In forming an estimate of sins, we are often imposed upon by imagining that the more hidden the less heinous they are.
All the more vile is the stupidity of those persons who open heaven to all the impious and unbelieving without the grace of Him whom Scripture commonly teaches to be the only door whereby we enter into salvation.
The name of Christ excludes all merit of our own.
Unless men establish their complete happiness in God, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him.
Let us fall before the majesty of our great God, acknowledging our faults, and praying that he will make us ever more conscious of them.
They babble and talk absurdly who, in the place of God’s providence, substitute bare permission – as if God sat in a watchtower awaiting chance events, and his judgments thus depended upon human will.
The Lord has not redeemed you so you might enjoy pleasures and luxuries or so that you might abandon yourself to ease and indolence, but rather so you should be prepared to endure all sorts of evils.
Where riches hold the dominion of the heart, God has lost His authority.
The only skills I have the patience to learn are those that have no real application in life.
I don’t need to compromise my principles, because they don’t have the slightest bearing on what happens to me anyway.
All our words ought to be filled with true sweetness and grace; and this will be so if we mingle the useful with the sweet.
Where God’s Spirit does not reign, there is no humility, and men ever swell with inward pride.
All truth is God’s truth.
There is no erratic power or action or motion in creatures but they are governed by God’s secret plan in such a way that nothing happens except what is knowingly and willingly decreed by Him.
When a certain shameless fellow mockingly asked a pious old man what God had done before the creation of the world the latter aptly countered that he had been building hell for the curious.
By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which He determined with Himself whatever He wished to happen with regard to every man.
Accursed is that peace of which revolt from God is the bond, and blessed are those contentions by which it is necessary to maintain the kingdom of Christ.
Free will does not enable any man to perform good works, unless he is assisted by grace; indeed, the special grace which the elect alone receive through regeneration. For I stay not to consider the extravagance of those who say that grace is offered equally and promiscuously to all.
Whenever the Lord holds us in suspense, and delays his aid, he is not therefore asleep, but, on the contrary, regulates all His works in such a manner that he does nothing but at the proper time.
Prayers belong strictly to the worship of God. Fasting is a subordinate aid, which is pleasing to God no farther than as it aids the earnestness and fervency of prayer.