Samuel Rutherford

A power ethical, politic, or moral, to oppress, is not from God, and is not a power, but a licentious deviation of a power; and is no more from God, but from sinful nature and the old serpent.

Make not Christ a liar in distrusting His promise.

If ye never had a sick night and a pained soul for sin, ye have not yet lighted upon Christ.

It is in some respect greater love in Jesus to sanctify than to justify, for He maketh us most like Himself, in His own essential portraiture and image in sanctifying us.

I pray God that I may never find my will again. Oh, that Christ would subject my will to His, and trample it under His feet.

Grow as a palm-tree on God's Mount Zion; howbeit shaken with winds, yet the root is fast.

I know that as night and shadows are good for flowers, and moonlight and dews are better than a continual sun, so is Christ's absence of special use, and that it hath some nourishing virtue in it, and giveth sap to humility, and putteth an …

It is certain that this is not only good which the Almighty has done, but that it is best; He hath reckoned all your steps to heaven.

There is nothing left to us but to see how we may be approved of Him, and how we may roll the weight of our weak souls in well-doing upon Him, who is God omnipotent.

It is no small comfort that God hath written some Scriptures to you which He hath not to others. Read these, and think God is like a friend who sendeth a letter to a whole house and family, but who speaketh in His letter to some by name …

Be not cast down. If ye saw Him who is standing on the shore, holding out His arms to welcome you to land, ye would wade, not only through a sea of wrongs, but through hell itself to be with Him.

Build your nest upon no tree here, for ye see that God hath sold the forest to death.

How soon would faith freeze without a cross!

Welcome, welcome, cross of Christ, if Christ be with it.

You must take a house beside the Physician. It will be a miracle if ye be the first sick that Christ hath put away uncured.

Christ seeketh your help in your place; give Him your hand.

Christ, in that place He hath put you, hath intrusted you with a dear pledge, which is His own glory, and hath armed you with His sword to keep the pledge, and make a good account of it to God.

There is nothing that will make you a Christian indeed, but a taste of the sweetness of Christ.

Take Christ in with you under your yoke, and let patience have her perfect work.

I find my Lord Jesus cometh not in the precise way that I lay wait for Him. He hath a manner of His own. Oh, how high are His ways above my ways

Every day we may see some new thing in Christ. His love hath neither brim nor bottom.

In our fluctuations of feeling, it is well to remember that Jesus admits no change in His affections; your heart is not the compass Jesus saileth by.

My desire is that my Lord would give me broader and deeper thoughts, to feed myself with wondering at His love.

Dearest wife, let us go on and faint not; something of ours is in heaven besides the flesh of our exalted Saviour, and we go on after our own.