JOHN FLAVEL

Brethren, it is easier to declaim against a thousand sins of others, than to mortify one sin in ourselves.

Man's extremity is God's opportunity.

Scripture knows no other way to glory, but Christ put on and applied by faith.

If time be a ring of gold, opportunity is the rich diamond that gives it both its value and glory.

A saving, though an immethodical knowledge of Christ, will bring us to heaven, John 17: 2, but a regular and methodical, as well as a saving knowledge of him, will bring heaven into us, Col. 2: 2, 3.

Jesus Christ is in every way sufficient to the vast desires of the soul.

Christ comes with kingly power, to rescue sinners, as a prey from the mouth of the terrible one.

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.

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).

How often has providence convinced its observers, upon a sober recollection of the events of their lives, that if the Lord had left them to their own counsels they had as often been their own tormentors, if not executioners!

A hot iron, though blunt, will pierce sooner than a cold one, though sharper.

One word of God can do more than ten thousand words of men to relieve a distressed soul.

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.

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.

The law sends us to Christ to be justified, and Christ sends us to the law to be regulated.

Oh sirs, deal with sin as sin, and speak of heaven and hell as they are, and not as if you were in jest.

Let us see that our knowledge of Christ be not a powerless, barren, unpractical knowledge: O that, in its passage from our understanding to our lips, it might powerfully melt, sweeten, and ravish our hearts! Remember, brethren, a holy calling never saved any man, without a holy heart; if our tongues only be sanctified, our whole man must be damned. We must be judged by the same gospel, and stand at the same bar, and be sentenced to the same terms, and dealt with as severely as any other men.

Lord, here is my body; I am very grateful for it; I neglected nothing that belonged to its contents and welfare; but as for my soul, that is lost and cast away forever. I took little.care and thought about it.

Wrath to come implies both the futurity and perpetuity of this wrath.... Yea, it is not only certainly future, but when it comes it will be abiding wrath, or wrath still coming. When millions of years and ages are past and gone, this will still be wrath to come. Ever coming as a river ever flowing.

The Lord's supper is memorative, and so it has the nature and use of a pledge or token of love, left by a dying to a dear surviving friend.

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.

We acknowledge no righteousness but what the obedience and satisfaction of Christ yields us. His blood, not our faith; his satisfaction, not our believing it, is the matter of our justification before God.

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.

No doctrine is more excellent, or necessary to be preached and studied, than Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

They that know God will be humble. They that know themselves cannot be proud.