Quotable

A doctrine which is needful to salvation can never be too sharply developed, or brought too fully into light....He who supposes that Jesus Christ only lived and died and rose again in order to provide justification and forgiveness of sins for His people, has yet much to learn...[and] is dishonouring our blessed Lord and making Him only half a Saviour. The Lord Jesus has undertaken everything that His people’s souls require; not only to deliver them from the guilt of their sins by His atoning death, but from the dominion of their sins, by placing in their hearts the Holy Spirit...to sanctify them....

The notion of purgatory after death, which shall turn sinners into saints, is a lying invention of man, and is nowhere taught in the Bible. We must be saints be- fore we die, if we are to be saints afterwards in glory....We need the work of the Holy Spirit as well as the work of Christ; we need renewal of the heart as well as the atoning blood; we need to be sanctified as well as to be justified....When an eagle is happy in an iron cage, when a sheep is happy in the water, when an owl is happy in the blaze of noonday sun, when a fish is happy on the dry land—then, and not till then, will I admit that the unsanctified man could be happy in heaven.

J. C. Ryle, 1817-1900

When we come to God, we must bring nothing but Christ with us. Any ingredients, or any previous qualifications of our own, will poison and corrupt faith. He that builds upon duties, graces, etc. knows not the merits of Christ....[You] must everyday denounce as dung and dross your privileges, your obedience, your baptism, your sanctification, your duties, your graces, your tears, your meltings, your humblings...your workings, your self-sufficiency must be destroyed. You must take all from God’s hand. Christ is the gift of God....Ah, how nature storms, frets, rages at this, that all is a gift, and it can purchase nothing with its actings and tears and duties, that all workings are excluded, and of no value in heaven.

Thomas Wilcox, 1621-1687