Fire and water may as well agree in the same vessel, as grace and sin in the same heart.
Interpretation
Goodness and wrongdoing cannot coexist in the same individual.
This quote by Thomas Brooks suggests that grace, representing goodness and virtue, cannot coexist with sin, which represents wrongdoing, within the same heart. It highlights the internal struggle between moral values and immoral actions, emphasizing that one must ultimately choose between the two sides of human nature.
In practice
During a sermon discussing moral integrity.
Remember this-all the sighing, mourning, sobbing, and complaining in the world, does not so undeniably evidence a man to be humble, as his overlooking his own righteousness, and living really and purely upon the righteousness of Christ.
Grace and glory differ very little; the one is the seed, the other is the flower; grace is glory militant, glory is grace triumphant.
He is the best preacher, not that tickles the ear, but that breaks the heart.
Ah! sinner, remember this, there is no way on earth effectually to be rid of the guilt, filth, and power of sin, but by believing in a Saviour. It is not resolving, it is not complaining, it is not mourning, but believing, that will make thee divinely victorious over that body of sin that to this day is too strong for thee, and that will certainly be thy ruin, if it be not ruined by a hand of faith.
Self is the only oil that makes the chariot-wheels of the hypocrite move in all religious concerns.
Humility can weep over other men's weaknesses, and joy and rejoice over their graces.
A virgin can conceive. A dead body can walk again. Your leprosy can be cured. The blind can see. Nonsense. It’s not moral to lie to children. It’s not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people and tell them that if they only would believe nonsense, they can be saved. It’s immoral.
It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn’t the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn’t we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed?
Mathematics can remove no prejudices and soften no obduracy. It has no influence in sweetening the bitter strife of parties, and in the moral world generally its action is perfectly null.
We will never end poverty if we don't tackle climate change.
Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, 'Repent,' he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
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