By Thomas Fuller
To-day is the golden opportunity, to-morrow will be the silver season.
Music is sweetest near or over rivers, where the echo thereof is best rebounded by the water.
May I not be so curious to know what weapon shall wound me, as careful to provide the plaster of patience against it.
Let me always be thus deceived to my advantage.
LORD, how near was I to danger, yet escaped!
I see thy goodness delights to have thy favours sued for, expecting we should crave what thou intendest we should have.
Grant, Lord, that I may not mangle and dismember thy word, but study it entirely, comparing one place with another.
If I could as easily decline diseases as I could dislike them, I should be immortal.
God’s mercy, whose providence, foreseeing that men of lead would make instruments of cruelty, did give that metal a medicinal virtue.
No malice of man can antedate my end a minute, whilst my Maker hath any work for me to do.
It is impossible by all my pains to purge out my uncleanness; which is quickly done by the rivulet of the blood of my Saviour.
London is a library of mortality.
The doctrine seemeth to haunt my soul; whithersoever I turn, it meets me.
Christ hath left in the custody of the Church our mother the sword of the Spirit, and the shoes of a Christian conversation, the same which he once wore himself, and they must fit our feet, yea, and we must take up the weight of many heavy crosses, before we can come at them.
The mark must not choose what arrow shall be shot against it. What God sends I must receive.
A person of great quality was pleased to lodge a night in my house; I durst not invite him to my family prayer, and therefore for that time omitted it.
LORD, many temporal matters, which I have desired, thou hast denied me; it vexed me for the present that I wanted my will; since, considering in cold blood, I plainly perceive, had that which I desired been done, I had been undone!
Praise for pensiveness, thanks for tears, and blessing God over the floods of affliction, makes the most melodious music in the ear of Heaven.
It is impossible for one to look any way, and to avoid the beholding of God’s bounty. Ungrateful man! And as there is no place, so there is no time for us to sin, without being at that instant beholden to him.
Thus, in the sight of our soul, heaven is discovered covered, and recovered; till, though late, at last, though slowly, surely, we arrive at the haven of our happiness.
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