Richard Sibbes
Measure not God's love and favour by your own feeling. The sun shines as clearly in the darkest day as it does in the brightest. The difference is not in the sun, but in some clouds which hinder the manifestation of the light thereof.Collection: Love
Satan gives Adam an apple, and takes away paradise. Therefore in all temptations consider not what he offers, but what we shall lose.Collection: Apples
The whole life of a Christian should be nothing but praises and thanks to God; we should neither eat nor sleep, but eat to God and sleep to God and work to God and talk to God, do all to His glory and praise.Collection: Thanksgiving
Gospel repentance is not a little hanging down of the head. It's a working of the heart until your sin becomes more odious to you than any punishment for it.Collection: Heart
There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us.Collection: Christian
The life of a Christian is wondrously ruled in this world, by the consideration and meditation of the life of another world.Collection: Christian
What the heart liketh best, the mind studieth most.Collection: Heart
When we go to God by prayer, the devil knows we go to fetch strength against him, and therefore he opposes us all he can.Collection: Prayer
The winter prepares the earth for the spring, so do afflictions sanctified prepare the soul for glory.Collection: Religious
Whatsoever is good for God's children they shall have it, for all is theirs to further them to heaven; therefore, if poverty be good, they shall have it; if disgrace be good, they shall have it; if crosses be good, they shall have them; if misery be good, they shall have it; for all is ours, to serve for our greatest good.Collection: Children
It is better to go bruised to heaven than sound to hell.Collection: Heaven
God can pick sense out of a confused prayer.Collection: Prayer
See a flame in a spark, a tree in a seed. See great things in little beginnings.Collection: Flames
The way to cover our sin is to uncover it by confession.Collection: Way
Self-emptiness prepares us for spiritual fullness.Collection: Spiritual
God knows we have nothing of ourselves, therefore in the covenant of grace he requires no more than he gives, but gives what he requires, and accepts what he gives.Collection: Giving
See here, for our comfort, a sweet agreement of all three persons: the Father giveth a commission to Christ; the Spirit furnisheth and sanctifieth to it; Christ himself executeth the office of a Mediator. Our redemption is founded upon the joint agreement of all three persons of the Trinity.Collection: Sweet
Christ does not choose you because you are good, but to make you good.Collection: Doe
It is a destructive addition to add anything to ChristCollection: Add
It would be a good contest amongst Christians, one to labour to give no offence, and the other to labour to take none. The best men are severe to themselves, tender over others.Collection: Christian
The soul is never quiet till it comes to God . . . and that is the one thing the soul desireth.Collection: Soul
When we shoot an arrow, we look to the fall of it; when we send a ship to sea, we look for its return; and when we sow seed, we look for a harvest; so likewise when we sow our prayers, through Christ, in God's bosom, shall we not look for an answer and observe how we speed? It is a seed of atheism to pray and not to look how we speed. But a sincere Christian will pray and wait, and strengthen his heart with promises out of the Word, and never leave praying and looking up till God gives him a gracious answer.Collection: Christian
Poverty and affliction take away the fuel that feeds pride.Collection: Religious
The depths of our misery can never fall below the depths of mercy.Collection: Fall
As the strongest faith may be shaken, so the weakest, where truth is, is so far rooted that it will prevail. Weakness with watchfulness will stand, when strength with too much confidence fails. Weakness, with acknowledgement of it, is the fittest seat and subject for God to perfect His strength in; for consciousness of our infirmities drives us out of ourselves to Him in whom our strength lies.Collection: Faith
If we desire to end our days in joy and comfort, let us lay the foundation of a comfortable death now betimes. To die well is not a thing of that light moment as some imagine: it is no easy matter. But to die well is a matter of every day. Let us daily do some good that may help us at the time of our death. Every day by repentance pull out the sting of some sin,that so when death comes, we may have nothing to do but to die. To die well is the action of the whole life.Collection: Light
In trouble we are prone to forget all that we have heard and read that makes for our comfort. Now what is the reason that a man comes to think of that which otherwise he should never have called to mind? The Holy Spirit brings it to his remembrance; He is a Comforter, bringing to mind useful things at such times when we have most need of them.Collection: Men
What coward would not fight when he is sure of victory?Collection: Fighting
This is a life of faith, for God will try the truth of our faith, so that the world may see that God has such servants as will depend upon His bare word.Collection: Faith
When we grow careless of keeping our souls, then God recovers our taste of good things again by sharp crosses.Collection: Thanksgiving
Sin is not so sweet in the committing as it is heavy and bitter in the reckoning.Collection: Sweet
Christ chiefly manifests Himself in times of affliction, because then the soul unites itself most closely by faith to Christ. The soul, in time of prosperity, scatters its affections, and looses itself in the creature; but there is a uniting power in sanctified afflictions, by which a believer, (as in rain a hen collects her brood) gathers his best affections unto his Father and his God.Collection: Father
A Christian is the greatest freeman in the world; he is free from the wrath of God, free from hell and damnation, from the curse of the law; but then, though he be free in these respects, yet, in regard of love, he is the greatest servant. Love abaseth him to do all the good that he can; and the more the Spirit of Christ is in us, the more it will abase us to anything wherein we can be serviceable.Collection: Christian
God is goodness itself, in whom all goodness is involved. If therefore we love other things for the goodness which we see in them, why do we not love God, in whom is all goodness? All other things are but sparks of that fire, and drops of that sea. If you see any good in the creature, remember there is much more in the Creator. Leave therefore the streams, and go to the fountainhead of comfort.Collection: Fire
There is not a minute of time in all of our life but we must either be near to God or we will be undone.Collection: Undone
The love of a wife to her husband may begin from the supply of her necessities, but afterwards she may also love his person: so the soul first loves Christ for salvation, but when it is brought to him, and finds what sweetness there is in him, then the soul loves him for himself, and esteems his person, as well as rejoices in his benefits.Collection: Husband
Those that look to be happy must first look to be holy.Collection: Looks
What is the gospel itself but a merciful moderation, in which Christ's obedience is esteemed ours, and our sins laid upon him, wherein God, from being a judge, becomes our Father, pardoning our sins and accepting our obedience, though feeble and blemished? We are now brought to heaven under the covenant of grace by a way of love and mercy.Collection: Father
It is Christ's manner to trouble our souls first, and then to come with healing in his wings.Collection: Healing
Providence is the perpetuity and continuance of creation.Collection: Creation
God takes a safe course with His children, that they may not be condemned with the world, He permits the world to condemn them, that they may not love the world, the world hates them.Collection: Religious
that which is begun in self-confidence will end in shame.Collection: Self Confidence
The tenets of [the Christian life] seem paradoxes to carnal men; as first, that a Christian is the only freeman, and other men are slaves; that he is the only rich man, though never so poor in the world; that he is the only beautiful man, though outwardly never so deformed; that he is the only happy man in the midst of all his miseries.Collection: Beautiful
Death is only a grim porter to let us into a stately palace.Collection: Death
No sin is so great but the satisfaction of Christ and His mercies are greater; it is beyond comparison. Fathers and mothers in tenderest affections are but beams and trains to lead us upwards to the infinite mercy of God in Christ.Collection: Mother
If Christ has once possessed the affections, there is no dispossessing of him again. A fire in the heart overcomes all fires without.Collection: Heart
God's truth always agrees with itself.Collection: Agree
In all their jollity in this world, the wicked are but as a book fairly bound, which when it is opened is full of nothing but tragedies. So when the book of their consciences shall be once opened, there is nothing to be read but lamentations and woes.Collection: Book
What unthankfulness is it to forget our consolations, and to look upon matters of grievance. To think so much upon two or three crosses as to forget an hundred blessing.Collection: Gratitude
It is atheism to pray and not wait on hope.Collection: Atheist