What They Said

“The Christian soldier must avoid two evils – he must not faint or yield in the time of fight, and after a victory he must not wax insolent and secure.  When he has overcome, he is so to behave himself as though he were presently again to be assaulted. For Satan’s temptations, like the waves of the sea, do follow one in the neck of the other;  and when one is past another is ready to overwhelm us, if, like skillful pilots, we be not ready to break the violence of that which follows, as well as of that which went before.”

George Downame

“Our Physician makes these outward blisters in our bodies, to draw out the poisonous corruption that is in our souls: and therefore let us endure what He imposes with patience, and never murmur against Him for effecting His cure; knowing that it is but childish folly to abhor the medicine more than the disease, and that we count them madmen who rage against the physician who intends their recovery.

Let us rather rejoice that the Lord is content to minister to us, because seeing He undertakes to cure us by these medicines, it is a sign that we are not past recovery.  For when in our diseases our estate is desperate, He leaves us to our own appetite, to have what our hearts can desire, and to take our fill of the pleasures of sin.”

George Downame

“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

"The preaching of the law does not make us more sinful, but reveals those sins unto us which before we discerned not; as the sun shining upon some filthy place does not make it so filthy, but only makes it manifest which was not seen in the dark."

George Downame

(1560-1634)

"The end of all arts and sciences is the practice of them.  And as this is to be confessed in all other arts, so it cannot be decried in divinity and religion."

George Downame

(1560-1634)