131 Thomas Watson Quotes

The devil would have Christ prove Himself to be God, by turning stones into bread; but the Holy Ghost shows His Godhead by turning stones into flesh (Eze. 36:26).

Prayer is the soul's breathing itself into the bosom of its heavenly Father.

A man adopts one for his son and heir that does not at all resemble him; but whosoever God adopts for His child is like Him; he not only bears His heavenly Father's name, but His image (Col. 3:10).

Keep your heart as you would a prisoner.

Those prayers God likes best which come seething hot from the heart.

Faith is full of good works. It believes as if it did not work, and it works as if it did not believe.

Idleness tempts the devil to tempt.

Religion will cost us the tears of repentance and the blood of persecution.

A humble sinner is in a better condition than a proud angel.

Adoption is a greater mercy than Adam had in paradise.

A child of God, though he cannot serve the Lord perfectly, yet he serves him willingly; his will is in the law of the Lord; he is not a pressed soldier, but a volunteer. By the beating of this pulse we may judge whether there be spiritual life in us or no.

Cheerfulness is a friend to grace; it puts the heart in tune to praise God, and so honors religion by proclaiming to the world that we serve a good master. Be serious, yet cheerful. Rejoice in the Lord always.

It is a sign the oil of grace hath been poured into the heart "when the oil of gladness" shines on the countenance. Cheerfulness credits religion.

God intermixeth mercy with affliction: he steeps his sword of justice in the oil of mercy; there was no night so dark, but Israel had a pillar of fire in it; there is no condition so dismal, but we may see a pillar of fire to give light. If the body be in pain, conscience is in peace, --there is mercy: affliction is for the prevention of sin, --there is mercy. In the ark there was a rod and a pot of manna, the emblem of a Christian's condition, mercy interlined with judgment.

Death is the last and best physician, which cures all diseases and sins - the aching head and the unbelieving heart. Sin was the midwife which brought death into the world; and death shall be the grave to bury sin! O the privilege of a believer!

A wicked man in prayer may lift up his hands, but he cannot lift up his face.

How far are they from offering violence to themselves in hearing, who come to the word in a dull, drowsy manner, as if they came to church to take a receipt to make them sleep. The word is to feed; it is strange to sleep at meat. The word judgeth men: it is strange for a prisoner to fall asleep at the bar.

He that chooses God, devotes himself to God as the vessels of the sanctuary were consecrated and set apart from common to holy uses, so he that has chosen God to be his God, has dedicated himself to God, and will no more be devoted to profane uses.

The pampering of the flesh, is the quenching of God's spirit.

The glory of God is a silver thread which must run through all of our actions.

Eternity to the godly is a day that has no sunset; eternity to the wicked is a night that has no sunrise.

To obey God in some things, and not in others, shows an unsound heart. Childlike obedience moves toward even command of God, as the needle points where the loadstone draws.

The sins of the godly are worse than others, because they bring a greater reproach upon religion. For the wicked to sin, there is no other expected from them; swine will wallow in the mire; but when sheep do so, when the godly sin, that redounds to the dishonor of the Gospel: "By this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme."

Highly prize the Scriptures. Can he make a proficiency in any art, who doth slight and deprecate it? Prize this book of God above all other books.

Let us then ascribe the whole work of grace to the pleasure of God's Will. God did not choose us because we were worthy, but by choosing us He makes us worthy.

They that deny Christ to be God, must greatly wrest, or else deny the Scripture to be the Word of God.

The godly have some good in them, therefore the devil afflicts them; and some evil in them, therefore God afflicts them.

To sin because mercy abounds is the devil's logic; he that sins because of God's mercy, shall have judgment without mercy. Mercy is not for them that sin and fear not, but for them that fear and sin not.

Meditation doth discriminate and characterize a man; by this he may take a measure of his heart, whether it be good or bad; let me allude to that; "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." Proverbs 23:7. As the meditation is, such is the man. Meditation is the touchstone of a Christian; it shows what metal he is made of. It is a spiritual index; the index shows what is in the book, so meditation shows what is in the heart.

Wicked men seem to bear great reverence to the saints departed; they canonize dead saints, but persecute living.

Whoever is afraid of submitting any question, civil or religious, to the test of free discussion, is more in love with his own opinion than with truth.

Satan tempts to sin gradually. As the husbandman digs about the root of a tree, and by degrees loosens it, and at last it falls. Satan steals by degrees into the heart: he is at first more modest.

Men could be content to have the kingdom of Heaven; but they are loathe to fight for it. They choose rather to go in a feather bed to Hell than to be carried to Heaven in a 'fiery chariot' of zeal and violence.

A true saint is a divine landscape or picture, where all the rare beauties of Christ are lively portrayed and drawn forth. He hath the same spirit, the same judgment, the same will with Christ.

How many souls have been blown into hell with the wind of popular applause?

If there be one God subsisting in three persons, then let us give equal reverence to all the persons in the Trinity. There is not more or less in the Trinity; the Father is not more God than the Son and Holy Ghost. There is an order in the Godhead, but no degrees; one person has not a majority or super eminence above another, therefore we must give equal worship to all the persons.

Jesus Christ went more willingly to the cross than we do to the throne of grace. Had not we need then provoke ourselves to duty?

Faith holds the promise in one hand, and Christ in the other.

What if we have more of the rough file, if we have less rust! Afflictions carry away nothing but the dross of sin.

If the word stays not in the memory, it cannot profit. Some can better remember a piece of news than a line of Scripture: their memories are like those ponds, where frogs live, but fish die.

God would have us part with nothing for Him, but that which will damn us if we keep it. He has no design upon us, but to make us happy.

God being a Father, if He hide His face from His child, it is in love. Desertion is sad in itself, a short hell (Job 6:9). When the light is withdrawn, dew falls. Yet we may see a rainbow in the cloud, the love of a Father in all this.

Hope is like the cork to the net, which keeps the soul from sinking in despair; and fear, like the lead to the net, which keeps it from floating in presumption.

The mercies of God make a sinner proud, but a saint humble.

I will conclude with that excellent saying of Bernard: "Lord, I will never come away from Thee without Thee." Let this be a Christian's resolution, not to leave off his meditations of God till he find something of God in him.

When sin is your burden, Christ will be your delight.

Prayer is the offering up of our desires to God in the name of Christ, for such things as are agreeable to his will. It is an offering of our desires. Desires are the soul and life of prayer; words are but the body; now as the body without the soul is dead, so are prayers unless they are animated with our desires.

The reason we come away so cold from reading the word is, because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.

It is absurd to imagine that God should justify a people and not sanctify them, He should justify a people whom He could not glorify.

Doth God give us a Christ, and will he deny us a crust? If God doth not give us what we crave, He will give us what we need.

Sin has the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death for its wages.

The Scripture is the library of the Holy Ghost; it is a pandect of divine knowledge, an exact model and platform of religion. The Scripture contains in it the credenda, "the things which we are to believe," and the agenda, "the things which we are to practice."

There is a great deal of difference between falling into a temptation, and running into a temptation. The falling into a temptation shall work for good, not the running into it. He that falls into a river is capable of help and pity, but he that desperately turns into it is guilty of his own death.

Behold, what manner of love is this, that Christ should be arraigned and we adorned, that the curse should be laid on His head and the crown set on ours.

Faith is seated in the understanding, as well as the will. It has an eye to see Christ, as well as a wing to fly to Christ.

The books of Nature and of Revelation equally elevate our conceptions and invite our piety; they are both written by the finger of the one eternal, incomprehensible God.

If Christ thought the soul was worth the shedding of His blood, well may we think it worth spending our sweat.

Be not only attentive in hearing, but retentive after hearing.

Everyone that hangs around the court does not speak with the king.

God's center is everywhere, His circumference nowhere.

Heat water to the highest degree, you cannot make wine of it; it is water still; so, let morality be raised to the highest, it is nature still; it is old Adam put in a better dress.

Little sins unrepented of will damn thee as well as greater. Not only great rivers fall into the sea, but little brooks; not only greater sins carry men to hell, but lesser; therefore do not think pardon easy because sin is small.

Our forgiving others is not a cause of God's forgiving us, but it is a condition without which He will not forgive us (Mt. 6:12).

Love is the only thing in which we can retaliate with God. If God be angry with us, we must not be angry again; if He chide us, we must not chide Him again; but if God loves us, we must love Him again. There is nothing in which we can answer God again, but love. We must not give Him word for word, but we must give Him love for love.

Godly sorrow shows itself to be ingenuous because when a Christian knows that he is out of the gun-shot of hell and shall never be damned, yet still he grieves for sinning against that free grace which has pardoned him.

We are to find as much bitterness in weeping for sin as we ever found sweetness in committing it.

Associate with sanctified persons. They may by their counsel, prayers, and holy example, be a means to make you holy.

Make up your spiritual accounts daily; see how matters stand between God and your souls (Psalm 77:6). Often reckonings keep God and conscience friends. Do with your hearts as you do with your watches, wind them up every morning by prayer, and at night examine whether your hearts have gone true all that day, whether the wheels of your affections have moved swiftly toward heaven.

The pleasure of sin is soon gone, but the sting remains.

Religion is not a matter of chance, but of choice.

Every pardon a sinner hath is written in Christ's blood.

Satan doth not tempt God's children because they have sin in them, but because they have grace in them. Had they no grace, the devil would not disturb them... Though to be tempted is a trouble, yet to think why you are tempted is a comfort.

Satan tempts to sin under a pretence of religion. He is most to be feared when he transforms himself into an angel of light. He came to Christ with Scripture in his mouth: "It is written." The devil baits his hook with religion.

We need not climb up into heaven to see whether our sins are forgiven: let us look into our hearts, and see if we can forgive others. If we can, we need not doubt but God as forgiven us.

Christians, you who are vessels of election - were by nature as wicked as others - but God had compassion on you and plucked you as brands out of the fire! He stopped you in your course of sinning - when you were marching to hell! He turned you back to Him by sincere repentance. Oh, here is the banner of love displayed over you!

Murmuring is the rising up of oneself against God. It sets oneself against God as if I am wiser than He.

God is more willing to pardon than to punish. Mercy does more multiply in Him than sin in us. Mercy is His nature.

The prayer that is faithless is fruitless.

It argues more grace to grieve for the sins of others than for our own. We may grieve for our own sins out of fear of hell, but to grieve for the sins of others is from a principle of love to God.

None so empty of grace as he that thinks he is full.

God will fill the hungry because He Himself has stirred up the hunger. As in the case of prayer, when God prepares the heart to pray, He prepares His ear to hear (Ps. 10:17). So in the case of spiritual hunger, when God prepares the heart to hunger, He will prepare His hand to fill.