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“When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord’s choicest wines.”
-Samuel Rutherford
“Affliction is a pill, which, being wrapt up in patience and quiet submission, may be easily swallowed; but discontent chews the pill, and so embitters the soul.”
John Flavel from Keeping the Heart
“He that rides to be crowned, will not think much of a rainy day.”
—John Trapp
“Affliction is good for us: 'It is good for me that I have been afflicted' (Ps. 119.71). Affliction causes repentance (2 Chron. 33.12). The viper, being stricken, casts up it poison; so, God's rod striking us, we spit away the poison of sin. Affliction betters our grace”
-Thomas Watson From The Doctrine of repentance
“In affliction one may have the love of God (Rev. 3.19). If a man should throw a bag of money at another, and in throwing it should hurt him a little and raise the skin, he will not take it unkindly, but will look upon it as a fruit of love. So when God bruises us with affliction, it is to enrich us with the golden graces and comforts of his Spirit.”
-Thomas Watson From The Doctrine of repentance
“There is more malignity in a drop of sit than in a sea of affliction, for sin is the cause of affliction and the cause is more than the effect.”
-Thomas Watson From The Doctrine of repentance
“It would much conduce to the settlement of your heart, to consider that by fretting and discontent you do yourself more injury than all your afflictions could do. Your own discontent is that which arms your troubles with a sting; you make your burden heavy by struggling under it. Did you but lie quietly under the hand of God, your condition would be much more easy than it is. 'Impatience in the sick occasions severity in the physician.' This makes God afflict the more, as a father a stubborn child that receives not correction. Beside, it unfits the soul to pray over its troubles, or receive the sense of that good which God intends by them.”
-John Flavel from Keeping the Heart
"There is no sweeter fellowship with Christ than to bring our wounds and our sores to him."
-Samuel Rutherford
"There is as much in our Lord's pantry as will satisfy all his children and as much wine in his cellar as will quench all their thirst. Hunger on, for there is meat in hungering for Christ; go never from him, but seek him who is yet pleased with the importunity of hungry souls until he fills you; if he delays, yet do not go away, even if you faint at his feet."
-Samuel Rutherford
"I find it most true that the greatest temptation outside of hell is to live without temptations; if water stands, it rots; faith is the better for the sharp winter storm in its face and grace withers without adversity. The devil is but God's master fencer to teach us to handle our weapons."
-Samuel Rutherford
"You will not get to steal quietly into heaven, into Christ's company, without a conflict and a cross. I find crosses to be Christ's carved work that he marks out for us and that with crosses he portraits us to his own image, cutting away pieces of our ill and corruption. Lord cut - Lord carve - Lord wound - Lord do anything that may perfect thy Father's image in us and make us ready for glory."
-Samuel Rutherford
"It is the Lord's kindness that he will take the scum off us in the fire. Who know how needful winnowing is to us and what dross we have before we enter the kingdom of God? So narrow is the entry to heaven that our knots, lumps of pride, self-love, idol-love, and world-love must be hammered off us, that we may stoop low and creep through into that narrow entry."
-Samuel Rutherford
"O, what I owe to the file, the hammer, and the furnace of the Lord Jesus! I know that he is no idle husbandman - he purposes a crop."
-Samuel Rutherford
"There are some things good but not pleasant, as sorrow and affliction. Sin is pleasant, but unprofitable; and sorrow is profitable, but unpleasant. As waters are purest when they are in motion, so saints are generally holiest when in affliction. Some Christians resemble those children who will learn their books no longer than while the rod is on their backs. It is well known that by the greatest affliction the Lord has sealed the sweetest instruction. Many are not bettered by the judgments they see, when they are by the judgments they have felt. The purest gold is the most pliable. That is the best blade which bends well without retaining its crooked figure." --William Secker, 1660.
William Secker's comments on Psalm 119:71 "It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes." as quoted in
The Treasury of David, 3 Volumes
"Christ chiefly manifests Himself to the Christian in times of affliction because then the soul unites itself most closely by faith to Christ. The soul in time of prosperity, scatters its affections and loses itself in the creature, but there is a uniting power in sanctified afflictions by which the soul (as in rain the hen collects her brood) gathers his best affections unto his Father and his God."
Richard Sibbes (1577-1635)
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