Jonathan Edwards Quotes - Page 4

I make it my rule, to lay hold of light and embrace it, wherever I see it, though held forth by a child or an enemy.

Such is man's nature, that he is very inactive and lazy unless he is influenced by some affection, either love or hatred, desire, hope, fear, or some other. These affections we see to be the springs that set men agoing, in all the affairs of life, and engage them in all their pursuits: these are the things that put men forward, and carry them along.

Resolved, that I will live so, as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.

Men will trust in God no further than they know Him; and they cannot be in the exercise of faith in Him one ace further than they have a sight of His fulness and faithfulness in exercise.

Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.

There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness

The godly are designed for unknown and inconceivable happiness.

The pleasures of humility are really the most refined, inward, and exquisite delights in the world.

He that has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only, without affection, never is engaged in the business of religion.

The surest way to know our gold, is to look upon it and examine it in God's furnace, where he tries it that we may see what it is. If we have a mind to know whether a building stands strong or not, we must look upon it when the wind blows. If we would know whether a staff be strong, or a rotten, broken reed, we must observe it when it is leaned on and weight is borne upon it. If we would weigh ourselves justly we must weigh ourselves in God's scales that he makes use of to weigh us.

The devil can counterfeit all the saving operations and graces of the Spirit of God.

Godliness is more easily feigned in words than in actions

There are two sorts of hypocrites: ones that are deceived with their outward morality and external religion; and the others are those that are deceived with false discoveries and elevation; which often cry down works, and men's own righteousness, and tlak much of free grace, but at the same time make a righteousness of their discoveries and of their humiliation, and exalt themselves to heaven with them.

I assert that nothing ever comes to pass without a cause.

A sinner is not justified before God (coram Deo) apart from the righteousness of Christ apprehended by faith.

Consider that as a principle of love is the main principle in the heart of a real Christian, so the labor of love, is the main business of the Christian life.

Among the many acts of gratitude we owe to God, it may be accounted one to study and contemplate the perfections and beauties of His work of creation. Every new discovery must necessarily raise in us a fresh sense of the greatness, wisdom, and power of God.

The best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other is by music.

When God is about to bestow some great blessing on His church, it is often His manner, in the first place, so to order things in His providence as to show His church their great need of it, and to bring them into distress for want of it, and so put them upon crying earnestly to Him for it.

I know not how to express better, what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite . . . When I look into my heart and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell.

The happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God, by which also God is magnified and exalted.

Because God is not only infinitely greater and more excellent than all other being, but he is the head of the universal system of existence; the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty; from whom all is perfectly derived, and on whom all is most absolutely and perfectly dependent; of whom, and through whom, and to whom is all being and all perfection; and whose being and beauty are, as it were, the sum and comprehension of all existence and excellence: much more than the sun is the fountain and summary comprehension of all the light and brightness of the day.

The end of the creation is that the creation might glorify [God]. Now what is glorifying God, but a rejoicing at that glory he has displayed?

Nothing is more certain than that there must be an unmade and unlimited being.

So that it must be only by the imagination that Satan has access to the soul, to tempt and delude it, or suggest anything to it. And this seems to be the reason why persons that are under the disease of melancholy are commonly so visibly and remarkably subject to the suggestions and temptations of Satan... Innumerable are the ways by which the mind may be led on to all kind of evil thoughts, by the exciting of external ideas in the imagination.