Samuel Rutherford Quotes

Since He looked upon me my heart is not my own. He hath runaway to heaven with it.

I find my Lord Jesus cometh not in the precise way that I lay wait for Him. He hath a manner of His own. Oh, how high are His ways above my ways

The cross of Christ is the sweetest burden that I ever bore; it is such a burden as wings are to a bird, or sails to a ship, to carry me forward to my harbor.

O, what I owe to the file, the hammer, and the furnace of the Lord Jesus! I know that he is no idle husbandman - he purposes a crop.

What is warranted by the direction of nature's light is warranted by the law of nature, and consequently by a divine law; for who can deny the law of nature to be a divine law?

The great Master Gardener, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in a wonderful providence, with his own hand, planted me here, where by his grace, in this part of his vineyard, I grow; and here I will abide till the great Master of the vineyard think fit to transplant me.

Why should I tremble at the plough of my Lord, that maketh deep furrows on my soul? I know He is no idle husbandman, He purposeth a crop.

I exhort you and beseech you in the bowels of Christ, faint not, weary not. There is a great necessity of heaven; you must have it. All other things, as houses, lands, children, husband, friends, country, credit, health, wealth, honour, may be let go; but heaven is your one thing necessary, the good part that shall not be taken from you. See that you buy the field where the pearl is. Sell all, and make a purchase of salvation. Think it not easy; for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory; many are lying dead by the way, that were slain with security.

No created powers can mar our Lord Jesus' music, nor spill our song of joy. Let us then be glad and rejoice in the salvation of our Lord

Whether God come to his children with a rod or a crown, if he come himself with it, it is well. Welcome, welcome Jesus, what way soever thou come, if we can get a sight of thee. And sure I am, it is better to be sick, providing Christ come to the bed-side, and draw aside the curtains, and say 'Courage, I am thy salvation,' than to enjoy health, being lusty and strong, and never to be visited of God.

You shall by faith sustain yourself and comfort yourself in your Lord, and be strong in His power; for you are in the beaten and common way to heaven, when you are under our Lord's crosses. You have reason to rejoice in it, more than in a crown of gold; and rejoice and be glad to bear the reproaches of Christ.

See that you buy the field where the Pearl is; sell all, and make a purchase of salvation. Think it not easy: for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory: many are lying dead by the way, slain with security.

Your heart is not the compass that God steers by.

Christ has no velvet crosses.

Christ's enemies are but breaking their own heads in pieces, upon the Rock laid in Zion; and the stone is not removed out of its place. Faith hath cause to take courage from our very afflictions; the devil is but a whetstone to sharpen the faith and patience of the saints. I know that he but heweth and polisheth stones, all this time, for the new Jerusalem.

The devil is but a whetstone to sharpen the faith and patience of the saints.-

Heaven is a house full of miracles; yea, of spectacles and images of free grace.

There is nothing left to us but to see how we may be approved of Him, and how we may roll the weight of our weak souls in well-doing upon Him, who is God omnipotent.

Think it not hard if you get not your will, nor your delights in this life; God will have you to rejoice in nothing but himself.

Do not faint; the wicked may hold the bitter cup to your head, but God mixeth it, and there is no poison in it. They strike, but God moves the rod; Shimei curseth, but it is because the Lord bids him.

[M]ake much of the written word, and pray to God to copy his Bible in your conscience, and write a new book of his doctrine in your hearts.

Howbeit your faith seeth but the black side of Providence, yet it hath a better side, and God shall let you see it. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God; hence I infer that losses, disappointments, ill tongues, loss of friends, houses or country, are God's workmen, set on work to work out good to you, out of everything that befalleth you.

I bless the Lord that all our troubles come through Christ's fingers, and that He casteth sugar among them and casteth in some ounce withts of heaven and of the spirit of glory in our cup.

It is in some respect greater love in Jesus to sanctify than to justify, for He maketh us most like Himself, in His own essential portraiture and image in sanctifying us.

The good Husbandman may pluck His rose & gather in His lily.

Oh thrice fools are we who like new-born princes weeping in the cradle know not that there is a kingdom before them then let our Lord's sweet hand square us and hammer us and strike off the knots of pride self-love and world-worship and infidelity that He may make us stones and pillars in His Father's house.

After winter comes the summer. After night comes the dawn. And after every storm, there comes clear, open skies.

Humility is a strange flower; it grows best in winter weather, and under storms of affliction.

When the race is ended, and the play is either won or lost, and ye are in the utmost circle and border of time, and shall put your foot within the march of eternity, all the good things of your short nightdream shall seem to you like ashes of a blaze of thorns or straw.

[S]how yourself a Christian, by suffering without murmuring; - in patience possess your soul: they lose nothing who gain Christ.

You will not get to steal quietly into heaven, into Christ's company, without a conflict and a cross. I find crosses to be Christ's carved work that he marks out for us and that with crosses he portraits us to his own image, cutting away pieces of our ill and corruption. Lord cut - Lord carve - Lord wound - Lord do anything that may perfect thy Father's image in us and make us ready for glory.

Our little time of suffering is not worthy of our first night's welcome home to Heaven.

This soul of ours hath love, and cannot but love some fair one. And oh what a fair One, what an only One, what an excellent, lovely ravishing One is Jesus! Put the beauty of ten thousand thousand worlds of paradises, like the garden of Eden in one, put all trees, all flowers, all smells, all colours, all tastes, all joys, all sweetness, all loveliness, in one: oh, what a fair and excellent thing would that be! And yet it would be less to that fair and dearest Well-beloved Christ, than one drop of rain to the whole seas, rivers, lakes, and fountains of ten thousand earths. Oh, but Christ is heaven's wonder and earth's wonder!

Faith's speculations to the worst and hardest, in point of resolution, are sweet.

Many are friends to the success of reformation, not to reformation.

If ye never had a sick night and a pained soul for sin, ye have not yet lighted upon Christ.

I see not the time of the fulfilling the promise; yet "Though the vision tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come and not tarry." (Hab. 2:3) We are to remember, God can trail his promise, in our seeming, through hell, and the devil's black hands, (as he led Christ through death, the curse, and hell,) and yet fulfill it. When Christ is under a stone, and buried, the gospel seems to be buried.

Verily, we know not what an evil it is to indulge ourselves, and to make an idol of our will.

I seldom made an errand to God for another but I got something for myself.

Through many afflictions we must enter into the kingdom of God ... It is folly to think to steal to heaven with a whole skin.

Do not focus your thoughts among the confused wheels of secondary causes, as -'O if this had been, this had not followed!' Look up to the master motion of the first wheel. In building, we see hewn stones and timbers under hammers and axes, yet the house in this beauty we do not see at the present, but it is in the mind of this builder. We also see unbroken clods, furrows, and stones, but we do not see the summer lilies, roses, and the beauty of a garden. Even so we do not presently see the outcome of God's decrees with his blessed purpose. It is hard to believe when his purpose is hidden and under the ground. Providence has a thousand keys to deliver his own even when all hope is gone. Let us be faithful and care for our own part, which is to do and suffer for him, and lay Christ's part on himself and leave it there; duties are ours, events are the Lord's.

The weightiest end of the cross of Christ that is laid upon you, lieth upon your strong Savior.

Ye have lost a child
nay, she is not lost to you, who is found to Christ; she is not sent away, but only sent before; like unto a star, which going out of our sight, doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere.

I urge you a nearer communion with Christ, and a growing communion. There are curtains to be opened in Christ that we have never seen before ... Therefore dig deep, and sweat, and labor. Take pains for Him, and set aside as much time as you can in each day for Him.

If your Lord calls you to suffering, do not be dismayed, for He will provide a deeper portion of Christ in your suffering. The softest pillow will be placed under your head though you must set your bare feet among thorns. Do not be afraid at suffering for Christ, for He has a sweet peace for a sufferer. God has called you to Christ's side, and if the wind is now in His face, you cannot expect to rest on the sheltered side of the hill. You cannot be above your Master who received many an innocent stroke. The greatest temptation out of hell is to live without trials. A pool of standing water will turn stagnant. Faith grows more with the sharp winter storm in its face. Grace withers without adversity. You cannot sneak quietly into heaven without a cross. Crosses form us into His image. They cut away the pieces of our corruption. Lord cut, carve, wound; Lord do anything to perfect Your image in us and make us fit for glory! We need winnowing before we enter the kingdom of God. O what I owe to the file, hammer, and furnace! Why should I be surprised at the plough that makes such deep furrows in my soul? Whatever direction the wind blows, it will blow us to the Lord. His hand will direct us safely to the heavenly shore to find the weight of eternal glory. As we look back to our pains and suffering, we shall see that suffering is not worthy to be compared to our first night's welcome home in heaven. If we could smell of heaven and our country above, our crosses would not bite us. La

Oh, what love! Christ would not intrust our redemption to angels, to millions of angels; but he would come himself, and in person suffer; he would not give a low and a base price for us clay. He would buy us with a great ransom, so as he might over-buy us, and none could over-bid him in his market for souls. If there had been millions of more believers, and many heavens, without any new bargain his blood should have bought them all, and all these many heavens should have smelled one rose of life; Christ should have been one and the same tree of life in them all. Oh, we under-bid, and undervalue that Prince of love, who did overvalue us; we will not sell all we have to buy him; he sold all he had, and himself too, to buy us.

You will not be carried to Heaven lying at ease upon a feather bed.

Make not Christ a liar in distrusting His promise.

Dashes and disappointments are not canonical Scripture.

As our dear Husband, in wooing his [church], received many a black stroke, so his bride, in wooing him, gets many blows, and in this wooing there are strokes upon both sides

Desires going before conversion are not such as can calm a storming conscience.

You must learn to make your evils your great good; and to spin comforts, peace, joy, communion with Christ, out of your troubles, which are Christ's wooers, sent to speak for you from Himself.

I desire now to make no more pleas with Christ; verily, he hath not put me to a loss by what I suffer; he oweth me nothing; for in my bonds, how sweet and comfortable have the thoughts of him been to me, wherein I find a sufficient recompense of reward!.

There is none like Him; I would not exchange one smile of His lovely face with kingdoms.

We would either have a silent, a soft, a perfumed cross, sugared and honeyed with the consolations of Christ, or we faint; and providence must either brew a cup of gall and wormwood, mastered in the mixing with joy and songs, else we cannot be disciples. But Christ's cross did not smile on him, his cross was a cross, and his ship sailed in blood, and his blessed soul was sea-sick, and heavy even to death.

Faint not; the miles to heaven are but few and short.

Be not cast down. If ye saw Him who is standing on the shore, holding out His arms to welcome you to land, ye would wade, not only through a sea of wrongs, but through hell itself to be with Him.

My faith has no bed to sleep upon but omnipotence.

Every day we may see some new thing in Christ. His love hath neither brim nor bottom.

It is comfort to the believer that all things are possible.

The bloom fell off my branches and joy did cast off its flower

In our fluctuations of feelings, it is well to remember that Jesus admits no change in His affections; your heart is not the compass Jesus saileth by.

My desire is that my Lord would give me broader and deeper thoughts, to feed myself with wondering at His love.

Every man by nature is a freeman born; by nature no man cometh out of the womb under any civil subjection to king, prince, or judge.

He who duly esteemeth Christ, is a noble bidder, and so a noble and liberal buyer.

Christ and His cross are not separable in this life, howbeit Christ and His cross part at heaven's door, for there is no house-room for crosses in heaven. One tear, one sigh, one sad heart, one fear, one loss, one thought of trouble cannot find lodging there.

How soon would faith freeze without a cross!

If Christ Jesus be the periode, the end and the lodging-home at the end of your journey, there is no fear ye go to a friend ... ye may look death in the face with joy.

Welcome, welcome, cross of Christ, if Christ be with it.

He would be of blood to us: not only come to the sick, and to our bed-side, but would lie down and be sick, taking on him sick clay, and be, in that condition of clay, a worm and not a man, that he might pay our debts; and would borrow a man's heart and bowels to sigh for us, man's eyes to weep for us, his spouse's body, legs, and arms, to be pierced for us; our earth, our breath, our life, and soul, that he might breathe out his life for us; a man's tongue and soul to pray for us: and yet, he would remain God, that he might perfume the obedience of a High Priest with heaven, and give to justice blood that chambered in the veins and body of God, in whom God had a personal lodging.

I have been benefited by praying for others; for by making an errand to God for them I have gotten something for myself.

The night will close the door & fasten my anchor within the veil and I shall go away to sleep.

I see Christ's love is so kingly, that it will not abide a marrow it must have a throne all alone in the soul.

Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan of them.

I assure you by the Lord, your adversaries shall get no advantage against you, except you sin, and offend your Lord, in your sufferings.

When I look to my guiltiness, I see that my salvation is one of our Saviour's greatest miracles, either in heaven or earth.

I think it is possible on earth to build a young, new Jerusalem, a little, new heaven of this surpassing love. God, either send me more of this love, or take me quickly over the water, where I may be filled with his love.

Well's them who are under crosses, and Christ says to them, "Half Mine."

Grace will ever speak for itself and be fruitful in well-doing; the sanctified, cross is a fruitful tree.

O my Lord Jesus Christ, if I could be in heaven without Thee, it would be hell; and if I could be in hell, and have Thee still, it would be heaven to me, for Thou are all the heaven I want.

I hang by a thread, but it is (if I may so speak) of Christ's spinning

We are as near to heaven as we are far from self, and far from the love of a sinful world.

The figure of the passing-away world, 1 Cor. vii. 31. is like an old man's face, full of wrinkles, and foul with weeping: we are waiting when Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, and shall come and wipe the old man's face.

It is certain that this is not only good which the Almighty has done, but that it is best; He hath reckoned all your steps to heaven.

When the sun riseth first, the beams over-gild the tops of green mountains that look toward the east, and the world cannot hinder the sun to rise: some are so near heaven, that the everlasting Sun hath begun to make an everlasting day of glory on them; the rays that come from his face that sits on the throne, so over-goldeth the soul, that there is no possibility of clouding peace, or of hindering daylight in the souls of such.

My dear brother, let God make of you what He will, He will end all with consolation, and shall make glory out of your suffering.

There is as much in our Lord's pantry as will satisfy all his children and as much wine in his cellar as will quench all their thirst. Hunger on, for there is meat in hungering for Christ; go never from him, but seek him who is yet pleased with the importunity of hungry souls until he fills you; if he delays, yet do not go away, even if you faint at his feet.

I perceive we postpone all our joys of Christ, till He and we be in our own house above, thinking that there is nothing of it here to be sought or found, but only hope and fair promises; and that Christ will give us nothing here but tears, sadness, crosses; and that we shall never feel the smell of the flowers of that high garden of paradise above, till we come there. Nay, but I find it possible to find young glory, and a young green paradise of joy even here. We dream of hunger in Christ's house, while we are here, although He alloweth feasts to all the bairns within God's household.

Whenever I find myself in the cellar of affliction, I always look about for the wine.

When either grace is turned into painted, but rotten nature, as Arminians do, or into wantonness, as others do, the error to me is of a far other and higher elevation, than opinions touching church government. Tenacious adhering to Antinomian errors, with an obstinate and final persistence in them, both as touching faith to, and suitable practice of them, I shall think, cannot be fathered upon any of the regenerated; for it is an opinion not in the margin and borders, but in the page and body, and too near the centre and vital parts of the gospel.

They lose nothing who gain Christ.

[T]he Papist and the Arminian on the one extremity, enthroneth Nature, and extolleth proud merit, and abaseth Christ and free grace. The Familist, libertine, and Antinomian, on a contrary extremity and opposition, turn man into a block, and make him into a mere patient in the way to heaven.

Grow as a palm-tree on God's Mount Zion; howbeit shaken with winds, yet the root is fast.

The hope of heaven under troubles is like wind and sails to the soul.