Adams Quotes 05

(These are from the Puritan Golden Treasury, the numbers are page references)

Anger 19 The angry man, like the two hot disciples that called fire from heaven, ordains himself the judge, and would have God turn his executioner.

Bible 36 He that would comprehend all things, apprehends nothing. As he that comes to a corn heap, the more he opens his hand to take, the less he graspeth, the less he holdeth. Where the Scripture hath no tongue, we should have no ear.

The Word of life may be so distorted from the life of the Word, till it becomes the food of death.

Church 55

Many crowd to get into the church but make no room for the sermon to get into them.

Controversy 61 As in the burning of some wet fuel, we cannot see the fire for smoke; so the light of the Scriptures is dusked by the vapours of controversies.

Covetousness 67 The miser deprives himself of this world and God will deprive him of the next.

On Friendship with unbelievers

All company with unbelievers or misbelievers is not condemned. We find a Lot in Sodom, Israel with the Egyptians, Abraham and Isaac with their Abimelechs; roses among thorns, and pearls in mud; and Jesus Christ among the publicans and sinners. So neither we be infected, nor the name of the Lord wronged, to converse with them that we may convert them, is a holy course. But still we must be among them as strangers: to pass through an infected place is one thing, to dwell in it another. The earth is the Lord's and we are His; wheresoever God shall find the saint, let him be sure to find God in every place.

[See Golden Treasury pp 113, 114]

On Regeneration

The creation of the world is a shadow of the regeneration of a Christian. First, there was an earth without form, void, and a darkness upon the face of the deep. Predestination is this great deep, which cannot be discovered or discerned. There the light was separated from the darkness; here knowledge is separated from ignorance of the soul; there is calling. Then was the sun created; so here the bright beams of grace are diffused into our hearts which fill us with spiritual joy; there is sanctification. Lastly, Adam was created after the image of God, and placed in Paradise; so the new man is conformed to the image of Christ, and shall be reposed in the paradise of everlasting glory.

[See Puritan Golden Treasury p 235]