We best oppose error by promoting a solid knowledge of the word of truth, and the greatest kindness we can do to children, is to make them early to know the Bible.
We must believe that He is able to do what He will, wise to do what is best, and good, according to His promise, to do what is best for us, if we love Him, and serve Him.
It was the greatest honor God did to man that he made man in the image of God; but it is the greatest dishonor man has done to God that he has made God in the image of man.
Those may justly be reckoned void of understanding that do not bless and praise God; nor do men ever rightly use their reason till they begin to be religious, nor live as men till they live to the glory of God. As reason is the substratum or subject of religion (so that creatures which have no reason are not capable of religion), so religion is the crown and glory of reason, and we have our reason in vain, and shall one day wish we had never had it, if we do not glorify God with it.
Were a man to live as long as Methuselah, and to spend all his days in the highest delights sin can offer, one hour of the anguish and tribulation that must follow, would far outweigh them.
Why wilt thou be so sottish, such an enemy to thyself, as to prefer puddle-water, and that poisoned too and stolen, before pure living waters out of thy own well?
Those that set God always before them and walk before him with all their hearts, shall find him as good as his word and better; he will both keep covenant with them and show mercy to them.
God cannot be represented by an image. We ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. We wrong God, and put an affront upon him, if we think so. God honoured man in making his soul after his own likeness; but man dishonours God if he makes him after the likeness of his body. The Godhead is spiritual, infinite, immaterial, incomprehensible, and therefore it is a very false and unjust conception which an image gives us of God.
When he [the slothful person] is pressed to be diligent, either in his worldly affairs or in the business of religion, this is his excuse (and a sorry excuse it is as bad as none).