Sunday, March 29, 2015

Puritan Nuggets of Gold # 69

Preaching

It was by the ear, by our first parents listening to the serpent, that we lost paradise; and it is by the ear, by hearing of the Word, that we get to heaven. "Hear, and your souls shall live." (Isaiah 55:3) (Thomas Watson)

Once we had golden ministers and wooden vessels, now we have wooden ministers and golden vessels. (John Trapp)

When the fire is stirred up and discovered it giveth more heat than when it is not, so the Word of God by preaching and interpreting maketh a great flame in the hearts of the hearers than when it is read. (Thomas Cartwright)

If a hardened heart be to broken, it is not stroking but striking that must do it. (Richard Baxter)

Rhetorical flowers and flourishes, expressions with impressions in praying or preaching, are not true bread, but a tinkling cymbal to it. (Christopher Nesse)

I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men. (Richard Baxter)

Pride

Pride loves to climb up, not as Zaccheus to see Christ, but to be seen. (William Gurnall)

This is certainly pride, for it is a lifting up of the heart above God and against God and without God. (Thomas Manton)

A proud faith is as much a contradiction as a humble devil. (Stephen Charnock)

The more godly a man is, and the more graces and blessings of God are upon him, the more need he hath to pray, because satan is busiest against him, and because he is readiest to be puffed up with conceited holiness. (Richard Greenham)

I may say of pride, many sins have done wickedly, but thou surmountest them all; for the wrathful man, the prodigal man, the lascivious man, the surfeiting man, the slothful man, is rather an enemy to himself than to God; the envious man, the covetous man, the deceitful man, the ungrateful man, is rather an enemy to men than to God; but the proud man sets himself against God, he maketh himself equal with God; he exalteth himself above God (because he will have his own will). (Henry Smith)

As death is the last enemy; so pride the last sin that shall be destroyed in us. (John Boys)

Pride is the shirt of the soul, put on first and put off last. (George Swinnock)

And if God spared not the angels, whom He placed in the highest heavens, but for their pride threw them down headlong to the nethermost hell, how much less shall He spare the proud dust and ashes of the sons of men, but shall cast them from the height of their earthly altitude to the bottom of that infernal dungeon! "Humility makes men angels; pride makes angels devils." Oh let us be humbled by our repentance, that we may not be brought down to everlasting confusion: let us be cast down upon our knees, that we may not be cast down upon our faces. For God will make good His own Word, one way: "A man's pride shall bring him low." (Joseph Hall)

When the devil cannot stay us from a good work, then he laboreth by all means to make us proud of it. (Henry Smith)

Men are more unwilling to part with their righteousness than with their sins. (Stephen Charnock)

Our father was Adam, our grandfather dust, our great-grandfather nothing. (William Jenkyn)

Only a Christian of strong grace can bear the strong wine of commendation without the spiritual intoxication. (William Jenkyn)

For the avoiding of this vice (pride), God suffereth man to fall into other vices, which men abhor and punish, as theft and fornication, and drunkenness, to make them ashamed by these vices, which were not ashamed of pride. (Henry Smith)


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