I recently read Thomas Watson’s, The Doctrine of Repentance. Like most puritan classics, it is a thoughtful, well-developed masterpiece, which leaves no stone unturned. Here are my fifteen favorite quotes from the book:
- It is better to go with difficulty to heaven than with ease to hell.
- We are to find as much bitterness in weeping for sin as ever we found sweetness sin committing it.
- The more bitterness we taste in sin, the more sweetness we shall taste in Christ
- By this self-accusing we prevent Satan’s accusing.
- Many had rather have their sins covered than cured (Prov. 28:13).
- Blushing is the color of virtue.
- Christ is never loved till sin be loathed.
- We are never more precious in God’s eyes than when we are lepers in our own.
- As God has two places he dwells in, heaven and a humble heart, so the devil has two places he dwells in, hell and a hard heart.
- Morality shoots short of heaven. It is only nature refined. A moral man is but old Adam dressed in fine clothes.
- Indeed, if prayer does not make a man leave sin, sin will make a man leave prayer.
- It is better to mortify one sin than to understand all mysteries.
- Never do the flowers of grace grow more than after a shower of repentant tears.
- Upon our turning to God we have more restored to us in Christ than ever was lost in Adam.
- It is the Spirit’s smiting on the rock of our hearts that makes the waters gush out.