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Fire and Ice: Puritan and Reformed Writings [Table of Contents] [Fast Index] [Site Map] |
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"Neither be idle in the means, nor make an idol of the means."
WILLAIM SECKER
"Means must be neither trusted nor neglected."
JOHN TRAPP
"Use thy duties, as Noah's dove did her wings, to carry thee to the ark of the Lord Jesus Christ, where only there is rest."
ISAAC AMBROSE
"There are no men more careful of the use of means than those that are surest of a good issue and conclusion, for the one stirs up diligence in the other. Assurance of the end stirs up diligence in the means. For the soul of a believing Christian knows that God has decreed both."
RICHARD SIBBES
"The Christian's life should put his minister's sermon in print."
WILLIAM GURNALL
"Screw the truth into men's minds."
RICHARD BAXTER
"We are not sent to get galley-slaves for the oars, or a bear to the stake: but He sends us to woo you as spouses, to marry you to Christ."
WALTER CRADOCK
"A hot iron, though blunt, will pierce sooner than a cold one, though sharper."
JOHN FLAVEL
"A river continually fed by a living fountain may as soon end its streams before it come to the ocean, as a stop be put to the course and progress of grace before it issue in glory."
JOHN OWEN
"It is not the glorious battlements, the painted windows, the crouching gargoyles that support a building, but the stones that lie unseen in or upon the earth. It is often those who are despised and trampled on that bear up the weight of a whole nation."
JOHN OWEN
"Assurance encourateth us in our combat; it delivers us not from it. We may have peace with God when we have done from the assaults of Satan."
JOHN OWEN
"Evangelical truth will not be honourably witnessed unto but by evangelical grace."
JOHN OWEN
"He who prays as he ought will endeavour to live as he prays."
JOHN OWEN
"Many a man's knowledge is a torch to light him to hell. Thou who hast knowledge of God's will, but doth not do it, wherein dost thou excel the devil, 'who transforms himself into an angel of light.'"
THOMAS WATSON
"A man may be theologically knowing and spiritually ignorant."
STEPHEN CHARNOCK
"The bare knowledge of God's will is inefficacious, it doth not better the heart. Knowledge alone is like a winter sun, which hath no heat or influence; it doth not warm the affections, or purify the conscience. Judas was a great luminary, he knew God's will, but he was a traitor."
THOMAS WATSON
"Let us not satisfy ourselves with a knowledge of God in the mass; a glance upon a picture never directs you to the discerning the worth and art of it."
STEPHEN CHARNOCK
"Neither place, parts, nay, nor graces, will exempt any man from falling. O believers, what need is there to be watchful and humble!"
JAMES DURHAM
"The title my love is a very kindly and sweet one; and this makes it lovely, that therein he not only intimates, but appropriates his love to her, allowing her to lay claim thereto as her own. My love, saith he, and it says, that there can be nothing more cordial and refreshing to believers than Christ's intimating of his love to them, and therefore he has chosen this title for that purpose. The men of this world exceedingly prejudice themselves, that they think not more of this, and study not to be aquainted with it."
JAMES DURHAM
"All the Spirit's operations, how rough soever some of them may appear, are always useful to believers, and tend to make them fruitful. To this end the most sharp influences contribute as well as the more comfortable."
JAMES DURHAM
"[Christ] feeds and gathers at once, and this gathering of souls is as sweetly refreshing and delightsome to our blessed Lord Jesus , as the plucking of the sweetest flower is to a man walking in a garden. And there is nothing more acceptable and welcome to him, than a seeking sinner....So long as our Lord Jesus has a church and ordinances in it, so he will continue to gather [his people], and he is not idle, but is still gathering; though at some times, and in some places, this may be more sensible and abundant than ordinary."
JAMES DURHAM
"Christ is the most cheap physician, he takes no fee. He desires us to bring nothing to him but broken hearts; and when he has cured us he desires us to bestow nothing on him but our love."
THOMAS WATSON
"Christ heals with more ease than any other. Christ makes the devil go out with a word (Mark 9:25). Nay, he can cure with a look: Christ's look melted Peter into repentance; it was a healing look. If Christ doth but cast a look upon the soul he can recover it. Therefore David prays to have a look from God, 'Look Thou upon me, and be merciful unto me' (Psalm 119:132)."
THOMAS WATSON
"Christ is the most tender-hearted physician. He hath ended his passion but not his compassion. He is not more full of skill than sympathy, 'He healed the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds' (Psalm 147:3). Every groan of the patient goes to the heart of the physician."
THOMAS WATSON
"Christ never fails of success. Christ never undertakes to heal any but he makes a certain cure, 'Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost,' (John 17:12). Other physicians can only cure them that are sick, but Christ cures them that are dead, 'And you hat he quickened who were dead' (Eph 2:1). Christ is a physician for the dead, of every one whom Christ cures, it may be said, 'He was dead, and is alive again' (Luke 15:32)."
THOMAS WATSON
"Christ is the most bountiful physician. Other patients do enrich their physicians, but here the physician doth enrich the patient. Christ elevates all his patients: he doth not only cure them but crown them (Rev. 2:10). Christ doth not only raise them from the bed, but to the throne; he gives the sick man not only health but also heaven."
THOMAS WATSON
"These two principles, their own reputation and that of their sect, constituted the life and soul of Pharisaism of old."
JOHN OWEN
"No heart can conceive that treasury of mercies which lies in this one privilege, in having liberty and ability to approach unto God at all times, according to his mind and will."
JOHN OWEN
"If we would talk less and pray more about them, things would be be better than they are in the world; at least, we should be better enabled to bear them."
JOHN OWEN
"It is a throne of grace that God in Christ is represented to us upon; but yet is is a throne still whereon majesty and glory do reside, and God is always to be considered by us as on a throne."
JOHN OWEN
"O sirs, here is a cord of love let down, and the upper end of it is fastened to Christ's heart, and the lower end of it hanging down the length of your hearts. And, O! shall not Christ's heart and yours be knit together this day. Here is a cord to bind His heart to your heart, and your heart to His heart."
RALPH ERSKINE
"Since the last communion here, one of our dear helpers in this presbytery from whose lips you used to hear the joyful sound, is gone away to the communion-table above; and glory be to God that he got a full gale of heavenly wind, to drive him in with holy joy and triumph to the harbor of glory."
RALPH ERSKINE
"Faith, without trouble or fighting, is a suspicious faith; for true faith is a fighting, wrestling faith."
RALPH ERSKINE
"The law breaks the hard heart, but the gospel melts it. A stone duly broken, may be still a hard stone; but the gospel melts."
RALPH ERSKINE
"O come! And kiss the Son, by believing in Him, and applying the benefits of this glorious transaction to yourself; and be who you will, if you kiss and embrace the Son, you shall find the glorious attributes of God kissing and embracing you, and hugging you in their arms, as a darling of heaven and a favourite in the house of God."
RALPH ERSKINE
"Oh, Christians, look to your steps! When you have prayed against sin, then watch against temptation. Such as are more excellent than others, God expects some singular thing from them. They should bring more glory to God and, by their exemplary piety, make proselytes to religion. Better fruit is expected from a vineyard than from a wild forest."
THOMAS WATSON
"He doth preach most that doth live best."
JOHN BOYS
"a minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more."
JOHN OWEN
"A faithful minister must see before he say."
EDWARD MARBURY
"Sense of sin may be often great, and more felt than grace; yet not be more than grace. A man feels the ache of his finger more sensibly than the health of his whole body; yet he knows that the ache of a finger is nothing so much as the health of the whole body."
THOMAS ADAMS
"God dwells as glorious in a saint when he is in the dark, as when he is in light, for darkness is His secret place, and His pavilion round about Him are dark waters."
WILLIAM ERBERRY
"Great comforts do, indeed, bear witness to the truth of thy grace, but not to the degree of it; the weak child is ofterner in the lap than the strong one."
WILLIAM GURNALL
"The Christian must trust in a withdrawing God."
WILLIAM GURNALL
"O Christian, never be proud of things that are so transient, injurious, and uncertain as the riches of this evil world! But set your heart on the true and durable riches of grace in Christ Jesus."
ISAAC AMBROSE
"How soon are we broken on the soft pillow of ease! Adam in paradise was overcome, when Job on the dunghill was a conqueror."
THOMAS WATSON
"Immoderate care takes the heart off from better things; and usually while we are thinking how we shall do to live, we forget how to die. We may sooner by our care add a furlong to our grief, than a foot to our comfort."
THOMAS WATSON
"God keeps open house for hungry sinners (Isa. 45:1,2)."
THOMAS WATSON
"Sin is naturally exceeding dear to us; to part with it is compared to plucking out our right eyes. Men may refrain from wonted ways of sin for a little while, and may deny their lusts in a partial degree, with less difficulty; but it is heart-rending work, finally to part with all sin, and to give our dearest lusts a bill of divorce, utterly to send them away. But this we must do, if we would follow those that are truly turning to God: yea, we must not only forsake sin, but must, in a sense, forsake all the world, Luke xiv.33 'Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.'"
JONATHAN EDWARDS
"A proud faith is as much a contradiction as a humble devil."
STEPHEN CHARNOCK
"'Tis no easy matter to be saved. 'Twas difficult work to Jesus Christ to work redemption for us. 'Tis difficult work to the Spirit to work grace in us, and to carry it on against corruptions, temptations, distractions."
PHILIP HENRY
"Despair is hope stark dead, presumption is hope stark mad."
THOMAS ADAMS
"There is a secret, heavenly vigour infused into every gracious soul by the sanctifying Spirit, which deadens it to the world, and makes it delight in God. He ought to shine in the world, as a light 'in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation,' Phil. ii.15. Light and darkness cannot endure one another; neither the power of grace those works of darkness in which the world lies drowned. He is by no means to be conformed to this world, Rom. 12:2, nor to run with the wicked to the same excess of riot, 1 Pet. 4:4. He is now new-born, and becomes a child of eternity; whereby his heart is fallen in love with new and everlasting delights, and the eye of his soul turned from the dung of this world towards the glory of the second life. As the worldling cannot relish the sweet joys of gracious exercises, so neither can the christian the frothy pleasures of carnal fellowship. You can as hardly draw the sound professor to an assembly of swaggering companions, as a lover of pleasure to a day of humiliation."
ROBERT BOLTON
"One great contest, between the religion of Arminianism, and the religion of Christ, is, who shall stand entitled to the praise and glory of a sinner's salvation? Conversion decides this point at once; for I think that, without any imputation of uncharitableness, I may venture to say, that every truly awakened person, at least when he is under the shine of God's countenance upon his soul, will fall down upon his knees, with this hymn of praise ascending from his heart, Not unto me, O Lord, not unto me, but to thy name, give the glory: I am saved not for my righteousness, but for thy mercy and thy truth's sake."
AUGUSTUS TOPLADY
"Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause, and to enable you to dispute with others; but seek it for the benefit of your souls, and in order to practice....Practice according to what knowledge you have. This will be the way to know more...[According to Ps. 119:100] 'I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.'"
JONATHAN EDWARDS
"In natures, we see God, as it were, like the sun in a picture; in the law, as the sun in a cloud; in Christ we see Him in His beams; He being 'the brightness of His glory, and the exact image of His person."
STEPHEN CHARNOCK
"Whatsoever is good for God's children they shall have it; for all is theirs to help them towards heaven; therefore if poverty be good they shall have it; if disgrace or crosses be good they shall have them; for all is ours to promote our greatest prosperity."
RICHARD SIBBES
"He that thirsts after grace is already entitled to the well of life and fullness of heavenly bliss, by a promise from God's own mouth. . . (Rev. 21:6)"
ROBERT BOLTON
"Christians in consort are an abridgement of heaven, shining like a firmament of bright stars. . . Surely, of all fellowships, this is the only good fellowship. Next to communion with God, there is no communion like the communion of saints."
GEORGE SWINNOCK
"Examples do strangely charm us into imitation. When holiness is pressed upon us we are prone to think that it is a doctrine calculated for angels and spirits whose dwelling is not with flesh. But when we read the lives of them that excelled in holiness, though they were persons of like passions with ourselves, the conviction is wonderful and powerful."
COTTON MATHER
"What was it that obliged Jerome to write his book, Concerning Illustrious Men? It was the common reproach of old cast upon Christians, 'That they were all poor, weak, unlearned men.' The sort of men sometime called 'Puritans' in the English nation have been reproached with the same character. . . But when truth shall have liberty to speak, it will be known that Christianity never was more expressed unto the life than in the lives of the persons that have been thus reproached."
COTTON MATHER
"I have often thought of Mr Paul Bayne, his fairwell words to Dr Ames when going to Holland; Mr Bayne perceiving him to be a man of extra-ordinary parts, 'Beware (said he) of a strong head and a cold heart.'"
COTTON MATHER
"You all have by you a large treasure of divine knowledge, in that you have the Bible in your hands; therefore be not contented in possessing but little of this treasure. God hath spoken much to you in the Scripture; labor to understand as much of what he saith as you can. God hath made you all reasonable creatures; therefore let not the noble faculty of reason or understanding lie neglected. Content not yourselves with having so much knowledge as is thrown in your way, and as you receive in some sense unavoidably by the frequent inculcation of divine truth in the preaching of the word, of which you are obliged to be hearers, or as you accidentally gain in conversation; but let it be very much your business to search for it, and that with the same diligence and labor with which men are wont to dig in mines of silver and gold."
JONATHAN EDWARDS
"It is no solid objection against God aiming at an infinitely perfect union of the creature with himself, that the particular time will never come when it can be said, the union is now infinitely perfect. God aims at satisfying justice in the eternal damnation of sinners; which will be satisfied by their damnation, considered no otherwise than with regard to its eternal duration. But yet there never will come that particular moment, when it can be said, that now justice is satisfied. But if this does not satisfy our modern free-thinkers who do not like to talk about satisfying justice with an infinite punishment; I suppose it will not be denied by any, that God, in glorifying the saints in heaven with eternal felicity, aims to satisfy his infinite grace or benevolence, by the bestowment of a good infinitely valuable, because eternal: and yet there never will come that moment, when it can be said, that now this infinitely valuable good has been actually bestowed."
JONATHAN EDWARDS
"Do you not find yourselves forgetful of Jesus? Some creature steals away your heart, and you are unmindful of him upon whom your affection ought to be set. Some earthly business engrosses your attention when you should have your eye steadily fixed upon the cross. It is the incessant round of world, world, world; the constant din of earth, earth, earth, that takes away the soul from Christ. Oh! my friends, is it not too sadly true that we can recollect anything but Christ, and forget nothing so easy as him whom we ought to remember? While memory will preserve a poisoned weed, it suffereth the Rose of Sharon to wither."
C.H. Spurgeon
"The reason [for the spread of Arminian] doctrine is because some preachers are men of learning and moral men, and they have drunk in some errors and lack experience. Learning and morality will qualify men to make many good and profitable sermons, much for the edification of the hearers. Learning qualifies men to clear up many principles of religion, and a moral disposition may fit men zealously to reprove vicious practices. But men may be learned men, yet drink in very corrupt doctrines."
SOLOMON STODDARD
"Remember the perfections of that God whom you worship, that he is a Spirit, and therefore to be worshipped in spirit and truth; and that he is most great and terrible, and therefore to be worshipped with seriousness and reverence, and not to be dallied with, or served with toys or lifeless lip-service; and that he is most holy, pure, and jealous, and therefore to be purely worshipped; and that he is still present with you, and all things are naked and open to him with whom we have to do. The knowledge of God, and the remembrance of his all-seeing presence, are the most powerful means against hypocrisy."
RICHARD BAXTER
"Most of God's people are contented to be saved from the hell that is without; they are not so anxious to be saved from the hell that is within."
ROBERT MURRAY MCCHEYNE
"For every look at self take ten looks at Christ."
ROBERT MURRAY MCCHEYNE
"It is a sure mark of grace to desire more."
ROBERT MURRAY MCCHEYNE
"Paul was Nero's prisoner, but Nero was much more God's."
WILLIAM GURNALL
"No, the Christian must stand fixed to his principles, and not change his habit; but freely show what countryman he is by his holy constancy in the truth."
WILLIAM GURNALL
"Take heart therefore, O ye saints, and be strong; your cause is good, God himself espouseth your quarrel, who hath appointed you his own Son, General of the field, called 'the Captain of our salvation,' Heb 2:10."
WILLIAM GURNALL
"O take heed of this squint eye to our profit, pleasure, honour, or anything beneath Christ and heaven; for they will take away your heart ... that is, our love, and if our love be taken away, there will be little courage left for Christ."
WILLIAM GURNALL
Blind zeal is soon put to a shameful retreat, while holy resolution, built on fast principles, lifts up its head like a rock in the midst of the waves.
WILLIAM GURNALL
"Godliness is glory in the seed, and glory is godliness in the flower."
THOMAS WATSON
"If a wicked man seems to have peace at death, it is not from the knowledge of his happiness, but from the ingnorance of his danger."
THOMAS WATSON
"Were the holiest heart upon earth enlarged to the vast comprehension of this great world's wideness; nay, made capable of all the glorious and magnificent hallelujahs and hearty praises offered to Jehovah, both by all the militant and triumphant church, yet would it come infinitely short of sufficiently magnifying, admiring, and adoring the inexplicable mystery and bottomless depth of this free, independent mercy, and love to God, the Fountain and First Mover of all our good."
ROBERT BOLTON
"For it is utterly impossible that any finite cause, created power, or anything out of God himself, should primarily move and incline the eternal, immutable, uncreated, omnipotent will of God. The true original and prime motive of all gracious, bountiful expressions and effusions of love upon his elect, is the good pleasure of his will. And therefore to hold that election to life is made upon foresight of faith, good works the right use of free will, or any created motive, is not only false and wicked, but also ignorant and absurd tenet. To say no more at this time, it robs God of his all-sufficiency, making him go out of himself, looking to this or that in the creature, upon which his will may be determined to elect."
ROBERT BOLTON
"First, draw off your hearts, because Jesus Christ, the Head, is risen and ascended upon high, and there sits at the right hand of His Father; and if the Head is in heaven, where should the members be but where the Head is? Shall Christ our Head be in heaven, and shall our hearts, which are His members, lie groveling on the ground and panting after the dust of the earth, making all our inquiry and labor after these? 'If Christ our Head be risen, seek those things that are above, where Christ sits at God's right hand.'"
CHRISTOPHER LOVE
"Christ is like a river in another respect. A river is continually flowing, there are fresh supplies of water coming from the fountain-head continually, so that a man may live by it, and be supplied with water all his life. So Christ is an ever-flowing fountain; he is continually supplying his people, and the fountain is not spent. They who live upon Christ, may have fresh supplies from him to all eternity; they may have an increase of blessedness that is new, and new still, and which never will come to an end."
JONATHAN EDWARDS
[Concerning the Word preached:] "Do we prize it in our judgments? Do we receive in into our hearts? Do we fear the loss of the Word preached more than the loss of peace and trade? Is it the removal of the ark that troubles us? Again, do we attend to the Word with reverential devotion? When the judge is giving the charge on the bench, all attend. When the Word is preached, the great God is giving us his charge. Do we listen to it as to a matter of life and death? This is a good sign that we love the Word.
THOMAS WATSON
"I remember myself, that when I was young, I had sometime the company of one ancient godly minister, who was of weaker parts than many others, but yet did profit me more than most; because he would never in prayer or conference speak of God, or the life to come, but with such marvelous seriousness and reverence, as if he had seen the majesty and glory which he talked of."
RICHARD BAXTER
"Afflictions add to the saints' glory. The more the diamond is cut, the more it sparkles; the heavier the saints' cross is, the heavier will be their crown."
THOMAS WATSON
"If God be our God, He will give us peace in trouble. When there is a storm without, He will make peace within. The world can create trouble in peace, but God can create peace in trouble."
THOMAS WATSON
"Eternity to the godly is a day that has no sunset; eternity to the wicked is a night that has no sunrise."
THOMAS WATSON
"Oh sirs, deal with sin as sin, and speak of heaven and hell as they are, and not as if you were in jest."
JOHN FLAVEL
"Grace will teach a Christian contentedly to take those potions that are wholesome, though they are not toothsome."
GEORGE SWINNOCK
"Mercy hath a heaven, and justice a hell, to display itself to eterity, but long-suffering hath only a short-lived earth."
HENRY SMITH
"Oh, that I might live to see that day when professors shall not walk in vain show; when they shall please themselves no more with a name to live, being spiritually dead; when they shall no more (as many of them now are) be a company of frothy, vain, and unserious persons, but the majestic beams of holiness shining from their heavenly and serious conversation shall awe the world, and command reverence from all who are about them; when they shall warm the hearts of those who come nigh them, so that men shall say, 'God is truly in these men!'"
JOHN FLAVEL
"Oh, study your hearts, watch your hearts, keep your hearts! Away with empty names and vain shows; away with unprofitable discourse and bold censures of others. Turn in upon yourselves, get into your closets, and now resolve to dwell there. You have been strangers to this work too long; you have kept other vineyards too long; you have trifled about the borders of religion too long. Will you now resolve to look better to your hearts? Will you hate and come out of the crowds of business and clamors of the world and retire yourselves more than you have done? Oh, that this day you would resolve upon it!"
JOHN FLAVEL
"Tell me, you vain professor, when did you shed a tear for the deadness, hardness, unbelief, or earthliness of your heart? Do you think that such an easy religion can save you? If so, we may invert Christ's words and say, 'Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to life, and may there be that go in there.'"
JOHN FLAVEL
"Most men need patience to die, but a saint who understands what death admits him to should rather need patience to live. I think he should often look out and listen on a deathbed for his Lord's coming; and when he receives the news of his approaching change he should say, 'The voice of my beloved! behold, He cometh leaping over the mountains, skipping upon the hills' (Song of Solomon 2:8)."
JOHN FLAVEL
"And is it well done, then, to repine and droop because your Father consults more the advantage of your souls than the pleasing of your humors? Because He will bring you a nearer way to heaven than you are willing to go? Is this a due requital of His love, who is pleased so much to concern Himself for your welfare? This is more than He will do for thousands in the world, upon whom He will not lay a rod or send an affliction for their good (Hosea 4:17; Matthew 15:14). But alas! We judge by sense, and reckon things good or evil according to what we, for the present, can taste and feel in them."
JOHN FLAVEL
"'The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,....neither can he know them' (1 Cor. 2:14). He may have more insight into the things of the world than a believer, but he does not see the deep things of God. A swine may see an acorn under a tree, but he cannot see a star."
THOMAS WATSON
"'The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,....neither can he know them' (1 Cor. 2:14). He may have more insight into the things of the world than a believer, but he does not see the deep things of God. A swine may see an acorn under a tree, but he cannot see a star."
THOMAS WATSON
"Were the holiest heart upon earth enlarged to the vast comprehension of this great world's wideness; nay, made capable of all the glorious and magnificent hallelujahs and hearty praises offered to Jehovah, both by all the militant and triumphant church, yet would it come infinitely short of sufficiently magnifying, admiring, and adoring the inexplicable mystery and bottomless depth of this free, independent mercy, and love to God, the Fountain and First Mover of all our good."
ROBERT BOLTON
"If the Lord should bring a wicked man to heaven, heaven would be hell to him; for he who loves not grace upon earth will never love it in heaven."
CHRISTOPHER LOVE
"Christ is not only a remedy for your weariness and trouble, but he will give you an abundance of the contrary, joy and delight. They who come to Christ, do no only come to a resting-place after they have been wandering in a wilderness, but they come to a banqueting-house where they may rest, and where they may feast. They may cease from their former troubles and toils, and they may enter upon a course of delights and spiritual joys."
JONATHAN EDWARDS
"But Christ Jesus has true excellency, and so great excellency, that when they come to see it they look no further, but the mind rests there. It sees a transcendent glory and an ineffable sweetness in him; it sees that till now it has been pursuing shadows, but that now it has found the substance; that before it had been seeking happiness in the stream, but that now it has found the ocean. The excellency of Christ is an object adequate to the natural cravings of the soul, and is sufficient to fill the capacity. It is an infinite excellency, such an one as the mind desires, in which it can find no bounds; and the more the mind is used to it, the more excellent it appears. Every new discovery makes this beauty appear more ravishing, and the mind sees no end; here is room enough for the mind to go deeper and deeper, and never come to the bottom. The soul is exceedingly ravished when it first looks on this beauty, and it is never weary of it. The mind never has any satiety, but Christ's excellency is always fresh and new, and tends as much to delight, after it has been seen a thousand or ten thousand years, as when it was seen the first moment."
JONATHAN EDWARDS
"See that your chief study be about heart, that there God's image may be planted, and his interest advanced, and the interest of the world and flesh subdued, and the love of every sin cast out, and the love of holiness succeed; and that you content not yourselves with seeming to do good in outward acts, when you are bad yourselves, and strangers to the great internal duties. The first and great work of a Christian is about his heart."
RICHARD BAXTER
"Luxury and gluttony is a sin exceeding contrary to the love of God: it is idolatry: it hath the heart, which God should have; and therefore gluttons are commonly and well called belly-gods, and god-bellies, because that love, that care, that delight, that service and diligence which God should have is given by the glutton to his belly and his throat."
RICHARD BAXTER
"If the scriptures do thoroughly direct men to know God in Christ, and save their own souls, why should we look any further? Now, they do not only furnish every private Christian with this knowledge; but the man of God, who is to instruct others, he needeth look no further, but is furnished out of the scripture with all things necessary to discharge his office. Therefore here we fix and rest, we have a sufficient rule, and a full record of all necessary Christian doctrine."
THOMAS MANTON
"Praising God is one of the highest and purest acts of religion. In prayer we act like men; in praise we act like angels."
THOMAS WATSON
"As God delights in his own beauty, he must necessarily delight in the creature's holiness which is a conformity to and participation of it, as truly as [the] brightness of a jewel, held in the sun's beams, is a participation or derivation of the sun's brightness, though immensely less in degree."
JONATHAN EDWARDS
"The enjoyment of [God] is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean."
JONATHAN EDWARDS
"Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause, and to enable you to dispute with others; but seek it for the benefit of your souls, and in order to practice....Practice according to what knowledge you have. This will be the way to know more...[According to Ps. 119:100] 'I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.'"
JONATHAN EDWARDS
"If a person is what the world calls an honest moral man, if he does justly, and, what the world calls, love a little mercy, is not and then good-natured, reacheth out his hand to the poor, receives the sacrament once or twice a year, and is outwardly sober and honest; the world looks upon such an one as a Christian indeed, and doubtless we are to judge charitably of every such person. There are many likewise, who go on in a round of duties, a model of performances, that think they shall go to heaven; but if you examine them, though they have a Christ in their heads, they have no Christ in their hearts."
GEORGE WHITEFIELD
"Christ never undertakes to heal any but he makes a certain cure, 'Those whom thou givest me I have kept, and none of them is lost' (John 17:12). Other physicians can only cure them that are sick, but Christ cures them that are dead, 'And you hat he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins' (Eph. 2:1)."
THOMAS BROOKS
"Christ never undertakes to heal any but he makes a certain cure, 'Those whom thou givest me I have kept, and none of them is lost' (John 17:12). Other physicians can only cure them that are sick, but Christ cures them that are dead, 'And you hat he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins' (Eph. 2:1)."
THOMAS BROOKS
"The indulgence of one sin opens the door to further sins. The indulgence of one sin diverts the soul from the use of those means by which all other sins should be resisted."
JOHN OWEN"
"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 ALLIENE
"Repentance is a grace of God's Spirit whereby a sinner is inwardly humbled and visibly reformed."
THOMAS WATSON
"Works? Works? A man get to heaven by works? I would as soon think of climbing to the moon on a rope of sand!"
GEORGE WHITEFIELD"
"The almightiness of his mercy doth as much transcend our highest iniquities, as it doth our shallowest apprehensions. Our sins, as well as our substance, are but as the dust of the balance, as easily to be blown away by his grace, as the other puffed into nothing by his power."
STEPHEN CHARNOCK
"Antichrist is Mammon's son."
JOHN MILTON
"Better to bear than to swear, and to die than to lie."
THOMAS BROOKS
"Christ never undertakes to heal any but he makes a certain cure, 'Those whom thou givest me I have kept, and none of them is lost' (John 17:12). Other physicians can only cure them that are sick, but Christ cures them that are dead, 'And you hat he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins' (Eph. 2:1)."
THOMAS BROOKS
"By grace we are what we are in justification, and work what we work in sanctification."
RICHARD SIBBES
"If you would have a clear evidence that that little love, that little faith, that little zeal, you have is true, then live up to that love, live up to that faith, live up to that zeal that you have; and this will evidence beyond all contradiction."
THOMAS BROOKS
"Some temptations come to the industrious, but all temptations attack the idle."
C.H. SPURGEON
"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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