Weakness with watchfulness will stand, when strength with too much confidence fails. Weakness, with acknowledgement of it, is the fittest seat and subject for God to perfect his strength in; for consciousness of our infirmities drives us out of ourselves to him in whom our strength lies.
The Bruised Reed
But the divine dayspring from on high is adored, Christ the Lord, who is our sun and shield; the sun of every blessing, asserting the glory of religion; the shield of the most safe protection, affording an invincible and inexpugnable guard to liberty.
Certainly when we undervalue mercy, especially so great a one as the communion of saints is, commonly the Lord takes it away from us till we learn to prize it to the full value. Consider well therefore the heinousness of this sin, which that you may the better conceive. First, consider it is against God's express precept, charging us not to forsake the assemblies of the saints (Heb. 10:20, 25). Again, it is against our own greatest good and spiritual solace, for by discommunicating and excommunicating ourselves from that blessed society, we deprive ourselves of the benefit of their holy conference, their godly instructions, their divine consolations, brotherly admonitions, and charitable reprehensions, and what an inestimable loss is this? Neither can we partake such profit by their prayers as otherwise we might, for as the soul in the natural body conveys life and strength to every member, as they are compacted and joined together and not as dissevered, so Christ conveys spiritual life and vigor to Christians, not as they are disjoined from but as they are united to the mystical body, the church.
The church of Christ is a common hospital wherein all are in some measure sick of some spiritual disease or other, that we should all have ground of exercising mutually the spirit of wisdom and meekness.
Let us not look so much who are our enemies as who is our Judge and Captain, nor what they threaten but what He promises; we have more for us than against us. What coward would not fight when he is sure of victory? None are here overcome but those that will not fight. Therefore, when any base fainting seizes upon us, let us lay the blame where it is to be laid.
If we knew the glory of our elder Brother in heaven, we should long to be there to see Him. We children think the earth a fair garden, but compared with the garden of the Lord it is but wild, cold, barren ground. All things are fading that are here; it is our happiness to make sure of Christ.
If you win Christ, though not in the sweet and pleasant way you would have Him, it is enough. For the Well Beloved comes not our way; He must choose His way Himself. He cuts off your love to the creature that you might learn that God only is the right owner of your love, sorrow, loss, sadness, death, or the worst things that are.
O that the heaven, and the heaven of heavens were paper, and the sea ink, and the multitude of mountains pens of brass, and I able to write my dearest, my loveliest, my sweetest, my matchless, and my most unequaled and marvelous Well Beloved! Woe is me, I cannot set Him out to men and angels! I am put to my wit's end how to get His name made great. How sweet is Christ's back! O, what there is in His face! Those that see His face, how are they able to get their eye plucked off Him again!Garden of Spices, 41
Christ's sitting down at God's right hand in heaven notes the advancement of Christ's human nature to the highest honor, even to be the object of adoration to angels and men. For it is properly His human nature that is the subject of all this honor and advancement, and being advanced to the right hand of Majesty, it is become an object of worship and adoration. Not simply as it is flesh and blood, but as it is personally united to the second person and enthroned in the supreme glory of heaven. Oh, here is the mystery, that flesh and blood should ever be advanced to the highest throne of Majesty, and being there installed in that glory, we may now direct our worship to him as God man. Fountain of Life, 420
Oh! Christ's riches are so many, they cannot be numbered; they are so precious, they cannot be valued; so great, they cannot be measured. Oh, the infinite riches of our King! Christ is a mine of gold which we must dig till we find heaven.Christ\'s Famous Titles, 51
When a man shall not only design me a purse of gold but shall venture his life to bring it to me, this is grace indeed. But, alas, what are a thousand such short comparisons to the unsearchable love of Christ? Riches, 103
Christ was never so joyful in all His life that we read of as when His sufferings grew near. Then He takes the sacrament of His body and blood into His own hands and with thanksgiving bestows it among His disciples. Then He sings a hymn, then He rejoices, then He comes with a "God, I come." O the heart—the great heart—that Jesus had for us to do us good! He did it with all the desire of His soul. Riches, 103
We are now by the Spirit at liberty to delight in the law, to make the law our counsellor, to make the Word of God our counsellor. That which terrified and frightened us before is now our direction. A severe schoolmaster to a very young pupil becomes later, as the pupil grows, a wise tutor to guide and direct. So, the law that terrifies and whips us when we are in bondage, till we are in Christ -it scares us to Christ -that law afterward comes to be a tutor, to tell us what we shall do, to counsel us and say this is the best way. And we come to delight in those truths when they are revealed to us inwardly. And the more we know, the more we want to know, because we want to please God better every day.Glorious Freedom, 41
O, pity for evermore that there should be such an one as Christ Jesus, so boundless, so bottomless, and so incomparable in infinite excellency, and sweetness, and so few to take Him! O, ye poor dry dead souls, why will ye not come hither with your toom vessels and your empty souls to this huge, and fair, and deep, and sweet well of life, and fill all your toom vessels?The Loveliness of Christ
Cast yourself into the arms of Christ, and if you perish, perish there. If you do not, you are sure to perish. If mercy is to be found anywhere, it is there.
There is nothing more profitable in the world than humility, because, though it seems to have nothing, yet it carries the soul to Him who fills all in all.