What They Said

“The Lord does not measure out our afflictions according to our faults, but according to our strength, and looks not what we have deserved, but what we are able to bear; for, as the prophet says, in wrath He remembers mercy (Hab. iii.2), which makes Him in all our chastisements to intend our profit, and not our punishment."

George Downame

"A military government may make a nation great, but it cannot make them free."

Fisher Ames

“Many will rejoice in that love which is profitable to themselves. But where is he that will as well rejoice in that love which is profitable only to others?”

Daniel Dyke 

(1617-1688)

“In vain do we seek to awaken our churches to zeal in evangelism as a separate thing. To be genuine it must flow from love to Christ. It is when a sense of personal communion with the Son of God is highest that we shall be most fit for missionary work, either ourselves or to stir up others.”

Archibald Alexander

“It is a great cause oftentimes why God blesseth not means, because we are so apt to trust in them, and rob God of his glory, not waiting for a blessing at his hands.  This causeth the Lord to cross us, and to curse his own benefits because we seek not him, but sacrifice to our own nets, putting confidence in outward means.  Therefore when we hope for help from them, God bloweth upon them, and turneth them to our hurt and destruction."

Abraham Wright

"Sound Protestant and Evangelical doctrine is useless if it is not accompanied by a holy life. It is worse than useless: it does positive harm. It is despised by keen-sighted and shrewd men of the world, as an unreal and hollow thing, and brings religion into contempt."

J.C. Ryle

"When we come to be religious, we lose not our pleasure, but translate it.  Before we fed on common notions, but now we live on holy truths."

Richard Sibbes

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."

Thomas Jefferson

(From letter to Archibald Stuart - 12,23,1791)

(Word "inconveniences" was originally "dangers" but it was crossed out and TJ used the current word)

“I wish that Christian men would insist more and more on the unrighteousness of war, believing that Christianity means no sword, no cannon, no bloodshed, and that, if a nation is driven to fight in its own defence, Christianity stands by to weep and to intervene as soon as possible, and not to join in the cruel shouts which celebrate an enemy’s slaughter.” 

Charles Spurgeon

(An All-Round Ministry)

“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Trade increases the wealth and glory of a country; but its real strength and stamina are to be looked for among the cultivators of the land." 

William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham 

(1708 – 1778)

"As a moth gnaws a garment, so doth envy consume a man."

John Chrysostom

"The Lord afflicts us at times; but it is always a thousand times less than we deserve, and much less than many of our fellow creatures are suffering around us. Let us therefore pray for grace to be humble, thankful, and patient."

John Newton

"But, though persecuting malice raged, yet the Gospel shone with resplendent brightness; and, firm as an impregnable rock, withstood the attacks of its boisterous enemies with success.  Tertullian, who lived in this age, informs us the if the Christians had collectively withdrawn themselves from the Roman territories, the empire would have been greatly depopulated. "

John Foxe

"It therefore requires a certain effort not to believe in a personal God: “No one disbelieves the existence of God except the person to whom God’s existence is not convenient.” There are no atheists so thoroughly sure of their unbelief as to be willing to die a martyr’s death for it. Since atheism is abnormal and unnatural, based not on intuitions but on inferential proofs and fallible reasoning, it is never sure of its causes. The arguments for the existence of God may be weak, but in any case they are stronger than those advanced for its denial. It is even impossible to prove that there is no God. To accomplish that feat a person would have to be omniscient and omnipresent, that is, to be God!"

Herman Bavinck

"Scripture was written by the Holy Spirit that it might serve him in guiding the church, in the perfecting of the saints, in building up the body of Christ.  In it God daily comes to his people, not from afar but nearby. In it he reveals himself, from day to day, to believers in the fullness of his truth and grace. Through it he works his miracles of compassion and faithfulness. Scripture is the ongoing rapport between heaven and earth, between Christ and his church, between God and his children. It does not just tie us to the past; it binds us to the living Lord in the heavens. It is the living voice of God, the letter of the omnipotent God to his creature."

Herman Bavinck

"I think the man who above all others should be pitied is the man who has never learned how to amuse himself without mechanical assistance when he is alone."

J. Gresham Machen

"If God gives you a watch, are you honoring Him more by asking Him what time it is or by simply consulting the watch?"

A.W. Tozer

"We begin by considering that THE CHURCH IS GOD'S FARM. The Lord has made the church his own by his sovereign choice. He has also secured it unto himself by purchase, having paid for it a price immense. "The Lord's portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance." Every acre of God's farm cost the Saviour a bloody sweat, yea, the blood of his heart. He loved us, and gave himself for us: that is the price he paid. Henceforth the church is God's freehold, and he holds the title deeds of it. It is our joy to feel that we are not our own, we are bought with a price. The church is God's farm by choice and purchase."

Charles Spurgeon

"What each one honors before all else, what before all things he admires and loves, this for him is God."

Origen (c. 185-254)

“Our duty, privilege, and security are in believing, not in knowing;  in trusting God, and not our own understanding. They are to be pitied who have no more trustworthy teacher than themselves.”

Charles Hodge

"No one truth is rightly held till it is clearly conceived and stated, and no single truth is adequately comprehended till it is viewed in harmonious relations to all the other truths of the system of which Christ is the centre.""

A. A. Hodge

"Furthermore, the field of Christianity is the world. The Christian cannot be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of all connection with Christianity. Christianity must pervade not merely all nations, but also all of human thought. The Christian, therefore, cannot be indifferent to any branch of earnest human endeavor. It must all be brought into some relation to the gospel. It must be studied either in order to be demonstrated as false, or else in order to be made useful in advancing the Kingdom of God."

J. Gresham Machen

"Divinity is the doctrine of living unto God"

William Ames

"Not I, but Christ;  not my will, but Christ's;  not my ease, not my lust, not my feckless credit, but Christ, Christ."

Samuel Rutherford

"Christ is that Fountain of living water which God has graciously provided for thirsting souls."

J.C. Ryle

"Many have passed the rocks of gross sins - who have suffered shipwreck upon the sands of self-righteousness."

William Secker

“Selfishness is one of the principal fruits of the corruption of human nature;  and it is obvious that selfishness disposes us to over-rate our good qualities, and to overlook or extenuate our defects.”

William Wilberforce

"Divine sovereignty is not the sovereignty of a tyrannical Despot, but the exercised pleasure of One who is infinitely wise and good! Because God is infinitely wise He cannot err, and because He is infinitely righteous He will not do wrong.  Here then is the preciousness of this truth. The mere fact itself that God's will is irresistible and irreversible fills me with fear, but once I realize that God wills only that which is good. My heart is made to rejoice."

A.W. Pink

"…., to teach us to set no time to the Lord the creator of time, for His time is always best,…"

Samuel Rutherford

"Self is the great antichrist and anti-God in the world, that sets up itself above all else."

Stephen Charnock

"Tell me what the world is saying today, and I'll tell you what the church will be saying seven years from now."

Francis Schaeffer

"Remember you are God's sword -- His instrument -- I trust a chosen vessel unto Him to bear His name.  In great measure, according to the purity and perfections of the instrument will be the success.  It is not great talents God blesses so much as a greg likeness to Jesus.  A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God."

Robert Murray M'Cheyene

(Written to Re. Dan. Edwards)

"A Christian, for the sweet fruit he bears to God and men, is compared to the noblest of all plants, the vine.  Now as the most generous vine, if not pruned, runs out into many superfluous stems and grows at last weak and fruitless: so doth the best man, if he be not cut short of his desires and pruned with afflictions."

Joseph Hall

"Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion.  They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope.  They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political or literary.  Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely; in the full conviction, that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity."

Daniel Webster

"My brethren, when God first began to love you, he gave you all that he ever meant to give you in the lump, and eternity of time is that in which he is retailing it out."

Thomas Goodwin

"But what a terrible thing to be unable to perceive the fragrance of the name of Jesus, which is as ointment poured forth ; unable to taste the sweet flavour of the bread of heaven, or the richness of that wine on the lees well refined, which makes the saints of God so glad.  I had rather be blind and deaf and dumb, and lose my taste and smell, than not love Christ.  To be unable to appreciate Him, is the worst of disabilities, the most serious of calamities. It is not the loss of a single spiritual faculty, but it proves the death of the soul.  It evidences the absence of all that can make existence worth the having, for he that hath not the Son hath not life, and the wrath of God abideth on him."

Charles Spurgeon

"Only Christ is the whole man's happiness, the sun to enlighten him, the physician to heal him, the wall of fire to defend him, the friend to comfort him, the pearl to enrich him, the ark to support him, the rock to sustain him under the heaviest pressures;  As an hiding place from the wind and a covert from the tempest, as rivers of waters in a dry place, and as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."

Isaac Ambrose

"In answer to this, you must know, that as God hath decreed the end, so He hath decreed the means that are proper for attaining that end; so that these two must not be separated."

Thomas Boston

"Divisions in the church always breed atheism in the world."

Thomas Manton

"No man can quench his thirst with sand, or with water from the Dead Sea; so no man can find rest from his own character, however good, or from his own acts, however religious.  Even were he perfect, what enjoyment could there be in thinking about his own perfection? What profit, then, can there be in thinking about his own imperfection?"

Horatius Bonar

"You will see many in this day who allow their children to choose and think for themselves, long before they are able, and even make excuses for their disobedience, as if it were a thing not to be blamed. To my eyes a parent always yielding, and a child always having its own way, are a most painful sight; – painful, because I see God’s appointed order of things inverted and turned upside down; – painful, because I feel sure the consequence to that child’s character in the end will be self-will, pride, and self-conceit. You must not wonder that men refuse to obey their Father which is in heaven, if you allow them, when children, to disobey their father who is upon earth."

J.C. Ryle

Thomas A'Kempis

"I believe that one reason why the Church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church."

Charles Spurgeon

"God speaks by the Church (the true Church we mean); but He speaks nothing by her but what He speaks in the Scriptures, which she does only ministerially declare to us; and therefore the authority of God and His law is above hers, who, though she publish, yet did not make it, but is herself subject to it." 

John Owen

"He has begun and he will carry on, he will finish the good work in our souls.  We have nothing to do, but to lay hold on him by faith, and to depend on him for wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.  Not but we must be workers together with him; for a true faith in Jesus Christ will not suffer us to be idle.  No, it is an active, lively, restless principle; it fills the heart, so that it cannot be easy, till it is doing something for Jesus Christ."

George Whitefield

"A foolish physician he is, and 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, than we will anger them, or hazard our reputation with them."   

Richard Baxter