C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
John Flavel
Alas! that Christians should stand at the door of eternity having more work upon their hands than their time is sufficient for, and yet be filling their heads and hearts with trifles.
Christ bounds and terminates the vast desires of the soul; He is the very Sabbath of the soul.
Christian! thou knowest thou carriest gunpowder about thee. Desire them that carry fire to keep at a distance. It is a dangerous crisis, when a proud heart meets with flattering lips.
Consult the honor of religion more, and your personal safety less. Is it for the honor of religion (think you) that Christians should be as timorous as hares to start at every sound?
Faith is the bond of union, the instrument of justification, the spring of spiritual peace and joy, the means of spiritual peace and subsistence.
Faith, considered as a habit, is no more precious than other gracious habits are; but considered as an instrument to receive Christ and His righteousness, it excels them all; and this instrumentality of faith is noted in the phrases, “by faith,” and “through faith.”
God kills thy comforts from no other design but to kill thy corruptions; wants are ordained to kill wantonness, poverty is appointed to kill pride, reproaches are permitted to destroy ambition.
He is taken up, that He may fulfill His design in dying, and give the work of our salvation its last completing act.
It is easier to declaim like an orator against a thousand sins in others than to mortify one sin in ourselves; to be more industrious in our pulpits than in our closets; to preach twenty sermons to our people than one to our own hearts.
See that you receive Christ with all your heart. As there is nothing in Christ that may be refused, so there is nothing in you from which He must be excluded.
Sometimes Providences, like Hebrew letters, must be read backwards.
The law sends us to Christ to be justified, and Christ sends us to the law to be regulated.
The Lord’s Supper comes to us like a ring plucked off from Christ’s finger, or a bracelet from His arm; or rather like His picture from His breast, delivered to us with such words as these, “As oft as you look on this, remember me.”
There are three acts of faith, assent, acceptance and assurance.
Two things a master commits to his servant’s care—the child and the child’s clothes. It will be a poor excuse for the servant to say, at his master’s return, “Sir, here are all the child’s clothes, neat and clean, but the child is lost.” Much so of the account that many will give to God of their souls and bodies at the great day. “Lord, here is my body; I am very grateful for it; I neglected nothing that belonged to its contents and welfare; but as for my soul, that is lost and cast away forever. I took little care and thought about it.”
We must not think that faith itself is the soul’s rest; it is only the means of it. We cannot find rest in any work or duty of our own, but we may find it in Christ, whom faith apprehends for justification and salvation.
When a man begins to apprehend the first approach of grace, pardon, and mercy by Jesus Christ to his soul; when he is convinced of his utter unworthiness and desert of hell, and can never expect anything from a just and holy God but damnation, how do the first dawnings of mercy melt and humble him!