Explore Quotes by John Flavel

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

Man's extremity is God's opportunity.

Christ is so in love with holiness, that at the price of His blood He will buy it for us.

Surely if He would not spare His own Son one stroke, one tear, one groan, one sigh, one circumstance of misery, it can never be imagined that ever He should, after this, deny or withhold from His people, for whose sakes all this was suffered, any mercies, any comforts, any privilege, spiritual or temporal, which is good for them.

I think it is not very difficult to discern by the duties and converses of Christians, what frames their spirits are under. Take a Christian in a good frame, and how serious, heavenly, and profitable, will his converses and duties be! what a lovely companion is he during the continuance of it!

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

God's unspotted faithfulness never failed any soul that durst trust himself in its arms.

Whatever be the ground of one's distress, it should drive him to, not from God.

For the infinite glorious Creator of all things, to become a creature, is a mystery exceeding all human understanding.

There is no grace more excellent than faith; no sin more execrable and abominable then unbelief. Faith is the saving grace and unbelief the damning sin. (Mark 16:16) ... Before Christ can be received, the heart must be emptied and opened: but men's heart's are full of self-righteousn ess and vain confidence (Rom 10:3).

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

The knowledge of Christ is profound and large. All other sciences are but shadows; this is a boundless, bottomless ocean. Though something of Christ be unfolded in one age, and something in another, yet eternity itself cannot full unfold him.

As God did not at first choose you because you were high, He will not now forsake you because you are low.

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

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

Some providences, like Hebrew letters, must be read backwards.

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

The Scriptures teach us the best way of living, the noblest way of suffering, and the most comfortable way of dying.

The Providence of God is like Hebrew words-it can be read only backwards.

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

Jesus, our head, is already in heaven; and if the head be above water, the body cannot drown.