Cotton Mather Quotes

Plenty of people out there think of me as the Antichrist or the devil incarnate because I do not affirm the literal patterns of the Bible. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. I just go beyond them.

I revere the fullness of His Scripture, in which He manifests to me both the Creator and creation. In the gospel moreover, I discover a Minister and Witness of the Creator, even His Word.

Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead, He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?

Someone recommended that I read the Bible, and it was then I discovered that I knew nothing about it.

The Lord knows that I could not open scripture; he must by his prophetical office open it unto me. So after that being unsatisfied in the thing, the Lord was pleased to bring this scripture out of the Hebrews.

The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.

There's no better book with which to defend the Bible than the Bible itself.

The word for knowledge appears in the Koran more often than any other except God.

Charles Sumner didn’t believe in the Bible because he didn’t write it.

Until the Bible begins to talk to us, we really have not been reading it.

Thus there are two books from whence I collect my Divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant Nature, that universal and public Manuscript, that lies expans'd unto the eyes of all; those that never saw him in the one, have discovered him in the other.

There are two books laid before us to study, to prevent our falling into error; first, the volume of the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the Creatures, which express His power.

The Bible is a supernatural book and can be understood only by supernatural aid.

The Old Testament is the record of men's conviction that God speaks directly to men.

The Bible, of course, is not a theology book. It is certainly not a philosophy book. So we have to derive the meaning of terms from the context in use.

I got more true knowledge from reading the Book of God in one month, than I could ever have acquired from all the writings of men.

God is so clear in spelling out His attributes in scripture in order that others would know what He is really like.

A man may just as soon read the Scripture without eyes, as understand the spirit of it without grace.

Next to the Bible, nature is to be our great lesson book.

The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God.

Remove Christ from the Scriptures and there is nothing left.

It is the Holy Spirit who inspired the Bible. It is the Holy Spirit who illumines the Bible.

We can study the whole history of salvation, we can study the whole of Theology, but without the Spirit we cannot understand. It is the Spirit that makes us realize the truth or - in the words of Our Lord - it is the Spirit that makes us know the voice of Jesus.

If you would follow on to know the Lord, come at once to the open Bible expecting it to speak to you. Do not come with the notion that it is a thing which you may push around at your convenience. It is more than a thing, it is a voice, a word, the very Word of the living God.