Quotes from Ralph Venning

All the beauty of the world, 'tis but skin deep.

Be as willing to die to sin as Christ was to die for sin, and as willing to live to Him as He was to die for you. Be as willing to be His, to serve Him, as that He should be yours to save you. Take Him on His own terms, give up yourself wholly to Him.

God would not allow Adam and Eve to eat of the forbidden tree, even though it was good for food, pleasant to the eye and to be desired to make one wise (Gen. 3).

Sin does not please men whether they are full or fasting.

To maintain an opinion because it is thine, and not because it is true, is to prefer thyself above the truth.

None of God's elect die before they are converted.

Sin is the quintessence of evil; it has made all the evils that there are & is itself worse than all evils it has made. It is so evil that it is impossible to make it good or lovely by all the arts that can be used.

Reproving others is a thankless office and an unwelcome work for the most part; men take reproofs for reproaches, yet since God has laid it on good men as their duty to rebuke and not suffer sin to lie upon their brother, they dare not omit it.

Sin, in being contrary to God, is contrary to man, for what crosses God's glory is opposed to man's happiness.

To be merciful to [indwelling] sin is to be cruel to yourself.

Oh, learn to pity your own soul, for he who sins offends and wrongs God, but also wrongs and destroys his own soul

Do not contend with God who is stronger than you are, who is able when he will (and he will one day be found both able and willing enough) to turn the wicked into hell, the element of sin and sinners, who shall go into it as into their own place, as Judas did

As a Christian should do no injuries to others, so he should forgive the injuries that others do to him. It is to be like God, who is a good-giving God, and a sin-forgiving God.

Sin promises like a God but pays like a Devil

Take notice not only of the mercies of God, but of God in the mercies. Mercies are never so savoury as when they savour a Saviour.

To maintain an opinion because it is thine, and not because it is true, is to prefer thyself above the truth.