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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.

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
Condemn
Sinner
Folly
Greatest
May
Heart
People
Justly
Sinners

More quotes by William Law

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The Prophet had made dishonorable proposals to my wife... under cover of his asserted 'Revelation.'... Smith told his wife Jane the Lord had commanded that he should take plural wives, to add to his glory... Joseph asked her to give him half her love she was at liberty to keep the other half for her husband.
William Law
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The greatest saint in the world is not he who prays most or fasts most it is not he who gives alms, or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice. It is he who is most thankful to God.
William Law
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This new birth in Christ, thus firmly believed and continually desired, will do everything that thou wantest to have done in thee, it will dry up all the springs of vice, stop all the workings of evil in thy nature, it will bring all that is good into thee, it will open all the gospel within thee, and thou wilt know what it is to be taught of God.
William Law
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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.
William Law
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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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They, therefore, who are hasty in their devotions and think a little will do, are strangers both to the nature of devotion and the nature of man they do not know that they are to learn to pray, and that prayer is to be learnt as they learn other things, by frequency, constancy, and perseverance.
William Law
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A revelation is to be received as coming from God, not because of its internal excellence, or because we judge it to be worthy of God but because God has declared it to be His in as plain and undeniable a manner as He has declared creation and providence to be His.
William Law
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Joseph has lately endeavored to seduce my wife, and has found her a virtuous woman.
William Law
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Death is not more certainly a separation of our souls from our bodies than the Christian life is a separation of our souls from worldly tempers, vain indulgences, and unnecessary cares.
William Law
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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.
William Law
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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.
William Law
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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.
William Law
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Men are not in hell because God is angry with them. They are in wrath and darkness because they have done to the light , which infinitely flows forth from God , as that man does to the light who puts out his own eyes .
William Law
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You have no questions to ask of any body, no new way that you need inquire after no oracle that you need to consult for whilst you shut yourself up in patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God, you are in the very arms of Christ, your heart is His dwelling-place, and He lives and works in you.
William Law
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If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead.
William Law
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Follow Christ in the denial of all the wills of self, and then all is put away that separates you from God the heaven born new creature will come to life in you, which alone knows and enjoys the things of God, and has his daily food of gladness in that manifold blessed, and blessed, which Christ preached on the mount.
William Law
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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.
William Law
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If you attempt to talk with a dying man about sports or business, he is no longer interested. He now sees other things as more important. People who are dying recognize what we often forget, that we are standing on the brink of another world.
William Law
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Hell is nothing else but nature departed or excluded from the beam of divine light.
William Law
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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.
William Law