Our very business is to teach the great lesson of self-denial and humility to our people, and how unfit is it then that we should be proud ourselves!
Overvalue not therefore the manner of your own worship, and overvilify not other men’s of a different mode.
Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator.
Above all be much in secret prayer and meditation. By this you will fetch the heavenly fire that must kindle your sacrifice: remember you cannot decline and neglect your duty to your own hurt alone, many will be losers by it as well as you.
I like to hear a man dwell much on the same essentials of Christianity. For we have but one God, and one Christ, and one faith to preach; and I will not preach another Gospel to please men with variety, as if our Saviour and our Gospel had grown stale.
Doth any man live more to himself, or less to God, than the proud?
What we most value, we shall think no pains too great to gain.
Speak to your people as to men that must be awakened, either here or in hell...
You may know God, but not comprehend Him.
In a divine commonwealth holiness must have the principal honor and encouragement, and a great difference be made between the precious and the vile.
It is true, that men may have Christ whenever they are willing to comply with His terms. But if you are not willing now, how can you think you shall be willing hereafter?
Till men are deeply humbled, they can part with Christ and Salvation for a lust, for a little wordly gain, for that which is less than nothing. But when God hath enlightened their consciences, and broken their hearts, then they would give a world for Christ.
In my library I have profitably and pleasantly dwelt among the shining lights, with which the learned, wise, and holy men of all ages have illuminated the world.
Is it but right that our hearts should be on God, when the heart of God is so much on us.
Is it not enough that all the world is against us, but we must also be against one another? O happy days of persecution, which drove us together in love, whom the sunshine of liberty and prosperity crumbles into dust by our contentions!
We must study as hard how to live well as how to preach well.
Death is half disarmed when the pleasures and interests of the flesh are first denied.
You will cast away your cards and dice when you find the sweetness of youthful learning.
Life is short, and we are dull, and eternal things are necessary, and the souls that depend on our teaching are precious.
It is past all question, and agreed on by all sides, that no religion will save a man who is not serious, sincere, and diligent in it. If thou be of the truest religion in the world, and are not true thyself to that religion, the religion is good, but it is none of thine.