“O that all Christians would take this course with all their neighbors that are enslaved to sin, and strangers to Christ!—Once more, be sure your example exhort as well as your words.”
“O what will that joy be, where the soul being perfectly prepared for joy, and joy prepared by Christ for the soul, it shall be our work, our business, eternally to rejoice!”
“Observe but the man who is much in heaven, and you shall see he is not like other Christians; there is something of what he hath seen above, appeareth in all his duty and conversation.”
“Of all the personal mercies that I ever received, next to the love of God in Christ to my own soul, I must most joyfully bless him for the plentiful success of my endeavors upon others.”
“Or they ask for directions for a heavenly life, and if the hearing them will serve, they will be heavenly Christians; but if we shew them their work, and tell them, they cannot have these delights on easier terms, then they leave us, as _the young man_ left Christ _sorrowful_.”
“Our liveliness in all duties, our enduring tribulation, our honoring of God, the vigor of our love, thankfulness, and all our graces; yea, the very being of our religion and Christianity, depend on the believing serious thoughts of our rest.”
“Praising God is the work of angels and saints in heaven, and will be our own everlasting work; and if we were more in it now, we should be liker to what we shall be then.”
“Promote their frequent meeting together, besides publicly in the congregation; not as a separate church, but as part of the church more diligent than the rest in redeeming time, and helping the souls of each other heaven-ward.”
“Read what Dives thought, _being in torment_.[249] As the joys of heaven are chiefly enjoyed by the rational soul in its rational actings, so must the pains of hell be suffered.”
“Reader, if thou be an humble, sincere believer, and waitest with longing and laboring for this rest, thou wilt shortly see, and feel the truth of all this.”
“Satan was himself their comforter, as he was to our first mother; "_Hath God said, ye shall not eat? ye shall not surely die._ Doth God tell you that you shall lie in hell?”
“Scripture not only proves, that this rest remains for the people of God, but also that it remains for none but them, so that the rest of the world shall have no part in it. _Without holiness no man shall see the Lord._[223] _Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
“Shall the wicked behold him and cry, "Yonder is he whose blood we neglected, whose grace we resisted, whose counsels we refused, whose government we cast off!”
