Quotes from Thomas Boston

Saving faith is the faith of God's elect; the special gift of God to them, wrought in them by his Spirit.

God will hold sinners with one hand over the pit of hell, while He torments them with the other.

God will not pity them, but "laugh at their calamity." The blessed company in heaven shall rejoice in the execution of God's righteous judgment, and sing while the smoke riseth up for ever.

Go where thou wilt, thou canst not go out of thy Father's ground.

Faith is the soul going out of itself for all its wants.

a fatal recovery from a promising illness

Go where thou wilt, thou canst not go out of thy Father's ground.

Men believe that fire will burn them; and therefore, they will not throw themselves into it. But the truth is, most men live as if they thought the gospel was a mere fable, and the wrath of God, revealed in his word against their unrighteousness and ungodliness, a mere scarecrow. If

Most men are so far from making God their chief end, in their natural and civil actions, that, in these matters, God is not in all their thoughts. . . . They seek God indeed, but not for himself, but for themselves. They seek him not at all, but for their own welfare; so their whole life is woven into one web of practical blasphemy; making God the means, and self their end; yea, their chief end.

Call on Me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me. The whole life of a Christian is a praying, waiting life.

O how unconcernedly do many look on the miseries of others, how far are they from taking a lesson to themselves therefrom!

And here is the true ground in the law of the infallible perseverance of the saints; their time of trial for life is over in their Head the second Adam - the prize is won!

the holiest parent begets unholy children, and cannot communicate their grace to them, as they do their nature; which many godly parents find true, in their sad experience.

And the soul is never cured of this disease, until conquering grace brings it back to take up its everlasting rest in God through Christ—but until this be, if man were set again in paradise, the garden of the Lord, all the pleasures there would not keep him from looking, yes, and leaping over the hedge a second time.

Trials wean us from this world and prompt us to look to the happiness of the next world.

we often find that our greatest cross occurs in the place where we expected the greatest comfort.

So do men oftentimes find their greatest cross where they expected their greatest comfort.

As the light depends on the sun, or the shadow on the body that casts it, so we also depend on God; without Him, we can do nothing

As to the crook in your lot, God has made it; and it must continue while He will have it so. Should you ply your utmost force to even it, or make it straight, your attempt will be vain: it will not change for all you can do. Only He who made it can mend it, or make it straight.

Good education is not regeneration. Education may chain up men's lusts, but cannot change their hearts.

The natural man cannot but resist the Lord's offering to help him; yet that resistance is infallibly overcome in the elect, by converting grace.

Affliction doth not rise out of the dust or come to men by chance; but it is the Lord that sends it, and we should own and reverence His hand in it.

If a man be new-born, he will desire the sincere milk of the word.

No work nor deed of ours whatsoever, no not faith itself, can be the condition of the covenant of grace properly so called; but only Christ's fulfilling all righteousness.