quotes
Mike Abendroth
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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
Thomas Watson, "[Jesus] alone is the Prince of Preachers. He alone is the best of expositors."