Quotes from John Owen

the whole Pelagian poison of free-will ... a clear exaltation of the old idol free-will into the throne of God ... That the decaying estate of Christianity have invented.

There is a state of perfect peace with God to be attained under imperfect obedience.

It is a throne of grace that God in Christ is represented to us upon; but yet is is a throne still whereon majesty and glory do reside, and God is always to be considered by us as on a throne.

We cannot enjoy peace in this world unless we are ready to yield to the will of God in respect of death. Our times are in His hand, at His sovereign disposal. We must accept that as best.

We need to attend diligently to the state of our soul, and to deal fervently and effectively with God about it.

Only what God has commanded in His word should be regarded as binding; in all else there may be liberty of actions.

The pretended desires of many to behold the glory of Christ in heaven, who have no view of it by faith while they are here in this world, are nothing but self-deceiving imaginations.

If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation.

A minister may fill his pews, his communion roll, the mouths of the public, but what that minister is on his knees in secret before God Almighty, that he is and no more.

If we would talk less and pray more about them, things would be better than they are in the world: at least, we should be better enabled to bear them.

He who prays as he ought will endeavor to live as he prays.

Temptation gains power where we see it prevail in others we know and we express neither shock or hatred of them and their ways nor pity and prayer for their deliverance.

The custom of sinning takes away the sense of it, the course of the world takes away the shame of it.

We can have no power from Christ unless we live in a persuasion that we have none of our own.

For to pretend that men may live habitually sinful lives without any attempt by the Spirit to mortify sin in them, nor with any desire for repentance, is to deny the Christian religion.

Nothing shall be lost that is done for God or in obedience to Him.

The good Lord send out a spirit of mortification to cure our distempers, or we are in a sad condition!

There wanted not some beams of light to guide men in the exercise of their Stocastick faculty.

To those to whom Christ is the hope of future glory, he is also the life of present grace.

Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.

Christ is the meat, the bread, the food of our souls. Nothing is in him of a higher spiritual nourishment than his love, which we should always desire.

The vigour, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.

Hatred of sin as sin, not only as galling or disquieting, a sense of the love of Christ in the cross, lie at the bottom of all true spiritual mortification.

The mortification of indwelling sin remaining in our mortal bodies, that it may not have life and power to bring forth the works or deeds of the flesh is the constant duty of believers.