John Bunyan

“ O! damned souls will have thoughts that will clash with glory, clash with justice, clash with law, clash with itself, clash with hell, and with the everlastingness of misery; but the point, the edge, and the poison of all these thoughts will still be galling, and dropping, and spewing out their stings into the sore, grieved, wounded, and fretted place, which is the conscience, though not the conscience only; for I may say of the souls in hell, that they all over are but one wound, one sore! Miseries as well as mercies sharpen and make quick the apprehensions of the soul. ”

“ For it is the soul that sins, that the soul might die! O! sin, what art thou? What hast thou done? and what still wilt thou further do, if mercy, and blood and grace doth not prevent thee? O silly soul! what a fool has sin made of thee? what an ass art thou become to sin? that ever an immortal soul, at first made in the image of God, for God, and for his delight, should so degenerate from its first station, and so abase itself that it might serve sin, as to become the devil's ape, and to play like a Jack Pudding for him upon any stage or theatre in the world! ”

“ Poor, lame, infirm, helpless man, cannot live without tender—great—rich—manifold—abounding mercies. 'No faith, no hope,' 'to hope without faith is to see without eyes, or expect without reason.' Faith is the anchor which enters within the vail; Christ in us the hope of glory is the mighty cable which keeps us fast to that anchor. 'Faith lays hold of that end of the promise that is nearest to us, to wit, in the Bible—Hope lays hold of that end that is fastened to the mercy-seat.' Thus the soul is kept by the mighty power of God. ”

“ That hope and the exercise of it, is as necessary in its place, as faith, and the exercise of it. All will grant that there is need of a daily exercise of faith; and we are bid to hope unto the end, because hope is the grace that relieveth the soul when dark and weary. Hope is as the bottle to the faint and sinking spirit. Hope calls upon the soul not to forget how far it is arrived in its progress towards heaven. Hope will point and show it the gate afar off; and therefore it is called the hope of salvation. Hope exerciseth itself upon God. ”

“ There all shall be well to all eternity. Further, all the parts of, and circumstances that attend salvation, are only there to be enjoyed; there only is immortality and eternal life; there is the glory and fulness of joy, and the everlasting pleasures; there is God and Christ to be enjoyed by open vision, and more; there are the angels and the saints; further, there is no death, nor sickness, no sorrow nor sighing for ever; there is no pain, nor persecutor, nor darkness, to eclipse our glory. O this Mount Zion! O this heavenly Jerusalem! ”

“ God forbid! but, on the contrary, we hear the voice of the divinity proclaiming, 'Not many wise men after the flesh—not many mighty—not many noble.' 'Thus saith the Lord, Heaven is my throne, the earth my footstool.' He looketh upon the high and low—the learned and the noble—the mighty princes and the unlettered labourer; and then makes this wondrous declaration—'To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.' The world will treat such humble ones as it treated the Lord of life and glory, with scorn, contempt, insult, robbery—death. ”

“ For by this doctrine, 'Christ died for our sins,' God damneth to death and hell the righteousness of the world. Christ must die, or man be damned. Where is now any room for the righteousness of men? room, I say, for man's righteousness, as to his acceptance and justification? Bring, then, thy righteousness to the cross of Jesus Christ, and in his blood behold the demands of justice; behold them, I say, in the cries and tears, in the blood and death of Jesus Christ. Look again, and behold the person dying; such an one as never sinned nor offended at any time, yet he dies. ”

“ O! a broken heart can savour pardon, can savour the consolations of the Holy Ghost. Yea, as a hungry or thirsty man prizes bread and water in the want thereof, so do the broken in heart prize and set a high esteem on the things of the Lord Jesus. His flesh, his blood, his promise, and the light of his countenance, are the only sweet things both to scent and taste, to those that are of a wounded spirit. The full soul loatheth the honey-comb; the whole despise the gospel, they savour not the things that are of God. ”

“ Oh, how hardly is sin got out of the soul when once it is in! Blood takes away the guilt; inherent grace weakens the filth; but the grave is the place, at the mouth of which, sin, as to the being of sin, and the saved, must have a perfect and final parting. (Isa 38:10) Not that the grave of itself is of a sin-purging quality, but God will follow Satan home to his own door; for the grave is the door or gate of hell, and will there, where the devil thought to have swallowed us up, even there by the power of his mercy make us, at our coming thence, shine like the sun, and look like angels. ”

“ Nevertheless, because I endeavour thy conviction, conversion, and salvation, consider: Do they cry out of sin, being burthened with it, as of an exceeding bitter thing? Do they fly from it, as from the face of a deadly serpent? Do they cry out of the insufficiency of their own righteousness, as to justification in the sight of God? Do they cry out after the Lord Jesus, to save them? Do they see more worth and merit in one drop of Christ's blood to save them, than in all the sins of the world to damn them? Are they tender of sinning against Jesus Christ? ”

“ Grace is sometimes taken for love; never any loved like Jesus Christ. Jonathan's love went beyond the love of women; but the love of Christ passes knowledge. It is beyond the love of all the earth, of all creatures, even of men and angels. His love prevailed with him to lay aside his glory, to leave the heavenly place, to clothe himself with flesh, to be born in a stable, to be laid in a manger, to live a poor life in the world, to take upon him our sicknesses, infirmities, sins, curse, death, and the wrath that was due to man. ”

“ In the midst of all this violent depravity, the Holy Spirit began the work of regeneration in his soul—a long, a solemn, yea, an awful work—which was to fit this poor debauched youth for purity of conduct—for communion with heaven—for wondrous usefulness as a minister of the gospel—for patient endurance of sufferings for righteousness' sake—for the writing of works which promise to be a blessing to the Church in all ages—for his support during his passage through the black river which has no bridge—to shine all bright and glorious, as a star in the firmament of heaven. ”

“ How desperate the conflict—the mouth of hell yawning to swallow him—man cannot aid the poor warrior, all his help is in God. Is it not a wonder to see a poor creature, who in himself is weaker than the moth, to stand against and overcome all devils—all the world—all his lusts and corruptions; or, if he fall, is it not a wonder to see him, when devils and guilt are upon him, to rise again, stand upon his legs, walk with God again, and persevere in faith and holiness? ”

“ The fire of his justice shall burn up all thy rags of righteousness wherewith by the law thou hast clothed thyself, and will leave thee nothing but a soul full of sin to bemoan, and eternal burnings to grapple with. O the burnings that will then beset sinners on every side, and that will eat their flesh and torment their spirit with far more terror than if they were stricken with scorpions! ”

“ Despair! when we have a God of mercy, and a redeeming Christ alive! For shame, forbear; let them despair that dwell where there is no God, and that are confined to those chambers of death which can be reached by no redemption. A living man despair when he is chid for murmuring and complaining! (Lam 3:39) . Oh! so long as we are where promises swarm, where mercy is proclaimed, where grace reigns, and where Jerusalem sinners are privileged with the first offer of mercy, it is a base thing to despair. Despair undervalues the promise, undervalues the invitation, undervalues the proffer of grace. ”

“ Dost thou not inwardly, and with indignation against sin, say, O that I might never, never feel one such motion more? O that my soul were so full of grace, that there might be longer no room for ever for the least lust to come into my thoughts! 3. What kind of thoughts hast thou of thyself, now thou seest these desires of thine that are good so briskly opposed by those that are bad? Dost thou not say, O! I am the basest of creatures, I could even spew at myself? There is no man in all the world in my eyes so loathsome as myself is. I abhor myself; a toad is not so vile as I am. ”

“ But, I say, what a thing is sin, what a devil and master of devils is it, that it should, where it takes hold, so hang that nothing can unclinch its hold but the mercy of God and the heart-blood of his dear Son! O the fretting, eating, infecting, defiling, and poisonous nature of sin, that it should so eat into our flesh and spirit, body and soul, and so stain us with its vile and stinking nature: yea, it has almost turned man into the nature of itself; insomuch as that sometimes, when nature is mentioned, sin is meant ”

“ O the plausible pretences, the golden names, the feigned holiness, the demure behaviours, mixed with damnable hypocrisy, that attend the persons that have forsaken the Lord Jesus, that have despised his person, trampled upon him, and counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing! They have crucified him to themselves, and think that they can go to heaven without him; yea, pretend they love him, when they hate him; pretend they have him, when they have cast him off; pretend they trust in him, when they bid defiance to his undertakings for the world. ”

“ Grace, when it comes, shows to a man more of the holiness and patience of God; his holiness to make us wonder at his patience, and his patience to make us wonder at his mercy, that yet, even yet, such a vile one as I am, should be admitted to breathe in the land of the living, yea more, suffered to come to the throne of grace. (4.) Grace is of a heart-humbling nature: it will make a man count himself the most unworthy of anything, of all saints. It will make a man put all others afore him, and be glad too, if he may be one beloved, though least beloved, because most unworthy. ”