Quotes from William Ames

For this is our most perfect duty and yet least known to us by nature: Whatever we conceive or will should be joined with the good of our neighbor.

An idea in man is first impressed upon him and afterwards expressed in things, but in God it is only expressed, not impressed, because it does not come from anywhere else.

The passive receiving of Christ is the process by which a spiritual principle of grace is generated in the will of man.

In the exercise of God's efficiency, the decree of God comes first. This manner of working is the most perfect of all and notably agrees with the divine nature.

The goodness of a thing created is the perfection of its fitness for the use which it serves. Now that use is either particular or universal.

Therefore, the church is not absolutely necessary as an object of faith, not even for us today, for then Abraham and the other prophets would not have given assent to those things which were revealed to them from God without any intervening help of the church.

The first act of religion, therefore, concerns those things which are communicated to us from God. The other concerns those things which we yield to God.

Everyone who understands the nature of God rightly necessarily knows that God is to be believed and hoped in, that he is to be loved and called upon, and to be heard in all things.

Faith is the virtue by which, clinging-to the faithfulness of God, we lean upon him, so that we may obtain what he gives to us.

From faith, hope, and love, the virtues of religion referring to God, there arises a double act which bears on the spiritual communion exercised between God and us the hearing of the word and prayer.

70. This affectation of a man's own excellency if it be exercised about good things that we have, it is called boasting: if about those things which we would seem to have, it is called arrogance: if about the fame and esteem which we seek with others, it is called vain glory: if about dignities, it is called ambition: if about the undertaking of matters, which are beyond our strength, it is called presumption.

29. The profession of the true Faith is the most essential note of the Church.

The poverty of Christ was without a singular vow, and without beggary.

44. In meter singing is joined, and therefore there must be more care of the speech and tone, then in prose. 45. But the melody of singing is ordained for a certain spiritual delight, whereby the mind is detained in the meditation of the thing that is sung.

In the Angels there was no ????????? or Restoring. First, Because they Fell from the highest top of excellency: Secondly, because in the Fall of Angels, all the Angelical nature did not perish, but by the sin of the first Man all mankind did perish.

15. Therefore to believe in God, is in believing to cleave to God, to lean on God, to rest in God as in our all-sufficient life and salvation. Deut. 30, 20. by cleaving to him, for he is thy life.

Virtue is an habit whereby the will is inclined to do well.

El pecado actual refleja el pecado original de la misma forma como lo hace una hija con su madre.

16. Yet it may, in part, be shadowed out in a similitude; namely the father is as it were, Deus intelligens, God understanding: the Son the express Image of the Father, is as it were Deus intellectus, God understood; the holy Spirit flowing and breathed from the Father by the Son, is as it were Deus dilectus, God beloved.

25. Superstition is that whereby undue worship is yielded to God.

An appendix of the Sermon is Prayer, both before and after.

Prayer differs from hearing the word, in that hearing is conversant about the will of God, but Prayer about our will: in hearing the word we receive the Will of God, but in Prayer we offer our will to God, that it may be received by him.

Faith is a resting of the heart on God; as on the author of life and eternal salvation: that is to say, that by him we may be freed from all evil, and obtain all good, Isa. 10. 20.

God therefore useth means, not for want of power, but through the abundance of his goodness: that namely he might communicate a certain dignity of working to his Creatures also, in them might make his efficiency more perceivable.