Jonathan Edwards quotes:

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  • Sincere friendship towards God, in all who believe him to be properly an intelligent, willing being, does most apparently, directly, and strongly incline to prayer; and it no less disposes the heart strongly to desire to have our infinitely glorious.

  • The way to Heaven is ascending; we must be content to travel uphill, though it be hard and tiresome, and contrary to the natural bias of our flesh.

  • Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I still will.

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

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

  • Lord, stamp eternity on my eyeballs.

  • To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here.

  • Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected.

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

  • As God delights in his own beauty, he must necessarily delight in the creature's holiness which is a conformity to and participation of it, as truly as [the] brightness of a jewel, held in the sun's beams, is a participation or derivation of the sun's brightness, though immensely less in degree.

  • Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church.

  • 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.

  • Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts; the sight of the deep-blue sky and the clustering stars above seems to impart a quiet to the mind.

  • True boldness for Christ transcends all, it is indifference to the displeasure of either friends or foes. Boldness enables Christians to forsake all rather than Christ, and to prefer to offend all rather than to offend Him.

  • The view of the misery of the damned will double the ardour of the love and gratitude of the saints of heaven.

  • Resolved, to confess frankly to myself all that which I find in myself, either infirmity or sin; and, if it be what concerns religion, also to confess the whole case to God, and implore needed help.

  • Holiness appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, serene, calm nature; which brought an inexpressible purity, brightness, peacefulness and ravishment to the soul.

  • Prayer is as natural an expression of faith as breathing is of life.

  • A truly humble man is sensible of his natural distance from God; of his dependence on Him; of the insufficiency of his own power and wisdom; and that it is by God's power that he is upheld and provided for, and that he needs God's wisdom to lead and guide him, and His might to enable him to do what he ought to do for Him.

  • On his world record triple jump - It's only jumping into a sandpit.

  • Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influenced and governed by his rules. And family education and order are some of the chief means of grace. If these fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual. If these are duly maintained, all the means of grace will be likely to prosper and be successful.

  • All truth is given by revelation, either general or special, and it must be received by reason. Reason is the God-given means for discovering the truth that God discloses, whether in his world or his Word. While God wants to reach the heart with truth, he does not bypass the mind.

  • If you seek in the spirit of selfishness, to grasp all as your own, you shall lose all, and be driven out of the world, at last, naked and forlorn, to everlasting poverty and contempt.

  • 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?

  • A true and faithful Christian does not make holy living an accidental thing. It is his great concern. As the business of the soldier is to fight, so the business of the Christian is to be like Christ.

  • 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.

  • We have seen that the Son of God created the world for this very end, to communicate Himself in an image of His own excellency. ... When we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous (rain)bow, we behold the adumbrations of His glory and goodness; and in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness.

  • A greater absurdity cannot be thought of than a morose, hardhearted, covetous, proud, malicious Christian.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Resolution 1: I will live for God. Resolution 2: If no one else does, I still will.

  • Since holiness is the main thing that excites, draws, and governs all gracious affections, it is no wonder that all such affections tend to holiness. That which men love, they desire to have and to be united to, and possessed of. That beauty which men delight in, they desire to be adorned with. Those acts which men delight in, they necessarily incline to do.

  • Tis a more glorious effect of power to make that holy that was so depraved and under dominion of sin, than to confirm holiness on that which before had nothing of the contrary.

  • Divines are generally agreed that sin radically and fundamentally consists in what is negative, or privative, having its root and foundation in a privation or want of holiness. And therefore undoubtedly, if it be so that sin does very much consist in hardness of heart, and so in the want of pious affections of heart, holiness does consist very much in those pious affections.

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

  • One of these grand defects, as I humbly conceive, is this, that children are habituated to learning without understanding.

  • Religion consists much in holy affection; but those exercises of affection which are most distinguishing of true religion are these practical exercises. Friendship between earthly friends consists much in affection; but those strong exercises of affection that actually carry them through fire and water for each other are the highest evidences of true friendship.

  • True virtue never appears so lovely as when it is most oppressed; and the divine excellency of real Christianity is never exhibited with such advantage as when under the greatest trials; then it is that true faith appears much more precious than gold, and upon this account is "found to praise and honour and glory.

  • Who will deny that true religion consists, in a great measure, in vigorous and lively actings of the inclination and will of the soul, or the fervent exercises of the heart? That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull, and lifeless, wishes, raising us but a little above a state of indifference.

  • I resolve to live with all my might while I do live. I resolve never to lose one moment of time and to improve my use of time in the most profitable way I possibly can. I resolve never to do anything I wouldn't do, if it were the last hour of my life.

  • True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.

  • God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. The enjoyment of him is our proper; and is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of any, or all earthly friends. These are but shadows; but the enjoyment of God is the substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but streams; but God is the fountain. These are but drops, but God is the ocean.

  • You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.

  • It is not by telling people about ourselves that we demonstrate our Christianity. Words are cheap. It is by costly, self-denying Christian practice that we show the reality of our faith.

  • Remember that pride is the worst viper that is in the heart, the greatest disturber of the soul's peace and sweet communion with Christ; it was the first sin that ever was, and lies lowest in the foundation of Satan's whole building, and is the most difficultly rooted out, and is the most hidden, secret and deceitful of all lusts, and often creeps in, insensibly, into the midst of religion and sometimes under the disguise of humility.

  • The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied.

  • Spiritual delight in God arises chiefly from his beauty and perfection, not from the blessings he gives us.

  • When God is about to do a mighty new thing He always sets His people praying.

  • Seek not to grow in knowledge chiefly for the sake of applause, and to enable you to dispute with others; but seek it for the benefit of your souls.

  • He that lives a prayerless life, lives without God in the world.

  • The foundation of the Christian's peace is everlasting; it is what no time, no change can destroy. It will remain when the body dies; it will remain when the mountains depart and the hills shall be removed, and when the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll. The fountain of His comfort shall never be diminished, and the stream shall never be dried. His comfort and joy is a living spring in the soul, a well of water springing up to everlasting life.

  • The smallest sin is an act of Cosmic Treason against a Holy God.

  • How can you expect to dwell with God forever, if you so neglect and forsake him here?

  • It is God's will through His wonderful grace, that the prayers of His saints should be one of the great principal means of carrying on the designs of Christ's kingdom in the world. When God has something very great to accomplish for His church, it is His will that there should precede it the extraordinary prayers of His people; as is manifest by Ezekiel 36:37. and it is revealed that, when God is about to accomplish great things for His church, He will begin by remarkably pouring out the spirit of grace and supplication (see Zechariah 12:10).

  • Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it.

  • Christ is like a river in another respect. A river is continually flowing, there are fresh supplies of water coming from the fountain-head continually, so that a man may live by it, and be supplied with water all his life. So Christ is an ever-flowing fountain; he is continually supplying his people, and the fountain is not spent. They who live upon Christ, may have fresh supplies from him to all eternity; they may have an increase of blessedness that is new, and new still, and which never will come to an end.

  • God's purpose for my life was that I have a passion for God's glory and that I have a passion for my joy in that glory, and that these two are one passion.

  • There are people who love those who agree with them and admire them, but have no time for those who oppose and dislike them. A Christian's love must be universal!

  • The seeking of the kingdom of God is the chief business of the Christian life

  • True salvation always produces an abiding change of nature in a true convert. Therefore, whenever holiness of life does not accompany a confession of conversion, it must be understood that this individual is not a Christian.

  • He who has Christ has all he needs and needs no more.

  • A truly Christian love, either to God or men, is a humble broken-hearted love. The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires. Their hope is a humble hope; and their joy, even when it is unspeakable and full of glory, is a humble broken-hearted joy, and leaves the Christian more poor in spirit, and more like a little child, and more disposed to a universal lowliness of behaviour.

  • They who truly come to God for mercy, come as beggars, and not as creditors: they come for mere mercy, for sovereign grace, and not for anything that is due

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

  • Truth is the agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God.

  • He who does not know Him, knows nothing else as it truly is.

  • Of all the knowledge that we can ever obtain, the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of ourselves, are the most important.

  • A true love for God must begin with a delight in His holiness, and not with a delight in any other attribute; for no other attribute is truly lovely without this.

  • If I murmur in the least at affliction, if I am in any way uncharitable, if I revenge my own case, if I do anything purely to please myself or omit anything because it is a great denial, if I trust myself, if I take any praise for any good which Christ does by me, or if I am in any way proud, I shall act as my own and not God's.

  • Resolved, to ask myself at the end of every day, week, month and year, wherein I could possibly in any respect have done better.

  • If there be ground for you to trust in your own righteousness, then, all that Christ did to purchase salvation, and all that God did to prepare the way for it is in vain.

  • He, whose heart is fixed, trusting in Christ, need not be afraid.

  • Christ is the true light of the world; it is through him alone that true wisdom is imparted to the mind.

  • Christ gives peace to the most sinful and miserable that come to Him. He heals the broken in heart and binds up their wounds.

  • I go out to preach with two propositions in mind. First, every person ought to give his life to Christ. Second, whether or not anyone else gives him his life, I will give him mine.

  • To live with all my might, while I do live

  • Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering.

  • If you long to be more like Christ, then act like Him, and walk as He walked.

  • Those who are in a state of salvation are to attribute it to sovereign grace alone, and to give all the praise to Him who maketh them to differ from others.

  • But yet it is evident that religion consists so much in affection, as that without holy affection there is no true religion; and no light in the understanding is good which does not produce holy affection in the heart: no habit or principle in the heart is good which has no such exercise; and no external fruit is good which does not proceed from such exercises.

  • Nothing sets a person so much out of the devil's reach as humility.

  • 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.

  • Resolved, never to suffer the least motions of anger to irrational beings.

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

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

  • Intend to live in continual mortification, and never to expect or desire any worldly ease or pleasure.

  • Resolved, never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life.

  • Nature is God's greatest evangelist.

  • In all your course, walk with God and follow Christ as a little, poor, helpless child, taking hold of Christ's hand, keeping your eye on the mark of the wounds on his hands and side, whence came the blood that cleanses you from sin and hiding your nakedness under the skirt of the white shining robe of his righteousness.

  • true weanedness from the world don't consist in being beat off from the world by the affliction of it, but a being drawn off by the sight of something better.

  • Resolved, never to do anything out of revenge.

  • The godly are designed for unknown and inconceivable happiness.

  • By the grace of God we will never pluck unripe fruit. We will never press people to decision, because we'll lead them to damnation and not salvation.

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

  • The Spirit of God is given to the true saints to dwell in them as his proper lasting abode to dwell in them and to influence their hearts as a principle of new nature or as a divine supernatural spring of life and action.

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

  • God is glorified not only by His glory being seen, but by its being rejoiced in.

  • Love is no ingredient in a merely speculative faith, but it is the life and soul of a practical faith.

  • If the heart be chiefly and directly fixed on God, and the soul engaged to glorify him, some degree of religious affection will be the effect and attendant of it. But to seek after affection directly and chiefly; to have the heart principally set upon that; is to place it in the room of God and his glory. If it be sought, that others may take notice of it, and admire us for our spirituality and forwardness in religion, it is then damnable pride; if for the sake of feeling the pleasure of being affected, it is then idolatry and self-gratification.

  • The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider... abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire.

  • Godliness is more easily feigned in words than in actions

  • He that sees the beauty of holiness or true moral good ,sees the greatest and most important thing in the world.

  • Resolved, never henceforward, till I die, to act as if I were any way my own, but entirely and altogether God's.

  • Christian practice is that evidence which confirms every other indication of true godliness.

  • We must view humility as one of the most essential things that characterizes true Christianity.

  • You have reason to wonder that you are not already in hell.

  • Teachers and learners are correlates, one of which was never intended to be without the other.

  • Assurance is not to be obtained so much by self-examination as by action

  • Find preachers of David Brainerd's spirit, and nothing can stand before them. Let us be followers of him, as he was of Christ, in absolute self-devotion, in total deadness to the world, and in fervent love to God and man.

  • 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, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it.

  • The deceitfulness of the heart of man appears in no one thing so much as this of spiritual pride and self-righteousness. The subtlety of Satan appears in its height, in his managing persons with respect to this sin. And perhaps one reason may be that here he has most experience; he knows the way of its coming in; he is acquainted with the secret springs of it: it was his own sin. Experience gives vast advantage in leading souls, either in good or evil.

  • 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.

  • There is no way that Christians, in a private capacity, can do so much to promote the work of God and advance the kingdom of Christ as by prayer.

  • Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and switfly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a fallen rock.

  • I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live, if they were to live their lives over again: Resolved, That I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age.

  • One requirement to be used as a leader in a movement of revival: They must have the Spirit of God upon them.

  • All the graces of Christianity always go together. They so go together that where there is one, there are all, and where one is wanting, all are wanting. Where there is faith, there are love, and hope, and humility; and where there is love, there is also trust; and where there is a holy trust in God, there is love to God; and where there is a gracious hope, there also is a holy fear of God.

  • Wicked people will on the day of judgment see all there is to see of Jesus Christ, except His beauty and loveliness

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