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A sheep may fall into a ditch, but it is the swine that wallows in it.
He who is his own teacher, is sure to have a fool for his master!
The Christian must always be at war. If he has peace with sin, he is at war with God.
We are more sure to arise out of our graves than out of our beds.
If you allow your love of creature comforts — or even your pleasure in family and loved ones — to outrun your love for the Lord, you cannot be a victorious soldier for Christ.The Christian in Complete Armour, 1:72
The layman has a large field in which he may minister to his fellow man, even if he is not called to full time ministry.Christian in Complete Armour 1:300
The dying words of Mr. Ash, the Puritan, are well-deserving of notice. He said, "When I consider my best duties, I sink, I die, I despair. But when I think of Christ, I have enough. He is all and in all.
Few are ever saved on their death-beds. One thief on the cross was saved that none should despair; but only one, that none should presume.
Death is a believer's ferryman to ferry him over to the land of rest; it opens the portal into heaven…. The day of a Christian's death is the birthday of his heavenly life; it is his ascension day to glory; it is his marriage day with Jesus Christ. After his funeral begins his marriage. Well then might Solomon say, "Better is the day of a man's death than the day of his birth."
For the day of death to the body is, as one saith, the birthday of eternity to the soul.
There is also a lawful contempt of death. We freely grant it, that in two cases a believer may contemn it. First, when it is propounded to them in a temptation on purpose to scare them from Christ and duty, then they should slight it as in Revelation 12:11. They loved not their lives to the death. Secondly, when the natural evil of death is set in competition with the enjoyment of God in glory, then a believer should despise it, as Christ is said to do (Heb. 12:2), though His was a shameful death. But upon all other accounts and considerations, it is the height of stupidity and security to despise it.
A grave with Christ is a comfortable place.
Oh then let not believers stand in fear of the grave. He that hath one foot in heaven need not fear to put the other into the grave.
If there certainly be such an eternal state into which souls pass immediately after death, how great a change then doth death make upon every man and woman! Oh, what a serious thing is it to die! It is your passage out of the swift river of time into the boundless and bottomless ocean of eternity. You that now converse with sensible objects, with men and women like yourselves, enter then into the world of spirits. You that now see the continual revolutions of days and nights, passing away one after another, will then be fixed in a perpetual now. Oh, what a serious thing is death!
Death mine enemy shall then set me free from the devil's temptation, the world's enticements, the outrage of men, the arrows of the Almighty, and the lustings of mine own flesh—all which have all my days stung my soul and battered my body. My soul! Take courage unto this last encounter.
We are manifestly mistaken concerning death. For the last gasp is not death. To live is to die. For how much we lived, so much we die; every step of life is a step of death. He that hath lived half his days is dead the half of himself. Death gets first our infancy, then our youth, and so forward. All that thou hast lived is dead.
Death is our birthday; we say falsely when we call death the last day. For it is indeed the beginning of an everlasting day, and is there any grievance in that? Death is the funeral of our vices and the resurrection of our graces. Death was the daughter of sin, and in death shall that be fulfilled: "The daughter shall destroy the mother." We shall never more be infected with sin nor troubled with ill natures.
The serious thoughts of death may do that for you which neither friends, counsel, example, prayers, sermons, tears have done to this very day. Well, remember this: to labor not to die is labor in vain, and to put this day far from you and to live without fear of death is to die living. Death seizes on old men and lays wait for the youngest. Death is oftentimes as near to the young man's back as it is to the old man's face.
What is this life but a smoke, a vapor, a shadow, a warfare, a bubble of water, a word, grass, a flower? Thou shalt die is most certain, but of the time no man can tell when. The longer in this life thou dost remain, the more thou sinnest, which will turn to thy more pain. By cogitation of death our minds be often in manner oppressed with darkness because we do but remember the night of the body, forgetting the light of the mind and of the resurrection. Thereto remember the good things that after this life shall ensue without wavering in certainty of faith, and so shall the passage of death be more desired.
I find not one in ten of the most obstinate, scornful wretches in the parish but when they come to die will humble themselves, confess their faults, seem penitent, and promise, if they should recover, to reform their lives. With what resolution will the worst of them seem to cast away their sins, exclaim against their follies and the vanities of the world when they see that death is in earnest with them! I confess it is very common for persons at such a season to be frightened into ineffectual purposes, but not so common to be converted to fixed resolutions. Yet there are some exceptions.
Death takes away difference between king and beggar and tumbles both the knight and the pawn into one bag.
We walk in this world as a man in a field of snow; all the way appears smooth, yet cannot we be sure of any step. All are like actors on a stage; some have one part, and some another. Death is still busy among us. Here drops one of the players. We bury him with sorrow, and to our scene again. Then falls another—yea all, one after another—till death be left alone upon the stage. Death is that damp which puts out all the dim lights of vanity. Yet man is easier to believe that all the world shall die than to suspect himself.
You must know conscience is a faculty that is corrupted as much as any other by nature and is very often made use of by Satan to deceive both good and bad, godly and ungodly. Many that know their consciences, they say, speak peace to them will be found merely cheated and gulled when the books shall be opened; no such discharge will then be found entered in the book of the word as conscience hath put into their hand. And many gracious souls who passed their days in a continual fear of their spiritual state and were kept chained in the dark dungeon of a troublesome conscience shall then be acquitted and have their action against Satan for false imprisonment and accusing their consciences to the disturbing their peace.
Converse with the saints that have the Spirit of God in them. They that would learn a foreign language associate with men of the country whose natural tongue it is. Wouldst thou have God and learn to speak heaven's language? Associate with those who by reason of their heavenly nature will be speaking of the things of God. It is true, they cannot propagate their spiritual nature; but it is as true that the Spirit of God may take the gracious discourses which they breathe forth the means of quickening thee. While thou art with such, thou walkest in the Spirit's company.https://tabletalkmagazine.com/article/2025/09/the-grace-of-christian-fellowship/
Liberty is the Diana of our times. O what apologies are made for some suspicious practices: long hair; gaudy, garish apparel; spotted faces; naked breasts! These have been called to the bar in former times and censured by sober and solid Christians as things at least suspicious and of no good report, but now they have hit on a more favorable jury that find them not guilty; yea, many are so fond of them that they think Christian liberty is wronged in their censure. Professors are so far from a holy jealousy that should make them watch their hearts, lest they go too far, that they stretch their consciences to come up to the full length of their tether, as if he were the brave Christian that could come nearest the pit of sin and not fall in.Christian in Complete Armour, 306
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