Marital Love

Loving Each Other. This is both the husband’s (Col. 3:19) and the wife’s duty (Tit. 2:4). Love is the great reason and comfort of marriage. This love is not merely romance, but genuine and constant affection and care for each other "fervently with a pure heart" (1 Pet. 1:22). Marital love cannot be based on beauty or wealth, for these are passing, and not even on piety, for that may decay. It must be based upon God’s command which never changes. The marriage vow obliges "for better or for worse," and married persons ought to consider their own spouses the best in the world for them. Marital love must be durable, lasting even after death has severed the bond (Prov. 31:12). This true-hearted love brings true content and comfort in its train. It guards against adultery and jealousy. It prevents or lessens family trouble. Without it, the marriage is like a bone out of joint. There is pain until it is restored. [Richard Steele]

God's means to save men from themselves

God breaks some mens hearts for sin; namely, because he would not have them die in it, but rather come to God, that they might be saved. Behold, therefore, in this, how God resolved as to the saving of some men’s soul! He will have them, he will save them. He will break their hearts, but he will save them; he will kill them, that they may live; he will wound them, that he may heal them. And it seems by our discourse that now there is no way left but this; fair means as we say, will not do; good words, a glorious gospel, entreating, beseeching with blood and tears, will not do. Men are resolved to put God to the utmost of it; if he will have them, he must fetch them, follow them, catch them, lame them, yea, break their bones, or else he shall not save them. [John Burnayn]

God's means to save men from themselves

God breaks some mens hearts for sin; namely, because he would not have them die in it, but rather come to God, that they might be saved. Behold, therefore, in this, how God resolved as to the saving of some men’s soul! He will have them, he will save them. He will break their hearts, but he will save them; he will kill them, that they may live; he will wound them, that he may heal them. And it seems by our discourse that now there is no way left but this; fair means as we say, will not do; good words, a glorious gospel, entreating, beseeching with blood and tears, will not do. Men are resolved to put God to the utmost of it; if he will have them, he must fetch them, follow them, catch them, lame them, yea, break their bones, or else he shall not save them. [John Burnayn]

A world such as this

Can I love such a world as this, where tyranny sheds streams of blood, and lays cities and countries desolate; where the wicked are exalted, the just and innocent reproached and oppressed, the gospel restrained, idolatory and infidelity too generally kept up; where Satan too often chooses pastors for the churches of Christ, even such as by ignorance, pride, and sensuality, become devouring wolves to those whom they should feed and comfort; where no two persons are in all things of a different mind, and where appears but little hopes of a remedy? And shall I not think more delightfully of "the inheritance of the saints in light" and of the cordial love and joyful praises of the church triumphant? Should I not love a lovely and loving world much better than a world where there is comparatively so little lovliness of love? [Richard Baxter]

Set sin before thine eyes

Keep fresh in your remembrance some particular sin or other, when you come to prayer, it will help you in confession; it is barrenness as I told you that you do not see what matter you have to confess, that makes you so scanted in your confession; would you but present some particular sin when you come to God, you would be in a better plight to confess sin to God; this the Psalmist doth, 51. Verse 3. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. he means the sin of adultery. When David came to prayer, he would put before his eyes the sin of adultery; now set thy sin before thee. Art thou a drunkard? set thy drunkenness before  thee; art thou an adulterer? set thy uncleanness before thee. Art thou an extortioner? then set thy oppression before thee. set sin before thine eyes when thou comest prayer and that is the way to feed thy spirits with confessions to God in a prayer. [Christopher Love]

Things bitter to the flesh

Do not even such things as are most bitter to the flesh, tend to awaken Christians to faith and prayer, to a sight of the emptiness of this world, and the fadingness of the best it yield? Doth not God by these things (ofttimes) call our sins to remembrance, and provoke us to amendment of life? How then can we be offended at things by which we reap so much good?…. Therefore if mine enemy hunger, let me feed him; if he thirst, let me give him drink. Now in order to do this, (1) We must see good in that, in which other men can see none. (2) We must pass by those injuries that other men would revenge. (2) We must show we have grace, and that we are made to bear what other men are not acquainted with. (4) Many of our graces are kept alive, by those very things that are the death of other men’s souls…. The devil, (they say) is good when he is pleased; but Christ and His saints, when displeased. [John Bunyan ]

Being laid low by sin

The mighty hand does not press us down, but as sinners, it is meet then that under it we see our sinfulness. Our guilt, whereby we shall appear criminals justly caused to suffer; our filthiness, whereupon we may be brought to loathe ourselves; and then we shall think nothing lays us lower than we well deserve. It is the overlooking of our sinfulness that suffers the proud heart to swell. [Thomas Boston]

Grace confuses satan

Neither would the confusion of the devil in the end be so great, and the victory so glorious, if all sin at first conversion were expelled. For by this means the devil hath in his assaults against us the more advantages, fair play, as I may so speak, fair hopes of overcoming, having a great faction in us, as ready to sin as he is greedy to tempt; and yet God strongly carries on his own work begun, though slowly, and by degrees, backs and maintains a small party of graces within us to his confusion.  [Thomas Goodwin]

On Duty

Whatever thou art required to do, remember, O my soul, that thou art under grace, and it is thy privilege to do it in faith. View the tables in the hand of thy Saviour, and recieve the ten commandments from his mouth. Happy for thee, Jesus is thy law-giver. His spirit will gospelize thine obedience. He will bring thine heart into it. He will set thee in the chariot of love, and thou shalt ride on properously. He will oil the wheels of duty and they shall run easy and pleasant. Thou shalt be carried sweetly through duty, thy beloved being present and conversing with thee in it; Yea thy faith working by love to him will render fellowship with God in all thou doest the joy of thy heart and the glory of thy life. [WILLIAM ROMAINE]

The sordid Habitation of the body

Were it not for our bodily interest and its temptations, how much more innocent and holy might I live! I should have nothing to care for, but to please God and be pleased in Him, were it not for the care of this bodily life. What employment should my will and love but to delight in God and love Him and His interest, were it not for the love of the body and its concerns? By this our mind is darkened, our thoughts diverted, our wills corrupted, our heart and time alienated from God, our guilt increased, our heavenly hopes and desires destroyed; life is made unholy and uncomfortable and death terrible; God and souls are separated, and eternal life is neglected and in danger of being utterly lost. I know that in all this, the sinful soul is the chief cause and agent-but is not bodily interest its temptation, bait and end? Is not the body, its life and pleasure, the chief alluring cause of all this sin and misery? And shall I take such a body to be better than heaven, or refused to be loosed from so troublesome a yoke-fellow, and separated from so burdensome and dangerous companion? [Richard Baxter]

River of Consolation

God’s people are apt to despond when they see things move eccentric, and go cross to their expectation. God is in the midst of Zion. He hath a special super-intendency over the affairs of His church; God hath more care of His church than we can. We read in Ezekiel’s vision, of a wheel within a wheel, Ezek. 1:16. God’s decree is the inner wheel that turns all the outward wheels of Providence;the church never wants enemies to assault, and make inroads upon her, but God is in the midst of her. Here is a River of Consolation ,whose Crystal streams may refresh the City of God, God’s eye is upon His people for good; The eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him. (Psalm 33:8) [Thomas Watson]

A Broken heart, is a thankful heart

A broken heart is of great esteem with God, because it is a thankful heart for that sense of sin and of grace it has received. The broken heart is a sensible heart. This we touched upon before. It is sensible of the dangers which sin leadeth to; yea, and has cause to be sensible thereof, because it has seen and felt what sin is, both in the guilt and punishment that by law is due thereto. As a broken heart is sensible of sin, in the evil nature and consequences of it; so it is also sensible of the way of God’s delivering the soul from the day of judgment; consequently it must be a thankful heart. Now he that praises me, glorifies me, saith God; and God loves to be glorified. God’s glory is dear unto him; he will not part with that (Psa 50:23; Isa 42: [John Bunyan]

Satan ripens cherished sin

It is hard to discern the working of Satan from our own corruptions, because for the most part he goes secretly along with them; he is like a pirate at sea who fires upon us under our own colors. Like Judas to Christ, he comes as a friend, therefore it is hard to discern; but it is partly seen by the eagerness of our lusts, when they are sudden, strong and strange, so strange sometimes that even nature itself abhors them. The Spirit of God leads sweetly on, but the devil hurries a man like a tempest, as we see in Amnon for his sister Tamar. Again, when we resist the motions of God’s good Spirit, dislike His government, and give way to passion, then the devil enters. Let a man be unadvisedly angry, and the devil will make him envious and seek revenge; when passions are let loose they are chariots in which the devil rides; some by nature are prone to distrust and some to be too confident; now the devil joins with them and so draws them on further; he broods upon our corruptions; he sits as it were upon the souls of men, and there broods and hatches all sin. All the devils in hell cannot force us to sin. Satan works by suggestions, stirring up humors and fancies, but he cannot work upon the will; we betray ourselves by yielding before he can do us any harm; yet he ripens sin when cherished in the heart and brings it forth into actual transgression. [Richard Sibbes]

God's Absolute Decree of Election

The decree of election (by which God determined with Himself to save some persons selected from the common mass) is absolute, and therefore necessarily and infallibly attains its effect. The decree of election is absolute, so that the Lord looked on nothing foreseen in the persons chosen, but absolutely decreed to work in them all conditions required to salvation. This is so clearly manifest from many places of Scripture, that it hardly needs any proof. We did not choose God, but He chose us, John 15. We are chosen that we might be holy, not holy that we might be chosen. He chose Jacob rather than Esau, when both were of like and equal condition, Romans 9. Effectual vocation and justifying faith are the fruits and effects of predestination not the foregoing conditions, see Romans 8. Lastly, if God’s mere good pleasure is the only reason of the decree (He has mercy on whom He will and hardeneth whom he will) it necessarily follows that God has absolutely decreed to save some. To absolutely save some He bestows on them grace, faith, and holiness. Granting these things, it appears that God converts all the elect after a manner that is irresistible, because if they could resist that grace, which is fit to convert them, being also given to this end, that they might be converted, then this absolute and preemptory decree of God might be disappointed by the creature, which must not be imagined. Neither is their any ground that they should now object to the way God saves, for by the same reason, those whom God has rejected sin irresistibly. For we deny that there is the same reason of both: for although faith is the effect of predestination, yet infidelity is to the proper effect of reprobation. Faith requires a cause of itself that is efficient, and has a true and proper influence to its effect. But there is no efficient cause required to unbelief. It is deficient (because it follows on the mere defect and absence of that cause by which faith should be created in someone). In the same way, to see light outside there is a required of the sun, or some other efficient cause, a tendency to that effect; but the absence of the sun is enough to cause darkness. In the same manner, although the sins of reprobates infallibly follows from the determinate counsel of God, who has decreed their event, yet conversion and faith follow the absolute decree of God after a much different manner.  [John Preston]

God's Absolute Decree of Election

The decree of election (by which God determined with Himself to save some persons selected from the common mass) is absolute, and therefore necessarily and infallibly attains its effect. The decree of election is absolute, so that the Lord looked on nothing foreseen in the persons chosen, but absolutely decreed to work in them all conditions required to salvation. This is so clearly manifest from many places of Scripture, that it hardly needs any proof. We did not choose God, but He chose us, John 15. We are chosen that we might be holy, not holy that we might be chosen. He chose Jacob rather than Esau, when both were of like and equal condition, Romans 9. Effectual vocation and justifying faith are the fruits and effects of predestination not the foregoing conditions, see Romans 8. Lastly, if God’s mere good pleasure is the only reason of the decree (He has mercy on whom He will and hardeneth whom he will) it necessarily follows that God has absolutely decreed to save some. To absolutely save some He bestows on them grace, faith, and holiness. Granting these things, it appears that God converts all the elect after a manner that is irresistible, because if they could resist that grace, which is fit to convert them, being also given to this end, that they might be converted, then this absolute and preemptory decree of God might be disappointed by the creature, which must not be imagined. Neither is their any ground that they should now object to the way God saves, for by the same reason, those whom God has rejected sin irresistibly. For we deny that there is the same reason of both: for although faith is the effect of predestination, yet infidelity is to the proper effect of reprobation. Faith requires a cause of itself that is efficient, and has a true and proper influence to its effect. But there is no efficient cause required to unbelief. It is deficient (because it follows on the mere defect and absence of that cause by which faith should be created in someone). In the same way, to see light outside there is a required of the sun, or some other efficient cause, a tendency to that effect; but the absence of the sun is enough to cause darkness. In the same manner, although the sins of reprobates infallibly follows from the determinate counsel of God, who has decreed their event, yet conversion and faith follow the absolute decree of God after a much different manner.  [John Preston]

Regeneration is sometimes unobservable

The precise time of begun regeneration, is not always observed nor known, either by the regnerate man himself, or by beholders of his way, as experience maketh evident in many, who from their infancy are brought up in the exercises of true religion, in whose conversion no notable change can be observed. In those words of Christ in part are verified, the Kingdom of Heaven cometh not with observation. Such persons when they begin to examine themselves, whether they be regenerate, whether they be in Christ, and at what time they were converted, they can neither determinately speak of their conversion, till after sundry trials and experiences can gather proof of their sincerity from such signs, effects and marks of the work of saving grace in them, as may  prove that Christ hath dwelt in them before.[David Dickson]

Confession of sin unto God

David when he kept close his sin; he roared by reason of horror; when he did not pour out his soul in confession to God; but when a man shall with an ingenious cleaness confess his evils unto God, this doth alleviate his mind, and lighten his burden, and ease his conscience, and quiet his spirit. Origen doth call confession of sin to God, the souls spiritual vomit. Now you  know vomiting doth give ease to a burdened stomach, when the stomach is pained and burdened, and oppressed. A man is sick at the heart when meat doth not digest; the vomiting of the load off the stomach doth ease the stomach; when the conscience is burdened, when a man’s spirit is troubled, pouring out of complaints and confession to God doth ease the mind; A sinner is like a vessel of new wine filled and stopped up close; till it hath vent it is ready to burst; so is a godly man filled with sin, till he can vent by confession to God, his heart is ready to go burst. [Christopher Love]

Profiting from Bereavement

Our dear Parents are gone, our lovely and desirable children are gone, our bosom relations that were as our own souls, are gone: And do not all thse warning knocks at our doors acquaint us, that we must prepare to follow shortly after them?

O that by these things our own Death might be both more easy and familar to us, the oftener it visits us, the better we should be acquainted with it; and the more of our beloved relations it removes before us, the less of either  snare or entanglement remains for us when our turn comes. [John Flavel]

The Sprinkled Blood of Christ

The sprinkled blood of Jesus Christ hath so great a hand in our salvation, and is so great a part of it, shall be to call upon you to a holy wondering and admiring at this strange way of our salvation! At this saving us by the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus! A great many people are minding heaven, and praying to be in heaven, and hoping for heaven, that yet to this day never knew the way to heaven; but think the way to heaven is to be good, to pray, to be holy as they call it; these things indeed are the exercise of a man that is in the way to heaven, but these are not the way to heaven; the way to heaven is jesus Christ, I am the way, the truth, and the life, saith our Lord to Thomas, John xiv. 6. and Christ is the way to heaven, as a slain Saviour; but how few there are that know him? Take a view of this sprinkling of the blood of Jesus and wonder at it; that this should have so great a hand in our salvation. [Robert Traill]

Motions of a Divine Life

In a word, what our blessed Saviour said of himself, is in some measure applicable to his followers, that it is their meat and drink to do their father’s will: and as the natural appetite is carried out toward food, though we should not reflect on the neccessity of it for the preservation of our lives; so are they carried with a natural and unforced propension toward that which is commendable. It is true, external motives are many times of great use to excite and stir up this inward principle, especially in its infancy and weakness, when it is often so languid that the man himself cannot discern it, hardly being able to move one step forward, but when he is pushed by his hopes or his fears; by the pressure of an affliction, or the sense of a mercy; by the authority of the law, or the persuasion of others. Now, if such a person be conscientious and uniform in his obedience, and earnestly groaning under the sense of his dullness, and is desirous to perform his duties with more spirit and vigour; these are the first motions of the divine life, which though it be faint and weak, will surely be cherished by influences of heaven, and grow into greater maturity. But he who is utterly destitute of this inward prinicple, and doth not aspire unto it, but contents himself with those performances whereunto he is prompted by education or custom, by fear of hell or carnal notions of heaven, can no more be accounted a religous person, than a puppet can be called a man. [Henry Scougal]

On Unity

There is a two-fold union, one mystical, between Christ and believers; another moral, between believers themselves. Faith knits them all to Christ, and then Love knits them one to another. Their common relation to Christ, their head, endears them to each other as fellow members in the same body. Thus they become glued together by the blood of Christ. Union with Christ is fundamental to union amongst the Saints. Perfect union would grow from this, their common union with Christ their head, were they not in an imperfect state, where their corruptions disturb and hinder it; and as soon as they shall attain to complete sanctification, they shall also attain unto perfect unity. How their unity with one another comes by way of neccessary resultancy their unity with Christ; and how this unity amongst themselves shall at last arise into just perfection. That one text plainly discovers: John 17:23: "I in them and thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one." &c.

Unity amongst those who hold not the head is rather a conspiracy than a gospel unity. Believers and non-beleivers may have a political or civil union. bit there is no spiritual unity but which flows from unity in Christ. I will not deny but in particular churches there may be and still are some hypocrites who hold communion with the Saints and pretend to belong unto Christ, the same head with them; but as they have no real union with Christ, so neither have they any sincere affection towards the Saints; and these for the most part are they that raise Tummults and Divisions within the church, as disloyal citizens do in the commonwealth. Of these the Apostle Speaks: 1 John 2:19

Sincere Christianity holds fast the soul by a Firm Bond of Life to the truly Christian community, wherein they reap those Spiritual pleasures and Advantages which assure their continuance therein to a great degree. But those that join with the church upon carnal and external inducements make little conscience of rending from it, and God permits their schismatical spirits to act thus for the discovering of their hypocrisy.  [John Flavel]

True and False Religion

Whenever religion revives remarkably, till we have learned well to distinguish between true and false religion, between saving affections and experiences, and those manifold fair shows, and glistering appearances, by which they are counterfeited; the consequences of which, when they are not distinguished, are often inexpressibly dreadful. By this means, the devil gratifies himself, by bringing it to pass, that that should be offered to God, by multitudes, under a notion of a pleasing acceptable service to him, that is indeed above all things abominable to him. By this means he deceives great multitudes about the state of their souls; making them think they are something, when they are nothing; and so eternally undoes them; and not only so, but establishes many in a strong confidence of their eminent holiness, who are in God’s sight some of the vilest of hypocrites. By this means, he many ways damps and wounds religion in the hearts of the saints, obscures and deforms it by corrupt mixtures, causes their religious affections woefully to degenerate, and sometimes, for a considerable time, to be like the manna that bred worms and stank; and dreadfully ensnares and confounds the minds of others of the saints and brings them into great difficulties and temptation, and entangles them in a wilderness, out of which they can by no means extricate themselves. By this means, Satan mightily encourages the hearts of open enemies of religion, and strengthens their hands, and fills them with weapons, and makes strong their fortresses; when, at the same time, religion and the church of God lie exposed to them, as a city without walls. By this means, he brings it to pass, that men work wickedness under a notion of doing God service, and so sin without restraint, yea with earnest forwardness and zeal, any with all their might. By this means he brings in even the friends of religion, insensibly to themselves, to do the work of enemies, by destroying religion in a far more effectual manner than open enemies can do, under a notion of advancing it. By this means the devil scatters the flock of Christ, and sets them one against another, and that with great heat of spirit, under a nation of zeal for God; and religion, by degrees degenerates into vain jangling; and during the strife, Satan leads both parties far out of the right way, driving each to great extremes, one on the right hand, and the other on the left, according as he finds they are most inclined, or most easily moved and swayed, till the right path in the middle is almost wholly neglected. [Johnathan Edwards]

Profiting from God's Chastisements

For it seemed to you that you should never have come soon enough into the land of blessing: what God made you to retire from it and it ought to have been yet long time ere before you had come there Think upon it and consider it was God’s hand that held you there as it were shut up in a close prison. Now then, although God has delivered you from it yet must you bare it in mind still according as we see how King Hezekiah speaks thereof in his song saying he will bethink of the years the past with heaviness and grief of heart and call to mind the chastisement had received at God’s hand thereby to hold himself in awe, that he shall not back again into the same faults for which he had been punished. Thus you see how we ought to think upon the corrections that God shall have sent us that we may profit ourselves by them. [John Calvin]

Profiting from God's Chastisements

For it seemed to you that you should never have come soon enough into the land of blessing: what God made you to retire from it and it ought to have been yet long time ere before you had come there Think upon it and consider it was God’s hand that held you there as it were shut up in a close prison. Now then, although God has delivered you from it yet must you bare it in mind still according as we see how King Hezekiah speaks thereof in his song saying he will bethink of the years the past with heaviness and grief of heart and call to mind the chastisement had received at God’s hand thereby to hold himself in awe, that he shall not back again into the same faults for which he had been punished. Thus you see how we ought to think upon the corrections that God shall have sent us that we may profit ourselves by them. [John Calvin]

Silly birds and silent fish

Consider what Solomon’s experience taught him: Let not your inadversities of these times, make you a new experiement of that ancient truth. And leave men that should be wise, especially that pretend to wisdom, to be numbered among and compared with a silly bird and a silent fish. [ Joseph Caryl]