, again, is a thing that will always be seen. Like the Great Head of the Church, from whom it springs, it ‘cannot be hid.’”
J. C. Ryle, Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots (1877), public domain.public domain

It Cannot Be Hid

SpiritualityArgument · power 84 · 100% accurate

In the gameRyle against a private, invisible holiness. A changed life shows. If nothing in a person’s conduct, temper or company has moved, the claim to have been sanctified is answering to nothing.

Strong against

×2.5Salvation from Sinan argument · why?

Ryle: holiness always shows, and it always grows. A thing that is still growing has not arrived!

×2.5Seasonable Thoughtsan argument · why?

Neither heat nor cold settles it. Watch what the person is like a year later — that is the test both sides claimed and only one of them applied!

“In peace I will both lay myself down and sleep, for you, Yahweh alone, make me live in safety.”
Psalm 4:8 (WEB).

Rest

SpiritualityRest · 100% accurate

In the gameBreak off and rest. Stamina is restored in full and any trouble is slept off, but the book is then ASLEEP for a turn (two turns, one time in five) while the other side does as it likes.

“To make everything yield to custom would be to do the greatest injustice. … In short, depraved custom is just a kind of general pestilence in which men perish not the less that they fall in a crowd.”
Calvin, Prefatory Address to Francis I (1536), prefixed to the Institutes of the Christian Religion (trans. Beveridge, 1845), public domain. (trimmed quote)public domain

Depraved Custom

EthicsArgument · power 88 · 100% accurate

In the gameAnswers "everyone has always done it this way" by asking what everyone doing it proves. Numbers do not make a thing right; they only settle how many are carried off by it.

Strong against

×4The Most Ancient Customan argument · why?

Numbers do not make a thing right. They only settle how many are carried off by it.

×0.5The Consent of the Fathersan argument · why?

That answers the custom, not the men. He is talking about the men.