William Symington > Quotes

“A man may sooner engrave the chronicle of a whole nation, or all the records of God in the Scripture upon the hardest marble with his bare finger, than write one syllable of the law of God in a spiritual manner upon his heart.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“To conclude this: As when a man comes into a palace, built according to the exactest rule of art, and with an unexceptionable conveniency for the inhabitants, he would acknowledge both the being and skill of the builder; so whosoever shall observe the disposition of all the parts of the world, their connection, comeliness, the variety of seasons, the swarms of different creatures, and the mutual offices they render to one another, cannot conclude less, than that it was contrived by an infinite skill, effected by infinite power, and governed by infinite wisdom. None can imagine a ship to be orderly conducted without a pilot; nor the parts of the world to perform their several functions without a wise guide; considering the members of the body cannot perform theirs, without the active presence of the soul. The atheist, then, is a fool to deny that which every creature in his constitution asserts, and thereby renders himself unable to give a satisfactory account of that constant uniformity in the motions of the creatures.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“The nearer God doth approach to us, and the more full his manifestations are, the more spiritual is the worship we return to God.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“the Greek word to worship signifies to creep like a dog upon his belly before his master; to lie low. How deep should our sense be of the privilege of God’s admitting us to his worship, and affording us such a mercy under our deserts of wrath!”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“Let us look upon sin with no other notion than as the object of God’s hatred, the cause of his grief in the creatures, and the spring of the pain and ruin of the world.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“The world is a sacred temple; man is introduced to contemplate it, and behold with praise the glory of God in the pieces of his art.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“The legal ceremonies were not a fit means to bring the heart into a spiritual frame.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“A man must be ignorant of himself before he can be ignorant of the existence of God.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“Love is appetites unionis; the more love, the more delight in the approachings of God to the soul, or the outgoings of the soul to God. As the object of worship is amiable in a spiritual”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“Fire increaseth by laying together many coals on one place; so is devotion inflamed by the union of many hearts, and by a joint presence;”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“Are we not often also, in our attendance upon him, more pleased with the modes of worship which gratify our fancy, than to have our souls inwardly delighted with the object of worship himself?”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“if thy heart be taken with God, it will be mortified to every-thing that is not G”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“If self-denial be the greatest part of godliness, the great letter in the alphabet of religion; self-love is the great letter in the alphabet of practical atheism.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“Though the reason of man proceed from the wisdom of God, yet there is more difference between the reason of man, and the wisdom of God, than between the light of the sun, and the feeble shining of the glow-worm; yet we presume to censure the ways of God, as if our purblind reason had a reach above him.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“The gospel pares off the rugged parts of the law, and heaven shall remove what is material in the gospel, and change the ordinances of worship into that of a spiritual praise.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“When man fell from his created goodness, God would evidence that he could not fall from his infinite goodness: that the greatest evil could not surmount the ability of his wisdom to contrive, nor the riches of his bounty to present us a remedy for it. Divine Goodness would not stand by a spectator, without being reliever of that misery man had plunged himself into; but by astonishing methods it would recover him to happiness, who had wrested himself out of his hands, to fling himself into the most deplorable calamity: and it was the greater, since it surmounted those natural inclinations, and those strong provocations which he had to shower down the power of his wrath.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“The Father orders it, the Son acts it, the Holy Ghost applies it.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“The circumcision of the flesh was to instruct them in the circumcision of the heart:”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“9. This shows us the excellency of the gospel and christian religion. It sets man in his due place, and gives to God what the excellency of his nature requires. It lays man in the dust from whence he was taken, and sets God upon that throne where he ought to sit. Man by nature would annihilate God and deify himself; the gospel glorifies God and annihilates man.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“How delicious is the sap of the vine, when turned into wine, above that of a crab!”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“There is not an atheist, an hypocrite, a profane person, that ever was upon the earth, but God’s soul abhorred him as such, and the like he will abhor forever; while any therefore continue so, they may sooner expect the heavens should roll as they please, the sun stand still at their order, the stars change their course at their beck, than that God should change his nature, which is opposite to profaneness and vanity; “Who hath hardened himself against him, and hath prospered?” (Job ix.4.)”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“The immutability of God is a perfection. Immutability considered in itself, without relation to other things, is not a perfection. It is the greatest misery and imperfection of the evil angels, that they are immutable in malice against God;”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“Men acquire wisdom by the loss of their fairest years;”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“All over the world conscience hath shot its darts; it hath torn the hearts of princes in the midst of their pleasures; it hath not flattered them whom most men flatter; nor feared to disturb their rest, whom no man dares to provoke. Judges have trembled on a tribunal, when innocents have rejoiced in their condemnation.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“There can be no reason for any change in the will of God. When men change in their minds, it must be for want of foresight; because they could not foresee all the rubs and bars which might suddenly offer themselves; which if they had foreseen, they would not have taken such measures: hence men often will that which they afterwards wish they had not willed when they come to understand it clearer, and see that to be injurious to them which they thought to be good for them; or else the change proceeds from a natural instability without any just cause, and an easiness to be drawn into that which is unrighteous; or else it proceeds from a want of power, when men take new counsels, because they are invincibly hindered from executing the old. But none of those can be in God.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“Those that deny the providence of God, do in effect deny the being of God; for they strip him of that wisdom, goodness, tenderness, mercy, justice, righteousness, which are the glory of the Deity.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“Whosoever is ambitious to be his own heaven, will at last find his soul to become its own hell.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“But what miracles could rationally be supposed to work upon an atheist, who is not drawn to a sense of the truth proclaimed aloud by so many wonders of the creation?”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“Thus Divine wisdom doth both sharpen and brighten us by the dust of sin, and ripen and mellow the fruits of grace by the dung of corruption. Grace grows the stronger by opposition, as the fire burns hottest and clearest when it is most surrounded by a cold air; and our natural heat reassumes a new strength by the coldness of the winter. The foil under a diamond, though an imperfection in itself, increaseth the beauty and lustre of the stone. The enmity of man was a commendation of the grace of God: it occasioned the breaking out of the grace of God upon us; and is an occasion, by the wisdom and grace of God, of the increase of grace many times in us.”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God

“How lamentable is it, that in our times this folly of atheism should be so rife! That there should be found such monsters in human nature, in the midst of the improvements of reason, and shinings of the gospel, who not only make the Scripture the matter of their jeers, but scoff at the judgments and providences of God in the world, and envy their Creator a being, without whose goodness they had none themselves; who contradict in their carriage what they assert to be their sentiment, when they dreadfully imprecate damnation to themselves!”
― William Symington, The Existence and Attributes of God