Ralph Venning Quotes

None of God's elect die before they are converted.

That is good which doth good.

The Hebrews have a saying that God is more delighted in adverbs than in nouns; it is not so much the matter that is done, but the matter how it is done, that God minds. Not how much, but how well! It is the well-doing that meets with a well-done. Let us therefore serve God, not nominally or verbally, but adverbially.

God would not allow Adam and Eve to eat of the forbidden tree, even though it was good for food, pleasant to the eye and to be desired to make one wise (Gen. 3).

As a Christian should do no injuries to others, so he should forgive the injuries that others do to him. It is to be like God, who is a good-giving God, and a sin-forgiving God.

Sin is the quintessence of evil; it has made all the evils that there are & is itself worse than all evils it has made. It is so evil that it is impossible to make it good or lovely by all the arts that can be used.

I have read of a glass kept in an idol temple in Smyrna that would make beautiful things appear deformed, and deformed things appear beautiful; carnal sense is such a glass to wicked men, it makes heavenly things which are beautiful to appear deformed, and earthly things which are deformed to appear beautiful.

Sin promises like a God but pays like a Devil

Sin does not please men whether they are full or fasting.

Be as willing to die to sin as Christ was to die for sin, and as willing to live to Him as He was to die for you. Be as willing to be His, to serve Him, as that He should be yours to save you. Take Him on His own terms, give up yourself wholly to Him.

Virtue and vice are both prophets; the first, of certain good; the second, of pain or else of penitence.

Seek that your last days be your best days.

To be merciful to [indwelling] sin is to be cruel to yourself.

Reproving others is a thankless office and an unwelcome work for the most part; men take reproofs for reproaches, yet since God has laid it on good men as their duty to rebuke and not suffer sin to lie upon their brother, they dare not omit it.

To maintain an opinion because it is thine, and not because it is true, is to prefer thyself above the truth.

All the beauty of the world, 'tis but skin deep.