17th-century Theologian Quotes

Emanuel Swedenborg

John Bunyan

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

George Fox

Isaac Watts

Gilbert Burnet

Roger Williams

Men are; more inclined to ask curious questions than to obtain necessary instruction.

Pasquier Quesnel

God hath put no such difference between the Male and Female as man would make.

The sun discovers atoms, though they be invisible by candle-light, yet that makes them dance naked in his beams.

Nathaniel Culverwell

Trouble is a thing that will come without our call, but true joy will not spring up without ourselves.

All truth is a shadow, except the last; but every truth is a substance in its own place, though it be but a shadow in another place; and the shadow is a true shadow, as the substance is a true substance.

Isaac Penington

The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment. Whereas the groanings of the righteous are but short, and their jubilee and triumph shall be everlasting.

Ebenezer Erskine

We must not indulge our inclinations, as we do little children, till they grow weary of the thing they are unwilling to let go. We must not continue our sinful practices in hopes that the divine grace will one day overpower our spirits, and make us hate them for their own deformity.

Entrance into Heaven is not at the hour of death, but at the moment of conversion.

Benjamin Whichcote

Passing too eagerly upon a provocation loses the guard and lays open the body; calmness and leisure and deliberation do the business much better.

But as Geographers use to place Seas upon that place of the Globe which they know not: so chronologers, who are near of kin to them, use to blot out ages past, which they know not. They drown those Countries which they know not: These with cruel pen kill the times they heard not of, and deny which they know not.

Isaac La Peyrère

Though some may have more than others, yet every one hath his load, as much as he can carry. Every vessel cannot bear up with the like sail, and therefore God, to keep us from oversetting, puts on so much as will safest bring us to heaven, our desired port.

Ezekiel Hopkins

The pride of life hath corrupted the judgment of others, and perverted them in the way of religion.

George Gillespie

Jesus... never laughed. Nothing has ever equaled the seriousness of his life; it is clear that pleasure, recreation, anything that could divert the mind, had no part in it. The life of Jesus was utterly taut, wholly caught up in God and in the woes of men, and he gave to nature only what he could not have refused it without destroying it.

No man can certainly know, or ought to conclude, concerning himself or others, as long as they live, that the season of grace is quite over with them. As we can conceive no rule God hath set to Himself to proceed by, in ordinary cases of this nature; so nor is there any He hath set unto us to judge by, in this case. It were to no purpose, and could be of no use to men to know so much; therefore it were unreasonable to expect God should have settled and declared any rule, by which they might come to the knowledge of it.

John Howe (cleric)

In the shadow of death he produces life, and though the senses are terrified, faith taking all for the best, is full of courage and assurance.

Jean Pierre de Caussade

He who has no mind to trade with the Devil should be so wise as to keep from his shop.

I shall I not equivocate, there is a meeting of men and women and there is a meeting only for women.

Anne Hutchinson

In the midst of the disguises and artifices that reign among men, it is only attention and vigilance that can save us from surprises.

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

So the question is, First, Whether the civil magistrate hath power to force men in things religious to do contrary to their conscience, and if they will not to punish them in their goods, liberties, or lives? this we hold in the negative.

Read whatever chapter of scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it - yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon him.

Charity itself consists in acting justly and faithfully in whatever office, business and employment a person is engaged in.

Emanuel Swedenborg

.. for the most part the worst instructed, and the least knowing of any of their rank, I ever went amongst.

There is nothing in Nature more shapeless and ill-figur'd than an old Rock or a Mountain, and all that variety that is among them is but the various modes of irregularity; so as you cannot make a better character of them, in short, than to say they are of all forms and figures, except regular.

A hermit who has been shut up in his cell in a college has contracted a sort of mould and rust upon his soul.

Farewell, I wish our souls may meet with comfort at the journey's end.- The Heavenly Footman: A Puritan's View of How to Get to Heaven.