Christian Leaders of the Eighteenth Century (Updated, Annotated) Quotes

“(1.) Preach Christ crucified, and dwell chiefly on the blessings resulting from his righteousness, atonement, and intercession. (2.) Avoid all needless controversies in the pulpit; except it be when your subject necessarily requires it, or when the truths of God are likely to suffer by your silence. (3.) When you ascend the pulpit, leave your learning behind you: endeavour to preach more to the hearts of your people than to their heads. (4.) Do not affect much oratory. Seek rather to profit than to be admired.”
― J. C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century

“So that the best believer, if he knows what he says, and says the truth, is but a sinner at the best.”
― J. C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century

“Like infants, when they are born into the world, God's children are not born again in the full possession of their spiritual faculties; and it is well and wisely ordered that it is so. What we win easily, we seldom value sufficiently. The very fact that believers have to struggle and fight hard before they get hold of real soundness in the faith, helps to make them prize it more when they have attained it. The truths that cost us a battle are precisely those which we grasp most firmly, and never let go.”
― J.C. Ryle, Christian Leaders of the 18th Century

“The old man woke up at once. “Ay, ay!” cried Whitefield, fixing his eyes on him, “I have waked you up, have I? I meant to do it. I am not come here to preach to stocks and stones: I have come to you in the name of the Lord God of Hosts, and I must, and will, have an audience.”
― J.C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century

“He was the first to see that Christ’s ministers must do the work of fishermen. They must not wait for souls to come to them, but must go after souls, and “compel them to come in.”
― J.C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century

“Content with their hardly-won triumphs, that worthy body of men seemed to rest upon their oars. In the plenary enjoyment of their rights of conscience, they forgot the great vital principles of their forefathers, and their own duties and responsibilities.”
― J.C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century

“To swear extempore, it was remarked by some, brought an Oxford student into no trouble; but to pray extempore was an offence not to be borne!”
― J.C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century

“Wherein do evangelical Churchmen fall short of their great predecessors in the last century I Let us look this question fairly in the face. Let us come to particulars. They fall short in doctrine. They are neither so full nor so distinct, nor so bold, nor so uncompromising. They are afraid of strong statements. They are too ready to fence, and guard, and qualify all their teaching, as if Christ’s gospel was a little baby, and could not be trusted to walk alone. They fall short as preachers. They have neither the fervour, nor fire, nor thought, nor illustration, nor directness, nor holy boldness, nor grand simplicity of language which characterized the last century. Above all, they fall short in life. They are not men of one thing, separate from the world, unmistakable men of God, ministers of Christ everywhere, indifferent to man’s opinion, regardless who is offended, if they only preach truth, always about their Father’s business, as Grimshaw and Fletcher used to be. They do not make the world feel that a prophet is among them, and carry about with them their Master’s presence, as Moses when he came down from the mount. I write these things with sorrow. I desire to take my full share of blame. But I do believe I am speaking the truth.”
― J. C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century

“Some made it an excuse for not attending the church service on a Sunday morning, that they could not awake early enough to get their families ready. He provided for this also. Taking a bell in his hand, he set out every Sunday for some months at five in the morning, and went round the most distant parts of the parish inviting all the inhabitants to the house of God.”
― J. C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century

“In another letter he says: “A man may be constitutionally meek as the lamb, constitutionally kind as the spaniel, constitutionally cheerful as the lark, and constitutionally modest as the owl; but these things are not sanctification. No sweet, humble, heavenly tempers, no sanctifying graces, are found but from the cross.”
― J. C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century

“(1.) To repent without despairing; (2.) To believe without being presumptuous; (3.) To rejoice without falling into levity; (4.) To be angry without sinning.”
― J. C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century

“I want to know one thing,—the way to heaven—how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way; for this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. Oh, give me that book! At any price give me the book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be a man of one book.”
― J. C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century

“I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath, And when my voice is lost in death, Praise shall employ my noblest powers; My days of praise shall ne’er be past, While life, and thought, and being last, Or immortality endures.”
― J. C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century

“Here again is one grand element of a preacher’s success. He must labour by all means to be understood. It was a wise saying of Archbishop Usher, “To make easy things seem hard is every man’s work; but to make hard things easy is the work of a great preacher.”
― J. C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century

“There are Lutherans and Wesleyans in the present day, but there are no Whitefieldites. No! The great evangelist of last century was a simple, guileless man, who lived for one thing only, and that was to preach Christ.”
― J. C. Ryle, Christian Leaders Of The 18th Century