What They Said

"Sin is the dare of God's justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeer of His patience, the slight of His power, and the contempt of His love."

"We are more sure to arise out of our graves than out of our beds."

"Repentance is a change of the mind, and regeneration is a change of the man."

"Let the quantity of thy sins be the measure of they repentance."

"It was by the ear, by our first parents listening to the serpent that we lost paradise; and it is by the ear, by hearing of the Word, that we get to heaven.  "Hear, and your souls shall live." (Isaiah 55:3)"

"To lengthen my patience is the best way to shorten my troubles"

"As for those parents who will not use the rod upon their children, I pray God He useth not their children as a rod for them."

"We preach and pray, and you hear; but there is no motion Christ-ward until the Spirit of God blows upon them."

"If your trade be such that you cannot allow yourselves time for your souls, then your trade is unlawful"

"Such is the condition of grace, that it shines the brighter for scouring, and is most glorious when it is most clouded."

"Bless God for the translation of the Scriptures.  The Word is our sword; by being translated, the sword is drawn out of it's scabbard."

"A man may be theologically knowing and spiritually ignorant."

"God's center is everywhere, His circumference nowhere."

"There is difference betwixt error, schism, and heresy.  Error is when one holds a strong opinion alone; schism when many consent in their opinion; heresy runs further, and contends to root out the truth.  Error offends, but separates not; schism offends and separates; heresy offends, separates, and rageth.....
Error is weak, schism strong, heresy obstinate.  Error goes out, and often comes in again; schism comes not in, but makes a new church; heresy makes not a new church, but no church......Error is reproved and pitied, schism is reproved and punished, heresy is reproved and excommunicated.  Schism is in the same faith, heresy makes another faith.  Though they be thus distinguished, yet without God's preventing grace, one will run into another."

"Let us learn like Christians to kiss the rod, and love it."                  

"Some of you people of God, when you get bitter waters, want to throw them away. Do not throw a drop of it away, for that is the water you have yet to drink. Accept your afflictions. They are a part of your education."

"The test of wisdom in the final analysis is to establish our life, thought, and action on the Rock Jesus Christ.  To do otherwise is to build on sand.  Gaining wisdom is in the daily act of changing and growing as we try to conform ourselves increasingly to His Word."                

"Thankless men are like swine feeding on acorns, which, though they fall upon their heads, never make them look up to the tree from which they come."

"The best of God's people have abhorred themselves.  Like the spire of a steeple, we are least at the highest."

"And, whilst I see the dangers that threaten ours from her intrigues and her arms, I am not so much alarmed as at the apprehension of her destroying the great pillars of all government and of social life, — I mean virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone, that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed.

"Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defence?  There is a wide difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defence be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own?"