Quotes from John Owen

a sense of the love of Christ in the cross; lie at the bottom of all true spiritual mortification

But the Spirit was not limited to doing surprising and extraordinary things. He was present in the Old Testament period in giving civil rule and government ... moral virtues ... physical strength ... and intellectual abilities.

Christians can be confident about their growth in sanctification and eternal security because they are confident in the God who promises it.

Arminians pretend, very speciously, that Christ died for all men, yet, in effect, they make him die for no one man at all.

Mortification is the soul's vigorous opposition to self, wherein sincerity is most evident.

But whatever dismal appearance of things there may be in the world, we need not fear the ruin of the church by the most bloody oppositions. Former experiences will give security against future events. It is built on the rock, and those gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

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

Every unmortified sin will certainly do two things:— [1.] It will weaken the soul, and deprive it of its vigour. [2.] It will darken the soul, and deprive it of its comfort and peace. [1.]

By beholding the glory of Christ by faith we shall find rest to our souls. Our minds are apt to be filled with troubles, fears, cares, dangers, distresses, ungoverned passion and lusts. By these our thoughts are filled with chaos, darkness and confusion. But where the soul is fixed on the glory of Christ then the mind finds rest and peace for to be spiritually minded is peace (Rom. 8:6).

A sin is not mortified when it is only diverted. Simon Magus for a season left his sorceries; but his covetousness and ambition, that set him on work, remained still, and would have been acting another way. Therefore Peter tells him, "I perceive thou art in the gall of bitterness;"—"Notwithstanding

So much as we see of the love of God, so much shall we delight in him, and no more.

The root of an unmortified course is the digestion of sin without bitterness in the heart. When a man hath confirmed his imagination to such an apprehension of grace and mercy as to be able, without bitterness, to swallow and digest daily sins, that man is at the very brink of turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, and being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

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.

Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness, is the soul and substance of all false religion in the world.

I cannot conceive an intention in God that Christ should satisfy his justice for the sin of them that were in hell some thousands of years before, and yet be still resolved to continue their punishment on them to all eternity.

Reader, if thou intendest to go any farther, I would entreat thee to stay here a little. If thou art, as many in this pretending age, a sign or title gazer, and comest into books as Cato into the theatre, to go out again, - thou hast had thy entertainment; farewell!

The use of means for the obtaining of peace is ours; the bestowing of it is God's prerogative.

Clearly the Holy Spirit is not merely a quality to be found in the divine nature … He is a holy intelligent person.

But of that day and hour no one knows neither the angels in heaven nor the Son but only the Father.' We are not to think that the Son of God as he is God did not know the day or hour but only that his human nature did not know it because his divine nature had not chosen to reveal it to his human nature.

It is to be feared that very many have little knowledge of the main enemy that they carry about them in their bosoms. This makes them ready to justify themselves, and to be impatient of reproof or admonition, not knowing that they are in any danger. 2 Chronicles 16:10

A man may beat down the bitter fruit from an evil tree until he is weary; while the root abides in strength and vigour, the beating down of the present fruit will not hinder it from bringing forth more. This is the folly of some men; they set themselves with all earnestness and diligence against the appearing eruption of lust, but, leaving the principle and root untouched, perhaps unsearched out, they make but little or no progress in this work of mortification.

By nature, since the entrance of sin, no man has any communion with God. He is light, we darkness; and what communion has light with darkness? He is life, we are dead—he is love, and we are enmity; and what agreement can there be between us?

in the meantime praying the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who has, of the riches of his grace, recovered us from a state of enmity into a condition of communion and fellowship with himself, that both he that writes, and they that read the words of his mercy, may have such a taste of his sweetness and excellencies therein, as to be stirred up to a farther longing after the fulness of his salvation, and the eternal fruition of him in glory.

the depth and complexity and ugliness and danger of sin in professing Christians is either minimized—since we are already justified—or psychologized as a symptom of woundedness rather than corruption.