Quotes from Richard Sibbes

Ministers by their calling are friends of the Bride, and to bring Christ and his Spouse together, and therefore ought, upon all good occasions, to lay open all the excellencies of Christ

He died that he might heal our souls with a plaster of his own blood, and by that death save us, which we were the procurers of ourselves, by our own sins.

To show that the creature cannot be so low but there is somewhat in God above the misery of the creature, his mercy shall triumph over the basest estate where he will show mercy. Therefore there is mercy above all mercy and love above all love, in that Christ was a servant.

Sometimes a Christian has such confused thoughts that he can say nothing but, as a child, cries, `O Father', not able to express what he needs, like Moses at the Red Sea. These stirrings of spirit touch the heart of God and melt him into compassion towards us, when they come from the Spirit of adoption, and from a striving to be better.

Oh, but is it possible', thinks the misgiving heart, `that so holy a God should accept such a prayer?' Yes, he will accept that which is his own, and pardon that which is ours.

It yields us comfort also in desolate conditions, such as contagious sicknesses and the like, in which we are more immediately under God's hand, that then Christ has a throne of mercy at our bedside and numbers our tears and our groans.

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

It does not matter as much what bad is in us as what is good; not what corruptions remain but how we regard them; not what our particular failings are so much as what the thread and tenor of our lives are, for Christ's displeasure of that which is wrong in us does not turn to his hatred of us but to his victory over all of our weaknesses.

We are only poor for this reason, that we do not know our riches in Christ.

Where Christ's laws are written in the heart, there all other good laws are best obeyed. None despise man's law but those that despise Christ's first.

A man knows no more in religion than he loves and embraceth with the affections of his soul.

The life of a Christian is wondrously ruled in this world, by the consideration and meditation of the life of another world.