Quotes from John Owen

Wherefore, we do not nor ought only to believe the Scripture as highly probable, or with a moral persuasion and assurance, built upon arguments absolutely fallible and human; for if this be the formal reason of faith, namely, the veracity and authority of God, if we believe not with faith divine and supernatural, we believe not at all.

The Holy Spirit is said to be the divine, eternal, mutual love of the Father and the Son.

He that would be like unto God must be sure to love him, or all other endeavours to that purpose will be in vain; and he that loves God sincerely will be like him.

And this gives us a general rule, that the anointing with material oil under the Old Testament did prefigure and represent the effusion of the Spirit under the New, which now answers all the ends of those typical institutions.

And, indeed, whereas (as our Saviour tells us) they are things which arise from and come out of the heart that defile us, there is no greater nor more forcible motive to contend against all the defiling actings of sin, which is our mortification, than this, that by the neglect hereof the temple of the Spirit will be defiled, which we are commanded to watch against, under the severe commination of being destroyed for our neglect therein.

How do they and their fellows, the Jesuits,19 exclaim upon poor Calvin, for sometimes using the hard word of compulsion, describing the effectual, powerful working of the providence of God in the actions of men; but they can fasten the same term on the will of God, and no harm done!

Every approach unto God by ardent love and delight is transfiguring. And it acts itself continually by,—(1.) Contemplation; (2.) Admiration; and, (3.) Delight in obedience.

Our unction, therefore, is the communication of the Holy Spirit, and nothing else.

That the choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.

God is "all in all." He therefore is, or ought to be, the only supreme, absolute object of our thoughts and desires; other things are from and for him only.

The words of the text explained: to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Rom. 8:6.

But where this Spirit of liberty and boldness is, the heart is enlarged with a true, genuine openness and readiness to express all its concerns unto God as a child unto its father.