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Fire and Ice: Puritan and Reformed Writings [Table of Contents] [Fast Index] [Site Map] |
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"There is no possibility of taking a mercy out of God's hand, till the mercy be ripe for us, and we ripe for the mercy."
THOMAS BROOKS
"The poets themselves said, that amor Deum gubernat, that love governed God. And, as Nazianzen well speaks, this love of God, this dulcis tyrannus, this sweet tyrant,did overcome him when he was upon the cross. There were no cords could have held him to the whipping-post but those of love; no nails have fastened him to the cross but those of love."
THOMAS GOODWIN
"Christ did not die for any upon condition, if they do believe; but He died for all God's elect, that they should believe."
JOHN OWEN
"My brethren, when God first began to love you, he gave you all that he ever meant to give you in the lump, and eternity of time is that in which he is retailing of it out."
THOMAS GOODWIN
Taken from The Greatness of God's Love to His Elect 67K).
"...that, by all things, they may come to know more of the power, holiness, justice, truth, goodness, and glory of God in Christ. We use to say," Experience teaches fools." Surely there is not an experienced saint, but will find, that by all the good things and bad things he hath been trysted with, by all the various vicissitudes and changes of providence, he hath come to see more of God than he saw before."
RALPH ERSKINE
Taken from one of his Beauties.
"Assurance grows by repeated conflict, by our repeated experimental proof of the Lord's power and goodness to save; when we have been brought very low and helped, sorely wounded and healed, cast down and raised again, have given up all hope, and been suddenly snatched from danger, and placed in safety; and when these things have been repeated to us and in us a thousand times over, we begin to learn to trust simply to the word and power of God, beyond and against appearances: and this trust, when habitual and strong, bears the name of assurance; for even assurance has degrees."
JOHN NEWTON
Taken from one of his Letters.
"When God calls a man, He does not repent of it. God does not, as many friends do, love one day, and hate another; or a s princes, who make their subjects favourites, and afterwards throw them into prison. This is the blessedness of a saint; his condition admits of no alteration. God's call is founded on His decree, and His decree is immutable. Acts of grace cannot be reversed. God blots out his people's sins, but not their names."
THOMAS WATSON
"Let them pretend what they please, the true reason why any despise the new birth is because they hate a new life. He that cannot endure to live to God will as little endure to hear of being born of God."
JOHN OWEN
"Covetousness is dry drunkeness."
THOMAS WATSON
"Till men have faith in Christ, their best services are but glorious sins."
THOMAS BROOKS
"It is mercy to lack mercy, till we are fit for mercy, till we are able to bear the weight of mercy, and make a divine improvement of mercy."
THOMAS BROOKS
"Any cloth may cover our sores, but the finest silk will not cover our sins."
HENRY SMITH
"Sin hath the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death for its wages."
THOMAS WATSON
"When we love things baser than ourselves it is like a sweet stream that runs into a sink. As our love therefore is the best thing we have, and none deserves it more than God, so let him have our love, yea, the strength of our love, that we may love him 'with all our souls, and with all our mind, and with all our strength,' Lev 19.18"
RICHARD SIBBES
"It is not happiness to see, but sight with enjoyment and interest. There are but two powers of the soul, understanding and will. When both these have their perfection, that is happiness: when the understanding sees, and the will draws the affections. So there these things concur to make up our everlasting happiness, the excellency of the thing, with the sight of it, and interest in it."
RICHARD SIBBES
"Many controversies of these times grow up about religion, as suckers from the root and limbs of a fruit tree, which spend the vital sap that should make fruit."
John Flavel
"Doth God give us a Christ, and will he deny us a crust? If God doth not give us what we crave, He will give us what we need."
THOMAS WATSON
"It is one thing to have sin alarmed only by convictions, and another to have it crucified by converting grace. Many, because they have been troubled in conscience for their sins, think well of their case, miserably mistaking conviction for conversion."
JOSEPH ALLEINE
"It is an undoubted truth that every doctrine that comes from God, leads to God; and that which doth not tend to promote holiness is not of God."
GEORGE WHITEFIELD
"Whatever vices and corruptions men see in the lives of their ministers will not be attributed to the depravity of their old nature which still abides in them, but to the gospel."
JOHN OWEN
"When you hear or see the sinful acts of me, think: Oh, what are the best of us by nature? Free grace stops my course, else I had been reeling with the drunkard, blaspheming with the swearer, revelling with the wanton; Lord, let me not bless myself in morality, but let me arrive at sincerity of disposition; never leave me to ways of mine own heart."
OLIVER HEYWOOD
"Knowledge without repentance will be but a torch to light men to hell."
THOMAS WATSON
"It is truth alone that capacitates any soul to glorify God."
JOHN OWEN
"Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death."
JOHN OWEN
"Thy sorrows outbid thy heart, thy fears outbid thy sorrows, and thy thoughts go beyond thy fears; and yet here is the comfort of a poor soul: in all his misery and wretchedness, the mercy of Lord outbids all these, whatsoever may, can, or shall befall thee."
THOMAS HOOKER
"The flowers smell sweetest after a shower; vines bear the better for bleeding; the walnut-tree is most fruitful when most beaten; saints spring and thrive most internally, when they are most externally afflicted. Afflictions are the mother of virtue. Manasseh's chain was more profitable to him than his crown. . . .All of the stones that came about Stephen's ears did but knock him closer to Christ, the corner-stone."
THOMAS BROOKS
"The world rings changes, it is never constant but in its disappointments. The world is but a great inn, where we are to stay a night or two, and be gone; what madness is it so to set our heart upon our inn, as to forget our home?"
THOMAS WATSON
"First we practice sin, then defend it, then boast of it."
THOMAS MANTON
"Let them fear death who do not fear sin."
THOMAS WATSON
"None so empty of grace as he that thinks he is full."
THOMAS WATSON
"I exhort you and beseech you in the bowels of Christ, faint not, weary not. There is a great necessity of heaven; you must have it... Think it not easy; for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory; many are lying dead by the way, that were slain with security."
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD
(this quotation is from Letter 100)
"Pride is the shirt of the soul, put on first and put off last."
GEORGE SWINNOCK
"Election having once pitched upon a man, it will find him out and call him home, wherever he be. It called Zaccheus out of accursed Jericho; Abraham out of idolatrous Ur of the Chaldees; Nicodemus and Paul, from the College of the Pharisees, Christ's sworn enemies; Dionysius and Damaris, out of superstitious Athens. In whatsoever dunghills God's elect are hid, election will find them out and bring them home."
JOHN ARROWSMITH
"All pangs are not the pangs of the new birth. The tree may blossom fairly in spring on which no fruit is to be found in harvest."
THOMAS BOSTON
"The house built on the sand may oftentimes be built higher, have more fair parapets and battlements, windows and ornaments, than that which is built upon the rock; yet all gifts and privileges equal not one grace.."
JOHN OWEN
"In all their jollity in this world, the wicked are but as a book fairly bound, which when it is opened is full of nothing but tragedies. So when the book of their consciences shall be once opened, there is nothing to be read but lamentations and woes."
RICHARD SIBBES
"What if we have more of the rough file, if we have less rust! Afflictions carry away nothing but the dross of sin."
THOMAS WATSON
"Christ's riches are unsearchable, and this doctrine of the gospel is the field this treasure is hidden in."
THOMAS GOODWIN
"The rattle without the breast will not satisfy the child; the house without the husband will not satisfy the wife; the cabinet without the jewel will not satisfy the virgin; the world without Christ will not satisfy the soul."
Thomas Brooks
"It is the happiness of heaven to have God be all in all."
JEREMIAH BURROUGHS
"A man may be theologically knowing and spiritually ignorant."
STEPHEN CHARNOCK
"If the guilt of sin is so great that nothing can satisfy it but the blood of Jesus; and the filth of sin is so great that nothing can fetch out the stain thereof but the blood of Jesus, how great, how heinous, how sinful must the evil of sin be."
WILLIAM BRIDGE
"Nothing is more contrary to a heavenly hope than an earthly heart."
WILLIAM GURNALL
"Christ is a most precious commodity, he is better than rubies or the most costly pearls; and we must part with our old gold, with our shining gold, our old sins, our most shining sins, or we must perish forever. Christ is to be sought and bought with any pains, at any price; we can not buy this gold too dear. He is a jewel more worth than a thousand worlds, as all know who have him. Get him, and get all; miss him and miss all."
THOMAS BROOKS
"I measure ministers by square measure. I have no idea of the size of a table, if you only tell me how long it is: but if you also say how wide, I can tell its dimensions. So, when you tell me what a man is in the pulpit, you must also tell me what he is out of it, or I shall not know his size"
JOHN NEWTON
"It is a destructive addition to add anything to Christ"
RICHARD SIBBES
"That which cannot quiet the heart in a storm, cannot entitle a man to blessedness; earthly things accumulated, cannot rock the troubled heart quiet, therefore cannot make one blessed. When Saul was sore distressed, could all the jewels of his crown comfort him? 'They shall cast their silver in the streets...their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord.' (Ezek. 7:19)"
THOMAS WATSON
"What renders God amiable to Himself should render Him lovely to His creatures, Isaiah 42:21."
STEPHEN CHARNOCK
"Oh, better were it for you to die in a jail, in a ditch, in a dungeon, than to die in your sins. If death, as it will take away all your comforts, would take away all your sins too, it were some mitigation; but your sins will follow you when your friends leave you, and all your worldly enjoyments shake hands with you. Your sins will not die with you as a prisoner's other debts will; but they will got to judgement with you there to be your accusers; and they will go to hell with you there to be your tormentors."
JOSEPH ALLEINE
"Solomon bids us (Prov 23:23) to buy the truth, but doth not tell us what it must cost, because we must get it though it be never so dear. We must love it both shining and scorching. Every parcel of truth is precious as the filings of gold; we must either live with it, or die for it."
THOMAS BROOKS
"To argue from mercy to sin is the devil's logic."
JAMES JANEWAY
"When sin is your burden, Christ will be your delight."
THOMAS WATSON
"When God and his glory our made our end, we shall find a silent likeness pass in upon us; the beauty of God will, by degrees, enter upon our soul."
STEPHEN CHARNOCK
"In the Scriptures there is a portrait of God, but in Christ there is God himself. A coin bears the image of Caesar, but Caesar's son is his own lively resemblance. Christ is the living Bible."
THOMAS MANTON
"Our mind is where our pleasure is, our heart is where our treasure is, our love is where our life is, but all these, our pleasure, treasure, and life, are reposed in Jesus Christ."
Thomas Adams
"Not only the worst of my sins, but the best of my duties speak me a child of Adam."
WILLIAM BEVERIDGE
" I can hardly recollect a single plan of mine, of which I have not since seen reason to be satisfied, that had it taken place in season and circumstance just as I proposed, it would, humanly speaking, have proved my ruin; or at least it would have deprived me of the greater good the Lord had designed for me. We judge of things by their present appearances, but the Lord sees them in their consequences, if we could do so likewise we should be perfectly of His mind; but as we cannot, it is an unspeakable mercy that He will manage for us, whether we are pleased with His management or not; and it is spoken of as one of his heaviest judgments, when He gives any person or people up to the way of their own hearts, and to walk after their own counsels."
JOHN NEWTON
"The godly have some good in them, therefore the devil afflicts them; and some evil in them, therefore God afflicts them."
THOMAS WATSON
"Spiritual rest maketh no man idle, spiritual walking maketh no man weary."
NATHANIEL HARDY
"God hears no more than the heart speaks; and if the heart be dumb, God will certainly be deaf."
THOMAS BROOKS
"The most tremendous judgment of God in this world is the hardening of the hearts of men."
JOHN OWEN
"I think it is possible on earth to build a young, new Jerusalem, a little, new heaven of this surpassing love. God, either send me more of this love, or take me quickly over the water, where I may be filled with his love."
SAMUEL RUTHERFORD
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