John Wesley Quotes - Page 7

When you set yourself on fire, people love to come and see you burn.

Even in the greatest afflictions, we ought to testify to God, that, in receiving them from his hand, we feel pleasure in the midst of the pain, from being afflicted by Him who loves us, and whom we love.

Holy solitaries' is a phrase no more consistent with the Gospel than holy adulterers. The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social; no holiness, but social holiness.

I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation.

[Christ] does not give [men] light but from moment to moment; the instant He withdraws, all is darkness.... God does not give them a stock of holiness.

Bear up the hands that hang down, by faith and prayer; support the tottering knees. Have you any days of fasting and prayer? Storm the throne of grace and persevere therein, and mercy will come down.

Fierce and poisonous animals were created for terrifying man, in order that he might be made aware of the final judgment in hell.

At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation.

I resolved to dedicate all my life to God, all my thoughts, and words, and actions; being thoroughly convinced, there was no medium; but that every part of my life (not some only) must either be a sacrifice to God, or myself, that is, in effect, to the devil. Can any serious person doubt of this, or find a medium between serving God and serving the devil?

Beware, lastly, of imagining you shall obtain the end without using the means conducive to it.

I look on all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty, to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation.

Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason.

Whether we think of, or speak to, God, whether we act or suffer for him, all is prayer, when we have no other object than his love, and the desire of pleasing him.

[When I die] if I leave behind me ten pounds...you and all mankind [may] bear witness against me, that I have lived and died a thief and a robber.

Whatever the natural cause, sin is the true cause of all earthquakes.

I desired as many as could to join together in fasting and prayer, that God would restore the spirit of love and of a sound mind to the poor deluded rebels in America.

All outward means of grace, if separate from the spirit of God, cannot profit, or conduce, in any degree, either to the knowledge or love of God. All outward things, unless he work in them and by them, are in vain.

Is it not common to say to a child, 'Put your finger in that candle, can you bear it even for one minute?' How then will you bear Hell-fire? Surely it would be torment enough to have the flesh burnt off from only one finger; what then will it be to have the whole body plunged into a lake of fire, burning with brimstone?

May we not say, that true zeal is not mostly charitable, but wholly so? That is, if we take charity in St. Paul's sense, for love; the love of God and our neighbour. For it is a certain truth, (although little understood in the world), that Christian zeal is all love. It is nothing else.

For many ages it has been allowed by sensible men, Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu: That is, There is nothing in the understanding which was not first perceived by some of the senses. All the knowledge which we naturally have is originally derived from our senses. And therefore those who want any sense cannot have the least knowledge or idea of the objects of that sense; as they that never had sight have not the least knowledge or conception of light or colours.

To abandon all, to strip one's self of all, in order to seek and follow Jesus Christ naked to Bethlehem where He was born, naked to the hall where He was scourged, and naked to Calvary where He died on the cross, is so great a mystery that neither the thing nor the knowledge of it, is given to any but through faith in the Son of God.

I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which Whitfield set me an example on Sunday; having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin, if it had not been done in a church.

Giving up witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible.

Prayer continues in the desire of the heart, though the understanding be employed on outward things.

And now run the race which is set before thee, in the royal way of universal love.