What They Said

"Again, if lustful looking be so grievous a sin, then those who dress and expose themselves with desires to be looked at and lusted after—as Jezebel, who painted her face, tired her head, and looked out of the window (2 Kings 9:30)—are not less, but even more guilty. In this matter it is only too often the case that men sin, but women tempt them so to do. How great, then, must be the guilt of the great majority of the modern misses who deliberately seek to arouse the sexual passions of our young men. And how much greater still is the guilt of most of their mothers for allowing them to become lascivious temptresses."

"It is absurd to imagine that God should justify a people, and they should go on in sin.  If God should justify a people and not sanctify them, He would justify a people whom He could not glorify."

"When Christ reveals Himself there is satisfaction in the slenderest portion, and without Christ there is emptiness in the greatest fulness."

"By entertaining of strange persons, men sometimes entertain angels unawares: but by entertaining of strange doctrines, many have entertained devils unaware."

"O my Lord Jesus Christ, if I could be in heaven without Thee, it would be hell; and if I could be in hell, and have Thee still, it would be heaven to me, for Thou are all the heaven I want."

"Take heed of driving so hard after this world, as to hinder thyself and family from those duties towards God, which thou art by grace obliged to; as private prayer, reading the scriptures, and Christian conference. It is a base thing for men so to spend themselves and families after this world, as that they disengage their heart to God's worship."

"The patient man is merry indeed.....The jailers that watch him are but his pages of honour, and his very dungeon but the lower side of the vault of heaven.  He kisseth the wheel that must kill him; and thinks the stairs of the scaffold of his martyrdom but so many degrees of his assent to glory.  The tormentors are weary of him, the beholders have pity on him, all men wonder at him; and while he seems below all men, below himself, he is above nature.  He hath so overcome himself, that nothing can conquer him."  

"We should therefore learn that the only good we have is what the Lord has given us gratuitously; that the only good we do is what He does in us; that it is not that we do nothing ourselves, but that we act only when we have been acted upon, in other words under the direction and influence of the Holy Spirit."

"If a ship would have two pilots of equal power, one would be ever crossing the other: when one would sail, the other would cast anchor: here were a confusion, and the ship must needs perish.  The order and harmony in the world , the constant and uniform government of all things, is a clear argument that there is but one Omnipotent, one God that rules all."

“If Jesus had preached the same message that ministers preach today, He would never have been crucified.”

"Christianity doth not abrogate affections, but regulates them."

"When we see wicked ones prosper in the world, and godly men crushed and destroyed in the way of righteousness and integrity, it may temped us to think there is no advantage by religion, and all our self-denial and holiness to be little better than lost labour......  "Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency."  This irreligious inference carnal reason was ready to draw from the dispensations of outward prosperity to wicked men; but now, if we would heedfully observe, either the signal retributions of Providence to many of them in this world, or to all of them in the world to come, O what a full confirmation is this to our faith!"

"Christ is not valued at all unless He is valued above all."

"Assurance is not of the essence of a Christian.  It is required to the bene esse (the well-being), to the comfrotible and joyful being of a Christian; but it is not required to the esse, to the being of a Christian.  A man  may be a true believer, and yet would give all the world, were it in his power, to know that he is a believer.  To have grace, and to be sure that we have grace, is glory  upon the throne, it is heaven on this side of heaven."

"The course of thy life will speak more for thee than the discourse of thy lips"

"It is one heart-quieting consideration in all the afflictions that befalls us, that God has a special hand in them: "The Almighty hath afflicted me."  Instruments can no more stir till God gives them a commission, than the axe can cut of itself without a hand.  Job eyed God in his affliction: therefore, as Augustine observes, he does not say "The Lord gave, and the devil took away," but "The Lord hath taken away."

"When we believe that we ought to be satisfied, rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves, imagine that He should submit His own honor to our advantage; we make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for Him, but He made for us; this is to have a very low esteem of the majesty of God."