"The use of God's rod is to bring us home unto God, and the affliction driveth us to make better use of his word: it changeth us from vanity to seriousness; from error, to truth; from stubbornness, to teachfulness; from pride, to modesty." - Thomas Manton
"If God did not deliver us, many a time, by prerogative, out of those straits and distresses which we bring ourselves into by our own sin and folly, and which therefore we could not expect any deliverance from by promise, we should soon be ruined, nay, we should have been ruined long before this. He deals not with us according to our deserts." - Matthew Henry
"The bulk of the common people seldom think for themselves in religious concerns, but judge it sufficient to give up their understandings and consciences to their professed teachers." - John Newton
"...the Bible in miniature." —Martin Luther on the Psalms
"The line between the Church and the world is almost invisible, and the people of God no longer stand out in their uniqueness as they once did." - D. M. Lloyd-Jones
"Faith is the acknowledgment of the entire absence of all goodness in us, and the recognition of the cross as the substitute for all the want on our part. Faith saves, because it owns the complete salvation of another, and not because it contributes anything to that salvation. There is no dividing or sharing the work between our own belief and Him in whom we believe. The whole work is His, not ours, from the first to last." - H. Bonar
"There are many circumstances concerning covetousness which do much aggravate the heinousness thereof; for, it is a deceiving sin; it blinds the understanding and corrupts the judgment in a main point of happiness... Upon this conceit of happiness, wealth so stealeth away a man's heart, and so inflames his affections, as he maketh it his god. Justly therefore is a covetous person called an idolater." - William Gouge"When I have a hasty thought against a man and wish him out of the world, I have killed him in thought, and even though I may disguise the wish under the expression of wishing him in heaven, there is guilt in the desire. Oh the hard, cruel, black thoughts which men have towards one another, when they are angry; why they kill and slay a thousand times over." - Charles Spurgeon
"What more can we wish, if not even a hair of our head can fall, save in accordance with his will?" - John Calvin
"No man can truly preach the gospel in his own strength and power. He can talk perhaps, and talk eloquently; but talk is not preaching, and it will lead to nothing." - D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendour of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one. When I think of any one of the three I think of Him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me” - Gregory Nazianzen (Quoted by John Calvin, Institutes, 1.13.17).
“If every attribute of the Deity were a distinct member, purity would be the form, the soul, the spirit to animate them. Without holiness, his patience would be an indulgence to sin, his mercy a fondness, his wrath a madness, his power a tyranny, his wisdom an unworthy subtlety. Holiness gives decorum to them all.” - Stephen Charnock
"There wanteth even in the hearts of God’s people a greater reverence of the Word of God than to this day appeareth among us, and this let me say, that want of reverence of the Word is the ground of all disorders that are in the heart, life, conversation, and in Christian communion. Besides, the want of reverence of the Word layeth men open to the fearful displeasure of God." - John Bunyan
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