“Sincerity! it is the life of all our graces, and puts life into all our duties, and, as life makes beautiful and keeps the body sweet, so sincerity the soul and all it doth.”

“They love truth flourishing, who do not love it when it is confuting. They dare handle and look on the sword with delight when in a rich scabbard, who would run away to see it drawn.”

“Count on the strength of your own godly attributes, and you will grow lax in your duties for Christ. Knowing you are weak keeps you from wandering too far from Him. When you see that your own cupboard is bare and everything you need is in His, you will go often to Him for supplies. But a soul who thinks he can take care of himself will say, "I have plenty and to spare for a long time. Let the doubting soul pray; my faith is strong. Let the weak go to God for help; I can manage fine on my own." What a sad state of affairs, to suppose that we no longer need the moment-by-moment sustaining grace of God. Not only does overestimating the strength of our own goodness make us shun God's help, but it also makes us foolhardy and venturesome. You who boast about your spirituality are likely to put yourselves in all kinds of dangerous situations, then brag that you can handle them.”

“Christ counts it his honour, that he is a king of a willing people, and not of slaves. He comes to make you free, not to bring you into bondage, to make you kings, not vassals. None”

“O, this persevering is a hard word! this taking up the cross daily, this praying always, this watching night and day, and never laying aside our clothes and armour, I mean indulging ourselves, to remit and unbend in our holy waiting on God, and walking with God.  This sends many sorrowful away from Christ, yet this is a saint's duty, to make religion his every-day work, without any vacation from one end of the year to the other.”

“The believer is to persevere in his Christian course to the end of his life: his work and his life must go off the stage together.”

“The Christian must trust in a with draw ing God, Isa.  50:10.  Let him that walks in darkness, and sees no light, trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God.”

“The true doctor studies harder than the freshman, because, as he knows more of learning, so by that knowledge he un derstands his own deficiency better; for the higher he ascends the hill of learning, the more his prospect en largeth, while the other, standing at the bottom, thinks he knows all in his little.”

“O ye saints, when reproached and persecuted, look farther than man, spend not your wrath upon him.  Alas! they are but instruments in the devil's hand.  Save your displeasure for Satan, who is thy chief enemy.  These may be won to Christ’s side, and so become thy friends at last. ”

“Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens,’ Lam. 3:41. That is, saith Bernard, oremus et laboremus—let us pray and use the endeavour.  The hypocrite’s tongue wags, but the sincere soul’s feet walk, and his hands work.”

“Except your righteousness exceeds their best, you are not Christians.  And can you let them exceed you in those things, which, when they are done, leave them short of Christ and heaven?  It is time for the scholar to throw off his gown, and dis claim the name of an academic, when every school-boy is able to dunce and pose him; and for him also to lay aside his profession, and let the world know what he is, yea, what he never was, who can let a mere civil man, with his weak bow only backed with moral principles, outshoot him that pretends to Christ and his grace.”

“The Lord Jesus lays down his heart’s blood to redeem souls out of the hand of sin and Satan, that they may be free to serve God, without fear, in holiness; and the loose Christian, if I may call him so, ‘denies the Lord that bought him,’ and delivers up himself basely unto his old bondage, from which Christ had ransomed him with so great a sum.  Whose”

“The historian's observation is worth the Christian's remembrance: ‘Crafty counsels promise fair at first, but prove more difficult in the managing, and in the end do pay the undertaker home with desperate sorrow.’[9]”

“Though some precious souls, that have closed with Christ, and embraced the gospel, be not at present brought to rest in their own consciences, but continue for a while under some dissatisfactions and troubles in their own spirits; yet even then they have peace of conscience in a threefold respect.  In precio, in promisso, in semine—in what purchases it, in the promise, and in the germ.”

“Prayer is nothing but the promise reversed, or God’s word formed into an argument, and retorted by faith upon God again.  Know,”

“That it is the saint’s duty, and should be their care, not only to get an established judgment of the truth, but also to maintain a steadfast profession of the truth.”

“The word of promise was all he had to show, and he counts that enough to set his faith on work.  But alas! some make comfort the ground of faith, and experience their warrant to believe.  They will believe when God manifests himself to them, and sends in some sensible demonstration of his love to their souls; but, till this be done, the promise hath little authority to silence their unbelieving cavils, and quiet their misgiving hearts into a waiting on God for the performance of what there is spoken from God's own mouth.”

“And truly, I am persuaded this last piece of armour hath given Satan great advantage in these our times, we are so afraid our charity should be too broad.  Whereas in this sense, if it be not wide as the world, it is too strait for the command which bids us ‘do good to all.’  May not we ministers be charged with the want of this, when the strain of our preaching is solely directed to the saints, and no pains taken in rescuing poor captive souls, yet uncalled, out of the devil's clutches?”

“No more, then, shall he infest the saints, no, nor rule the wicked, but he with them, and they with him, shall lie under the immediate execution of God’s wrath. For”

“Distinguish between mercy and mercy; let the choicest mercies have thy highest praises.  It shows a naughty heart to howl and make a great noise in prayer for corn and wine, and in the meantime to be indifferent or faint in his desires for Christ and his grace.  Nor better is it, when one acknowledges the goodness of God in temporals, but takes little notice of those greater blessings which concern another life.  You shall have sometimes a covetous earthworm speak what a blessed time and season it is for the corn and the fruits of the earth —that fit his carnal palate, as the pottage did Esau’s —but you never hear him express any feeling sense of the blessed seasons of grace, the miracle of God’s patience that such a wretch as he s out of hell so long, the infinite love of God in offering in offering Christ by the gospel to him.  He turns over these as a child doth a book, till he hits on some gaud and picture, and there he stays to gaze.  Christ and his grace, with other spiritual blessings, he skills not of, he cares not for, except they would fill his bags and barns.  Now, shall such a one pass for a thankful man? will God accept his praises for earth that rejects heaven? that takes corn and wine with thanks, and bids him keep Christ to himself with scorn? saying, as Esau when his brother offered him his present, ‘I have enough?’ ”