He [God] threatened horrible things to us, if we would not be happy.
He hath given us an easy religion, and hath established our future felicity upon natural and pleasant conditions, and we are to be happy hereafter if we suffer God to make us happy here; and things are so ordered that a man must take more pains to perish than to be happy.
The devil does not tempt people whom he finds suitably employed.
And if any man pretends that he is now sure he shall be saved and that he cannot fall away from grace; there is no better way to confute him, than by advising him to send for the surgeon, and bleed to death.
We resolve against those sins that please us not, or where temptation is not present, and think, by an overacted zeal against some sins, to give indulgence for others.
Drunkenness calls off the watchman from the towers; and then all the evils that proceed from a loose heart, an untied tongue, and a dissolute spirit, we put upon its account.
Pity and forbearance, and long-sufferance and fair interpretation, and excusing our brother, and taking in the best sense, and passing the gentlest sentence, are as certainly our duty, and owing to every person that does offend and can repent, as calling to account can be owing to the law, and are first to be paid; and he that does not so is an unjust person.
