Do you mortify; do you make it your daily work; be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers Chapter 2
The gospel is most wickedly eclipsed while multitudes of petty "scholars" fret themselves how they might best teach the faith within a rigidly structured, accurate, methodical-philosophical form! A great multitude of errors have swarmed into the church through the reception of philosophy, like Greeks out of the belly of the Trojan horse...The clear fact is that the common, Aristotelian philosophy supplied sufficient materials for an infinity of quarrels and useless disputes. The facts shout out to heaven that our little, witty, chattering sophists, in their endless wrangling over the "articles of faith," are simply raking over the embers of Aristotle's philosophy, and in so doing they irritate the throne of Almighty God with legal quarrels and cheap tricks...It is a result of this that our theological libraries are packed full of weighty tomes, and our disputes are without end, and the most about matters, assertions and terms the Christian world would have done far better never to have heard of -and would not have heard of if they had not happened to enter the fertile brain of Aristotle so long ago! But the full catalog, the great Iliad of evils so produced, this is not the place to try to expound in detail.Biblical Theology: The History of Theology from Adam to Christ
It is not the distance of the earth from the sun, nor the sun's withdrawing itself, that makes a dark and gloomy day; but the interposition of clouds and vaporous exhalations. Neither is thy soul beyond the reach of the promise, nor does God withdraw Himself; but the vapours of thy carnal, unbelieving heart do cloud thee.
It is better that our affections exceed our light from the defect of our understandings, than that our light exceed our affections from the corruption of our wills.Works, Vol 1. 401
A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.
A godly man weeps sometimes out of the sense of God's love. Gold is the finest and most solid of all the metals, yet is soonest melted with the fire. Gracious hearts, which are golden hearts, are the soonest melted into tears by the fire of God's love.
Love is the only attribute which God hath acted to the utmost. We have never seen the utmost of His power, what God can do, but we have seen the utmost of His love: He hath found a ransom for lost souls (Job 33:24).
Lusts that pretend to be useful to the state and condition of men, that are pleasant and satisfactory to the flesh, will not be mortified without such a violence as the whole soul shall be deeply sensible of. https://ccel.org/ccel/owen/pneum/pneum.i.viii.viii.html
There is tremendous relief in knowing his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery can disillusion him about me.
It is the love of Christ, i. e. his love to us which passes knowledge. It is infinite; not only because it inheres in an infinite subject, but because the condescension and sufferings to which it led, and the blessings which it secures for its objects, are beyond our comprehension. This love of Christ, though it surpasses the power of our understanding to comprehend, is still a subject of experimental knowledge. We may know how excellent, how wonderful, how free, how disinterested, how long-suffering, how manifold and constant, it is, and that it is infinite. And this is the highest and most sanctifying of all knowledge. Those who thus know the love of Christ towards them, purify themselves even as he is pure.
no man preacheth that sermon well that doth not first preach it to his own heart-If the word do not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us
There is a call, a cry, in every rod of God, in every chastising providence; and therein He makes a declaration of His name, His holiness, His power, His greatness.
Let them pretend what they please, the true reason why any despise the new birth is because they hate a new life. He that cannot endure to live to God will as little endure to hear of being born of God.
Sin does not only still abide in us but is still acting, still laboring to bring forth the deeds of the flesh. When sin lets us alone we may let sin alone, but as sin is never less quiet than when it seems to be most quiet, and its waters are for the most part deep when they are still, so ought our contrivances against it to be vigorous at all times and in all conditions, even where there is least suspicion.
Remember in particular the love of Jesus Christ, as God-man, in giving Himself for us. This love is frequently proposed to us with what He did for us, and it is represented peculiarly in this ordinance: "Who loved me and gave Himself for me," says the apostle. Faith will never be able to live upon the last expression "gave Himself for me" unless it can rise up to the first, "who loved me." Who "loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood," etc. (Rev. 1:5–6).