Stephen Charnock


“Works make not the heart good, but a good heart makes the works good.”

"When we believe that we should be satisfied rather than God glorified in our worship, then we put God below ourselves as though He had been made for us rather than that we had been made for Him".

"Unbelief was the first sin, and pride was the first-born of it."

“A proud faith is as much a contradiction as a humble devil.”

"We often learn more of God under the rod that strikes us than under the staff that comforts us."

“Power is God's hand or arm, omniscience is God's eye, mercy is God's delight, eternity is God's duration, but holiness is God's beauty!”

“Without the heart it is no worship. It is a stage play. It is an acting of a part without being that person, really. It is playing the hypocrite.”

“Self is the great antichrist and anti-God in the world, that sets up itself above all else.”

“Since therefore all things are ordered in subserviency to the good of man, they are so ordered by Him that made both man and them.”

“A man may be theologically knowing and spiritually ignorant.”

“Assurance is the fruit that grows out of the root of faith.”

“What a curious workmanship is that of the eye, which is in the body, as the sun in the world; set in the head as in a watch-tower, having the softest nerves for receiving the greater multitude of spirits necessary for the act of vision!”

“In regard of God, patience is a submission to His sovereignty. To endure a trial, simply because we cannot avoid or resist it, is not Christian patience. But to humbly submit because it is the will of God to inflict the trial, to be silent because the sovereignty of God orders it - is true godly patience.”

“It is the black work of an ungodly man or an atheist, that God is not in all his thoughts. What comfort can be had in the being of God without thinking of him with reverence and delight? A God forgotten is as good as no God to us.”

“All the prayers in the Scripture you will find to be reasoning with God, not a multitude of words heaped together.”

“Pride is self contending with God for preeminence.”

“It is less injury to Him to deny His being, than to deny the purity of it; the one makes Him no God, the other a deformed, unlovely, and a detestable God. He that saith God is not holy speaks much worse that he that saith there is no God at all.”

“Had it been published by a voice from heaven, that twelve poor men, taken out of boats and creeks, without any help of learning, should conquer the world to the cross, it might have been thought an illusion against all reason of men; yet we know it was undertaken and accomplished by them.”

“God knows all that is done in the most secret caverns of the heart. No place is deprived of his presence.”

“When we believe that we should be satisfied rather than God glorified in our worship, then we put God below ourselves as though He had been made for us rather than that we had been made for Him.”

“Frequently renew settled and holy resolutions. A soldier unresolved to fight may be easily defeated...The weakness of our graces, the strength of our temptations, and the diligence of our spiritual enemies, require strong resolutions.”

“We may be truly said to worship God, though we lack perfection; but we cannot be said to worship Him if we lack sincerity.”

“Our ignorance of God is too great, because our estimations of God are too little.”

“Without the heart its not worship, its a stage play.”

“Let us look upon a crucified Christ, the remedy of all our miseries. His cross hath procured a crown, his passion hath expiated our transgressions. His death hath disarmed the law, his blood hath washed a believer's soul. This death is the destruction of our enemies, the spring of our happiness, and the eternal testimony of divine love.”

“How comfortable it is to have One, day and night, before the throne to control the charge of our enemy, and the despondencies of our souls.”

“God doth not govern the world only by his will as an absolute monarch, but by his wisdom and goodness as a tender father. It is not his greatest pleasure to show his sovereign power, or his inconceivable wisdom, but his immense goodness, to which he makes the other attributes subservient.”

“Since nothing but God is eternal, nothing but God is worth the loving.”

“Since we are dead in sin, a spiritual light and flame in the heart suitable to the nature of the object of our worship, cannot be raised in us without the operation of supernatural grace... such a worship God must have, whereby he is acknowledged to be the true sanctifier and quickener of the soul.”

“How worthy it is to remember former benefits when we come to beg for new.”

“Regeneration is a spiritual change; conversion is a spiritual motion.”

“To pretend to homage to God and intend only the advantage of self, is rather to mock Him than worship Him.”

“When we have a fear of God, it will make our worship serious; when we have a joy in God, it will make our worship durable. Our affections will be raised when we represent God in the most reverential, endearing, and obliging circumstances.”