Quotes about Belief

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.

Evangelical faith has the gospel of Christ for its foundation;

God has made me willing to do any thing that I can do, consistent with truth, for the sake of peace, and that I might not be a stumbling-block to others. For this reason I can cheerfully forego, and give up, what I verily believe, after the most mature and impartial search, is my right, in some instances.

They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They don't only justly deserve to be cast down thither, but the sentence of the law of God, that eternal and immutable rule of righteousness that God has fixed between him and mankind, is gone out against them, and stands against them; so that they are bound over already to hell: John iii. 18, "He that believeth not is condemned already.

Till you have savingly believed in Christ, all your desires, and pains, and prayers lay God under no obligation;

God must be trusted out of sight, i.e., when we cannot see which way it is possible for him to fulfil his word; everything but God's mere word makes it look unlikely, so that if persons believe, they must hope against hope. Thus the ancient Patriarchs, and Job, and the Psalmist, and Jeremiah, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, and the Apostle Paul, gave glory to God by trusting in God in darkness

tis plain and manifest, that whatever pains a natural man takes in religion, whatever prayers he makes, till he believes in Christ, God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment from eternal destruction.

So in the sense in which the apostle James seems to use the word justify for manifestative justification, a man is justified not only by faith, but also by works; as a tree is manifested to be good, not only by immediately examining the tree, but also by the fruit,664 Prov. xx. 11. "Even a child is known by his doing, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.

God is under no manner of obligation to show mercy to any natural man, whose heart is not turned to God: and that a man can challenge nothing either in absolute justice, or by free promise, from any thing he does before he has believed on Jesus Christ, or has true repentance begun in him.

Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. But my first conviction was not so.

There seems to be the utmost danger, that the younger generation will be carried away with Arminianism as with a flood.

faith is the subsistance of things not seene;