JOHN OWEN

Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.

I wish thy lot, now bad, still worse, my friend, for when at worst, they say, things always mend.

In the divine Scriptures, there are shallows and there are deeps; shallows where the lamb may wade, and deeps where the elephant may swim.

The vigor and power and comfort of our spiritual life depends on our mortification of deeds of the flesh.

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.

The most tremendous judgment of God in this world is the hardening of the hearts of men.

All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless, it must be done by the Spirit.

The custom of sinning takes away the sense of it, the course of the world takes away the shame of it.

All thing I thought I knew; but now confess, the more I know I know, I know the less.

Leanness of body and soul may go together.

After hearing the evidence, I will record a verdict of natural causes.

The house built on the sand may oftentimes be built higher, have more fair parapets and battlements, windows and ornaments, than that which is built upon the rock; yet all gifts and privileges equal not one grace.

Unless men see a beauty and delight in the worship of God, they will not do it willingly.

A man may easier see without eyes, speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit.

It is truth alone that capacitates any soul to glorify God.

Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts. He who doth not kill sin in this way takes no steps toward his journey's end.

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.

Christ is our best friend, and ere long will be our only friend. I pray God with all my heart that I may be weary of everything else but converse and communion with Him.

To those to whom Christ is the hope of future glory, he is also the life of present grace.

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?

Labour to grow better under all your afflictions, lest your afflictions grow worse, lest God mingle them with more darkness, bitterness and terror.

When someone sets his affections upon the cross and the love of Christ, he crucifies the world as a dead and undesirable thing. The baits of sin lose their attraction and disappear. Fill your affections with the cross of Christ and you will find no room for sin.

Free will is "corrupted nature's deformed darling, the Pallas or beloved self-conception of darkened minds"

Fill your affections with the cross of Christ that there may be no room for sin.

There is not a day but sin foils or is foiled, prevails or is prevailed on; and it will be so whilst we live in this world.