III. SENTENCES AND APHORISMS
HE that puts forth a book sentences his reason to the gantelope:1 every one will strive to have a lash at it in its course; and he must be content to bear it.
I HAVE from the beginning resolved not to persist in any controversy, as to the public debate of it, when once it begins to degenerate into a strife of words and personal reflections.
STEADFASTNESS in believing doth not exclude all temptations from without. When we say a tree is firmly rooted, we do not say that the wind never blows upon it.
THAT faith alone will never forsake Christ which springs out of or is built on a conviction of the want of him.
TO pray well is to pray always, that is, to keep the heart always in that frame which is required in prayer. And where this is, sin can have no rule, no, nor quiet harbour in the soul.
TO be true to convictions is the life of sincerity.
OBEDIENCE unto Christ doth not consist merely in doing the things he requireth. . . . All obedience unto Christ proceeds fom an express subjection of our souls and conscience unto him.2
IN the evening, in the close, it will be light, so light as to be to us discernible. In the meantime we are like unskilful men, who going to the house of some eminent artist, so long as he is about his work, despise it as confused; but when it is finished, admire it as excellent. Whilst the passages of Providence are on us, all is confusion; but when the fabric is reared, glorious.
A DUNGEON with Christ is a throne; and a throne, without Christ, a hell.
THERE is a far greater distance between the vision of heaven and the sight which we have now by faith, than is between the sight which we now have and what they had under the Old Testament.
WITHOUT justice, great commonwealths are but great troops of robbers.
MANY we have who plead themselves to be Christians. Which might be allowed them (if they pleased themselves), would they not do such things as Christian religion abhorreth. But this is the least part of their claim. They will also be the only Christians; all others who differ from them, however falsely so called, being only a drove of unbelievers, hastening unto hell.
IGNORANCE of God and of ourselves is the great principle and cause of all our disquietments; and, this ariseth mostly not from want of light and instruction, but for want of consideration and application.
GRACE and truth are the two ingredients of an evangelical promise.
ABILITY of speech in time and season is an especial gift of God, and that eminently with respect unto the spiritual things of the gospel; but a profluency of speech,3 venting itself on all occasions and on no occasions, making men open their mouths wide when indeed they should shut them and open their ears, and to pour out all that they know and what they know and what they do not know, making them angry if they are not heard and impatient if they are contradicted, is an unconquerable fortification against all true spiritual wisdom.
I NO way doubt but that many men do receive more grace from God than they understand or will own, and have a greater efficacy of it in them than they will believe. Men may be really saved by that grace which doctrinally they do deny.
HAD not Esau come against him with four hundred men, Jacob had not been called Israel; he had not been put to it to try his strength with God, and so to prevail. Who would not purchase with the greatest distress that heavenly comfort which is in the return of prayers?
No wild beast in a toil doth more rave and tear and rend, than a proud man when he is reproved.
IN all our approaches unto God we are to consider him as a throne.
OUR ignorance is both our calamity, our sin, and an occasion of many sins unto us.
WHILST the gospel is preached unto men, they are under their great trial for eternity.
FAITH, if it be a living faith, will be a working faith.
NOTHING shall be lost that is done for God or in obedience to him.
AFTER the most sincere performances of the best of our duties, our comforts and securities are centred in Christ alone.
IT is a great honour to serve in the church, by doing or suffering, for the use and service of future generations.
O THE deep wounds the gospel hath received by the mutual keen invectives of learned men!
COMMON experience declares how momentary and useless are those violent fits and gusts of endeavours which proceed from fear and uncertainty, both in things spiritual and temporal, or civil. Whilst men are under the power of actual impressions from such fears, they will convert to God, yea, they will momento turbinis, and perfect holiness in an instant; but so soon as that impression wears off (as it will do on every occasion, and upon none at all), such persons are as dead and cold towards God as the lead or iron, which ran but now in a fiery stream, is when the heat is departed from it.
MEN think all things would be very glorious, if they might be done according to their mind. Perhaps, indeed, they would–but with their glory, not the glory of God.
I HAVE seen many good laws for the Sabbath, and hope I shall see some good examples.
SOME relate or talk that the eagle tries the eyes of her young ones by turning them to the sun; which if they cannot look steadily on, she rejects them as spurious. We may truly try our faith by immediate intuitions of the Sun of Righteousness. Direct faith to act itself immediately and directly on the incarnation of Christ and his mediation; and if it be not of the right kind and race it will turn its eyes aside unto any thing else.
LOOK what the roots are in the family; such will the fruit be in the church and commonwealth.
‘DEEP calleth unto deep.’ The deeps of affliction awaken the conscience to a deep sense of sin.
GIFTS are given to trade withal for God. Opportunities are the market-days for that trade. To napkin up the one and to let slip the other will end in trouble and disconsolation. Disquietments and perplexities of heart are worms that will certainly breed in the rust of unexercised gifts. God loseth a revenue of glory and honour by such slothful souls; and he will make them sensible of it. I know some at this day whom omissions of opportunities for service are ready to sink into the grave.
ALL men are equally concerned in the love of God and pardon of sin. Every one hath a soul of the same immortal constitution, equally capable of bliss and woe.
THE terms of reconciliation which some fancy to be offered in the shining of the sun and the falling of the rain, never brought souls to peace with God. Life and immortality are brought to light only by the gospel.
ALL love in general hath an assimilating efficacy; it casts the mind into the mould of the thing beloved. . . . Every approach unto God by ardent love and delight is transfiguring.
LOVE and likeness unto God are inseparable.
HE that cannot live in an actual resignation of himself and all his concerns unto the sovereign pleasure of God, can neither glorify him in any thing nor have one hour’s solid peace in his own mind.
THEN are we servants of God, then are we the disciples of Christ, when we do what is commanded us and because it is commanded us.
A DUE respect unto God’s promises and threatenings is a principal part of our liberty.
THERE is indeed no better frame of heart to be attained in this life than that whereby it is to the Word as the wax to the seal, fit and ready to receive impressions from it–a frame that is tender to receive the communications of the Word in all their variety, whether for reproof, instruction, or consolation.
EVERY thing in the preaching of the Word comes cross and unpleasing to the minds of proud men.
THE language of spiritual complacency is, I will go in the strength of the Lord God: I will make mention of thy righteousness, of thine only. That of spiritual pride is, God, I thank thee that I have done thus and thus.
HE whose religion lies all in prayer and hearing, hath none at all.
I SHALL not value his prayers at all, be he never so earnest and frequent in them, who gives not alms according to his ability.
NO man is safe a moment whose mind by any means is dispossessed of a sense of the soverign authority of God in his commands.
THE church is no less beautiful and glorious when encompassed and seemingly overwhelmed with all the evils and dreadful miseries here recounted (Heb. xi. 35-37), than when it is in the greatest peace and prosperity.
To do the greatest things and to suffer the hardest, is all one to faith. It is equally ready for both, as God shall call. These things, unto the flesh, differ as next to heaven and hell; they are both alike to faith, when duty calls.
THIS is the praise of a man, the only praise whereof in this world he is partaker, that he doth the will of God4 before he fall asleep; that he faithfully serves his generation, until he be no more.
YOU have your season, and you have but your season; neither can you lie down in peace, until you have some persuasion that your work as well as your life is at an end.
WE have but an uncertain season for the due performance of most certain duties.
IT is not the distance of the earth from the sun, nor the sun’s withdrawing itself, that makes a dark and gloomy day; but the interposition of clouds and vaporous exhalations. Neither is thy soul beyond the reach of the promise, nor doth God withdraw himself; but the vapours of thy carnal, unbelieving heart do cloud thee.
THE most tremendous judgment of God in this world is the hardening of the hearts of men.
AND whatever there is in any trouble of allay from the utmost wrath, is of mere goodness and grace.5 Thy houses are burned, but perhaps thy goods are save–is there no grace, no goodness therein? Or perhaps thy substance also is consumed, but yet thy person is alive; and should a living man complain. But say what thou wilt, this stroke is not hell, which thou hast deserved long ago, yea, it may be a means of preventing thy going thither; so that it is accompanied with infinite goodness, patience, and mercy also.
I DOUBT not but that men for a season may not know, may disbelieve and deny, some fundamental articles of Christian religion, and yet not be absolutely concluded not to hold the Head by any sinew or ligament.
IT is the ‘terror of the Lord’ that causes us to ‘persuade’ others, but is is the ‘love of Christ’ that constraineth us to live to him.
THE house built on the sand may oftentimes be built higher, have more fair parapets and battlements, windows and ornaments, than that which is built upon the rock; yet all gifts and privileges equal not one grace.
THAT which the seed of wheat brings forth is wheat; but that which the gospel brings forth is not gospel but faith.
THE profession of the truth by not a few is the greatest dishonour and disparagement that can be cast upon it. The best service many can do it is by forsaking it, and declaring that the belief of it is inconsistent with their cursed wicked lives.
NEITHER is it a verbal acknowledgement, in owning that which Christ suffered at Jerusalem, which will free any from this charge and guilt. Unless the Lord Christ, that Christ which is God and man in one person, be owned, received, believed in, loved, trusted unto, and obeyed in all things, as he is proposed unto us in the Scripture, and with respect unto all the ends of rightousness, holiness, life, and salvation, for which he is so proposed, he is renounced and forsaken.
IT is in many places a lost labour to seek for Christianity among Christians.6
FAITH can rest in what it cannot comprehend.
THIS is not the way to answer that love which passes knowledge, to know not whether we love Christ again or not.
I VERILY believe that the life of faith doth answer in proportion to our thoughts about the dying of Jesus.7
NO argument can be rationally and usefully pleaded for the necessity of holiness, which doth not contain in itself an encouraging motive unto it.”
AMONG all the glorious works of God, next unto that of redemption by Jesus Christ, my soul doth most admire this of the Spirit in preserving the seed and principle of holiness in as, as a spark of living fire in the midst of the ocean, against all corruptions and temptations wherewith it is impugned.
THAT fear which keeps from sin and excites the soul to cleave more firmly to God, be the object of it what it will, is no servile fear, but a holy fear or due reverence unto God and his word.
NOTHING is duty, nothing is obedience in believers, but what is grace from Christ communicated unto them.
THE gospel leaves men, unless upon extraordinary occasions, their names, their reputations, their wealth, their honours, if lawfully obtained and possessed; but the league that is between the mind and these things in all natural men must be broken. They must be no longer looked upon as the chiefest good, or in the place thereof.
AMONG those who lay any serious and real claim to Christianity, there is nothing more certain nor more acknowledged than that there is no deliverance from a state of misery for those who are not delivered from a state of sin.
CUSTOM of sinning takes away the sense of it; the course of the world takes away the shame of it.8
THE life of faith is every way a safe life.
THEY cast themselves out of the verge of Christianity who suppose that the Lord Christ is no otherwise our life, or the author of life to us, but as he hath revealed and taught the way of life to us. He is our life as he is our head, and it would be a sorry head that should only teach the feet to go, and not communicate strength to the whole body so to do.
IN our desires for heaven, if they are regular, we consider not so much our freedom from trouble as from sin; nor is our aim in the first place so much at complete happiness as perfect holiness.
IT is to be feared that the most of us know not how much glory may be in present grace, nor how much of heaven may be obtained in holiness on the earth.
THERE is a religion in the world that runs in a parallel line by that of evangelical truth, but toucheth it not, nor will do so to eternity.
AS the elect of God, let us put on humility in all things; and let me add, that there is no grace whereby at this day we may more glorify God and the gospel, now the world is sinking into ruin under the weight of its own pride.9
WE are greatly mistaken if we suppose we have no benefit by the Word beyond what we retain in our memories, though we should labour for that also. Our chief advantage lies in the excitation which is hereby given unto our faith and love to their proper exercies.
BELIEVERS are all ‘trees planted in the garden of God.’ Some thrive, some decay for a season, but the growth of the best is secret.
LET no man think10 to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until he be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so will he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death.
IT is truth alone that capacitates any soul to give glory to God.
As there are good duties which have sin adhering to them, so there are sins which have good in them.
LET them pretend what they please, the true reason why any despise the new birth is because they hate a new life. He that cannot endure to live to God will as little endure to hear of being born of God.
OUR forgiving of others will not procure forgiveness for ourselves; but our not forgiving of others proves that we ourselves are not forgiven.
THE world is now growing towards six thousand years old, and yet is no nearer the bottom of the springs of its vanity, that it was the first day that sin entered into it.
THE whole world hath been employed in the practice of iniquity five thousand years and upwards; and yet ‘aspice hoc novum’ may be set on many villanies.
MANY previous sins make way for the great sin of finally rejecting the voice or word of God.
THE end of all God’s works, of his mighty works of providence towards a person, a church, or a nation, is to bring to faith and dependence.
RICHES have been kept for men to their hurt. Wisdom and high place have been the ruin of many. Liberty and plenty are to most a snare. Prosperity slays the foolish. It is enough to fill the soul of any man with horror and amazement, to consider the ways and ends of most of them that are entrusted with this world’s goods.11
ARGUMENTS that are equally true may yet, on the account of evidence, not be equally cogent.
SINS have their aggravations from mercies received.
AGGRAVATIONS of sin do glorify grace in pardon.
IT is one thing to fear God as threatening, with a holy reverence, another to be afraid of the evil threatened.
WE can have no power from Christ unless we live in a persuasion that we have none of our own.
SEE in the meantime that your faith bringeth forth obedience, and God in due time will cause it to bring forth peace.
THINK of the guilt of sin, that you may be humbled. Think of the power of sin, that you may seek strength against it. Think not of the matter of sin, . . . lest you be more and more entangled.
NONE use instituted ways or forms of worship profitably, but such as find communion with God in them or are seriously humbled because they do not.
YOU cannot be carried before any magistrate, but Christ is there present, greater than them all, who hath their breath in his hand, their lives and their ways at his disposal, and can do what he pleases with them.12
THE best duties of unbelievers are but white sins.13
A MAN may want liberty and yet be happy, as Joseph was. A man may want peace and yet be happy, as David was. A man may want children and yet be blessed, as Job was. A man way want plenty and yet be full of comfort, as Micaiah was. But he that wants the gospel, wants everything that should do him good. A throne without the gospel is but the devil’s dungeon. Wealth without the gospel is fuel for hell. Advancement without the gospel is but a going high to have the greater fall.
THE height of rebellion against God is the despising of spiritual gospel mercies. . . . I had almost said, hell furnishes no greater sin.
CAN none of you look back on any particular days or nights, and say, ‘ O Lord, that thou shouldst be so patient and so full of foreberance as not to send me to hell at such an instant! But, O Lord, that thou shouldst go further and blot out mine iniquities, for thine own sake, when I made thee serve with my sins!’ Lord, what shall I say it is? It is the free grace of my God! What expression transcendeth that, I know not.
IN the extreme north one day and one night divide the year; but with a people without the gospel it is all night.
CHRIST knows the minds of all. But all know not how to communicate their mind to Christ. It will not avail a man at all that Christ knows his mind; for so he doth of every one, whether he will or no. But that a man can make his heart known unto Christ, this is consolation.
SO unspiritual are many men’s minds. . . . that they reckon men’s happiness by their possessions, and suppose the catalogue of their titles to be a roll of their felicities.
IT was a storm that occasioned the discovery of the golden mines of India. Hath not a storm driven some to the discovery of the richer mines of the love of God in Christ?
O THAT. . . we might have less writing and more praying, less envy and more charity! that all evil surmisings, which are works of the flesh, might have no toleration in our hearts, but be banished for noncomformity to the golden rule of love and peace.14
MEN may be more or less holy, more or less sanctified, but they cannot be more or less regenerate. All children that are born into the world are equally born, though some quickly outstrip others in the perfections and accomplishments of nature; and all born of God are equally so, though some speedily outgo others in the accomplishments and pefections of grace.
EVERY promise of God hath this consideration tacitly annexed to it–’Is anything too hard for the Lord?’
EARNEST exhortations on feeble principles have more of noise than weight.
OLD Testament examples are New Testament instructions.
EXHORTATION is nothing but an encouragement given unto others to walk with us or after us in the ways of God.
ALL grace is special grace. It proceeds not from any common principle, but from the especial love of God in Christ; and is given out in an especial, distinguishing manner; and that for especial ends and purposes.
ALL men, it is hoped, design to obey in some things, most in most things, but few in all.
IT is a dangerous condition for children to boast of the priviledges of their fathers and to imitate their sins.
THE heart of a believer affected with the glory of Christ, is like a needle touched with the loadstone.15 It can no longer be quiet, no longer be satisfied in a distance from him. It is put into a continual motion towards him. This motion, indeed, is weak and tremulous. . . . However, it is continually pressing towards him. But it obtains not its point, it comes not to its centre and rest, in this world.
IN all the sins of men God principally regards the principle–that is, the heart.
IT is a matter of great and tremendous consequence, to have the promises of God left and proposed unto us.
WHEN we have, through Christ, obtained mercy for our persons, we need not fear but that we shall have suitable and seasonable help for our duties.
WHOSOEVER dealeth with God or man about the sins of others should look well, in the first place, unto his own.
OPPORTUNITIES for duty which render it beautiful, ought diligently to be embraced.
GOD doth as well undertake for our being his people as he doth for his being our God.
WE have no bounds, under the gospel, for a Sabbath-day’s journey, provided it be for Sabbath ends.
A GOOD work it is to pare off all unnecessary occasions of debate and differences in religion, provided we go not so near the quick as to let out any of its vital spirits.
TO speak of religion without a supposition of sin, and the way of a relief from the event of it mentioned, is to talk of chimeras–things that neither are, ever were, or will be.
ONE principle contended for as rational and true, which (if admitted) will insensibly seduce the mind unto and justify a practice ending in atheism,16 is more to be feared than ten thousand jests and scoffs against religion.
I AM persuaded that some have scarce any better or more forcible argument to satisfy their own minds that they are in the right in religion, than the inclination they find in themselves to hate and persecute them whom they suppose to be in the wrong.
THE light of the stars is useful and relieving in a dark night as we are on our way; but what are they when the sun ariseth! Will any man think it a loss, that, upon the rising of the sun, they shall not enjoy their light any more, though in the night they knew not what to have done without it? It may be we cannot conceive how it will be best for us to forego the use of sacraments, ministry, and the Scripture itself. But all the virtue of the streams is in the fountain; and the immediate enjoyment of Christ unspeakably exceeds whatever by any means we can be made partakers of here below.
POWER, they say, is a liquor that, let it be put into what vessel you will, is ready to overflow.
WE have lived to see the utmost extremes that the Christian religion can divert into. Some, with all earnestness, do press the formal invocation of saints and angels as our duty; and some will not grant that it is lawful for us so to call on Christ himself.
IT is sottish ignorance and infidelity to suppose that, under the gospel, there is no communication between God and us but what is, on his part, in laws, commands, and promises; and on ours, by obedience performed in our strength and upon our convictions unto them. To exclude hence the real internal operations of the Holy Ghost, is to destroy the gospel.
THERE is a state of perfect peace with God to be attained under imperfect obedience.
THERE is no rule of proportion between eternal and temporal things.
WE may receive the promises, as to the comfort and benefit of them, when we do not actually receive the things promised.
FAITH must be tried, and of all graces it is most suited unto trial.
THERE may sometimes, through God’s providential disposal of all things, be an appearance of such an opposition and inconsistency between his commands and promises as nothing but faith bowing the soul unto divine sovereignty can reconcile.
NO man knows whereunto a deliberate sin may lead him, nor what will be the event of it.
THE doctrine of the law, indeed, humbles the soul for Christ, but it is the doctrine of the gospel that humbles the soul in Christ.
SIN is never less quiet than when it seems to be most quiet.
SOME refuse, transient thoughts are sometimes cast away on God; which he despiseth.
GOD accounts a flight to the strong tower of his name to be the most excellent valour.
THE particular end of literature is none other but to remove some part of that curse which is come upon us by sin. Learning is the product of the soul’s struggling with the curse for sin. To disentangle the mind in its reasonings, to recover an acquaintance with the works of God–is the aim and tendance of literature.17
ECCLESIASTICAL laws have been always looked on as cobwebs that catch the smaller flies, whilst the greater break them at their pleasure.
A RETURN unto obedience is an act of greater power than a persistency in the way and course of it, and more is required thereunto.
THAT wisdom which cannot teach me that God is love, shall ever pass for folly.
A RIVER continually fed by a living fountain may as soon end its streams before it comes to the ocean, as a stop be put to the course and progress of grace before it issue in glory.
IT is not the glorious battlements, the painted windows, the crouching antics18 that support a building, but the stones that lie unseen in or upon the earth. It is often those who are despised and trampled on that bear up the weight of a whole nation.
MUCH of the glory of heaven may dwell in a simple cottage, and poor persons, even under rags, may be very like God.
THOSE who would take away the use of our reason in spiritual things would deal with us as the Philistines did with Samson–first put out our eyes, and then make us grind in their mill.
FAITH keeps the soul at a holy distance from these infinite depths of divine wisdom, where it profits more by reverence and holy fear than any can do by their utmost attempt to draw nigh to that inaccessible light wherein these glories of the divine nature do dwell.
IT is true God can and often doth direct a word of truth, spoken as it were at random, unto a proper effect of grace on some or other; as it was when the man drew a bow at a venture and smote the king of Israel between the joints of the harness. But ordinarily a man is not likely to hit a joint who knows not how to take his aim.
ASSURANCE encourageth us in our combat; it delivereth us not from it. We may have peace with God when we have none from the assaults of Satan.
FOR the most part we live upon successes, not promises:–unless we see and feel the print of victories, we will not believe.
UNTIL men know themselves better, they will care very little to know Christ at all.
SIN aims always at the utmost. Every time it rises up to tempt or to entice, might it have its own course, it would go out to the utmost sin in that kind. Every unclean thought or glance would be adultery, if it could. Every covetous desire would be oppression. Every thought of unbelief would be atheism, might it grow to its head.
EXERCISE and success are the two main charishers of grace in the heart.
DUTIES are excellent food for an unhealthy soul; they are no physic for a sick soul.
SOMETIMES in reading of the word God makes a man stay on something that cuts him to the heart, and shakes him as to his present condition.19
WHEN we go to Christ for healing, faith eyes him peculiarly as pierced.
MEN are sometimes carried into sin by love to it, and are continued in it by fear of what will ensue upon it.
HOW will young men put themselves on any company, any society? At first being delighted with evil company, then with the evil of the company.
THE same faith works equally in them that die by violence (Heb. xi. 37) and them who, to escape death, expose themselves to other miseries, provided that the call to the one or other be of God.
THAT alone makes sinners wise which tenders them relief.
THE countries which send up no vapours receive down no showers. Remembrance with thankfulness of former mercies is the matter, as it were, which by God’s goodness is condensed into following blessings.
EVANGELICAL truth will not be honourably witnessed unto but by evangelical grace.
They that know anything in this world know that, as the first great opposition of hell, the world, and corrupt nature, is against faith to God by Christ; so the next great opposition made against us, is against our love.
WHEN men have laboured as much in the improvement of the principle of forebearance as they have done to subdue other men to their opinions, religion will have another appearance in the world.
SIN may be the occasion of great sorrow, when there is no sorrow for sin; as it was with Esau.
THE sum of all false religion consisteth always in contrivances for the expiation of sin.
ALL our rest in this world is from trust in God.
THE church is the safest society in the world.
THIS is the great apostolical canon for the due performance of divine worship, namely, ‘Let us have grace to do it’; all others are needless and superfluous.
HE who prays as he ought will endeavour to live as he prays.
UNTO a reproof it is essential that it spring from love. ‘Whom I love, I rebuke’ is the absolute rule of these things.
I CANNOT believe in him as my heavenly king, who is not able by himself and by the virtue of his presence with me to make what changes and alterations he pleaseth in the minds of men, and in the whole creation of God, to relieve, preserve, and deliver me, and to raise my body at the last day.
IT is to no purpose to boast of Christ, if we have not an evidence of his graces in our hearts and lives. But unto whom he is the hope of future glory, unto them he is the life of present grace.
THE life of religion is in the Life.
HE suffered not as God, but he suffered who was God.
THIS is the end of divine revelation: to direct us in paying that homage which is due to the divine nature.
HE that really improves gospel truths, though he hears them a thousand times, they will be always new and fresh unto him, because they put him upon newness of practice.
A COMMANDMENT that is always practised is always new, as John speaks of that of love.
THE bottom of a pit or well gives the best prospect of the heavenly luminaries, and the soul in its deepest humiliations hath for the most part the clearest view of things within the veil.
AS for religion, it is the choice of men, and he that chooseth not his religion hath none.
THE dream of setting up an outward, glorious, visible kingdom of Christ, which he must bear rule in, and over the world, be it in Germany or in England, is but an ungrounded presumption. The Jews not called, Antichrist not destroyed, the nations of the world generally wrapped up in idolatry and false worship, little dreaming of their deliverance–will the Lord Christ leave the world in this state, and set up his kingdom here on a molehill?20
IT is almost as difficult to convince men of their spiritual decays as it is to recover them from them.
THERE is no grace or mercy that doth more affect the hearts of believers, that gives them a greater transport of joy and thankfulness, than this of deliverance from backslidings.
ALL that a natural man hath on this side hell is free mercy.
WHEN hath a gracious soul the soundest joys, but when it hath deepest sorrows? ‘Habent et gaudia vulnus.’
EVERY act of sin is a fruit of being weary of God.
YOU that are engaged in the work of God, seek for a reward of your service in the service itself.
TO some men it is hard seeing a call of God through difficulties; when if it would but clothe itself with a few carnal advantages, how apparent it is to them! They can see it through a little cranny.
THE things of Christ should be as Joseph’s sheaf, to which all others should bow.
WHAT am I the better if I can dispute that Christ is God, but have no sense or sweetness in my heart from thence that he is a God in covenant with my soul?21
TRUE faith can no more be without true holiness, than true fire without heat.
LOVE in the Father is like honey in the flower; it must be in the comb before it be for our use. Christ must extract and prepare this honey for us.
EVERY one who is now in heaven hath his pardon sealed in the blood of Christ. All these pardons are, as it were, hanged up in the gospel; they are all enrolled in the promises thereof, for the encouragement of them that stand in need of forgiveness to come and sue out theirs also. Fear not then the guilt of sin, but the love of it and the power of it.
PRUDENCE and skill for the management of ourselves in reference to others, in civil affairs, for public good, is much the fairest flower within the border of nature’s garden.
WERE men not so wise, the world, perhaps, would be more quiet.
WHOEVER hath an interest in any one promise hath an interest in them all, and in the fountain-love from whence they flow. He to whom any drop of their sweetness floweth may follow it up unto the spring. Were we wise, each taste of mercy would lead us to the ocean of love. Have we any hold on a promise?–we may get upon it, and it will bring us to the main, Christ himself and the Spirit, and so into the bosom of the Father. It is our folly to abide upon a little, which is given us merely to make us press for more.
CHURCHES may inform the minds of men; they cannot enforce them. And if those that adhere unto any church do not do so, because they judge that it is their duty, and best for them so to do, they therein differ not much from a herd of creatures that are called by another name.
SOME men’s words go exceedingly beyond their hearts. Did their spirits come up to their expressions, it were well.
TRUTH and good company will give a modest man a little confidence sometimes.
LET new light be derided whilst men please; he will never serve the will of God in this generation, who sees not beyond the line of foregoing ages.22
THE Lord break the pride of our spirits before it break the staff of our bread and the help of our salvation.
I AM persuaded that if every Absalom in the land, that would be a judge for the ending of our differences, were enthroned, the case would not be much better than it is.
HEREIN is Christ honoured indeed, when we go to him with our sins by faith, and say unto him, ‘Lord, this is thy work. This is that for which thou camest into the world. This is that thou hast undertaken to do. Thou callest for my burden, which is too heavy for me to bear; take it, blessed Redeemer. Thou tenderest thy righteousness; that is my portion.’
ADMIRATION is the soul’s ‘non-plus,’ its doing it knows not what, the winding of it up until it stands still, ready to break.
HE never will be, he never was, behind with any poor soul in return of love.
TAKE heed of decays. Whatever ground the gospel loseth in our minds, sin possesseth it for itself and its own ends.
THE minds of some are apt, on accasions of signal mercies, to be filled with thoughts of what they have received, but he who is spiritually minded will immediately retreat into thoughts of God.
THE general who heard one of his soldiers cry out, upon a fresh onset of the enemy, ‘Now we are undone, now we are ruined,’ called him a traitor, and told him it was not so whilst he could wield his sword. It is not for every private soldier on every danger to make judgement of the battle; that is the work of the general. Jesus Christ is ‘the captain of our salvation’: he hath undertaken the leading and conduct of our souls through all our difficulties. Our duty is to fight and contend; his work is to take care of the event, and to him it is to be committed.
TROUBLES and afflictions in themselves and their own nature have no good in them, nor do they tend unto any good end; they grow out of the first sentence against sin, and are in their own nature penal.
HE that is alive may know that he was born, though he know neither the place where nor the time when he was so; and so may he that is spiritually alive, and hath ground of evidence that he is so, that he was born again, though he know neither when, nor where, nor how. And this case is usual in persons of quiet natural tempers, who have had the advantage of education under means of light and grace. God ofttimes, in such persons, begins and carries on the work of his grace insensibly, so that they come to good growth and maturity before they know that they are alive.
DO not deceive yourselves. It is not an indifferent thing, whether you will come in unto Christ upon his invitations or no–a thing that you may put off from one season to another. Your present refusal of it is as high an act of enmity against God as your nature is capable of.
THERE is nothing more dreadful than for a man to be able to digest his convictions; to have sin look him in the face, and speak perhaps some words of terror to him, and to be able, by an charms of diversions or delays, to put it off.
WHEN Christ comes with his spiritual power upon the soul, to conquer it to himself, he hath no quiet landing-place. He can set foot on no ground but what he must fight for and conquer.
THE very notion that some men have, though you may think there is little in it, that they can dedicate23 anything to God, hath been the greatest ruin that ever befell religion in this world.
THERE is not a day but sin foils or is foiled, prevails or is prevailed on; and it will be so whilst we live in this world.
THE multitude of the guilty take away the sense and shame of the guilt.
ALL things do now call us to be martyrs in resolution, though we should never really lose our lives by violence.24
I AM not sometimes without some suspicion that many of the impure abominations, follies, villanies, which are ascribed to the primitive heretics, yea, the very Quakers themselves (upon whom the filth that lies is beyond all possible belief), might be feigned and imposed, as to a great part thereof. For though not the very same, yet things as foolish and opposite to the light of nature, were at the same time charged on the most orthodox.25
TO say a man is convinced, when, either for want of skill and ability or the like, he cannot maintain his opinion to and against all men, is a mere conceit.
THE enmity between God and us began on our part: the peace which he hath made begins and ends with himself.
IT is a sad sign that our ways please not God, when his ways please not us at all.
A MAN may beat down the bitter fruit from an evil tree, till he is weary; whilst the root abides in strength and vigour, the beating down of the present fruit will not hinder it from bringing forth more.
A CAUSE is good or bad before it hath success one way or another; and that which hath not its warranty in itself can never obtain any from its success. The rule of the goodness of any public cause is the eternal law of reason, with the first legal rights and interests of men. If these make not a cause good, success will never mend it.
THE giving way to the law of sin in the least is the giving strength to it. To let it alone, is to let it grow; not to conquer it, is to be conquered by it.26
IT hath been observed that the schoolmen themselves, in their meditations and devotional writings, wherein they had immediate thoughts of God, with whom they had to do, did speak quite another language as to justification before God than they do in their wrangling, philosophical, fiery disputes about it. And I had rather learn what some men really judge about their own justification from their prayers than their writings.
I HAD rather be instrumental in the communication of light and knowledge to the meanest believer, than to have the clearest success against prejudiced disputers.
IT is good to strive to excel and to go before one another in knowledge and in light, as in holiness and obedience. To do this in the road is difficult. Many, finding it impossible to emerge into any consideration by walking in the beaten path of truth, and yet not able to conquer the itch of being accounted ????? ???????,27 turn aside into byways, and turn the eyes of men to them by scrambling over hedge and ditch, when the sober traveller is not at all regarded.
WE allow no faith to be justifying, which is not itself and in its own nature a spiritually vital principle of obedience and good works.28
THE first beam of spiritual light and grace instates29 an indefatigable desire of the glory of God in the minds and souls of them in whom it is. Without this the soul knows not how to desire is own salvation. I may say, it would not be saved in a way wherein God should not be glorified.
CONSCIENCE is the territory or dominion of God in man, which he hath so reserved to himself that no human power can possibly enter into it or dispose of it in any wise.
THESE two principles, their own reputation and that of their sect, constituted the life and soul of Pharisaism of old.
NO heart can conceive that treasury of mercies which lies in this one privilege, in having liberty and ability to approach unto God at all times, according unto his mind and will.
IF we would talk less and pray more about them, things would be better than they are in the world; at least, we should be better enabled to bear them.
IT is one reason against the restraint of forms, because there is in them too little exercies of the faculties of our minds in the worship of God.
IT is a throne of grace that God in Christ is represented to us upon; but yet it is a throne still whereon majesty and glory do reside, and God is always to be considered by us as on a throne.
NO man of sobriety can, on any mistake, reprove us for anything, be it never so false, but that it is merely of sovereign grace that we have not indeed contracted the guilt of it; and humble thankfulness unto God on this occasion, for his real preserving grace, will abate the edge and take off the fierceness of our indignation against men for their supposed injurious dealings with us.
THERE are many saints in these nations who can truly say that the best and most comfortable days they ever saw in their lives were those wherein they were exercised with the greatest fears, dangers, and troubles.30
DOTH the heart promise fair? Rest not on it, but say to the Lord Christ, ‘Lord, do thou undertake for me.’ Doth the sun shine fair in the morning? Reckon not therefore on a fair day; the clouds may arise and fall.
THIS is the trial and touchstone of gospel light. If it keep the heart sensible of sin, humble, lowly, and broken on that account; if it teach us to water a free pardon with tears, to detest forgiven sin, to watch diligently for the ruin of that which we are yet assured shall never ruin us–it is divine, from above, of the Spirit of grace.
I HOPE many a poor soul will be able to say with him that was banished from his country and found better entertainment elsewhere, ‘My friends, I had perished if I had not perished–had I not been undone by fire, it may be I had been ruined in eternal fire.’
NO duties need to jostle one another, I mean constantly. Especial occasions must be determined according to especial circumstances. But if in anything we take more upon us than we have time well to perform it in, without robbing God of that which is due to him and our own soul, this God calls not unto, this he blesseth us not in.
SINNERS at their first conversion are very sensible of great forgiveness: ‘Of whom I am chief’ lies next their heart.
THE paths of faith and love wherein he [David] walked are unto the most of us like the way of an eagle in the air–too high and hard for us. Yet to this very day do the cries of this man after God’s own heart sound in our ears.
THERE is ‘vox naturae clamantis ad Dominum naturae’–a voice in nature itself, upon anything that is suddenly too hard for it, which cries out immediately to the God of nature. So men, on such occasions, without any consideration, are surprised into a calling on the name of God and crying unto him.
OUR solitudes and retirements . . . give us the most genuine trials whether we are spiritually minded or no. What we are in them, that we are, and no more.
HE that loves not God for himself–that is, for what he is in himself, and what from himself alone he is and will be to us in Christ (which consideration are inseparable)–hath no true affection for any spiritual thing whatever.31
WITH what little disadvantage to the religion of Jesus Christ, I suppose, a loss of all the canons of all councils that ever were in the world since the apostles’ days, with their acts and contests (considering what use is made of them), might be undergone!
IT is love alone that is the salt of every kindness or benefit.
LOVE is that jewel of human nature which commands a valuation wherever it is found.
ALL mercies without Christ are bitter; and every cup is sweet that is seasoned but with a drop of his blood.
IF one falsity be not covered with another, it will quickly rain through all.
HE alone is in a posture to learn from God who sincerely gives up his mind, conscience, and affections to the power and rule of what is revealed unto him.
SOME, yea many, promises of God may have a full accomplishment, when very few or none at all know or take notice that so they are accomplished.32
THERE is no death of sin without the death of Christ.33
FOR a sinner out of hell not to rest in the will of God, not to humble himself under his mighty hand, is to make himself guilty of the especial sin of hell. Other sins deserve it; but repining against God is principally, yea, only committed in it.
THERE is more glory under the eye of God, in the sighs, groans, and mournings of poor souls filled with the love of Christ, after the enjoyment of him according to his promises . . . that in the thrones and diadems of all the monarchs on earth.
THEY that love him would have him be all that he is–as he is, and nothing else; and would be themselves like him.
BLESSED Jesus! we can add nothing to thee, nothing to thy glory; but it is a joy of heart unto us that thou art what thou art–that thou art so gloriously exalted at the right hand of God. And we do long more fully and clearly to behold that glory, according to thy prayer and promise.
No man ever yet, but Jesus Christ, was able to finish all that was in his heart to do for God. On the removal of such accomplished and useful persons, I have sometimes relieved myself with this thought, that Christ lives in heaven still, and the blessed Spirit, from whom the head and heart of this chosen vessel were so richly replenished, liveth still.
(NATHANIEL MATHER, in his preface to Owen’s posthumous Discourses on the Holy Spirit and His Work.)
Footnotes
1 i.e. Makes it run the gauntlet.
2 Perhaps the classic words in which Dr. Chalmers describes his change to evangelical religion are not too well known to be cited as an apt parallel to Owen’s sentence. ‘I am now most thoroughly of opinion, and it is an opinion founded on experience, that on the system of Do this and live no peace, and even no true and worthy obedience, can ever be attained. It is Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. When this belief enters the heart, joy and confidence enter along with it,’ etc.
3 In 1651 George Fox stood up in York Minster at the close of the service, and informed the clergy and congregation that ‘This was the Lord’s word to them that they lived in words.’
4 ‘The perfected character is a cordial, delighted, intelligent sympathy with the whole revealed will of God’ (Thomas Erskine’s Unconditional Freedom of the Gospel, p. 112).
5 Almost the devout thought of Izaak Walton’s sentence: ‘Every misery I miss is a new mercy, and therefore let us be thankful.’ Or of Jeremy Taylor’s reflection that ‘the very privative blessings, the blessings of immunity, safeguard, and integrity which we all enjoy, deserve a thanksgiving of a whole life.’ But neither of these good men would have finished the paragraph precisely as their Puritan contemporary has done.
6 This sentence, italicised in the original, was written in 1676, as were the two preceeding paragraphs.
7 ‘The principle of growth is not love only, but forgiven love’ (F.W.Faber).
8 See, Owen adds, Augustine’s Confess. ii. 6.
9 See Jeremy Taylor’s quite admirable paragraphs in Holy Living (chap. ii. sect. iv.).
10′Let no man think that sudden in a minute
All is accomplished and the work is done;-
Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it,
Scarce were it ended in thy setting sun.’ (F. W. H. Myers.)
11 Written during the Restoration period. The aptest comment it supplied by the diaries of Pepys (e.g. November 8, 1663; October 15, 1666; July 27 and 29, 1667; October 23, 1668) and John Evelyn (February 17, 1662; October 10, 1666; March 1, 1671; January 14, 1682, etc.), both Royalists. Clarendon’s evidence is even more mournful and analytic.
12 Epictetus writes, under Domitian: ‘When you go in to the presence of any great personage, remember there is Another as high who sees all that happens; him you should please, not the other person’ (cf. Diss. i. 30).
13 This familiar and dreadful sentence is on a par with Luther’s ‘damned heathen, Aristotle,’ and with Owen’s own contemptuous allusion to Socrates (On Communion with God, part II. ch. iv.), which is as painful to read as John Howe’s derision of Spinoza. Socrates, says Owen, ‘died like a fool.’ Like some of the illiberal fathers in the early church, he took offence at the cock for Aesculapius.–A more guarded expression of the same idea is given in the Discourse on the Holy Spirit (Bk. iii. ch. iv.), where Owen proceeds to argue on ‘the duties of men unregenerate. Formally, and unto them they are sin; materially, and in themselves, they are good. This gives them a difference from, and a preference above, such sins as are every way sinful. As they are duties, they are good; as they are the duties of such persons, they are evil, because necessarily defective in what should preserve them from being so.’ Owen, as he explains, is here following the lead of Augustine’s spledida peccata. ‘This some are now displeased with, but it is easier to censure him than to confute him.’
14 ‘Seeing we are civilised Englishmen,’ said Fuller in his quaint, straight way, ‘let us not be naked savages in our talk.’
15 See Jeremy Taylor’s use of the same simile (in Growth of Sin, part II. ch. xvii.). ‘As the needle of a compass, when it is directed to its beloved star, at the first addresses waves on either side, and seems indifferent in his courtship of the rising and declining sun, and when it seems first determined to the north, stands awhile trembling, as if it suffered inconvenience in the first fruition of its desires, and stands not still in full enjoyment till after first a great variety of motion, and then an undisturbed posture; so is the piety, and so is the conversion of a man, wrought by degrees and several steps of imperfection,’ etc.
16 In the preface to his Truth and Innocence, Owen makes a curious statement (see Samson Agonistes, 294-299). While he had often met practical atheists, ‘For my part,’ he confesses, ‘I have had this advantage by my own obscurity and small consideration in the world, as never to converse with any persons that did or durst question the being or providence of God, either really or in pretence.’ He understands, however, from hearsay and printed matter, that some people occupy this attitude of ‘ prodigious licentiousness and impiety.’ When Hume, a century later, made a similar remark at Holbach’s dinner-table, the Parisian sceptic calmly told him he was sitting at table with no fewer than seventeen of the men whose existence he doubted.
17 This view is not peculiar to Owen. Milton throws out the same idea in his tractate ‘On Education,’ where he advises Master Samuel Hartlib that ‘the end of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him,’ etc.
18 Grotesque decorations of a building.
19 Bunyan’s Grace Abounding is crowded with instances of this experience.
20 Baxter too came to have a proper scorn for such flighty views. ‘I am farther than ever I was from expecting great matters of Unity, Splendour, or Prosperity to the church on earth, or that Saints should dream of a Kingdom of this World, or flatter themselves with the Hopes of a Golden Age or reigning over the Ungodly.’ Owen had no sympathy at any time with millennial fancies. Elsewhere in an earlier sermon he curtly observes: ‘For the personal reign of the Lord Jesus on earth, I leave it to them with those discoveries I am not, and curiosities I would not be, acquainted.’
21 Compare Melanchthon’s great sentence: ‘Hoc est Christum cognoscere, beneficia eius cognoscere, non eius naturas, modos incarnationis, contueri.’ Also the sentence quoted from Luther by Hermann in his Verkehr (E. tr., p. 125). Owen elsewhere observes: ‘When the heart is cast indeed into the mould of the doctrine that the mind embraceth, when not the sense of the words only is in our heads but the sense of the things abides in our hearts, when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for- then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men.’
22 The aphorism, like the well-known passage in the Areopagitica, is in line with the best traditions of the Independents. It is said that when their congregations in England covenanted to walk in gospel ordinances, they added the proviso, ’till God should give them “new light” and “further light”‘ (see Barclay’s Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, p. 122). Neal gives the whole noble address said to have been spoken by John Robinson to the Mayflower emigrants, and from it these sentences may be cited: ‘If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry: for I am verily persuaded, the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of his holy word. For my part I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the reformed churches, who are come to a period in religion and will go at present no farther than the instruments of their reformation.’ That Robinson meant the Bible by the ‘word of God’ is put beyond reach of doubt by what follows. ‘I beseech you remember, it is an article of your church-covenant that you be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you from the written word of God.’ The American Independents, it must be allowed, were less true to this principle than their English brethren.
23 i.e. as the context indicates, ‘consecrate’-in the sense of setting apart, as specially holy, any spot or place to be reserved exclusively for God. These rather extravagant words occur in a sermon on ‘A Christian, God’s Temple,’ preached in 1674, in which Owen’s reaction against the dominant ritualism of the Anglican Church brings him pretty close to the well-known positions of his former opponent, George Fox. One of the grudges against Laud had been raised by his elaborate consecration of some churches in London. His tossing of dust into the air may be alluded to in Comus, 164-165, and indeed the whole poem has sometimes been thought to contain an allegorical reflection of the true church beguiled by Laud’s popish potion.
24 See the passage quoted by Keble below his verses on St. Stephen’s Day in The Christian Year.
25 ‘I confess I give but halting credit to most histories that are written, not only against the Albigenses and Waldenses, but against most of the ancient hereticks who have left us none of their own writings, in which they speak for themselves; and I heartily lament that the historical writings of the ancient schismatics and hereticks (as they were called) perished, and that partiality suffered them not to survive, that we might have more light in the church-affairs of those times and been better able to judge between the fathers and them. And I am prone to think that few of them were so bad as their adversaries made them,’ etc. (Baxter’s Reliquiae, part I. sect. 212. 40).
26 ‘In the sense of religion we all are warriors or slaves’ (Jeremy Taylor).
27 ‘Certain great persons.’
28 For once Owen’s italics serve as a right emphasis. The thought of these words may seem a truism, but it was something very different in the seventeenth century, when statements of the atonement often suggested and actually led to a development of antinomianism among the Puritans. Nor was the snare confined to one party. ‘It is true,’ says Mr. Shorthouse (John Inglesant, chap. xvii.), ‘that the Laudian press teemed with holy works, setting the highest of pure standards before its readers, and exhorting to the following of a holy life; but this life was looked upon rather as a spiritual luxury and privilege, to which high and refined natures might well endeavour to attain, than as absolutely necessary to salvation.’ It was a real service to evangelical faith when George Fox entered his protest against the isolation of pardon which in some current phases of Puritanism was tending to produce anti-moral consequencies.
29 i.e. Instils.
30 In sec. 6, ch. x., of the Saints’ Rest we read: ‘When did Christ preach such comforts to his disciples, as when their hearts were sorrowful at his departure? When did he appear among them and say, Peace be unto you, but when they were shut up for fear of the Jews? . . . Is not that our best state, wherein we have most of God?’
31 This is almost the high note struck repeatedly by Jonathan Edwards, in his Religious Affections (e.g. pt. III. ?2, ?12, etc.), though the latter carries disinterestedness to the verge of unreality. It is curious to compare Spinoza’s famous sentence–’He who loves God cannot expect God to love him in return’–the sentence which bound Goethe to him for his great disinterestedness of nature.
32 Compare the lines by Coventry Patmore, ending thus:–
‘For what of me the world’s course will not fail;
When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;
The truth is great and shall prevail,
When none cares whether it prevail or not.’
33 Pity that so deep a sentence is immediately preceeded by a narrow attack on ‘Seneca, Tully, Epictetus.’ ‘You know,’ cries Owen (Mortification of Sin, ch. vii.), ‘what affectionate discourses they have of contempt of the world and self, of regulating and conquering all exorbitant affections and passions! The lives of most of them manifested that their maxims differed as much from true mortification as the sun painted on a signpost from the sun in the firmament. They had neither light nor heat.’