Quotes from John Owen

It is to be feared that the most of us know not how much of glory may be in present grace, nor how much of heaven may be attained in holiness on the earth.

God and the doctor we like adore, But only when in danger, not before.

And it will one day appear that there is more glory, more excellency, in giving one poor minister unto a congregation, by furnishing him with spiritual gifts for the discharge of his duty, than in the pompous instalment of a thousand popes, cardinals, or metropolitans.

Wherefore, we do not nor ought only to believe the Scripture as highly probable, or with a moral persuasion and assurance, built upon arguments absolutely fallible and human; for if this be the formal reason of faith, namely, the veracity and authority of God, if we believe not with faith divine and supernatural, we believe not at all.

The Holy Spirit is said to be the divine, eternal, mutual love of the Father and the Son.

He that would be like unto God must be sure to love him, or all other endeavours to that purpose will be in vain; and he that loves God sincerely will be like him.

And this gives us a general rule, that the anointing with material oil under the Old Testament did prefigure and represent the effusion of the Spirit under the New, which now answers all the ends of those typical institutions.

And, indeed, whereas (as our Saviour tells us) they are things which arise from and come out of the heart that defile us, there is no greater nor more forcible motive to contend against all the defiling actings of sin, which is our mortification, than this, that by the neglect hereof the temple of the Spirit will be defiled, which we are commanded to watch against, under the severe commination of being destroyed for our neglect therein.

How do they and their fellows, the Jesuits,19 exclaim upon poor Calvin, for sometimes using the hard word of compulsion, describing the effectual, powerful working of the providence of God in the actions of men; but they can fasten the same term on the will of God, and no harm done!

Every approach unto God by ardent love and delight is transfiguring. And it acts itself continually by,—(1.) Contemplation; (2.) Admiration; and, (3.) Delight in obedience.

Our unction, therefore, is the communication of the Holy Spirit, and nothing else.

That the choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.

God is "all in all." He therefore is, or ought to be, the only supreme, absolute object of our thoughts and desires; other things are from and for him only.

The words of the text explained: to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Rom. 8:6.

But where this Spirit of liberty and boldness is, the heart is enlarged with a true, genuine openness and readiness to express all its concerns unto God as a child unto its father.

A man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul.

Now, for what sins he made satisfaction, for them the justice of God is satisfied; which surely is not done for the sins of the reprobates, because he justly punisheth them to eternity upon themselves, Matt. v. 26.

That profession which renders a church visible according to the mind of Christ, is the orderly exercise of the spiritual gifts bestowed on it, in a conversation evidencing the invisible principle of saving grace.

I say, then, mortification is not the present business of unregenerate men. God calls them not to it as yet; conversion is their work, -- the conversion of the whole soul, -- not the mortification of this or that particular lust.

Prosperity hath slain the foolish and wounded the wise.

They must glaze, adorn, and dress the objects of the flesh, and bring them home to give satisfaction; and this they are able to do, in the service of a defiled imagination, beyond all expression.

that shall be the truth with them, and nothing else. Unto persons whose minds are wholly vitiated with the leaven of this corrupt affection, there is not a line in the Scripture whose sense can be truly and clearly represented; all appears in the colour and figure that their prejudices frame in their minds.

The anointing, then, of believers with the Spirit consists in the collation of him upon them to this end, that he may graciously instruct them in the truths of the gospel by the saving illumination of their minds, causing their souls firmly to cleave unto them with joy and delight, and transforming them in the whole inward man into the image and likeness of it.

2.) Mortification prunes all the graces of God, and makes room for them in our hearts to grow.