The Saints' Everlasting Rest

Christ leads me through no darker rooms than He went through before.

All are making haste towards hell, until by conviction, Christ brings them to a halt, and then, by conversion, turns their hearts and lives sincerely to himself.

When the Son of God comes to rescue us and bring us back to God, He does not find in us the ability to believe.

If our rest was here, most of God's providences must be useless. Should God lose the glory of his church's miraculous deliverances, and of the fall of his enemies, that men may have their happiness here?

Much more do they want that moral perfection which the blessed partake of; those holy dispositions of mind; that cheerful readiness to do the will of God; that perfect rectitude of all their actions: instead of these, th…

The name of this city much helpeth Jew and Gentile to see the state of peace, for this is called Jerusalem, and that in Canaan hath Christ destroyed: this name should clearly have taught bot h the Hebrews not to look and…

I would desire every divine to beware that he tell not the unsanctified, that whoever hath the least degree of love to God for himself, and not as a means to carnal ends, shall certainly be saved ; for he would certainly…

What interest hath this empty world in me? and what is there in it that may seem so lovely, as to entice my desires and delight from thee, or make me loth to come away? When I look about me with a deliberate, undeceived…

He that dare not die, dare scarce fight valiantly (475).

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).

Though every man naturally abhorreth sorrow, and loves the most merry and joyful life; yet few do love the way to joy, or will endure the pains by which it is obtained; they will take the next that comes to hand, and con…

The strongest Christian is unsafe among occasions to sin (519).

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).

If every work of the day had thus its appointed time, we should be better skilled, both in redeeming time and performing duty (556).

If and worms'-meat must have such respect, think, then, what reverence thou shouldst approach thy Maker (569).

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…

Meditation puts reason in its authority and preeminence. It helpeth to deliver it form its captivity to the sense, and setteth it again upon the throne of the soul. When reason is silent, it is usually subject; for when…

We may reconcile ourselves to the world at our peril, but it will never reconcile itself to us. . . . This unwillingness to die, doth actually impeach us of high treason against the Lord : is it not a choosing of earth b…

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).

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)?

The sum is this, 'As thou makest conscience of praying daily, so do thou of the acting of thy graces in meditation; and more especially in meditating on the joys of heaven, To this end, set apart one hour or half hour ev…

When shall I be past these soul-tormenting fears, and cares, and griefs, and passions? When shall I be out of this frail, this corruptible, ruinous body; this soul-contradicting, insnaring, deceiving flesh? When shall I…

Why dost thou not see that on earth they desires fly from thee? Art thou a not as a child that thinketh to travel to the sun, when he seeth it rising or setting, as it were close to the heart ; but as he traveleth toward…

But a tedious way to a grievous end(745);

what a silly, frail, and forward pieces are the best of men (647)!

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).

O blessed be the grace that makes advantages of my corruptions, even to contradict and kill themselves (648).

What if you had seen haven open as Stephen did, and all the saints there triumphing in glory, and enjoying the end of their labours and sufferings, what a life would you lead after such a sight as this! Why, you will see…

As one can hardly find any thing in a house where nothing keeps its place, but all is cast on a heap together; so it is in the heart where all things are in disorder, especially when darkness is added to this disorder: s…

[T]here is no greater strengthener of sin, and destroyer of the soul, than Scripture misapplied (317).

He that believeth that he believe, believeth himself and not God (333)[.]

[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).

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).

Yet I must tell you, that all these graces which are expressed by passions of sorrow, fear, joy, hope, love, are not so certainly to be tried by the passion that is in them, as by the will that is either contained in the…

[T]his is the strongest encouragement to them in sinning; and we have need to lay all our batteries against this bulwark of presumption (361).

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) [.]

What if you had once seen hell open, and all the damned there in their easeless torments, and had heard them crying out of their slothfulness in the day of their visitation, and wishing that they had but another life to…

Till thou hast learned to suffer from a saint a well as from the wicked, and to be abused by the godly as well as the ungodly, never look to live a contented or comfortable life, nor ever think thou has truly learned the…

That physician is no better than a murderer, that negligently delayeth till his patient be dead or past cure (389).

Lothness to displease men, makes us undo them (394).

Sure, if you saw your friend in hell, you would persuade him hard to come thence, if that would serve ; and why do you not now persuade him to prevent it? The charity of our ignorant forefathers may rise up in judgment a…

If God had bid you give them all your estates to own them, or lay down your lives to save them, sure you would have refused, when you will not bestow a little breath to save them? Is not the soul of a husband, or wife, o…

O sirs, how many souls, then, have every one of us been guilty of damning! What a number of our neighbours and acquaintance are dead, in whom we discerned no signs of sanctification, and never did once plainly tell them…

I am persuaded our discontents, and murmurings with out unpleasing condition, and our covetous desires after more, are not so provoking to God, nor so destructive to the sinner, as our too sweet enjoying, and rest of spi…

Either paganish unbelief of the truth of that eternal blessedness, and of the truth of the Scripture which doth promise it to us; or, at least, a doubting of our own interest; or most usually most sensible of the latter,…

Even innocent Adam is liker to forget God in a paradise, than Joseph in a prison, or Job upon a dunghill(376)[.]

O let us not be as the purblind world, that cannot see afar off ; let us never look at the grave, but let us see the resurrection beyond it(42).

[O]ur applications are quicker about our sufferings, than our sins(77)[.]

Oh! what a potent instrument for Satan is a misguided conscience(93)!

As all our senses are the inlets of sin, so they are become the inlets of sorrow (99).