John Owen Quotes
Satan's greatest success is in making people think they have plenty of time before they die to consider their eternal welfare.
If private revelations agree with Scripture, they are needless, and if they disagree, they are false.
Christ did not die for any upon condition, if they do believe; but He died for all God's elect, that they should believe.
Every time we say we believe in the Holy Spirit, we mean we believe that there is a living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it.
We are never nearer Christ than when we find ourselves lost in a holy amazement at His unspeakable love.
The first and principal duty of a pastor is to feed the flock by diligent preaching of the word
We can have no power from Christ unless we live in a persuasion that we have none of our own.
Temptation is like a knife, that may either cut the meat or the throat of a man; it may be his food or his poison, his exercise or his destruction
I do not understand how a man can be a true believer, in whom sin is not the greatest burden, sorrow and trouble.
If a man teach uprightly and walk crookedly, more will fall down in the night of his life than he built in the day of his doctrine.
The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him is not to believe that he loves you.
A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.
We speak much of God, can talk of him, his ways, his works, his counsels, all the day long; the truth is, we know very little of him.
The more I see of the glory of Christ, the more the painted beauties of this world will wither in my eyes.
For to pretend that men may live habitually sinful lives without any attempt by the Spirit to mortify sin in them, nor with any desire for repentance, is to deny the Christian religion.
Unless we are thoroughly convinced that without Christ we are under the eternal curse of God, as the worst of His enemies, we shall never flee to Him for refuge.
If we would talk less and pray more about them, things would be better than they are in the world: at least, we should be better enabled to bear them.
Temptations and occasions put nothing into a man, but only draw out what was in him before.
Pardon comes not to the soul alone; or rather, Christ comes not to the soul with pardon only! It is that which He opens the door and enters by, but He comes with a Spirit of life and power.
We shall not benefit from reading the Old Testament unless we look for and meditate on the glory of Christ in its pages.
We must not be concerned only with that which troubles us, but with all that troubles God.
A true saving knowledge of sin is to be had only in the Lord Christ: in him may we see the desert of our iniquities.
Indwelling sin always abides whilst we are in this world; therefore it is always to be mortified.
Did you never run for shelter in a storm, and find fruit which you expected not? Did you never go to God for safeguard, driven by outward storms, and there find unexpected fruit?
As a tender and loving friend is grieved at the unkindness of his friend... so is it with this tender and loving Spirit, who hath chosen our hearts for a habitation to dwell in.
Before the work of grace the heart is ‘stony.’ It can do no more than a stone can do to please God.
To suppose that whatever God requireth of us that we have power of ourselves to do, is to make the cross and grace of Jesus Christ of none effect.
It is one thing to fear God as threatening, with a holy reverence, and another to be afraid of the evil threatened.
To those to whom Christ is the hope of future glory, he is also the life of present grace.
The good Lord send out a spirit of mortification to cure our distempers, or we are in a sad condition!
A man may be carried on in a constant course of mortification all his days; and yet perhaps never enjoy a good day of peace and consolation.
No man shall ever behold the glory of Christ by sight hereafter who does not in some measure behold it here by faith.
There wanted not some beams of light to guide men in the exercise of their Stocastick faculty.
The indulgence of one sin opens the door to further sins. The indulgence of one sin diverts the soul from the use of those means by which all other sins should be resisted.
Let no man pretend to fear sin that does not fear temptation also! These two are too closely united to be separated. He does not truly hate the fruit who delights in the root.
There is no broader way to apostasy than to reject God's sovereignty in all things concerning the revelation of himself and our obedience.