Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners Quotes

“...Great sins do draw out great grace; and where guilt is most terrible and fierce, there the mercy of God in Christ, when showed to the soul, appears most high and mighty...”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“Oh, the remembrance of my great sins, of my great temptations, and of my great fears of perishing forever! They bring afresh into my mind the remembrance of my great help, my great support from Heaven, and the great grace that God extended to such a wretch as I.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“...I am for going on, and venturing my eternal state with Christ, whether I have comfort here or no; if God doth not come in, thought I, I will leap off the ladder even blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell; Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do; if not, I will venture for thy name.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“whether we had best have our meeting or not; and whether it might not be better for me to depart, lest they should take me and have me before the justice, and after that send me to prison (for he knew better than I what spirit they were of, living by them): to whom I said, No, by no means, I will not stir, neither will I have the meeting dismissed for this.  Come, be of good cheer; let us not be daunted; our cause is good, we need not be ashamed of it; to preach God’s Word, is so good a work, that we shall be well rewarded, if we suffer for that; or to this purpose -”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“I thought I might now have an opportunity to speak my last words to a multitude, which I thought would come to see me die; and, thought I, if it must be so, if God will but convert one soul by my very last words, I shall not count my life thrown away, nor lost.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“But oh! how I now loved those words that spake of a Christian’s calling! as when the Lord said to one, Follow Me; and to another, Come after Me: and oh, thought I, that He would say so to me too: how gladly would I run after Him! 73.  I cannot now express with what longings and breathings in my soul, I cried to Christ to call me.  Thus I continued for a time, all on a flame to be converted to Jesus Christ; and did also see at that day, such glory in a converted state, that I could not be contented without a share therein. ”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“because”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners: A Brief Account of God’s Exceeding Mercy through Christ to His Poor Servant, John Bunyan

“Now I thought, surely I am possessed of the devil: at other times, again, I thought I should be bereft of my wits; for instead of lauding and magnifying God the Lord, with others, if I have but heard Him spoken of, presently some most horrible blasphemous thought or other would bolt out of my heart against Him; so that whether I did think that God was, or again did think there was no such thing, no love, nor peace, nor gracious disposition could I feel within me.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“Cobb.  You know, saith he, that the Scripture saith, the powers that be, are ordained of God. Bun.  I said, Yes, and that I was to submit to the King as supreme, and also to the governors, as to them who are sent by Him. Cobb.  Well then, said he, the King then commands you, that you should not have any private meetings; because it is against his law, and he is ordained of God, therefore you should not have any. Bun.  I told him that Paul did own the powers that were in his day, to be of God; and yet he was often in prison under them for all that.  And also, though Jesus Christ toldPilate, that He had no power against him, but of God, yet He died under the same Pilate; and yet, said I, I hope you will not say that either Paul, or Christ, were such as did deny magistracy, and so sinned against God in slighting the ordinance. ”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“After which, the Lord came in upon my own soul, with some staid peace and comfort through Christ; for He did give me many sweet discoveries of His blessed grace through Him; wherefore now I altered in my preaching (for still I preached what I saw and felt); now therefore I did much labour to hold forth Jesus Christ in all His offices, relations, and benefits unto the world; and did strive also to discover, to condemn, and remove those false supports and props on which the world doth both lean, and by them fall and perish.  On these things also I staid as long as on the other.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“Wherefore, to be brief; at last, being still desired by the church, after some solemn prayer to the Lord, with fasting, I was more particularly called forth, and appointed to a more ordinary and public preaching of the word, not only to and amongst them that believed, but also to offer the gospel to those who had not yet received the faith thereof; about which time I did evidently find in my mind a secret pricking forward thereto; though I bless God, not for desire of vain-glory; for at that time I was most sorely afflicted with the fiery darts of the devil, concerning my eternal state.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“But the same day, as I was in the midst of a game of Cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to strike it the second time, a voice did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which said, Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?  At this I was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to heaven, and was, as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus looking down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if He did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for these and other ungodly practices.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“is profitable for Christians to be often calling to mind the very beginnings of grace with their souls. ”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“I bless the Lord that my heart is at that point, that if any man can lay any thing to my charge, either in doctrine or in practice, in this particular, that can be proved error or heresy, I am willing to disown it, even in the very market-place; but if it be truth, then to stand to it to the last drop of my blood.  And, Sir, said I, you ought to commend me for so doing.  To err and to be a heretic are two things; I am no heretic, because I will not stand refractorily to defend any one thing that is contrary to the Word.  Prove any thing which I hold to be an error, and I will recant it.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“Bun.  That practice of theirs, I abhor, said I; yet it doth not follow that, because they did so, therefore all others will do so.  I look upon it as my duty to behave myself under the King’s government, both as becomes a man and a Christian, and if an occasion were offered me, I should willingly manifest my loyalty to my Prince, both by word and deed.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“Keel.  He said he was not so well versed in Scripture as to dispute, or words to that purpose.  And said, moreover, that they could not wait upon me any longer; but said to me, Then you confess the indictment, do you not?  Now, and not till now, I saw I was indicted. Bun.  I said, This I confess, we have had many meetings together, both to pray to God, and to exhort one another, and that we had the sweet comforting presence of the Lord among us for our encouragement; blessed be His name therefore.  I confessed myself guilty no otherwise.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“And that though one man may tell another how he should pray: yet, as I said before, he cannot pray, nor make his condition known to God, except the Spirit help.  It is not the Common Prayer-Book that can do this.  It is the Spirit that showeth us our sins, and the Spirit that showeth us a Saviour, Jn. xvi. 16, and the Spirit that stirreth up in our hearts desires to come to God, for such things as we stand in need of, Matt. xi. 27, even sighing out our souls unto Him for them with groans which cannot be uttered.  With other words to the”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“I said, Because I did not find it commanded in the Word of God. Keel.  He said, We were commanded to pray. Bun.  I said, But not by the Common Prayer-Book. Keel.  He said, How then? Bun.  I said, With the Spirit.  As the apostle saith, I will pray with the Spirit, and with the understanding.  1 Cor. xiv. 15.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“At the first he told them he would; but afterwards he made a demur at the business, and desired first to see my mittimus, which ran to this purpose: That I went about to several conventicles in the county, to the great disparagement of the government of the church of England, etc.  When he had seen it, he said that there might be something more against me than was expressed in my mittimus;”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“And in this I admire the wisdom of God, that He made me shy of women from my first conversion until now.  Those shy of women know, and can also bear me witness, with whom I have been most intimately concerned, that it is a rare thing to see me carry it pleasant towards a woman: the common salutation of women I abhor; ’tis odious to me in whomsoever I see it.  Their company alone, I cannot away with; I seldom so much as touch a woman’s hand; for I think these things are not so becoming me. ”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“Oh! I cannot now express what then I saw and felt of the steadiness of Jesus Christ, the rock of man’s salvation: What was done, could not be undone, added to, nor altered.  I saw, indeed, that sin might drive the soul beyond Christ, even the sin which is unpardonable; but woe to him that was so driven, for the word would shut him out.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“And as I went on and read, I lighted upon that passage, To one is given, by the Spirit, the word of wisdom; to another the word knowledge by the same Spirit; and to another faith, etc.  1 Cor. xii.  And though, as I have since seen, that by this scripture the Holy Ghost intends, in special, things extraordinary, yet on me it did then fasten with conviction, that I did want things ordinary, even that understanding and wisdom that other Christians had.  On this word I mused, and could not tell what to do, especially this word ‘Faith’ put me to it, for I could not help it, but sometimes must question, whether I had any faith, or no; but I was loath to conclude, I had no faith; for if I do so, thought I, then I shall count myself a very cast-away indeed.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“Now I was, as they said, become godly; now I was become a right honest man.  But oh! when I understood these were their words and opinions of me, it pleased me mighty well.  For, though as yet I was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet, I loved to be talked of as one that was truly godly. ”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“but one day, as I was standing at a neighbour’s shop window, and there cursing and swearing, and playing the madman, after my wonted manner, there sate within, the woman of the house, and heard me; who, though she also was a very loose and ungodly wretch, yet protested that I swore and cursed at that most fearful rate, that she was made to tremble to hear me; and told me further, that I was the ungodliest fellow for swearing, that she ever heard in all her life; and that I, by thus doing, was able to spoil all the youth in the whole town, if they come but in my company.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“This woman and I, though we came together as poor as poor might be (not having so much household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt us both), yet this she had for her part: The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven and The Practice of Piety; which her father had left her when he died.  In these two books I would sometimes read with her, wherein I also found some things that were somewhat pleasing to me (but all this while I met with no conviction).  She also would be often telling of me what a godly man her father was, and how he would reprove and correct vice, both in his house, and among his neighbours; what a strict and holy life he lived in his days, both in word and deed.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“But God did not utterly leave me, but followed me still, not now with convictions, but judgments; yet such as were mixed with mercy.  For once I fell into a creek of the sea, and hardly escaped drowning.  Another time I fell out of a boat into Bedford river, but, mercy yet preserved me alive: besides, another time, being in a field, with one of my companions, it chanced that an adder passed over the highway, so I having a stick in my hand, struck her over the back; and having stunned her, I forced open her mouth with my stick, and plucked her sting out with my fingers; by which act had not God been merciful unto me, I might by my desperateness, have brought myself to my end.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“Remember also the word, the word, I say, upon which the Lord hath caused you to hope: if you have sinned against light, if you are tempted to blaspheme, if you are drowned in despair, if you think God fights against you, or if heaven is hid from your eyes; remember it was thus with your father; but out of them all the Lord delivered me.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

“But it is forever! Oh, this cutting EVER! What a soul-”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners: A Brief Account of God’s Exceeding Mercy through Christ to His Poor Servant, John Bunyan

“Fost.  So (said he), I understand: but well, if you will promise to call the people no more together, you shall have your liberty to go home; for my brother is very loath to send you to prison, if you will be but ruled. Bun.  Sir (said I), pray what do you mean by calling the people together? my business is not anything among them, when they are come together, but to exhort them to look after the salvation of their souls, that they may be saved, etc. Fost.  Saith he, We must not enter into explication, or dispute now; but if you will say you will call the people no more together, you may have your liberty; if not, you must be sent away to prison. Bun.  Sir, said I, I shall not force or compel any man to hear me; but yet, if I come into any place where there is a people met together, I should, according to the best of my skill and wisdom, exhort and counsel them to seek out after the Lord Jesus Christ, for the salvation of their souls.”
― John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners