Quotes from John Owen

If a man teach uprightly and walk crookedly, more will fall down in the night of his life than he built in the day of his doctrine.

Temptations and occasions put nothing into a man, but only draw out what was in him before.

The most tremendous judgment of God in this world is the hardening of the hearts of men.

Let no man pretend to fear sin that does not fear temptation also! These two are too closely united to be separated. He does not truly hate the fruit who delights in the root.

Whatever vices and corruptions men see in the lives of their ministers will not be attributed to the depravity of their old nature which still abides in them, but to the gospel.

A man may easier see without eyes, speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit.

A natural man hath no such thing as free-will at all, if you take it for a power of doing that which is good and well-pleasing unto God in things spiritual.

When we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for-then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men.

Selfishness is the making a man's self his own centre, the beginning and end of all he doeth.

Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts. He who doth not kill sin in this way takes no steps toward his journey's end.

He works in us and with us, not against us or without us; so that his assistance is an encouragement to the facilitating of the work, and no occasion of neglect as to the work itself.

To kill sin is the work of living men; where men are dead (as all unbelievers, the best of them, are dead), sin is alive, and will live.

He that loves works out good to those that he loves, as he is able. God's power and will are equal; what He wills He works.

We admit no faith to be justifying, which is not itself and in its own nature a spiritually vital principle of obedience and good works.

All other ways of mortification are vain, all helps leave us helpless, it must be done by the Spirit.

After hearing the evidence, I will record a verdict of natural causes.

There is no death of sin without the death of Christ.

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

Consider that it is not failing in this or that attempt to come to Christ, but a giving-over of your endeavors, that will be your ruin.

Faith, if it be a living faith, will be a working faith.

To mortify a sin is not utterly to kill, root it out, and destroy it, that it should have no more hold at all nor residence in our hearts. It is true this is that which is aimed at; but this is not in this life to be accomplished.

A man may easier see without eyes, speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit.

The new goddess contingency could not be erected until the God of heaven was utterly despoiled of his dominion over the sons of men, and in the room thereof a home-bred idol of self-sufficiency set up, and the world persuaded to worship it. But that the building climb no higher, let all men observe how the word of God overthrows this babylonian tower.

In the divine Scriptures, there are shallows and there are deeps; shallows where the lamb may wade, and deeps where the elephant may swim.