Thomas Boston (1676 - 1732) was a Scotch Presbyterian Calvinist who has left the world an outstanding testimony to the truth as it is in Jesus through his magnum opus, Human Nature In Its Fourfold State, or Man's Fourfold State. This is a work that every Christian ought to read, as it probes the depths of man in his State of Innocence, man in his State of Nature, man in his State of Grace, and man in his Eternal State, and it probes these great themes with an intelligence and spiritual vivacity not found in today's common drivel. Many of the Puritans and other mighty servants of God, such as George Whitefield, Charles Spurgeon, and a host of preachers throughout the world, considered this book mandatory reading.Boston's Human Nature In Its Fourfold State and Memoirs Of Thomas Boston are both available in hardcover from Banner Of Truth Trust. Additionally, The Complete Works Of Thomas Boston, which are now out of print, and which run to a total of twelve volumes, may be found occasionally from used book vendors. This is a treasure worth owning, if you can find it.The following quotations are from Complete Works, published as a reprint of the original by Richard Owen Roberts. |
"We have been once born sinners: we must be born again, that we may be saints." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Regeneration is a supernatural real change on the whole man, fitly compared to the natural birth... For the better understanding of the nature of regeneration, take this along with you, that as there are false conceptions in nature, so there are also in grace: by these many are deluded, mistaking some partial changes made upon them, for this great and thorough change." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Many call the church their mother, whom God will not own to be his children." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Good education is not regeneration. Education may chain up men's lusts, but cannot change their hearts." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"A turning from open profanity, to civility and sobriety, falls short of this saving change [of regeneration]. Some are, for a while, very loose, especially in their younger years; but at length they reform, and leave their profane courses. Here is a change, yet only such as may be found in men utterly void of the grace of God, and whose righteousness is so far from exceeding, that it doth not come up to the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"One may engage in all the outward duties of religion, and yet not be born again... All the external acts of religion are within the compass of natural abilities. Yea, hypocrites may have the counterfeit of all the graces of the Spirit." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Men may advance to a great deal of strictness in their own way of religion, and yet be strangers to the new birth." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"A man whose conscience has been awakened, and who lives under the felt influence of the covenant of works, what will he not do that is within the compass of natural abilities?" Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"A person may have sharp soul-exercises and pangs, and yet die in the birth... There may be sore pangs of conscience, which turn to nothing at last... and some have sharp soul-exercises, which are nothing but foretastes of hell." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Some have sharp convictions for a while: but these go off, and they become careless about their salvation... They get awakening grace, but not converting grace; and that goes off by degrees, as the light of the declining day, till it issues in midnight darkness." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"There may be a wonderful moving of the affections, in souls that are not at all touched with regenerating grace. When there is no grace, there may, notwithstanding, be a flood of tears, as in Esau... There may be great flashes of joy... There may be also great desires after good things, and great delight in them too... Common operations of the divine Spirit, like a land-flood, make a strange turning of things upside down: but when they are over, all runs again in the ordinary channel. All these things may be, where the sanctifying Spirit of Christ never rests upon the soul." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Great changes may be made by the power of nature, especially when assisted by external revelation. Nature may be so elevated by the common influences of the Spirit, that a person may thereby be turned into another man, as Saul was, who yet never becomes a new man. But in regeneration, nature itself is changed, and we become partakers of the divine nature; and this must needs be a supernatural change." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Original sin infects the whole man; and regenerating grace, which is the cure, goes as far as the disease... When the Lord opens the sluice of grace, on the soul's new-birth day, the waters run through the whole man, to purify and make him fruitful." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"In regeneration the mind is savingly enlightened. There is a new light let into the understanding... The spotless purity of God, his exact justice, his all-sufficiency, and other glorious perfections revealed in his word, are by this new light discovered to the soul, with a plainness and certainty, which as far exceed the knowledge it had of these things before, as ocular demonstration exceeds common report. For now he SEES what he only heard of before." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Regenerating grace brings the prodigal to himself, and makes men full of eyes within, knowing every one the plague of his own heart. The mind being savingly enlightened, the man sees how desperately corrupt his nature is; what enmity against God, and his holy law, has long lodged there: so that his soul loathes itself. No open sepulchre so vile and loathsome, in his eyes, as himself." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"The truth is, unregenerate men, though capable of preaching Christ, have not, properly speaking, the knowledge of him, but only an opinion, a good opinion, of him; as one has of many controverted points of doctrine, wherein he is far from certainty... But saving illumination carries the soul beyond opinion, to the certain knowledge of Christ and his excellency... The same light convincingly discovers a superlative worth, a transcendent glory and excellence in Christ, which darken all created excellencies as the rising sun makes the stars hide their heads... Finally, this illumination in the knowledge of Christ, convincingly discovers to men a fulness in him, sufficient for the supply of all their wants, enough to satisfy the boundless desires of an immortal soul." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Regenerating grace elevates the soul, translates it into the spiritual world, from whence this earth cannot but appear a little, yea, a very little thing; even as heaven appeared before, while the soul was grovelling in the earth. Grace brings a man into a new world: where this world is reputed but a stage of vanity, a howling wilderness, a valley of tears." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Though men be not book-learned, if they are born again, they are Spirit-learned; for all such are taught of God. The Spirit of regeneration teaches them what they knew not before and what they knew by the ear only, he teaches them over again as by the eye. The light of grace is an overcoming light... this illumination will make men's minds run, as willing captives, after Christ's chariot wheels." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Love makes a net for elect souls, which will infallibly catch them, and bring them to land. The cords of Christ's love are strong cords; and they need to be so, for every sinner is heavier than a mountain of brass; and Satan, together with the heart itself, draws the contrary way. But love is strong as death; and the Lord's love to the soul he died for, is the strongest love; which acts so powerfully, that it must come off victorious." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"In regeneration, the mind is enlightened in the knowledge of spiritual things... The will is renewed... The will is cured of its utter inability to will what is good. While the opening of the prison to them that are bound, is proclaimed in the Gospel, the Spirit of God comes and opens the prison door, goes to the prisoner, and, by the power of his grace, makes his chains fall off; breaks the bonds of iniquity, wherewith he was held in sin, so as he could neither will nor do any thing TRULY good; and brings him forth into a large place." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"The corrupt nature is the source of all evil, and therefore the soul will be often laying it before the great Physician. O what sorrow, shame, and self-loathing fill the heart, in the day that grace makes its triumphant entrance into it!" Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"In regeneration... the will is endowed with an inclination, bent, and propensity to good. In its depraved state, it lay quite another way, being prone and bent to evil ONLY: but now, by the operation of the omnipotent, all-conquering arm, it is drawn from evil to good, and gets another turn... By regenerating grace, the will is brought into conformity to the will of God. It is conformed to his preceptive will, being endowed with holy inclinations, agreeable to every one of his commands... Thus the will is disposed to fall in with those things which, in its depraved state, it could never be reconciled to." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"The Lord God proposes a covenant of peace to sinners, a covenant which he himself has framed, and registered in the Bible: but they are not pleased with it. Nay, unregenerate hearts cannot be pleased with it... Though the covenant could not be brought down to their depraved will, their will is, by grace, brought up to the covenant... Regenerating grace undermines, and brings down the towering imaginations of the heart, raised up against its rightful Lord... So the chief work in regeneration is done; the fort of the heart is taken; there is room made for the Lord Jesus Christ in the inmost parts of the soul; the inner door of the will being now opened to him, as well as the outer door of the understanding... Christ having taken the heart by storm, and triumphantly entered into it, in regeneration, the soul by faith yields itself to him." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"The regenerate man's desires are rectified; they are set on God himself, and the things above... Before, he saw no beauty in Christ, for which he was to be desired; but now he is all he desires, he is altogether lovely... regenerating grace sets the affections so firmly on God, that the man is disposed, at God's command, to quit his hold of every thing else, in order to keep his hold of Christ... If the stream of our affections were never thus turned, we are, doubtless, going down the stream into the pit." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"In regeneration... the conscience is renewed. As a new light is set up in the soul, in regeneration, conscience is enlightened, instructed and informed. That candle of the Lord is now snuffed and brightened; so that it shines, and sends forth its light into the most retired corners of the heart, discovering sins which the soul was not aware of before: and, in a special manner, discovering the corruption or depravity of nature, that seed and spawn whence all actual sins proceed... It powerfully incites to obedience, even in the most spiritual acts, which lie not within the view of the natural conscience; and powerfully restrains from sin, even from those sins which do not lie open to the observation of the world." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"As the memory wanted not its share of depravity, it also is bettered by regenerating grace... It is strengthened for spiritual things... Grace sanctifies the memory." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"If a man be new-born, he will desire the sincere milk of the word." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"It is as natural for one that is born again to pray, as for the new-born babe to cry." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"The work of the Spirit is felt." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"The child is not, till it be generate; and a man has no gracious being, no being in grace, till he is regenerate... As the child is passive in generation, so is the child of God in regeneration... God leaves some in their depraved state; others he brings into a state of grace, or regeneracy." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"In natural generation we are curiously wrought, like a piece of needle-work; as the word imports: even so it is in regeneration... O glorious creature, new-made after the image of God! It is grace for grace in Christ, which makes up this new man; even as in bodily generation, the child has member for member in the parent; has every member which the parent has in a certain proportion." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Were thine eyes ever turned inward to see thyself; the sinfulness of thy depraved state, the corruption of thy nature, the sins of thy heart and life? Wast thou ever led into a view of the exceeding sinfulness of sin? Have thine eyes seen King Jesus in his beauty; the manifold wisdom of God in him, his transcendent excellence, and absolute fulness and sufficiency, with the vanity and emptiness of all things else?" Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"The neglect of self-examination leaves most men under sad delusions as to their state." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"A hypocrite's religion may appear far greater than that of a sincere soul: but that which makes the greatest figure in the eyes of men, is often of least worth before God." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"The fire that shall try every man's work, will try, not of what BULK it is, but of what SORT it is." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"You that are strangers to this new birth, be convinced of the absolute necessity of it... Regeneration is absolutely necessary to qualify you to do any thing really good and acceptable to God. While you are not born again, your best works are but glittering sins; for though the matter of them is good, they are quite marred in the performance... Without regeneration there is no faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God... Unregenerate men may presume; but true faith they cannot have. Faith is a flower that grows not in the field of nature... Without regeneration a man's works are dead works." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"If thou art not born again, all thy reformation is naught in the sight of God. Thou hast shut the door, but the thief is still in the house. It may be thou art not what once thou wast; yet thou art not what thou must be... Thy prayers are an abomination to the Lord... Others are affected with thy prayers, which seem to them, as if they would rend the heavens; but God accounts them but as the howling of a dog... All thou hast done for God, and his cause in the world, though it may be followed with temporal rewards, yet it is lost as to divine acceptance." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"It may be thou art zealous against sin in others, and dost admonish them of their duty, and reprove them for their sin; and they hate thee, because thou dost thy duty; but I must tell thee, God hates thee too, because thou dost it not in a right manner; and that thou canst never do, whilst thou art not born again." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Regeneration is absolutely necessary to qualify you for heaven. None go to heaven but those who are made meet for it. As it was with Solomon's temple, so is it with the temple above. It is built of stone made ready before it is brought thither; namely, of lively stones, wrought for the selfsame thing; for they cannot be laid in that glorious building just as they come out of the quarry of depraved nature." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"It is true, there is joy in heaven, but it is holy joy; there are pleasures in heaven, but they are holy pleasures; there are places in heaven, but it is holy ground -- that holiness which in every place, and in every thing there, would mar all to the unregenerate." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Regeneration is absolutely necessary to your being admitted into heaven. No heaven without it. Though carnal men could digest all those things which make heaven so unsuitable for them, yet God will never bring them thither. Therefore born again you must be, else you shall never see heaven; you shall perish eternally." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Thus you see what affinity there is between an unregenerate state, and the state of the damned, the state of absolute and irretrievable misery. Be convinced, then, that you must be born again; put a high value on the new birth, and eagerly desire it." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"An unregenerate state is hell in the bud... Be convinced, then, that you must be born again; put a high value on the new birth, and eagerly desire it... by earnest prayer, beg that the dew of Heaven may fall on thy heart, that the seed may spring up there." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Receive the testimony of the word of God, concerning the misery of an unregenerate state, the sinfulness thereof, and the absolute necessity of regeneration." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"Remember, whatever you are, you must be born again; else it had been better for you, that you had never been born. Wherefore, if any of you shall live and die in an unregenerate state, you will be inexcusable, having been fairly warned of your danger." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, On Regeneration |
"None of the children of men are natural branches of the second Adam, that is, Jesus Christ, the true vine; they are the natural branches of the first Adam, that degenerate vine: but the elect are all of them, sooner or later, broken off from their natural stock, and ingrafted into Christ, the true vine." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"Were it possible that we could eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ, in a corporal and carnal manner, it would profit nothing. It was not Mary's bearing him in her womb, but her believing on him, that made her a saint." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"Once in Christ, ever in him. Having taken up his habitation in the heart, he never removes. None can untie this happy knot." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"The unregenerate man's fruits savour not of love to Christ, nor of the blood of Christ, nor of the incense of his intercession, and therefore will never be accepted in heaven." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"Christ, as a king, must be served with variety. Where God makes the heart his garden, he plants it as Solomon did his, with trees of all kinds of fruits. Accordingly it brings forth the fruit of the Spirit in all goodness. But the ungodly are not so; their obedience is never universal; there is always some one thing or other excepted. In one word, their fruits are fruits of an ill tree, that cannot be accepted in heaven." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"Every unrenewed man is a branch of a dead stock... A dead stock can convey no sap to the branches, to make them bring forth fruit... In vain do men labour to get fruit on the branches, when there is no sap in the root... Many sermons are preached to no purpose; because there is no life to give sensation. Sleeping men may be awakened; but the dead cannot be raised without a miracle; even so the dead sinner must remain, if he be not restored to life by a miracle of grace." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"Adam took the poisonous cup, and drank it off: this occasioned death to himself and us. We came into the world spiritually dead, thereby exposed to eternal death, and absolutely liable to temporal death... is it not absolutely necessary to be broken off from this our natural stock? What will our fair leaves of a profession, or our fruits of duties, avail, if we be still branches of the degenerate, dead, and killing stock?... Why is there so much noise about religion among many, who can give no good account of their having laid a good foundation, being mere strangers to experimental religion? I fear, if God does not in mercy undermine the religion of many of us, and let us see that we have none at all, our root will be found rottenness, and our blossom go up as dust, in a dying hour. Therefore let us look to our state, that we be not found fools in our latter end." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"Adam, at his best estate, was but a shrub, in comparison with Christ, the tree of life... It cannot be denied, that grace was shown in the first covenant: but it is as far exceeded by the grace of the second covenant, as the twilight is by the light of the mid-day." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"Wherefore Christ, God-man, is the stock, whereof believers are the branches: and they are united to a whole Christ... These are the elect, and none other. They, and they only, are grafted into Christ; and consequently none but they are cut off from the killing stock. For them alone he intercedes, that they may be one in him and his Father. Faith, the bond of this union, is given to none else; it is the faith of God's elect. The Lord passes by many branches growing on the natural stock, and cuts off only here one, and there one, and grafts them into the true vine, according as free love hath determined... If we inquire, why so? We find no other reason but because they were chosen in him, predestinated to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"There is no mixing of the law and faith in this business; the sinner must hold by one of them, and let the other go. The way of the law, and the way of faith, are so far different, that it is not possible for a sinner to walk in the one, unless he comes off from the other: and if he be for doing, he must do all alone; Christ will not do a part for him, if he do not all. A garment pieced up of sundry sorts of righteousness, is not a garment meet for the court of heaven." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"The same Spirit which is in the Mediator himself, he communicates to his elect in due time, never to depart from them... The Spirit of faith furnishes him feet to come to Christ, and hands to receive him. What by nature he could not do, by grace he can, the Holy Spirit working in him the work of faith with power." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"The union between Christ and his mystical members is firm and indissoluble... as the believer apprehends Christ by faith, so Christ apprehends him by his Spirit, and none shall pluck him out of his hand." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"They have an unsafe hold of Christ, whom he has not apprehended by his Spirit. There are many half marriages here, where the soul apprehends Christ, but is not apprehended of him." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"Holiness is not one grace only, but all the graces of the Spirit; it is a constellation of graces; it is all the graces in their seed and root." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"Whoever are united to Christ, bring forth the fruit of gospel-obedience and true holiness... They grow upward in heavenly-mindedness, and contempt for the world, for their conversation is in heaven." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"Believers, by virtue of their union with Christ, are the objects of God's special care and providence." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"The cross of Christ, by which appellation the saint's troubles are named, is a kindly name to the believer. It is a cross indeed; not to the believer's graces, but to his corruptions." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"Worldly things are often such a load to the Christian, that he moves but very slowly heavenward. God sends a wind of trouble, that blows the burden off the man's back; he then walks more speedily on his way; after God has drawn some gilded earth from him, that was drawing his heart away from God... thousands have been hugged to death in the embraces of a smiling world; and many good men have got wounds from outward prosperity, that must be cured by the cross... It is kindly for believers to be healed by stripes; although they are usually so weak as to cry out for fear at the sight of the pruning hook, as if it were the destroying axe; and to think that the Lord is coming to kill them, when he is indeed coming to cure them." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"They that are now walking most closely with God, may have enough to do to stand when the trial comes: how hard will it be for others then, who are like to be surprised with troubles, when guilt is lying on their consciences unremoved! To be awakened out of a sound sleep, and cast into a raging sea, as Jonah was, will be a fearful trial." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"Be heavenly-minded, and maintain a holy contempt of the world. You are united to Christ; he is your head and husband, and is in heaven; wherefore your hearts should be there also... This is the great business of life; you must please him, though it should displease all the world. What he hates must be hateful to you, because he hates it." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Grace, Mystical Union Between Christ And Believers |
"The righteousness wherein man was created, was the conformity of all the faculties and powers of his soul to the moral law. This is what we call Original Righteousness, which man was originally endued with... He had perfect knowledge of the law, and of his duty accordingly: he was made after God's image, and consequently could not want knowledge, which is a part thereof... It is true, Adam had not the law written upon tables of stone; but it was written upon his mind, the knowledge thereof being created with him. God impressed it upon his soul, and made him a law to himself, as the remains of it among the heathens do testify." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Innocence, Of Man's Original Righteousness |
"An inclination to evil is really a fountain of sin, and therefore inconsistent with that rectitude and uprightness which the text expressly says Adam was endued with at his creation. The will of man then was directed and naturally inclined to God and goodness, though mutable. It was disposed, by its original make, to follow the Creator's will, as the shadow does the body." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Innocence, Of Man's Original Righteousness |
"The will, when we consider it as renewed by grace, is by that grace naturally inclined to the same holiness, in all its parts, which the law requires; so was the will of man, when we consider him as God made him at first, endued with natural inclinations to every thing commanded by the law... In a word, as Adam knew his Master's pleasure in the matter of duty, so his will was inclined to what he knew." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Innocence, Of Man's Original Righteousness |
"Man's affections, then, in his primitive state, were pure from all defilement, free from all disorder and distemper, because in all their motions they were duly subjected to his clear reason, and his holy will. He had also an executive power answerable to his will; a power to do the good which he knew should be done, and which he was inclined to do, even to fulfill the whole law of God." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Innocence, Of Man's Original Righteousness |
"There was not a wrong pin in the tabernacle of human nature, when God set it up, however shattered it is now. Man was then holy in soul, body, and spirit; while the soul remained untainted, its lodging was kept clean and undefiled; the members of the body were consecrated vessels, and instruments of righteousness... as this righteousness was universal in respect of the subject, because it spread through the whole man; so also it was universal in respect of the object, the holy law. There was nothing in the law but what was agreeable to his reason and will, as God made him, though sin hath now set him at odds with it; his soul was shapen out in length and breadth to the commandment, though exceeding broad; so that his original righteousness was not only perfect in its parts, but in degrees." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Innocence, Of Man's Original Righteousness |
"Adam's will was not absolutely indifferent to good and evil; God set it towards good only, yet he did not so fix and confirm its inclination, that it could not alter. No, it was moveable to evil, and that only by man himself, God having given him a sufficient power to stand in this integrity, if he had pleased." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Innocence, Of Man's Original Righteousness |
"If Adam had been unchangeably righteous, he must have been so either by nature or by free gift: by nature he could not be so, for that is proper to God, and incommunicable to any creature; if by free gift, then no wrong was done to him in withholding what he could not crave. Confirmation in a righteous state is a reward of grace... and accordingly is given to the saints upon account of the merits of Christ, who was obedient even unto death. And herein believers have the advantage of Adam, that they can never totally nor finally fall away from grace." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Innocence, Of Man's Original Righteousness |
"Great is that delight which the saints find in those views of the glory of God, which their souls are sometimes let into, while they are compassed about with many infirmities." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Innocence, Of Man's Original Righteousness |
"God may most justly require of men perfect obedience to his law, and condemn them for their not obeying it perfectly, though now they have no ability to keep it. In so doing, he gathers but where he has sown. He gave man ability to keep the whole law; man has lost it by his own fault." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Innocence, Of Man's Original Righteousness |
"Free grace will fix those, whom free will shook down into a gulph of misery." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Innocence, Of Man's Original Righteousness |
"The heart, that was made according to God's own heart, is now the reverse of it, a forge of evil imaginations, a sink of inordinate affections, and a storehouse of all impiety." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Behold the heart of the natural man... The mind is defiled; the thoughts of the heart are evil; the will and affections are defiled: the imagination of the thoughts of the heart, that is, whatsoever the heart frameth within itself by thinking, such as judgment, choice, purposes, devices, desires, every inward motion, or rather the frame of the thoughts of the heart, namely the frame, make, or mould of these, is evil... The heart is ever framing something; but never one right thing: the frame of thoughts, in the heart of man, is exceedingly various; yet are they never cast into a right frame. But is there not, at least, a mixture of good in them? No, they are only evil; there is nothing in them truly good and acceptable to God." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"The imagination of the heart, or frame of thoughts in natural men, is evil continually, or every day. From the first day to the last day, in this state, they are in midnight darkness; there is not the least glimmering of the light of holiness in them; not one holy thought can ever be produced by the unholy heart. O what a vile heart is this! O what a corrupt nature is this!... Surely that corruption is ingrained in our hearts, interwoven with our very natures, has sunk deep into our souls, and will never be cured but by a miracle of grace. Now such is man's heart, such is his nature, till regenerating grace change it." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Had the history of the deluge been transmitted unto us, without the reason thereof in the text, we might thence have gathered the corruption and total depravity of man's nature: for what other quarrel could the holy and just God have with the infants that were destroyed by the flood, seeing they had no actual sin?" Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Man's nature is now wholly corrupted. There is a sad alteration, a wonderful overturning in the nature of man: where, at first, there was nothing evil, now there is nothing good... Man was created in the likeness of God; that is, the holy and righteous God made a holy and righteous creature, but fallen Adam begat a son, not in the likeness of God, but in his own likeness; that is, corrupt sinful Adam begat a corrupt sinful son." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"As the corruption of our nature shews the absolute necessity of regeneration, so the absolute necessity of regeneration plainly proves the corruption of our nature; for why should a man need a second birth, if his nature were not quite marred in the first birth?" Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"What though the carnal man lives at ease and quiet, and the corruption of nature is not his burden, is he therefore free from it? No, no; it is because he is dead, that he feels not the sinking weight. Many a groan is heard from a sick bed, but never any from a grave." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Is not man naturally much more desirous to know new things, than to practise old known truths? How much like old Adam do we look in this eagerness for novelties, and disrelish of old solid doctrines? We seek after knowledge rather than holiness, and study most to know those things which are least edifying." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Men might often come fair off, if they would dismiss temptations with abhorrence, when first they appear; if they would nip them in the bud, they would soon die away." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Most men live as if they were nothing but a lump of flesh: or as if their soul served for no other use, but, like salt, to keep their body from corrupting." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Is not every one by nature discontented with his present lot in the world, or with some one thing or other in it? This also was Adam's case. Some one thing is always wanting; so that man is a creature given to changes... And the soul is never cured of this disease, till conquering grace brings it back to take up its everlasting rest in God through Christ: but till this be, if man were set again in paradise, the garden of the Lord, all the pleasures there would not keep him from looking, yea, and leaping over the hedge a second time." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"It is as natural for us to hide sin, as to commit it. Many sad instances thereof we have in this world; but a far clearer proof of it we shall get at the day of judgment, the day in which God will judge the secrets of men. Many a foul mouth will then be seen which is now wiped, and saith, I have done no wickedness." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Man in his natural state is altogether corrupt; both soul and body are polluted... As for the soul, this natural corruption has spread itself through all the faculties thereof; and is to be found in the understanding, the will, the affections, the conscience, and the memory." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Never was there any communion between God and Adam's children, where the Lord himself had not the first word. If he were to let them alone they would never inquire after him." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"The life of every natural man is but one continued dream and delusion, out of which he never awakes, till either, by a new light darted from heaven into his soul, he come to himself, or, in hell he lift up his eyes. Therefore, in scripture account, though he be ever so wise, he is a fool, and a simple one." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"We are born spiritually blind, and cannot be restored without a miracle of grace. This is thy case, whoever thou art, who are not born again." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Thus was darkness over the face of the world, when Christ, the true light, came into it; and so is darkness over every soul, till he as the day-star, arises in the heart. The latter is an evidence of the former." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Every natural man's heart and life is a mass of darkness, disorder, and confusion, how refined soever he may appear in the sight of men." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"All the unregenerate are utterly mistaken in the point of true happiness: for though Christianity hath fixed that matter in point of principle, yet nothing less than overcoming grace can fix it in the practical judgment." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"The natural man is void of the saving knowledge of spiritual things. He knows not what a God he has to do with: he is unacquainted with Christ, and knows not what sin is. The greatest graceless wits are blind as moles in these things." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Many a man that bears the name of a Christian, may make Pharaoh’s confession of faith -- I know not the Lord -- neither will he let go what God commands them to depart with... Do they know Christ, or see his glory, and any beauty in him, for which he is to be desired?... I own, indeed, that they may have a natural knowledge of these things, as the unbelieving Jews had of Christ, whom they saw and conversed with; but there was a spiritual glory in him, perceived by believers only." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Doth not the carnal mind naturally strive to grasp spiritual things in imagination, as if the soul were quite immersed in flesh and blood, and would turn every thing into its own shape?" Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"A man's being kept from sin, not his being kept from affliction, is the immediate proper effect of the law of God impressed upon the heart." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Now, the law is a lamp and light, as it guides in the way of duty; and instructing reproofs from the law are the way of life, as they keep from sin: they guide not into the way of peace, but as they lead into the way of duty; nor do they keep a man out of trouble, but as they keep him from sin." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"There is in the carnal mind an opposition to spiritual truths, and an aversion to receive them. It is as little a friend to divine truths, as it is to holiness. The truths of natural religion, which do, as it were, force their entry into the minds of natural men, they hold prisoners in unrighteousness." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"How few are there who have been blessed with an inward illumination, by the special operation of the Spirit of Christ, leading them into a view of divine truths in their spiritual and heavenly lustre! How have you learned the truths of religion, which you pretend to believe?" Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"How many professors have made shipwreck of their faith, such as it was... They fall into damning delusions; because they never really believed the truth, though they themselves, and others too, thought they did believe it." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"If you believe the doctrines of the word, how is it that you are so unconcerned about the state of your souls before the Lord? how is it that you are so little concerned about this weighty point, whether you be born again or not?" Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Men believe that fire will burn them; and therefore they will not throw themselves into it: but the truth is, most men live as if they thought the gospel a mere fable, and the wrath of God, revealed in his word against their unrighteousness and ungodliness, a mere scarecrow... Do such persons believe the sinfulness and misery of a natural state? Do they believe that they are children of wrath? Do they believe that there is no salvation without regeneration, and no regeneration but what makes a man a new creature?" Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"If you believe the threatenings, how is it that you live in your sins; live out of Christ, and yet hope for mercy? Do such persons believe God to be the holy and just One, who will by no means clear the guilty? No, no; none believe; none, or next to none, believe what a just God the Lord is, and how severely he punisheth." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"However some magnify the power of free-will, a view of the spirituality of the law, to which acts of moral discipline in no wise answer, and a deep insight into the corruption of nature, given by the inward operation of the Spirit, convincing of sin, righteousness, and judgment, would make men find an absolute need of the power of free grace, to remove the bands of wickedness from off their free-will." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"There is, in the unrenewed will, an utter inability for what is truly good and acceptable in the sight of God. The natural man's will is in Satan's fetters, hemmed in within the circle of evil, and cannot move beyond it, any more than a dead man can raise himself out of his grave. We deny him not a power to choose, pursue and act what is good, as to the matter; but though he can will what is good and right, he can will nothing aright and well. Christ says -- Without me -- that is, separate from me, as a branch from the stock, as both the word and context will bear -- ye can do nothing -- which means, nothing truly and spiritually good." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Although the existence of a heaven and a hell were only probable, it were sufficient to determine the will to the choice of holiness, were it capable of being determined thereto by mere reason." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"It may be observed, that the generality of the hearers of the gospel, of all denominations, are plagued with the doctrine of free-will; for it is a root of bitterness, natural to all men; from whence spring so much fearlessness about the soul's eternal state, so many delays and excuses in that weighty matter, whereby much work is laid up for a deathbed by some, while others are ruined by a legal walk, and neglect the life of faith, and the making use of Christ for sanctification; all flowing from the persuasion of sufficient natural abilities." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"I own, the natural man may have a kind of love to the letter of the law: but here lies the stress of the matter, he looks on the holy law in a carnal dress; and so, while he embraces the creature of his own fancy, he thinks that he has the law; but in very deed he is without the law: for as yet he sees it not in its spirituality; if he did, he would find it the very reverse of his own nature, and what his will could not fall in with, till changed by the power of grace." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"While the word is preached or read, or the rod of God is upon the natural man, sometimes the convictions are darted in upon him, and his spirit is wounded in greater or lesser measure: but these convictions not being able to make him fall, he runs away with the arrows sticking in his conscience; and at length, one way or other, gets them out, and makes himself whole again. Thus, while the light shines, men, naturally averse to it, willfully shut their eyes, till God is provoked to blind them judicially." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Zion's King gets no subjects but by stroke of sword, in the day of his power. None come to him, but such as are drawn by a divine hand." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"If you repent not, you will get your reward in full measure; when you go to hell, your work will follow you. The drunkard will not have a drop of water to cool his tongue there; nor will the covetous man's wealth follow him into the other world! you may drive on your old trade there; eternity will be long enough to give you your heart's fill of it." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Men set up to themselves an idol of their own fancy, instead of God, and then fall down and worship it... Every natural man is an enemy to God as he is revealed in his word. The infinitely holy, just, powerful, and true being is not the God whom he loves, but the God whom he loathes." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"As men cannot get the doctrine of God's justice blotted out of the Bible, it is such an eye-sore to them, that they strive to blot it out of their minds: they ruin themselves by presuming on his mercy, while they are not careful to get a righteousness, wherein they may stand before his justice." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"There are thousands who hear the gospel, that hope to be saved, and think all safe with them for eternity, who never had any experience of the new birth, nor do at all concern themselves in the question." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Many call Christ their dear Saviour, whose consciences can bear witness, that they never derived so much sweetness from him as from their sweet lusts, which are ten times dearer to them than their Saviour. He is no other way dear to them, than as they abuse his death and sufferings for the peaceable enjoyment of their lusts; that they may live as they please in the world; and when they die, be kept out of hell." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Many come to duties, that never come out of them to Jesus Christ... men naturally think highly of their duties, that seem to them to be well done, so they look for acceptance with God, according as their work is done, not according to the share they have in the blood of Christ... They value themselves on their performances and attainments... taking to themselves what they rob from Christ the great High-priest." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"The natural man, going to God in duties, will always be found either to go without a Mediator, or with more than the one only Mediator, Jesus Christ... for they pray, confess, mourn, and have great desires, and the like; and so have something of their own to commend them unto him: they were never made poor in spirit, and brought empty-handed to Christ, to lay the stress of all on his atoning blood." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"None, but those in whom Christ is formed, do really put the crown on his head, and receive the kingdom of Christ within them." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"In the way of the gospel, the sinner must stand before the Lord in an imputed righteousness: but corrupt nature is for an inherent righteousness... Nature is always for building up itself, and to have some ground for boasting; but the great design of the gospel is to exalt grace, to depress nature, and exclude boasting." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"All gospel truths centre in Christ: so that to learn the truth, is to learn Christ." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"The natural man turns the very gospel into law, and transforms the covenant of grace into a covenant of works... Thus is the doctrine of the gospel corrupted by papists, and other enemies to the doctrines of free grace. And indeed, however natural men's heads may be set right in this point, as surely as they are out of Christ, their faith, repentance, and obedience, such as they are, are placed by them in the room of Christ and his righteousness; and so trusted to, as if by these they fulfilled a new law." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"The law, laid home on the natural conscience in its spirituality, irritates corruption... What reason can be assigned for this, but the natural enmity of the heart against the holy law?... Let us conclude then, that the unregenerate are heart-enemies to God, his Son, his Spirit, and his law; that there is a natural contrariety, opposition, and enmity in the will of man to God himself, and his holy will." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Though there be upon the sinner a weight of sin, which makes the earth to stagger; although there is a weight of that wrath on him, which makes the devils to tremble; yet ye goes lightly under the burden; he feels not the weight any more than a stone would, till the Spirit of the Lord quicken him so far as to feel it." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Self is natural man's highest end, in their religious actions. They perform duties for a name, or some other worldly interest. Or if they be more refined, it is their peace, and at most their salvation from hell and wrath or their own eternal happiness, that is their chief and highest end. Their eyes are held, that they see not the glory of God. They seek God indeed, yet not for himself, but for themselves. They seek him not at all, but for their own welfare: so their whole life is woven into one web of practical blasphemy; making God the means, and self their end, yea, their chief end." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Call it no more free-will, but slavish lust; free to evil, but free from good, till regenerating grace loosens the bands of wickedness." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"The natural man's affections are wretchedly misplaced; he is a spiritual monster. His heart is where his feet should be, fixed on the earth; his heels are lifted up against heaven, which his heart should be set on. His face is towards hell, his back towards heaven; and therefore God calls him to turn." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Here is a threefold cord against haven and holiness, not easily broken: a blind mind, a perverse will, and disorderly distempered affections. The mind, swelled with self-conceit, says, the man should not stoop; the will, opposite the will of God, says, he will not; and the corrupt affections, rising against the Lord, in defense of the corrupt will, say, he shall not. Thus the poor creature stands out against God and goodness, till a day of power comes, in which he is made a new creature." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Conscience can never do its work, but according to the light it has to work by... When the natural conscience is awakened by the Spirit of conviction, it will indeed rage and roar, and put the whole man in a dreadful consternation; awfully summon all the powers of the soul to help in a strait; make the stiff heart to tremble, and the knees to bow; set the eyes weeping, the tongue confessing; and oblige the man to cast out the goods into the sea, which he apprehends are likely to sink the ship of the soul, though the heart still goes after them. Yet it is an evil conscience which naturally leads to despair, and will do it effectually, as in Judas' case; unless either lusts prevail over it, to lull it asleep, as in the case of Felix, or the blood of Christ prevail over it, sprinkling and purging it from dead works, as in the case of all true converts." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Adam, by his sin, became not only guilty, but corrupt; and so transmits guilt and corruption to his posterity... Adam's sin corrupted man's nature, and leavened the whole lump of mankind... Let none wonder that such a horrible change could be brought on by one sin of our first parents; for thereby they turned away from God as their chief end, which necessarily infers a universal depravation. Their sin was a complication of evils, a total apostasy from God, a violation of the whole law: by it they broke all the ten commandments at once." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"We are all, in a spiritual sense, dead-born." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Learn from this the nature and necessity of regeneration... It is not a partial, but a total change... The change wrought upon men by good education, or forced upon them by a natural conscience, though it may pass among men for a saving change, yet it is not so; for our nature is corrupt, and none but the God of nature can change it... It is not a change made by human industry, but by the mighty power of the Spirit of God." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Thou must be born again; otherwise thou shalt never see heaven, unless it be afar off, as the rich man in hell did. Deceive not thyself: no mercy of God, no blood of Christ, will bring thee to heaven in thy unregenerate state: for God will never open a fountain of mercy to wash away his own holiness and truth; nor did Christ shed his blood, to blot out the truths of God, or to overturn God's measures about the salvation of sinners." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Few are concerned to get their corrupt conversation changed; but fewer, by far, to get their nature changed. Most men know not what they are, nor what spirits they are of; they are as the eye, which, seeing many things, never sees itself. But until you know every one the plague of his own heart, there is no hope of your recovery... Lord, open their eyes to see it, before they die of it, and in hell lift up their eyes, and see what they will not see now." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Let us have a special eye upon the corruption and sin of our nature. God sees it: O that we saw it too, and that sin were ever before us! What avails it to notice others sins, while this mother-sin is not noticed? Turn your eyes inward to the sin of your nature. It is to be feared that many have this work to begin yet; that they have shut the door, while the grand thief is yet in the house undiscovered." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Men's passions are often highest against the faults of others, when sin sleeps soundly in their own breasts... the corruption of their own nature never makes them long for heaven. Lusts, scandalously breaking out at a time, will mar their peace, but the sin of their own nature never makes them a heavy heart." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Grace makes men zealous against sin in others, as well as in themselves: but eyes turned inward to the corruption of nature, clothe them with pity and compassion; and fill them with thankfulness to the Lord, that they themselves were not the persons left to be such spectacles of human frailty." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Many have their own appointed time for repentance and reformation: as if they were such complete masters over their lusts, that they can allow them to gather more strength, and yet overcome them. They take up resolutions to amend, without an eye to Jesus Christ, union with him, and strength from him; a plain evidence that they are strangers to themselves; so they are left to themselves, and their flourishing resolutions wither; for, as they see not the necessity, so they get not the benefit, of the dew from heaven to water them." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"A view of the corruption of nature would be very humbling, and oblige him that has it to reckon himself the chief of sinners... The want of thorough humiliation, piercing to the sin of one's nature, is the ruin of many professors: for digging deep makes the great difference betwixt wise and foolish builders." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"They never yet knew well their errand to Christ, who went not to him for the sin of their nature; for his blood to take away the guilt of it, and his Spirit to break the power of it. Though, in bitterness of your souls, you should lay before him a catalogue of your sins of omission and commission, which might reach from earth to heaven: yet, if original sin were wanting in it, assure yourselves that you have forgot the best part of the errand which a poor sinner has to the Physician of souls." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Though a man be sick, there is no fear of death, if the sickness strike not to his heart: and there is as little fear of the death of sin, as long as the sin of our nature is not touched." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"If you would repent indeed, let the streams lead you up to the fountain; and mourn over your corrupt nature, as the cause of all sin, in heart, lip, and life... it is a vain religion to attempt to make the life truly good, while the corruption of nature retains its ancient vigour, and the power of it is not broken." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"He that would walk aright must have one eye upward to Jesus Christ, and another inward to the corruption of his own nature." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Never did every sin appear, in the conversation of the vilest wretch that ever lived; but look thou into thy corrupt nature, and there thou mayest see all and every sin in the seed and root thereof. There is a fullness of all unrighteousness there. There is atheism, idolatry, blasphemy, murder, adultery, and whatsoever is vile. Possibly none of these appear to thee in thy heart; but there is more in that unfathomable depth of wickedness than thou knowest." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"People are ruined by their not contemplating the sin of their nature." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"Without the Spirit's teaching, all other teaching will be to little purpose. Though the gospel were to shine about you like the sun at noon-day, and this great truth were ever so plainly preached, you would never see yourselves aright, until the Spirit of the Lord light his candle within your breast: the fullness and glory of Christ, and the corruption and vileness of our nature, are never rightly learned, but where the Spirit of Christ is the teacher." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"For I testify unto you all, there is no peace with God, no pardon, no heaven, for you, in your natural state: there is but a step between you and eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord: if the brittle thread of your life, which may break with a touch ere you are aware, be broken while you are in this state, you are ruined for ever, without remedy." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Sinfulness Of Man's Natural State |
"You cannot be the children of God, who never yet saw yourselves the children of the devil. You cannot be in the way to heaven, who never saw yourselves by nature in the high road to hell." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"The Word is indeed the saint's security against wrath: but it binds the natural man's sin and wrath together, as a certain pledge of his ruin, if he continue in that state." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"When Adam sinned, God turned him out of paradise: and natural men are -- as Adam left them -- banished from the gracious presence of the Lord; and can have no access to him in that state." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"God strives with the unrepentant for a while, and convictions enter their consciences; but they rebel against the light; and by a secret judgment, they receive a blow on the head; so that, from that time, they do as it were live and rot above ground... They are plagued with judicial blindness. They shut their eyes against the light; and they are given over to the devil, the god of this world, to be blinded more." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"When the end of the world, as appointed of God, is come, the trumpet shall sound, and the dead arise. Then shall the weary earth, at the command of the Judge, cast forth the bodies, the cursed bodies, of those that lived and died in their natural state... They shall be eternally shut up in hell, never to get the least drop of comfort, nor the smallest alleviation of their torment. There they will be punished with the punishment of loss, being excommunicated for ever from the presence of God, his angels, and saints. All means of grace, all hopes of a delivery, will be for ever cut off from their eyes. They shall not have a drop of water to cool their tongues... There the worm that shall gnaw them will never die; the fire that will scorch them, shall never be quenched. God will, through eternity, hold them up with the one hand, and pour the full vials of wrath into them with the other." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"We may now flee from the wrath of God, indeed, by fleeing to Jesus Christ: but such as flee from Christ, will never be able to avoid it. Whither can men flee from the avenging God?" Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"We are apt to fear the wrath of man more than we ought; but no man can apprehend the wrath of God to be more dreadful than it really is: the power of it can never be known to the utmost. How fierce soever it be, either on earth or in hell, God can still carry it farther." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"O, miserable soul! if thou flee not from this wrath unto Jesus Christ, though thy misery had a beginning, yet it will never have an end." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"Foolish man indeed practically bids a defiance to Heaven; but the Lord often, even in this world, opens such sluices of wrath upon them, as all their might cannot stop: they are carried away thereby, as with a flood! How much more will it be so in hell?" Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"Cold death will quench the flame of man's wrath against us, if nothing else do: but God's wrath, when it has come on the sinner for millions of ages, will still be the wrath to come, as the water of a river is still coming, how much soever has passed. While God is, he will pursue the quarrel." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"Thou art a sinner by nature; and it is highly reasonable, that the guilt and wrath be as old as sin... The poisonous nature of the serpent affords a man sufficient ground to kill it, as soon as ever he can reach it; and by this time thou mayest be convinced that thy nature is a very compound of enmity against God." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"Is it strange, that they who will needs depart from God now, cost what it will, should be forced to depart from at the last, into everlasting fire?" Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"Consider the vast rewards which God has annexed to obedience. His word is no more full of fiery wrath against sin, than it is of gracious rewards to the obedience it requires. If heaven be in the promises, it is altogether equal that hell is in the threatenings... Moreover, sin deserves the misery, but our best works do not deserve the happiness." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"Consider how God dealt with his own Son, whom he spared not. The wrath of God seized on his soul and body both, and brought him into the dust of death. That his sufferings were not eternal, flowed from the quality of the Sufferer, who was infinite; and therefore able to bear, at once the whole load of wrath; and, upon that account, his sufferings were infinite in value. But as the sufferings of a mere creature cannot be infinite in value, they must be protracted to an eternity." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"The unregenerate man puts no period to his sinful course... That thou hast not done more, and worse, thanks to him who restrained thee; to the chain by which the wolf was kept in, not to thyself. No wonder that God shews his power on the sinner, who puts forth his power against God, as far as it will reach." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"The infinity of God makes infinite wrath the just demerit of sin. God is infinitely displeased with sin; and when he acts, he must act like himself, and shew his displeasure by proportionable means. Those who shall lie for ever under this wrath will be eternally sinning, and therefore must eternally suffer." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"The poorest, that go from door to door, and have not one penny left them by their parents, were born to an inheritance. Their first father Adam left them children of wrath: and continuing in their natural state, they cannot escape it." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"Thunder-claps of wrath from the word of God, conveyed to the soul by the Spirit of the Lord, will surely keep a man awake." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"As a gracious state is a state of glory in the bud; so a graceless state is hell in the bud, which if it continue, will come at length to perfection." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"Even in this world, many have been set up as monuments of Divine vengeance, that others might fear." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"God will not sell deliverance, but freely gives it to those who see themselves altogether unworthy of his favour. Turn your eyes, O prisoners of hope, towards the Lord Jesus Christ; and embrace him, as he offereth himself in the gospel... His blood will quench that fire of wrath which burns against thee; in the white raiment of his righteousness thou wilt be safe; for no storm of wrath can pierce it." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"The saints have no reason to complain of their lot in the world, whatever it may be." Man's Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, The Misery Of Man's Natural State |
"Saving faith is the faith of God's elect; the special gift of God to them, wrought in them by his Spirit." Man’s Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, Man’s Utter Inability To Recover Himself |
"The arms of natural abilities are too short to reach supernatural help: hence those who most excel in them are often most estranged from spiritual things." Man’s Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, Man’s Utter Inability To Recover Himself |
"Believing, repenting, and the like, are the product of the new nature; and can never be produced by the old corrupt nature... as the child cannot be active in his own generation, so a man cannot be active in his own regeneration. The heart is shut against Christ: man cannot open it, only God can do it by his grace." Man’s Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, Man’s Utter Inability To Recover Himself |
"The natural man cannot but resist the Lord's offering to help him; yet that resistance is infallibly overcome in the elect, by converting grace." Man’s Fourfold State, The State Of Nature, Man’s Utter Inability To Recover Himself |
"The prayer that God makes account of is first in the heart... The mouth must not speak out anything but what is the desire of the heart. It is dangerous to mock God, who knows the heart." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Nature Of Prayer In General |
"Now, all promises of temporal things have this condition, if they be for God's glory and his children's good." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Nature Of Prayer In General |
"We must come to God in the name of Christ, laying all the stress upon his merits... This implies that we must be in Christ, before we can pray acceptably." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Nature Of Prayer In General |
"It is a privilege that God will allow us to come so near him, and to pour out our hearts before him, a privilege bought by the blood of Christ. The prayless person undervalues this rich privilege, trampling on that blood that bought it, which will be a worm in his conscience in hell that will gnaw it for ever." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Nature Of Prayer In General |
"Christ intercedes for us in heaven; the Spirit intercedes in us, by his effectual working in us, helping us to pray aright, and make intercession for ourselves. He forms our petitions for the court of heaven. No gifts could avail to this end. If the best gift without the Spirit were bestowed on a man, he could not make a prayer that would be acceptable to God, though it might be much admired of men." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"The Spirit helps in prayer with groanings... these groanings for divine aid, which believers have in their prayer, though they may be reckoned small things, yet are really great and prevalent with God, as proceeding from and produced in them by his own Spirit; and they are more forcible and expressive of the desires of the soul than any words." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"We reckon in the world, that they are in the best case that hold all within themselves; but in respect of spiritual thriving, they are fairest for that who are kept from hand to mouth, and never want a new errand to God's door." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"The help of the Spirit in prayer is a certain pledge of the hearing of prayer." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"The Lord's cross on his people's back is better than the world's crown on the head of his enemies." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"Diseases and ailments of whatsoever nature go under the name of infirmities, as weakening body or spirit. Timothy had frequent attacks by them, 1 Tim. v.23. And in the road to heaven such weights and pressures one way or other will not be missed." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"Our Lord Jesus did not enter to his glory, but after a long track of sufferings. This was necessary in the case of Christ the head, for the purchasing of our salvation. And it is necessary in the case of believers, that they may be conformed to him, bearing the image of his sufferings." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"Believers are committed into Christ's hand, as the great Pilot, to guide them through the sea of this world, to the shore of Immanuel's land: and it will magnify the power of his grace, that by his conduct so many broken ships are brought safe ashore, through so many rocks and shelves, and suffering so many storms." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"According to this dispensation, believers are drowned deeper in debt of free grace, than otherwise they would have been. By the infirmities wherewith they are compassed, it comes to pass that their accounts of pardoning and supporting grace are swelled with many items; the view of which will make them sing the praises of God in heaven, on a higher key than innocent Adam would have done." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"The believer is sensible of his infirmities, for it is supposed that he is wrestling under them. He sees, he feels, that he is not man enough for his work; that his own hands are not sufficient for him, nor his own back for his burden; this is what drives him out of himself to the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And thus he lies open to the help of the Spirit, while proud nature in unbelievers is left helpless." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"It is the office of the Spirit to help his people's infirmities. And so a call from the Lord to any piece of work imports a promise of a gift of ability for it, the sap of which promise is to be sucked by believing it; and it is withal a call to look to the Lord for the help of his Spirit. For the Lord treats not his children as the Egyptian taskmasters did, who would have the Israelites make brick without giving them straw." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"As every good gift is from the Spirit, so the same Spirit has not given them away so to any, but that he has still lock and key on them, opening them out, and shutting up as he will. Therefore there ought to be a dependence on the Lord, for the help of his Spirit, to the exercise of any gift necessary for what the Lord calls one to." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"Innocent Adam's strength and skill failed in preserving the grace received in his creation; yet the believer's grace received in his new creation is never lost." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"Light let into the soul stirs up grace, therefore it is called the light of life. Thus the Spirit presenting a man's sin to him in its ugly colours, stirs up the grace of repentance; discovering the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, it excites love; and discovering the creature in its emptiness, excites contempt of the world." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"The hearts of men are in the hand of the Lord, to turn them what way he will." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"The kingdom of providence is put into the hand of the Mediator for the behoof of the kingdom of grace; and he guides it by his Spirit." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"The law or covenant of works exacts duty rigidly, but affords no help; the covenant of grace affords the promise of help with the command; for the latter is, but the former is not, the ministration of the Spirit." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"To unbelievers, who neither have the Spirit, nor are careful to have him dwelling in them, and influencing them, their best works are dead works, having nothing of the quickening and sanctifying Spirit in them; and they themselves are but natural men spiritually dead. Whatever flourish they make with their gifts in duties, their best duties will no more be accepted of God than carrion, or a beast that died of itself would have been accepted on the altar." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"A gift of prayer without the Spirit of prayer cannot be sufficient to make one right prayer that will be acceptable to God... As no prayer can be accepted but through Christ's intercession, so none will be offered to God by the Intercessor farther than it is the product of His own Spirit." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"Narrow asking ofttimes makes narrow receiving." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"The light of a gift without the warmth of the Spirit's grace serves to show the way to outer darkness." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"So much prayer as has been made by you without the Spirit... that if ye seek your prayers in heaven, which ye think ye have sent thither, it will be found that many of them never came there; they wanted the wings of the Spirit's influences, and so fell upon the earth, and are lost." Discourses On Prayer, Of The Spirit's Help In Prayer |
"The righteous man dies, not in a sinful, but in a holy state. He goes not away in his sin, but out of it. In his life he was putting off the old man, changing his prison garments; and now the remaining rags of them are removed, and he is adorned with robes of glory." Man’s Fourfold State, The Eternal State, Difference Between The Righteous And The Wicked In Their Death |
"If you have not an imputed righteousness, and also an implanted righteousness, or holiness; if you be yet in your natural state, unregenerated, not united to Christ by faith, however moral and blameless in the eyes of men your conversation may be, you are the wicked who shall be driven away in their wickedness, if death find you in that state." Man’s Fourfold State, The Eternal State, Difference Between The Righteous And The Wicked In Their Death |
"While there is hope, there is some restraint on the worst of men; those moral endowments which God gives to a number of men, for the benefit of mankind in this life, are so many restraints upon the impetuous wickedness of human nature. But all hope being cut off, and these gifts withdrawn, the wickedness of the wicked will then arrive at its perfection. As the seeds of grace, sown in the hearts of the elect, come to their full maturity at death; so wicked and hellish dispositions in the reprobate, come then to their highest pitch. Their prayers to God will then be turned to horrible curses, and their praises to hideous blasphemies." Man’s Fourfold State, The Eternal State, Difference Between The Righteous And The Wicked In Their Death |
"Death overturns the house built on the sand; it leaves no man under the power of delusion." Man’s Fourfold State, The Eternal State, Difference Between The Righteous And The Wicked In Their Death |
"A dying day is a good day to a godly man." Man’s Fourfold State, The Eternal State, Difference Between The Righteous And The Wicked In Their Death |
"A dying day is, in itself, a joyful day to the godly; it is their redemption day, when the captives are delivered, when the prisoners are set free. It is the day of the pilgrims coming home from their pilgrimage; the day in which the heirs of glory return from their travels, to their own country, and their Father's house; and enter into actual possession of the glorious inheritance." A dying day is a good day to a godly man." Man’s Fourfold State, The Eternal State, Difference Between The Righteous And The Wicked In Their Death |
"Endeavour to grow in knowledge, and walk closely with God: be diligent in self-examination; and pray earnestly for the Holy Spirit, whereby you may know the things freely given you of God." Man’s Fourfold State, The Eternal State, Difference Between The Righteous And The Wicked In Their Death |
"God, in the course of his providence, hides some of his saints early in the grave, that they may be taken away from the evil to come." Man’s Fourfold State, The Eternal State, Difference Between The Righteous And The Wicked In Their Death |
"When the fruit is ripe, it falls off the tree easily; so, when a Christian's heart is truly weaned from the world, he is prepared for death, and it will be the more easy to him. A heart disengaged from the world is a heavenly one: we are ready for heaven when our heart is there before us." Man’s Fourfold State, The Eternal State, Difference Between The Righteous And The Wicked In Their Death |
"Have ye never seen yourselves lost and undone under the wrath of God? If not, it is an evidence, that it lies upon you still. If ye have never seen yourselves children of the devil, it is a sure token that ye are not yet the children of God." Of Effectual Calling |
"An effectual call is the call that gains its real intent; that is to say, when the party called comes when called... To some of them it is ineffectual, and these are the most part of gospel-hearers... To others it is ineffectual, and these are but few." Of Effectual Calling |
"The elect of God, in their natural condition, are lost sheep gone astray among the devil's goats; effectual calling is the bringing them from out among them, back to Christ's fold... Thus they are, like Noah, called into the ark, where they will be safe when the deluge of wrath sweeps away the world of the ungodly." Of Effectual Calling |
"It is the Spirit of the Lord, accompanying the call of the word, that makes it effectual... And in this respect they need a powerful call, such a word from the Lord himself as makes the mountains to shake, the rocks to rend, and the graves to stir up their dead, and the whale to vomit up Jonah." Of Effectual Calling |
"Sinners naturally are not only asleep, but dead in sins. And no less power is requisite to bring them than to raise the dead, and therefore this call is a voice that raiseth the dead." Of Effectual Calling |
"The Spirit of the Lord convinces the man that he is a sinner, and sets his particular sins in order before him." Of Effectual Calling |
"The sinner is not only convinced of the sins of his life, lips, and heart, but also of the sin of his nature." Of Effectual Calling |
"Sinners will not come to Christ as long as they can find any other way; and therefore the Spirit hunts the elect out of all their starting holes, that finding no rest for the soles of their feet, they may get into the ark." Of Effectual Calling |
"The law discovers the disease, and the gospel the physician." Of Effectual Calling |
"As to the qualities with which the bodies of the saints shall be endowed at the resurrection, the apostle tells us, they shall be raised incorruptible, glorious, powerful, and spiritual... Then shall the saints be strong without meat or drink, warm without clothes, ever in perfect health without medicine, and ever fresh and vigorous, though they shall never sleep, but serve him night and day in his temple." Man’s Fourfold State, The Eternal State, Difference Between The Righteous And The Wicked In Their Death |
"As to the qualities of the bodies of the wicked at the resurrection, I find the Scripture speaks but little of them. Whatever they may need, they shall not get a drop of water to cool their tongues. Whatever may be said of their weakness, it is certain they will be continued for ever in life, that they may be ever dying; they shall bear up, however unwillingly under the load of God's wrath, and shall not faint away under it." Man’s Fourfold State, The Eternal State, Difference Between The Righteous And The Wicked In Their Death |
"Shame follows sin, as the shadow follows the body; but the wicked in this world walk in the dark, and often under a disguise; nevertheless, when the Judge comes in flaming fire at the last day, they will be brought to the light; their mask will be taken off, and the shame of their nakedness will clearly appear to themselves and others, and fill their faces with confusion." Man’s Fourfold State, The Eternal State, Difference Between The Righteous And The Wicked In Their Death |
"Ye are God's building -- All hands of the glorious Trinity are at work in this building. The Father chose the objects of mercy, and gave them to the Son to be redeemed; the Son purchased redemption for them; and the Holy Ghost applies the purchased redemption unto them." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Ye are God's building... It is more than five thousand years since this building rose above ground. And the first stone of it that appeared, was a promise, a promise of a Saviour, made in paradise after the fall, Gen. iii. 15, namely, that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent. Here was mercy. And mercy was laid upon mercy. Upon promising mercy was laid quickening mercy, whereby our lost first parents were enabled to believe the promise; and upon quickening mercy was laid pardoning mercy to them; and upon that again sanctifying and establishing mercy; and at length glorifying mercy." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Ye are God's building... The cement is blood; the blood of Jesus Christ the Mediator, which is the blood of God, Acts xx. 28. No saving mercy for sinners could consist, nor could one mercy lie firm upon another in the building, without being cemented with that precious blood; but by it the whole building consists, and stands firm for ever." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"All things brought forth in time, lay from eternity in the womb of God's decree; in virtue whereof they have their being in time." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Without such a purpose of grace in God, there could never have been such a covenant of grace. But the sovereign Lord of the creatures overlooking the fallen angels as to any purpose of mercy, entertained thoughts of love and peace towards fallen mankind, purposing in himself to make some of them everlasting monuments of his free grace and mercy, partakers of life and salvation, and so set on foot the covenant of grace." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"The party contractor then with God, in the covenant of grace, in our Lord Jesus Christ. He alone managed the interests men in this eternal bargain: for at the making of it none of them were in being; nor, if they had been, would they have been capable of affording any help." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"The covenant of grace was made with Christ as the last Adam, head and representative of his spiritual seed, that infinite love might have an early vent, even from eternity. The special love of God to the spiritual seed took vent in the covenant of grace. And that love and that covenant are of the same eternal date: as the love was everlasting, so was the covenant... if it was not made with Christ as their representative; it could not otherwise have been an eternal covenant... But as princes sometimes do, by proxy, marry young princesses, before they are marriageable, or capable to give their consent; so God, in his infinite love, married to himself all the spiritual seed, in and by Jesus Christ as their representative, not only before they were capable of consenting, but before they were at all." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"The covenant of works having been made with Adam, as a representative of his natural seed, upon the breaking thereof, sin and death are communicated to them all from him as a deadly head. This being so, it was not agreeable to the method of divine procedure with men, to break with those predestinated unto salvation severally, as principal parties, each contracting for himself in the new covenant for life; but to treat for them all with one public person, who, through his fulfilling the covenant, should be a quickening head to them, from whence life might be derived to them, in as compendious a way, as death was from the first Adam. For his mercies are above all his works." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"The party represented and contracted for, by our Lord Jesus Christ, in the covenant of grace, was the elect of mankind; being a certain number of mankind, chosen from eternity to everlasting life." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"As Adam's deadly efficacy goes as wide as his representation did in the first covenant, reaching all mankind his natural seed, and them only; so Christ's quickening efficacy goes as wide as his representation did in the second covenant, reaching all the elect, his spiritual seed, them only; and if it did not, some would be deprived of the benefit which was purchased and paid for, by the surety, in their name; the which is not consistent with the justice of God." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Fallen angels and men were both run away from God, and sinking in the sea of his wrath; and Christ, with the bond of the covenant, takes hold of men; but not of the fallen angels; them he leaves to sink unto the bottom. All the seed of Adam was sinking, as well as the seed of Abraham, which is but a part of the seed of Adam, even some of all mankind; but Christ is not said to have taken hold of the seed of Adam, that is, all mankind; but of the seed of Abraham, that is, all the elect, or the spiritual Israel, called the house of Jacob." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"In the first covenant, the whole flock of mankind was put under the hand of one shepherd, to wit, Adam; but he, losing himself, lost all the flock, and was never able to recover so much as one of them again. God had, from all eternity, put a secret mark on some of them, whereby he distinguished them from the rest -- 2 Tim. ii. 19, 'Having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his.'" A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"In Adam's representation in the covenant of works, the party represented was considered as an upright seed; but in Christ's representation in the covenant of grace, the party represented was considered as a corrupt sinful mass, laden with guilt, under the wrath of God and curse of the law. And who would have represented such a company, putting himself in their room and stead? But free love engaged our Lord Jesus to it. So the holy one of God represented wretched sinners; the beloved of the Father represented the cursed company." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Doubtless he [Jesus Christ] could have contracted for the one, as well as for the other,; but sovereignly passed by fallen angels, and caught hold of men; howbeit, the former were, in their own nature, the more worthy and excellent creatures. But in all the dispensation of grace, there is no respect to creature-worth; all is owing to the mere good pleasure of God, who hath mercy on whom he will have mercy." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"There is no universal redemption, nor universal atonement. Jesus Christ died not for all and every individual person of mankind; but for the elect only." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"The eternal Word consented to be made flesh, that all flesh might not perish: he consented to become man, to take unto a personal union with himself a human nature, to wit, a true body and a reasonable soul, according to the eternal destination of his Father. This was an instance of amazing condescension... Nay the highest angel's consent to become a worm, is not to be named in one day with the eternal Son of God, the Father's equal, his consenting to become man: for the distance between the divine nature and the human is infinite; whereas the distance between the angelic nature, and the nature of worms of the earth, is but finite." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"The Father designed a certain number of lost mankind, as it were by name, to be the constituent members of that body chosen to life, of which body Christ was the designed head; and he gave them to him for that end." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Our Lord Jesus standing as second Adam, head and representative of the particular persons of lost mankind, by name elected to life, and given to him as his spiritual seed, entered into the second covenant with his Father; accepting the promises thereof, upon the terms and condition therein proposed; consenting and engaging to fulfill the same, for them. And thus the covenant of grace was made, and concluded, betwixt the Father and Christ the second Adam, from all eternity; being the second covenant, in respect of order and manifestation to the world, though it were first in being." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"The great end, in subordination to the glory of God, for which this more intimate union and match with our nature was gone into by our Kinsman-redeemer, was to render it again fruitful in the fruits of true holiness: and without it our nature had for ever remained under absolute barrenness in that point, even as the nature of fallen angels doth." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Our Lord Jesus knew very well, the burden he took on himself in his suretiship for sinners; the character of those whom he became surety for; and that he could have no relief from them; but his love to his Father's glory, and the salvation of sinners, engaged him in it." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"In the second Adam's suretiship for the criminal debt of his spiritual seed, there was not an ensuring of the payment thereof one way or other, only; as in simple cautionary: but there was an exchange of persons in law; Christ substituting himself in their room and taking the whole obligation on himself... in virtue of that substitution, Christ became debtor in law, bound to pay that debt which he contracted not; to restore that which he took not away." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"It is true, the human nature of Christ, being a creature, owed obedience to God in virtue of its creation; and must owe it for ever, forasmuch as the creature, as a creature, is subject tot eh natural law, the eternal rule of righteousness: but Christ's putting himself in a state of servitude, taking on him the form of a bond-servant, and in the capacity of a bond-servant, performing obedience to the law, as it was stated in the covenant, for life and salvation was entirely voluntary." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"The human nature of Christ had a complete right to eternal life, and was actually possessed thereof in virtue of its union with the divine nature; so that there was no occasion for him to gain life to himself by his obedience." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Though the elect's believing, repenting, and sincere obedience, are infallibly secured in the covenant; so that whosoever, being subjects capable of these things, do live and die without them, shall undoubtedly perish, and are none of God's elect: yet I judge, that Christ did not become Surety in the covenant, in way of caution to his Father, that the elect should perform these deeds, or any other; and that that way of speaking doth not so well agree with the scripture-account of the covenant... that sinners themselves perform any part of the condition of the covenant, properly so called, cannot be admitted without prejudice to the grace of the covenant: for so far as we perform, in our own persons, any part of the condition, the reward is not of grace, but of debt." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"The sum of the matter lies here: If Christ did in the covenant become Surety in way of caution for his people's performing some deed; the performing of the condition of the covenant, properly so called, is divided betwixt Christ and them, however unequal their shares are: and if the performing of the condition is divided betwixt Christ and them, so far as their part of the performance goes, the reward is of debt to them, which obscures the grace of the covenant. According to the Scripture, the elect's believing, repenting, and sincere obedience, do belong to the promissory part of the covenant. If we consider them in their original situation, they are benefits promised in the covenant by God unto Christ the Surety, as a reward of his fulfilling of the condition of the covenant. And so they are, by the unchangeable truth of God, and his exact justice, insured beyond all possibility of failure." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"A priest is a public person, who deals with an offended God in the name of the guilty, for reconciliation by sacrifice, which he offereth to God upon an altar, being thereto called of God, that he may be accepted. So a priest speaks a relation to an altar, an altar to sacrifice, and a sacrifice to sin." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"The first covenant was made without a priest, because then there was no sin to take away; the parties therein represented, as well as the representative, were considered as innocent persons. But the second covenant was a covenant of peace and reconciliation between an offended God and sinners, not to be made but by the mediation of a priest, who should be able to remove sin, and repair the injured honour of God... And there was none fit to bear that character but Christ himself. No man was fit to bear it; because all men were sinners themselves, and such an high priest became us, as was undefiled, separated from sinners." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Had it been executed on sinners themselves, the fire of wrath would have burnt continually on them; but never would such a sacrifice have sent forth a savour smelling so sweet, as to be a savour of rest to revenging justice; forasmuch as they were not only mere creatures, whose most exquisite sufferings could not be a sufficient compensation for the injured honour of an infinite God; but they were sinful creatures too, who would still have remained sinful under their sufferings. Wherefore Jesus Christ, being both separate from sinners, and equal with God, consented in the covenant to be the sacrifice, on which the curst of the first covenant might be executed in their room and stead... And who could furnish that but Christ himself, whose divine nature was the altar from whence the sacrifice of his human nature derived its value and efficacy as infinite?" A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Not that Christ was a sacrifice only while on the cross; but that his offering of himself a sacrifice, which was begun from his incarnation in the womb, the sacrifice being led on the altar in the first moment thereof; and was continued through his whole life; was completed on the cross, and in the grave... And since Christ himself was the sacrifice, and the altar too, he himself alone could be the priest. And forasmuch as the weight of the salvation of sinners lay upon his call to that office, he was made priest of the covenant by the oath of God. As he had full power over his own life, to make himself a sacrifice for others; so his Father's solemn investing of him with this office by an oath, gave him access to offer himself effectually; even in such sort as thereby to fulfill the condition of the condition, and to purchase eternal life for them." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"What remains for sinners, that they may be personally and savingly in covenant with God, is not, as parties contractors and undertakers, to make a covenant with him for life and salvation; but only, to take hold of God's covenant already made from eternity, between the Father and Christ the second Adam, and revealed and offered to us in the gospel." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"I would have all to beware of a practical corrupting of the covenant of grace, by making covenants of their own, upon such and such terms, which they will fulfill for life and salvation... thus many, thinking that eternal salvation is proposed to them in the Word upon the condition of faith, repentance, and sincere obedience to God's law, do consent to these terms, and solemnly undertake to perform them: just binding themselves to such and such duties, that God may save their souls: and so they make their covenant... The sinfulness of this practice is great, as overlooking Christ, the great undertaker and party-contractor by the appointment of the Father; and putting themselves in his room, to do and work for themselves for life. And the danger of it must needs be great, as laying a foundation to bear the weight of their salvation, which divine wisdom saw to be quite unable to bear it." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"In the making of the covenant before the word began, the Father proposed to Christ as second Adam, their head and representative, that he should take the burden upon him for them, and be their Kinsman-redeemer, their Surety for their debt of punishment and duty, and their Priest; and Christ consented thereto from eternity." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"To believe upon some ground we see in ourselves, is very natural, but to believe merely upon a ground in another, namely righteousness in Christ, and faithfulness in God, while all in ourselves tends to make us despair, is above the reach of nature. A conscience thoroughly awakened, will convince a sinner that it is a matter of greatest difficulty." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"No work nor deed of ours whatsoever, no not faith itself, can be the condition of the covenant of grace properly so called; but only Christ's fulfilling all righteousness." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"God forbid we should go about to jostle faith and obedience out of the covenant of grace: those who do so in principle or practice, will thereby jostle themselves out of the kingdom of heaven." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Man, by the fall, having lost much of his knowledge of the law, had lost sight of many of the duties required therein: howbeit, ignorance of the law excuseth no man." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"It behoved to be an article of the covenant, that Christ should be born holy, and retain the holiness of human nature in him to the end; else the unholy birth and corrupt nature we derived from Adam, would have staked us all down eternally under the curse." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Faith uniting a sinner to Christ the head of the second covenant, makes him partaker of Christ's righteousness, as really as ever his covenant relation to Adam made him partaker of his guilt." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Unjustified, unsanctified; and unsanctified, unjustified... Consider this, ye who are far from righteousness of life, living in the neglect of the duties either of the first or second table, or both. Your ungodly and unrighteous life declares you to be yet in your sins, under the curse, and far from righteousness imputed. There is indeed a righteousness of Christ; but alas! it is not upon you; ;ye are naked for all it, and stand exposed to revenging wrath." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"When our Saviour hung on the cross, he hung there as representative of all that are his, with all their sins on him by imputation, that the body of sin might be destroyed in his sufferings for it. He hung there as the efficient meritorious cause of their mortification, that by his death they might destroy the power of death in them... Will ye then live after the flesh, not wrestling against, but fulfilling the lusts thereof; living in sin and to sin, instead of being mortified to it; and yet pretend that the satisfaction of Christ is imputed to you for righteousness? Truly you may on as good grounds say, that the blood of Christ shed for you, hath proven ineffectual; and that he hath so far missed of his aim and design in suffering for you; or that he died for you, that you might live in your sin without danger. These would make a blasphemous profession. Accordingly, your presumptuous sinful life and practice is a course of practical blasphemy against the Son of God, making him the minister of sin; and evidenceth your pretensions to the imputation of his satisfaction to be altogether vain." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Our Lord Jesus took on our nature to satisfy the law therein: the whole course of his life was a course of obedience to it, for life and salvation to us; and he suffered to satisfy it in what of that kind it had to demand, for that effect: in a word, he was born to the law, he lived to the law, and he died to the law; namely, to clear accounts with it, to satisfy it fully, and get life and salvation for us with its good leave." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"The true way to plead the promises, is to come to God in the name of Christ, and plead the fulfilling of them to us for his sake... To ask in Christ's name, believing, is to present one's self before the Lord, as a member of Christ, joined and cleaving to him offered unto us in the gospel; and for the sake of the head, to implore the free favour of the promise, relying on his merit for obtaining it." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"The promises are all of them made to Christ chiefly, even to him who purchased them with his blood; and justice requires that they be performed to him: and being performed to him, they must needs have their effect on all his members, for whom, because in themselves unworthy, he merited them. So the soul may say, However unworthy I am, yet He is worthy for whom God should do this." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Sinners in their natural state lie dead, lifeless, and moveless; they can no more believe in Christ, nor repent, than a dead man can speak or walk: but, in virtue of the promise, the Spirit of life from Christ Jesus, at the time appointed, enters into the dead soul, and quickens it; so that it is no more morally dead, but alive, having new spiritual powers put into it, that were lost by Adam's fall." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"As receiving Christ passively, the sinner that was spiritually dead, is quickened; so being quickened, he receives Christ actively." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"Since, with the commands of the law requiring obedience, the gospel also comes to us, shewing how we may be enabled to obey them acceptably, and offering us that ability in Christ Jesus; we are inexcusable in that matter; the plea of the wicked and slothful servant is rejected; and he is condemned, not only for not giving obedience, but for refusing grace and strength offered him, to enable him thereto." A View Of The Covenant Of Grace |
"It is not anything in our prayers themselves for which they are accepted, but only the intercession of Christ, for the best things in them are mixed with sin. Only such prayers are fit to be put in the Mediator's hands, and he will take them off the sinner's hand to present them to the Father, and the Father will accept them at his hand; whereas other sorts of prayer, wherein the petitioner is not sincere, or where they are wrong as to the matter of them, or are not made in the right manner, they cannot come into the Mediator's hand, and he will never present them for acceptance; and so it is impossible they can be accepted." Discourses On Prayer |
"To believe the gospel because good ministers and good books say so, or because it appears agreeable to our reason, is not faith, but opinion." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"The light of nature is not the external mean or instrument of salvation; for it brings no report of Christ." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"There may be a believing in an unseen, but not an unknown Christ. How can they believe the gospel, that know not what it is?" Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"Sanctification and belief of the truth go together." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"There is a judicial blindness on many. Men have refused to believe the gospel, that they might get continued in the embraces of their lusts, therefore God hath given them over into the hand of Satan, who has blinded them so, as they cannot behold the light and glory of the gospel." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"Men may profess and preach the gospel too, that they never believed. Man's arm may fit men to possess and preach it; but it is the arm of the Lord only that can bring men to believe it." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"The common way of the world is not God's way; and they are rare persons that are right... Many will be walled out of the visible church, and thrown away as naught, till they be left but as one of a city, and two of a family, as the gleanings of the vintage, that are to be carried to Zion above." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"Whose heart and life soever is not purified by the gospel, they do not really believe it." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"The consideration that so few believe the report of the gospel, should put every one to see himself, that he be not an unbeliever." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"Many will be affected with some gross sins of theirs against the law, who never see the venom of their unbelief of the gospel. But this is the sin that draws deepest; and therefore that is the sin which the Spirit is in a special manner to convince of." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"If ye really believe the gospel, nothing can ruin you; if ye do not, nothing can save you." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"The gospel is the last method of Heaven for the salvation of sinners; where the law failed, the gospel came to help out. But if ye miss salvation in the way of the gospel, there is not another method to follow; so it is the last ship bound for Immanuel's land, and therefore the only one." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"Persuade yourselves, that the faith of the gospel is beyond the power of nature; that there is a necessity of a power from on high to bring you to believe. This will raze the old foundation, and cause you to look up for it." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"There is no true believing or trusting to the report of the gospel, but what is the effect of the working of a divine power on the soul for that end." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |
"The gospel casts out a rope to hale sinners to land; but the sinner has no hands to lay hold on it; his very faith must be wrought in him by the Spirit." Necessity of Divine Power In Order To Faith |