Armour Warfare Quotes

Silena appeared out of the woods, her sword drawn. Her Aphrodite armour was pink and red, colour coordinated to match her clothes and makeup. She looked like Guerilla Warfare Barbie.

Another part or piece,' said Diabolus, 'of mine excellent armour, is a dumb and prayerless spirit, a spirit that scorns to cry for mercy, let the danger be ever so great; therefore be you, my Mansoul, sure that you make use of this.

Prayer is a great heart-easer; it breathes out those distempered passions which, being bound up in others, break out when God at any time crosseth them in their wills.

Many lose heaven because they are ashamed to go in a fool's coat thither.

It is true, Christian, the debt thou owest to God must be paid in good and lawful money, but for thy comfort, here Christ is thy paymaster. Send

one affirmative from God's mouth for thy pardoned state, carries more weight, though of old date, than a thousand negatives from Satan's. David's

Christ is a prince that loves to see his people thrive and grow rich under his government. This

Faith hath an incarnating virtue, as they say of some strengthening meat; it feeds upon the promise, and that ‘is perfect, converting’—or rather restoring —‘the soul,’ Ps. 19:7. Though

Above all sins, guard against bold or arrogant ones. You are not beyond the danger of such. If caught in the web of presumptuous sin, call quickly to God for help. If you hesitate, you only give Satan time to entangle you more tightly. But if you cry out to God in true repentance, He will come at once to rescue you. The sooner you yield to the Spirit, the less damage is done to your soul.

They say stars have greatest influences when they are in conjunction with the sun; then sure the graces of a saint should never work more powerfully than in prayer, for then he is in the nearest conjunction and communion with God. That

Every single sorrow in my heart came about as a result of my forgetting who I am. Every single catastrophe that has happened in my life was designed to cause me to forget who I am. If there is one weapon you need to repeatedly pick up and continuously hold onto, that is the sword and shield and armour of KNOWING THYSELF. Know your soul, see your spirit, look at who you are and breathe it. This is your mission in life. This is the treasure your enemy wants to steal.

Jehoshaphat cried when in the throng of his enemies, and the Lord helped him; much more mayest thou promise thyself his succor in thy soul combats.

When afflicted, love can allow thee to groan, but not to grumble.

Christian, hath not God secretly instructed thee by his Spirit from the Word, how to read the shorthand of his providence? Dost

If ever you would have a blessed issue of this evil day, so as to stand in judgement before the great God, rest not till thou hast got into a covenant-relation with Christ.

apply thyself to the use of those means which God hath appointed for the strengthening grace. If

The providences of God to his saints here, while on this low bottom of earth, are mixed and parti-coloured, as was signified by the ‘speckled’ horses, Zech. 1:8, in

We are to choose affliction rather than sin, yea, the greatest affliction before the least sin. Moses

What have we Bibles for, ministers and preaching for, if we mean not to furnish ourselves by them with armour for the evil day? In

Confession of the mouth without faith in the heart is gross hypocrisy.

The news which the gospel hath in its mouth to tell us poor sinners is good. It speaks promises, and they are significations of some good intended by God for poor sinners.

Gospel peace comforts the soul, and that strongly, when it hath no other comfort to mingle with it.

Till he be merciful to pardon our sins through Christ, he cannot bless or look kindly on us sinners.

Meditate of Christ’s coming to judgment. Surely thou wilt not easily sleep while this trumpet, that shall call all mankind to judgment, shall sound in thy ear.

It is more honour to take one soul alive out of the devil's clutches, than to leave many slain upon the field. Erasmus

Both God and man, between whom Christ comes to negotiate, call for holiness—God’s glory and man’s happiness; neither of which can be attained except holiness be restored to man.  Not God’s glory, who, as he is glorious in the holiness of his own nature and works, so is he glorified by the holiness of his people’s hearts and lives.

Jerusalem above is a city whose builder and maker is God." Every grace, yea, every degree of grace, is a stone in that building, the topstone whereof is laid in glory, where saints shall more plainly see, how God was not only Founder to begin, but Benefactor also to finish the same. The glory of the work shall not be crumbled and piece-mealed out, some to God and some to the creature, but all entirely paid in to God, and he acknowledged all in all.

No, the Christian must stand fixed to his principles, and not change his habit; but freely show what countryman he is by his holy constancy in the truth.

Indeed there is no duty in the Christian's whole course of walking with God, or acting for God but is lined with many difficulties, which shoot like enemies through the hedges at him, while he is marching towards heaven: so that he is put to dispute every inch of ground as he goes.

We read of no dispatches sent to court to procure his liberty; but many to the churches, to help them to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free.

Be strong in the faith of this truth, make it an article of your creed; with the same faith you believe that there is a God, believe also this God's almighty power is thy sure friend, and then improve it to thy best and advantage.

This affords a reason why God suffers his dear children to fall into temptation, be cause he is able to outshoot Satan in his own bow, and in the thing wherein he thinks to outwit the Christian to be above him.  God will not only be admired by his saints in glory for his love in their salvation, but for his wisdom in the way to it.  The love of God in saving them will be the sweet draught at the marriage-feast, and the rare wisdom of God in effecting this, as the curious workmanship with which the cup will be enamelled.

Now wisdom being that which the creature chiefly glories in, and that which was chosen by Satan for his first bait, [when he] made Eve believe she should be like God in knowledge and wisdom, therefore God, to give Satan the more shameful fall, gives him leave to use his wits and wiles in tempting and troubling his children, in which lies his great advantage over the saints, that so the way to his own throne—where his wisdom shall at last, as well as his mercy, sit in all its royalty—may be paved with the skulls, as I may so speak, of devils.

The Christian’s life is a continual wrestling.  He is, as Jeremiah said of himself, born ‘a man of strife.’  Or what the prophet [said] to Asa, may be said to every Christian; ‘From hence thou shalt have wars:’ from thy spiritual birth to thy nat ural death; from the hour when thou first didst set thy face to heaven, till thou shalt set thy foot in heaven.

Take heed therefore, sinners, how you use the Spirit when he comes knocking at the door of your hearts.  Open at his knock, and he will be your guest; you shall have his sweet company. Repulse him, and you have not a promise he will knock again.  And if once he leave striving with thee, unhappy man, thou art lost for ever; thou liest like a ship cast up by the waves upon some high rock, where the tide [will] never come to fetch it off.  Thou mayest come to the Word, converse with other ordinances, but in vain.  It is the Spirit in them, which is both tide and wind, to set the soul afloat, and carry it on, or else it lies like a ship on dry ground which stirs not.

Mercies should draw, afflictions drive.

Few are made better by prosperity, whom afflictions make worse.

All things are yours who are Christ's.  He hath given life to be yours, hath given death also.  He that hath given heaven for your inheritance—Paul and Cephas, his ministers and ordinances to help you thither—hath given the world with all the afflictions of it, yea, the prince of it too, with all his wrath and power, in order to the same end.  This, indeed, is love and wisdom in a riddle, but you who have the Spirit of Christ can unfold it.

When the Son made thee free, thou becamest free indeed.

Thou art translated into the kingdom of Christ, but thou art a great way from his court. That is kept in heaven, and that the Christian knows, but as we [know] far countries which we never saw only by map, or some rarities that are sent us as a taste of what grows there in abundance.

He is not a good subject, that is all for what he can get of his prince, but never thinks what he may do for him; nor he the true Christian, whose thoughts dwell more on his own happiness than on the honour of his God.

But O! what desperate madness is it of sinners then, not to endure a little hardship here, but [to] entail on themselves the eternal wrath of God here after, for the short feast and running banquet their lusts entertain them here withal; which often is not gaudium unius horœ—a joy that lasts an hour.

When the spirit is low through unbelief, every threatening from man makes sad impression.  Let thy faith take but a deep draught of the promises, and thy courage will rise.

It is a notable passage in Anselm, [in which he] compares the heretic and the persecutor to the horse, and the devil to the rider.  Now, saith he, in battle, when the enemy comes riding up, the valiant soldier ‘is[13] angry not with the horse, but horseman; he labours to kill the man, that he may possess the horse for his use; thus must we do with the wicked, we are not to bend our wrath against them, but [against] Satan that rides them, and spurs them on, labouring by prayer for them as Christ did on the cross, to dismount the devil, that so these miserable souls hackneyed by him may be delivered from him.’  It is more honour to take one soul alive out of the devil's clutches, than to leave many slain upon the field.

The Lord Jesus doth not only take upon him to dis charge the vast sums of those sins, which he finds them charged with before conversion; but for all those dribbling debts, which afterward, through their infirmity, they contract.  ‘If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins,’ I John 2:1, 2, so that God may without impeachment to his justice cross the saints’ debts, which he is paid for by their surety.  It is mercy indeed to the saints, but justice to Christ, that he should.  O happy conjunction where mercy and justice thus conspire and kiss each other!

Sincerity! it is the life of all our graces, and puts life into all our duties, and, as life makes beautiful and keeps the body sweet, so sincerity the soul and all it doth.

It is sincere faith, that is the strong faith; sincere love, that is the mighty love. Hypocrisy  is to grace as the worm is to the oak—the rust to the iron—it weakens them, because it corrupts them.

Except your righteousness exceeds their best, you are not Christians.  And can you let them exceed you in those things, which, when they are done, leave them short of Christ and heaven?  It is time for the scholar to throw off his gown, and dis claim the name of an academic, when every school-boy is able to dunce and pose him; and for him also to lay aside his profession, and let the world know what he is, yea, what he never was, who can let a mere civil man, with his weak bow only backed with moral principles, outshoot him that pretends to Christ and his grace.

Great ships cannot sail in narrow rivers and shallow waters, neither can minds truly great with the knowledge of God and heaven, find room enough in the creature to turn and expatiate[12] themselves in.

Truth cannot itself be bound, nor will it dwell in a soul that lies bound in sin's prison; and therefore when once truth and the soul are agreed, or rather Christ and the soul, who are brought together by ‘truth,’ then the poor creature may lift up his head with joy, for his redemption and jail-delivery from this spiritual bondage draws nigh; yea, the day is come, the key is in the lock already to let him out.

God is glorious when the world sees him not, but his declarative glory then appears when the glory of his mercy, truth, and faithfulness break forth in his people's salvation.

The sun is ever glorious in the most cloudy day, but it appears not so till it hath scattered the clouds that muffle it up from the sight of the lower world.  God is glorious when the world sees him not, but his declarative glory then appears when the glory of his mercy, truth, and faithfulness break forth in his people's salvation.  Now

That of Luther is most true, omnia præcepta sunt in primo tanquam capite—all the commands are wrapped up in the first.  For, saith he, all sin is a contempt of God; and so we cannot break any other commands, but we break the first.

We disfigure the beautiful face of God’s providence, when we fancy him to have a cast of his eye, and care, to one more than another.

Thus we might say to such selfish mourners, ‘We perceive that if thou couldst but save the life of thy soul from eternal death and damnation, though the glory of God miscarried, thou couldst be pleased well enough.

Fides pinguescit operibus—‘faith fattens or becomes strong on works,’ Luther.

Patience enrageth indeed the wicked, but meekens the saints.

It is one thing to have armour in the house, and another thing to have it buckled on; to have grace in the principle, and grace in the act.  So that our instruction will be,

Satan knows what orders thou keepest in thy house and closet, and though he hath not a key to thy heart, yet he can stand in the next room to it, and lightly hear what is whispered there.

You know what a confusion there is in a town at some sudden alarm in the dead of the night, the enemy at the gates, and they asleep within.  O what a cry is there heard! One wants his clothes, another his sword, a third knows not what to do for powder.  Thus in a fright they run up and down, which would not be if the enemy did find them upon their guard, orderly waiting for his approach.  Such a hubbub there is in a soul that keeps not his armour on; this piece and that will be to seek when he should use it.

This indeed makes it easy for Christ's sheep to be infected with the scab of error, because that weed which breeds the rot is so like the grass that nourisheth them.

If one workman should tell you your house is rotten, and must be pulled down, and all new materials prepared; and another should say, No such matter; such a beam is good, and such a spar may stand —a little cost will serve the turn: it were no wonder that you should listen to him that would put you to least cost and trouble.  The faithful servants of Christ tell sinners from the Word, that man in his natural state is corrupt and rotten, that nothing of the old frame will serve, and there must needs be all new; but in comes an Arminian, and blows up the sinner's pride, and tells him he is not so weak or wicked as the other represents him.  If thou wilt, thou mayest repent and believe; or, at least, by exerting thy natural abilities, oblige God to superadd what thou hast not. This is the workman that will please proud man best.

There are great complaints of what men have lost in these hurling times.  Some bemoan their lost places and estates, others the lost lives of their friends in the wars; but professors may claim justly the first place of all the mourners of the times, to lament their lost loves to the truths of Christ, worship of Christ, servants of Christ—yea, that universal decay which appears in their holy walking before God and man.

Here is godliness in triumph—when the Christian can carve contentment out of God's providence, whatever the dish is that is set before him.

As the unicorn heals the waters by dipping his horn in them, that all the beasts may drink without danger, so Christ hath healed creature-enjoyments, that there is no death now in the saints’ cup.

This breastplate of righteousness is of so base an ac count with them, that they who wear it in their daily conversation do make themselves no less ridiculous to them than if they came forth in a fool's coat, or were clad in a dress contrived on purpose to move laughter.

Those who are so far from being holy them selves, that they mock and jeer others for being so. This breastplate of righteousness is of so base an ac count with them, that they who wear it in their daily conversation do make themselves no less ridiculous to them than if they came forth in a fool's coat, or were clad in a dress contrived on purpose to move laughter.

There are three things consid ered in the nature of a holy righteous life, that are enough to demonstrate it to be the only pleasant life. It is a life from God; it is a life with God; it is the very life of God.

Gospel comfort may be known by the vessel it is poured into, which is a broken heart.

The Spirit exactly knows the heart of God to the creature, with all his counsels concerning him: ‘The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God,’ I Cor. 2:10.  And what are those ‘deep things of God’ the apostle means, but the counsels of love, which lie deep in his heart, till the Spirit draws them forth and acquaints the creature with them?

Though some precious souls, that have closed with Christ, and embraced the gospel, be not at present brought to rest in their own consciences, but continue for a while under some dissatisfactions and troubles in their own spirits; yet even then they have peace of conscience in a threefold respect.  In precio, in promisso, in semine—in what purchases it, in the promise, and in the germ.

Do we not live in a time when the church is turned into a sophister’s school? where such a wrangling and jangling hath been that the most precious truths of the gospel are lost already to many.

There is nothing, next Christ and heaven, that the devil grudged believers more than their peace and mutual love.

It can therefore be called ‘the righteousness of faith’ for this reason and no other—because faith is the only grace whose office it is to lay hold on Christ, and so to appropriate his righteousness for the justification of our souls.

Love is another heavenly grace; but faith gathers the fuel that makes this fire.

We would all pass for such as have the true faith and not the false.  But, be not your own judges; appeal to the Spirit of God, and let him, with the sword of his word, come and decide the controversy.  Which faith is thine, the true or false?

He that believeth not is condemned already,’ John 3:18.  He hath his mittimus already to jail; yea, he is in it already in a sense—he hath the brand of a damned person on him.

The time of mourning for the departure of all earthly enjoyments is at hand.  We shall see them, as Eglon’s servants did their lord, fallen down dead before us, and weep be cause they are not.

Zanchy tells of one in Geneva, who being desired to go hear Calvin, answered his friend, ‘If Paul were to preach, I would leave Paul himself to hear Calvin[35].’  And will pride in the gifts of another so far transport, even to the borders of blasphemy, what work will then pride make when the gifts are a man's own?

Tertullian speaks of some that think satìs Deum habere si corde et animo suspiciatur, licèt actu minus fiat—‘God hath enough,’ they think, ‘if he be feared and reverenced in their hearts, though in their actions they show it not so much;’ and therefore they can sin, and believe in God, and fear him never the worse.  This, saith he, is to play the adulteress, and yet be chaste; to prepare poison for one’s father, and yet be dutiful.

Here is the necessity of divine armour, to persevere till we have done all.  Wherefore, else, bids he them take this armour for this end, if they could do it without?

Formerly soldiers used to take an oath not to flinch from their colours, but faithful to cleave up to their leaders; this they called sacramentum militare—a military oath.

If it be but a tooth to pull out, the faster it stands the more pain we have to draw it.  O loosen the roots of thy affections from the world, and the tree will fall more easily.

The evil day is not such a scareful thing to thee that art a Christian, as that thou shouldst start for it.  Bring up thy heart close to it.  Show thy soul what Christ hath done to take the sting out of it, what the sweet promises are that are given on purpose to overcome the fear of it, and what thy hopes are thou shalt get by it.  These will satisfy and compose thy spirit; whereas the shunning the thoughts of it will but increase thy fear, and bring thee more into bondage to it.

The hypocrite in prayer juggles, he asks what he would not thank God to give him.

Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens,’ Lam. 3:41. That is, saith Bernard, oremus et laboremus—let us pray and use the endeavour.  The hypocrite’s tongue wags, but the sincere soul’s feet walk, and his hands work.

They say the Gauls, when they first tasted of the wines of Italy, were so taken with their lusciousness and sweetness, that they could not be content to trade thither for this wine, but resolved to conquer the land where they grew.  Thus the sincere soul thinks it not enough to receive a little, now and then, of grace and comfort, from heaven, by trading and holding commerce at a distance with God in his ordinances here below; but projects and meditates a conquest of that holy land, and blessed place, that he may drink the wine of that kingdom in that kingdom.

Look that thy thirst be right, a heart‑thirst and not simply a conscience‑thirst.  It is a very different heat that causeth the one and the other.  Hell-fire may inflame the conscience, so as to make the guilty sinner thirst for Christ’s blood to quench the torment which the wrath of God hath kindled in his bosom!  But it is heaven‑fire, and only that, which begets a kindly heat in the heart, that breaks out in longings of soul for Christ and his Spirit with sweet cooling dews of grace to slack and extinguish the fire of lust and sin.

Compurgator, one that under oath vouches for the character or conduct of an accused person.  From Webster’s.—SDB

And you must know conscience is a faculty that is corrupted as much as any other by nature, and is very oft made use of by Satan to deceive both good and bad, godly and ungodly.

Justin Martyr, when converted, professed, ‘That the holiness that shined in Christians’ lives and patience, that triumphed over their enemies’ cruelty at their deaths, made him conclude the doctrine of the gospel was truth.

Heaven is a city where righteousness dwells.

Third.  It is holiness, and that maintained in its power, that capacitates us for communion with God in this life.

The Lord Jesus lays down his heart’s blood to redeem souls out of the hand of sin and Satan, that they may be free to serve God, without fear, in holiness; and the loose Christian, if I may call him so, ‘denies the Lord that bought him,’ and delivers up himself basely unto his old bondage, from which Christ had ransomed him with so great a sum.  Whose

I have heard say that diseases of the heart are seen in spots of the tongue, but the hypocrite can show a clear tongue and yet have a foul heart.

Sincerity is to the soul as the soul is to the body.  It is a spark of divine life kindled in the bosom of the creature by the Spirit of God.

Sincerity makes the Christian sing when he hath nothing to his supper.

The word for sorrow in the Hebrew signifies a shield that fenceth and covers over; and, saith one upon this place, it denotes the disease physicians call cardiaca passio, which so oppresseth the heart that is covered sicut scuto—as with a shield or lid over it, and keeps all relief from the heart.

a word, in times of public calamity, when the flood of God’s wrath comes rolling in upon a nation, like waves irresistibly, at the wide breach which the high crying sins of the times make, and the few righteous that are found upon the place labour to stand in the gap, by their prayers, begging the life of the nation, but God will not hear, even then sincerity will be a sweet support while we share with others in the common calamity

Yet, faith made him willing; he saw better robes, that he should put on in heaven, than those he was called on to put off on earth.  The lowest place in glory is, beyond all compare, greater preferment than the highest place of honour here below; to stand before the throne there, and minister to God in immediate service, than to sit in a throne on earth and have all the world waiting at his foot.