Quotes about Understanding

Resolved, to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.

But yet it is evident that religion consists so much in affection, as that without holy affection there is no true religion; and no light in the understanding is good which does not produce holy affection in the heart: no habit or principle in the heart is good which has no such exercise; and no external fruit is good which does not proceed from such exercises.

There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness. . . . So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty. The former may be obtained by hearsay, but the lat- ter only by seeing the countenance.

One part of that divine fullness which is communicated is the divine knowledge. That communicated knowledge, which must be supposed to pertain to God's last end in creating the world, is the creature's knowledge of HIM. For this is the end of all other knowledge, and even the faculty of understanding would be vain without it.

This is the most excellent and divine wisdom that any creature is capable of. 'Tis more excellent than any human learning; 'tis far more excellent than all the knowledge of the greatest philosophers or statesmen. Yea, the least glimpse of the glory of God in the face of Christ doth more exalt and ennoble the soul than all the knowledge of those that have the greatest speculative understanding in divinity without grace.

Yea, the least glimpse of the glory of God in the face of Christ doth more exalt and ennoble the soul, than all the knowledge of those that have the greatest speculative understanding in divinity, without grace.

This light, and this only, has its fruit in an universal holiness of life. No merely notional or speculative understanding of the doctrines of religion will ever bring to this. But this light, as it reaches the bottom of the heart, and changes the nature, so it will effectually dispose to an universal obedience.

but his mouth was that of the just, which bringeth forth wisdom, and whose lips dispense knowledge.

at New Haven with the valedictory. In his Sophomore year he made the acquaintance of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding—a work which left a permanent impress on his thinking. He read it, he says, with a far higher pleasure "than the most greedy miser finds when gathering up handfuls of silver and gold from some newly-discovered treasure.

He best knows his own heart, and what His own ends and designs were in the wonderful works which He has wrought.

No living Christian but he must deny his owne wisedome, judgement, and understanding, that he may be wise in Christ; You say, what, would you have men senselesse, and mopish, and not understand themselves? No, no, here is the point, True grace doth not destroy a mans wisdome, but rather enlargeth and enlightneth it wonderfully; so as that men by nature are blinde, but spirituall wisedome enlightens the eyes of the blinde.

By particular and occasional moral Inability, I mean an Inability of the will or heart to a particular act, through the strength or defect of present motives, or of inducements presented to the view of the understanding, on this occasion.—If