What They Said

"Death is no punishment to the believer: it is the gate of endless joy." 
  

"Without the heart it is no worship. It is a stage play. It is an acting of a part without being that person, really. It is playing the hypocrite."

"An oath of office places a man and the people he governs in covenant with God.  It binds the man and the people.  It is an act of the most serious nature and consequences.  Before it is too late, we had better take it as seriously as God does!"

"Where there is no want, there is usually much wantonness."

"Adoption gives us the privilege of sons, regeneration the nature of sons."

"Providence is the perpetuity and continuance of creation."

"This life was not intended to be the place of our perfection, but the preparation for it."

"It is our bounden duty to live in obedience, but it would prove our utter ruin to live on obedience."

"The devil tempts, that he may deceive; but God suffers us to be tempted, to try us.  Temptation is a trial of our sincerity."

"The cause why our oppressors prevail oft against us is, because we trust too much in our own wits, and lean too much upon our own inventions; opposing subtility to subtility, one evil device to another, matching and maintaining policy by policv, and not committing our cause to God."

"To want temptations is the greatest temptation of all."

"Temptations and occasions put nothing into a man, but only draw out what was in him before."

"If thou hast fallen into sin through violent temptations, seek speedily for repentance for it, recovery out of it, and reformation from it."

"Satan, like a fisher, baits his hook according to the appetite of the fish."

"We have as many hypocrites in government as we do because so many of us voters are hypocrites.  We are all for reforming everyone except ourselves."

"To understand therefore what is happening in America's economy, the answer is not to complain about the rising price of farm products but to look at the changing yardstick, money."

"When the faith is more than a possession but a fire in our being that possesses us, we are governed by it.  It commands and compels us as nothing else can, because we are in the hands and power of the living God."

"When a civilisation looses its faith, it begins to live, not in terms of responsibilities, and the future, but in terms of the present pleasure." 

"Politics cannot produce character: Christianity must. The decline of faith is a decline of character and a decline of character is the forerunner of political decay and collapse. Christianity has an obligation to train a people in the fundamentals of God's grace and law, and to make them active and able champions of true political liberty and order."

"Evangelical repentance is repentance of sin as sin: not of this sin nor of that, but of the whole mass. We repent of the sin of our nature as well as the sin of our practice. We bemoan sin within us and without us. We repent of sin itself as being an insult to God. Anything short of this is a mere surface repentance, and not a repentance which reaches to the bottom of the mischief. Repentance of the evil act, and not of the evil heart, is like men pumping water out of a leaky vessel, but forgetting to stop the leak. Some would dam up the stream, but leave the fountain still flowing; they would remove the eruption from the skin, but leave the disease in the flesh."

"God will not pardom for repentance, nor yet without it."

"The wicked do but weep for their sins past, but the godly purpose to sin no more."

"A repenting man is more angry at his own heart that consenteth to sin than he is at the devil who did tempt him to sin."

"You cannot repent too soon, because you do not know how soon it may be too late"

"God's forbearance is no acquittance."

"Christ came not to possess our brains with some cold opinions, that send down a freezing and benumbing influence into our hearts.  Christ was a master of the life, not of the school; and he is the best Christian whose heart beats with the purest pulse towards heaven, not he whose head spins the finest cobweb."

"As the saint is described sometimes by a "clean heart," so also sometimes by "clean hands," because he has both; the holiness of his heart is seen at his fingers' ends."

"There are some things good but not pleasant, as sorrow and affliction.   Sin is pleasant, but unprofitable; and sorrow is profitable, but unpleasant.  As waters are purest when they are in motion, so saints are generally holiest when in affliction."

"Sin hath the devil for its father, shame for it companion, death for its wages."

"The second branch of good nurture is a training up of children unto a good calling. This charge [train up a child in the way that he should go (Prov 22:6)] directly tendeth to this purpose. This duty hath from the beginning of the world been performed by parents, and their performance thereof commended by the Holy Ghost."

Though there is not always grace where there is the fear of hell, yet, to be sure, there is no grace where there is no fear of God."

"His glory is as Himself, eternal, infinite, and so abides in itself, not capable of our addition to it or detraction from it. As the sun, which would shine in its own brightness and glory though all the world were blind, or did wilfully shut their eyes against it, so God will ever be most glorious, let men be ever so obstinate or rebellious. Yea, God will have glory by reprobates, though it be nothing to their ease; and though He be not glorified of them, yet He will glorify Himself in them."

Nehemiah Rogers

"Jesus sustains no association to His Church more expressive than that of the marriage relationship. From all eternity He forever betrothed her to Himself. He asked her at the hands of her Father—and the Father gave her to Him. He entered into a covenant that she would be His. The conditions of that covenant were great, but not too great for His love to undertake. They were, that He should assume her nature, discharge her legal obligations, endure her punishment, repair her ruin, and bring her to glory! He undertook all, and He accomplished all, because He loved her! The love of Jesus to His Church is the love of the most tender husband. It is single, constant, affectionate, matchless, wonderful. Jesus sympathizes with her, nourishes her, provides for her, clothes her, watches over, and indulges her with the most intimate and endearing tenderness."

“Be very sure of this,-people never reject the Bible because they cannot understand it. They understand it only too well; they understand that it condemns their own behavior; they understand that it witnesses against their own sins, and summons them to judgment.” 

"The work of the Spirit, then, is joined to the word of God. But a distinction is made, that we may know that the external word is of no avail by itself. unless animated by the power of the Spirit ...All power of action, then, resides in the Spirit himself."

"If so be that free-will were our tutor, and we had our heaven in our own keeping, then we would lose all.  But because we have Christ for our tutor, and He has our heaven in His hand, therefore the covenant it must be perpetual."

"When you are dangerously sick, and the physician tells you unless you take such a course of physic, your case is desperate, do you use to reason thus: If I knew that God had decreed my recovery, I would take that course that is so like to restore me; but till I know that God has decreed my recovery I'll take nothing?  Surely we should think such a reasoner not only sick, but distracted."

"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 predestinated you."

"Some are much troubled because they proceed by a false method and order in judging of their estates.  They will begin with election, which is the highest step of the ladder; whereas they should begin from a work of grace wrought within their hearts, from God's calling by His Spirit, and their answer to His call, and so raise themselves upwards to know their election by their answer to God's calling.  "Give all diligence," says Peter, "to make your calling and election sure," your election by your calling.  God descends unto us from election to calling, and so to sanctification; we must ascend to Him beginning where He ends."

"You begin at the wrong end if you first dispute about your election.  Prove your conversion, and then never doubt your election.  If you cannot yet prove it, set upon a present and thorough turning.  Whatever God's purpose be, which are secret, I am sure His promises are plain.  How desperately do rebels argue!  "If I am elected I shall be saved, do what I will.  If not, I shall be damned, do what I can."  Perverse sinner, will you begin where you should end?"

"Take a saint, and put him into any condition, and he knows how to rejoice in the Lord."

"To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea."

"Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state - it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage."