Quotes by "John Fox"

Cloth will keep color best that is dyed in the wool, and the vessel will scent longest of that liquor with which it is first seasoned. Oh, then, remember your Creator in the days of your youth.

The great God stands much on priority to have the first and the best: the first ripe fruits, the first that opens the womb. Oh then offer the Isaac of your youth, the spring and flower of your age to God, and stay not until the evil day. Begin first with Him from whom you had your beginning. Go about the grand affair and work of your dear and never-dying soul before you do engulf yourself in the cares of this world. Resolve to present the first ripe fruits to that good and gracious God, who desires the first ripe fruits. In the bright morning of your life, match yourself to the King of Glory and become His bride before you are deflowered and defiled by sin and the world. If the celestial seeds of grace are sown in the morning, the pleasant and sweet flowers springing out of those seeds will invite the Lord Jesus to come and walk in His garden (Song 5:1). If you would be the temple of the Holy Spirit, let Him that made the house be the first and chief inhabitant. And suffer not your heart to be a habitation for dragons and devils, which will be your undoing to all eternity.

Time is compared to golden sands running between two eternities, and 'tis an infinite mercy they are still running, that you have a day to work out your salvation, to agree with your adversary while he is in the way [Matt. 5:25; Phil. 2:12]--namely, to make up the breach between God and your soul (Rev. 2:21).

Religion requires action, labour, diligence; for it does not consist in airy, empty notions and speculations of the head but in the exercise of the mind and heart. Habits must be exerted; grace, improved. Heaven (that is, all uphill) must be strived for and gotten, as it were, by force and victory.

Delays and laziness are the two great gulfs in which multitudes of souls are drowned and perish.

...follow and improve the light before the darkness overtakes you.

A work of infinite moment depends on a moment of time.

Live continually in an expectation of your great charge. Buy, sell, converse, read, pray, hear, and do all as dying men and passing to receive the recompense of endless joy or woe. Christians, if you would work while it is day; if you would glorify God on earth; if you would not be prey to the prince of darkness; if you would stand with comfort before the Lord Jesus at His dreadful bar; if you would not spend your days without hope--arise, therefore, and be doing, and the Lord be with you.