Stephen Charnock Quotes

When we believe that we should be satisfied rather than God glorified in our worship, then we put God below ourselves as though He had been made for us rather than that we had been made for Him.

We often learn more of God under the rod that strikes us than under the staff that comforts us.

Let us look upon a crucified Christ, the remedy of all our miseries. His cross hath procured a crown, his passion hath expiated our transgression. His death hath disarmed the law, his blood hath washed a believer's soul. This death is the destruction of our enemies, the spring of our happiness, and the eternal testimony of divine love.

Power is God's hand or arm, omniscience is God's eye, mercy is God's delight, eternity is God's duration, but holiness is God's beauty!

Our ignorance of God is too great, because our estimations of God are too little.

God knows all that is done in the most secret caverns of the heart. No place is deprived of his presence.

In regard of God, patience is a submission to His sovereignty. To endure a trial, simply because we cannot avoid or resist it, is not Christian patience. But to humbly submit because it is the will of God to inflict the trial, to be silent because the sovereignty of God orders it - is true godly patience.

A man may be theologically knowing and spiritually ignorant.

Pride is self contending with God for preeminence.

Adoption gives us the privilege of sons, regeneration the nature of sons.

Works make not the heart good, but a good heart makes the works good.

A proud faith is as much a contradiction as a humble devil.

Self is the great antichrist and anti-God in the world, that sets up itself above all else.

Without the heart it is no worship; it is a stage play; an acting a part without being that person really which is acted by us: a hypocrite, in the notion of the word, is a stageplayer.

The little time that remains between this moment and our death, should quicken our diligence to inherit the endless and unchangeable eternity of God.

Since nothing but God is eternal, nothing but God is worth the loving.

Assurance is the fruit that grows out of the root of faith.

We may be truly said to worship God, though we lack perfection; but we cannot be said to worship Him if we lack sincerity.

God doth not govern the world only by his will as an absolute monarch, but by his wisdom and goodness as a tender father. It is not his greatest pleasure to show his sovereign power, or his inconceivable wisdom, but his immense goodness, to which he makes the other attributes subservient.

Without the heart it’s not worship, it’s a stage play.

Paul was so much taken with Christ, that nothing sweeter than Jesus could drop from his lips and pen.

How worthy it is to remember former benefits when we come to beg for new.

Since we are dead in sin, a spiritual light and flame in the heart suitable to the nature of the object of our worship, cannot be raised in us without the operation of supernatural grace... such a worship God must have, whereby he is acknowledged to be the true sanctifier and quickener of the soul.

How comfortable it is to have One, day and night, before the throne to control the charge of our enemy, and the despondencies of our souls.

Accustom yourself to serious meditation every morning. Fresh airing our souls in heaven will engender in us a purer spirit and nobler thoughts. A morning seasoning will secure us for all the day.