What They Said

“Besides, does not the experience of all good men prove that sin is most easily crushed in the bud, in its beginnings?  Is it not safer to flee from temptation than to fight it?  Fight like a man when you cannot avoid the battle; but rather flee than fight.  Be afraid of temptation, avoid it, abhor it; and if caught by the enchantress, tear yourself from her encircling arms; throw her from you; seek safety in flight, your answer that of Joseph's chastity, Shall I do this great evil and sin against God?”

Thomas Guthrie

“Some of Christ's followers have thought that the best way to live a holy life, was to flee from the companionship of men. But one does not get away from temptation, by being alone. We carry in our hearts, wherever we go, a great nest of evil things.”

J.R. Miller

"Temptation [is] soft and gentle when first it cometh to us, but how deadly, how damnable the wounds it causeth ere long!"

Charles Spurgeon

“'Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed,' James 1:14. Temptation were no temptation, if our hearts were not wicked hearts. Nay, many of us are ready to tempt temptations, to provoke the devil to temptations; we cast ourselves open to temptations. Temptations find lust within, and lust within is the mother to conceive sin, if temptation be the father. Times do not bring evils along with them, they do but discover what was hid before. All the evils and corruptions you now see among us, where were they in the day of our first love, when we were as a loving and beloved child? Have all these risen up of late? No certainly, all that you have seen and found were before, though they did not appear; before they were in the root, now you see the fruit. All the apostacy and profanity that hath been vented in these days, was all shut up within the corners of men’s hearts at the beginning. Time and temptation hath but uncovered the heart, and made the inside out, hath but opened a sluice to let out this sea of corruption. It is not bred since, but seen since.”

Hugh Binning

“Let no man think himself to be holy because he is not tempted, for the holiest and highest in life have the most temptations.  How much the higher a hill is, so much is the wind there greater; so, how much higher the life is, so much the stronger is the temptation of the enemy.”

John Wycliffe