Daily Readings - The Puritans Quotes

“It was a notable speech of Erasmus that he said he desired wealth and honor no more than a feeble horse does a heavy saddle.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Meditate much on hell. Let us go into hell by contemplation that we may not go into hell by condemnation.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“There seems to be some analogy and resemblance between meditation and memory. But I conceive there is a double difference. First, meditation has more sweetness in it, than the bare remembrance. The memory is the chest or cupboard to lock up a truth, meditation is the palate to feed on it. The memory is like the ark in which the manna was laid up, meditation is like Israel’s eating of manna.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“If you would attain true love unto Jesus Christ, you must get conviction of sin, and a sense of your need of Christ.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Christ effectually, strongly lays bands of love, cords of sweet enforcing grace, to persuade the soul to take Jesus Christ. Christ comes to the mind under a higher apprehension, with His rainy and wet hair, knocking, and again knocking, to show His face in such soul-redeeming beauty and excellency, as the soul must be taken captive, subdued, and overcome with the love of Christ; as the spouse is so wrought on with the beauty, grace, riches, endowments of excellency, words of love of such a husband, that she is forced to say, “I have no power, neither heart nor hand to refuse you.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“The flesh interposes and our carnal hearts interline and interlace our prayers with vain thoughts and earthly distractions. When with our censer we come to offer incense to God, we mingle sulfur with our incense. Therefore, we should labor all that we can to get the heart above the world into the presence of God and company of the blessed, that we may deal with Him as if we were by Him in Heaven, and were wholly swallowed up of His glory. Though our bodies are on earth, yet our spirits should be with our Father in heaven.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Christian, has not God secretly instructed you by His Spirit from the Word, how to read the shorthand of His providence? Do you not know that the saint’s afflictions stand for blessings?”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“There is not such a pleasant history for you to read in all the world as the history of your own lives, if you would but sit down and record from the beginning hitherto what God has been to you, and done for you; what signal manifestations and outbreakings of His mercy, faithfulness and love there have been in all the conditions you have passed through. If your hearts do not melt before you have gone half through that history, they are hard hearts indeed.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“You find parents giving suitable names to their children, that every time they looked upon them they might refresh the memory of God’s mercies (1 Sam. 1:20).”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“The devil, who by God’s permission stripped him of his goods and health, yet could not strip him of his grace.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“If God be unchangeable in doing us good, it is reason we should be unchangeable in doing Him service; if He assures us that He is our God, our “I am,” He would also that we should be His people. His we are. If He declare Himself constant in His promises, He expects we should be so in our obedience.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Be clothed with humility” (1 Pet. 5:5). But the question is now, How we should attain to, and live in the exercise of this blessed and comely grace? to which the apostle answers, Fear: be afraid with godly fear; and thence will flow humility. “Be not high-minded, but fear;” that is, fear, or be continually afraid and jealous of yourselves, and of your own naughty hearts; also fear lest, at some time or other, the devil, your adversary, should get advantage of you. Fear, lest, by forgetting what you are by nature, you also forget the need that you have of continual pardon, support, and supplies from the Spirit of grace, and so grow proud of your own abilities, or of what you have received of God, and fall into the condemnation of the devil.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Meditate upon final relapses. Meditation on this will make us earnest in prayer to God—for soundness of heart, “Make my heart sound in your statutes” (Ps. 119:80). Lord, let me not be an almost Christian. Work a thorough work of grace upon me: though I am not washed perfectly, let me be washed thoroughly (Ps. 51:2). That which begins in hypocrisy, ends in apostasy!”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Meditation on God’s truth will be a pillar of support for faith. The world hangs upon God’s power, and faith hangs upon His truth.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“He breaks us by afflictions, and upon these broken pieces of the ship, brings us safely to shore; meditate on the wisdom of God.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Meditation on His omniscience will make a Christian sincere, both in His actions and aims. Only a fool would dare to be a hypocrite before God!”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Love in the Father is like honey in the flower; it must be in the comb before it be for our use. Christ must extract and prepare this honey for us. He draws this water from the fountain through union and dispensation of fullness; we by faith, from the wells of salvation that are in Him.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“With an eye of faith, look within the veil; and whenever you come to pray, see God in heaven, and Christ at His right hand. The great work of faith is to see Him that is invisible; and the great duty of prayer is to get a sight of God in heaven, and Christ at His right hand.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“When our worship suits with the nature of God, it is spiritual and holy, not pompous and theatrical.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“God loves the saints as the purchase of His Son’s blood. They cost Him dear, and that which is so hardly got shall not be easily lost. He that was willing to expend His Son’s blood to gain them will not deny His power to keep them. God loves the saints for their likeness to Himself, so that if He loves Himself, He cannot but love Himself appearing in them; and as He loves Himself in them, so He defends Himself in defending them.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Providence carries our lives, liberties and concerns in its hand every moment. Your bread is in its cupboard; your money in its purse, your safety in its enfolding arms; and surely it is the least part of what you owe to record the favors you receive at its hands.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Labor to get as full and thorough a recognition as you are able of the providences of God concerning you from first to last. Fill your hearts with the thoughts of Him and His ways. If a single act of providence is so ravishing and transporting, what would many such be, if they were presented together to the view of the soul! If one star is so beautiful to behold, what is a constellation! Let your reflections therefore upon the acts and workings of providence for you be full, extensively and intensively. Let them be as extensively full as may be. Search backward into all the performances of providence throughout your lives.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Every believer has his watchtower as well as Habakkuk; and give me leave to say, it is an angelic employment to stand up and behold the consent of God’s attributes, the accomplishment of His ends and our own happiness in the works of providence.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“A great part of the pleasure and delight of the Christian life is made out of the observations of providence. That is, the study of Providence is so sweet and pleasant that it invites and allures the soul to search and dive into it. How pleasant is it to a well-tempered soul to behold and observe. Observe the sweet harmony and consent of divine attributes in the issues of providence!”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Use relations to the end providence designed them. Walk together as co-heirs of the grace of life; study to be mutual blessings to each other; so walk in your relations that the parting day may be sweet. Death will shortly break up the family; and then nothing but the sense of duty discharged, or the neglects pardoned, will give comfort.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“How poor, miserable, and unprovided with earthly comfort and accommodations are many millions of the inhabitants of this world! What mercies do you enjoy in the place of your habitation? What is it but a garden enclosed out of a wilderness? I may without partiality or vanity say, God has, even upon temporal accounts, provided you with one of the best rooms in the house of this world.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“They that do not see the glory of God’s holiness, cannot see anything of the true glory of His mercy and grace:”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Though their outward sufferings were very grievous, yet their inward spiritual joys were greater than their sufferings; and these supported them, and enabled them to suffer with cheerfulness. Their joy was full of glory.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“Love to God, like a gentle fire, sets the soul a-melting. Tears that come from love are never without pardoning mercy.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans

“God must deny Christ’s payment before He can deny your pardon. God will not deny what His Son has earned so dearly; and what He earned was for us, and not for Himself.”
― Randall J. Pederson, Daily Readings - The Puritans