To live among such excellent helps as our libraries afford, to have so many silent wise companions whenever we please.
O what a blessed day that will be when I shall . . . stand on the shore and look back on the raging seas I have safely passed; when I shall review my pains and sorrows, my fears and tears, and possess the glory which was the end of all!
I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.
The strongest Christian is unsafe among occasions to sin (519).
When the world is worth nothing, then heaven is worth something. I leave every Christian to judge by his own experience, whether we do not overlove the world more in prosperity than in adversity (374) [.]
Seriousness is the very thing wherein consisteth our sincerity. If thou art not serious, thou art not a Christian (279).
Thou I cannot so freely say, My heart is with thee, my soul longeth after thee ; yet can I say, I long for such a longing heart (648).
what a silly, frail, and forward pieces are the best of men (647)!
Sirs, so much as your hearts as is empty of Christ and heaven, let it be filled with shame and sorrow, and not with ease (483).
The falseness of your own hearts, if you look not to them, may undo you(15).
He may be a Christian by common profession; but, in a saving sense, no man is a Christian, in whose soul any thing hath a greater and higher interest than God the Father, and the Mediator (352).
If your hope dieth, your duties die, your endeavors die, your joys die, and your souls die. And if your hope be not acted, but lie asleep, it is next to dead, both in likenss and preparation( 585).
He that believeth that he believe, believeth himself and not God (333)[.]
Preaching a man a sermon with a broken head and telling him to be right with God is equal to telling a man with a broken leg to get up and run a race.
[O]ur applications are quicker about our sufferings, than our sins(77)[.]
If every work of the day had thus its appointed time, we should be better skilled, both in redeeming time and performing duty (556).
Consideration doth, as it were, open the door between the head and the heart: the understanding having received truths, lays them up in the memory now, consideration is the conveyer of theme from thence to the affections (571).
O blessed be the grace that makes advantages of my corruptions, even to contradict and kill themselves (648).
So then, let “Deserved” be written on the door of hell, but on the door of Heaven and life, “The free gift” (68).
Oh! what a potent instrument for Satan is a misguided conscience(93)!
Of two duties we must choose the greater, though of two sins we must choose neither (556).
Anger is the rising up of the heart in passionate displacency against an apprehended evil, which would cross or hinder us of some desired good.
If any have more of the government of thee than Christ, or if thou hadst rather live after any other laws than his, if it were at thy choice, thou art not his disciple (331).
The most dangerous mistake that our souls are capable of, is, to take the creature for God, and earth for heaven (374).
As all our senses are the inlets of sin, so they are become the inlets of sorrow (99).
[T]here is no greater strengthener of sin, and destroyer of the soul, than Scripture misapplied (317).
The door of the visible church is incomparably wider than the door of heaven (522)[.]
While doubt cannot be expelled, it can be subdued.
Believe it, brethren, God looks for more from England, than from most nations in the world; and for more from you that enjoy these helps, than from the dark, untaught congregations of the land (271).
Do I not well deserve to be turned into hell, if the scorns and threats of blinded men, if the fear of silly, rotten earth, can drive me thither (588)?
Even innocent Adam is liker to forget God in a paradise, than Joseph in a prison, or Job upon a dunghill(376)[.]
[O]ur English divines are sounder in it than any in the world, generally: I think because they are more practical, and have had more wounded, tender consciences under cure, and less empty speculation and dispute (336-7).
If anything keep thy soul out of heaven, which God forbid, there is nothing in the world liker to do it, than thy false hopes of being saved, while thou art yet out of the way to salvation(234). (III.III)
[W]hen the pleasure is at the sweetest, death is the nearest (461)[.]
The sweetest poison doth often bring the surest death (645).
and the best, if not heedfully used, will prove the word. The better and keener the knife is, the sooner and deeper will it cut thy fingers, if thou take not heed (647).
The way of painful duty is the way of fullest comfort. Christ carrieth all our comforts in his hand : if we are out of that way where Christ is to be met, we are out of the way where comfort is to be had (312).
Thou art standing all this while at the door of eternity, and death is waiting to open the door, and put thee in(247).
If thy meditation tends to fill thy note-book with notions, and good sayings, concerning God, and not thy heart with longing after him, and delight in him, for aught I know thy book is as much a Christian as thou (553).
That physician is no better than a murderer, that negligently delayeth till his patient be dead or past cure (389).
He that dare not die, dare scarce fight valiantly (475).
In necessary things unity in doubtful things liberty in all things charity.