Inspirational Quotes by Richard Sibbes
“In the small seeds of plants lie hidden both bulk and branches, bud and fruit. In a few principles lie hidden all comfortable conclusions of holy truth. All these glorious fireworks of zeal and holiness in the saints had their beginning from a few sparks.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“For where God intends to do any good, he first works in them a gracious disposition: after which he looks upon his own work as upon a lovely object, and so doth give them other blessings. God crowns grace with grace. By”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Tender Heart
“The eye being a tender part, and soonest hurt, how watchful is man by nature over that, that it take no hurt. So the heart, being a tender thing, let us preserve it by all watchfulness to keep blows from off it. It is a terrible thing to keep a wound of some great sin upon the conscience, for it makes a way for a new breach; because when the conscience once begins to be hardened with some great sin, then there is no stop, but we run on to commit sin with all greediness. 9.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Tender Heart
“Christ came down from heaven, and emptied himself of majesty in tender love to souls; shall we not come down from our high conceits to do any poor soul good? Shall man be proud after God hath been humble?”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“A holy despair in ourselves is the ground of true hope. In God the fatherless find mercy (Hos. 14:3); if men were more fatherless, they should feel more God's fatherly affection from heaven, for the God who dwells in the highest heavens dwells likewise in the lowest soul (Isa. 57:15).”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“holy despair in ourselves is the basis for true hope. In God the fatherless find mercy (Hos. 14:3). If men were more fatherless, they should feel more God's fatherly affection from heaven, for the God who dwells in the highest heavens dwells likewise in the lowest soul (Isa. 57:15).”
“Proud men are the devil’s pipes, and flatterers the musicians to blow these pipes.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from Josiah's Reformation
“nothing in the world of so good use, as the least dram of grace.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“It is love in duties that God regards, more than duties themselves.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“Peace and joy are two main fruits of Christ’s kingdom. Let the world be as it will, if we cannot rejoice in the world, yet we may rejoice in the Lord. His presence makes any condition comfortable.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“And there is a proud kind of moderation likewise, when men will take upon them to censure both parties, as if they were wiser than both,”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“there is more mercy in Christ than sin in us, there can be no danger in thorough dealing. It is better to go bruised to heaven than sound to hell.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“Where Christ’s Spirit is, it will bring men from their altitudes and excellencies, and make them to stoop to serve the church, and account it an honour to be an instrument to do good.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from Christ Is Best
“only God’s Spirit can raise the conscience with comfort above guilt, because he only is greater than the conscience.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from The Bruised Reed
“The more we see the grace of God in Christ, the spirit of fear is diminished and replaced by a spirit of love and boldness.”
“Does God take care of beasts, and not of his more noble creature? And therefore we ought to judge charitably of the complaints of God's people which are wrung from them in such cases. Job had the esteem with God of a patient man, notwithstanding those passionate complaints.”
“Are you dejected? here is comfort; are you sinful? here is righteousness; are you led away with present contentments? here you have honours, and pleasures, and all in Christ Jesus.”
“It should be the art of Christians to present death as a passage to a better life, to labour to bring our souls into such a condition, as to think death not to be a death to us, but the death of itself. Death dies when I die, and I begin to live when I die. It is a sweet passage to life. We never live till we die.”
― Richard Sibbes ,
from Christ Is Best
“In temptations it is safest to behold nothing but Christ the true brazen serpent, the true ‘Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world’, (John 1:29). This saving object has a special influence of comfort to the soul, especially if we look not only on Christ, but upon the Father’s authority and love in him. For in all that Christ did and suffered as Mediator, we must see God in him reconciling the world unto himself (2 Cor. 5:19).”
“The whole chain [of God's love] so holds, that all the creatures in heaven and earth cannot break a link of it. Whom he calls he will justify and glorify. Therefore never doubt of continuance, for it holds firm on God's part, not thine. God embraces us in the arms of his everlasting love, not that we embraced him first. When the child is safe from falling, it is from the mother's holding the child, and not from the child's holding the mother. So it is God's holding of us, knowing of us, embracing of us, and justifying of us that maketh the state firm, and not ours ; for ours is but a reflection and result of his, which is unvariable. (A Heavenly Conference, p. 439)”
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Richard Sibbes was an English theologian. He is known as a Biblical exegete, and as a representative, with William Perkins and John Preston, of what has been called "main-line" Puritanism.
He attended St John's College, Cambridge from 1595. He was lecturer at Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, from 1610 or 1611 to 1615 or 1616. It is erroneously held by 18th and 19th century scholars that Sibbes was deprived of his various academic posts on account of his Puritanism. In fact he was never deprived of any of his posts, due to his ingenuity of the system.
He was then preacher at Gray's Inn, London, from 1617, returning to Cambridge as Master of Catherine Hall in 1626, without giving up the London position.
He was the author of several devotional works expressing intense religious feeling -- The Saint's Cordial (1629), The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax (1631, exegesis of Isaiah 42:3), The Soules Conflict (1635), etc.