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Now if you will stop here and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.

William Law

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William Law
Age: 75 †
Born: 1686
Born: January 1
Died: 1761
Died: April 9
Theologian
Writer
King's Cliffe
Northamptonshire
Tell
Intended
Heart
Primitive
Never
Christians
Neither
Ignorance
Pious
Stop
Thoroughly
Asks
Purely
Christian
Inability

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Nothing harms or destroys us but the wrong use of that liberty of choice which God has entrusted to us.
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Joseph has lately endeavored to seduce my wife, and has found her a virtuous woman.
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Man needs to be Saved from his own Wisdom as much as from his own Righteousness, for they produce one and the same corruption. Nothing saves a man from his own righteousness, but that which delivers him from his own wisdom.
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The sun meets not the springing bud that stretches towards him with half the certainty that God, the source of all good, communicates himself to the soul that longs to partake of him.
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From morning to night keep Jesus in thy heart, long for nothing, desire nothing, hope for nothing but to have all that is within thee changed into the spirit and temper of the holy Jesus.
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No education can be of true advantage to young women but that which trains them up in humble industry, in great plainness of living, in exact modesty of dress.
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The more we pay for any truth, the better is our bargain.
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We may justly condemn ourselves as the greatest sinners we know because we know more of the folly of our own heart than we do of other people's.
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God seeth different abilities and frailties of men, which may move His goodness to be merciful to their different improvements in virtue.
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What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?
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Faith is not a notion, but a real strong essential hunger, an attracting or magnetic desire of Christ, which as it proceeds from a seed of the divine nature in us, so it attracts and unites with its like.
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Read whatever chapter of scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it - yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon him.
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The obedience of men is to imitate the obedience of angels, and rational beings on earth are to live unto God, as rational beings in heaven live unto Him.
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All that is sweet, delightful, and amiable in this world, in the serenity of the air, the fineness of seasons, the joy of light, the melody of sounds, the beauty of colors, the fragrancy of smells, the splendor of precious stones, is nothing else but Heaven breaking through the veil of this world.
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If someone is leaving you behind, and you are becoming jealous and embittered, keep praying that he may have success in the very matter where he is awakening your envy and whether he is helped or not, one thing is sure, that your own soul will be cleansed and ennobled.
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Wherever thou goest, whatever thou dost at home, or abroad, in the field, or at church, do all in a desire of union with Christ, in imitation of His tempers and inclinations, and look upon all as nothing, but that which exercises, and increases the spirit and life of Christ in thy soul.
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Perhaps there cannot be a better way of judging of what manner of spirit we are of, than to see whether the actions of our life are such as we may safely commend them to God in our prayers.
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All our salvation consists in the manifestation of the nature, life and spirit of Jesus Christ in our inward new man. This alone is Christian redemption, this alone delivers from the guilt and power of sin, this alone redeems and renews.
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Feasts and business and pleasure and enjoyments seem great things to us, whilst we think of nothing else but as soon as we add death to them they all sink into an equal littleness.
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We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.
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