Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
To be the people of God without regeneration, is as impossible as to be the children of men without generation.
When the Son of God comes to rescue us and bring us back to God, He does not find in us the ability to believe.
Lay siege to your sins, and starve them out by keeping away the food and fuel which is their maintenance and life.
If life be long, I will be glad, Tthat I may long obey; If short, yet why should I be sad, To soar to endless day?
To live among such excellent helps as our libraries afford, to have so many silent wise companions whenever we please.
Prayer must carry on our work as much as preaching; he preacheth not heartily to his people that will not pray for them.
Sinners, hear and consider, if you wilfully condemn your souls to bestiality, God will condemn them to perpetual misery.
Life is short, and we are dull, and eternal things are necessary, and the souls that depend on our teaching are precious.
This is the sanctification of your studies: when they are devoted to God, and when He is the end, the object, and the life of them all.
A holy and heavenly life is a continual pain to the consciences of sinners around you and continually solicits them to change their course.
If you do not see yourselves and all things as living, moving, and having their being in God, you see nothing, whatever you may think you see.
The longer you delay, the more your sin gets strength and rooting. If you cannot bend a twig, how will you be able to bend it when it is a tree?
You shall find this to be God's usual course: not to give his children the taste of his delights till they begin to sweat in seeking after them.
In a divine commonwealth holiness must have the principal honor and encouragement, and a great difference be made between the precious and the vile.
If family religion were duly attended to and properly discharged, I think the preaching of the Word would not be the common instrument of conversion.
Our very business is to teach the great lesson of self-denial and humility to our people, and how unfit is it then that we should be proud ourselves!
I must confess, as the experience of my own soul, that the expectation of loving my friends in heaven principally kindles my love to them while on earth.
God takes men's hearty desires and will, instead of the deed, where they have not power to fulfill it; but he never took the bare deed instead of the will.
Take heed to yourselves, lest you perish while you call upon others to take heed of perishing, and lest you famish yourselves while you prepare their food.
In my library I have profitably and pleasantly dwelt among the shining lights, with which the learned, wise, and holy men of all ages have illuminated the world.
In our first paradise in Eden there was a way to go out but no way to go in again. But as for the heavenly paradise, there is a way to go in, but not way to go out.
The heart is naturally hard, and grows harder by custom in sin, especially by long abuse of mercy, neglect of the means of grace, and resisteing the spirit of grace.
Do not mathematics and all sciences seem full of contradictions and impossibilities to the ignorant, which are all resolved and cleared to those that understand them?
It is true, that men may have Christ whenever they are willing to comply with His terms. But if you are not willing now, how can you think you shall be willing hereafter?
Never does sin so reign in the Church or State, as when it has gained reputation,or, at least, is no disgrace to the sinner,nor is a matter od offence to we who behold it.
Keep up your conjugal love in a constant heat and vigor. Love will suppress wrath: you cannot have a bitter mind upon small provocations, against those that you dearly love.
The churchyard is the market place where all things are rated at their true value, and those who are approaching it talk of the world and its vanities with a wisdom unknown before.
A man pleaser cannot be true to God, because he is a servant to the enemies of his service; the wind of a man's mouth will drive him about as the chaff, from any duty, and to any sin.
Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the world: use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used. Kill it before it kills you.
Most (Christians) have an ungrounded trust in Christ, hoping that He will pardon, justify and save them, while the world has their hearts, and they live to the flesh. And this trust they take as justifying faith.
Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator.
It is as hard a thing to maintain a sound understanding, a tender conscience, a lively, gracious, heavenly spirit, and an upright life in the midst of contention, as to keep your candle lighted in the greatest storms.
We shall then have joy without sorrow, and rest without weariness...Be of good cheer, Christian, the time is near, when God and thou shalt be near, and as near as thou canst well desire. Thou shalt dwell in his family.
If a man that is desperately sick today, did believe he should arise sound the next morning; or a man today, in despicable poverty, had assurance that he should tomorrow arise a prince: would they be afraid to go to bed....?
Though selfishness hath defiled the whole man, yet sensual pleasure is the chief part of its interest, and, therefore, by the senses it commonly works; and these are the doors and windows by which iniquity entereth into the soul.
O what a blessed day that will be when I shall . . . stand on the shore and look back on the raging seas I have safely passed; when I shall review my pains and sorrows, my fears and tears, and possess the glory which was the end of all!
Is it not enough that all the world is against us, but we must also be against one another? O happy days of persecution, which drove us together in love, whom the sunshine of liberty and prosperity crumbles into dust by our contentions!
You little know what you have done, when you have first broke the bounds of modesty; you have set open the door of your fancy to the devil, so that he can, almost at his pleasure ever after, represent the same sinful pleasure to you anew.
Above all be much in secret prayer and meditation. By this you will fetch the heavenly fire that must kindle your sacrifice: remember you cannot decline and neglect your duty to your own hurt alone, many will be losers by it as well as you.
Will any man that hath not lost his senses, now stand caviling, and quarrelling, that so few should be saved, instead of making sure of his own salvation? The reason that there are so few is, because they will not be saved upon God's terms.
Despair of ever being saved, "except thou be born again," or of seeing God "without holiness," or of having part in Christ except thou "love him above father, mother, or thy own life." This kind of despair is one of the first steps to heaven.
Of all the preaching in the world, I hate that preaching which tends to make the hearers laugh, or to move their minds with tickling levity and affect them as stage plays used to, instead of affecting them with a holy reverence for the name of God.
Holiness is nothing else but the habitual and predominant devotion and dedication of soul, and body, and life, and all that we have to God; and esteeming, and loving, and serving, and seeking Him, before all the pleasures and prosperity of the flesh.
I like to hear a man dwell much on the same essentials of Christianity. For we have but one God, and one Christ, and one faith to preach; and I will not preach another Gospel to please men with variety, as if our Saviour and our Gospel had grown stale.
It is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or good, but the well-reading of a few, could he be sure to have the best. And it is not possible to read over many on the same subject without a great deal of loss of precious time.
Till men are deeply humbled, they can part with Christ and Salvation for a lust, for a little wordly gain, for that which is less than nothing. But when God hath enlightened their consciences, and broken their hearts, then they would give a world for Christ.
A foolish physician he is, and a most unfaithful friend, that will let a sick man die for fear of troubling him; and cruel wretches are we to our friends, that will rather suffer them to go quietly to hell, then we will anger them, or hazard our reputation with them.
It is past all question, and agreed on by all sides, that no religion will save a man who is not serious, sincere, and diligent in it. If thou be of the truest religion in the world, and are not true thyself to that religion, the religion is good, but it is none of thine.
The more perfect the sight is the more delightful the beautiful object. The more perfect the appetite, the sweeter the food. The more musical the ear, the more pleasant the melody. The more perfect the soul, the more joyous the joys of heaven, and the more glorious that glory.
I tell you again, God hath not ordinarily decreed the end without the means; and if you will neglect the means of salvation, it is a certain mark that God hath not decreed you to salvation. But you shall find that He hath left you no excuse, because He hath not thus predestined you.