Quotes from Richard Sibbes

A holy despair in ourselves is the ground of true hope. In God the fatherless find mercy (Hos. 14:3); if men were more fatherless, they should feel more God's fatherly affection from heaven, for the God who dwells in the highest heavens dwells likewise in the lowest soul (Isa. 57:15).

Discouragements, then, must come from ourselves and Satan, who laboureth to fasten on us a loathing of duty.

Christ came down from heaven, and emptied himself of majesty in tender love to souls; shall we not come down from our high conceits to do any poor soul good? Shall man be proud after God hath been humble?

holy despair in ourselves is the basis for true hope. In God the fatherless find mercy (Hos. 14:3). If men were more fatherless, they should feel more God's fatherly affection from heaven, for the God who dwells in the highest heavens dwells likewise in the lowest soul (Isa. 57:15).

And there is a proud kind of moderation likewise, when men will take upon them to censure both parties, as if they were wiser than both

Despair is a high point of atheism, it takes away God and Christ both at once. Judas, in betraying our Saviour, was an occasion of his death as man, but in despairing he did what lay in him to take away his life as God.

It should be the art of Christians to present death as a passage to a better life, to labour to bring our souls into such a condition, as to think death not to be a death to us, but the death of itself. Death dies when I die, and I begin to live when I die. It is a sweet passage to life. We never live till we die.

If those also of the younger sort would ask of themselves, why God should not have the flower and marrow of their age? And why they should give their strength to the devil?

people will frame a divinity to themselves, pleasing to the flesh suitable to their own ends, which, being vain in the substance, will prove likewise vain in the fruit, and as a building upon the sand.

Two things trouble the peace of Christians very much (1), their weaknesses hanging upon them, and (2) fear of holding out for time to come.

Some think it strength of grace to endure nothing in the weaker, whereas the strongest are readiest to bear with the infirmities of the weak.

Never fear to go to God, since we have such a Mediator with him, who is not only our friend but our brother and husband