Quotes about Soul

As the fire doth mount upwards, and the needle that is touched with the loadstone still turneth to the north, so the converted soul is inclined to God. Nothing else can satisfy him, nor can he find any content and rest but in his love. In a word, all that are converted do esteem and love God better than all the world; and the heavenly felicity is dearer to them than their fleshly prosperity.

The most dangerous mistake that our souls are capable of, is, to take the creature for God, and earth for heaven (374).

Words and actions are transient things, and being once past, are nothing; but the effect of them on an immortal soul may be endless.

How will it fill our souls with perpetual joy, to think that in the streams of this blood we have swum through the violence of the world, the snares of Satan, the seductions of flesh, the curse of the law, the wrath of an offended God, the accusations of a guilty conscience, and the vexing doubts and fears of an unbelieving heart, and are arrived safely at the presence of God!

Thou I cannot so freely say, My heart is with thee, my soul longeth after thee ; yet can I say, I long for such a longing heart (648).

I know it is not mere noise that will convert a soul: a bawling fervency, which the hearers may discern to be but histrionical and affected, and not to come from a serious heart, doth harden the auditors worst of all.

If anything keep thy soul out of heaven, which God forbid, there is nothing in the world liker to do it, than thy false hopes of being saved, while thou art yet out of the way to salvation(234). (III.III)

Woe to the soul which God rejoiceth to punish! . . . . Is it not a terrible thing to a wretched soul, when it shal lie roaring perpetually in the flames of hell, and the God of mercy himself shall laugh at them; when they shall cry out for mercy, yea, for one drop of water, and God shall mock them instead of relieving them; when non in heaven or earth can help them but God, and hell shall rejoice over them in their calamity(244)?

T]here is no greater strengthener of sin, and destroyer of the soul, than Scripture misapplied (317).

Reverence is that affection of the soul that proceeds from deep apprehensions of God and signifies a mind that is much conversant with him.

Meditation puts reason in its authority and preeminence. It helpeth to deliver it form its captivity to the sense, and setteth it again upon the throne of the soul. When reason is silent, it is usually subject; for when it is asleep the senses domineer. . . . Reason is at the strongest when it is most in action. Now, meditation produceth reason into act (573).

God has made the desire of our own happiness so necessary to the soul of man, that it cannot be separated from our desire to please him. Therefore, both in respect to God, and to our own happiness, "we must believe that he is the everlasting Rewarder of them that diligently seek him.