John Flavel
Man's extremity is God's opportunity.Collection: God
He is bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, a garment to the naked, healing to the wounded; and whatever a soul can desire is found in Him.Collection: Healing
Did Christ finish His work for us? Then there can be no doubt but He will also finish His work in us.Collection: Christian
The carnal person fears man, not God. The strong Christian fears God, not man. The weak Christian fears man too much, and God too little.Collection: God
As God did not at first choose you because you were high, He will not now forsake you because you are low.Collection: God
If you neglect to instruct children in the way of holiness, will the devil neglect to instruct them in the way of wickedness? No; if you will not teach them to pray, he will to curse, swear, and lie; if ground be uncultivated, weeds will spring.Collection: Love
No doctrine is more excellent, or necessary to be preached and studied, than Jesus Christ, and him crucified.Collection: Religious
Christ [is] the very essence of all delights and pleasures, the very soul and substance of them. As all the rivers are gathered into the ocean, which is congregation or meeting-place of all waters in the world: so Christ is that ocean in which all true delights and pleasures meet. . . .Collection: Ocean
They that know God will be humble. They that know themselves cannot be proud.Collection: Christian
One word of God can do more than ten thousand words of men to relieve a distressed soul.Collection: Men
The Scriptures teach us the best way of living, the noblest way of suffering, and the most comfortable way of dying.Collection: Life
He feels all our sorrows, needs, and burdens as his own. That is why it is said that the sufferings of believers are called the sufferings of Christ.Collection: Suffering
The Providence of God is like Hebrew words-it can be read only backwards.Collection: Hebrew
As the blood of Christ is the fountain of all merit, so the Spirit of Christ is the fountain of all spiritual life; and until he quicken us and infuse the principle of the divine life into our souls, we can put forth no hand, or vital act of faith, to lay hold upon Jesus Christ.Collection: Spiritual
Affliction is a pill, which, being wrapt up in patience and quiet submission, may be easily swallowed; but discontent chews the pill, and so embitters the soul.Collection: Soul
The law sends us to Christ to be justified, and Christ sends us to the law to be regulated.Collection: Christian
Suppose that by revenge you might destroy one enemy; yet, by exercising the Christian's temper you might conquer three–your own lust, Satan's temptation, and your enemy's heart.Collection: Christian
The knowledge of Christ is profound and large. All other sciences are but shadows; this is a boundless, bottomless ocean. Though something of Christ be unfolded in one age, and something in another, yet eternity itself cannot full unfold him.Collection: God
Sometimes God makes use of instruments for good to His people, who designed nothing but evil and mischief to them. Thus Joseph's brethren were instrumental to his advancement in that very thing in which they designed his ruin (Gen. 50:20).Collection: Christian
Christ is so in love with holiness, that at the price of His blood He will buy it for us.Collection: Blood
Look to it, my dear friends, that none of you be found Christless at your appearance before him. Those that continue Christless now, will be left speechless then. God forbid that you that have heard so much of Christ, and you that have professed so much of Christ, should at last fall into a worse condition than those that never heard the name of Christ.Collection: Fall
To see a man humble under prosperity is one of the greatest rarities in the world.Collection: Christian
Whatever be the ground of one's distress, it should drive him to, not from God.Collection: Should
The soul of man, like the bird in the shell, is still growing or ripening in sin or grace, till at last the shell breaks by death, and the soul flies away to the piece it is prepared for, and where it must abide forever.Collection: Men
Providence is wiser than you, and you may be confident it has suited all things better to your eternal good than you could do had you been left to your own option.Collection: May
Whatsoever we have over-loved, idolized, and leaned upon, God has from time to time broken it, and made us to see the vanity of it; so that we find the readiest course to be rid of our comforts is to set our hearts inordinately upon them.Collection: Christian
Regeneration expresses those supernatural, divine, new qualities imparted by the Spirit to the soul, which are the principle of all holy action.Collection: Soul
Guilt is to danger, what fire is to gunpowder; a man need not fear to walk among many barrels of powder, if he have no fire about him.Collection: Men
And now let us consider and marvel that ever this great and blessed God should be so much concerned, as you have heard He is in all His providences, about such vile, despicable worms as we are! He does not need us, but is perfectly blessed and happy in Himself without us. We can add nothing to Him.Collection: Christian
Some providences, like Hebrew letters, must be read backwards.Collection: Letters
Look around in the world, and you may see some in every place who are objects of pity, bereaved by sad accidents of all the comforts of life, while in the meantime Providence has tenderly preserved you.Collection: Christian
I think it is not very difficult to discern by the duties and converses of Christians, what frames their spirits are under. Take a Christian in a good frame, and how serious, heavenly, and profitable, will his converses and duties be! what a lovely companion is he during the continuance of it!Collection: Christian
Scripture knows no other way to glory, but Christ put on and applied by faith.Collection: Way
Observed duties maintain our credit; but secret duties maintain our life.Collection: Secret
There is no grace more excellent than faith; no sin more execrable and abominable then unbelief. Faith is the saving grace and unbelief the damning sin. (Mark 16:16) ... Before Christ can be received, the heart must be emptied and opened: but men's heart's are full of self-righteousn ess and vain confidence (Rom 10:3).Collection: Heart
Oh sirs, deal with sin as sin, and speak of heaven and hell as they are, and not as if you were in jest.Collection: Heaven
God's unspotted faithfulness never failed any soul that durst trust himself in its arms.Collection: Soul
Where there is no want, there is usually much wantonness.Collection: Want
All the dark, intricate, puzzling providences at which we were sometimes so offended...we shall [one day] see to be to us, as the difficult passage through the wilderness was to Israel, "the right way to the city of habitation".Collection: Christian
Christ bounds and terminates the vast desires of the soul; He is the very Sabbath of the soul.Collection: Soul
It is better to be as low as hell with a promise, than in Paradise without one.Collection: Promise
It would much conduce to the settlement of your hearts, to consider, That by fretting and discontent, you do yourselves more injury thart till the afsltilions you lie under could do; your own discontent is that which arms your troubles with a sting; it is you that make your burden heavy, by struggling under it. Could you but lie quiet under the hand of God, your condition would be much easier and sweeter than it is.Collection: Lying
To keep the heart then, is carefully to preserve it from sin which disorders it; and maintain that spiritual and gracious frame, which fits it for a life of communion with God.Collection: Spiritual
The heart of a Christian, like the moon, commonly suffers an eclipse when it is at the full, and that by the interposition of the earth.Collection: Christian
What is a child, but a piece of the parent enrapt up in another skin? And yet our dearest children are but as strangers to us, in comparison of the unspeakable dearness that was between the Father and Christ. Now, that he should ever be content to part with a Son, and such an only One, is such a manifestation of love, as will be admired to all eternity.Collection: Children
No repentance, obedience, self-denial, prayers, tears, reformation or ordinances, without the new creation, avail any thing to the salvation of thy soul.Collection: Prayer
That soul is dead to which the Spirit of Christ is not given in the work of regeneration; and all its works are dead works.Collection: Soul
Christian, thou knowest thou carriest Gunpowder about thee, desire those that carry Fire to keep at a Distance from thee; 'tis a dangerous Crisis when a proud Heart meets with flattering Lips.Collection: Christian
Creatures, like pictures, are fairest at a certain distance, but it is not so with Christ; the nearer the soul approaches Him, and the longer it lives in the enjoyhment of Him, still the sweeter and more desirable He becomes.Collection: Distance
We are not distinguished from brutes by our senses, but by our understanding.Collection: Understanding