Quote

Reading is good, hearing is good, conversation and meditation are good but then, they are only good at times and occasions, in a certain degree, and must be used and governed with such caution as we eat and drink and refresh ourselves, or they will bring forth in us the fruits of intemperance.

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
Certain
Conversation
Fruits
Used
Meditation
Caution
Must
Drink
Occasions
Good
Bring
Forth
Religious
Degree
Reading
Hearing
Refresh
Times
Fruit
Intemperance
Christian
Degrees
Governed

More quotes by William Law

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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.
William Law
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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.
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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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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What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?
William Law
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You are to think of yourself as only existing in this world to do God's will. To think that you are your own is as absurd as to think you are self-created. It is an obvious first principle that you belong completely to God.
William Law
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When therefore the first spark of a desire after God arises in thy soul, cherish it with all thy care, give all thy heart into it it is nothing less than a touch of the divine loadstone, that is to draw thee out of the vanity of time, into the riches of eternity.
William Law
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If our life is not a course of humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection, we do not live the lives of Christians.
William Law
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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.
William Law
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Love has no errors, for all errors are the want for love.
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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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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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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The eyes of our souls only then begin to see when our bodily eyes are closing.
William Law
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Love and pity and wish well to every soul in the world dwell in love, and then you dwell in God.
William Law
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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.
William Law
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As all types and figures in the Law were but empty shadows without the coming of Christ, so the New Testament is but a dead letter without the Holy Spirit in redeemed men as the living power of a full salvation.
William Law
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Ask what Time is, it is nothing else but something of eternal duration become finite, measurable and transitory.
William Law
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If, therefore, a man will so live as to show that he feels and believes the most fundamental doctrines of Christianity, he must live above the world.
William Law
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Perfection does not consist in any singular state or condition of life, or in any particular set of duties, but in holy and religious conduct of ourselves in every state of Life.
William Law