Spurgeon's Wit

While I disagree with Mr. Spurgeon's view of the doctrine of election, I was greatly amused at his powerful wit:

"I recollect an Arminian brother telling me that he had read the Scriptures through a score or more times, and could never find the doctrine of election in them. He added that he was sure he would have done so if it had been there, for he read the Word on his knees. I said to him, 'I think you read the Bible in a very uncomfortable posture, and if you had read it in your easy chair, you would have been more likely to understand it. Pray, by all means, and the more, the better, but it is a piece of superstition to think there is anything in the posture in which a man puts himself for reading: and as to reading through the Bible twenty times without having found anything about the doctrine of election, the wonder is that you found anything at all: you must have galloped through it at such a rate that you were not likely to have any intelligible idea of the meaning of the Scriptures.'" ~ Charles Spurgeon

Seeking divine transformation

"What shall I do my suit to gain?
Oh Lamb of God for sinners slain,
I plead what thou hast done!
Didst thou not die the death for me?
Jesu, remember Calvary,
And break my heart of stone.

Oh let thy Spirit shed abroad
The love, the perfect love of God,
In this cold heart of mine!
Oh might he now descend, and rest,
And dwell for ever in my breast,
And make it all divine!"

~ Charles Wesley

Assurance before confidence

"It is by this faith . . . that we receive Christ . . . But is this the faith of assurance, or faith of adherence? The Scripture mentions no such distinction . . . And it is certain, this faith necessarily implies an assurance . . . that Christ loved me, and gave Himself for me. For 'he that believeth' with the true living faith 'hath the witness in himself': 'the Spirit witnesseth with his spirit that he is a child of God.' 'Because he is a son, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into his heart, crying, Abba, Father'; giving him an assurance that he is so, and a childlike confidence in Him. But let it be observed, that, in the very nature of the thing, the assurance goes before the confidence. For a man cannot have a childlike confidence in God till he knows he is a child of God. Therefore, confidence, trust, reliance, adherence, or whatever else it be called, is not the first, as some have supposed, but the second, branch or act of faith. " ~ John Wesley in "The Scripture Way of Salvation"

Impossible possibilities

". . . the commandments were given irrespective of human ability or inability to keep them; then when Jesus Christ came, instead of doing what we all too glibly say He did - put something easier before men, He made it a hundredfold more difficult, because He goes behind the law to the disposition." ~ Oswald Chambers

"If the old commandments were difficult, our Lord's principles are unfathomably more difficult. Our Lord goes behind the old law to the disposition. Everything He teaches is impossible unless He can put into us His Spirit and remake us from within." ~ Oswald Chambers

Contesting for the truth

"In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time." ~ Abraham Lincoln

For by grace are ye saved

The words of John Bunyan an unspecified number of years before his soul was comforted with the witness of the Holy Spirit: "Sometimes I would tell my condition to the people of God; which, when they heard, they would pity me, and would tell me of the promises; but they had as good have told me, that I must reach the sun with my finger, as have bidden me receive or rely upon the promises: and as soon I should have done it. All my sense and feeling were against me; and I saw I had an heart that would sin, and that lay under a law that would condemn." ~ John Bunyan in Grace Abounding

The strait gate and narrow way

"And though I was much troubled, and tossed, and afflicted, with the sight and sense and terror of my own wickedness, yet I was afraid to let this sight and sense go quite off my mind . . . I had seen some, who . . . seeking rather present ease from their trouble . . . cared not how they lost their guilt, so they got it out of their mind . . . but they grew harder and blinder . . . This made me afraid, and made me cry to God the more, that it might not be so with me.

In this condition I went a great while but when comforting time was come . . . I began to give place to the word which with power, did over and over make this joyful sound within my soul ... And with that my heart was filled full of comfort and hope, and now I could believe that my sins should be forgiven me." ~ John Bunyan in Grace Abounding