Puritan Gems

• "The first retreat from a free and open, to a closed and concealed practice of religion; not opening our windows as Daniel did to show we care not who knows we dare worship our God, and are not ashamed of our duties, but hiding our principles and practice with all the art and care imaginable, reckoning it well if we can escape danger by letting fall our profession which might expose us to it; but if the inquest go on, and we cannot be secured any longer under this refuge, we must comply with false worship, and give some open signal that we do so, or else be marked out for ruin; then saith fear, Give a little more ground and retreat to the next security, which is to comply seemingly with that which we do not allow, hoping God will be merciful to us and accept us, if we keep our hearts for him, though we are forced ... to hide our principles...But if still the temptation hunts us further, and we come to be more narrowly sifted and put to a severer test, by subscribing to contrary articles, or renouncing our formerly avowed principles, and that upon penalty of death, or all that is dear to us in the world, now nothing in all the world hazards our eternal salvation as our own fears will do; this is like to be the rock on which we split all, and make a horrible shipwreck of truth and peace."
  -- John Flavel
• Say not, O but my sins are greater than can be forgiven: the difficulties of my salvation are too great to be overcome, especially by a poor creature as I am, that am able to do nothing, no, not to raise one penny towards the discharge of that great debt I owe to God. For here thou wilt find, upon thy union with Christ, that there is merit enough in his blood, and mercy enough in his bowels, to justify and save such a one as thou art.
  -- John Flavel
• Say not that thou hast royal blood in thy veins and art born of God, unless thou canst prove thy pedigree by daring to be holy - http://www.ccwonline.org/holiness.html
  -- William Gurnall
•   Let none, then, pretend that they love the brethren in general, and love the people of God, and love the saints, while their love is not fervently exercised towards those who are in the same church society with them... the apostle tells us, "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, will never love God whom he hath not seen."
  -- Thomas Watson
•   Jesus Christ went more willingly to the cross than we do to the throne of grace. Had not we need then provoke ourselves to duty?
  -- Thomas Watson
•   "You will be as fearful of living in any foolish way, either of spending your time, or your fortune, as you are now fearful of neglecting the public worship."
  --William Law
•   "Those prayers God likes best which come seething hot from the heart."
  -- Thomas Watson
•   Those who, rejecting Scripture, imagine that they have some peculiar way of penetrating to God, are to be deemed not so much under the influence of error as madness.
  -- John Calvin
•   The flesh inclines us more to believe a temptation than a promise"
  --Thomas Watson
•   "Christ is the very essence of all delights and pleasures, the very soul and substance of them. As all the rivers are gathered into the ocean, which is the meeting-place of all the waters in the world, so Christ is that ocean in which all true delights and pleasures meet."
  -- John Flavel
•   "The pampering of the flesh, is the quenching of God's spirit."
  -- Thomas Watson
•   Many in these days are bewitched and deceived by the magnificent words, lofty strains- and stately terms of deceivers, such as illumination, revelation, and deification. As harlots paint their faces and adorn and perfume their beds, the better to allure and deceive simple souls, so false teachers will put a great deal of paint and garnish upon their most dangerous principles and blasphemies, in order that they may better deceive and delude poor ignorant souls. They know that sugared poison goes down sweetly: they wrap up their pernicious, soul-killing pills in gold.
  -- Thomas Brooks
•   "Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honour, and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure, and pays with pain; he promises profit, and pays with loss; he promises life, and pays with death. But God pays as he promises; all his payments are made in pure gold."
  -- Thomas Brooks
•   "Those that go gold into the furnace will come out no worse."
  -- Matthew Henry
•   "Sin and conscience are stubborn in their conflict whilst immediately opposed, conscience pleading that there should be no sin, and sin contending that there may be no conscience; but, as nature is corrupted, they will both comply with an accommodation. Wherefore a device to satisfy sin and to deceive conscience will not fail of a ready entertainment; and this is the design in part or in whole of every false way in religion that men apostatize unto from the purity and simplicity of the gospel. See 2 Pet. 2:18; 2 Peter 2:18-19; 2 Peter 2:19".
  -- John Owen
•  "Faith lives in a broken heart. 'He cried out with tears, Lord, I believe.' True faith is always in a heart bruised for sin. They, therefore, whose hearts were never touched for sin, have no faith. If a physician should tell us there was a herb that would help us against all infections, but it always grows in a watery place; if we should see a herb like it in colour, leaf, smell, blossom, but growing upon a rock, we should conclude that it was the wrong herb. So saving faith always grows in a heart humbled for sin, in a weeping eye and a tearful conscience."
  --Thomas Watson
•   "If we desire to end our days in joy and comfort, let us lay the foundation of a comfortable death now betimes. To die well is not a thing of that light moment as some imagine: it is no easy matter. But to die well is a matter of every day. Let us daily do some good that may help us at the time of our death. Every day by repentance pull out the sting of some sin,that so when death comes, we may have nothing to do but to die. To die well is the action of the whole life."
  -- RICHARD SIBBES
•   "He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd virtue, unexcersied and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary."
  --John Milton
•   "Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the world: use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used. Kill it before it kills you; and though it bring you to the grave, as it did your Head, it shall not be able to keep you there."
  --Richard Baxter

The Lord willing, we will add a weekly (or daily, if we find time) short, sharp quotation from the Puritan fathers.