Quote 1641
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Not grace to bar what is not bliss,
Nor flight from all distress, but this:
The grace that orders our trouble and pain,
And then, in the darkness, is there to sustain.http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/sustained-by-sovereign-grace-forever
A man may be theologically knowing and spiritually ignorant.
All the prayers in the Scripture you will find to be reasoning with God, not a multitude of words heaped together.
What a wonder that two natures infinitely distant should be more intimately united than anything in the world... That the same person should have both a glory and a grief; an infinite joy in the Deity, and an inexpressible sorrow in the humanity; that a God upon a throne should be an infant in a cradle; the thundering Creator be a weeping babe and a suffering man;
A God of unmixed blessedness is linked personally with a man of...sorrows: life incapable to die, joined to a body in that economy incapable to live without dying first; infinite purity, and a reputed sinner; eternal blessedness with a cursed nature, Almightiness and weakness, omniscience and ignorance, immutability and changeableness, incomprehensibleness and comprehensibility; that which cannot be comprehended, and that which can be comprehended; that which is entirely independent, and that which is totally dependent; the Creator forming all things, and the creature made, met together to a personal union; "The word made flesh
I desire to cast my crown at the feet of Jesus, and to cry grace! grace! Dear Sir, what a charming word is that? I am sure I can freely own, that all my salvation is of grace, unmerited, distinguishing, electing grace!
Power is God's hand or arm, omniscience His eye, mercy His bowels, eternity His duration, but holiness is His beauty
Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.
Repentance was never yet produced in any man's heart apart from the grace of God. As soon may you expect the leopard to regret the blood with which its fangs are moistened, as soon might you expect the lion of the wood to abjure his cruel tyranny over the feeble beasts of the plain, as expect the sinner to make any confession, or offer any repentance that shall be accepted of God, unless grace shall first renew the heart.
You need grace! But someone says if you throw that much grace around it will be a liscence for sin. Only among the unconverted Church members. Oh they will take it as an excuse for sin. The genuinely converted will say this, if grace be such. If it be so large and so wide... depths I cannot sound. Then oh let me be holy! Unknown
The greatest punishment inflicted upon Christ, when he stood as a sacrifice for sin, was not the act of men, but the act of God
The great objection of a penitent is, I have sinned, and I know not whether God will receive me: consider, God knows your sin better than you do, yet he kindly calls to you, and promises you as good a reception as if you had never sinned.
Those who suppose that the doctrine of God's grace tends to encourage moral laxity are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they do not know what they are talking about. For love awakens love in return; Knowing God (The Grace of God, 152)
Holiness can no more approve of sin than it can commit it. To be delighted with the evil in another's act contracts a guilt, as well as the commission of it; for approbation of a thing is a consent to it.
He could not be Lord of any man as a happy creature if He did not, by His power, make them happy; and He could not make them happy unless, by His grace, He made them holy.
God's children have various degrees of grace: some are little children who only feed upon the milk of the gospel; others are young men grown to maturity; others are fathers who are ready to take their degree in glory. Each has the vitality of godliness. The Scriptures speak both of the cedar and of the bruised reed: each is a plant of God's creation -each of His care; so the weakest plant in God's garden of the church is equally regarded by Him with the strongest. God can read the work of His Spirit on the soul which has received the dimmest impression.
The meditation of the excellency of grace would make us earnest in the pursuit after it. We dig for gold in the mine, we sweat for it in the furnace. Did we meditate on the worth of grace, we would dig in the mine of ordinances for it. What sweating and wrestling in prayer? We would put on a modest boldness and not take a denial.
Grace not only makes a man more a man, but it also makes him more than a man. The primitive Christians were the best of men. None were more lowly in their dispositions or more lovely in their conversation. Noah was a just man and perfect in his generation. He was not a sinner among saints, but he was a saint among sinners. Who would have looked for so fair a bird in so foul a nest? Though he once acted as the sons of men do, yet he was numbered with the sons of God. A field of wheat may be good and yet have a weed in it. A saint is not free from sin—that is his burden; a saint is not free to sin—that is his blessing.
Many men are changed in a moral sense, and one may say they are become new men, but they are in heart and nature the same men still. They are not changed in a spiritual and supernatural sense, and therefore it cannot be said of them they are become new creatures. Restraining grace may cause a moral change, but it is renewing grace that must cause a saving change. Now many are under restraining grace, and so changed morally, that are not under the power of renewing grace, and so changed savingly.
The kingdom of grace yields "joy unspeakable" (1 Peter 1:8), though not glory unspeakable. We have "songs in the house of [our] pilgrimage" (Ps. 119:54). God will have us to enter upon our possession by degrees: joy enters into us before we enter into our Master's joy. We have first the daystar, then the sun. What a good Master do we serve that gives us a part of our wages ere we have done our work! While we are sowing we have peace, the conscience and contentment of a good action.
Grace doth not pluck up by the roots and wholly destroy the natural passions of the mind because they are distempered by sin! That were an extreme remedy to cure by killing and heal by cutting off; no, but it corrects the distemper in them. It dries not up this main stream of love but purifies it from the mud which it is full of in its wrong course or turns it into its right channel, by which it may run into happiness and empty itself into the ocean of goodness. The Holy Spirit turns the love of the soul toward God in Christ, for in that way only can it apprehend His love. So then Jesus Christ is the first object of this divine love; He is medium unionis, through whom God conveys the sense of His love to the soul and receives back its love to Himself.
Grace is not of an equal extent to nature: grace is not native, but donative; not by generation, but by regeneration. It is from the Father of spirits, not fathers of our flesh. Who can bring a clean thing out of filthiness? The new birth is "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man" (John 1:13).
Nature may teach a man to loathe sin in others, but 'tis only grace that teacheth us to abhor sin in ourselves.
He that knows the true worth of grace thinks he hath never enough till satisfied with it in glory.
Grace is of a stirring nature and not such a dead thing, like an image, which you may lock up in a chest, and none shall know what God you worship. No, grace will show itself; it will walk with you in all places and companies; it will buy with you and sell for you; it will have a hand in all your enterprises; it will comfort you when you are sincere and faithful for God, and it will complain and chide you when you are otherwise. Go to, stop its mouth and heaven shall hear its voice; it will groan, mourn, and strive even as a living man when you would smother him. I will as soon believe the man to be alive that lies peaceably as he is nailed up in his coffin, without strife or bustle, as that thou hast grace and never exercise it in any act of spiritual life.
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1. Thomas Watson (164)
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6. John Piper (87)
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8. John Flavel (75)
9. Thomas Brooks (73)
10. A.W. Pink (68)
11. John Owen (67)
12. Louis Berkhof (63)
13. Thomas Manton (60)
14. C.S. Lewis (59)
15. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (58)
16. B.B. Warfield (58)
17. R.C. Sproul (55)
18. Heinrich Bullinger (53)
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20. Gerald Bray (50)
2. Charles Spurgeon (135)
3. J.C. Ryle (117)
4. John Calvin (107)
5. J.I. Packer (93)
6. John Piper (87)
7. George Swinnock (80)
8. John Flavel (75)
9. Thomas Brooks (73)
10. A.W. Pink (68)
11. John Owen (67)
12. Louis Berkhof (63)
13. Thomas Manton (60)
14. C.S. Lewis (59)
15. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (58)
16. B.B. Warfield (58)
17. R.C. Sproul (55)
18. Heinrich Bullinger (53)
19. Matthew Henry (51)
20. Gerald Bray (50)
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