82 quotes
Certain it is, that as nothing can better do it, so there is nothing greater, for which God made our tongues, next to reciting His praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul.
...if love hath filled all the corners of our soul, it alone is able to do all the work of God.
Holy Living (1650)
Friendship is like rivers, and the strand of seas, and the air, common to all the world; but tyrants, and evil customs, wars, and want of love, have made them proper and peculiar.
Revenge... is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.
Make use of time, if thou valuest eternity. Yesterday cannot be recalled; to-morrow cannot be assured; to-day only is thine, which, if thou procrastinatest, thou losest, which loss is lost forever.
...since God has appointed one remedy for all the evils in the world and that is a contented spirit.
Holy Living (1650)
God is pleased with no music from below so much as in the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows, of supported orphans, of rejoicing, and comforted, and thankful persons.
If Scripture be the repository of all Divine Truths sufficient for us, Tradition must be considered as its instrument, to convey its great mysteriousness to our understandings.
Θεολογία Εκλεκτική: Of the Liberty of Prophesying (1647)
Can any thing in this world be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth can come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster?
God is in the bowels of thy brother; refresh them, when he needs it, and then you give your alms in the presence of God, and to God; and He feels the relief which thou providest for thy brother.
Holy Living (1650)
...for there is some virtue or other to be exercised, whatever happens...
Holy Living (1650)
If anger proceeds from a great cause, it turns to fury; if from a small cause, it is peevishness; and so is always either terrible or ridiculous.
Choose for your friend him that is wise and good, and secret and just, ingenious and honest, and in those things which have a latitude, use your own liberty.
There is an acre sown with royal seed.
Ignorance is the mother of devotion.
To a Person Newly Converted (1657)
When we pray for any virtue, we should cultivate the virtue as well as pray for it; the form of your prayers should be the rule of your life; every petition to God is a precept to man.
Let no man appropriate to his own use what God, by a special mercy, or the republic, hath made common; for that is both against justice and charity too; and by miraculous accidents, God hath declared his displeasure against such enclosure.
Holy Living (1650)
Nothing is more dishonourable to God, then to offer a sin in sacrifice to Him, and nothing more incongruous in the nature of the thing, then that truth and falsehood should support each other, or that true doctrine should live at the charges of a lie.
Θεολογία Εκλεκτική: Of the Liberty of Prophesying (1647)
God gave necessities to man, that all men might need; and several abilities to several persons, that each man might help to supply the public needs, and, by joining to fill up all wants, they may be knit together by justice, as the parts of the world are by nature.
Holy Living (1650)
For heresy is not an error of the understanding, but an error of the will. And this is clearly insinuated in Scripture, in the style whereof Faith and a good life are made one duty, and vice is called opposite to Faith, and heresy opposed to holiness and sanctity.
Θεολογία Εκλεκτική: Of the Liberty of Prophesying (1647)