John Bunyan's Dying Sayings # 1

John Bunyan's Dying Sayings # 1

Of Sin

Sin is the great block and bar to our happiness, the procurer of all miseries to man, both here and hereafter. Take away sin, and nothing can hurt us - for death, temporal, spiritual, and eternal, is the wages of it.

Sin, and man for sin, is the object of the wrath of God. How dreadful, therefore, must his case be who continues in sin! For who can bear or grapple with the wrath of God?

No sin against God can be little, because it is against the great God of Heaven and earth; but if the sinner can find out a little god, it may be easy to find out little sins.

Sin turns all God's grace into wantonness - it is the dare of His justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeer of His patience, the slight of His power, and the contempt of His love!

 Take heed of giving yourself liberty of committing one sin, for that will lead you to another; until, by an ill custom, it becomes natural.

To begin a sin, is to lay a foundation for a continuance; this continuance is the mother of custom, and impudence at last the outcome.

The death of Christ gives us the best discovery of ourselves - in what condition we were, in that nothing could help us but that; and the most clear discovery of the dreadful nature of our sins. For if sin be so dreadful a thing as to wring the heart of the Son of God, how shall a poor wretched sinner be able to bear it?

Of Affliction

Nothing can render affliction so insupportable as the load of sin; would you, therefore, be fitted for afflictions, be sure to get the burden of your sins laid aside; and then what afflictions soever you may meet with will be very easy for you.

If you can hear and bear the rod of affliction which God shall lay upon you, remember this lesson - you are beaten that you may be better.

The Lord uses his flail of tribulation to separate the chaff from the wheat!

The school of the Cross is the school of light - it discovers the world's vanity, baseness, and wickedness, and lets us see more of God's mind. Out of dark affliction, comes a spiritual light.

In times of affliction, we commonly meet with the sweetest experiences of the love of God.

Did we heartily renounce the pleasures of this world, we would be very little troubled for our afflictions; that which renders an afflicted state so insupportable to many, is because they are too much addicted to the pleasures of this life, and so cannot endure that which makes a separation between them.

Of Repentance and Coming to Christ

The end of affliction is the discovery of sin, and of that to bring us to the Saviour. Let us therefore, with the prodigal, return unto Him, and we shall find ease and rest.

A repenting penitent, though formerly as bad as the worst of men - may, by grace, become as good as the best.

To be truly sensible of sin, is to sorrow for displeasing of God; to be afflicted that he is displeased by us, more than that He is displeased with us.

Your intentions to repentance, and the neglect of that soul-saving duty, will rise up in judgment against you.

The gospel of grace and salvation is above all doctrines the most dangerous, if it be received in word only by graceless men - if it be not attended with a sensible need of a Saviour, and brings them to Him. For such men as have only the notion of it, are of all men most miserable - for by reason of their knowing more than heathens, this only shall be their final portion, that they shall have greater stripes.

~John Bunyan~

(continued with # 2)