"the silence of the inspired apostles, on any theme, is to be sacredly and unscrupulously regarded as much as the positive teaching"
-- Thomas Campbell
"This is the distinctive difference between us and other religious bodies. Others accept the New Testament as their rule of faith, but do not make it the limit of their faith. They add other things as articles of faith and acts of worship than those contained in the Bible. We seek for things authorized, they for things not prohibited. Our rule is safe - theirs is loose and latitudinarian. Ours confines us to God's appointments. Theirs opens the worship and service of God to whatever will please men. Our rule limits man's worship to the exercises approved in the Bible. "
- David Lipscomb
"The subject of expediency, as interpreted by some of us, may yet prove the rock on which the reformation for which we are pleading goes to pieces. This is not said in the spirit of alarm, it is the utterance of a calm conviction. I do not deny that expediency is sometimes right, nor that the New Testament in very special cases, sanctions it. Certainly not... When we plead expediency to justify practices unknown to the apostolic age, we are not within the limits of the expedient. We are then violating the word of God. Expediency is no law for innovations, either in faith or practice; and he who pleads it to this extent has abandoned the only rule which can save us from ruin."
- Moses Lard