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The crafty person is always in danger; and when they think they walk in the dark, all their pretenses are transparent.
The art of using deceit and cunning grow continually weaker and less effective to the user.
A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence, which costs us nothing.
When we have practiced good actions awhile, they become easy; when they are easy, we take pleasure in them; when they please us, we do them frequently; and then, by frequency of act, they grow into a habit.
Every man hath greater assurance that God is good and just than he can have of any subtle speculations about predestination and the decrees of God.
Let no man deceive you with vain words or vain hopes or false notions of a slight and sudden repentance. As if heaven were a hospital founded on purpose to receive all sick and maimed persons that, when they can live no longer to the lusts of the flesh and the sinful pleasures of this world, can but put up a cold and formal petition to be admitted there. No, no, as sure as God is true, they shall never see the Kingdom of God who, instead of seeking it in the first place, make it their last refuge and retreat.
There is no readier way for a man to bring his own worth into question than by endeavoring to detract from the worth of other men.
Next to the wicked lives of men, nothing is so great a disparagement and weakening to religion as the divisions of Christians.
To be able to bear provocation is an argument of great reason, and to forgive it of a great mind.
If God were not a necessary Being of Himself, He might almost seem to be made for the use and benefit of men.
For the spiritual efficacy of the Sacrament doth not depend upon the nature of the thing received, supposing we received what our Lord appointed, and receive it with a right preparation and disposition of mind, but upon the supernatural blessing that goes along with it, and makes it effectual to those spiritual ends for which it was appointed.
Even so does he who provides for the short time of this life, but takes no care for all eternity; which is to be wise for a moment, but a fool for ever; and to act as crossly to the reason of things as can be imagined; to regard time as if it were eternity, and to neglect eternity as if it were but a short time.
For a Man cannot believe a Miracle without relying upon Sense, nor Transubstantiation without renouncing it. So that never were any two things so ill coupled together as the Doctrine of Christianity and that of Transubstantiation, because they draw several ways, and are ready to strangle one another: For the main Evidence of the Christian Doctrine, which is Miracles, is resolved into the certainty of Sense, but this Evidence is clear and point blank against Transubstantiation.
They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are the most observed.
Though all afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure.
And as for Pleasure, there is little in this World that is true and sincere, besides the Pleasure of doing our Duty, and of doing good.
How often might a man, after he had jumbled a set of letters in a bag, fling them out upon the ground before they would fall into an exact poem, yea, or so much as make a good discourse in prose? And may not a little book be as easily made by chance as this great volume of the world?
Of all parts of wisdom the practice is the best.
Men expect that religion should cost them no pains, that happiness should drop into their laps without any design and endeavor on their part, and that, after they have done what they please while they live, God should snatch them up to heaven when they die. But though the commandments of God be not grievous, yet it is fit to let men know that they are not thus easy.
Zeal is fit for wise men, but flourishes chiefly among fools.
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