Saturday, January 24, 2015

Puritan Nuggets of Gold # 11

The Bible (continued)

The Scripture is the sun; the church is the clock, whose hands point us to and whose sound tells us the hours of the day. The sun we know to be sure, and regularly constant in his motion; the clock, as it may fall out, may go too fast or too slow. We are wont to look at, and listen to the clock, we know the time of the day; but, where we find the variation sensible, we believe the sun against the clock, not the clock against the sun. (Joseph Hall)

The Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of His holy Word. (John Robinson)

Blessings

Did you never run for shelter in a storm, and find fruit which you expected not? Did you never go to God for safeguard, driven by outward storms, and there find unexpected fruit? (John Owen)

He (God) gives them three jewels more worth than heaven - the blood of His Son, the grace of His Spirit, and the light of His countenance. (Thomas Watson)

To bless God for mercies is the way to increase them; to bless Him for miseries is the way to remove them. (William Dyer)

Those blessings are sweetest that are won with prayers and worn with thanks. (Thomas Goodwin)

God forgives, then He gives; till He be merciful to pardon our sins through Christ. He cannot bless or look kindly on us sinners. All our enjoyments are but blessings in bullion, till Gospel grace and pardoning mercy stamp and make them current. (William Gurnall)

Chastisement 

None but the godly are capable of desertion. Wicked men know not what God's love means, nor what it is to want it. You fear you are not God's child because you are deserted.

The Lord cannot be said to withdraw His love from the wicked, because they never had it. The being deserted, evidences you to be a child of God. How could you complain that God has  estranged Himself, if you had not sometimes received smiles and tokens of love from Him? (Thomas Watson)

We may feel God's hand as a Father upon us when He strikes us as well as when He strokes us. (Abraham Wight)

God's wounds cure, sin's kisses kill. (William Gurnall)

Better be pruned to grow than cut up to burn. (John Trapp)

Especially look to those sins to which your crosses have some reference and respect. Are you crossed in your goods? Think if you did not over-love them and get them unjustly, or if in your children, see if you did not over-love them and not train them correctly, and so in all things of like kind. In what God smites you, see if you have not in that sinned against Him, and so frame to lament your sins and to seek help against them. (William Whately)


It is in mercy and in measure that God chastiseth His children. (John Trapp)


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