John Fox > Quotes

“Religion requires action, labour, diligence; for it does not consist in airy, empty notions and speculations of the head but in the exercise of the mind and heart. Habits must be exerted; grace, improved. Heaven (that is, all uphill) must be strived for and gotten, as it were, by force and victory.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“Awake, awake, you that sleep. Open your eyes, stand on your feet, and behold and see what a sea of blood and wrath is here!" See and believe; believe and consider; consider and fear; fear and fly; and make haste in your work. Your work is great and mighty; diversions are many; adversaries are strong; your strength is small; your time is short; your account is great. Death and judgment are at the door. Therefore, up and be doing, now or never.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“We may compare this mad, deluded world to a company of poor, blind men, dancing about the brink of a very dangerous pit, but do not perceive it or see how each falls in one after another.”
― John Fox

“Delays and laziness are the two great gulfs in which multitudes of souls are drowned and perish.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“Harold stuck his chest out a bit. "I'm the Senator's representative in this district," which made me think of the relationship priests supposedly have with God.”
― John Fox, The Boys on the Rock

“There is no romance without finance.”
― John Fox

“The great God stands much on priority to have the first and the best: the first ripe fruits, the first that opens the womb. Oh then offer the Isaac of your youth, the spring and flower of your age to God, and stay not until the evil day. Begin first with Him from whom you had your beginning. Go about the grand affair and work of your dear and never-dying soul before you do engulf yourself in the cares of this world. Resolve to present the first ripe fruits to that good and gracious God, who desires the first ripe fruits. In the bright morning of your life, match yourself to the King of Glory and become His bride before you are deflowered and defiled by sin and the world. If the celestial seeds of grace are sown in the morning, the pleasant and sweet flowers springing out of those seeds will invite the Lord Jesus to come and walk in His garden (Song 5:1). If you would be the temple of the Holy Spirit, let Him that made the house be the first and chief inhabitant. And suffer not your heart to be a habitation for dragons and devils, which will be your undoing to all eternity.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“A work of infinite moment depends on a moment of time.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“...follow and improve the light before the darkness overtakes you.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“Sincerity (the scriptur[al] perfection) is the best of a Christian, the grace of every grace; for faith unfeigned and love in sincerity are the very nerves and sinews of Christianity.”
― John Fox

“Let every lust be mortified, every duty performed, every grace exercised.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“There are but a few that look on themselves as concerned at all, just like a company of simple sheep in a fat pasture. The butcher comes and fetches one today, another tomorrow. The rest feed on and take no notice of what is become of their lost companions. 'Tis as if a company of condemned persons (reprieved for a time) should be appointed to be executed one after another...”
― John Fox

“The increase of your grace and holiness depends on your acquaintance and communion with the God of grace.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“You sadly besotted souls, know and remember while you have a day before the golden thread of life is cut that, if you are found without Christ, faith, repentance, holiness but a moment after death, you are undone to eternity. After death, all means and hopes fail. There is no work nor device in the grace (Eccl. 9:10). God will then be irreconcilable; sin, unpardonable; heaven, not attainable; and your souls, lost irrevocably.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“Live continually in an expectation of your great charge. Buy, sell, converse, read, pray, hear, and do all as dying men and passing to receive the recompense of endless joy or woe.

Christians, if you would work while it is day; if you would glorify God on earth; if you would not be prey to the prince of darkness; if you would stand with comfort before the Lord Jesus at His dreadful bar; if you would not spend your days without hope--arise, therefore, and be doing, and the Lord be with you.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“But the beauty of grace withers not under the greatest declinings of natural beauty, for grace is the oil in the lamp that never goes out but shines more and more.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“Sirs, up and be doing. Press toward the mark. Add to your faith, virtue; to virtue, knowledge; to knowledge, temperance; to temperance, patience; to patience, godliness, that you be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Be you therefore steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of our Lord. And if you do these things, you will never fall (1 Cor. 15:58; 2 Peter 1:5-8, 10).”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“Gospel time is our spiritual harvest, and it is notorious folly to sleep or loiter in harvest. The time of the gospel is a time indeed--namely, a time of light, a time of love, a time of life, a time of liberty (Matt. 4:16; 2 Tim. 1:10; Ezek. 16:8; Rom. 5:8; Isa. 61:6; John 8:36). Now, the trumpet of jubilee sounds, and all debts and mortgages may be taken up and released. Here is liberty for the poor captives and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. 'Tis now an "accepted time," a "day of salvation" (2 Cor. 6:2), a time to accept or a time to be accepted, a golden and glorious time indeed. Behold, now there is a broad and clear way to His mercy seat. The flaming sword is gone; the partition wall is down; all bars and gates are removed; an act of indemnity is proclaimed; and there is a free admission for all to come and be saved. Pardons are ready (Isa. 55:6-7).”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“...meditation or consideration is a further inquisition into the truth. Set consideration at work and, not like brutes, suffer your eyes, ears, lusts, and senses to be your guides. But commune with your hearts, consider your ways, reflect on your actions, look to your end--which, if you did, you would not be so sensual, so sinful as you have been and are (Isa. 1:4).”
― John Fox

“Time is compared to golden sands running between two eternities, and 'tis an infinite mercy they are still running, that you have a day to work out your salvation, to agree with your adversary while he is in the way [Matt. 5:25; Phil. 2:12]--namely, to make up the breach between God and your soul (Rev. 2:21).”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“So I immediately joined Sutton College of Music in Grove Road, Sutton to thoroughly learn theory of music. Over and over again, I would copy all the major and minor scales until I was blue in the face. It wasn’t easy because it was so boring but I knew it was absolutely essential to have this”
― John Fox, My Musical World, A Lifetime in Music

“Often the first poem is the hardest, the one caught by a lifetime of being smaller than you are, trapped by your ideas of what art is, what an artist is, immobilized by the judgments of teachers whose names you may never again remember. How did we come to forget that anything true is beautiful? How young were we then?”
― John Fox, Poetic Medicine

“Oh what a nothing is our life!--namely, a span, a dream, a wind, a shadow, a vapour, a post, swifter than a post (Job 7:6).”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“If there be the truth of grace, there will be an endeavor after the strength of grace.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“Death, and every death, is the fruit of sin: death temporal, death spiritual, death eternal.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“...you must be constant in the use of means and lay hold on every opportunity of enjoying the gospel. This our Lord commends in Mary, calling her attendance on the word preached a choosing the "good part" (Luke 10:42). There, you will taste the crystal streams and view the golden minds of sound doctrine and wells of salvation. This is the place of spiritual wonders where the dead are raised, the lepers cleansed, the eyes of the blind opened, and the devils ejected. Gospel ordinances are the golden galleries where the King of Glory walks, the bed where immortal souls are begotten unto God, and in which the broken hearts do travail till Christ is formed in them [Gal. 4:19]. Through these golden pipes, the water of life is poured out on thirsty, panting souls for the cheering of their spirits. Here is the doctrine preached and words where by you must be saved (Acts 10). Here, Christ's mother found Him, it being the place where the Bridegroom and the bride meet and solace themselves together.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“How sad and astonishing a spectacle it is to see a man near the coast of eternity--namely, to behold a wretched sinner in his cold sweats and dying groans with his precious and immortal soul standing on his pale, cold, quivering lips; and death, the great conqueror and king of terrors, marching furiously with his writ of removal in one hand, not to be reversed, and his deadly dart and sting in the other hand; conscience on the rack, barking, biting, and tearing him like a lion; the devil, God's executioner, looking on and standing by; the heart under dejecting and sinking despair; the eyes dim and fixed; his heart strings ready to break with anguish; his wife, children, and friends at the bedside, weeping, sighing, crying, wring their hands, beating their breasts; the wife crying out, "Alas, my husband!"; the child crying out, "Alas, my father!"; the poor perishing soul all this while looking backward on his misspent time and bypast sins, inward on his own heart--a dreadful sight! Where he sees no Christ, no grace, no purity, nothing but sin, guilt, death, darkness. Then, looking upward to that God who has been provoked, to that Christ who has been rejected, to that heaven and eternity that he has lost. And looking downward to that dark and dreadful pit that must be his place and portion (with a fearful looking for judgment), seeing the devils come and ready to seize on him. Oh what a dreadful outcry and shriek will the soul make when it departs! Perceiving itself sinking down, down to the burning lake and bottomless pit, where he must take up his lodging with devouring fire to all eternity.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“Sinners, your dear Lord Jesus, the great peacemaker, is now an important suitor to your perishing souls--namely, an inviting, knocking, waiting, promising Christ (Prov. 1:22; 9:4; Isa. 65:2; Matt. 11:28; Rev. 3:20; Song 5:2; John 6:37). The treasures of grace are opened and offered for sale on easy terms without money and without price (Isa. 55:1; Rev. 3:18). Oh make speed and come. Make the purchase. Buy the pearl of price that is better than rubies, and you will have treasure in heaven. The favor of God, precious blood, white raiment, tried gold, and the eternal life of your never-dying souls are worth the having. Consider also that now the Holy Spirit calls and offers His assistance to close the bargain, to tie the marriage knot between Christ and your souls (Hebrews 3). If you lose this opportunity, you may never have the like. "The Spirit and the bride say, Come" (Rev. 22:17).”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“Thine is the kingdom. Take the throne. Sit on the chiefest chariot. Take up Thy lodging in my heart forever and suffer not the dead child to lie in the place of the living child and a dead world and damnable lusts, where my Lord should lodge.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End

“Cloth will keep color best that is dyed in the wool, and the vessel will scent longest of that liquor with which it is first seasoned. Oh, then, remember your Creator in the days of your youth.”
― John Fox, Time and the End of Time: Discourses on Redeeming the Time and Considering Our Latter End